Dale Pike: Improving Weblogging

my thoughts on audio/video/mo/etc-blogging

Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:15:03 GMT

I'm very interested in all of the new weblog entry/storage methods being explored. I'm sure that, in short order, audio blogging and video blogging will be available to the masses. I am also fairly certain, however, that it will be much longer before such applications of the technology are mainstream. A couple of reasons:

One of the primary benefits of weblog technology is that through aggregation of multiple sources, you can skim through a tremendous amount of data in a (relatively) short period of time. Content contained in media must be viewed (at least currently) in real time--even to be previewed. While excerpts could be entered in text, such duplication of content would raise the bar for making an entry. Ultimately we may have voice-to-text transcription happening behind the scenes, which would really bring media-blogging into the fold. Add GPS-enabled time/date/location stamping and other useful meta-data and the picture has real potential, especially for small vertical applications of weblog-like technology.
I guess my number two is really an extension of number one. How do you permalink an excerpt of an audio or video entry? Unless I'm missing something (which is entirely possible), you can't--at least today. When automatic computer-generated transcriptions are associated to the time code of the video source, we'll be cooking with gas. I can then point to a specific word or sentence in your entry. TrackBack and comment strings could be very interesting in this context--I could watch/listen to the whole conversation "thread", with multiple participants, in my media tool.

I am very excited about the possiblity of multimedia weblog entries, but I see them as an augmentation of the existing text-based medium as opposed to a replacement. Some related articles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/webwatch/story/0,12455,858719,00.html http://www.audblog.com/ http://www.denniskennedy.com/realtime.htm

waves vs communities

Mon, 10 Feb 2003 22:18:59 GMT

Many systems and phenomena are distributed according to a power law distribution. A power law applies to a system when large is rare and small is common. The distribution of individual wealth is a good example of this: there are a very few rich men and lots & lots of poor folks. A familiar way to think about power laws is the 80/20 rule: 80% of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the population... [kottke.org] I'm seeing quite a bit of conversation on this type of topic over the past few days, primarily revolving around the fact that a very few people seem to get a majority of the traffic. To be completely honest, I'm not sure what the problem is. I think the "waves" that David refers to are quick to rise, but all too often they are quick to subside. I'm much more interested in building a community, and such construction happens quietly, over time. I'm fairly certain that the tools we use to publish and aggregate our ideas will evolve over time, but I am also certain that whatever those tools are, I'll be using them to listen and correspond with those who are working toward goals that are similar to my own. Serious applications of any tool, including weblogs, in an academic environment will require an understanding of not only teaching and learning theories, but the perspective that comes from having seen several other "must have" technologies rise and fall in the educational technology domain. I think Dave Winer's foray into academia is quite exciting not because I believe he'll be producing the most influential research, but rather because the spotlight he brings may help influence political momentum ("See how much press Harvard is getting? We could do the same here with very little investment..."). Weblogs are exciting because they are messy--community building is unpredictable and the power to build is decentralized. Such distribution of authority is behind most every modern application of learning theory, so the technology behind weblogs may just make itself into something we can't yet imagine...we just need to figure out how to get it into the hands of our learning communities in ways that will empower such discovery and growth.

EduBlogger meta tagging?

Mon, 10 Feb 2003 19:06:59 GMT

I'm curious about how others are using weblogs in combination with systems on their campus? At UNC Charlotte, we use WebCT as our web-based courseware. We are also implementing Campus Pipeline's Luminus Portal system. I've been working at ways to integrate Moveable Type and Radio into a WebCT course so that, in the end, the combination of the systems is invisible to the student. It would be helpful to have some sort of index of weblog implementation that is organized by environment. I guess I see something like the BlogChalking tag for educational bloggers? As I understand it, BlogChalking allows you to filter or search for sites based on geographic location. They also include some optional codes to indicate demographic information and interests. What if we had a similar tag (or maybe as a part of the Edublog WebRing tag?) that indexed information such as:

Educational Institution
Position (faculty/staff/administration)
weblog software used (Radio/Manila/MoveableType/Blosxom/etc.)
personal desktop operating system (Windows XP/Mac OS X/etc.)
courseware name & support status (or supported/unsupported)
instructional technology support (yes/no)
general tech environment (supportive/unsupportive)
general funding environment (well-funded/partially funded/not funded)

I'm not making an official proposal here--I can see holes in my list already. I guess I'm fishing for interest. Would it be a helpful thing to include some sort of meta-tag index that would allow someone in an environment similar to mine to find me? How about finding someone in an environment different from mine? I know it is easy to get carried away with this sort of thing--it must be simple if it has a chance to work. I don't anticipate that this would narrow my field of weblogs that I read regularly, but if I'm a lonely Widget XXL user who writes her weblog using MovingStereo software and is trying to figure out how to integrate it with ChalkBoardCT courseware, wouldn't it be cool to hook up with someone, wherever they are, who is doing the same thing?

