Saturday, March 22, 2003

Web Logs from "Embedded" Journalists. Not a great deal of Web logs, but one cruise through some of these sites and it is apparent how much the Internet is changing journalism. What I am most struck by is the interactivity that journalists are practicing with their readers. Readers are getting their questions answered right from the ground. That's pretty amazing, I'd say. Once again, the Christian Science Monitor is leading the way. But I'm happy to report that New Jersey.com actually has a Web log running for breaking news. (This sets me up for the use of the Newswire site, which I'm planning to crank up again this week.) Unfortunately, CNN pulled the plug on Kevin Sites War blog. And there is much discussion among fellow Web loggers about it. J.D. Lasica, who runs a great online journalism related Web log, has a pretty good rundown of the debate. Personally, from what I can tell, Sites may not have been as clear as he could have been to CNN about what he was doing. But regardless, there is no doubt that what he and other reporters are starting will change the way major events like wars and disasters and more are covered. 9/11 started it, but that was pure reaction. This time, people have thought it out. And there is no better coverage of this war than what you can find on the Web. 3:00:44 PM

Aggregator Tweaks. With the slight hope that there might be someone listening, here's a little wish list for the Manila aggregator: Allow for the limiting of some feeds to no more than the first five lines...for many sites, I don't need to see the whole post. I would want to be able to see the whole post from a student Web log, though. Sort by site rather than time...I like reading everything by one author in one place. Especially if I am aggregating student sites. Cache the posts for, say, five days instead of 24 hours...again, from a teaching standpoint, I may not be able to check in every day. And I may want to have an easy way to read previous posts. Anyone else? 6:44:11 AM

includeHttp, viewRssBox, eTc. If I'm going to create a Web log as Web site that has things feeding from and to every which place, I think it's time to roll up my sleeves and start learning some more Manila. Trying to figure out how "Pat" funnels "Terry"'s column at the "eBN" site. I get that it's the RSS feed of a separate Web log that he has set up for Terry to post. And I'm also guessing that he uses the includeHttp macro to do it, though I may be wrong about this. Bryan Bell talks about using it for the Kern site, and I know there are some limitations. He uses it in conjunction with the printFriendlyLink macro, and I can get it to work on the Prefs-Advanced page here, but not on the home page. I think there is a CSS element that Pat is using too because I can get it to work but the text is all screwed up. Tried the viewRssBox thing too, and that worked better. It actually may be what Pat is using. The only problem is I couldn't seem to reduce the column width...hmmm. If anyone wants to take a look at my play space and send some help, have at it. So much to learn, and when I have the time to play, I make some baby step progress. I still wish I could find the manual. 6:44:10 AM

The New Journalism. BBC reporters throughout the Middle East are posting to this collective Web log. There's something really fascinating in the way this has been put together, and it just adds another chapter to the Web log as J discussion. 6:44:10 AM

Yeeeee Haaawww. How cool is this: Two new server-level preferences were released today for Manila's News Aggregator feature. The first is used to allow managing editors of Manila sites to subscribe to any feed they want by URL, without having to ask the server manager to subscribe the server to the feed. The second allows server managers to automatically subscribe to all Manila sites on the server, making them available for subscription by Manila site managing editors. Now I know I have no life, but I cannot wait to get into class tomorrow and turn them loose on this. News4Sites has a whole bunch of aggregated feeds that lend themselves perfectly for my kids' beat work. Just that fact that Jake is back at work with all of this makes me very happy, especially since my idea for Web log Web site seems to be moving forward. Thanks for the pointer to Greg, who I know won't mind when I quote his e-mail observation that this is: Sounding more and more like a classroom dream... All students with blogs. All sites have a pointer to the news aggregator for that class. All students able to easily see who has updated recently, which will foster competition to maintain their sites. Instructors can easily keep on top of students blog activity by using their own aggregator page for their class(es) The Web based aggregator I've been wanting built right into Manila? Very neat. Now if they can just tweak the read out a little bit... 6:44:10 AM

Historical Perspective on casualties: Battle of the Somme. Quote: "With the winter weather deteriorating Haig now brought an end to the Somme offensive. Since the 1st July, the British has suffered 420,000 casualties. The French lost nearly 200,000 and it is estimated that German casualties were in the region of 500,000. Allied forces gained some land but it reached only 12km at its deepest points." Comment: Off topic and I haven't really commented on the war to this point, but I'm struck by how few casualties there have been to U.S. and British forces.  On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British had about 20,000 men killed. 6:41:15 AM

Blackboard 2003 User's Conference Handouts. The handouts/presentations are now available.  Search for sessions you're interested in, then click into them if they have "Handouts available online", for example.  Cruddy interface because they use POST requests (instead of GET) and so particular kinds of lists aren't linkable.  The full program list is here. 6:41:12 AM