Weblogs: June 2003 Archive Page

"We?re quite good at remembering when things happen. That has meaning for us. But imagine creating an individual document around every one of those individual blog entries and just having them there on your desktop or in a folder. It would be completely meaningless to you. And that's how we treat e-mail now. But imagine keeping e-mail a bit more like a blog. Then suddenly, you?ve got instant messaging qualities and e-mail qualities happening at the same time. So I'm guessing that we?ll start to see that sort of timeline become more and more important." Tim Brown --Master of Design  (Technology Review)

"A weblog, also known as a *blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so that the reader sees the most recent post first. The style is typically personal and informal. Freely available tools on the World Wide Web make it easy for anybody to publish their own weblog, so there is a lot of variety in the quality, content and ambition of weblogs, and a weblog may have anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of daily readers. Weblogs first appeared in the mid-nineties and became more widely popular as simple and free publishing tools such as Blogger.com became available towards the turn of the century...." Jill Walker --Final Version of Weblog Definition (jill/txt)

Jill has responded to comments on the first draft. I quibbled with her use of "personal" and her focus on creative/diary weblogs rather than filter/community blogs, but her definition probably suits her intended audience (readers of an encyclopedia of narrative theory).

"Google Inc., want to know how to compete with Microsoft? Endear yourself to us all. Listen to the likes of us the little people of the Internet. Make the toolbar cross-platform and you will endear yourself to all of us. Change the 'BlogThis!' to enable us to blog to whatever blog tools we use. When Microsoft pushes us all into using a Microsoft Operating System, the Microsoft Search Engine, the Microsoft Word Processor, the Microsoft Weblog Tool, the Microsoft Password System, and the Microsoft Telephone through which we blog to our Microsoft Blogging site, we (all us bloggers, the 3 million of us and the other 10 million who are taking up blogging in the near future) will use the Google Search Engine that has cross-platform support to all the blogging companies." Elwyn Jenkins --Google Toolbar 'BlogThis!' Disappoints Fans (Microdoc News)

"In the light of Microsoft rumblings about creating its own search services, we need to ask just where Google is going with a toolbar built only for a Microsoft product. Microsoft are shaping up to take Google out!" --Microsoft and the New Google Toolbar (Microdoc News)

Elwyn offers his usual thoughtful critique of all things Google. Lots of contextualized links to relevant info elsewhere on the Internet.

"the new google toolbar not only blocks popup ads, it comes with a 'blog this!' button for blogger integration." mecran01 --Google *is* the OS (KairosNews)

Is this the first sign of what happens now that Google has purchased Blogger? I don't use Blogger, so I won't be able to experiment with that feature. Anyone want to share their experiences? Until I get my comments feature activated on this home-grown website, you can post your comments on KairosNews (free registration required). Or, you can post on WebWord (no registration required.)

Pale Fire: Bloggers are both Kinbote and Shade (Literacy Weblog)

“Jerz's Literacy Weblog” has been classified as a “research blog,” even though I think of it as a teaching tool and memory aid.

My blogging sometimes reminds me of the obsessive behavior of Professor Charles Kinbote, the protagonist in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Kinbote compulsively catalogues every minute environmental detail, not in his own life, but in the life of poet John Shade, whose work is the subject of Kinbote’s research.

I should say more precisely that Shade’s environment is the subject of Kinbote’s research; spying through the window of Shade’s study, Kinbote records exactly when Shade composes each line of poetry, indexed against exactly what was happening in Shade’s life at the time.

In keeping a blog, I am both my own Kinbote and my own Shade; I peer over my own shoulder at my work, and occasionally catch glimpses of myself.

"Emerson was himself a sort of group blogger in The Dial, a magazine he founded with Margaret Fuller in 1840. He designed it as a compendium of the 'good fanatics,' like Thoreau, Alcott and Channing in his Concord circle. 'I would not have it too purely literary,' he wrote to Fuller, venting a blogger's ambition. 'I wish we might make a Journal so broad and great in its survey that it should lead the opinion of this generation on every interest and read the law on property, government, education, as well as on art, letters, and religion.'" Christopher Lydon explains why American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) is "a man for bloggers to embrace". --A God for Bloggers (Lydon)

"This past year has seen the world of Weblogs, aka the blogosphere, grow in power and stature, if not to the general public, then to the other media. So we've created a graphical depiction of what I believe to be the most influential blogs, pushing the direction of media coverage and perhaps even public policy. | The bigger the mouth, the more influential the Weblog. The position of the mouth shows its political orientation (left or right) and whether it's doing more blogging (top) or more journalism (bottom)." Mark Glaser --Mark Glaser's Guide to the Blogosphere (OJR)

"WatchBlog is a multiple-editor weblog broken up into three major political affiliations, each with its own blog: the Democrats, the Republicans and the Third Party (covering everything outside the two major parties)." --WatchBlog: 2004 Election News, Opinion and Commentary (WatchBlog)

This looks interesting -- a three-column blog -- Democrat on the left side, Republican on the right. So far, so good. But covering third-party issues in the center column? I can't really think of any third-party issues that are centrist. Some will be far left, some will be far right; and some times the extremes share a totalitarian vision of enforcement of their ideals, and sometimes the extremes share a libertarian vision of minimal government interference in the lives of its citizens. The one-dimensional layout of the perspectives on this page doesn't match my vision of the political landscape, since it gives so much recognition to third-party voices (compared to the effect the third-party voices actually have on governance).

