More Than Cat Diaries: Publishing With Weblogs

demo1

2005-06-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

What I Learned at NMC

A diary is not just book
Rissoto was Great
Bullets provided by shy audience members

This lovely slide was created live during the presentation

Notes: Word Slide Demo

The internet got slow...

This slide was creatied live during the presentation on June 16, 2005. If there is some real content here, than it may have been successful.

demo2

2005-06-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

Surfer Girls photo "PinCheck" (Brian), found on flickr

Photo Slide Demo (Created live during this presentation)

Notes: Photo Slide Demo

This photo was found in the flickr creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License section among the photos tagged by "oahu"

Credits

2005-06-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

Photo Credits

Photos used in this presentation are all attributed. The following images were found in the Creative Commons licensed collection from flickr and usage here is in accordance with those licenses.

The cat/diary graphic in the pink sidebar and the cover slide is a collage created from:
- The cat: "King of Stray Cats" by "elvis1967" in Kanagawa, Japan.
- The diary: "Livre 1" by Clément Laberge in Québec, Canada.
- Written words in the diary: "torn" by Jessica Reynolds Hutchison in Dallas, texas
The images were edited in Adobe PhotoShop by Alan Levine.

Notes: Photo Credits

This is the presentation for "More Than Cat Diaries: Publishing With Weblogs" to be presented at the New Media Consortium 2005 Summer Conference.

Ultima

2005-06-14T01:53:00.000-07:00

Ultima Online Blog blog by "Ghosty Twofish"

Blog As A News Center Using RSS

Notes: Blog As A News Center Using RSS

Ultima Online - UO On The Web: "Articles mentioning Ultima Online are linked automatically as they appear on Yahoo! News"
This site shows that the front page published by a blog need not be just a reverse chronological listing of articles. In this case, the main page, and only page is a display of RSS feed content generated by Yahoo News base don search criteria related to an online game. The content is displayed using Feed2JS.

Finale

2005-06-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

Sam The Cat's Diary flickr photo by Bryan Kelley

And Cats Really Do Diaries!

Notes: Finale

That's It! Go out there and smash "the blogs are online diaries" myth.

Blogger Presenter

2005-06-14T01:28:00.000-07:00

Blogger Presenter (or How To Do This)

Break The Blogger Box
With CSS You Can Do Any Display*
No Archives
Crafting the Navigation Menu
Demo

*Design first for compliant web standard browsers. Then spend a few hours/days/weeks working around the unpredictable behaviors of Internet Explorer.

Notes: Blogger Presenter

For this demo, I have uploaded all of the graphics for the slides and style sheets to my own web server. Since this is not always an available option, there is no reason why the images could not be referenced with &ltg'img src="....."gt; tags pointing to files with URLs on Flickr. For example, the opening slide image is on my flickr site and could be inserted into my slides as HTML pointing to flickr:
```
<img src="http://photos13.flickr.com/17881017_6150474c08_o.jpg" 
  width="600" height="450" alt="cat-diaries-cover" />
```
The "Blogger Box" refers to the layout and display of 99% of Blogger sites- a main page withe the last N entries, a sidebar full of links, and archives organized by date. There is no reason why Blogger could not be used to publish a series of articles not strictly organized by date, and in fact, in this presentation, I have completely subverted the date order through my own navigation (the order of the slides is not the order in which they were written.
In fact, the front page is just static content, and is found in the <MainPage>.....</MainPage> tags (content displayed only on the main or front page)
In fact the settings for this blog have the setting for archives to "None". They have no meaning here.
The drop down navigation menu and the button navigation were the most challenging things to deal with. My first attempts were to use Blogger's PreviousEntries tag, but the problem is that it only works for the front page to display all previous pages. If I created 5 slides on May 20, 2005, and 5 more on June 2, 2005... the June entries would never appear on the March pages since they are not "previous". I also tried an approach of creating each slide as an archive, but ran into the same problems of date order. The answer was spawned by the Blogger Help page for "How Do I Change the Order of the Archive Links" where the Blogger tags are used to populate a JavaScript array, and then JavaSCript is used ti dynamically build a menu. For this presentation, I manually loaded the slides into an array in the HEAD of the template. Rather than manually setting the array indices, I use an incrementing counter; this way I can easily change the order of the show by moving two line together:
```
<script type="text/Javascript"> 

// The base URL for the blogger site, no trailing slash
var myurl = 'http://cat-diaries.blogspot.com';

// Build an array for navigation menus, because of Blogger's limited tags
// this needs to be hand edited
var myitems = new Array(); 

// This is a counter so we do not have to manually edit array indices
ic=-1;

// A slide can be moved in order by just cutting and pasting the two lines of code

ic++;
myitems[ic] = new Array('/', 'Splash Screen'); 

ic++;
myitems[ic] = new Array('/2005/05/online-diaries.html', 'Online Diaries');

:
:
```