I guess the conversation wouldn't be complete if we also didn't consider the privacy issues involved. Would such tags expose individuals or institutions inappropriately? I don't think so, but I'm interested in opinions that support or refute the thought.

small iconic brainstorm

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 00:12:24 GMT

So I'm browsing in NetNewsWire (my news aggregator of choice) and I come across a post by Will Richardson from his Weblogg-ed site and I find myself trying to remember what Will looks like. Where did I see his face? Then I've got it...over at Sebastian Fiedler's place. Sebastian has a very nice setup where a small b/w icon of the author's face accompanies each post. So then I start wondering (because I'm not a coder I don't have any limits to my imagination!) about the little icons that accompany URLs for some sites in some browsers (I recently started using Apple's Safari browser, which displays these little icons instead of the default @ sign that shows up in IE for Mac). So how hard would it be to have a news aggregator access this small icon file and include it (intelligently) with the news feeds? I don't even know what that little icon is called, but I imagine it may be specific to the http protocol and difficult to reproduce in RSS. I guess that's a question for the folks at UserLand and Ranchero Software.

Weblog as a communication hub

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 22:20:38 GMT

I've been thinking about types of communication lately. "Types" is a bit too vague, but I'm not sure of the proper nomenclature for the concept I'm reaching for. I've been thinking of a series of matrices that display some of the following characteristics:

Audience size (self, individual, small group, large group, etc.)
Message purpose (inform, request, entertain, etc.)
Message initiation trigger ("push" vs. "pull", manual vs. automatic)
Universality of format (open vs. proprietary requirements to receive message)
Complexity of message encoding (low->high)
Need for Immediacy (low->high)
Need for Durability (low->high)
etc, etc, etc...

Email has taken off as a messaging medium because it is fairly easy to send messages with multiple purposes to audiences of varying sizes. Immediacy and Durability are dependent upon the habits of the recipient (your urgent email message means nothing to me if I don't check my email, and that serial number the software company sent me when I registered is useless if I automatically delete messages after a given period of time). Much of the current frustration with the medium comes from the ease with which messages that have not been requested (definitely on the "push" side) find their way into the average user's email inbox.

I believe that weblogs are growing in popularity because they lower the complexity of encoding a message and, at the same time, offer multiple (simultaneous/transparent) channels of output (HTML, RSS, etc.). They also provide similar immediacy to email (if RSS news aggregators are a part of the mix) and greatly increased durability of the message (especially when the software used includes built-in search capabilities).

I am very interested in moving much of the messaging that I have traditionally done in my email tool into my weblog environment. What if I could specify a recipient (anywhere on the continuum from individual to group) as a category, and the preferences for outputting that category included an option to send the message via email or instant messaging rather than (or in addition to) HTML or RSS? This is particularly powerful if I can de-select the primary or default category (ala Radio) because there will be times that I want to route a message to only one channel. The database behind this messaging powerhouse doesn't care what channel each message goes through. It faithfully catalogs each entry so that later I can pull up references easily.

This type of functionality would mirror, for the encoding side of my messaging world, the exciting potential of projects such as DynamicObjects' Spaces or OSAF's Chandler. These tools propose to gather all of your incoming streams of communication and present them to you within a single interface that adds value through automatic association of related messages. I think the concept of weblogs as messaging tools has just as much exciting potential--especially (for me) if I can more tightly integrate all of my messaging needs into them.

categorizing my weblog usage

Tue, 28 Jan 2003 13:11:46 GMT

I've discovered that there is tremendous value to my having (at least) two spaces in which to blog. I use a weblog at work as an avatar for conversation within my small community of team members. On it I am constantly making posts that fall (roughly) into the following categories:

reference posts
FYI posts
HELP! posts
conversation posts

reference posts
This is sort of a souped-up favorites/bookmarks list. I use Moveable Type, so the archives are readily searchable. I often make a mental note that there is a post regarding a certain topic on a weblog (either mine or someone else's). Because I'm not in the habit of using keywords extensively, there are times that I can't find the post easily because I can't remember what it was called, but most of the time it works wonderfully. In our team meetings I am finding that we increasingly refer one another to an old post on someone's weblog for more information. Analogy: Searchable and annotated Favorites/Bookmarks list

FYI posts
These are sort of like an email distribution list. I have a rough idea of who is subscribed to my RSS feed, so I can post a notice in my weblog when I come across something I think everyone should be aware of. This ranges from project-oriented communication or information to silly Friday-afternoon links to a Dilbert cartoon. Analogy: Email distribution list, discussion board, news group

HELP! posts
This is one of the most valuable forms of communication that the weblog has enabled. When I have an idea that I don't know how to proceed with because I'm not sure

who else is/has been working on similar projects
who is the right person to talk to
what potential obstacles to the project might be
etc.

