CogBlogged from ‘August, 2004’

I picked this one off the pile of RSS feeds, GUI Bloopers a site supporting a book about software design “mistakes”. I have to admit to not doing more than scanning the table of contents, so the book may be a fine treasure indeed, but the web page here just makes me gag up kibbles and bits: texttured backgrounds repeating tiled GIFs- it is so, like 1997. white text on a dark background, cool on the monitors, ghost like invisible to a printer fancy text headings as embedded images- more useful, less bandwidth with style sheets Javascript image replacement roll-overs- again, very passe, and yes your copy of ImageReady, GoLiuve etc makes ‘em for you… but again, clunky. Maybe it is because the date stamp is 2002, but the site is under a more modern looking one that has at least made some small web-design steps into the current century– [...]

Sometimes in the RSS grazing you zoom quickly past something that just has a tiny spark, and it registers- this might be big. I had that sensation upong finding this O’Reilly article from uber uber geek John Udell, Prime-Time Hypermedia: In the course of trying to transform my blog from a hypertext publication into a hypermedia publication, I’ve run into a bunch of obstacles. In the world of tech blogging they are — ironically — almost purely technical. Presentations, demos, and interviews are often freely available for viewing or listening, yet infuriatingly hard to link to. Almost anyone can create and post a snippet of audio or video, but almost no one can do so easily, spontaneously, or routinely. In a series of columns beginning with this one, I’ll review and elaborate on a variety of hypermedia techniques I’ve been experimenting with. I don’t know beans about high-end AV technologies, [...]

I believe in wikis…. but they are very strange internet things to wrap your head around. I met today with David, one of the co-chairs of our ePortfolio Ocotillo Action Group and we had an interesting discussion on how to make wikis approachable and appreciated (and used) by people who have never ventured into them. “Blogs are the rage, in a lot of media, and there is now some ‘shame’ pressure for people to get into blogs.. but wikis??? it’s not even on the radar” And even when you explain the Hawaiian source of the word, it does not seem to register or connote a web-based collaborative, hyperlinked space when you say the word. It just sounds goofy. David is a bleeding edge technology faculty (having jumped into HTML in 1994) and he struggles with how wikis might be best used (we planned for collaborative building of resource collections, brainstorming [...]

Back to code. I modified the download-able version of our Feed2JS to provide local installations the same build and CSS select/modify tools we offer on the main site. The primary reason is getting it set up on a server in New Zealand for my pending visits there for workshops in November. This was a fairly quick attempt. If someone who is using the code on their own site can just check out the new build.php, style.php, pages and associated assets, I’d be appreciative.

I asked for it. I got it. Some good, healthy, swift kicks regarding yesterdays 2 part frothy rants on This Ain’t No Blogging (parts 1 and 2), both via comments and trackbacks. Thanks Scott, Dan. Stephen, James, David, Rino (I think, I cannot read Norwegian), Brian, Tom and everyone else who decides to pile on. More or less what I was hoping for by lobbing some silly big rocks into the blog pond. Rightfully so, pointed out that blogs are blogs without comments comments are a curse (spam, overload, marginal value) and a blessing blogs can work well as pure publishing, or info sharing blogs can be news scoops or personal rants and much more… Yup, I asked for a whupping, and got one. I was trying to make a subtler point, that likely missed the mark. Not the first or last time. No one can really singularly define or [...]

As hoped, I already got some bark backs on “This A’int No Blogging” Part 1: If a Blog Falls in the Woods…. And as rightfully pointed out, comments are not all there is to being part of the blogging community- see the well thought comments just made by Stephen Downes — noting the pitfalls of comments (if you get too many you really are unable to respond and have a life) who I think anticipated the next bit of froth I intended to post today: More precisely, there are bloggers who are (more or less) well integrated into the network, and those who are not. Those who are more integrated are more like those academics who, as well as publishing to journals, actually read the articles other people have written, and reflect this in their own work. They are like those people who attend, and listen to, presentations by other [...]

I am going to write something in this first of two posts that I bet (and hope) a lot of people will disagree with. I want that. I want to hear your dissent. That is what this stuff is about. Here it is, I make my own artificial distinction between publishing a weblog and the broader, social act of blogging. Huh? This came from several instances of following some interesting stories in my RSS reader, finding a blog where the author had written something where I wanted to disagree with, agree with, offer extra information… and in a number of instances I had no voice because there was no comment functionality. I get tired of looking for it, trying to even find email contacts, and failing. I understand fully the bloggers who have dealt a blow by spam. I have too dealt with the scourge of blog spam, but rather [...]