Where we need the menu and buttons, we can now use this array to generate the form elements. There is a little upfront math to determine if the URL for the current page document.location.href matches the URL for the menu item being built. We kee track of the array index for the current page sel so we can also set up the back and next buttons. (the notes button is explained below).

<form method="post" name="navmenu">
<select name="items" onchange="document.location.href= myurl+this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;" class="nav_form">

<script type="text/javascript"> 
var sel = 0;
var mytitle = '';

for (var i=0;i<myitems.length;i++) {
	// test for current URL in view, store for now in variable
	if (myurl+myitems[i][0] == document.location.href) {
		sel = i
	}

	// write menu item
	document.write('<option value="' + myitems[i][0] +  '">' 
	    + myitems[i][1] + '</option>');
} 

if (sel == 0) {
	myprev = myitems.length-1;
} else {
	myprev = sel -1;
}

if (sel == myitems.length-1) {
	mynext = 0;
} else {
	mynext = sel + 1;
}

</script> 
</select>
<input type="button" value="«" onClick="document.location.href=myurl+myitems[myprev][0]" class="nav_form">
<input type="button" value="»" onClick="document.location.href=myurl+myitems[mynext][0]" class="nav_form">
<ItemPage>
<input type="button" value="+/- notes" onClick="expandcollapse('ss_notes')"  class="nav_form">
</ItemPage>
</form>

The other trick was setting up the show/hide notes button to toggle the visibility of the notes and comments below the slide. This was achieved by a method borrowed from the Blogger article on "How can I make show/hide links for my posts?". A slide page content is set up as two CSS divs with classes that can toggle the visibility:
```
 <div id="ss_show" class="show_it" >
```
contains the main slide show content (top of the screen) and is set always with a visibility of "on" controlled by the class "show_it":
```
.show_it {
	display:block;
}
```
while the notes section is set with its own div and a class set to hide it on initial display:
```
 <div id="ss_notes" class="hide_it" >
```
set invisible by its class:
```
.hide_it {
	display:none;
}
```
The button merely calls a JavaScript function than can toggle the class of a given div:
```
// function for showing/hiding the CSS div with the notes
function expandcollapse (part) { 
   whichpart = document.getElementById(part);  
   if (whichpart.className=="show_it") { 
      whichpart.className="hide_it"; 
   } 
   else { 
      whichpart.className="show_it"; 
   } 
} 
```
This set up with two divs and the need to keep the comments portion inside the notes div creates a bit of havoc when publishing through the Blogger editor as it generates an error message because it finds a missing opening <div>
And here it is, what you may really be looking for-- a text file containing the entire blogger template that powers this presentation:http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/show/nmc05/docs/cat-diaries.template
Finally, editing with ecto greatly sped up the publishing process.

LTA Process

2005-06-14T00:08:00.000-07:00

LTA Publishing Process

Content Emailed
Images Processed
Publish to Draft LTA Site (mirror)
Collect Feedback From Author
Copy Entry to LTA Blog and Publish
Demo

Notes: LTA Publishing Process

Content is typically sent in MS Word or HTML format
Images are extracted from MS Word versions or collected from HTML archive, processed, optimized and resized using Adobe ImageReady droplets (scripted actions)
Content is posted to the draft site using ecto, the desktop bog editor.
Draft Site http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta-draft/

