3rd February 2002: "Blog the Organization : Shelved My agent has spent a few months pitching "Blog the Organization" to publishers, and he's received no more than a lukewarm response. A few months ago I switched from an "All About Weblogs" approach to one that emphasized "Weblogs for Business." The latter generated a bit more interest, but still not enough. And it wasn't as though the publishers were ignorant. We encountered some that had a clear understanding of weblogs. Ultimately, I think the publishers are right, and that there isn't a sufficient market to justify the effort."

 

Surprising news. But I guess the cluetrain is too much for most companies. But some, some will give it a whirl. Perhaps not big enough for a book publisher, not yet. 20 years perhaps. So would that mean that some companies would be 20 years ahead? Is that risk management?

Michael Poremba - Re: Weblogging in a corporate environment?   2/28/2002; 2:52:56 PM (reads: 5, responses: 0) Hey, there's discussion of blogging at work in the klogs discussion group on Yahoo. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/ Klogs are knowledge blogs. Check out the following for more info, if you haven't already. http://www.byte.com/documents/s=620/byt20010524s0001/index.htm http://dijest.editthispage.com/klogs/

 

You are blogged mate. I saw this message on a mailing list and thought about you. Some good links there. I'm already on the klog mailing list, been so since it started. Bit quiet lately, but the early archives are worth reading. I think people got the point quite quickly. And the idea is... bloging is fun, blogging is easy, it's not the techology issues that matter, XML-RPC this, discussion/coments/feeds that. It's the people stupid. KISS. And blogging is kissy. Kissy kissy in fact.

 

Imagine 200 bloggers in a company of a 1,000. "If only," you say. If only it were sooner, says I.

So what's been occurring here. This cyberSaps blog, has been turned inside out and upside down. And it's since I started using Radio. Now, I'm blogging from one place -- my Radio interface. So I blog from here to there, there, and there. So although it don't look updated here it looks updated there.
Personal, family
War blog
Consultant blog
Sex blog
B.I.S.

Yeah that's blogger way of doing things, not as smart as news items Manila. This is what I was thinking of putting templates in xManilaBloggerBridge then you could send your own formatted news item, but the title of the page would still be the pesky "Blogger News Item" -- not good.

 

I was thinking of something simpler than an API. Using the Blogger API and then just a callback that said, "oh it's a pesky blogger news item via rpc. I'd better strip out the first link, and format it for Manila news items."

 

But that would have to rely on Joe Punter sending the news item as a very standard format "My title: news body..." Which, happily, the two Radio express tools: customBlogPost, radioExpress sort out for Joe Punter. But Joe can be dumb and mess with the formatting...

 

Yes, that would be brilliant. Didn't someone who was messing with an OS X client have that?

 

 

I think we're stuck with the front page for posting. And the easiest work around is to delete most of the news item template in Manila and reformat via templates in xManilaBloggerBridge, but this pre-supposes that only people with Radio are posting, if someone was to post a news item via Manila then they'd get no formatting...

 

Tricky and awkward -- that's what I think :-)

There you go... One happy camper...Strange that you need Dave's version of the tool as well. I haven't had it installed for a few days now. Shouldn't need it... Anybody else tried it? He's posting to a blogger site...

 

 

The link's good, just that I've been messing with something else... All day, and yesterday, and haven't blogged or updated this tool, till just now... Me thinks I've bust something :-) Looks like I've been upstreaming 1k files containing the word just the true -- better fix that. My tools working fine though, writing out files from a FileMaker database, then automatically, when upstreaming happens, it renders out two files, one big one small, each whacked through some graphics templates, the small is ftp'd the larger sent to the printer spool. Takes about a minute for each letter (printing extra, but now I've got a faster Epsom photo quality full bleed A4 printer, that's about a minute too).

 

Anyway if you just tried downloading it and found the same thing "true" that's my explanation. Get it from the same link again now, it's a full 44k this time.

 

So if anyone else has just been here, and had the same problem, mind it's only been an hour and fifteen minutes, real live events here.

There's afew more things I'd like to get around to, like templates, and callbacks to as I explain below .

 

I'm a little concerned about deleting posts to vanila Manila sites. Seems to work fine with news item Manila, and I haven't testede it with blogger API friendly clones. But just uses standard blogger API so there shouldn't be a problem.

Yes, vanila Manila, news item Manila or any other blogger API friendly. Though not tested with the 'others' (blogger et al).

 

 

I suppose some testing would be in order, I suppose they only way to get that going is to release it.

