CogBlogged Tagged ‘wide world of blog’

I’ve been guilty of this several times over, but its easy to fall into the Field of Dreams Syndrome (FoDS) by focusing on the construction of the place (“build a virtual community and they will come”). I’ve rambled before about this, that if you look at real communities of people, it is just more than the coors of the walls they hang out at; and I remain firmly convinced that we under-focus on the social aspects of the “community” and over-focus on the place. So last Thursday I was in a meeting, and missed the big webcast launch of the Apple Digital Campus Exchange. Look at all the things the “place” required- registering in advance, downloading a special application (cast stream), logging in at a set time. I arrived a little over an hour late and must have missed the show: As you can see, I actually left it open [...]

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 [...]

In the next few months I will be trying to… ahem, dip into the cliche bag…. “walk some of the talk” (or maybe it is “jog some of the blog”). My colleagues and I concocted a plan last week to cease completely the print publication of our mcli Forum, a once a semester publication form our fofice on teaching, learning, and assessment. The forum has been pumped out since 2001, and actually before that in a previous incarnation as the Labyrinth-Forum back to 1992 (for a trip down memory lane, see our August 1994 issue on “Mosaic of Internet”). So yes, while we have been electronically publishing all along, the primary focus has been on the print version, resulting in these issues for us: We spend a lot of money on print versions. A lot of bucks, although we use a reaonble priced paper, limited colors, grey scale photos… In [...]

I’m trying to give James a hand at bumping up the number of new sites at Edublogs.org by a factor of 10. I emailed a message to our distribution list for our Ocotillo Online Learning Group letting them new this was available. I’ve heard more people talk about, or actually try blogging in all of the last two years, its like sitting on an inflection point. The basic message was: Do you hear more and more people are talking about blogging? Don’t know where to start? If the word and practice is strange, start by looking at Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/) If you are curious enough and want a free place to practice and try it out, see the new hosted service Edublogs.org (http://edublogs.org) offering free service for educators. You can create your own unique URL like http://elvis.edublogs.org/ and have the use of one of the better blog software platforms, [...]

Skepticism is healthy and leaves room for later acceptance, eh? As previously barked, I am not convinced yet that there is a natural leap form the success of podcasting to saying video will take off just the same. I would enjoy being wrong. David Weinberger, the Cluetrain guy, the Small Pieces guy someone I read often and respect immensely — is posting video interviews with the blogerati of the Supernnova 2005 conference. It is being referred to as “blogcasting”: Blogcasting is a new program being launched at this year’s Conference, that offers a video-based online blog format with a twist. It will feature hosted interviews with speakers and key conference participants as well ad hoc commentary from our attendees. Our Conference commentator, David Weinberger – popular industry analyst, writer and blogger – will interview panel moderators as well as approach session attendees; distilling the key points, asking the questions on [...]

I had first stumbled into the J-Walk Blog a while ago, and remember it as a place that is oozing with sarcasm, right there from the byline: Stuff That May or May Not Interest You Wow, a real mission statement! I had first done the J-Walk with the first of three wickedly funny fake sites below. If you have a tough time dealing with sarcasm, don’t go here. The 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference “Write better emails. Make more moneys.” Spam University “Welcome to Spam University, the world’s top-rated educational institution for the growing spam industry.” Google Content Blocker “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads. That’s where Google Content Blocker comes in. It effectively blocks all Web site content, leaving only the advertisements.” The [...]

Darth Vader is baring his soul in blog format Darth Vader is an immaculately conceived knight-bastard imbued with magical powers who rules the known galaxy at the right hand of the merciless and brilliant Emperor Palpatine I. Though he maintains palaces on both Coruscant and Vjun, Vader spends most of his time travelling aboard Executor, the flagship of his deadly pan-galactic armada. He enjoys fixing things, listening to music, and crushing people’s tracheas with his mind. There is a huge amount of writing, perhaps storytelling in blog format here. If you think it is trivial, note the number of comments: Must have a galactical sized Technorati profile Tip of the blog hat to Sébastien Paquet

I was experimenting with the Jots.com bookmark and publish to weblog API, but as duly noted in comments by Will and James, it was turning my blog reading into more of a linkatorium: I’d rather get it by subbing your Jots feed rather than your blog feed. True, so I am shutting of the publishing of “Today’s Jots” and may set up the feed as a sidebar WordPress Page. I have been adding a few of these by setting up a few of my othe feeds to publish to the page via Feed2JS, such as my presentation RSS feed and another one I played with doing a feed for the technology articles from our bi-annually published MCLI forums (such much worth subscribing to the feed as its update change is twice a year, but RSS makes it handy to publish the summaries elsewhere). On another front, I am still weighing [...]

The internet is seemingly infinite and I love gems that lie out there in the long tail of the long tail. From that obscure zone where a few people find vitality comes the blog “WordPerfect for DOS Updated”, so rock in in your special niche of DOS lovers, filling a void no big software support sites would bother.

I’ve not had any luck starting any memes. And I expect my streak will continue. But I am curious if perhaps others would share via comments or in their own sites, What was your “Blog-Ha” Moment? (Blog Aha!) What was it the triggered the 10,000 watt light bulb going off in your head that screamed, “Wow! There is something really powerful about this way of expression” A good collection of these mini stories would be useful when doing the “Intro to Blogs 101″ type workshops. It relates to my recent wonderings about the wisdom of starting new faculty bloggers with writing in empty blogs vs reading existing ones. Or it may just be interesting. My Own Blag-ha The meme will surely be lame since I do not have a precise starting point (it was before I started blogging!)… I cannot recall exactly a big light going off. I know that [...]