Of course, that's probably the point of the website, to encourage people to challenge their own perspective, and that is of course a good thing. And, untill we have three-dimensional computer interfaces, no I can't really think of a better way to dispay the ideas... unless you have four columns, but then the fringe views would get even more attention.

Hmm... that reminds me of a political quiz that ranks you on a left-right-libertarian-authoritarian scale.

Update: I found and blogged the political quiz.

"To some, a blog is the software and the user's experience with the software, and because of that they focus on the technology that makes blogs possible. | To others, blogs are experiential in terms of an individual's relationship to a blog as relationship, whether as an individual or one of a community." --Talk about PHP or Writing? (Weeblog)

This post advocates thinking about blogs as a rhetorical space rather than a user experience. I agree completely that focusing on software instead of what people are trying to accomplish while using that software is a mistake, but the activity of blogging is very different from the conventional writing our students have been asked to do. You have to spend some time letting students familiarize themselves with their new tools, and set a number of milestones that let students see their progress and gauge the amount of effort they will need to invest in order to keep up.

My own enthusiasm about various forms of cybertext sometimes makes students feel that learning the form is easier than it really is; or, they may feel that simply learning the form (that is, simply getting a web page to "work") ought to be enough for a good grade. Asking students to learn a new tool, construct something with it, and also to learn how to think critically about the whole process is not something that easily fits into a one-semester course -- particularly when similar courses are being taught in more vocational settings on the other side of campus.

Google is Already Spidering my New SiteLiteracy Weblog)

My digital move from UWEC to Seton Hill is happening much faster than I had anticipated. My UWEC weblog, which changed several times a day, seems to have encouraged Google's spiders to check out a good chunk of my website on a regular basis. The cache was rarely more than a day behind the pages that updated most frequently, and if I made a minor change to a web page that didn't change frequently, the change was usually in Google's system within a few days.

I've been working on my Seton Hill website for about two months now; it's been "live" all that time, but Google didn't find it because I wasn't linking to it, and nobody else was, either. Now, just a few days after my farewell post to my UWEC blog, Google has found this one, and has so far indexed about 150 pages on the site. That's pretty darn efficient.

While my UWEC site had been dormant for about three weeks, I started posting on it again, in order to encourage the bots, spiders, and real human beings to start visiting it on a regular basis again, and thus perhaps have a bigger audience when the move took place.

I posted the announcement on my old weblog, posted to a pair of interactive fiction news groups, pinged weblogs.com, and e-mailed about four webloggers to inform them of the link change. I really haven't spent much time publicizing the new site, but the response was tremendous.

Now I'd like to watch to see what PageRank does to some pages where my UWEC website was the top hit.

• One of my UWEC pages is the top Google hit for "blurbs," but my Seton Hill site (which has the same content but no off-site publicity) is nowhere in sight.
• I just changed my York Corpus Christi website (another top Google hit) to redirect to the new page, and since Thursday is the day the medieval church would have celebrated the Feast of Corpus Chisti, and this Sunday is the day the modern church will celebrate it, I plan to Google for Catholic and Medieval blogs and send a handful of them a brief note.
• There are already a few links to my new "Literacy Weblog," and at the moment my Seton Hill site is the eighth listed in a Google search. [Update 30 June: Now the Seton Hill version is second.]
• A Google search for "Dennis G. Jerz" brings my UWEC site up first, but my Seton Hill site up fifth. [Update 30 Jun: Now the Seton Hill site is third, but it's not my new home page -- it's the index page for my writing subdirectory.]

At the moment, while Google does seem to be paying some attention to category listings (which at the moment aren't actually filtering things... sorry about that), it hasn't seem to be searching any of the permalinks.

For the record, in my last month at UWEC, the stylesheet I use on my weblog was getting about 1500 hits per week, but my website as a whole was getting just under 50,000 hits per week. So, as far as the rest of the Internet is concerned, the value of my website far overshadows the value of my weblog, but the bots visit my site far more often than it would be necessary to index an archive of online teaching aids.

Will Gayther, the CS student who has written the weblog sofware I use, writes:

Holy !@#!, it actually works! It's actually alive! The blog actually works! And gives decent performance! ("gives decent performance", I bet Dr Jerz will love that english!...need to get to sleep...) Wow!

PS: I, Will Gayther, am of course the author of this entry and of the blogging software powering this blog.

If you would like to learn about the boundary waters canoe area (bwca) in Minnesota, please visit my boundary waters website. If you're looking to hire someone to write a dynamic website, especially using java, jsp, etc, please consider me. :-)

M

--It's alive!!!! (Will Gayther)

For the moment, I don't seem to have full access to my Seton Hill e-mail account, so if you have comments, drop me a line at "pr0f_jerz at yah00 d0t c0m."

