Al Macintyre: Brain Food

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 07:27:23 GMT

There is a beautiful diagram below, but it is one dimensional ... in reality many of the visions on the periphery will be interconnected. There is also a beautiful vision in the architecture described, but in reality there are many players with other visions, and what we get is chaos, difficult to predict where the future might take us.

[Phil Wolff: Blue Sky Radio] shares interesting perspectives from

[a klog apart klogging]

From .blog to converged client..

Blogging is a form in transition.

Personally, I think blogging as a form will merge with all the other forms of digital expression. With email and IM first. With voice/video conferencing, streaming videos, browsing, and PowerPointing later.

Watch it change:

as more people blog from their foto-mobiles
as devices start to blog ("My car's day")
as audiobloggers create radio shows and videobloggers create televsion programming
as Sims characters start to blog.

Moving forward, see a convergent software client emerge.

Source: evanwolf group, 2002.

The surfaces presented to a user will adapt to each medium and form. Perhaps I need a storyboard for planning a video; maybe it can also be used for planning a presentation, an extended blog post, an interaction with a customer. Are you presenting on a computer projector, a video stream, or paper? The software should understand how to adjust.

The converged client should also adapt to people. A person's culture, experience, goals, interests, and skills. This is hard as adamantium, but it is what allows robust tools to work for most people in many situations. Some people need help and wizards and automatic spelling correction (think Microsoft Office), others need directly manipulable affordances (think Kai's Power Tools). Small children need different environments (Power Puff Girls) than teens than adults. Grokking world cultures and subcultures, and reflecting those in software, is a fine art.

Contrast this with Anil Dash's microcontent client. I'm seeing the converged client as a conceptual superset or framework for building microcontent clients.

Can you imagine the plumbing?

You'd want to design for:

Flexibility
Interoperability
Extensibility
Scalability
Polylingual

Your architecture would need:

Shared services. A common chassis.
Open APIs. So third party's can connect, communicate, and interact with the client.
Plug-in sockets. So tool makers can add their own features and extend the client's abilities.
Standards support. To increase interoperability.
Heavy transcoding. Transcoding is a fancy term for converting content from one platform to others. The converged client will have to handle a wider range of content than most. From story outlines to storyboards. From audio tracks to text subtitles. From IM threads to blog posts.

So what?

We're on our way. Blogging tools are starting to interact with email and sounds. PIMs are managing contact information across multiple applications. Community and collaboration features are as critical to games as traditional gameplay.

I'm calling it: 2003-2005 will see many clients converge, weblogs among them. The challenges? Immense. The rewards? Many and rich. The fun? Deep and lasting.

[a klog apart klogging]

[Phil Wolff: Blue Sky Radio]

Sun, 17 Nov 2002 20:54:28 GMT

[McGee's Musings] QUOTE

Wicked problems. Amy Lee is a work colleague and very patient wife of Mike (look at him now...he's acquired a light on... [IDblog]

Pointer to a site of Jeff Conklin's. This is good for two reasons. One is that the work Jeff has done on applying technology tools to http://www.cognexus.org/id42.htm is important. Jeff was one of the early researchers to work in the broad area of hypertext that was the precursor to much of what we take for granted today on the web and elsewhere. Second because I had lost track of Jeff after having a chance to meet him back in about 1992 when I was with CGEY's Center for Business Innovation.

Here's the definition of a wicked problem:

A wicked problem is one for which each attempt to create a solution changes the understanding of the problem. Wicked problems cannot be solved in a traditional linear fashion, because the problem definition evolves as new possible solutions are considered and/or implemented.

Wicked problems always occur in a social context -- the wickedness of the problem reflects the diversity among the stakeholders in the problem.

Most projects in organizations -- and virtually all technology-related projects these days -- are about wicked problems. Indeed, it is the social complexity of these problems, not their technical complexity, that overwhelms most current problem solving and project management approaches.

Go read the rest of the material for yourself. It's worth the time.

UNQUOTE [McGee's Musings]

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 08:21:20 GMT

John Hiler has a dynamite overview of Blog Software Types, from the perspectrive of what might be deisrable to an end user, which I am just summarizing here. I have added a bit to his conclusions. This post has stuff in the format ... if you are THIS-GOAL then the best weblog software tools for you mght be one of the following. This does not neccessarily imply that if you are NOT that goal that you should steer away from those suggestions.

If you want to run a community discussion group blog similar to Kuro5hin or Slashdot, then the best Weblog software for you might be: LiveJournal, Manila, pMachine, Scoop, or Slash.

If you are a programmer who loves to play around with open source software, then perhaps the best for you would be Bloxsom, Moveable Type, or Radio Userland.

If you are an end user who just wants to publish your own web pages with a minimum of hassle, then perhaps good weblog software for you would be Blogger or Moveable Type.

I am still sufficiently a beginner at all this to see what if anything is incomplete about this picture.

Sun, 27 Oct 2002 22:09:03 GMT

Recent Radio Links Test review:

Often we draw conclusions based on a test with what is broke and what is working, then a day or so later, Radio is functioning correctly, as though there is some lag in the software recognizing that there is something out there that should be indexed using the double quote system. Some wtuff that looks Ok for the owner of the Radio, really only works because the stuff is pointing at what is on our hard disk and does not work for other PC users.

