CogBlogged from ‘August, 2005’

Today is Blogday, celebrating an effort to push some folks in the long tail of the blog a little bit up the curve. BlogDay was initiated with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to know other bloggers, from other countries or areas of interests. In that day Bloggers will recommend about them to their Blog visitors. Okay, but since we are celebrating, let’s sing! Happy Blog Day to You! Happy Blog Day to You! Happy Blog Day dear blogosphere! Happy Blog Day to You! Do I now owe any royalties to the copyright holder? Apparently not!. For my puny piece, I combed through my recently comments/trackbacks (yes, ones that have sifted through the spam protection) for these 5, before they posted comments, unknown blogs to me: Sum Musing Orla from Toronto is doing “Sum politics. Sum fun. Sum research. Sum more fun. Sum rants. [...]

This morning I was browsing the new Drupal fueled look to evolt, a web developer site I’ve been tapping into for so long I cannot remember, and started reading Isaac Forman’s Usable Forms (for an international audience). It’s a good review of some of the pitfalls in web forms when we are not thinking enough about the audience… but the great quote for web designers, especially ones doing Web 2.0 work with sites running on databases: Stop and think about the last contact form that you designed, or consider this the next time you have the opportunity: Are you designing for your users? or Are you designing for your database? That’s a great bold question to ask, and anyone’s experience in shopping online, requesting information via a web form, even some blog comment forms, should be saying, “Yeah! I’m wondering about that too!” I am hoping to keep that in [...]

After running the minor upgrade for WordPress from 1.5.1 to 1.5.2, I can say their process is rather easy. I still smile when you run the upgrade script at it says “Step 1. It may take a while though, so be patient.”, then it completes and says “There’s actually only one step. So if you see this, you’re done. Have fun”. You have to like (well not really but I do) software that has a sarcastic personality, its what I have always liked about flickr (“Yes, I have read the fascinating terms of agreement”), well maybe before they riled up the masses. On the other hand, what sort of vibe do you get from a MS Office install? WordPress upgrades are pretty no-brainer. What I do not like for a minor upgrade is their suggestion: * Delete your old WP files, saving ones you’ve modified* Upload the new files So [...]

flickr fotoStranger Things Have Happenedavailable on my flickr I am still bleed Apple colors, but I have a new TabletPC for working with some new pen based applications (see what is on the screen. It’s a strange world indeed I’m still trying to get familiar with the TableTC environment with this new HP tc1100… no I am not abandoning my primary development on my Powerbook– this machine was purchased specifically to be able to do some R&D work with TableTC applications, primarily the MagicPaper on that we are piloting as part of our participation in the MIT iCampus Project. To that end, I am creating a new “R&D” category on this blog as I delve into these new technologies. The pen based mousing makes me feel like I’ve gone back to my first trackpad experience. The device is pleasently tiny, yet the swiveling screen back and forth is not quite [...]

To add to my list of burps in the Panther-Tiger upgrade: I seem unable to print any web page from Firefox… its infinite beach ball spin, and forced quit to escape. I can print fine in other applications. I rarely print web content, but its not too much to ask for. Finder sidebar disappearing icons… I keep all of my project/working files on a portable FireWire hard drive, so I can move them from work machine to home machine and back (yes, they are regularly backed up as often they are transported in a backpack). Pre-Tiger, I marked often used folders (local copies of web directories for 4 different servers) on this external drive as sidebar icons by simply dragging them over there. I’ve been trying to figure out why they would disappear next time I mounted the hard drive. Finally digging down in the bowels os Apple’s support forums, [...]

It’s only been… what, a few days?… when I insinuated that Trackback was not such a major problem. I just took a look at one of our MovableType 2.66 sites (that will remain nameless, linkless from here) that I’ve not scanned in a while, and saw a whole raft of Trackback spam sitting in the bins. Sigh. It took about 30 minutes of adding new filters to the MT Blacklist, running the Despam routine. I deleted somewhere between 150 and 200 ping spams. The interesting thing was among the usual suspects (pills and porn) was a majority of links to various Mp3 sites– what’s with that? Other preventative measures included: * renaming the Trackback script and adjusting the MT config files. This necessitates rebuilding all pages of all blogs running off of the site * deleting the option of Trackback email notification. Since there have been no legit trackbacks in [...]

Ah a bump in the Mac OS X Tiger upgrade — my vopy of iPhoto is toally stuck in spinning beachball land. I’ve tried rebuilding the library, renmaming, extracing photos with iPhoto extractor, etc. It is still hosed. I might have to get a copy of iLife now and start over. I had a huge pile of photos in the old version (still there), but really should have backed them to DVD first.

The link came from an actual comment to a blog entry– imagine that, a useful link from a comment! BlogSieve (“Advanced Feed Processing for Atom, RDF, and RSS”) is a new service that is fresh out and has potential for those wanting to mix RSS feed sources and recombine them in new ways: BlogSieve is a web-based tool that creates new feeds by filtering, merging and sorting existing feeds. The BlogSieve engine accepts virtually every (valid) feed format, processed results are then exported into any feed format you choose You can enter up to 5 feed sources (RSS URLs) as a starting point. The feature that Blogsieve offers that may maje it stand out from others, is that you can create a series of “filters” or search terms, so you are not getting everything from all 5 sources, but ones that match keyword criteria. It also provides output in 4 [...]

Cue up your 1970 dusty, scratch ridden version of the classic John Barleycorn tune long ago wafted by Traffic: There were three bloggers [1], [2], [3] came out of the West, Their fortunes for to try, And these three bloggers made a solemn vow: Blog Trackback must die. They’ve wrote, they’ve dug, they’ve harrowed it in, Threw posts upon its head, And these three bloggers made a solemn vow: Blog Trackback was dead. Yup, the proclamation has been made. Trackback is Dead. I’ve read it all before. Trackback is too complicated. It is prone to spam. It’s the wrong model for connecting blogs. It’s yucky. Yadda yadda yadda. In the beginning, There was MovableType. Trackback was Simple. When I write a blog posting here, and reference Jermey’s posting by the mere virtue of a hyperlink, my blog software would tell his that “someone was writing about your stuff” and build [...]

It’s been interesting to see how a dis-connected set of blog posts about “distributed conversations” have pretty much emulated the topic. Mine was but one tiny ripple among the tide. With a few iterations of search (lacking an explanation of their syntax), Technorati does a credible job, but is it all the echoes? Just recently, Stephen Downes pointed to an iteresting, long thread on this topic inside the house of Moodle, the forums where Moodlers are trying to get their hands around fitting a blog tool. Take a gander in Blogs, Forums and the Nature of Discussion (you can read by logging in as guest). It seems like there is a village of people who dwell in tree houses, and spend all their time there. They sometimes see through their binoculars 1 or 2 people who live far away in the caves. The two societies rarely meet, yet they form [...]