For the most part, these questions are those that would not traditionally merit a phone call or an email. As silly as it sounds, I feel more comfortable posting these 'low end' questions so that someone can choose to reply if they desire than I am initiating a two-way conversation for the sole purpose of gaining this small bit of information. Further, when these questions are asked openly, all benefit from the exchange--the answer to the question moves into the FYI category mentioned above. You can remember that someone else asked the question before and you search for it on their weblog.Analogy: Phone call or email message that becomes archived and visible to all those who might need it

conversation posts
These are some of the most interesting. The weblog is a somewhat awkward conversation medium at first glance. Because our team uses Moveable Type, we have ready access to the TrackBack feature, which makes conversational dialogue MUCH simpler. In the past, a user would make a comment on an individual post. Often, because there wasn't any flag that indicated the comment had been made, it would go unnoticed. An unanswered comment has a chilling effect on the motivation of the commenter to participate in the future. With TrackBack, I can select the portion of your post that I wish to comment on and use my bookmarklet to post the excerpt on my weblog, along with any comments I wish to make. Because we have autodiscovery of TrackBack pings turned on, referencing the original post is as easy as checking a box or selecting the name of the post from a popup list. The new post is then referenced on the original site without any effort on the part of the original author. I am quite surprised at how readily conversations of this sort have been taken place. Once you get over the initial mental shift required to participate in this sort of conversation, it can become a powerful tool (especially when combined with the HELP posts mentioned above). Analogy: Discussion group, email (individual or list), "slow" IM

iCalendar and RSS for course calendars

Mon, 27 Jan 2003 19:03:24 GMT

I'm teaching an introductory Japanese language course this semester (yet another reason for the recent scarcity of my posts). It has been wonderful to be back in the classroom. We use WebCT on our campus, and I have been quite frustrated with the hoops I'm required to jump through to get it to work. The primary value (both current and future) is the integration of the system with our student information system, financial resource system, human resources system, etc.

Because it is frames-based, however, I have been able to get around some of the limitations of WebCT by simply pointing to resources on a different server within the main frame of the WebCT environment. This is transparent (for the most part) to the student, and I can use the tools I'm familiar with. I've been quite pleased with my course calendar. I use Apple's iCal application, which publishes calendars in .ics format (Windows users can use Mozilla's calendar for a somewhat similar feature set), to publish my calendar to a server running PHPiCalendar. This set of PHP scripts takes the .ics file and renders it in very attractive HTML, complete with links to details, etc. Once I have everything set up, I simply make a change in iCal. The software automatically connects to the server and the changes are immediately visible to anyone who loads the calendar. Deceivingly transparent.

Another bonus that I'm just getting my mind wrapped around...PHPiCalendar automatically produces an RSS feed of the calendar in day, week, and month formats. That means that if I make an addition to the schedule via iCal, it is available not only on the web, but via the news aggregators of my students (if they were using them--they're not...yet...). What if every course had a day, week, and month RSS feed? As a student I could aggregate each of these feeds and have my schedule, complete with details for every course, automatically rendered in multiple formats. There is no central application to be updated when a change is made by an individual faculty--they update their calendar and it filters out to those who need it.

....[Fudd chuckle]...Vewy intewesting...

Making a switch

Mon, 27 Jan 2003 18:47:08 GMT

I'm thinking of migrating this weblog away from Userland's servers and toward the Moveable Type implementation in my office. I've already got Moveable Type configured and the server is running nicely. My only concern is I have no idea of the future load this might place on my office server. I'd like to think I'll someday participate in a conversation profound enough to bring it to its knees with the unbelievable traffic generated...[thoughtful pause] ...OK, OK...I'll look into moving it over this week some time. ;-)

back for now

Mon, 27 Jan 2003 18:41:07 GMT

Unbelievable! I'm able to make a post. I'm sure I've obtained a trojan of some sort because the system I'm using to publish this weblog crawls to a halt and doesn't allow me to post a thing. I just rebooted and will type quickly before this window of opportunity expires!

I've migrated almost exclusively to Moveable Type for my blogging activities. The combination of performance and reliability were the deciding factors for me--I've had so many fewer problems since I switched over. This weblog, Stand Up Eight, has suffered from my inattention in part because of those very issues. The demands that Radio puts on my system have contributed heavily to the processor all but grinding to a halt.

Although I am happy with the switch, I find myself missing some of the features I had become accustomed to in Radio. Most noticable is the lack of aggregator integration, but I have fallen in love withRanchero Software's NetNewsWire Pro (still in beta) and I believe it will fill the gap nicely. I also miss Marc Barrot's activeRenderer--I had just begun to realize the potential of its functionality when I switched over. Is there any way to duplicate it in Moveable Type? I doubt it...it seems tightly integrated with Radio's outliner. The final big hole is the automated email distribution of my aggregator content that I had set up via Doug Kaye's news2mail tool. I can't find any replacement for this in Moveable Type, either, but the more I get used to using NetNewsWire Pro, the less it matters.