Double quotes in sentences in stories referencing other stories or shortcuts do become links in Radio.
- This works for other PC users.
Double quotes in sentences in short cuts referencing stories failed to become links in Radio.
Double quotes in sentences on home page referencing stories or shortcuts do become links in Radio.
- This works for other PC users.
- Home page usage of double quoted links to stories or shortcuts work correctly in RSS news aggregation. However, as we have just seen, this does not matter if the shortcut connection is flawed. In other words, Radio stories work better than Radio shortcuts.
  - This works for other PC users
Double quotes in sentences on category pages referencing stories do become links in Radio.
- This works for other PC users.
- Category page usage of double quoted links to stories fail to work correctly in RSS news aggregation. This means that if we want links to our stories to work in categories where quoted by other people, then the posting to the category page needs to use the actual url link and not the double quoted version.
There are probably other variations on this worth trying from time to time, since Radio software is continuously improved, and as I learn more Link Types.
Rule of thumb here (conclusions for now) is to

forget about double quoting system on home page and categories, because sometimes I will want to make a post in a category, and I will not want a messed up RSS news aggregation.
depend upon double quoting system inside stories.

Sun, 27 Oct 2002 20:51:20 GMT

Thankyou Dave Winer for giving me a definition of SOAP ... there is too much jargon out there for my tastes.

[Scripting News] QUOTE

MSDN: The Argument Against SOAP Encoding. I have no idea what he's talking about, but he almost got the original intent of SOAP right. It's a simple way to call procedures running on other machines, on other OSes, written in other languages, using different economic systems, without being forced to pay a tax to Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Sun or the W3C. UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

Sat, 12 Oct 2002 06:37:02 GMT

Radio Answer: How to add Amazon book feed for your interest to your weblog:

Mary, of [Dog News: radio questions], an e-chef highly skilled in Radio e-cuisine for the mind, demonstrated great skill in figuring things out when she combined serveral ingredients to add a customized book feed to your weblog.

Saturday, I announced that I had added http://www.yaywastaken.com/ collection of Browser plug ins to my Enhanced Radio Tools directory, but as usual, I make lists of interesting places way ahead of doing any serious exploration with what they have to offer. This was one of the ingredients of Mary's e-cooking, although she might have found the place independently of me.

Other ingredients in Mary's tasty e-dish were Dave Winer's RSS Macro, and Keola's font customization, producing a new macro to add a customized book feed to your weblog.

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 08:39:58 GMT

[RadioFAQs]

Radio Tip: Huge new service: Phillip Pearson has added RSS support to his Comment Monitor, enabling anyone to use RSS to keep up with new comments posted to a Radio Userland weblog. [Rogers Cadenhead: Workbench: Radio Userland Tips] Subscribe to the comments on www.dws.us via Phillip's Comment Monitor Read lots more about this. [Don W Strickland: RadioFAQ]

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 20:49:54 GMT

Adding metadata to my template (per Syndic8). Peering into my referrer logs this morning, I saw a reader coming from Syndic8, so I decided to take a look at how this site looks through that syndicator's display. I noticed that RFB is listed as not having the metadata that Syndic8 looks for, so I followed a link to some metadata help, followed a further link to the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names to get the longitude, latitude, and a numerical code for Oakland, and came up with these new metadata entries for the HEAD section of my home template:

<META NAME="dc.creator.e-mail" CONTENT="contactus@radiofreeblogistan.com">
<META NAME="dc.creator.name" CONTENT="Christian Crumlish (xian)">
<META NAME="tgn.id" CONTENT="7014250">
<META NAME="tgn.name" CONTENT="Oakland">
<META NAME="geo.position" CONTENT=" 37.800;-122.267">
<META NAME="geo.placename" CONTENT="Oakland, California">
<META NAME="geo.country" CONTENT="US">
<META NAME="dmoz.id" CONTENT="Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/">

While investigating that last meta tag (name="dmoz.id"), I discovered that Radio Free Blogistan is not listed at DMOZ, so I submitted it in the Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs category. [Radio Free Blogistan]

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 21:55:17 GMT

[RadioFAQs]

Radio Tip: Find more RSS feeds: Brent points out this page for AmphetaDesk users, which works for anyone using virtually any RSS reader. [inluminent/weblog] [Don W Strickland: RadioFAQ]

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 19:49:07 GMT

[RadioFAQs]

Radio Tip: This is how I read news in my Radio aggregator on OSX using iCab 2.8.2

My preferences are set to check news items by default
View a new list of news here http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/news
Scan down the list; when you see one you like
1. Control-click on the Post button
2. Pick Open Link in Background Window from the pop-up menu
3. Leave that item in it's new window and continue scanning
Repeat Scan & Post until you've got several items in separate windows or reach end of list
Cycle through open item windows, editing and posting (not publishing) them
When all items are posted delete the news list and repeat with a new list

[Don W Strickland: RadioFAQ]

Thu, 03 Oct 2002 19:37:18 GMT

In one of my e Radio Ideas collections, I wrote, with respect to News Aggregation:

'For example, I might be going down the list doing some deletion checking off, then come to a post I want to react to right now, before I lose my place, but that means I lose the fact I just checked a bunch of boxes...'

After dws.Radio.FAQ shared this, Peter Cook commented

I have a pretty simple solution which works right now and doesn't involve any coding from UserLand.

