Steve Pilgrim: Radio

RELOCATION NOTICE - WE'RE MOVING!

This may not work, but assuming it does, you need to change your bookmarks, favorites and blogrolls. It is 11:50pm CDT on Saturday, July 20, 2002. If all goes well, this site will be relocated within the next few hours.

This weblog is leaving http://radio.weblogs.com/0100740/.

Look for it at: http://www.rodentregatta.com/

Thanks, Steve Pilgrim

LINKING TO THOSE WHO LINK

Is this similar to Mark Pilgrim's "Further Reading on Today's Posts" where he indicates who has linked to his site? How is that accomplished?

Referrer List Locally -- More Ways to Weave the Blog. Linkback Referrers. [Blunt Force Trauma]

THERE'S BUSINESS BLOGGING TO BE DONE

Building Business Relationships via the Blog. If you read only one post today, make it this one. [Blunt Force Trauma]

SMALL BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Note the this post and the next

Traction and Radio. Roland Tanglao liked my review of Traction, but reconsidered when Jim McGee pointed out that Traction is a whole lot more expensive: ... [Jon's Radio]

THIS SEEMS LIKE A VERY SENSIBLE APPROACH

for evaluating knowledge management tools as they might be applied in small organizations. We also do some small business consulting and advisory work and our clients want a tool, but often lack the disciplines to use them well. Terry says this, "But Radio is still a lot closer to reaching the mythical Zero Contribution Barrier that I believe is critical to any long-term KM success."

Radio vs. Traction -- A Personal View. Jim McGee asked, so I thought I'd try to find an answer. [Blunt Force Trauma]

A GOOD BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conclusion. Due to a long-standing bug in Radio, I am unable to include the full text of this post here, for fear of damaging your News page. Please click the item title to read this post safely. [dive into mark]

I SUPPOSE THIS IS ALL VERY IMPORTANT

I just don't recall covering this in any of our 29 lessons.

No tables for Lycos. Lycos Europe will be moving to a new design that validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and uses CSS for layout.... [Buzz]

IF DESIGN DID NOT MATTER...

airlines wouldn't spend so much painting airplanes. Politicians wouldn't spend so much on banners, handbills and signs. Companies wouldn't spend so much on corporate identity packages. Imagine the cost of changing a logo or color at a place like Federal Express.

I'm confident that part of what draws me into a weblog or web site is the design. I know good design when I see it, but I surely do wish I could create it!

Why to build your own template. During a spell of blogsurfing yesterday, I repeatedly ran across links to Paul Andrews’s blog. The other end of one such link spurred me to do what Jonathon Delacour calls “fossicking around” in the blog archives. Only then did I... [Caveat Lector]

MORE RESOURCES FROM MERYL

Free XHTML and CSS Courses. Yes, Virginia, there are still good stuf available for *free* on the 'net. Latest is the Westciv Self-paced Course on HTML 4.0 and XHTML for CSS. Sounds like they'll be [meryl's notes]

MARK SUGGESTS; JONATHON OBLIGES & COMMENTS

Day 29: Making everything searchable. Due to a long-standing bug in Radio, I am unable to include the full text of this post here, for fear of damaging your News page. Please click the item title to read this post safely. [dive into mark]

A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO BLOGROLLING

Linkless. I just dropped the [Links] section on the navigation bar for this site. I went in to drop BurningBird and looked over the list and realized how out of date it was. Too much work to keep it up to date so now I am just gonna let Google do the work, with the addition of the "related sites" link under [misc]. [BitWorking]

Alvin Toffler. "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." [Quotes of the Day]
(me thinks he never saw Radio templates, macros and HTML)

MORE ON HTML

Fixing Your(tm) Web Site with Dr. HTML. Fixing Your^tm Web Site with Dr. HTML

One of the goals of this site is to provide you with tools to help you fix your Web site.

It's not easy to take a Web site that's underperforming and make it better. There are aesthetic issues, marketing issues and, most importantly, technical issues. That's where Doctor HTML can come in to help. You can't fix the technical issues if you don't know what they are.

[Web Pages That Suck -- Examples of Bad Web Design]

START DECORATING THE CAKE

at Fireland. You can get world reaction here. I don't know either of these people, but I've often wondered if Joshua Allen is related in any way to Dean Allen. (This is probably another of those all over the board posts, but both Joshua and Dean are terrific designers.) Anyhow, I wish Joshua and Alexis all the best.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

gets added to the shopping list. Terry Frazier weighed in with a comment and an educational post about my question earlier today. I also got a comment from Dave Rogers. Thanks to both of you! Oh, and Rob made a couple of great suggestions without coming right out and calling me a dummy. If you haven't already, check out the apple cores for permalinks.