 

xManilaBloggerBridge

 

Just pop it into your tools folder a minute later you'll see the link on the status panel of your local home page, fill in the details and you're away. Any problems, I suppose you'd better tell me.

This is a detail, actual size, of the big letter, which is scaled down by 30% to print onto A4.

I suppose the next thing to do is to run this as a web service. You just tell your copy of Radio where your database is, what your letter text is and I send you the weblogs to your server, and a summary page with links to all the big letters and on a PC you 'pint all pages from this page' or something like that.

 

Needs some thinking does that.

This is the next project. Letters.

 

From a file maker database, with one click of the mouse. Many index pages are written to the www folder. Each one is then upstreamed, but on the way it's shoved through some graphics templates to render the text as jpeg'd images. There are two html templates that it's rendered through. The first one does it as in the illustration with the reply form on the bottom. The second, is much much larger, in fact it's about 2200 pixels wide! That's so I can print out the 72dpi jpeg's text at 30% to resize it down to standard A4. Each large one is then sent to my printer. I've also an envelope that's as big which is also sent to my printer at 30%.

 

The end result is photo quality mail merged A4 letters, envelopes and web pages to accompany them. The point being that I can send out letters that look like letters, but also have links printed on them.

 

I'll also be sending up an .htaccess file to my Apache server, so that each letter is realm protected. Each printed letter has the web address of its web version, and the user and password as jpeg's text.

Salon: All hail .Net! - We will all carry around hand-held computers that will allow us to access our e-mail, trade our stocks, send video and photos to the family and generally manage our daily lives. Those hand-helds will also be phones and navigation units, and will carry our electronic wallets. They'll communicate with our computers at home to manage the heating, order the groceries and, when we get home, set just the right ambience for that all-important date with a mix of appropriate mood lighting and Barry White.

 

Out of the box, Visual Studio.Net provides three of its own .Net-enabled development languages, but companies such as ActiveState are already hard at work making existing languages compatible with .Net as well

 

The key to Web services is the way they separate out, or "decouple," user interfaces from applications. Where a Web page provides a static interface to a snapshot of data, a Web service can provide the data itself. Completely devoid of a user interface, Web services enable the development of smart-client-based applications, applications that can detect the type of platform they are running on and then provide a user interface to suit.

 

As developers move to embrace .Net, the Internet will be transformed from a complex, un-standardized mishmash of awkward static views of data to a dynamic pool of data connected by a true web of Web services all working together to make your life easier.

 

.Net marks the dawn of the third age of computing -- embrace it.

Via Scripting News - Henry Jenkins: "Like cockroaches after nuclear war, online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot coms."Jenkins' piece echoes a belief that's getting more hollow every day. He says "It may seem strange to imagine the blogging community as a force that will shape the information environment almost as powerfully as corporate media." It may seem strange to some, but to me it doesn't go far enough. Corporate media is disappearing. It's diseconomic. It fails to give people with minds what they want, differing perspectives and access to information.His quote, adapted to 1981, would go like this. "It may seem strange to imagine the personal computer community as a force that will shape the information environment almost as powerfully as mainframes and minis."

The Register: Visual Studio.NET to expand economy - Billg - "[Visual Studio.NET] is one of the largest pieces of work we have ever done on tools in research and development. Product release cycles normally takes two years, this was three years," he said. .NET is consuming more than $5 billion in research and development, Gates said.
Here it comes. Lucky, I too, can do web services.

Manila and the Australian National Wage Case: "Manila has been used by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in smaller cases and I really pleased that the Manila project is being used for such an important case. The AIR, which does the administration for the commission, is very happy with Manila's functionally and ease of use. "  

Good news!

Phew, a long day away. All the way down to Windsor and back, a round trip of 300 miles. And a dull meeting. I felt sure that they had moved on, but no, my information wasn't correct.  

Oh well, out of my control.  

For anybody who comes here from that meeting, here's a few more sites.
Personal, family
War blog
Ziad's blog
Sex blog  

As a drove home I began to realise that these people want a three page website that says we're lovely. What they need...  

Oh well, never mind, when you're ready, sir.

A resource for web designers and developers who want to learn CSS layout techniques to replace archaic table-based web page layouts... glish.com : CSS layout techniques: "Feel free to steal all the code you find on this site, and consider linking back here on your site or in your source comments."

Most excellent resourse. Thank you.

Who said all Manila sites look the same?

overstated: february 2002 - I've started using another measure in its place, the number of memes originating with an individual. Instead of biasing originality on consistency, this value relates the propensity of an individual to find and curate powerful ideas.