Command-click on the 'Post' button of the item you are interested in.
A new browser window opens, you edit and post as you see fit, close that window (if you like) and return to your original list.
There are other variations on this (eg, drag the 'Post' button into another open browser window/tab) and you may need to substitute command-click for whatever works on your browser/platform.

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 00:50:26 GMT

Radio Tips Update: I recently added some stuff to my stories, which are always subject to me adding more thoughts from time to time. I think some of my Radio pals might like to know about this (I call my e-mail friends e-friends ... is there a similar short way of referring to my Radio friends?).

Blog Money is my preliminary thinking on the various ways (if any) that someone skilled in Radio Weblogging might be able to combine that know-how with adding to one's income.
Radio Doc Sources get a line or two added typically several times a week. This is my directory, by name of contributor, listing links to people who have provided some kind of documentation or tools for the Radio community. Most recently I added some links to good stuff from:

Alison Fish text input tips;
Rick Klau and Mark Mower on Live Topics;
and Mark Nottingham with RSS Tutorial.

Search Engine Tips basically provide links to recent good stuff provided by Christian Crumlish, Alison Fish, and Don Strickland.
Understand Radio News Aggregation got a few more links added to the bottom of this essay.

Fri, 27 Sep 2002 06:02:37 GMT

Radio Tip: [Larry Yudelson] QUOTE

I used one of the rss-generating services to create an rss channel for my referrer list. I don't know when the log is actually read, but I at least get some coming in my aggregator every day.
UNQUOTE [Larry Yudelson]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 21:17:14 GMT

I started a directory of RSS resources. [Scripting News]

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 07:18:28 GMT

I think we have a Radio Tip here, since several people have been looking for various connections to documentation, directories, etc.

[Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE

Compendium of weblog resources. The most useful thing in the aforementioned article was a link to Weblogs Compendium, another good central clearinghouse of blog information and resources, today featuring pointers to useful third-party services such as myMediaList (for adding lists of books, music, and other media to your blog or web page) and blogLinker (for managing a modular link list, much like blogrolling.com). Naturally, there is a Compediumblog as well.

UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan]

This fits into what I posted to my Radio Doc Sources about Sebastien Paquet weblog: Seb's Open Research

His Weblogs by Profession is a directory of professions active in weblogging, in which for many, but not all, he has links to directories for each of the professions that he lists.
- Consultants
- Educators and (old) Teachnology
- Journalists
- Knowledge Management people
- Lawyers and Academic Law
- Librarians
- Researchers
- Software developers
- Web designers and information architects
Also Steve Outing
- Taxonomy (Terminology) of Types of Weblogging

Tue, 24 Sep 2002 21:20:33 GMT

For future reference, I added Comment Monitor by Phillip Pearson to both my stories:

Radio Doc Sources (by person supplying documentation and other good stuff)
and Enhanced Radio Tools (by type of offering) collections.
I have recently added to both my collections of stories and categories.

Tue, 24 Sep 2002 07:16:25 GMT

[Granneman's Web Sites Worth Visiting] shows us how to create Venn diagrams on our websites.

Tue, 24 Sep 2002 00:23:11 GMT

developer.* [Blogfish] Thanks for the link to Daniel Read's great collection of essays for Professional Programming Quality, Book Reviews, and project to codify programming standards.

Sun, 22 Sep 2002 20:06:04 GMT

Continuous improvement of our Radio communication efforts, in Al's opinion, requires mixtures of:

Writing Skills in general ... which we can learn by practicing good examples set by others, such as Novelists, Journalists, and successful Technical Writers.
Learning broad range of capabilities of Radio, and the relevant vocabulary, then using them effectively, such as links to context, to more detailed stories, and include objects across spectrum of what's possible.

Alison Fish has been teaching Al Macintyre how to do Images and Permalinks, but not enough has clicked in Al brain yet.
The learning curve at getting better and better at these tools for me has been:

Past: Get comfortable with Stories, Shortcuts, and simple links.
Now: Delve into more advanced links and objects we can connect to our web site.
Next: Become a student of Radio Outlining.

Know laws and etiquette.
- Be very careful in quoting not to permit any confusion regarding who said what.
  - I have a Radio Wish that a future version of the Radio editing box can have something for us to click on that we could use a particular style for quoting a particular person ... person A B C in a body of text.
  - For the moment, just break new paragraph QUOTEs around whoever source.
  - But I want to learn how to mix it up ... Person A said this, but on the other hand Person B makes a good point, and it is crystal clear what was said by ME, A B etc.
  - I think part of the problem is that we are accustomed to using double quotes when quoting someone, but double quotes have a special meaning in Radio, so we need something else when making it clear we are quoting someone and who.
- Be sensitive to the needs of a broad spectrum of people visiting our web site.
Understanding how to best use the medium.
Knowing the subject that we are sharing our opinions on, and being careful to distinguish which of our words are backed by experience and when this is just our uninformed opinion.
Other topics on Phil Wolff's great lists.

Sun, 22 Sep 2002 11:13:12 GMT

Al struggles to learn Permalinks within the same document.

[Blogfish] QUOTE

The sample code given in the original post HTML 1-A Lesson: Anchors was incorrect.

The pound signs # should be used in the links to the anchors instead of the anchors themselves:

Before, Incorrect:

Link to the anchor: How do we enable categories?

The Anchor: #enablingCategories>How do we enable Categories?