LTA Author DB

2005-06-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

LTA Authors Database Tables

Notes: LTA Authors LTA Authors Database Tables

The loc_authors table provides the information needed to display the authors information not avaialble in MovableType- first and last names and an affiliation field. By having separate name fields, we can sort results by the last name. The author_id is used as a relational bridge to the mt_authors table (to access the author email address) and link to display all entries associated with the author.
The lta_coauthors table provides a way to tie the ao-author's details (in MovableType this is NOT the actual author of the entry) to an entries this person should be listed as a co-author. There is one record per every LTA the person is a co-author.
The authors page is generated by a MovableType template (to create the correct sidebar navigation), but the main content is created by custom PHP code to query the database and provide the intended results.
As a feature not available on the old site, we can use the same PHP script to generate a listing of just the entries by a single author, e.g. all LTAs by Steven Bell, by passing a URL paramater of s=XXXXXXX where XXXXX is the MovableType username, e.g. http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/author.php?a=sbell

At this time, the entry of data into the 2 extra tables os done manually. The process involves:

Creating a new MT user account if the author is new for the site (accounts are created but never used by the authors).
If the author is new, their details are added to the loc_authors table.
The entry is first published under an editors account. Once done, the mt_entries table is edited to assign the entry author as the one listed in the first step.
Any co-authors are added to the lta_coauthors table

Sample Queries

Get all authors by querying MT authors tables and our local authors table (which includes first name, last name, and affiliation)

	
$a_query = "SELECT a.fname, a.lname, a.affil, mt.author_email, 
            mt.author_id FROM mt_author AS mt
LEFT  JOIN loc_author AS a ON mt.author_id = a.mt_author_id
LEFT  JOIN mt_permission AS p ON p.permission_author_id = mt.author_id
WHERE p.permission_blog_id = $blog_id AND mt.author_id = a.mt_author_id
ORDER  BY a.lname";

Walk through the results of the query above to process each author:
```
while ($author_row = mysql_fetch_array($a_result)) {
```

For each author select the entries that they have published

 $e_query = "SELECT 
	entry_title, DATE_FORMAT(entry_created_on, '%b %e, %Y')  AS pub_date 
	FROM mt_entry 
	WHERE entry_blog_id = $blog_id 
		AND entry_author_id = " . $author_row['author_id'] . " 
	ORDER by entry_created_on DESC";

Query to find all entries where this author_id is listed as a coauthor

$co_query = "SELECT p.entry_title, DATE_FORMAT( p.entry_created_on,  '%b %e, %Y'  )  AS pub_date
	FROM lta_coauthor AS c
	LEFT  JOIN mt_entry AS p ON c.mt_entry_id = p.entry_id
	WHERE c.mt_author_id = " . $author_row['author_id'] . " 
	ORDER  BY p.entry_created_on DESC";

The queries are simliar for cases where we extract information for a single author, except the first query looks for an author with a specific user name. See the template for the full details.

LTA Authors

2005-06-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

Authors Page Compared for Old and New LTA Site

Notes: Authors Page Compared for Old and New LTA Site

The Authors archive needed a means to display all of the LTA authors and the items they had published.

MovableType's database did not provide the exact data needed to replicate the features of the old site's author archives. Usernames in MovableType are not neceaarily the display name, e.g. a user name might be alevine where the display name should be "Alan Levine". While this can be achived using the author nickname, there would be no way to sort alphabetically.
There is no field available to store an author's affiliation (although later discovery of the XXXXX plugin could have provided a way to achive our results without the mthod described below).
The only way to achieve this would be a large template with manually defined MovableType Entries tags, one for each author:
```
<$MTEntries author=xxxxgt;...

.....
```
which would need to be manually edited for each new author.
There is no way to define co-authors of the same entry.
Our solution was to create additional database tables for author information that could be queried to dynamically generate the authors page (using PHP and calls to the MySQL database.
More details provided in the next slide

See the examples...

LTA Comments

2005-06-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

Comments From Entire LTA Site

Notes: Comments From Entire LTA Site

View Comments
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/comments.php
MovableTyoe template used for All Comments as RSS
Publishes RSS feed for comments http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/comments.xml
Use wew MovableType Template with content displayed using Feed2JS

LTA Categories

2005-06-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

Categories in the New LTA Site

Notes: Categories in the New LTA Site

Exmaple Topical Category: Library-based resources
Example Threshold Category: Medium Level

LTA Archives

2005-06-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

Comparision of Archives on Old and New Sites

Notes: Comparision of Archives on Old and New Sites

All LTAs Archive

LTA Templates

2005-06-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

MovableType Templates for LTA Site

Notes: MovableType Templates for LTA Site

Below you will find links to text versions of all the MovableType templates used for the LTA site. Note that you will find a few things that are specific to our site and server, so it may not work as a cut and paste copy.

