New Guest Editor's Picks for 9/30

Hi everybody. As posted in the Journals Message Board, our new
Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:

Our
Guest Editor this week is Jodi, a mom of four who
likes to write, loves daisies and has 96
other things that you can learn about her. Her featured blog
is Looking
Beyond the Cracked Window, and you can see Jodi's top blog
picks in her blog
entry:

* Tidbits
*
Seriously,
Though
* Carpe
Diem
* Separation
Anxiety
* Sugar,
Spice and Everything Nice
* One-Way
Passage

Jodi's chose a theme of
autumn, though it's more of a feeling than a season
-- one of comfort, transition and change.



In other news, the tech folks put in a fix for the intermittent problem
of comment alerts not getting delivered, though I'm
still getting problem reports so it looks like they'll have to keep
looking.





Also, it looks like we'll be installing a fix next week to make

counters more reliable; I will tell you more about it when we get

closer to it.





Talk to you later, have a great weekend.



Thanks. -- Joe

Tag: Guest Editor's Picks

Random Web Link Roundup

Hi folks...I originally wrote this in an e-mail to some folks here:

"Here are some Web links of interest that I don't know yet if I'm
going

to be able to use, but that you might find interesting." 



Then, later: "Hrm,
I guess this is a pretty bloggy format, so I guess I will post it. But you can
use it too."


Anyway, here you go:



* milliondollarhomepage.com

- Brit uni (as in university) student selling pixels
on this page at $1

per pixel (10x10, or 100 pixel mininum); he's already cleared over

$200K. (He has a blog, too.)



* www.HappyNews.com -
Nothing but shiny, happy news for people who can't
deal with reality. Read about it in Gawker, who could barely stop gagging. Not
sure if this is a put-on or not.



* www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov
- Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'

(you know, "Redrum! Redrum!") remixed into a movie trailer for a

parenting comedy. It's a 9-megabyte movie
download...here is a mirror

site: http://waxy.org/random/video/shining_redux.mov
-- (http://waxy.org/links is where I read
about it.)



* www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/1043


- "You really know you're a techno-geezer when..." Computerworld

columnist Robert Mitchell blogs about how different we are from young

folks who only know a world with the Web, cell phones and IMs. (Hey, you

kids....get offa my lawn!)



* www.boingboing.net/2005/09/29/thirty_buck_toy_amp_.html
- Boing-Boing entry about a $30 amplifier that kicks
the snot out of amps 10 times the price.

If you
see these links anywhere else on AOL...well, you can say that you saw
it here first. Thanks. -- Joe

AOLJournals Bot Is Back

Hi folks...the AOLJournals bot is back; our tech
folks contacted

the bot tech folks, who bounced (or rebooted) the bot (would that just

be "rebotted"?). It's working now.



If you haven't tried updating your AOL Journal or AIM Blog via IM yet,

it's pretty neat. It's most useful if you're away
from your regular

computer, or if you're using a cell phone with AIM or other mobile

device, but it can also be convienient for quick hit
entries from your

computer.

Here's how it works:


1. In your IM client, open an IM to screen name
AOLJournals (this goes for AIM bloggers, as well).
For you lazy people, you can click these links to pop an IM to the bot:

AIM Users | AOL
Users

(You can add
AOLJournals to your Buddy List, just like any other
screen name.)

2. Type a message, four words or
longer. This will be the body of your entry. Send
the IM:








3. If you have multiple Journals (under the screen name you're IMing

from), it will ask you to choose which Journal you want to publish
to:








(You'll see that I use the word "foo" a lot when I need text for a
placeholder or example. Here's the Wikipedia
entry on "foo".)





4. If you want to give the entry a subject (if you don't, it will say

"Untitled", which isn't all that helpful or attractive), send another
IM starting with subject: (you need the colon)
followed by your title:








5. You can also add music: and
mood: the same way. For

moods, you have to stick with our mood options -- it

will tell you what they are if you type a non-supported mood (we know

you want free-form mood entry). You can just type "help" to see the

list of commands:








6. If you send another IM with more words, it will ask you if you want

to add them to  your current entry, or start a new
one.








So that's how you use IMs to publish to your Journal.





The tech folks are also working on alternate ways to publish to your

Journal, though I don't have anything solid to report right now. I'll

keep you updated as things progress.  Thanks. -- Joe

AOLJournals Bot Is Down

Hi folks...looks like the AOLJournals bot is down
(the IM robot

that lets you post entries to your blog via IM); when you try to send

it an IM, it returns the message, "I'm sorry. AOL Journals isn't here

right now. Try again later."





I've alerted the tech folks and will post an update when I get more
info.





Thanks to Jimmy, The Stupidsheet Guy, for the
report.  -- Joe

Blogging Hurricane Rita

Boy, didn't we just go through this? I'm having a bad case of
deja vu, here, though I'm sure not as much as the
residents of New Orleans, who are experiencing more flooding.

First

off, we might as well be proactive and get set to help those folks who

are being affected by Rita (as well as continuing to help those hurt
by

Hurricane Katrina) -- please, if you're able:

Donate
Now

If

there was any doubt, Hurricane Katrina pretty much proved the value of

blogs (and the Web in general) as a way to spread information in times

of crisis, so we have a pretty good model to
follow.

* Blog Herald has a list of good
Rita resources (blog-based and otherwise); instead
of stealing their list, I'm going to link off to it.



* One of their commenters also shares a Google Maps-based track of Rita (though
they add a disclaimer that for an official track,
folks should go right to the source, which is the National Hurricane
Center.