After, Correct:

Link to the anchor:
~~How do we enable categories?~~

How do we enable categories?

The Anchor:
~~#enablingCategories>How do we enable Categories?~~

How do we enable Categories?

Before, Incorrect:
Link to the anchor:	`How do we enable categories?`
The Anchor:	`#enablingCategories>How do we enable Categories?`

After, Correct:
Link to the anchor:	~~`How do we enable categories?`~~ `How do we enable categories?`
The Anchor:	~~`#enablingCategories>How do we enable Categories?`~~ `How do we enable Categories?`

UNQUOTE [Blogfish]

I tried the earlier lesson in "Understand Radio Categories". It did not work. I thought it was me. Back to school with Al student, Alison Teacher. Assuming Al passes the class, what Al has learned will need to go into Al's documentation series to help the next person on this learning curve.

My anchor is the same as what it was except I took the color out, because I have sometimes had troubles combining links and colors - I prefer to let links be standard hyperlink colors.

For my link to the anchor, I used the Create Hyperlink editing bar and in there put #whatever that corresponded to the anchor. It still not working, so student not yet getting it. I had previously read documentation on permalinks and tried this several times before and not got it. It could be me, or it could be the documentation. I figured that if I worked on other stuff on the learning curve then returned here periodically, in some future visit it would finally click in my brain.

Link-anchor permalinks for Mark Paschal FTPed Radio site.

This stuff is a bit more advanced than Al is ready for.

Outliner might come with this according to a Radio Discussion Thread.
Radio Discussion of reapplying default theme settings with latest upgrades but Backup reminder before serious adjustments to one's Radio site.
Radio Discussion of a modification to make it easier to get Permalinks.
Rules including Perma Link programming Radio to Manila.

This stuff is a bit more advanced than Al is ready for.

Sam DeVore provides the macro for perma links {newsArchiveLink} that we can put in the news day template or in the homepage template.

Sat, 21 Sep 2002 23:17:53 GMT

I add to some of my stories with little bits at a time, hardly worth mentioning, but check out my stories via http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/ ... the ones most recently getting some work have been:

"Radio Doc Sources" ... I chopped out my introductory remarks that were cluttering the top, and made them a separate story, then "Radio Start" is for beginners, but I have only begun this, it needs more work.

"Enhanced Radio Tools" is list as I come across stuff, but other people have been inventorying this long before I started, so initially, like "Radio Doc Sources" it is a pointer to those other people.

"Radio Wishes" have not been kept current. This is an index to that topic scattered all over my weblog.

"Blind of NH" used to be the one part of my weblog that showed up the most on searches that I found in my referers, but now, sad to say, someone's notion that Nigerian justice system is a hoax is now number one most common connection.

[Blogfish] QUOTE Al Macintyre has been adding so many great sources to his article Understanding Radio Categories, the page has grown into nine (yes, I counted) screen lengths of information. One of Al's eRadio ideas is to accomodate the multitude of information by updating the presentation:

"It would be really nice if each of the summary questions up top was a link to the detail answer down below." "Down the road I hope to learn Radio Outlining..."

I can't help out with the outlining, but I do know how to make anchors. Imagine a hyperlink that does not jump to another webpage, but jumps to another heading on the same webpage. Here is the code:

href="enablingCategories">How do we enable Categories?
href="categoryGotchas">What are some gotchas, to avoid, that can get us into trouble?
href="postingToCategories">How do we post stuff to Categories?

name=#enablingCategories>How do we enable Categories?
Aug 3 I talked about this.
Russ Lipton has several documents of relevance.

name=#categoryGotchas>What are some gotchas, to avoid, that can get us into trouble?
Russ Lipton has several documents of relevance. Check out...

Here is how it will look:

How do we enable Categories?

What are some gotchas, to avoid, that can get us into trouble?

How do we post stuff to Categories?

How do we enable Categories?

Aug 3 I talked about this.

Russ Lipton has several documents of relevance.

What are some gotchas, to avoid, that can get us into trouble?

Russ Lipton has several documents of relevance. Check out...

Ok, Al - when you learn of Outlining, will you explain it to the rest of us? :) UNQUOTE [Blogfish]

Alison ... I can see by your site that you have already figured out how to make Outlining work, but you are having a bit of trouble with the terminology

(as am I ... the name of the anchor concept (does this work only in Source format - I have been using WYSIWYG and my first effort not seem to work like you descrive) you teaching me is permalinks) ...

All I have done so far on Outlining is to identify a bunch of places where it is documented. I am exploring several Radio Userland sites that are just for this feature (I stumbled across them by accident), documentation by several people who are into documenting Radio, and one of the Journalists, because they do such a great job of putting things into perspective. I am merely absorbing bits and pieces of info in moments that I get from this damn Kidney Infection that has been dragging me down for the last couple weeks.

Another story I need to do some time is Links Terminology, because I have stumbled over an enormous number of different kinds. I visited "Al Mac Radio Doc Plans" to make sure that plan stated there, which reminded me of something else, so I started a story on "Chess Variants".

Sat, 21 Sep 2002 05:47:18 GMT

I started some new categories today, and went through my archives assigning some stuff to also be in the relevant new categories ... check out what I have via http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/Categories/

Mon, 16 Sep 2002 21:23:16 GMT

e-mail pass along

Subject: SUNRISE OVER LOWER MANHATTAN

No one will see this again.