Index Templates
- About (about.php) -- a static page that is used as a link to provide more detailed information about the site [template] [view example output]
- Main Index (index.php) -- This is the (duh) main page for the site [template] [view example output]
- RSS 2.0 index (index.xml) -- The main site RSS feed [template] [view example output]
- RSS For Comments (comments.xml) --This RSS 2.0 feed provides a summary of the comments site wide [template] [view example output]
- Comments (comments.php) -- A summary page describing the comments feed and displaying the most recent ones using the RSS Comment Feed and displayed with JavaScript generated by Feed2JS [template] [view example output]
- All Archives (all.php) -- An archive that generates a list of all LTAs in reverse chronological order [template] [view example output]
- Authors (author.php) -- A dynamic page that uses PHP and MySQL queries to generate an archive of all LTA authors as well as a listing of the LTAs by a single author if a parameter is provided to designate the MT user name [template] [view example output for all authors or view an example of a single author)]
- Style Sheet (styles-site.css) [link]
Archive Templates
- Cateogory Archive- generate the topical category pages- will be automatically generate a new one if a category is added. [template] [view example output]
- Individual Entry Archive- used to generate a single LTA. The file name is based on a keyword field entry of ltaXX where XX is the LTA number, and the archive settings in the Weblog config define this name according to the code:
```
<MTIfEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryTitle dirify="1" trim_to="20"$>
</MTIfEmpty>
<MTIfNotEmpty var="EntryKeywords"><$MTEntryKeywords dirify="1"$>
</MTIfNotEmpty>.php
```
  This makes use of the MTIfEmpty plugin that will assign a file name based on the entry keywords, and if for some reason there is none, it will name the file based on the first 20 characters of the first name [template] [view example output]
Misclleanous Templates Note that the comments entry fields on this blug use James Seng's MT Security Code plugin that forces comment entries to verify a randomly generated graphic code to reduce the efforts of spammers.
Template Modules Code reused elsehwew in templates, e.g.:
```
<$MTInclude module="topnav"$>
```
to insert the contents of the topnav module.
- Comments/Trackback JavaScript (comm-tb-js) -- This module is referenced wherever we need two functions to generate the popup windows for Comments or Trackbacks. This uses a customized function that makes it a little harder for spammers to harvest direct URLs for your scripts that replaces the standard functions referenced in the out of the box MovableType templates. [template]
- Sidebar (navbar) -- used whereever we need the code for the sidebar [template]
- Top Navigation Bar Module (topnav) -- This is used to display the grey navigation bar used below the banner on every page. [template]

LTA Grid

2005-06-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

LTA CSS / MovableType Design Grid

Notes: LTA CSS / MovableType Design Grid

MovableType CSS and templates for all LTA pages differ from standard versions by displaying a sidebar on all content pages.
The sidebar and the top navigation bar are generated from MovableType "template modules", in essence, sub-templates. As common features on every template, modules make changes simpler as one edit on a module is reflected across all pages that use them.
Using the contextual features of MovableType, on the main index template. the sidebar can display recent comments at all entries in the site; the same code in a category archive displayes newest comments for entries in that category.
See the style sheet for the LTA site
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/styles-site.css

LTA Compared

2005-06-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

Comparision of Old and New Sites

Notes: Comparision of Old and New Sites

Details to be described in next few slides!

LTA New

2005-06-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

New LTA Site published by Alan Levine with MovableTyoe

New LTA Site

Notes: New LTA Site

The original LTA web site was dutifully maintained by Charles Ansorge, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. In Spring of 2004, after assisting Charles with including RSS feeds for the site, I began suggesting that much of the manual and tedious editing of the LTA web site (where each page needed updates on the addition of a new LTA), that it could be just as well be published using weblog software.
New LTA site: http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta

LTA Original

2005-06-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

Low Threshold Application of the Week Site (a TLTGroup project) originally maintained by Charles Ansorge

Original Low Threshold Applications site

Notes: Web Resources

Low Threshold Applications & Activities or LTAs have been collected and promoted by the Teaching Learning Technology Group (see the LTA web site). An LTA is defined as:

... a teaching/learning application of information technology that is reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating and (incrementally) inexpensive. Each LTA has observable positive consequences, and contributes to important long term changes in teaching and/or learning. "... the potential user (teacher or learner) perceives an LTA as NOT challenging, not intimidating, not requiring a lot of additional work or new thinking. LTAs are also 'low-threshold' in the sense of having low INCREMENTAL costs for purchase, training, support, and maintenance." - Steve Gilbert, President, TLT Group, in AAHESGIT-96

For more, see the LTA definitions and characteristics.