* Here's the Flickr photo group for "Hurricane
Rita"



* As before, here are some canned searches

on "Hurricane Rita" on some of the more promiment blog search engines

so you can find your own blog content. Here are some of the usual

suspects:

Feedster | Technorati | BlogPulse

In addition,
you can try Truth Laid Bear | Daypop |
Findory | Blogdigger | IceRocket

There

are a lot of blog search engines and lists out there -- the trick is
to

find one that you you feel consistently gives you the results you're

looking for, and use that as a start.

* The
Wall Street Journal, as part of their free
offerings, has a Storm News Tracker, which looks
suspiciously like a blog. (Also free from the WSJ, Walter Mossberg's
Personal Tech column has a feature on ways to keep your gadgets going when
there's no power from the grid.)



* Speaking of power outages, here's a little bit of humor gleaned from Hurricane
Isabel,

which hit the mid-Atlantic in September, 2003 -- it features

lessons learned, including: "I learned what happens when you make fun

of another state's blackout" and "When required, a Lincoln Continental

will float."



* Looking at things a little closer to home, here's the AOL
Journals search results for "Hurricane
Rita."



* Blogger John Scalzi has a roundup of some AOL Journaler's comments on Rita (and of
course, don't forget his latest Weekend Assignment, where he asks which
three nonessential items are essential enough to you that you'd grab
them if you had to evacuate.)



* Also, blogger The Real BigDawg asks and answers
the question "Why Don't We Just Nuke
Hurricanes?"



* On the Citizen Journalism front, here is
AOL News' latest photoblog for Rita



* Also from AOL News: if you want to help shape their news coverage, check out the
Daily Pulse blog; it's getting a lot of
traffic, especially in the comments
section.

Finally

for right now, if you have your own Rita (or Katrina) blog resources
or

entries and you'd like to share, please leave a comment with a link

below.

Have a great weekend, everybody -- including
those of us

affected by any of this season's hurricanes. We're with you. Thanks.
--

Joe

New Guest Editor's Picks for 9/23

Hi everybody. As posted in the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:

Our Guest Editor this week is Kelly,
a single mom who used to be in the Air Force, and is now a math major
pursuing a degree in education. (Or maybe engineering -- she's still
deciding). 



Her featured blog is In My Opinion (its full name is actually In My Opinion, and Yes I Have an Opinion on EVERYTHING), and you can see Kelly's top blog picks in her blog entry:

* Christy's Thoughts
* Really Living
* A Survivor's Guide
* Miss O's Soapbox
* Bekah's Butterflies
* Am I Thinking That?

Kelly's
picks center around everyday people (to coin a phrase). Observant
readers will also note that the promo tag line I used on the Journals
main page is a reference to the Clint Eastwood movie of the same name.

I have a pending update about Hurricane blog resources, so stay tuned.

Thanks -- Joe


Tag: Guest Editor's Picks

Blogging in the Funny Papers

Hi, folks. So, there I was reading the Sunday
funnies (on

Sunday, of course -- I'm running a little behind), when I came across
a

mention of blogging that I thought I'd share with
you.

The comic is the fairly awesome Candorville, by Darrin Bell, who is
himself a blogger. I thought it was especially
relevant, considering that it came right on the heels of the Blog Trends Survey and my entry asking
Why
We Blog.

I've excerpted the comic below;
you can find the entire comic on the Candorville
Website:



To
summarize, blogger Lemont has a freakout when Susan
says that she's read his latest blog entry, but leaves him to wonder
what she thinks about it.

Looking at the survey results, you could take a couple of differing
viewpoints:

* Lemont is the
exception

that proves the rule: He's one of those 3.8% of bloggers who "describe

themselves as blogging perfectionists, obsessive and
compulsive."

* Lemont is normal,

in that he's just like the 65% of us who feel disappointed when
someone

posts a negative comment to our blogs, so he just wants to
know.

* Lemont just overreacted
a

bit, since 40% of bloggers say "it is important to address messages

people have posted in their blog in a timely manner," and come on...

you can't just leave a guy hanging like that.

* Or
simply, that even though most bloggers blog for ourselves, we're not
machines: We still care about what other people
think.





So, what do you think?

In another comic venue, Gary
Trudeau's Doonesbury

has also recently covered some blog issues.  He's had a few
strips

on blogging, starting with issues that blogger Zipper faces with his
Krispy KremeDonut of the Month blog
feature:



In
four panels, Trudeau covers two important blog
topics:

1. The bit of blog
etiquette that says you don't steal
someone else's idea (at least, not without giving proper
credit)
2. The idea that folks feel
pressured to update their blogs (which the blog survey
debunks to

some extent, given that two-thirds or respondents say they don't worry

about churning out entries on a schedule, so therefore, no deadlines
to

speak of).

In the next day's strip,

Trudeau takes the issue of how TV news organizations are grappling
with

the challenge of how to integrate blogs in their coverage (or, as
skeptic

Jeff puts it, "What a concept -- take the unreadable
and make it illegible!").

Actually, in the weeks
since that strip was posted, CNN (a part of Time-Warner, as is AOL,
yadda yadda) has tried to go beyond just showing screenshots of blogs,
with Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room. 

I haven't watched it yet, since it's inconveniently broadcast from

3pm-6pm ET, so I don't know if the format works, though here is a writeup in Wired News.





Feel free to leave your comments below (you know you can't leave a guy
hanging like that.) Thanks. -- Joe