Al Macintyre: e Radio Ideas

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 19:02:58 GMT

[The Cartoonist] QUOTE Understanding Weblogs : In this article, I'll show you how to build a simple weblog using Radio UserLand, then I'll spend some time explaining the fundamentals behind weblogging. (O'Reilly Network via MyAppleMenu) UNQUOTE

Wei-Meng Lee has written a dynamite article here, and I plan to be linking to it from some of my general Blog Software collections.

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 07:46:33 GMT

I started a story on why we do not want to be Blog Moving, because it is a disadvantage common to several Blog Software Types, another story that I updating, thanks to information on a post by Lila Efimova, on choices in selecting the right Blog Software for you.

Sun, 08 Dec 2002 07:24:55 GMT

Open letter from Al Macintyre to Florian and other Weblogger newcomers.

Welcome to an exciting learning curve that can consume you with a desire to learn all sorts of neat things. You shared some questions whose answers inevitably may lead to more questions. Many thousands of other webloggers have been down this path ahead of you, so there is much you can learn by lurking in the sub-communities of webloggers who are a self-help tech support and mutual help society of people sharing tips how best to progress down the path of learning how best to use this relatively new technology.

If you have already selected a particular Blog Software, then you need to join the sub-communities of users familiar with the nuances of that particular Type. Be sure to check out directories of webloggers by category of professional interest ... academia, knowledge management, librarians, journalists, and so forth, because you can get great insights from seeing what is posted to the weblogs of people whose interests are similar to yours. If your interest is in finding weblogs by people who share your hobby interests (one of mine is science fiction books and games), your best route to your peers is via the link services and search engines.

If you know what blogging is all about, but you can't decide what software is best for your needs, check out my do-it-yourself Consumer Reports collection of perspectives comparing what all the different blog software vendors have to offer. If you have no idea what blogging is, or having trouble wrapping your mind around some of the concepts, perhaps you ought to get one of the Blog Books.

Sat, 07 Dec 2002 20:00:36 GMT

[Seb's Open Research] QUOTE

Essential questions about blogging.. Newcomer Florian asks six probing questions, trying to get to the essence of weblogging. Good answers to all of these would go a long way towards building a decent blogging FAQ. UNQUOTE [Seb's Open Research]

[Florian] Weblogging Questions:

1.) why? why do we write? what are the motivations to publish all that is published?
2.) and for whom? who is the audience? who -exactly- are weblogs created for?
3.) are they, can they be an alternative source for news?
4.) how do you find your way around? how do you NOT get lost in the matrix of personal entries and worlds? or is that the point?
5.) what role does weblogging play in your life? how much time do you spend updating your own weblog?
6.) is there a community of webloggers? and what are the "rules"?

Al Macintyre takes a stab at some answers:

1.) why? why do we write? what are the motivations to publish all that is published?

Different strokes for different folks.
In my case, I enjoy writing, speculating, analysing, discussing.
Then some people claim to enjoy my output. This motivates me to try to improve the quality of
- my selection (what I chose to write about) and
- my presentation (clarity of my arguements and beliefs explanations).

2.) and for whom? who is the audience? who -exactly- are weblogs created for?

The communities are evolving. You can perhaps understand better if you can answer the question why we join and participate in this or that Internet Discussion Group but not some other one that has very similar content and people opinions. Or how about friends of friends we trade e-mail with ... people who are not relatives, neighbors, school chums, co-workers, never were in same social group, but we are fast friends with them on the Internet. I took a vacation in Colorado to meet someone I knew only on the Internet, and also to have a vacation in Colorado the week before me at IBM University in the region.

3.) are they, can they be an alternative source for news?

This is a reliability / reputation topic. Some are not reliable sources for news. Some are. The difference is in the character of the writer, our skills at being a word smith, using the software, and other topics I have previously addressed in my Brain to Brain Inter-personal communications Category.
Consider our e-mail contacts who tend to forward a lot of garbage along with the good stuff. It seems to me that some e-friends believe 100% at face value what they hear on the Internet, scams along with it. I have talked with some and learned that they agree with me that 99.999% of the forwarded info about viruses and geopolitics and ete. are fraudulent but they forward all just in case this latest is the 0.001% that is true, and I can't get them to see that the huge volume of false info about scams and urban legends and stuff rooted in racism and so forth is totally drowning out the good stuff in the e-mail. People who cannot distinquish fact from fantasy or why we should make an effort not to pass on the fantasy, they are not reliable sources for news. Well we can have the same people problem in any medium of expression.

4.) how do you find your way around? how do you NOT get lost in the matrix of personal entries and worlds? or is that the point?

This is related to the learning curve of weblogging.
First we learn how to post the stuff to our weblogs.
Then we learn how to work news agregation linking.
Along the way we see the rules of etiquette that apply here to givng proper credit to whoever was the originator of some text, and notifying people that we used their stuff.
Then as we explore referers (who is using OUR stuff) and search engine nuances, we figure out how to find the news sources that we are personally going to be most interested in.
And there is always the Knowledge Management Challenge of how best to organize everything.

5.) what role does weblogging play in your life? how much time do you spend updating your own weblog?

Different people balance all kinds of hobbies and interests, depending on the tools available and the associated learning curves.
Some day we may see family webrings where photos of the kids are posted with dates not being dates when posted, but dates pointing at how old the kids were when these photos were taken, with some kind of scroll feature so we can rapidly flip through pictures of one young boy or girl as they get older, and the whole thing linked in a family tree so we can flip through pictures of relations, and grandparents dig out faded pictures ... here is what auntie this and cousin that looked like.
There is a weblog called Digging Up Dirt, or something like that, which is someone showing the progress of gardening, which in the western culture is one of the biggest family bobbies.
As for me, I am single, somewhat a loner, interested in a variety of intellectual pursuits, which I try to balance, but more computer opportunities mean less time reading novels, more TV channels means less time with ordinary videos, not having a game club around that is into the kind of stuff I like, means I spending less time on game simulation design. We try to fit weblogs into that mixture, and I guess it means less time on the Internet discussion lists for me. Our interests do not evolve, but jump from related area to area.

6.) is there a community of webloggers? and what are the "rules"?