This picture was taken by a lady returning on a cruise this past summer (July 28, 2001). It is a sunrise over lower Manhattan.

SHE Writes: As I watched the beautiful skyline of New York City float past me I noticed the sun was about to line up just behind the twin towers. I was lucky enough to snap the picture at exactly the right moment. If you look at the sun rays it is almost prophetic. a little spooky.

When I show this picture to anyone they almost always asks for a copy. I just want to share it with all who want it. Please take this picture and share it with anyone and everyone who likes it. I've been printing them like crazy on my home computer to give to those that want a copy.

[file:///C|/Program%20Files/Radio%20UserLand/www/images/image0016.jpg]

[http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/images/TwinTowers%2016.jpg]

UNQUOTE

Al is having trouble getting this picture so that other people can see it on Al Weblog. Someone tell me if the second url above shows you the image (apparently the first points to Al's hard drive) ... I got to this by looking in Radio Folder / Images / locate which image I had called it when I dropped it into my PC path corresponding to the MY PICTURES in Prefs as suggested by Alison Fish, and I see she has enhanced her how-to since the last time I looked at it.

Here is a copy of it supplied by Paula Allen. Thanks Paula.

Mon, 09 Sep 2002 18:58:37 GMT

Reference Directories to Blogs by Profession, organized by

Sebastien Paquet

His home page.
His weblog is Seb's Open Research
Weblogs by Profession is a directory of professions active in weblogging, in which for many, but not all, he has links to directories for each of the professions that he lists.
- Consultants
- Educators and (old) Teachnology
- Journalists
- Knowledge Management people
- Lawyers and Academic Law
- Librarians
- Researchers
- Software developers
- Web designers and information architects

Sat, 07 Sep 2002 20:43:29 GMT

Radio Lesson

Understanding the 3 buttons ... I do not know if this is correct or not, but it was the clearest explanation I have heard so far, within the Craig Burton Tutorial I recently mentioned, as compared to other explanations I have previously seen in other people Radio Documentation.

Post
- This saves on your desk top PC your work, that was just in your Home Editing Box..
- I do this a lot when working on a post, just in case my browser connection fails.
Publish
- Send to the public site ALL your work that you might have posted but not published.
- There could be several pieces you been working on and not yet published.
- Your Home Editing Box could be empty when you do this.
Post and Publish
- This does both.
- Anything in your Home Editing Box is saved to your desk top PC.
- Anything in your Home Editing Box is also published on the public site.
- Anything else you been working on but not yet published, it now gets published to the public site.

Thu, 05 Sep 2002 21:23:31 GMT

Comment on Al's Radio Doc Sources using Quick Topics. Eventually, Al wants to look into pros & cons of several different commenting systems for Radio, but we have to start some place.

Wed, 04 Sep 2002 11:47:45 GMT

[RadioFAQs]

Radio Tip: Never metadata I didn't like
N.Z. Bear, Philip Pearson and some other folks have created a project to establish some standards for Weblog metadata -- i.e., standardized ways for blogs to tell software more about what they are and what they're all about. More here. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] [Don W Strickland: RadioFAQ]

I don't know that I fully Grok this, but I happy to see people working to improve contextual interconnectivity, implementing our Radio Wishes.

Sun, 01 Sep 2002 20:20:43 GMT

Donald Larson has a Category just for the Articles that he finds interesting each day. I like his approach, but for me I would probably need to split such a category a bit by the subjects that interest me - computer / politics / intellectual freedoms.

I am interested in the non-standard but nice technique he used to let a casual visitor to his site know that this existed.

Here is his summary of summaries. http://radio.weblogs.com/0108730/2002/09/index.html

Do I have one like that? Let's see. http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/2002/09/index.html

Here would be August if I have deciphered this correctly

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/2002/08/index.html

I perceive an update to "Radio url number system" coming on.

Well I am getting error 404 when I try to link. I wonder if this is related to the new archiving system. My Radio Preferences are set for automatic update each nite (if my Radio is on then) of software upgrades, but I have been having a lot of MS BSOD strike in middle of nite when I am sleeping, so I not know what happened right before they struck. My Prefs / Weblog have 15 options (used to be 14) in which # 15 is Archives. I shall enable this new feature here and see what happens.

Sun, 01 Sep 2002 08:13:24 GMT

I have just started a category called 400 on Radio Dial which will be for stuff related to my interests in that part of the IBM world which has nothing to do with the PC world, other than issues related to connecting PCs to IBM midrange networks and OS, like Linux, Unix, or OS/400. This category will not show up on various lists until stuff I post there gets upstreamed ... you will then be able to find it via my directory of stories and categories.

Midrange-l is a technical discussion group for people who work with IBM's midrange computer system, which used to be known as AS/400 but has been rebranded iSeries eServer.

Midrange-l discussion group now has its archives such that we can subscribe to them through our Radio News Aggregation, but where Radio Subscription Channels are identified by rss.xml at end of the Channel's url, here you have to select
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/maillist.rdf to join up.

Posts to the Radio News Aggregation then show up in the format of the title of the post with in parentheses the name of the person who made the post to the discussion group. Clcking on the link then takes you to the actual post, looking exactly the same way as it does when you go to the archives of the group, and you can link from post to post within thread, just like being at the archives.