1. scripting.com, 149
2. ncf.ca/~ek867, 104
3. davelog.com, 91
4. dangerousmeta.com, 83
5. randomwalks.com, 82
6. camworld.com, 78
7. swallowingtacks.com, 69
8. themorningnews.org, 67
9. wannabegirl.org, 66
10. booboolina.com, 65
11. zeggelaar.com/log, 63
12. robotwisdom.com, 63
13. bulltown.com/dailywebthing, 60
14. fredleal.com/blog, 60
15. tonie.net, 59
16. world.std.com/home/dacha/www/emg/public_html, 59
17. swaine.com, 57
18. smartass.nu/blog, 57
19. doc.weblogs.com, 55
20. geocities.com/radio_mookie, 54
21. watnou.com, 54
22. megosteve.com 53
23. letsvamos.com/letsblogar, 52
24. 42.cabaretvoltaire.com, 52
25. blahblahblog.com, 51

There is more to this measure than a list; not surprisingly it is correlated with many structural features. For instance, the more central an individual is to the entire network, the more probable it is that they are also a meme-originator. This points to either a) good links attracts an audience, or b) popularity makes memes spread. My instinct tells me that the answer lies somewhere in between.
Good stuff. Some nice links for me to follow for a while.

B2BMarketingBiz: Top 5 Corporate Communication Mistakes the Fortune 500 Make Online - Mistake #4: Timely PR updates

Corporate communications also needs to have access to easy-to-use content management tools for the site (i.e. don't set up a system where site change requests get routed through your IT department and take weeks to appear online.)   Obvious examples of sites where PR wasn't able to change the site's message when it was necessary include Enron's site, which contains many now-laughable statements, Wendy's site which made no note of founder Dave Thomas' demise for at least 24 hours

So this is how my interface looks these days. I'm adding more links to functionality, as I go, as this is going to be the command and control, for all I survey. Looks better in MSIE but that just crashed, and nice too in Mozila. Opera screws a bit with it, but not bad.

The Blog Phenomenon

Ego gratification. Some people need to be the center of attention. It makes them feel good about themselves to tell the world what important things they've been doing and what profound thoughts they've been having. Curiously, while this looks like the most obvious reason for a Web log, I think it's probably the least likely reason, since it's too trite and shallow.

Antidepersonalization. When people begin to think that they are nothing more than a cog in the wheel of society, they look for any way to differentiate themselves. The Web log proves they are different. Just read it. You'll see.

Elimination of frustration. Day-to-day life, especially in the city, is wrought with frustration, and the Web log gives people the ability to complain to the world. You get to read a lot of complaining in these logs. If you think I'm a complainer, oh boy!

Societal need to share. As a cynic who gets paid to write, I have a hard time with this explanation. But it seems some people genuinely like to "share," and this is one way.

Wanna-be writers. A lot of people want to be published writers. Blogs make it happen without the hassle of getting someone else to do it or having to write well—although there is good writing to be found. Some is shockingly good. Most of it is miserable. I expect to see those Open Learning classes around the country offering courses in Blog writing.

Seems a lot faster now. I managed to squeeze 18 meg out of a bloated 90 meg root.

I suspect that there may have been some corruption in the table containing all 55,000 messages. Thus every time it need to build a discussion page... Looking through all those tables and getting stuck on one that was corrupt...

We'll see tomorrow.

Took longer than planned four and a half hours. Got unlucky with first download, a crash here made it impossible to open, had to get another one. And as it took only 40 minutes to save as, I had a nap which added another hour and half when I could have been moving forward...

Giants forging Web services consortium - Tech News - CNET.com - Web services allow software to be made available over the Internet to run identically on multiple devices, such as PCs and cell phones.

Early Web services have allowed people to access stock quotes from cell phones, for instance. But companies envision a much grander future. For example, scheduling a plane flight could trigger a cascade of actions that would assemble different options that tie in with hotels, frequent-flyer programs and other related services.

TIME.com: Pssst. Wanna See My Blog? - I believe this is the first time in my life I've had something in common with RuPaul. The cross-dressing superstar and I have both started blogging, which is almost as much fun as it sounds. A blog, short for weblog, is a kind of spontaneous online public journal.

BBC: I blog, therefore I am - Ever read a weblog? Perhaps you are one of the growing numbers who keep one. Or maybe you haven't got a clue what they are.

Radio Userland 8 - Blogging is fun, and it can also be competitive: Bloggers, like open-source hackers, are motivated by public recognition. Savvy CIOs who can make KM feel like a game may be the ones to finally surmount the high activation threshold that has forever plagued the KM world.

a test