CogBlogged from ‘October, 2005’

There are big URLs, little URLs, long convoluted database generated URLs. I’ve always leaned a bit towards the side of the fence where web site addresses that indicate what their content points to is a bit more useful than long meaningless ones. But it may not even matter. I was struck by this today visiting one of our colleges’ web sites that looks like it has moved to a new (capital letters coming) Content Management System, which makes for a nice looking site (good navigation, some dynamic content, flash headers), but ugh, department URLs that end up looking like: http://……../ndex.php?page=32&subpage=905&sublink=8002 What does that really tell you about the content it links to? I’m not familiar with the technology, but can think a bit about how WordPress is set up— It too generates URLs as ugly as those above, but uses some under the hood server technology (mod_rewrite) to turn them [...]

Is anyone else dizzy at the rate of new web-based tools/services with tinges of RSS, social software, open-ness? It’s a Good Thing, but it seems like there are 3 or 4 or 12 a week. The latest is the coyly named Remember the Milk: Achieve Domestic Bliss. Never forget the milk (or anything else) again. Remember The Milk is the easiest and best way to manage your to-do lists online. Here are just a few of the reasons why it’s so cool: * Features galore. Sharing, publishing, notes… we’ve got it all. * Get reminded. Receive reminders via email, instant messenger, and SMS. * It’s free. Hard to believe, we know, but it’s true. So its a service for creating todo lists, looks like with items that are tagged for free-form categorizing, multiple modes for sending reminders, and hooks for creating shared lists (that’s all guess work from the features [...]

Pity the 96% of the computing world stuck in virus infected, human interface rejected, bug detected operating systems. They act like they like it, but often the Freudian slips are visible. But you don;t have to wait for an Intel powered Mac to get the Aqua groove– there is FlyakiteOSX: The web site for this OSX emulator is also an OSX emulator, all done with CSS, JavaScript, and groovy graphics. Once you “log in”, you get a desktop: which you can see has its own animated dock. You can open up the apps, skim the finder, leave stickies, move things around, (the iTunes emulator never connected to a playlist): Yes, I know Stephen will comment back in seconds with some derogatory remark about Macs, but beyond that, if you look just at the web site and how it is rendered, its a great kick in the sites to your Web [...]

I use the term “people” rather loosely: What is scarier is that somewhere out there is someone who would actually reply. Ahhh, the smell of spam frying in the junk mail folder. Sizzzzzzle…..

Guess who’s coming to town? Do you think they need a map? Can we expect future logos with cacti, gila monsters, and javelina? Will they take the company tubing down the Salt River? Can they handle the hot stuff from Los Dos Molinos? Will they check out Zoo Lights? After dowing some Killer Chili they stick their dollar bills to the walls of the restaurant at Tortilla Flat? Will they flip through the used CDs and find the best local and indies music at Zia’s? So many things to search for here…

Last week was our most recent meeting of our Ocotillo Online Learning Group (OLG) meeting– OLG is an open meeting once a month at different college sites at Maricopa. The October meeting was at South Mountain Community College, featuring a topic of Copyright, Not Copywrong. As our trend this year, we captured two of the segments simply by plunking down an iRiver MP3 recorded in front of the room and they are connected into our OLG Podcasts. At this meeting, we had librarian Hazel Davis of Rio Salaod provide an overview of Copyright in the Online Environment– the link there will take you to the presentation, handouts, and the 51 minute audio recording: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/olg/audio/olg_oct05_davis.mp3 I did a 5 minute song and dance about Creative commons (mostly links in the notes). We then had a counsel form our legal department do some Q&A with the audience, also recorded: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/olg/audio/olg_oct05_mcconnell.mp3 It was [...]

Shazam! Sit back and watch/listen to Brian Lamb’s first screen cast, “Beyond the Blog”, a whirlwind tour of weblogs, wikis, RSS, aggregators, flickr, social software, and more. Best quip, “Think of delicious as blogging without writing a weblog”. Awesome work, Brian, and your fans shall clamor for more.

flickr foto Shockwave Book Put To Workavailable on my flickr I was musing recently about long ago doing multimedia development for the web using Macromedia Director and Shockwave as the playback engine in the browser… and I recalled that I am still using on the classic books. Darrel Plant’s Shockwave: Breathe New Life into Your Web Pages came out way back in 1996 as the first book about Fried Green Director. I think I got a copy for maybe doing a review or having some content bundled into the CD-ROM. That is in the dusty neuron category. Anyhow, Darrel’s book is still very useful- here it is used to lift up the Apple XServe that hosts CogDogBlog to give the machine a bit more airflow underneath. Another Shockwave book holds up the other end, but’s it far back to bother looking. And in trying to be clever taking the photo, [...]

Well what do you know, look which two Course Management Systems have hooked up… maybe more spicy than MacroDobie or Adobamedia will be BbCT? Interesting times as the curse goes, eh?

A year ago there were none but now there are a good handful of sites that allow you to mix in a collection of disparate RSS feed URLs, and it mixes them into a new one, with its own RSS feed. I refer these frequently to folks that write me about Feed2JS asking if it can accept multiple feed URLs (the answer is “no”). A feed mixer will do the trick. Having just come across a new one, KickRSS (love the name), I thought I;d try and list the ones I knew. Most likely I will miss one, two, ten or twelve, so let me know of other similar services. To test them, I have created a few test feeds, using RSS URLs for my favorite Canadian Bloggers: OLDaily http://www.downes.ca/ Abject Learning http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/brian/ Couros Blog http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/ D’Arcy Norman http://www.darcynorman.net/ Roland Tanglao http://www.rolandTanglao.com/ Mezzoblue http://www.mezzoblue.com/ Feed Mix Sites and results: KickRSS [...]