This link announces the service and gives instructions for subscribing.

*** ADMIN: RDF / RSS files now available (David Gibbs) [midrange-l mailing list]

This service is also available for the RPG400-L list.

For random visitors to Al's Weblog who may be unfamiliar with RPG, it is an extremely popular business language used on mid sized IBM computers. I guess common languages for software written in the IBM world include: COBOL JAVA RPG SQL

RPG is an acronym meaning Report Program Generator. At one time I knew what most all languages acronyms stood for, except perhaps ENGLISH. " :-}"

Important context, when discussing this technology, is that UserLand wrote and deployed the first RSS-based news aggregator, in the spring of 1999

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 05:58:10 GMT

[dws software he uses and reccommends] shares this [Tip from John Robb] QUOTE

If you are using Radio (and it is running right now) and you are interested in customizing your site's theme: here is a list of handy macros you can use. They are pretty powerful, particularly if you need specific things automated. If you are a developer and have built macros that we can add to the list, please let me know so we can add them.

They are really easy to use. For example: if I insert <%navigatorLinks%> which is a macro that publishes the links I have in my menu on the right, in the editing box when it is in "source" view (the little toggle switch at the bottom of the editing box), I get this:

Home

UNQUOTE [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Fri, 30 Aug 2002 06:22:24 GMT

Random blogs worth another look.
Down left side of [follow me here] is definition of Weblogging with powerful links.
Here's another photography enthusiast. http://www.staceygraham.com/
I like the icons here illustrating each of the topics. http://www.wanderlost.org/ramble/
Here is someone experimenting with Radio theme redesign and advising others on the topic. http://mrp.peircecentral.com/lcweblog/ I like the mixed photo array across the top. This individual has both learned how to import images, and layout around them in an eye-appealing way.
I love [Pamela Joy] general layout and clicking on various windows of house. She now has a tutorial on how to do this kind of ODP editing thing.

Thursday topics: Artistic sites; Computer Security; Humor; Links; Politics. I also updated some stories and categories (access my collection via Radio url number system). The indigestion problem seems to have largely passed, and now I just feel a little dizzy.

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 07:41:19 GMT

Question: Are there search engines that are good at finding Weblogs on a particular topic, or in our neighborhood? Where do we find advice on increasing traffic to our web site thanks to search engines finding our content?

Answer: Check out

Scott Johnson's Becoming Part of the Weblogging Community which outlines Community Resources, with brief introductions to their functions and how we can participate. Also check out his Etiquette on pages 8-9. Just as there is a word Netiquette for e-Etiquette, is there a word for Blogging Etiquette?

Weblogs.com
- Recently updated - includes Radio and Manila sites.
News is free.com
- The blogging world includes people writing new content, and commenting on what others have written. News is free.com helps us find interesting stuff to comment on. You can also add your Weblog to their input.
Day Pop.com
- Search Engine of Weblogs. Search for your own name and see who has commented on you. This is not the same as referrers, limited to posts in the last 24 hours.
MIT Blog dex
- This indexes the information to which Blogs are linking.
Meerkat
- You can select types of news you want to follow.
Garbox
- Show you all sites that have linked to a particular weblog entry or news item.
Syndic8
- Alternative to News is free

Go to Scott's Info to get the actual urls of these places, reviews in more detail than my outline, and step by step how to participate in them. Scott's [Fuzzy Blog] recently admired www.blogstreet.com which has 9,700 blogs there when I checked.

Answer: Check out Al Macintyre's:

July 10 post on top UK Weblogs thanks to specific services.
July 12 post on BlogChalking, which I do not exactly figure out.
- Later, [Joseph the Poet] shares an alternate site.
Aug 12 post on MSNBC and Eaton Web, both organizing Weblogs by subject.
- Later, I find and explore some other conceptually similar sites.
- http://www.jjg.net/portal/tpoowl.html
- some directories have useful info even if they no longer maintained
- http://www.cyberjournalist.net/cyberjournalists.html
  Directory of weblogs maintained by professional journalists
- http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html
  Directory of weblogs maintained by librarians
- http://portal.eatonweb.com/ appears to have approx 6,000 Weblogs on their search engine.
- http://www.bloghop.com/ and http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/ have twice as many
- http://blo.gs/ tracks 39,000 weblogs for 450 users
- Not all of them are Radio Userland of course.
- When we look at the various Cloud Status Link connections from our Radio Site, the numbers seem to be higher.
Aug 14 I try to register my weblog at Eatonweb and relay my struggles getting that done.

Al has often mentioned [Search Day] as a great source for information about Search Engines in general. For example [Aug 22 Search Day] surveys why some perfectly good web sites fail to provide a search engine to improve user navigation. In my case it is merely that there are many things I plan to do some day & this is one of those I have procrastinated with, and I want to use it for myself. But I also want to learn what's involved in making a site Search Engine-Friendly. QUOTE

More than 1,600 webmasters responded to the survey, which covered the topics of why site managers have or have not installed search engines, correlations of the sizes of sites and the installation of search engines, frequency of updates, file formats served, languages, and number of languages used on sites. Also see [Search Engine Ratings] of the 16 most popular search tools.

Key findings of the [Search Tools Survey]:

Most sites with a search tool installed wanted to provide better

navigation and a professional look for the site.

Sites with more pages tend to have search engines installed.

Sites which are updated hourly or daily are much more likely to have
search installed than those which update less frequently.

Sites with non-English text are more likely to have search engines

installed.

Why haven't the majority of web managers surveyed installed search

engines? Time and [complexity] were the most frequently cited reasons.

UNQUOTE.

[IT Analysis Com] reports that the US Gov FTC questions Search Engine integrity with respect to disclosing paid links.

From Search Day I have found out about some Directory based search engines, where we start with the general flavor of site we want then drill down from there, such as

[1DO3.com] in the UK has a section just on Weblogs covering current events.
[Speciality Search Engines] has links to
- [Invisible Web] where normal search engines cannot go
- [Web Rings] where a cluster of sites are interlinked on topics of mutual interest, such as a Science Fiction Fan Club. I think there are a lot more out there than this outfit has indexed.
- Search Engines designed for usage through Wireless.
- [Miscelaneous Other] such as discussion groups, job postings, literature, museums and art works, transportation
Search Day newsletter subscribe from http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/
Dig into Search Day archives. July 11 they had a big article with connections to 131 different legitimate ways to improve traffic to your web site, by ensuring that search engines will include you properly. There's also a bit here on the e-etiquette of linking to other sites, irrespective of whether they are weblogs.
Remind Al ... 2 do includes getting into the gems = Al's notes on Traffic to Web Site ideas for increasing.

I mentioned a Radio Wish to one of my Radio correspondents, who said that it sounded like I was talking about [Mind Mapping] which intriqued me, but I still have that Radio Dream:

Many search engines give us the choice of searching the whole internet, just that one site, or just the sites run by a particular company. I want a sub-category to be a group of people who have created Radio Userland documentation, in which we can adjust the list of sites involved, perhaps have new ones and url changes communicated to us via News Aggregation. I also want a system of aliases, in which some feature might be known by different names to people familiar with different kinds of Weblogging software vendors, or may be commonly confused with some similarly appearing interface with other Computer software.

So we search for topic X and we also get links to Y and Z because of aliases, and we get hits where they exist on any one of the group of sites where people have done documentation. But I want more, a directory of Radio features, with who has documented that, so it becomes obvious on which features no one has yet documented.

This concept could also be applied to other special interests ... we compile a directory of sites that are involved in a particular category of particular interest to us, then do a search vs. all of them at the same time.

This post was originally written for Al's new category [e-Radio Ideas = Empower Freedom of e-Speech through dws.Radio.FAQ learning in Radio Userland: Questions; Wishes; Tips; Speculation] but then as it developed, Al thought also applied to the Home Page.

Wed, 21 Aug 2002 18:55:07 GMT

Here is a challenge that will come to all of us sooner or later, so perhaps we can learn from this how we can cope when it happens. In the last 24 hours my Radio has gone from 98% to 97% of 40 Meg free. I think it is probably due to my new stories, and I am now up to 22 News Aggregation Channel Subscriptions.

[Christian Crumlish (xian): salonika] QUOTE Yes, the problem is I've maxed out my server space at Salon's host, so I suppose this means moving over to my FTP server again. Even then, though I'll need to replace the home page at blogs.salon.com/0001111/ with some sort of link or redirect to the new address, or it will look like a dead blog to anyone coming in from an old bookmark or link! But how do I do that when my allocation is full? How do I clear out the remote host without killing my site? UNQUOTE [Christian Crumlish (xian): salonika]

Am I stating the obvious?

Ask your ISP about buying a larger allocation.
I added some more thoughts in Radio Discussion Thread.
- My most useful idea, in my opinion, is to search the Discussion Archives for the practicality of running two versions of Radio on same site at same time, for ease of moving stuff from old site to new site, and replacing old copy with pointers to new site.
- If you do that, first move to the new site, that on the old PC copy never got to the old site, so that does not get to the old site as you clean out enough disk space to make room for the pointers.
URL not coming across so here it is http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/08/18/understandRadioCategories.html
In my essay "Understand Radio Categories", note the very last section on What else good to know about Categories where I direct you to Radio documentation on how to publish a category to a different FTP server. If you organize your stuff into Categories that are each hosted by different ISP, then it will be a longer time interval between incidents of having to deal with this.
When you get your new url operational.
- carefully review if there is anything on your old archives that you could move to your replacement site. Especially anything that is a reasonably large chunk of text.
  - The reason for a large chunk of text is to clear space on your old allocation, with minimum effort on your part.
- After you know for sure the old archives stuff is on the new.
- See if the old archives will let you edit so as to replace that large chunk of text with a one liner that redirects people to the new location.
  - The reason for that is courtesy for anyone who has linked to stuff in your old archives.
- Now see if the verbiage that exited your old archives was in sufficient volume to permit the addition of a post on top pointing people to your new site.
In the future, create a dummy post that is large enough to accomodate this kind of information, linking people to another site.
- The game plan is that when the ceiling is hit, and you have the new site, replace the dummy post with the new link.
Consult with your filled up ISP.
- They may be able to improve on these suggestions.

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 03:59:29 GMT

Monday's Topics: e-Accessibility; Computer Architecture; e-Tools; Great Links; Personal To Dos; Radio Education; Science Fiction Speculation; Tidal Wave of News to absorb; UPS.