Anyway, I'm going to try and post this...wish me luck!

Back again

Mon, 09 Dec 2002 15:17:59 GMT

Well, I'm back (again) from a breakdown-induced blogging hiatus. While my wife may argue to the contrary, the breakdown was not mine but of several of the various technologies that make up my daily working environment. I'm fascinated at how quickly blogging habits seem to break down when familiar tools are no longer available. My word processing needs may not be as easy to manage with a different application/platform than what I usually use, but there isn't really a "flow" to the type of writing I usually do in a word processor. There is very definitely a "flow" to weblogging, and mine was broken.

I've tried to use various news aggregators to capture the daily news from my communities, but I'm so used to the aggregator being built into my posting tool (Radio) that I couldn't get around the slight inconveniences of separate applications. It was also frustrating that various forms of RSS feeds behave differently in common RSS aggregators. I can see where this could become very frustrating if there is a bifurcation of the developer community regarding which flavor of RSS they will support.

I did get quite used to Moveable Type, however, and now am stuck in between the two applications. It is difficult to quantify exactly what it is I love about the two tools. Moveable Type feels clean--the interface and workflow "feel" nice. I don't think I can live without TrackBack as I move forward--I've got to figure out how to integrate it into Radio. I really enjoy the out-of-the-box functionality of MT's built-in bookmarklet script, as well.

One concern I haven't resolved--how portable is my weblog? The proprietary database content in either Radio or Moveable Type doesn't seem to be easily extracted and incorporated into another environment. I still feel as if I'm in the "beta" stage of my weblog experiences, so losing content doesn't hurt as much as it might after a longer investment. Is there a way to reverse-process the XML output of an RSS feed and import it into one of the tools?

Well, I've got to get back to work this morning. Here in Charlotte we're still feeling the impact of the big ice storm that blew through here last week--several co-workers still don't have power at home, and my daughter's school is still closed. Grateful to be safe and warm...

on links and chunks

Thu, 24 Oct 2002 18:30:45 GMT

Thinking a lot about context. A piece of information has no value until it is linked to other information. My focus with weblogs as a hybrid communication and content management tool as been with attempting to pre-suppose the potential uses of any given chunk of information and assign it to categories. Thus the chunk is repeated multiple times in various “streams” that are aggregated by topic, audience, or some similar organizational concept. While I believe this exercise has value in that it [explain value here], I believe that this approach is not sustainable over time. As the number of categories I’m using increases, it becomes more difficult to scan the possible array of possibilities when I’m making a post. I also find myself reluctant to create new categories and often attempt to “squish” the post into an existing category. The result of this activity is a huge array of topical HTML and RSS repositories that (so far) nobody looks at. I’m not too worried about readership, but the primary motivation for dissecting the stream of posts into topical or audience-driven streamlets is to provide a filter for an audience. I imagine a side benefit for myself of being able to jump through these filtered streams to review progress in a particular area or with a particular group. OK, so I’m convincing myself that this approach is not entirely misguided. It has its limits, however, and I must come up with better criteria for the designation and use of categories.

I’ve toyed around a bit with the TrackBack features of the Moveable Type weblog tool, and it has stimulated some new ideas regarding the interconnection of these chunks of information that make up our weblogs. If I read something in your weblog that I’d like to comment on, I can write my comment in my weblog and “ping” (or notify) yours (if the feature has been enabled) to tell it I’m creating the reference. In doing so, I create a new link between two (hopefully) related chunks. This is possible because a “hook” of sorts was created that allows me to attach my link. Right now the functionality is quite rudimentary, but even in its basic form it allows me to see a dynamic list of posts that refer to my post. This is fundamentally different from comment systems because the conversation is taking place across the network—my comments are a part of my “space” and therefore have context through both location (on my weblog) and association (through the link to your post on your weblog).

In addition to allowing pings to an individual post, a category can be given a TrackBack URL. Individuals making posts can ping this category “hook” and add their chunk to a defined group of thought (again, a category can be topical, audience-focused, etc.)

I find this conceptually fascinating and must begin to re-think my methods of interconnecting information. Without having fully explored the functionality as implemented in Moveable Type’s TrackBack convention, I immediately find myself wishing for additional functionality:

I want to be able to categorize the link itself. If I think of the link as having an identity of its own, there are certain characteristics that I’d love to be able to identify. What if I clicked on the “See Related Information” link below a post (which would bring up the TrackBack listing of URLs that have “pinged” that particular chunk), and saw a listing of links organized by type of link? Commentary, Definition, Historical Background, Other Examples, How To, Biographical Data, etc, etc, etc… I’d also like to be able to see basic information such as the link’s author and when it was created. (While I’m dreaming, what if these links had a rating system built in—something like Amazon.com’s reviews that show up beneath any item they sell?)
While the method for achieving this one is completely beyond my imagination, I would love to be able to reference discreet components of your post. I want to chunk up your chunk. I envision this as follows: When you click on “See Related Information, perhaps the result is simply an overlay on the original post (currently this would probably be achieved with a pop-up window, but I digress…) Maybe the discreet chunks of your post that have been pinged now show up as hyperlinks. When you mouse over the chunk, a popup list of defined links (Definition, Comment, etc.) is generated.
I want an easy way to generate TrackBack links to my own posts (this may already exist). This could also enable individuals who didn’t author either of the chunks of information that are being linked to create and characterize a connection.

Audio blogging (first attempt)

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 23:33:30 GMT

Using different weblog tools

Fri, 18 Oct 2002 22:49:22 GMT

It's been a busy week. I completed an install of Moveable Type and have a preliminary idea of its functionality. From what I've found, I'd begin to make a comparision chart like this:

	Pros	Cons
Manila	EASY TO SET UP NEW SITES Powerful scripting capabilities Usable URL structure	Relatively expensive Requires dedicated server Must know scripting/coding to customize Single category per post Documentation is not very usable Tends to crash unpredictably (OS X)
Moveable Type	Free Nicely implemented documentation Stylesheet templates Seems pretty solid (no crashes so far) Very supportive developer community	Difficult to set up original installation Difficult (multiple steps) to set up new user space
Radio	Mobility and off-line editing MULTIPLE CATEGORIES PER POST Somewhat supportive developer community (best if you're a UserTalk coder)	Eats up local desktop resources (not trivial in education environment) Still somewhat buggy (weird macro errors, intermittent crashing, etc.) Awkward URL structure (users/0000014)

Ultimately, I want to have a weblog tool that:

Is accessible from anywhere on the web
Is smoothly integrated with my email
Is smoothly integrated with my IM tool
Allows for conversation and replication of conversation
Is as easy as Manila to create new weblogs
Has a usable path structure automatically generated (e.g. http://myserver.com/weblogs/dale/)
Allows for simple setting of public/private privileges for discreet portions of my site
Allows for easy uploading and referencing of graphics and other files

The Tipping Blog - How Weblogs Can Turn an Idea into an Epidemic

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 23:22:38 GMT

"
TIPPING ON THE WEB

Understanding how Link Mavens and Connectors work transformed my thoughts of how ideas spread. You can literally see the process take place online in a way that is virtually impossible in real life.

It's generally a five-step process:

An Expert (one might call her a Content Maven) Writes or Creates something interesting and puts it online (creating the critical component of any online ideavirus: the link)
A Link Maven comes across the link, and blogs it to their site
A Connector finds the link and blogs it to their site (or the aforementioned Link Maven has Connector-like traffic levels)
The link starts to Tip within the weblog community
The link Tips beyond the weblog community, as the rest of us find out about it

Advertisers think about banner-ad campaigns as a way to carpetbomb their audience with ads. But in a world where ideas and links can Tip so dramatically, perhaps it makes sense for them to revise their thinking. Or as Malcolm wrote in Seth's foreward:

Advertisers spent the better part of the 20th century trying to control and measure and manipulate the spread of information—to count the number of eyes and ears that they could reach with a single message.

But this [ideavirus] notion says that the most successful ideas are those that spread and grow because of the customer’s relationship to other customers—not the marketer’s to the customer.

Understanding Link Mavens and Connectors can let you tap this viral power, and infect the weblog world with your ideas! If you're lucky, your ideas will spread beyond weblogs: not only through high-traffic sites, but through Google. As we've seen before, Google loves link-rich weblogs... so your efforts will ripple beyond the weblog community into the web-at-large.

"[via seblogging]

I've got to read this book. This article reinforces, among other things, my recent feelings about citation of weblog sources. I can post a blurb from someone's site without giving credit to the site that pointed me there, but doesn't that, in the purest of senses, constitute a sort of meme plagarism? At the very least, it keeps the reader from knowing how you came about the information, and the ability to make processes transparent is, IMHO, one of the most valuable aspects of a weblogging community.

So are we talking about a Blog Style Manual (ala Strunk & White)? Is the medium too young to attempt such a thing? Who has the authority/respect to begin? What might entries look like?

Seb articulates how to enhance the collaborative features of weblogs

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 18:28:09 GMT

Making group-forming ridiculously easy.