Yes, but it is very disorganized, almost anarchistic, with various webloggers struggling in concert to do Knowledge Management out of the chaos.
There are "rules" but I see them helter skelter, and have copied links to some that I have seen. They are related to concepts of behaving towards our fellow humans in a civilized manner, similar to in e-mail where we are expected to quote in context, not clog up our e-mails with extraneous bandwidth, watch out for the integrity of our fellow computer users systems, help each other out, similar to the open source mentality.

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 21:07:13 GMT

Question: Is there a directory out there of where people are doing good writing about Knowledge Management?

Partial Answer: Several people have attempted this, resulting in Fragmented Indexes, which collectively get us to a lot of interesting stuff on KM.

Logically and ultimately we might expect to find a comprehensive directory at the Blogs and Bloggers Tribe organized by Ross Mayfield. (A Tribe is a business networking community hosted by www.Ryze.com) Thanks to Andrea Janssen of http://fliegenvonferne.blogspot.com for introducing me to this place.

But while we are waiting, see:
http://www.rklau.com/tins/ left column other blogs of note by category, with one list for KM
Phil Wolff http://dijest.editthispage.com/klogs/ left side ... his stuff can be read in your choice of seven languages
http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/index.html right column blogrolls have a knowledge category
David Gurteen has what he calls KM News Aggregation page http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/0/D202075EFE9D8E1B80256BF40034ECE8/
Seb surely has one http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~paquetse/cgi-bin/om.cgi?Weblogs_By_Profession but http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~paquetse/cgi-bin/om.cgi?KMPings is almost empty when I looked there
KLOGS discussion group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/

When I come across cool KM ideas I often put them in my Brain to Brain Category, but it is scattered throughout, not in any directory format, while I try to post FAQ discoveries to dws via my e Radio Ideas. I also have a lot of links to weblog directories, some of which are KM releated, in my Blog Software Perspectives and Search Engine Tips.

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 16:14:04 GMT

My Blog Software Directory had grown to 14 pages and I have lots more I intend to add, but it was getting unwieldy for me to edit, and I suspect perhaps bandwidth hassle for some potential visitors, so I restructured the introductory content so as not to lose anything, but now have more focused stories.

Blog Books is something for you to print and hand carry to your local book store to help you look for particular titles, authors, publishers. It lists a dozen titles, with links to reviews, summary of some contents. Obviously I know more about some than others. (3 pages)

Blog Software is my directory of relevant software out there that I am aware of so far, in which I have populated some of them with what they have in common or different. (now 9 pages). I am contemplating further breaking this down into chunks by contiguous letters of the alphabet such as
Blog Software A - B (2 pages) over 20 such as Blogger variants
Blog Software C - F (1 page) over 20 such as Dairyland
Blog Software G - J (1 page) about a dozen such as Graymatter and Grok Soup
Blog Software K - M (1 page) about a dozen such as Live Journal, Manila, Moveable Type
Blog Software N - P (1 page) over 20 where I named them but not yet know much about them
Blog Software R - S (2 pages) about a dozen such as Radio Userland
Blog Software T - Z (2 pages) about a dozen such as Tinderbox, Web Crimson, Weblogger, Xanga

Blog Software Perspectives is the do-it-yourself Consumer Reports comparison of what your Weblogging Choices are. (2 pages)

Blog Software MT and RU collects links to various people opinions pros and cons different suites. (4 pages)

Blog Software Start is introduction for beginners to this Blog Software collection, like Radio Doc Sources Introduction and Radio Start are for Radio Doc Sources, so that experienced users can skip that verbiage and go direct to the meat. (2 1/2 pages)

Blog Software Types charts what is involved in the major different approaches, that I have conceptually figured out so far. (2 pages)

Link Services are for any weblog, not just Radio Users, a starting point for how to find out about other Weblogs that may be of interest to you. I need to add the Random Blog links here also. Much more to come here ... Search Engine Tips includes links to many services I have not yet checked out ... as I do so, I plan to write up here what each has to offer. Most of them here do not yet have much explanation. What happened was I had just started this thing, beginning to compare, then I got a flood of discoveries, whose links I put into the Search Engine Tips, planning to look into them later, and expand this. (1 page)

Enhanced Radio Tools is my directory of add-on software in which right now it includes stuff that works for Radio, plug ins for Browser, services for any Weblogging. Later I plan to split this up into Radio only, Browser only, general Weblogging, and perhaps some of the major categories in there such as Comment alternative systems. (3 pages)

Search Engine Tips include a score of Weblog Directories you might consider for registering your weblog. This is another story that has exploded in size and content that I may later split up by function: Traditional Places; Specialized Places; Weblog Places; Actual tips for using them; Links to tips for putting one or more on our weblog; Intro to all this. (10 pages)

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 05:53:29 GMT

Blogging Resource Directory found thanks to links on http://randomfoo.net/ which I found on my referers. Another place to explore links.

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 20:22:44 GMT

Radio Wish: When we have something from News Aggregation, that we Post + Publish as is or edited or with some of our remarks upon on our site, the act of publishing it the first time causes a ping on the referers of where ever we got the data from. Perhaps if we revise the story, and republish, there goes another ping. This would automate notification of who is using our stuff, to help expedite our interaction with each other. Perhaps it could be in Preferences whether or not we want this happening.

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 08:34:31 GMT

Radio Referer Wish: I have previously stated a desire to get at something more than 24 hours ago, and sometimes think more about what kind of form I want it in, so that I can aggregate it into some kind of personal data base.

Search engine hits ... what host sites are they using ... what text strings are they using ... give me the option of ignoring all the search engine hits and just list the real people
Other webloggers - point me to WHERE on that web site the link to me came from, and to which of my pages it got directed.

Well my latest thought on this topic is that perhaps we could have additional columns on the chart.