On Barger, Books and BlogsLiteracy Weblog)

Unless I'm mistaken, Jorn Barger doesn't seem to have updated his Robot Wisdom weblog in weeks (yeah, yeah, I'm the pot, he's the kettle, I know).

The 2 Blowhards critique of book culture reminds me of "Theory: Write a web-book in a day", a usenet posting by Jorn Barger. Barger responded to my input by telling me that I should go find my own Internet where I wouldn't bother the idealists.

Barger incidentally coined the term "weblog" in a 1997 Usenet posting. The term was met with some snarky responses about bias and yellow journalism, but Barger replied as if the "yellow" comment is a superficial complaint about his choice of background color. Was Barger playing dumb, or did he miss the point of the critique? The exchange reads ambiguously to me.

Barger's Web Resources FAQ of 1999 is similarly terse and provocative -- which is consistent with Barger's casting of himself as a free-floating radical. He has in the past threatened to stop blogging unless he gets consulting work, and he seems to have disappeared from Usenet as well.

"Biographies? Serious travel books? Moneylosers for most of their authors. How so? Well, say you're lucky and your agent nails a $100,000 contract for you for a biography you're dying to write. Sounds good, huh? But run the math: First, subtract the agent's fee (10-15%), and then subtract taxes. You've got to write the book on the, say, $55,000ish that remains. Keep in mind that almost all books take longer to write and publish than expected. But, heck, you're a fast worker -- it'll only take you 3 years. That means you'll be living on $17,000 a year. And wait: you've gotta do some research -- what's a biography without research? Visiting some archives, interviewing whoever's still alive ... Guess where the money for these travels and aventures comes from? Your own pocket." --Tacit Knowledge -- Writing a Book (2 Blowhards)

For more depressing statistics on how institutions crush our creative fantasies, see "Courtney Love Does the Math," which presents the recording industry execs as a bunch of mean, evil dudes.

"Eurobloggers who wish to use their real names may be out of luck. For better or for worse, Europe lacks a First Amendment and the respect for limited government, private property and free enterprise that America still enjoys. And Europe sure doesn't have a Judge Stewart Dalzell, who correctly predicted seven years ago that 'the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.'" Declan McCullagh --Why Europe Still Doesn't Get the InternetNews.com)

So.. blogs are so powerful now that a legislative body is considering enforcing the right of the fisked to fisk back.

"I'm looking for people who support people who use weblogs, in a context that is not about weblogs, if possible. For example, a history class where each student keeps a weblog. Teachers who manage classes with a weblog. My goal of course is to learn from them, and then figure out what the next steps are. What do they need from other educators. What software is missing? We've already got some famous universities, I want to get connected with some not-so-famous universities. Who is leading in use of weblogs in education? Who do you look to for insight and inspiration? That's who I want for BloggerCon." Dave Winer --BloggerCon -- Harvard, October 2003Scripting News)

The response was a little snarky when I cross-posted this news to KairosNews, which is, of course, why blogging is so much fun.

"So perhaps journalists, playing Wizard of Oz for so many years behind the veil of assorted editors, fact-checkers and media executives, are now feeling a bit naked out in the open. It doesn't help that media companies have cut fact-checking down to the bone (if it exists at all). With the Net and bloggers breathing down their necks, journalists will just have to try harder, especially when it comes to quotes." Mark Glaser --Feeling Misquoted? Weblogs, Transcripts Let the Reader Decide  (OJR)

For more fun stuff regarding quotes, see Ann Coulter's observation that an "average guy on the street" named Greg Packer has been quoted about 100 times:

It was easy for the Times to spell Packer's name right because he is apparently the entire media's designated "man on the street" for all articles ever written. He has appeared in news stories more than 100 times as a random member of the public. Packer was quoted on his reaction to military strikes against Iraq; he was quoted at the St. Patrick's Day Parade, the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Veterans' Day Parade. He was quoted at not one – but two – New Year's Eve celebrations at Times Square. He was quoted at the opening of a new "Star Wars" movie, at the opening of an H&M clothing store on Fifth Avenue and at the opening of the viewing stand at Ground Zero. He has been quoted at Yankees games, Mets games, Jets games – even getting tickets for the Brooklyn Cyclones. He was quoted at a Clinton fund-raiser at Alec Baldwin's house in the Hamptons and the pope's visit to Giants stadium.

Is this guy a made-up person, like the theatrical George Spelvin or cinematographcial Alan Smithee?

Update: an AP story, that does not credit Coulter, offers a profile of the oft-quoated Packer, a highway construction worker who enjoys rubbing elbows with celebrities.

Webloggers kick Trent Lott out of his job! Weblogger Salam Pax gives the best on-the-scene reports from Iraq! Webloggers take down the top management at The New York Times! Well, two out of three ain't bad.... But most journalists -- if not the public -- couldn't keep their eyes off the train wreck and continued to follow Romenesko during the scandal." --For Bloggers, NYT Story Was Fit to Print (OJR)

It's good to be back... my new permanent digital home isn't up and running yet, but I'm back online after my move from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania.