CogBlogged from ‘October, 2005’

I’ve been tinkering with my simple approach of using MovableType as a publisher engine to create podcast feeds and content listings for audio content that is used across several different web sites. While there are many ways one could go about this, I am finding this to be efficient and fast. I only have about 7 feeds set up, but they are pushing across multiple web sites, with different design layouts. This allows me to create a single directory of content and RSS files that can be accessed by any of our other PHP web pages. So the main podcast entry page lists all the casts on our site, and th elistings provide links to web sites connected to the audio, a description, a URL for the MP3 file, and now, stealing the idea from the EDUCAUSE blogs, the slick niftyplayer, and embedded flash audio player, e.g.: But by setting [...]

I read a long time ago a column by an auto mechanic who said the hardest customers to deal with were ones who tried to guess what the car’s problem was rather than describe the symptoms, e.g. someone saying, “I think the hydrowidget is sheared off” rather than, “I hear a harsh squealing noise when I make left turns”. What I got out of this that its important to describe the symptoms of a problem, the situations where it occurs when you are asking for help. The same goes when people have technology issues. I get piles of these for various projects or web sites. While I know a good portion of these are very likely things that are my fault or problems created by our stuff, I cannot even come close to helping when messages come in like, “it does not work” or “HELP!!!!! The link is bad” (and [...]

How says there’s nothing worthy on blogrolls…. Found on a sidebar– is this a long lost blog cousin to CDB? http://sitcogblog.blogspot.com/ Strike out on Jakob’s Weblog Usability Law #1…

My experiments with new services that offer tools to mix a set of different RSS feeds into one was interesting, and the comments brought in a few more. I’ve updated the original post to include: Aggrssive lazytom’s feedjumbler FEEDcombine Feed Findings FrankenFeed Feedjumbler had likely the easiest setup and mix of good output features, FrankenFeed was clean and had the coolest logo, and Aggssive is intriguing for the whole tagging business. Others worked, but took longer (e.g. entering one feed URL per form field, others choked on bad RSS. John offered a good list where I got most of these. Wow, there’s a whole pile of these.

Thanks to an email from Ralph in Austria, I updated the bookmarklet tool for Simpy on my Multipost Bookmarklet Tool, the cheesy script I made for combining multiple social bookmark tools into one. Since these days I have pared my tool set down to one tasty tool, I have no idea if the others have gone bad or changed. As Ralph pointed out, my page did not have an easy way to contact me, so I have added hopefully obvious links to my standard web feedback form. Also, I did go in and discover that the tool for Blinklist no longer required a cryptic coded user id, so that one is also updated. And I removed my own Bag of URLs site because (a) it really is not a social bookmark tool; and (b) because 90% of the submissions were spam, and the other 10% were all me, I changed [...]

According to Molly’s Web Design and Development Personality Indicators: Frustrated with the range of attitudes and opinions I deal with as a standards-oriented educator, I’ve decided to begin a project (very) loosely based on the Meyers-Briggs personality indicators. So, dear readers, I’m hoping you’ll help me add and refine my categories, but I’m off to a start with the following… There are not a 100 questions to respond to, just a self-assessment; so I am somewhere in the land of: TTLM. Trying To Learn More. In this category are the good men and women who might still be serving it up Old Skool but are open to learning, open to growth yet struggling with standards related concepts and the snakepit of browser challenges of contemporary Web design and development. These brave souls are not in the majority, but they are to be lauded and assisted for their willingness to venture [...]

The least thought-out posts gain the most comment? As a follow-up to Me 2.0 someone kindly sent a serendipitous Bloglines pairing of my post and something else that is sort of related (might need the full-size to appreciate):

What a nice surprise that search results returned from Google now act like the are supposed to- a hover or a right/control mouse click on a link actually points to the site listed, rather than a re-direct via a Google.com address: This has been most annoying for blogging especially as I use Google to locate relevant links in my posts, and I prefer a direct URl to the site returned, not a re-directed link. Good on ya, Google! Back to the way it ought to be. Hope you got all the data you need.

Faster then a speeding meme, more hot that the surface of the sun, all one needs now for a “sexy” technology name is to tack on a “2.0″. Already tired and expired is putting an “i” in front of every noun, even more tired/ more expired is putting the “e” in front of everything. Submitted for evidence: * Web 2.0 The Conference (heck I could not even make it to Web 1.0), also Joi Ito is leaving room for Web x.0 (thanks Teemu) * Web 2.0 Central (flashing, blinking, and ad laden) * E-Learning 2.0 (no that is not your GPA) * Business 2.0 (actually, that one’s been out for a long time) * Identity 2.0 (“the next generation of identity”, a drivers license is like so Identity 1.0… thanks Stephen) * Cafe 2.0 (does it leave room for cream at the top?) * Innovation 2.0 (1.0 = dot.bom.0? Thanks [...]

I have an unwritten internal filter on the range of topics blogged here. For a personal venture I have taken up, to run a half marathon in January, I decided to set up as its own blog, on my own domain. So I won’t be really writing about it here- you can see the full details at I Hate Running http://dommy.com/ihaterunning/ In a nutshell, running is something I have never enjoyed or done seriously, so it’s a challenge for me to do so. As well as I am doing the training as part of a team raising money to support research and education into a cure for diabetes, this October coming up my 35th year since being diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic. I mention the blog here only because doing so has become a nice laboratory for poking deeper into WordPress. I’ve started a Web Site Notes page that [...]