Feed2JS Templates

2005-06-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

Movable Type Blog Templates

Notes: Case Study 1: MovableType Templates Used for Feed2JS

Since the publishing task is rather limmited in scope, we are able to use just 3 templates to provide the content used in the Feed2JS site

The About template is used to publish the three most recent updates to the front of the site. Rather than publishing an entire web document with the blog, we merely publish the content chunk needed as an output file name about.inc. The main features of the template are to insert the JavaScript needed to generate the pop upwindows foir comments, and to write the MT template tag to pull the 3 most recent entries:
```
<MTEntries lastn="3">
 <$MTEntryTrackbackData$>

 <li><strong><$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y"$></strong> : 
 <$MTEntryTitle$><br />
 <a name="<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"></a>
 
 <$MTEntryBody$>
```
followed by the post data, comment links etc. You can get a copy of this template.
The template to create the content for the history page, essentially an entire archive, is exactly the same, except we use a very high value for the <MTEntries lastn="X"> like 100.
The template for the RSS feed is no different from the standard RSS 2,0 templates provided by the blog. The only difference is publishing it as a specifically named file and location to match its URL
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/content/feed2js.xml

Feed2JS Includes

2005-06-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

Graphic by Alan Levine

Two Levels of PHP Includes

Notes: Case Study 1: Feed2JS and Includes

One part of the power of PHP as a web construction technology is te ability to generate entire sites from templates:

The entire Feed2JS site is powered by a single PHP file, index.php. When a page is requested, for example, clicking the download tab, it is typically passed a paramter via the URL such as .../index.php?s=download. The main template then uses whatever content is inside an external text file named download to dynamically displaye the web page as viewed.
For the main page the content is stored in a file named about, which itself has its own include of a second file, about.inc. This is the actual content that is published by MovableType.
This multilevel template then allows MovableType to publish just the content on the bottom fo the page (three most recent updates) as a file that is part of the entire content presented for url http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=about
In a similar fashion, the url for the entire update history http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=history uses a blog published history.inc file that is included in the history content file.

Feed2JS

2005-06-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

Feed2JS web site by Alan Levine

Feed2JS Site Updates and RSS Feed Are Blog Published

Notes: Case Study 1: Feed2JS

This presentation is not about the Feed2JS site (see us later this week for the 5 minutes of fame!), but more about it, see an audio narrated overview (Breeze presentation) of how the site and service works with RSS feeds from the Maricopa Learning eXchange.

For the first year or two the site has been around, every update to the script was just manually edited by adding a new item to an HTML list.

A MovableType 2.661 weblog is used to publish two content files, not full web pages, but text files that are read into the page via a PHP include statement. The blog publishes the content that appears on the front page as the three newest updates, while the "archive" or all of the posts, are written to a file that is part of the content presented under "history"

Finally, the blog also publishes the updates as an RSS 2.0 feedhttp://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/content/feed2js.xml

Since the updates can now be written just as the content of a blog posting, any new changes published are automatically updated in the web site.

Maricopa Examples

2005-06-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

Three Case Studies From Maricopa

Feed2JS: Publish content and RSS for updates
Low Threshold Applications: Blog tools simplify manual editing of web site
Cat Diaries: bending Blogger to do this presentation

Notes: Three Case Studies From Maricopa

The basis for this presentation is my own use of MovableType blogware to provide simpler and more featured web publishing, moving processes from manual HTML editing.

Feed2JS is a web service and free code we offer that allows ordinary humans to use the URL for RSS content, and convert it to a cut and paste line of JavaScript that is used to render content dynamically in any web page. I will demonstrate how I used MovableType to set up a quick and easy publishing scheme for updates that also automatically updated an RSS feed for the content.
Low Threshold Applications (LTA of the Week) is a project of the TLTGroup that offers short articles written to explain how faculty can use technology tools that are easy and low/no cost to use. Until last year, it was aweb site that has manually edited as HTML files, where updates required changes across multiple pages. By publishing in a blog we not only simplied that process, we added numerous other features not available in static files. I will be comparing the old and new site by features, and sharing how we used the blog tools to replicate the content in a more efficient and well designed site.
And thislovely presentation was crafted in a customized template in the free and public Blogger.com site. I will show how the templates were wrangled to get it functioning (if it functions!)