"Weblogs have a potential for group-forming like no other medium. However I'm convinced that much of it to this day remains untapped. I'd like to explain an idea that I have been bouncing around for a while. It might well be a reformulation of what others have said previously. I believe that implementing this properly would give a nice boost to the blogosphere's social aggregation capability." [Seb's Open Research]

Why I use Radio

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 12:19:03 GMT

Here is a snippet of a conversation I had recently about why I use Radio over Manila:

"I use both Radio and Manila, but my primary weblog activity is in Radio. I've got Radio installed on my machine in the office and I've enabled remote access (one of the preferences in Radio--Craig Burton has a great tutorial on setting this up). That way I can use Radio from anywhere using the username and password I specify in the prefs. I also use a tool created by Mike Krus of Newsisfree.com called RadioExpress! that installs as a javascript "bookmarklet" in the favorites bar of the machines I use at work and at home. This allows me, when I am on a page I find interesting/significant, to select some text and click the RadioExpress! link, which takes the text I've selected from the page and places it in a preformatted entry in Radio, ready for me to add my comments. When I submit, it takes me back to the page I was working on. It has become a fundamental part of my daily workflow, and I couldn't do it if Radio restricted me to a one-machine publishing model.

The primary reason I use Radio over Manila is the capability of multiple-category posting. The fact that each category can be served up as an HTML page (even to a different server via FTP) or an RSS feed is wonderful, but I am most excited about the potential of the tool. I want to be able to designate a category that sends the content of my post to an email address. It could be an individual or a distribution list of some sort. Once I figure out this capability, my weblog tool becomes a much more robust part of my communication interface. Manila allows categorization via "departments", but only one at a time. Many of my uses for my weblogs demand the data be routed to multiple destinations. I'm hoping Manila inherits this capability from Radio soon... "

Raymond Yee at Berkeley gets it

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 16:07:48 GMT

"I wonder how many people will know what a weblog is...."

Raymond Yee and his associates from Berkeley did a wonderful job of describing their vision for an open architecture for learning objects.

We are putting together a development team at UNC Charlotte and our eventual focus will be on the development of learning objects with faculty clients. I was VERY intrigued by Raymond's vision for an architecture that would allow various XML-based protocols to interact--namely those from digital library initiatives (METS/MOA2) and Learning Management Systems (LRN). He calls these "crosswalks" and the potential of such tools is astounding. I'm going to get in touch with Raymond and see if he is willing to post some of his materials to his weblog.

Metaphors for weblogs

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 14:30:08 GMT

Following up on my thoughts in the previous post, I've been trying to think of a metaphor for a weblog. For the first-time viewer (particularly those not familiar with technology) there is little to distinguish a "weblog" from a "homepage" of old. So you have the stuff on the page organized by date...can't I do that manually in FrontPage? How hard is it to insert the date before I type a message? Etc.

For me, the value of "weblogging" is the whole process of reading the views of others and selecting/commenting on some of those views in my own space (for myself and for others). RSS allows me to "see" many more chunks of info than I would be able to otherwise.

So what is a metaphor for this process? Is there one? To me, a weblog is:

a journal
an editorial column
a URL favorites manager
a messenging application
one side of a discussion group tool
a news reader
a project management assistant
a knowledge repository

What is a weblog to you?

Knowledge Management & Instructional Design

Sat, 07 Sep 2002 23:55:11 GMT

Knowledge management and Instructional Design. Knowledge repositories are not the driving problem in knowledge management.

H.G. Wells on Knowledge Management. H.G. Wells recognized the need for KM as early as 1937. He advocated for a Permanent World Encyclopaedia in a speech that included this quotation:

An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganized. We need a sort of mental clearing house for the mind: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared.

~H.G. Wells
The Brain: Organization of the Modern World

[excited utterances]

Gordon Dickson offered a similar vision in his book The Final Encyclopedia. He offered a notion of a single repository of all human knowledge as a route to understanding what was "at the back of the human head." Actually, it's a fairly common concept in a number of good science fiction novels.

What's good in a fictional setting, however, only serves to confuse the issue when you're trying to make something practical happen in the real world. The myth that all these stories perpetuate is that the relevant problem is collecting and organizing the knowledge. As important as library science is to coping with a world of information overload and data glut, it's not the most important, or even the first, problem in knowledge management that needs to be solved.

The first problem that needs to be solved is helping knowledge workers understand how knowledge they don't already possess from experience might be relevant to solving their problem at hand. All the well-organized repositories in the world won't be relevant until an individual knowledge worker decides they need to turn somewhere else for help.

[McGee's Musings]

The goal of knowledge management is "what?" It seems to me that the goal of knowledge management is to change knowledge into information. It is possible to manage knowledge, and it is possible to use information. I have no problem with the ideas of knowledge management and KLogs. In fact, I kind of like them. My question, maybe someone can send me a link to help, is how do you turn the knowledge into information via learning? My background is in instructional design, so maybe this is a natural question for me to ask. I see the instructional design process as having a large potential impact on the issues of knowledge management. I am still trying to wrap my head around this intersection of knowledge, information, learning, and instruction. I see them together complimenting each other, but I am working on how to produce clarity at this intersection.