Date time of 1st connecton hit out there
Date time of last connection hit
The above two datums could then tie into preferences of how far back we want our referers to be stored ... for example ... I might normally want to allow for me not looking at the data for 72 hours, then after I got my fill - push a button to get rid of everything that is over 24 hours old.
I would like little boxes beside them ... kill all these search engine and spammer links from My personal referer review
The mass public sites would still show the same kind of data we now have, but when I am looking at my referers, I am more interested in who is quoting me, and other people interests that are following the threads of those quotes and discussion. Perhaps there are some other tools that I ought to be using to get a handle on this.
I would like something at the very top of the referer list ... when by some miracle I have made it into the top 100 Ranking for the day ... let me know that factoid, so I only know to go look when in fact I am there

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 07:39:00 GMT

PC Question: How do I get rid of this new hassle? Every time I arrive at the News Aggregation page <http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/news#250> up pops Security Warning (mislabeled advertisement) Do you want to install and run Macromedia Flash Player 6, a quick free download? I select NO, then the next time I arrive at the News Aggregation page, there it is again. This started this week, since I got the same thing when visiting one of the sites found in my referers. I am not interested in downloading any more load onto my PC until it is obvious to me why I need this or that. I have a clog problem as it is, without adding more baggage.

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 17:14:57 GMT

Expanding on my previous post inspired by Phil Wolff on mapping the Blogsphere, we can discuss what we think might do the job effectively, then state a series of wishes for additional standards that apply to more than one vendor for this to work, assuming they are sufficiently motivated for it to happen. Here is link to other people comments on Phil Wolff idea.

There are a lot of sites that don't show up on the radar screens of search engines or weblog directories. Newbies who might delay self-registration until they get more self-confidence. Weblogs inside the intranet firewall of a business, school system, or government agency. People on project teams can have private multi-author sites known only to each other and need password to access the content. Some Blog Software is free unregistered until get paid services, or lacks the high environment options of the leaders. Pirates want a low profile. Do we want to count all of this in our blogsphere map?

Some Blog Software outfits claim 750,000 customers or some such number, and we know many not registered with weblog.com. Many can be inactive for a broad spectrum of reasons ranging from newbie got suck or hyper active ran out of disk space and continued on next installment space. Would some Blog Software places accept an outside audit of where they get their customer count, and who would pay for such an audit?

From this we can hopefully get ratios of total customer volume vs. weblog.com radar that are reliable proportions across consistent Blog Software Types (on line, off line, publish, community, etc.). I call this the radar ratio ... how much is out there as opposed to how much is actually on the radar screens. I think that journalists and researchers would be highly motivated to get a handle on what that is, and might be where the funding come from for my proposed audit.

Some Blog Software is more appropriate for educators, journalists, intranets, and other non-hostile labels of WHAT AM I motivation for weblog. On/off global radar screen probably vaies by types of such communities.

There must be at least 50 different directories of weblogs, and counting. There needs to be a registration service where it is easier for the beginner to fill in all the info about self, that the various services desire, and say to send this to ALL the directories, or NONE of them, or SPECIFIC ones. I am thinking of a page connected to the Prefs, in which there would be links to each of the directories basic info, so the blogger could say YES register me with THIS one also. An important part of this is WHAT AM I in terms of categorizing type of personal interests intended for this blog, which will change over time. We might need a variant per category. There should be some info pre-calculated here that you cannot change ... WHAT AM I in terms of what Blog Software.

I have seen posts saying this or that content focus is not a real weblogger, and the phraseology is invariably somewhat hostile. We need to come up with non-hostile labels and definitions linked to the self-registration page such that a person who really is that type of user vision for blog usage can say YES that is what I want to be or accomplish, and check off a particular self-assessment, or NO none of these match my self-image goals, so they optionally key in text describing personal blog goals.

Different directories for different purposes do want different info, and quite probably someone filling out their page will not have enough info to get properly registered at one or more Link Service directories. We'd want the rest of the input to get to the registration updates, leaving like an error list that you can individually click on and deal with - either cancel attempt to register with a site, or add the additional info they want. Later some services might want more info, leading to a new error message you want to deal with at your convenience.

Now the recently updated chart in weblog.com in addition to current info would have some WHAT AM I column(s), one being abbreviated which Blog Software like RU MT with unmistakable what we talking about, and another being user vision for blog, short form of the non-hostile labels, and perhaps link to the person's registration info page link, if that individual had checked off YES to making it available here.

This serves many interests. End users faster and more easily locate similar to self, and are inspired to update their own WHAT AM I page. Link Service directories combine how recently updated on weblogs.com with WHAT AM I classification, for all sorts of interesting correlations.

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 08:26:55 GMT

[Don W Strickland: RadioFAQ] Quotes [Phil Wolff: Blue Sky Radio] asking a question to which I think I can add some answers, starting with the notion that this is worth an occasional review and I agree that there are several tools that can be added to our collection to improve the picture. Take a look at past stories and posts that I have done of relevance.

Sep 30 I did a post listing some Search Engine and Link Service directories of weblogs with how many known to each ... How do they find these places? Is it purely user registration and www.weblogger.com? Weblog Compendium lists 35 directories of Weblogs Look at Sebastien Paquet's Weblogs by Profession - How do Seb and friends locate sites to be listed? Can we do a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guestimate) what proportion of such sites actually get found to be listed like this? Will this vary by profession? Can we help locate additional sites that should be added? Do weblogs appeal particularly to particular professions? Can we estimate what percentage of the people in a profession are likely to be turned on to this hobby?
Link Services and Search Engine Tips include a score of places that try to keep score on what's going on in blogspace, for those bloggers who register with them. Perhaps we need some centralized service for all this, that is similar to www.weblogger.com but we also need something to count the secret sites that do not register with weblogger. Review my Sep 9 post about www.alexa.com because perhaps we need Link Services based on improvements to existing ones. Do places like www.blogrolling.com have statistics on how many people are using their services?
I have found over 100 suppliers of Blog Software but only begun to categorize Blog Software Types. I suspect our hypothetical census will want to know how many of each combination type are out there. As I came across claims of how many this or that Blog Software out there, I added that to my Blog Software story. Also see my Sep 11 link to key info on the Wired article claiming 1/2 million weblogs on the Internet, with analysis of patterns of webloggers giving up on one kind of Blog Software and starting over with another.

I might also add some questions to the survey.

Proportionally how many posts are never quoted by other people, how many get quoted / copied at least once, how many get multiple copied? Of those bloggers doing quoting / copying, what proportion of copies are done with proper credit, just copied without comment, commented on by the person copying the material?
Which weblog software providers claim to have some number of customers, and are they willing to open that portion of their books to some kind of outside audit to validate those claims?
Can ISPs or Search Engines tell whether a web site is a weblog, or something else? Can information from ISPs and Search Engines be combined to count how much volume is on various domains that is what kind of web site?

[Don W Strickland: RadioFAQ] from [Phil Wolff: Blue Sky Radio] QUOTE

We need a census of blogspace..

A friend of mine asked: how many webloggers are there? This is like "How big is the Internet?"

I searched through Nua and a dozen other internet sites and haven't seen any research on the size of the blogosphere.

I ask you:

Do you have an educated guess?
Do you know of any prior work in this area?
Can you think of a methodology or two to create useful measures of the number of bloggers and the number of weblogs?
What related questions would you want answered?
How might you use this information?
Pitfalls to avoid?
Would you join a BlogCensus.org to provide and share stats?

My wild stabs:

Do you have an educated guess?
- Not yet.
Do you know of any prior work in this area?
- No. I've looked.
Can you think of a methodology or two to create useful measures of the number of bloggers and the number of weblogs?
- Some vendors host weblogs and have relevant stats. We could add those up.
- We could look at download and registrations from the top 5 vendors, and add fudge factors to cover other tools and disadoption rates
What related questions would you want answered?
- I'd love to know:
  - How many entries have ever been blogged? (the cumulative number of posts).
  - How many links in posts? (excluding blogrolls and navigation)
  - What blogging tool or service they're using?
  - Blog lifecycles:
    - How long to bloggers of various stripes blog?
    - How many change hosts? Change tools?
    - Why do people abandon blogging?
    - Is there a critical mass, a minimum number of posts per day/week/month that separates those that blog from those that fail?
    - Of people who take a break, how many start again?
  - Number originating within a company or operating behind a firewall
  - Connection speed (does broadband make it easier to blog?)
  - Payload distribution. How many people include pictures, sounds, flash games, or movies? How many bytes are home pages?
  - Syndication. What percentage syndicate their sites?
  - Duplication/Overlap:
    - How many blogs per person?
    - Do you post to them equally? How many are updated daily/weekly/monthly?
    - How many tools do you use?
  - What ancillary tools do you use?
    - Graphics and other media
    - News readers
    - HTML editors
    - email clients
    - blog-specific search (daypop, google)
    - blogosphere navigation (blogdex, blogtree)
How might you use this information?
1. As a blogger.
  - Always good to know where I stand in relation to the pack.
  - Trends might tip me to new capabilities
2. As a consultant or IT leader.
  - Make better choices about deploying blogging and community tools
  - Use the "bandwagon" sell when appropriate
3. As a blog tool maker.
  - Understand the markets I serve vs. the ones I don't
Pitfalls to avoid?
- Hype
- Irreproducible results
- Bias - vendor, country
Would you join an BlogCensus.org to provide and share stats?
- As a user, with anonymity.
- As a vendor, sure.

What say you?

[Phil Wolff: Blue Sky Radio] [Don W Strickland: RadioFAQ]

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 07:38:30 GMT

Weblogger Hosting Tip: If you running out of disk space for your weblog, you might check out this possibility. One of my Southern Indiana neighbors in the world of personal web pages is www.greeblie.com (the other one that I have found so far is http://www.countermoon.com/) who is considering offering free hosting for a limited number of experienced journal-type bloggers (Dave not looking for pundits and lookie-heres). I am now at 70% of my 40 meg and falling, and there is a lot of stuff I am not posting because I know it will accelerate my fall, but my interests are all over the map.

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 10:14:00 GMT

This month I have continued to update many of my stories. Those with the most additions and updates are shown below with links to the respective stories. The most volume of recent input to my stories categorized here as NEW A B C D.

Alternate Realities - This Science Fiction Topic has nothing to do with Radio or Weblogging how-to. Here I basically try to explain the Games Dimension, with a few movies, and I plan to do books later. This is NEW in the last few days. It could well be that this concept is so alien for some people, that it is as difficult to explain to newbies as it is to do documentation for weblogging.
Blog Books - still stands at a dozen choices - I have now got my hands on a couple of them, and I have inserted brief overviews of what their contents are all about. C
Blog Money = a few more ideas. D
Blog Software directory - I have not added much in the way of new links to software providers, but rather most of my recent additions have been expanding details about what each has to offer that is different, and links to more info. A
Blog Software Types - this is a NEW story (2 pages long) started today, supplementing my Blog Software directory, by helping understand the fundamental differences that are out there - off-site / on-line / Radio mixture, and stating major advantages and disadvantages with each kind.
BPCS Doc Sources - This has nothing to do with Radio or Weblogging. BPCS is the ERP at my day job. Documentation Sources is a recurring hot topic in some discussion groups, so I thought I would create something conceptually similar to Radio Doc Sources, and this is a NEW story (8 pages so far) built up this weekend.
Link Services is a story that I started last month, and periodically been adding to, with respect to syndicating your weblog. D
Heaven Dimension - This Science Fiction Theology has nothing to do with Radio or Weblogging how-to. I have been a long time Science Fiction fan of Alternate Realities and I came across a depiction of Religion in a novel that I thought was extremely well done, although to some people this might seem a rather controversial notion. NEW
Radio Doc Sources - directory of links to different people who supply documentation for Radio users ... just a little amount added so far this month. D
Radio Start = a few more links for beginners. D
Search Engine Tips - this keeps growing with links to cool things we can get from different sites. C
Understand Radio Categories = additional nuances. C
Understand Radio News Aggregation got a major rewrite expansion (now 6 pages), to clarify some jargon and concepts that had not previously been spelled out in what I thought was a satisfactory manner. I am now making heavy use of analogies, comparing aspects of this to how TV News shares the headlines. A
Understand Radio Referers - periodically I add additional nuances to this big picture. D

Wed, 06 Nov 2002 18:36:13 GMT

Radio Weblogs Wish: I have checked the preferences box to notify www.weblogs.com when my Radio Weblog is updated. There are various other services that feed off of this, that I talk about in my stories about Link Services, Search Engine Tips, etc. My updates are often in the area of the individual stories, most of them have to do with some Radio Documentation, or Blog Software in general, but the latest one I working on is a Science Fiction topic. What seems to show up on www.weblogs.com is the url for my general home page. It might be nice if it was the url of what changed or updated, unless the story I working on is not quite ready for people to see yet. So here is my idea for a future variant on the current service.

On the page where we do the Preferences to notify www.weblogs.com there would be a secondary box ... if we are updating stories do we want what is sent to www.weblogs.com to be the url of our home page or the individual stories we just updated? Then on the page where we have a submit button to input the text to some stories we just added or changed, there would be another check box (only if notifying www.weblogs.com had been activated by us on the regular Preferences) where we would have the option for this particular update to just have our regular home page url be what goes to the folks viewing www.weblogs.com - this way we can have the best of all possible worlds.

Some people may continue to keep their stories hidden from public view until ready to share them, while other people can make it easier for people to see what stories just got updated or added.

Wed, 06 Nov 2002 07:23:24 GMT

Weblogger Tip

Check out the Google Directory of Weblogs. There's less than 3,000 here. You can submit your weblog to Google here, if you have not already done so.

Check out the Google Directory of Weblog Software Resources. A goodly chunk of this is Blog Software in competition with Radio Userland. But there are also links to News Sources, Tools that work on Radio as well as on the competition.

I found this by accident when struggling to get to www.upsaid.com which Biz Stone book on Blogging claims performs a service similar to www.blogrolling.com but also has some other services.

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 18:23:04 GMT

Radio Tip for Macintosh lovers: Previously WYSIWYG editing of Radio Weblogs was only available for PC Windows users via Internet Explorer, but now you too have this option.

[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] QUOTE

I'm quite pleased with the response so far to the screenshot of our Simple Blogging Tool. The idea came about while designing the ultimate 'idiot-proof' weblogging tool. First of all, it can't be done. Nothing can be that simple :)

I've retained Marcus for several months now, he's been developing what will result in a "Radio UserLand" tool that prsents you with a simpler interface, and an all new wysiwyg editor box, now also available for the Mac.

Bonus: The tool now also includes Dutch localization. UNQUOTE [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 06:21:45 GMT

Radio Tip: Check out http://www.blogrolling.com/ I found out about this in the book Blog On by Todd Stauffer (see Blog Books for more info on that book and many others), then I went to the Blogrolling site to start reading their documentation. Over 80,000 sites have been Blogrolled using this service.

Doubtless you have seen many people maintaining long lists of navigation links on the sides of their web pages. I plan to explain about that in my Link Types story, but in the mean time use Jenny Levine's Radio Docs 101 how to. For someone, like me, who is a relative beginner to HTML, it seems like a big hassle to maintain this kind of thing. Well let http://www.blogrolling.com/ do the dirty work for you. Allegedly it can work for any of the major Blog Software choices. I plan to write this up in one or more of my stories, after it sinks into my brain which one it belongs in. You go to this url, register (it is free), and create YOUR blogroll, where your links will be stored. They provide the code to be inserted in our Radio for it to display the blogroll provided - documentation to read because Radio is but one of many software packages that can use this.

Once we have populated whatever we want to populate into this http://www.blogrolling.com/ service, we will need to republish Radio, from Open Radio Application / Radio / Republish, or whatever the equivalent deal is for people on some other Blog Software. Jake Savin has written up documentation for how to make this work for Radio Outliner.

There's a couple different ways to add more to the list. You can do one at a time type in title, description, url, then let http://www.blogrolling.com/ manage the collection for you, or you can get a Bookmarklet (I thought that was a Moveable Type feature that Radio Userland did not have, but now I see it is an optional feature added to our Browser ... see my MT compared to RU story) on your Browser Favorites toolbar. When you surfing the Internet and see a cool site you want added to your Blogroll, you can click the Bookmarklet, and up pops a window for you to edit what you want to say about this site, click add, and now it is added to your Blogroll. Your Radio Application does not need to be running on your PC, because this is added to your Blogroll at the http://www.blogrolling.com/ site, thanks to communications from your browser, while your Radio weblog has a standard link to this outfit.

http://www.blogrolling.com/ provides us with cut and paste code to put in our Radio Template Preferences so this will work. At least that is the theory. I have not tried it yet. You need to visit http://www.blogrolling.com/ to backup your Blogroll because what is on your PC with Radio is the code to access your Blogroll in http://www.blogrolling.com/

This is integrated with www.weblogs.com

Careful, you do need to read the FAQ on this.

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 05:43:41 GMT

Radio Wish: When we use News Aggregation to post something about some other person weblog, I would like that person to have something that is LIKE the Referers directory that lists who all used your RSS feeds today to post something on their sites, commenting on your stuff, and when we click on the connections, we would see not just their site, but where they doing the commenting on us. I would like this directory to NOT get wiped out at midnite, in which we would have access to a YESTERDAY directory of all the people who used RSS as basis of comment links to our stuff.

This would not get people who accessed our site directly using copy shortcut. What this does for me is several benefits: One, it automates polite notification of people that we used their stuff. Two, we find out sooner about the links. As it stands now, unless we post a comment or e-mail to other person site, the first they know about the quotation is when someone else links to their site from seeing what we said. This would make for faster discovery of people who are interested in your stuff, and faster notification of any problems with our presentation.

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 04:59:35 GMT

I have seen mention before of the importance of placing keywords on our web sites to tell search engines about the general content, but I ntever before had figured out where or how to insert this.

I am skimming through the book Blog On by Todd Stauffer. He addresses that issue by says that we need to dig into our HTML templates and add some metadata code, in which he gives specific examples:

below head
title of our site
meta name keywords followed by content such as

blog, exploring Radio Userland, comment on computer news, books
(which I think need to be names, very short things)

meta name description followed by content in the form of a sentence list such as

A weblog that comments on hot topics in the news, and explores how to work weblogging, through Radio Userland.

Radio Question: I skimmed through my Radio Preferences trying to figure out where I am supposed to put this stuff. I first thought HOME PAGE TEMPLATE but I not even saw the title of site there. It is obviously working, so it must be arriving via a macro. I am speculating that the meta name description is handled by our site description, and what I need are the keywords. I was wondering if there is a preference where the only thing we enter in is list of keywords we want to supply to search engines.

Radio Wish if I wrong about this = add a preference to do exactly that.

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 03:54:54 GMT

Al Stories recently updated within the last couple weeks.

A list = most heavily updated recently, in terms of volume of new stuff added to the story.
- Understand Radio News Aggregation
B list = quite a bit of stuff added but not as much as on the A list
- Search Engine Tips
C list = several recent updates, but not as much as above - typically one or two sections added.
- Blog Books
- Blog Software
- Blog Software MT and RU
- Enhanced Radio Tools
- Understand Radio Referers
D list = almost trivial, such as adding one or two additional links.
- Blogs worth revisiting
- Etiquette On-Line
- Link Types
- Radio Doc Sources
- Understand Radio Categories
- Radio Start
- Radio url number system

I had intended to put posts like this in a format such that all the links working on categories, with me adding to the directory periodically, but a short cut experiment failed miserably. I now thinking I will use a story that is as of some time frame, that has directory of links to my stories, with a little bit of info on each and some kind of list hash marks at the end ... currently I use a note pad with list of stories I recently worked on, then hash marks after title to show volume of updates ... A list has like 10 hash marks for example, since last time I shared this kind of directory.

Fri, 01 Nov 2002 18:34:07 GMT

[Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE

Question: Where are the key sites to register your blog?

Answer: I would say Eatonweb, Blogdex, Daypop, maybe Yahoo and the usual directory places, blo.gs? Bloghog? Bloghop? Blogsnob? Blog Hot or Not? The list is potentially endless, but what are the essential portals or directories of blogging today, assuming they exist?

UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan]

See links to most of these places in my Search Engine Tips, and I just added reminder notes to hightlight those where you might want to register your weblog. My emphasis has been on how to increase search engine traffic to your web site without you investing any $ other than your time improving your weblog. I want to see what's practical for free before reviewing what benefits are worth paying for.

Tue, 29 Oct 2002 18:29:14 GMT

Radio Question

[Radio Free Blogistan] QUOTE I'm looking for some tips on good free discussion-board software for integration into blogs (not this one, just general advice), especially the type that could be integrated so as to automatically generate a topic for each blog entry post. [Radio Free Blogistan]

Me too - eventually I want to make a list of resources that support discussion-board linked to blogging, because I will want to usethat capability to host the playing of certain kinds of games. I imagine that in time, [Radio Free Blogistan] will have additional relevant links as people reply to this. Check my stories:

Enhanced Radio Tools with respect to Comments
Radio Doc Sources - you will have to do some exploration

Pick a person listed, who has done some documentation
Use Google search of that person site for any hits on discussion-board software

See my Search Engine Tips collection
There was a way to have Google only search weblogs, not general sites, but I not now remember where I put that link.

Understand Internet Collaboration with respect to the links there

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 06:13:24 GMT

Phil Wolff shares his Top Radio Wishes, a list adjusted by Lilia Efimova, and others. I recognize that some tools may be available to solve some of these desires, but they probably not menu driven easy to install by a WYSIWYG user. Here is a summary of are my past posts on this general topic, and below is my latest ranking of which I think are the most critical, for my interests.

Search Engine against cluster of similar Radio content sources, such as all the folks in my Radio Doc Sources.
Referer Archives - Yesterday grand total info input in some form that I can work on with variety of PC software, so as to combine aggregate of several days, perhaps through RSS but not as text file object
Regular Useability audits for Radio Userland that provides them with a check list of beginner gotchas to fix as their time permits, and their interest in better marketing drives need to do a better job of delivery to beginners.
Raise 40 Meg ceiling by paying some premium $ rate, without much of a change our urls hassle - perhaps an automated deal ... move me to the new domain that is over 40 Meg, change all my stuff to the new domain, give me an upgrade for my PC that does that, so I not have to figure out all that applies.
Save so far in case my browser loses it.
Drafts area
Stories sortable by sequence of user interest, such as alphabetical.
RSS source default to permalink or actual item, not just entire home/category/feed.
RSS feeds via Google Index
RSS available in summary format, where instead of entire body, it is single line links with title and content source url, organized by content or some other options available ... perhaps have a news source feed us interesting RSS links based on topics we interested in.
As a beginner
- State WHAT we beginner in (check boxes vs. some aspects of the Internet) using (check boxes vs. PC OS Browser etc.) particularly interested in using Radio for (check boxes vs. various blogging possibilities)
- This generates a flow chart of suggested links to learn what sequence and study what documentation, sent to us as a custom help page associated with a point on our learning curve
Site diagnosis tool conceptually similar to what we use for security and performance
- Check boxes of where we have concerns
- Also some standard stuff
- We get accessibility rating, we given a count of spell errors and broken urls and stuff in double quotes that did not get translated to story or whatever links, what is eating our resources (how much consumed by blogroll, stories, categories, total by month)
Make $ off of what I have learned.
As Userland finds documentation worth posting to Userland site,
- Give the provider of that documentation some kind of $ honorarium.
- Perhaps each year, based on traffic stats to the documentation, give some prize to the most popular provider of it.
As Userland reviews documentation that is not worth posting to Userland site,
- Give the provider of that documentation something like an author gets from a publisher - SORRY - the problem with your writings = whatever
- This would incentify some of us doing a better job of it

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 16:23:32 GMT

Test of what shows up on Al Home v.s. Categories v.s. RSS News Aggregation in Al's Radio 8.0.7.

Shortcut Link to "RU DG" Tech Support.
"Link Services" Story Link
What I am looking for is which show up in double quotes as opposed to links as opposed to what works as a hyper link, and in which scenarios.

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 21:37:17 GMT

Radio Tip for Beginners

I have just created a new story on Stories and Shortcuts. If you are a total expert on all nuances and ways to use them, you can skip this essay.
My story tries to explain what is the difference between a Story and a Shortcut and how they work on Radio and Manila, in which there are some distinct differences that I have observed. I share step by step instructions how to setup each in Radio, using what I consider to be constructive examples for people still advancing across the learning curve, near where I was until recently.
I am working on a story (not finished yet, which is an all too familiar pattern on Al's Weblog) on the different kinds of Links we can have, and I got to the part where I wanted to explain Global Links as opposed to Local Links. Well, Stories and Shortcuts are both Global Links in Manila, but Radio Stories are Global Links in Radio, while Radio Shortcuts are not neccessarily Links, but in my examples I show how they can be used that way, so doing that story was my primary path to explaining Global Links, using specific how to examples.
Check my latest new stories here.
- Since my last post here updating this topic, Al's stories that have been started or added to, on Al Macintyre's weblog, are the following:
- Al Categories
- Al Introduction
- Blog Books
- Blog Software
- Enhanced Radio Tools
- Link Services - outfits that help us see who is linking to our weblogs - I am a novice at the topic of tracking traffic statistics
- Link Types - what I was working on last few days,
- Radio Doc Sources
- Radio Start
- Search Engine Tips
- Stories and Shortcuts - the latest new Radio story by Al Macintyre

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 22:10:49 GMT

Visitor Traffic Tip

Blogster Net claims to be a visitor exchange service, in which you register your site and link to them. For every one person that goes to their site from you, 2-5 will come in the opposite direction. This presupposes that they have a service that will lead to people visiting them. What I am seeing so far is a list of sites that have had perhaps 1,000 visitors, on down, connected to a somewhat traditional looking search engine directory. I am not so much interested in random visitors, but lots of links to our sites do help raise our stakes in the search engines.

I suspect that in the long run what is important is the quality of our content, not spikes in other people occasional interests, or linking systems like this.

I guess value of things are in the eyes of the beholder. Since I recently exploring directories of weblog services, number two on their list is number one on my next place to go visiting, an alleged complete guide to weblog tools, hosting, directories etc. I say alleged because I have found some extremely comprehensive lists, but yet this is a moving target, with new stuff appearing all the time, and services shutting down. However, the link is to the Weblog Compendium, which is one of the most comprehensive I have found so far.

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 20:03:04 GMT

Radio Wishes

Preference settings to help with our PC performance tweaking, and crash avoidance.

If our PC resources drop below some threshholds that we would set in the new preferences, Eadio is to censor the start of, or conclude the current running of, some scheduled actions, and perhaps within our editing window show us an icon alert that we have dropped to the specified danger threshholds. Events log state threshhold reached as stated in prefs and what action(s) impacted (not run on schedule, or taken to a conclusion before completion).

Link to PC Doctor site that is sensitive to Radio preference settings and what they mean.

Just like I can link to some inspection supplied by the anti-virus and other places, that checks out my PC security and tells me I have the latest anti-virus definitions but not the most advanced anti-virus software available for my PC, that I am protected against this or that, but I missed a spot in my defenses, and here is how to patch it.

I am dreaming of a future web site that I would link my PC to, and it would check my Radio preferences, and other general PC health, internet connection speed and so forth, then give me a PC Radio Medical Report, reccommending changes in my preferences to improve performance, stability, and other criteria. It would also note that I have Categories and RSS active but not Outlining and various other things. There would be links provided to documentation on the various things I not yet using, just in case I am ready to advance there.

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 19:21:19 GMT

Weblog Info Navigation Tip

Weblog Compendium lists some 35 directories of Weblogs.
Sebastien Paquet has directories of weblogs by profession.
Also see connections in Al's Search Engine Tips.

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:16:16 GMT

I have been adding to my stories since my last update here.

Blog Books directory of approx nine now.
Blog Software directory now over one hundred different names there.
- Printed out, it comes to about 7 1/2 pages. Now until recently, my goals in building this thing were:
- - List actual names of the software outfits, so that people can use search engines to locate them.
  - Give links for ease of checking out their latest offerings.
  - Give some info about what this outfit has to offer.
  - Add any links to relevant documentation I may have seen any place else.
- I now have a 5th goal - I think I will split off the introductory material (first 2 1/2 pages) into a separate story, like I did with Radio Doc Sources, so that regular visitors can focus in on the actual one hundred or whatever listed.
Blog Software MT and RU
Radio Doc Sources
- About 55 listed, in which I periodically adding a few more links. Printed out, this comes to 8 pages with approx 175 links to documentation and other aids to understanding Radio.
Radio url number system
Search Engine Tips
Understand series
- Understand News Aggregation
- Understand Radio Referers
- In the Understand series I try to lift the fog on topics that have been a puzzlement to many users transitioning from beginner to experienced in Radio.

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 20:17:04 GMT

Thanks [Radio Free Blogistan] for a Great Link, and thanks Seb for a great article, with an immense volume of heavy duty links for us to explore. It would be great if I could have a printer-friendly version of this (some stuff tends to scroll off right side of my screen and paper). QUOTE

Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research. Sébastien Paquet has written an article about the rise of personal knowledge publishing. UNQUOTE [Radio Free Blogistan]

I added links to this in my Radio Start, which is an outline of what I think a beginner needs to know to avoid significant misconceptions when starting Weblogging with Radio.

P.S. What is the legal significance (if any) of Copy Left (very bottom of Seb's page)?

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 19:45:18 GMT

Thanks to links on Oct 9's Search Day review of a Search Engine executives conference in San Francisco, I found this article in which [Australia's F2 Network] in the Sydney Morning Herald, heavily quoting the head of the development team for www.panopticsearch.com (which I will be looking into further for my evolving essay on Search Engine Tips), writes

Web site structure is key to both search engines properly navigating the important stuff on our sites, such as
- Page Names
- Descriptive Anchor Text
- short meaningful urls
Search Engines themselves need to do a better job of deep linking to permalinks

This implies that we periodically need to compare the standards of our weblog software and plug in tools to what are the evolving search standards.

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 03:05:24 GMT

[Sean Carton] QUOTE

Sadly, tools for conceptually laying out sites have remained fairly rudimentary.

UNQUOTE [Sean Carton]

So this means that we need to see what he has to say about weblogging, and constantly be on the alert for improved plug in tools.

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 08:03:28 GMT

I have been adding a bunch of links to my Search Engine Tips, then exploring some to compare how well they cover weblogs. At All the Web, I found this picture of weblog interconnectivity, which happened to be blank when I arrived at midnite PST, but it uses a big list of weblog urls, to which I added mine so that I can hopefully see the promised picture in a few days of checking at some other time of day or night.

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 06:45:31 GMT

Meta-Weblog Question

Does anyone know of Weblog sites that perform services for Webloggers? Things like directories of Weblogs, places to announce new Weblogs, central indexes of Weblog content? [Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log]

Lots of people have provided answers - check out the comments.

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 21:43:32 GMT

I just added another bunch of stuff to my story on Search Engine Tips. If you print it out, it now runs to about 4 1/2 pages with almost 50 significant links on such topics as:

Links to other people evaluating Search Engine Choices.
How to get your weblog listed on tons of Search Engines.
How to get a Search Engine on your Radio Weblog.
Navigating other Weblogs by a variety of criteria.
Locating directories of Weblogs.
Locate someone e-mail address, or phone #.
Search non-public websites.
Subscribe to alerts notifying us when a popular search query changes.

As I add additional stuff here, the volume of loose ends that I want to untangle continues to grow.

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 07:07:40 GMT

Radio Fantasy - use Radio as a tool in the fight against Spam.

[Scripting News] QUOTE

At 4:30PM, I checked my email. Forty messages. All spam. Every one of them.

UNQUOTE [Scripting News]

We need better tools to root out the content that is not spam, buried in the garbage of stuff generated by marketing and viruses. How about our e-mail going to LIKE mailboxes but from there, just send selected heading info via RSS variant to LIKE News Aggregation, except we can sort by who sent it, the subject, etc. and options we take on the list of topics can be propagated back to our e-mail.

Delete these; forward these to the Spam police, then delete them; this is something I want to keep.

Last April I switched e-mail addresses. At that time I was receiving several hundred spam a day. It dropped to nothing for a month, then began to slowly climb. I now getting a handful each day.

I have some regular correspondents whose ISPs have instituted spam fighting software that generates false positives on me. I get several e-mails a week bouncing back to me because of this. For those individuals I fortunately have alternate e-mail addresses. I just send a note to the primary e-mail to let them know something is at the secondary because of this scenario.

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 06:56:23 GMT

I continue to update my stories.

Blog Books is a reference list that you might use if you interested in buying a book on Blogging.
Radio Wishes got a section on Archives added right after my last post.

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 01:33:41 GMT

Radio Tip

I updated some of my stories again, and started some new ones, since my last update here..

Al Categories = directory with brief comments on the goals of each
- I now have a link to this on my home page, which shows up on some other pages as I publish new stuff there.
Al Essays = just a link to my Radio stories, that I put on my web log like the Categories directory.
Al Introduction = a few links to where I have said who I am & what I am into
- This is something I been meaning to start for months
Blog Software = I keep adding to the list, but more importantly to navigation links near the top
Enhanced Radio Tools = my directory is not as rich as many other people's
- Check out the Radio Userland Community Tools Directory, which looks like it has not been updated recently, and seemed quite sluggish to get from page to page when I was trying to access it.
Radio Start = this is an outline of what I think beginners are going to need, in which I occasionally manage to fill in one of the pieces.
- Think of it as a sub-set of my Radio Doc Sources, where the sources are organized by NAME of person making the contribution, while the Start is organized in SEQUENCE in which we need to learn the stuff.
Search Engine Tips - more for Radio users than the Internet population as a whole
Radio url number system = Navigation Tips for beginners and areas where I am still somewhat of a beginner - got some more nuances added
Radio Wishes = this is never caught up because I am constantly adding them all over my site, but I did get a few nuances added here, such some Events Log nuances

Sun, 06 Oct 2002 21:23:53 GMT

Check out what Ernie the Attorney has to say about Active Words.

Sun, 06 Oct 2002 19:59:18 GMT

I just posted an Introduction to Web site Usability, in which I mention some minor things about other people web blogs, that courtesy demands that I bring to their attention, as per my Etiquette On-Line. If you want a readable copy of the whole thing, plan on printing pages 1-4.

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 20:08:06 GMT

Radio Tip

I added http://www.yaywastaken.com/default.asp collection of Browser plug ins to my Enhanced Radio Tools directory, which now runs to just over 2 pages of links on such topics as Comments and News Aggregation, but I tentatively plan to move some of the Search Engine stuff to another story. I found this latest link on my referers.

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 07:40:20 GMT

Hosting Questions

I am now at 80% of my 40 meg is free, so at some point I will need to buy more than the 40 meg that we get for our $40.00 Radio purchase, probably from http://store.weblogger.com/addOns since that is the only hosting option url I know of so far, so my first question is if anyone has created a directory of where there are alternative hosting options for Radio Weblogs and the pricing. Ideally I would like to keep the same url with just more than 40 meg.

My sister Susan has not yet started her own weblog. I told her about Radio, but because each of the music files that she has written, composed, and performed, that she wants to put on her site for people to download from her, take up a lot of disk space, 40 meg just does not cut it.

Her questions were one of the reasons I started my story on Blog Software. I feared that Radio 40 meg constraint might not be easy to resolve, and perhaps one of Radio's competitors hosting options more easy to figure out.

QUOTING Al's sister Susan

I’ve been told there are extra charges if your web site has more than the allotted number of visitors. Also, music files are about 3 meg each and then I’m not sure about software to play the files…I guess the user could be expected to have that on their machine? At any rate, I would need quite a bit more than 40 meg.

UNQUOTE

I told her that I had never heard of any such thing as pricing based on numbers of visitors, but it does make sense that there is a relationship between a site's popularity and the bandwidth advisable.

I advised her that, in my opinion, software to play the music on her web site would be preferable so that people could sample what she had, and perhaps less hassle with what needs to be compatible for visitors. She is a school teacher doing this somewhat for recreation, giving friends and relatives copies of her music such as audio tapes to play in automobiles, which is mainly Modern Christian Music.

I warned her that it is possible that changes in laws due to Hollywood lobbyists may make it illegal for musicians to share their work on the Internet, or using audio tapes, but I do not think she believes me.

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 23:27:00 GMT

Radio Tip