Thanks to Don Strickland's Radio FAQ for this connection to A Klog Apart's collection of directories of glossaries of weblogging terminology.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 18:26:23 GMT

Sometimes when I share links, I also tell the place that I am linking to that I am doing it. This is both common courtesy and an opportunity to be corrected on any misconceptions before they are more widely shared. In one of my notifications I said that I had not yet learned how to do the little Icons that show that some name is trademarked etc. My respondent tried to guide me to how to do it in HTML, but I am using WYSIWYG to edit this site, and not yet hardly delved into the underlying software that makes it all work. I want to figure out what is doable by ordinary non-technical home computer users, so we can help spread the joy of this to a larger audience.

So here Patrick is the results of me cutting and pasting your suggestions into my web site.

Symbol font: Ô
HTML: ™
Graphic:

It is apparent that your Graphic did not translate. Now that might not be a problem with Radio. It might be because I have not yet explored the Image capabilities of this software, and some aspects of what it can do might still be turned off for me.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 06:21:47 GMT

Categorized Links, Aha!.

The Shifted Librarian: How to Add Navigator Links in Radio

[Bag o' Knowledge Klog]

Fri, 09 Aug 2002 19:10:42 GMT

Today's Topics: fixing broken links; e-Accessibility; other miscelaneous interests.

There are a lot of broken links on the Internet. Some sites close down. Some move to another ISP. Other people had seen those sites when they were at the old location and thought WOW COOL LINK. Sometimes the link ended up in our Browser bookmarks, e-mail, or a web site, but the place we linked to is no longer there. We need tools to review our inventory of urls to identify those that are no longer any good.

Xenu(tm) finds broken links on web sites. You download the software to your PC and follow the instructions on how to use it. It is very fast because of preemptive multithreading in which the link checking software retrieves several web pages at the same time. The upper limit on how much you can do is that of the memory on your PC. This is free. Satisfied customers may select one of the projects that the software author loves, and make a suitable donation.

Sat, 03 Aug 2002 21:26:44 GMT

A lot of Radio Documentation assumes the reader already knows the A B C's of working with this software, answers questions how to do H K Q on the learning curve and has flawed links directing people back to the neccessary A B C's. Today I learned how to enable categories. I am sure thousands of other users already know how to do this and think it is so obvious that it need not be documented, but it can be a bit of a struggle to deduce. Here is a mini-tutorial of what I learned today, that did not seem to be explicitly spelled out in documentation I recently encountered.

We all need to know the A B C's of a lot of Basic Radio topics. I have not yet listed what all falls into the Basics, since I still struggling with many myself.
Make sure your Radio Application is running because some links on Radio Userland Documentation, to tell you how to do stuff, are broken if all you are using is your Browser to study the material, and your Radio application is currently inactive.
Using your Radio Desktop (the window with Home / News / Stories / etc.) drill down to Prefs -> Weblogs -> Categories.
Check the Box to Enable Categories then push the Submit button.
Return to your Radio Desktop (if you had another window open there, do F5 refresh screen).
Notice that we now have check boxes to select where to post our notes.
Re-read the documentation that assumed we knew the A B C's because now I can appreciate the answers to my D E F's.

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 17:47:08 GMT

With "Blogs worth revisiting" I think I am beginning to "get it" on how to link to my past posts. Several people and several documents had told me the same theoretical stuff, but it takes a bit of learning by doing, exploring Radio, often doing wrong, to finally "get it". I am still a bit of a novice learning Radio.

I keyed the "Blogs worth revisiting" story, and posted it, then saw something more I wanted to add, so selected the button to Edit my work, and I got a blank screen. Panic. Back button. It is still there. Try again, another blank screen. By experimentation I found that what works is to go to Stories on top menu bar, select the story I want to edit, then the edit button works, the first time. If I want to edit some more, go via Stories menu. That works.

Thanks also someone for telling me about F5. I not remember who told me, or what document ... I have looked at several Radio Tutorials in the last few days. Basically when I have one Browser window open at my public site, and another open to the editing, which is being upstreamed to the public site, F5 is needed at the public site to refresh the picture to see my latest input.

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:42:22 GMT

Here I try to figure out how to cross-link my posts, so that I can do that with posts on the same subject. I was contemplating a story for each subject that I get into, that would have links to all the posts mentioning it, to help in future mentions.

With Radio there are many different kinds of links that I want to learn how to do, and also learn the correct terminology for them all. Newbies see something we want to do, but we not know what it called, so we dither all over the place trying to describe it, and of course search engines not much help for the right documentation because we not know the right terminology yet.

Jan Karlsbjerg of http://www.karlsbjerg.net/blog/ reminded me that if I have one Windoze Browser window open on my public site, and another open on my private editing of my weblog, QUOTE

So if you want to refer to all your posts for Wednesday, July 10, 2002,

you go to your public website (http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/), find

the date in question, hover the mouse over the day-anchor, right-click

(I'm assuming you're running Windows here) and from the menu that

springs up you select "Copy Shortcut". You now have the shortcut to your

posts for that day, and you can insert them into your own writing (see

"Copy and Paste URLs" above). Same thing for specific post-anchors,

except steal the link from the #-sign for the post.

UNQUOTE

So I did that and here is what I get for my link to my Wednesday, July 10 posts.

I am obviously not quite yet "getting it", so I need to do some more studying of

Copy and Paste URLs:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0100059/stories/2002/04/12/copyAndPasteUrls.html