[Scott Adams: Instructional Design]

I really need more time to sit down and write than I have at the moment, so I'll post a reminder to myself and try to get back to this later. The distinction may be trivial, but my understanding is that knowledge management attempts to turn information (fairly raw data) into knowledge (applicable learning). I, too, come to knowledge management from an instructional design background. In some ways, I've begun to believe that as important as the tools of knowledge management are, the most important (and most challenging) hurdle to jump is getting a "knowledge worker"(someone whose job it is to filter complex arrays of information, extract relevant chunks, combine them with other chunks (or new ideas) to create "value") into the mindset that any knowledge management tool requires. Figuring out how to capture, annotate, and store chunks of information so as to increase its potential energy is a huge endeavor. A system or tool may have its own workflow, but unless the individual has internalized the process, the following of a script will fail to extract deep value.

Any system that is flexible enough to deal with unexpected queries in the future must be fairly messy on the front end. If you knew exactly what you were going to do with each "chunk" as you recorded it, building a cataloging system would probably be straightforward. I believe the value of a dynamic knowledge management system comes from the ability to look back over past entries for "meaningful" data, where the value is defined by the ever-changing context.

OK, I've got to run help put my kids to bed, so I'll have to come back to this later. Also, I hate cluttering up people's aggregator with such a long message. Maybe I'll have to look into providing a truncated RSS feed...

referencing multiple media

Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:45:50 GMT

An interesting conundrum I've found myself in... I have throughout my life recognized the recurring phenomena of what I call "sticky themes". It isn't a complex concept--for whatever reason an idea strikes me as intriguing, so I mull it over. Immediately, I begin to recognize other applications of the concept in wildly diverse areas of my life--each reinforcing the concept. It is sort of like when someone you know buys a new car and you immediately begin to see instances of its make/color/etc everywhere you go. Suddenly it seems everyone is driving a white Camry.

So, lately I've been listening to audio books on my iPod as I work out in the morning. I was listening to The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century a month ago. The author of one of the chapters discussed a theory (posited by Arthur C. Clarke? I can't remember...more about that in a minute) about interstellar space travel. The theory stated that the first group to finally embark on an interstellar journey will be passed by their grandchildren, who will have figured out a way to get there in half the time. Soon after that, they will be passed by their grandchildren, and so on... Such a dilemma might cause the first generation to just wait, but here is where the repeating concept (for me) was born. Without the advances brought on by the efforts of the first generation, the ability of the next crew to improve upon it would be stifled. So I begin to see repetition of the concept everywhere. I know, I know...very basic. But to me, the most profound concepts usually are. I'll probably ramble more about this later. The point of this post, however, is quite different than this idea.

How can I maintain "references" from an increasingly diverse set of information sources? When I thought of the concept I had read in the book, I immediately wanted to go back to my notes that I had scribbled in the margin, only to realize that the margin (and the notes) were all mental constructs (which, for me anyway, are regrettably quite a bit less reliable than ink on paper). It is much the same in many areas of my life. I have begun to be spoiled by the convenience of my weblog tools. In this arena, I find my dependence on Mike Krus' little bookmarklet javascript called RadioExpress!, which allows me to grab a section of a web page I'm viewing and quickly annotate it as an entry into my weblog. I don't keep favorites or bookmarks any more. It is all kept in my weblog/klog. Now if I could just figure out how to make RadioExpress! work on my iPod...

More mobius blogging

Thu, 29 Aug 2002 16:30:17 GMT

My contribution to the thread...

Mobius blogging.

I'm in, but just because Joe recently did and McGee usually will blog an entire post of mine. I wonder if Alwin can come out to play?

Life in the Aggregator.

An Experiment: Life in the Aggregator. How far can it travel? Please play by passing it along, including all source links... [jenett.radio]

I'm willing to play

The trick with this one would be not just settling for a lame-o "me, too" response as this meme continues, and remembering to leave your own breadcrumb link. I suspect that may become harder as it grows...[gRadio]

This activity fascinates me...and makes me think I need to come up with a standard for referencing the content of others. I have all too often seen posts on a weblog that I believed to be by the weblog maintainer, only to find out later that they had simply entered an entire post from someone else's blog on theirs.

What about weblog citation?

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 19:57:03 GMT

How might we define, as a community, suggested formats for the "tunneling" of weblog posts? For example, I quote Sebastian, who is quoting David...how does someone who looks at my post make sense of the whole concept? I am only now getting used to the disjointed conversations that take place in this medium. Some of the most experienced bloggers, like Dave Winer, very seldom include much of another person's post at all...they simply refer to their comments and let the reader follow the hyperlink to digest the reference. I've found that viewing threads of a conversation are much easier in my RSS aggregator, but only if the responses occur in a timely manner. A reply taken out of context by a long pause can be quite confusing if it isn't referenced properly. So that brings me back to my original question: can we come up with a proposed citation standard? Should we? One last thought: is there any value in attempting to catalog various "types" of weblog posts (e.g. Announcement, Commentary/Critique, Conversation (Meme), etc.) and developing styles for citations that match the purpose of a post? Just thinking out loud...