ONLY THREE DAYS ARE LEFT
I hope there's a sequel

Day 27: Using real headers. Due to a long-standing bug in Radio, I am unable to include the full text of this post here, for fear of damaging your News page. Please click the item title to read this post safely. [dive into mark]

THERE'S AN ENTIRE SCIENCE DEVOTED TO WHAT LINKS LOOK LIKE?
Design details are numerous

Hyperlinks should be seen but not heard. With all the underlines disrupting the flow of the prose, reading link-rich hypertext can be difficult, akin to reading some [kottke.org]

SUMMER IS CLEAN UP, PAINT UP, FIX UP SEASON
Another great-looking design by Stacy Tabb

SAMIZDATA HAS MOVED and has a new site designed by the lovely and talented Stacy Tabb of Sekimori. Visit it, admire it, and set your bookmark accordingly. [InstaPundit]

HER FRIENDS AREN'T THAT INTERESTING?

I've got some friends who aren't that interesting as well! (After editing, the sentence became: When she looks at blogs she sees the weblogs she knows; and misses the enormity of the medium.)

I'm beginning to get the impression that there is some kind of history that colors Dave's view of the book or Rebecca or something said in the past. What I can tell you is that this comment about "her friends" doesn't flow naturally from a reading of Rebecca's book.

Morning coffee notes. [Scripting News]

AN INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE
"Dave" is back - I mean really back; it's great!

As with any product or service, the novice simply has to dig around, experiment, ask questions and watch others to learn why one product or service is good or bad or better or worse for the need or want. Take digital cameras as an example. A novice user of a digital camera would probably be overwhelmed (or would seriously undervalue) the features of a truly high end digital camera.

The same is true with weblogging. Radio Userland may be the right software for hackers or programmers or whatever they want to be called. Movable Type may be the right choice for some other skill level or interest level or whatever. How can the novice determine that? Just this morning I heard of another tool for weblogging that I've not even seen mentioned in six months of fairly intensive weblogging. Somebody ought to take a minute or two and elaborate on the lines of dileniation between all these products. We novices could then stay out of the hair of those who have contempt for us!!!

I found Rebecca Blood's book worthwhile. I am a novice. I admit that. However, novices need resources such as Rebecca's particularly if they are coming from some field other than software development, website development and whatever other spins people want to put on the names for those people and industries involved in computer work.

I owe every bit of my weblog to "Dave Winer" and the people who are users of the Radio Userland product. There are things about the tool and the "community(?)" I don't like. Those things don't prevent me from learning more, using the tool more and wishing for the stuff that I don't like to change. It is easy for me to see how a pioneer in the weblogging area we're talking about might not need the same resource that I need. Does that then make that resource bad? I don't think so. You really need to read all of what Dave had to say this morning. Some of it has been edited since I first saw the beginnings of the post in the news aggregator. Here's an excerpt:

It's the software. In 2002, we're beginning to get to a category of software, with lines of delineation -- Movable Type is different from Manila, and Radio is different from Blogger, if one wanted to study a category, the products are lining up to accomodate. Other than that there's little that each blog has in common with other blogs. It's like trying to figure out what word processing documents have in common. People did try to do that in the late 70s and early 80s, but then the market exploded, and that ended all speculation.

Of all the books in process, I hold the most hope for the BlogRoots folks: Meg, Matt, and PB. They put enough time into it (the O'Reilly book was a rush job) and they (appear to) have the right premise. It would have been possible for a philosophical book to have lasting value, but to do so, they should have gotten a social butterfly to edit it, one who crosses all the lines with ease, someone who likes everyone and who everyone likes, but somehow doesn't have to kiss ass to do it. (Note: I am not that person, as you can see I don't suffer fools without complaining, I don't write to make friends, and I know it.) [Scripting News]

HOW MANY BLOGGING TOOLS ARE THERE?
And to think, some people still handcode their entire weblog

Sunlog and uni.tb. The new Sunlog 2.2 is now ready for download. It's blogging software based on PHP and MySQL, and (as far as I know) is the first blogging package to support... [PapaScott]

WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT

if all the Blogger users had RSS feeds? Why would you "turn off" your RSS feed if you are a Movable Type user? I'm told the default installation of Movable Type includes the RSS feed. What advantage do they gain when they remove it?

THE MOTHER OF ALL BUTTONS

So I'm thinkin' to myself - maybe I shoulda made the button a little <A href="javascript:goBigButt();">bigger... ;~)) [jenett.radio]

TWO FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS ABOUT BLOGGING

Someone has suggested that there are people in the blogging world who link to others merely to get links in return. I link to a lot of sources. Other weblogs I read have a link in almost every post. Is there some written or unwritten rule I'm breaking?

Second, I've been accused of shouting. Apparently, the fact that the titles of my posts are in all caps gives some the impression that I'm shouting as one might in a chat room. Never was that my intent. I've composed compound documents all my life and some of them have all caps in key headings or section breaks. Is that shouting? Again, what are the rules of the road?

A WEBLOG FIND

epersonae. Always happy to find a good blog I didn’t know about before. epersonae is one such. Its proprietor Elaine kindly emailed me apropos of the Paynter interview, did not mention her blog, so naturally I went to see it. Saw... [Caveat Lector]