Presentation

2005-06-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

Workshop Presentation blog by Steven M. Cohen

Publishing a Presentation via a Blog

Notes:Publishing a Presentation via a Blog

Steven M. Cohen inspired me to copy his idea of using Blogger as a presentation content platfom. I am utterly amazed that I could not find any other examples. Remember the adage about imitation and flattery!

"A Presentation About Weblogs....in a Weblog"
Staying Ahead of Your Patrons With Weblogs and RSS is presentation published in Blogger for a Fenruary 2005 presentation at Yale University.
Steven published an audio blog post on his reactions from presenting in this format.

Newsletters

2005-06-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Culture Corner web site by Peter Hess

Online Newsletter

Notes: Blogs Publishing Online Newsletters, Journals

There are hundreds of thousands of news sites published with weblog software, and the line here between what "looks like a blog" and what I have chosen to say "does not" is arguable. I am hoping to add to the resources here where the blog platfom is used for something beyond the newest first article sites, the ones that are easy to quickly point out "That is a blog template!"

This also ignores the large number of blogs that aggregate and publish content from other sites, such as Many-To-Many, Kairosnews and more.

Examples:
- Culture Corner web site by Peter Hess
- wwwTools for Teachers
- Into the Blogoshpere University of Minnesota
- Using a Weblog to Facilitate Paper Publishing Tim Lauer describes how his Elementary School uses MovableType to assemble stories from teachers for publishing in electronic and print format.

Photo Galleries

2005-06-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

Ephemera photos by Derek Powazek

Photography Collections

Notes: Blogs Publishing Photo Collections (PhotoBlogging)

Examples:
- Ephemera Photos By Derek Powazek
- Bowman Photos Web design guru Douglas Bowman organizes photos in a compelling format, published via MovableType.
- Exitwound
- Chicago Uncommon Photographs by Dawn Mikulich
- Shutterbug Photos by Tracey Hoyng, student from Sydney Australia
- Ten Years of My Life
- ]Daily Photo Project One man has been documenting his daily appearance for more than 5 years.
Photoblogs.org
PhotoBlogging: Publish and Build Communities Around Digital Images

Non-Blogs: Searchable Resource

2005-06-09T00:21:00.000-07:00

Wisdom Quotes site by Jone Johnson Lewis

Searchable Web Resource Published via MovableType

Notes: Web Resources

Wisdom Quotes
Web Standards Project
The Bowie State University School of Education web site is all blog.

Antiblogs

2005-06-09T00:17:00.000-07:00

Blogs That Do Not Look Like Blogs

Web Content Published With Blog Software
Not necessarily "news", "posts"
Break The Box Models

Notes: Blogs That Do Not Look Like Blogs

Blogware and Web Sites

2005-06-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

Blogware Features for Web Site Publishers

Easy to Use
Focus on Writing, not on the technical details of formatting
Clean Web Standard CSS Templates (not clunky handspun HTML)
Built In Features
- Search Tool
- RSS Syndication
- Archiving By Category, Date
- Feedback (Comments)
"A weblog is just a web site organized by time." (Russ Lipton)

Notes: Blogware Features

Jill Walker's defintion of a weblog, written for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory
Weblog Handbook (Rebecca Blood)
What Makes a Weblog a Weblog (Dave Winer)
The History of Weblogs (Dave Winer)
5 minute Summary of What Is a Blog (Jay Cross)
Blog Commonalities from Trevor Ettenborough's Blogs and RSS Webquest
Blog Anatomy from the BlogShop
Introduction to Weblogs from UBC
Into the Blogosphere
An Introduction to Weblogs

Blogs and Diaries

2005-06-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

Blogs and Diaries In Common

Chronologically Organized
Personal
Small Audience (=1?)

Notes: Blogs and Diaries In Common

There are more differences:
- Diaries typically are not reverse chronologically organized.
- Diaries are rarely read in public
- Diaries are usually hidden in a drawer, not put on public display
- Diaries are usually less media rich than blogs
- Diaries are usually not open for comments
- Diary entries do not show up on Google searches

Relationship Aid?

