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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 […]

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Introducing “Sharebacks”- the MLX Implementation of Trackback

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The web elves have been doing some refining of our Maricopa Learning eXchange “packing slips”- mainly in the lower portions. For reference as we blog, see the MLX slip for the Correlation Meter.

We wanted to make the commenting function for apparent by embedding the comment form directly in the packing slip, and using what should be familiar as the kind of form one finds on weblogs where name and em-mail can be cookie saved. We also extract the most recent comment in display form on the slip, with a link to see the rest,

In parallel, you will find a revamp presentation (and under the hood implementation) or Trackback (described more than a year ago). Thanks also to Derek at Auricle for generating some ideas on Trackback.

Given that the word “TrackBack” does not really describe the effect, we took liberty to call it “Shareback” meaning if you use, re-use, describe, mentione, blog one of our packages on some other web site, we have the tools to easily “shareback” that information with the MLX package.

Like our comments, the Shareback area of the MLX packing slip now will display the most recent shareback, and link to more (if there is more than one). The Shareback display includes all pings registered, as well as more of an explanation of what we mean by shareback, and a web form where you can register the information if you lack the tools to do it for you.

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Ideal Use of Internet Technology: Turning The Pages

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(yes, something not related to spam) I had seen and recommended before the British Library’s Turning the Pages site, but was recently reminded of it in an email exchange. To me this is one of the prime examples of what the Internet can provide- a rich interactive experience with a resource that would not be […]

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Rolling Up the Sleeves On Spam War Front

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Yes, fighting blog spam has been a huge distraction. I would rather be creating things than roach stomping. But I refuse to close off comments completely; it runs dead against what blogs should do to foster community building. About 36 hours ago, I took the approach of renaming my mt-comments.cgi script. The new name was […]

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Spammers 12 / Me Zero

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It was all for nought. My research, attempts to tidy up the movabletype holes, changing names of comment scripts, did squat. I just combed through and deleted 12 blog comment spams, generously sent in a swift spurt, all related somehow to animals, by guess. I am ready to raise the white flag and kill the […]