442 Posts from 2004

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BlogSpam: The Troops Are Getting Tired

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Reports from the trenches on the fight against comment spam…. CDB has been relatively quiet since masquerading the URLs for comment scripts. However, two other blogs on our server, one for a college Center for Teaching and Learning and the other of an Art faculty member, were pummeled this week with the worst of the porn spam, and in multiple doses.

Some of the problem were a few things I had accidently hosed with the MT-Blacklist plugin, but these URLs were really attacking the blacklist model by various permutations on animals, fetishes, body parts, etc. I guess the folks making out are the domain registrars.

It is sure feeling like another nail for perhaps an MT coffin this summer

But a few positive puny, miniscule victories….

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Ocotillo Retreat Today

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Today is my big catered affair. The 2004 Ocotillo Retreatis the 17th one for the Maricopa Community College’s “Ocotillo” program— something started to provide a faculty-led focus on issues of instructional technology. Ocotillo is a desert plant that is also the creative metaphor for what has been a dynamic and evolving organization over the years […]

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Google.Vanity: RSS2JS Sprinklings

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Again, I should be working on something important, but for idle curiosity I was fishing in the Ocean Google to try and find where other folks have been using our RSS To Javascript code/service: http://www.google.com/search?q=rss2js.php%3Fsrc%3D It is an interesting mmix of people running off of our server as well as running it on their own […]

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Group Communication Tools: Big Multi-tools? Pliers and Screwdriver?

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I’ve been in a number of collaboration initiatives that aim to use online collaboration tools or “virtual community building” and sometimes it feels like the frustration of combing through one of those 90 function multi-tools when all you really need is a basic knife.

While not convinced the tools make or break the projects (it has more to do with the people, the motivation, a shared purpose, the gravitational pull of Saturn ;-), it sure seems like the tools often get in the way rather than enabling. The creaky 1990s vintage “Worktools” used, or attempted in use last year by the Learning Objects Virtual Community of Practice (LOVCOP) as well as the ePortfolios VCOP (E-PAC) had brief pulses of activity last year, but are now online ghost-towns. Was it the tools fault? I would not know, but I can vouch that the sheer tediousness of using them compelled me not to extend an effort (email notifications of discussions posted- you had to log in, navigate and open threads to even find them) and not many others spent time inside these multi-tool. sites. Worktools was likely a fine effort in the early days of web-based forums, but to me it was the equivalent of a Model T on the autobahn.

So what has happened?

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Blog As a Web Publishing Platform: LTA Demo

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A perception is that weblogs are primarily for teen angst diaries, obsessions on favorite pets, or rantings of the extreme lunatic fringe (hey, I think pretty much describes my blog!). I’ve been tinkering here and there with a demonstration case that the tools and features blog can be harnessed to simplify the creation of beautiful and/or useful web sites by every day folks, not just techies, programmers, and designers.

The current site for Low Threshold Applications (LTA), is designed to provide mainly for an audience of non technical teachers, a collection of detailed tips on non threatening ways to use information technology in a beneficial manner. All very good stuff, goal-wise. But the web site falls short on design and functionality, so we have set up a blog published demo to put side by side….

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“Woe is Me” and MT3

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Oh the wailing and despair that is bleating across the blogscape about MovableType’s announcement of the fee$$$$$$$ for MT 3.0. I’ve not bothered too much as I prefer to wait until the dust settles, but I am reading of mad rushes to rampage, rapid switches to other platforms such as WordPress, Bloxsum, heck, maybe folks […]

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New Tool BlogPulse (and how to GET what they POST)

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Somewhere in the aggregator today came a pointer to a new blog search tool, BlogPulse

BlogPulse is an “automated trend discovery system for blogs. Blogs, a term that is short for weblogs, represent the fastest-growing medium of personal publishing and the newest method of individual expression and opinion on the Internet. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs… It is a one-stop portal for finding out what bloggers are saying on topics of interest to you or on your beat…. Perhaps you want to find out the latest, greatest memes and trends in the blogosphere—you’ve come to the right place. Check out our daily Analysis and Trends.

And it seems to support Google-like searches, well at least putting quotes around words for a phrase search, for example, my own BlogPulse on “learning objects”.

But wait a minute- when you search from BlogPulse, you are not provided a savable URL like Google, which allows you to create your own “Google Links” ( that links to an MLX package “how to”). The reason is on the techie side, but it boils down to how the FORM tags are set up- a method=”POST” option does not return the query appeneded to the search URL (like BlogPulse), while the GET method supplied by Google will return the results with a full URL that allows you to regenerate the results.

This is an incredible feat that Google provides, whether it was their intent to do so or not. Any search result from Google can be repeated by the URL of the search results page. Copy / Paste and you have a new Google Link

This is a small trick I have used for years, but as a Happy Friday bonus, I present my strategy for going from a POST to a GET…

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openMLX: Thumbs Up From Legal

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Our legal department was supportive, even enthusiastic, about our plans to provide an openMLX, the propose open source version of the Maricopa Learning eXchange. They were not overly familiar with the details of open source licenses (they first proposed drafting up a new license), but seemed to understand our rationale for going GPL. Anyhow our […]

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Prototype for New RSS to JavaScript Code

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I ought to be something else, but have been bothered by two items regarding our often used RSS2JS (allows humans to use RSS by cut and past JavaScript, processed by a PHP middle ware script). It hinged upon the defunct, gone, and un-documented OnyxRSS Parser. It could not handle Atom feeds, and since Blogger is […]