2005-06-08T22:49:00.000-07:00

"Relationship Aid?"

The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac & Snaggy

Notes: Blog Comics

The Joy of Tech

Diaries Exist

2005-06-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

Screenshot of Xanga blog

"Blog Sites Full of Teen Angst"

Notes: Blog Diaries Exist

Blog Diary Examples
- how stupid i used to be. (by babycaramel)
- Step on The Stones
Popular Teen Blog sites
- Xanga http://wxanga.com/
- LiveJournal http://www.livejournal.com/
- Random Blogger sites No accounting for taste or what you may find. A good number these days are set up by spammers where they can load their links sky high. Do they think that Google, who owns Blogger, is stupid enough not to filter them out?
- About.com Teen Blog listings http://weblogs.about.com/od/teenblogs/
A parody of too much blogging: The Dullest Blog in the World
Other diary-like blogs of interest:
- You may chalk it up to Star Wars fanaticism, but check out the depth and range of writing (and public comments at Darth Vader's diary: The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster ("Journal of Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith and Servant to His Supreme Excellency the Emperor Palpatine.")
- The Diary of Samuel Pepys "is a presentation of the diaries of Samuel Pepys, the renowned 17th century diarist who lived in London, England. A new entry written by Pepys will be published each day; 1 January 1660 was published on 1 January 2003. This site is run by Phil Gyford (who is far from an expert on Pepys) and questions and comments are more than welcome"
- The Diaries of Franz Kafka (1910-1923) via weblog.
- 2020 Hindsight is a re-presentation of the events surrounding the first testing (and use) of the atomic bomb 60 years ago, in 1945, using the time-and-date stamping format of weblogs.

Blog Comics

2005-06-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

gnmoz comic by Alan Levine

"The Comics Page Gets It"

Notes: Blog Comics

Gnomz build your own comics like this one.

About This Blog

2005-05-26T21:14:00.000-07:00

What is This?

I am exploting Blogger as a vehicle for deliverying this presentation. I aimed to torque the templates and the concepts away form your run of the mill Blogger site.

Notes: About This Blog

This is the presentation for "More Than Cat Diaries: Publishing With Weblogs" to be presented at the New Media Consortium 2005 Summer Conference. It's root and even the the cat and diary reference were planted as seeds (or weeds) in a blog post I made in May of 2004.

It was supposed to be pink, loud, garish, and adorned with pretty kitties to make it the sterotypical "Blogs are just diaries about trivial things like the habits of people's cats".

Here is the program description and the rest of the show lives online:

Blogs are "in" but often viewed as just for "online diaries." However, once the templates are harnessed, weblog software can publish sophisticated web sites. See how the Low Threshold Applications site was converted from a tedious manual editing job to a more coherent and automated site using MovableType. Other examples include project sites and eportfolios, all published via blogware. Learn some of the secrets that have been extracted for doing more than what comes in the box.

Online Diaries

2005-05-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

Collage by Alan Levine from news web sites

"Weblogs Are Just Online Diaries"

Notes: Blogs Are Just Online Diaries

Google Search for headlines on blogs "online diaries" http://www.google.com/search?q=blogs+%2B%22online+diaries%22
- "Too Much Buzz on the Blogs" (Business Week, Nov 4, 2004)
- "Internet giants catch on to blogs Major portals provide services for online journals" San Francisco Chronicle, Sep 1, 2003
- "Blogs of War " Information Today, Feb 2005
Once blogs 'change everything,' fascination with them will chill (USA Today, May 25, 2005)
Exploding The Diary Myth Corante: Strange Attractor (Suw Charman)-- this quote sums up this presentation:

At the root of this problem is the confusion between the blog tool and the blog content. A blog is no more a diary than an empty notebook is a diary. Blogs become a diary when people use them to publish diary entries in the same way that a notebook becomes a diary when you write a diary entry in it. But an empty notebook can also be a sketch book, a novel, an exercise book, a dictionary, or an infinite variety of other things, depending entirely on content. Equally, a blog can also be a tool for disseminating important news, or a project log, or a team building tool, or a marketing tool, or whatever its user chooses to make it. In fact, blogs are a lightweight content management system which are easy to use, have strong archiving, cross referencing and search facilities, and are cost effective and flexible. That is what they are. A diary is what some people make them.

"Blog On" Edutopia (June 5, 2005)