What tweaks have you made?

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:09:36 GMT

Jon Udell: Radio deployment descriptors

"A few weeks ago, I spent some time showing an InfoWorld colleague, Mark Jones, how I use Radio. As always in this kind of situation, I was reminded of:

- how much non-default configuration I depend on

- how little I remembered having done that configuration

- how hard it was to articulate, then transfer, that configuration"

I'm running into similar situations as I try to help my team members get up and running in Radio. So much of my blogging workflow comes from 'tweaks' I've made. It would be great to be able to peek over the shoulder of others who've been doing this for a while and see what their processes are (and how they've set up their weblogging tools to support them).

Here are some of the most fundamental of my configurations:

I've set up categories (here) to manage my posts.

I've enabled title & description (here) so RSS aggregators can see my posts.
I've enabled remote access (here) to allow posting from other machines.

I use Mike Krus' RadioExpress. This allows me to select text from a web page, click on a link in my Links bar, and the title, URL, and text I've selected is put into my Radio tool, ready for posting.

What is "blogging"?

Tue, 06 Aug 2002 20:16:08 GMT

It seems that the first stage in adapting to a blog mindset is simply making entries and reading the entries of others to get a feel for the subtleties of the medium. It IS different from a traditional "home page", but quantifying the difference can be challenging. Any analogy I try to draw captures only a portion of the utility that a weblog can offer. It is a journal. It is a (heavy duty) favorites list. It is a two-way communication medium, but not in ways that you're used to. Userland's Radio tool (the one I'm using) enhances the two-way capabilities with its RSS aggregator. Because I've cut my teeth on Radio, I can't imagine what the blogging experience would be like without the INPUT side of the equation offered by the aggregator. Of course there are several news aggregators that, coupled with another weblog tool, could complete the circle. For those who do not use RSS-based subscriptions, does personal blogrolling (or services such as weblogs.com) serve as the INPUT source?

I've been thinking a lot today about how to use the knowledge captured within my weblog. Once I'm in the habit of wrapping just the right amount of myself around chunks of other sites, when do I use it again? How does it pop back into my workflow? The most basic of models seems to be, "Didn't I make a post about that? Hmmm... Did I use the phrase "image management" or "picture database"?" Seems klunky. Management of meta-data is a great idea (e.g. categories), but it requires, to some extent, some foreknowledge of how you're going to want to use the information in the future. I know...there isn't a good answer. I would love to see, however, a system that would automatically add meta-data that might prove useful. I guess I'm talking about some sort of intelligent agent that could analyze my entries according to unforseen parameters. Sort of like the engines behind personal management software like Creo's Six Degrees or Enfish Personal--both applications that attempt to categorize the data in your contacts, email, and documents to present meaningful options when you're working with any of the three. What if my weblog software were "smart" like this? I guess it almost sounds like Microsoft's Smart Tags (which has always sounded vaguely sinister) in application. Let's say I make a post about a project I'm working on that deals with instructional design for web-based courses. Could my tool cruise through the archived RSS feeds of the sites I'm subscribed to and suggest links to other's who are working on the same thing? Could it look through my own archives and find posts with similar themes? How would I see these suggestions? Would they be available to those who subscribe to my weblog? At this point I have many more questions than answers.

Thread regarding RSS aggregation

Mon, 05 Aug 2002 19:27:55 GMT

Sebastian and Wil Richardson continue to discuss RSS in academia. Particularly interesting is the dialog about automatic aggregation of RSS content. It has been a while since I've played with these ideas (and let me remind you, I'm not a programmer, so all I can do is come up with the ideas).

In February, I was all worked up about the impending release of Radio Community Server. I had sent John Robb an email (snippet below) and his response pointed me to RCS. RCS is great, and it is a step in the right direction, but I am still searching for the capabilities I desire...

First, I will have a default set of baseline categories for all of my staff that address common topics (troubleshooting windows, student portal project, etc.). That, obviously, is not a problem with Radio. The challenge is with the next step--I want to have an aggregator (I've been thinking that Manila is the natural tool for the job) collect all of these same-topic feeds and collect them as a topical publication of the _group's_ efforts. It is one step further than the publication of an individual's topical feeds through the use of categories in Radio--it offers a one-stop aggregation of that topic at the departmental or unit level. My mind starts to spin with the possiblities this would open up. As I understand it, it would require Radio to allow the same functionality that is represented by Dave's Manila-Blogger Bridge but at the level of the category. Each category could be set up to publish to a Manila server.
Is this even worth considering? Is there a way to set up Manila to "listen" to an RSS feed? Am I barking up the wrong tree? Can you point me in the right direction?

This isn't exactly the application of the current discussion, but the same tool could theoretically be used to solve both problems, no?