As a sweetener for members of Palimpsest who made a donation towards the hosting this year, I offered them an @palimpsest email address.

This got me thinking about what other services could be offered to those who might be interested.

How about having a Palimpsest hosted blog?

I have a spare database that isn’t being used, and with WordPress being able to run multiple blogs, it would be easy enough to set up. The one downer is that the URL would be palimpsest.org.uk/blogs/user but as most people read these things through an aggregator (don’t they?) it really wouldn’t matter.

I’ll give it some thought. If anyone has any comments, just let me know.

WordPress 1.5.1 has been released. Better get upgraded…

BlogJetThis! Extension for FireFox 0.4

James Avery has created a FireFox extension that allows you to select text in FireFox and then blog about it using BlogJet. Great work James!

If you visit the above link, you’ll see a few comments from me, who in my usual dunderheaded way, couldn’t seem to get the extension installed right…

And of course I used it to create this post…

From the Guardian Online blog:

In praise of Amiga

Apropos of very little, I had a bit of a retro memory flashback the other day (actually it was when I dug out an old copy of Lemmings) and started thinking about what probably ranks as my favourite computer ever:…

And it’s the good old Amiga 500! I used to have one, and loved it…

Neville Hobson writes:

Three lessons about evangelism:

1. Always consider another’s point of view – and listen to that point of view no matter how anxious you are to get across your own point of view
2. Be passionate but consider how you ‘deploy’ that passion – others may view your evangelism as rigid and self-righteous proselytizing
3. Know that evangelism will fail in the face of a closed mindset

He was recently interviewed on The Red Couch.

US based celebrity blog thing is now up and running, as reported by Dan Gillmor:

The Huffington Post has launched, and it’s part-Drudge (though from a different perspective), part blog of blogs. It’s obviously version 1.0, which means you should give it time to settle down.

The great Harry Shearer will “Eat the Press” — this could be fun.

Overall, the site seems to be aiming at the role of op-ed page of the Net. I’m watching with great interest, and reading some of it, too.

To give more of a flavour, here’s an excerpt from the announcement email:

The Huffington Post is serving up-to-the-minute breaking news and blog posts from hundreds of the most interesting figures in politics, entertainment, business, the arts, and the media.  In addition, Harry Shearer will be moderating a section on the media called “Eat the Press” — where, besides documenting and discussing the absurdities within our news cycle, he will regularly be posting raw satellite feed of our nation’s politicians and broadcasters in their most unguarded moments. 

Already, John Cusack, Ellen DeGeneres, Russell Simmons, Mike Nichols, David Mamet, Michael Isikoff, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Hall, David Corn, and Marshall Herkovitz have posted their unique takes on issues as diverse as gay marriage, the war in Iraq, and what “SpamAlot” and political leaders have in common.

The Huffington Post is also your source for breaking news.  Today, the Post offers an exclusive pre-publication look at the explosive new book, “Secrets of the Kingdom,” by best-selling author Gerald Posner, which reveals the unknown story of how Saudi Arabia’s oil fields are rigged to turn into a radioactive nuclear wasteland in the event of an invasion or internal revolution.

Just gotten round to filling in the FTP details on BlogJet, which means that if I have a photo on my PC, BlogJet will upload it for me in a specified directory on the web server, when I get round to updating the blog. Here’s a quick test:

Look – it’s Gary Megson, the man who failed to keep Forest in the Championship this season. Well, at least BlogJet works.

Doc Searles on blogs

What is a blog? The oft-cited Doc Searles shares his thoughts in a PowerPoint from the “Les Blogs” conference in Paris. Or, if you’d like the html version …

Try slide 17 for the nub of things:

• Blogs are journals
• They are not “sites”
• They are not “content”
• They are not “media”
• They are not here to “deliver an experience”
• They are not an “emergent synchronization mode”
• There’s no argument about “who’s a journalist.” We all are.

Searles’ basic argument is that blogs are individual writings — speech — that turn into conversations through the linking ability of the Web. Treat them like content, he says, and we run the risk of censorship.

This is why news media and blogs struggle to find compatibility. We in this business see such things as content. That’s fine. Call them online columns, which is what most really are when we produce them.

From Scoble:

Google moves its blog to Blogger, adds blogroll

Yeah, TDavid, it is an honor to be blogrolled on Google’s blog. Google recently moved its blog over to Blogger.

So that’s why my previous attempts to subscribe to this have failed recently. Note to self: check this out in the morning.

History of the Graphical User Interface

Ars Technica has a great history of the GUI that just came online. I was one of those “Xerox invented it, Apple stole it, Microsoft stole that” kinds of people. It’s great to realize that, really, everyone stole everything from someone else and none of this is unique.

From Ensight, a blog by a chap named Jeremy Wright. Looks like an article well worth looking up. I’m reading feeds in bed through FeedDemon, so can’t look them up just now. Oh, for a wireless internet connection!

Well, I am leaving Scrutiny after nearly a year and have a new job as a Business Analyst at another authority. Just a week to go – my first day is 16 May.

What’s it all about? Well, project management basically. A real growth area in local authorities in the UK, and one I am keen to learn about. And guess what? To help keep a handle on all the information that will be coming my way, I am going to be blogging about it. Not here, though. One of the joys of WordPress is that I can have multiple blogs running from the same MySQL database. So, I have just started Project: Blog and will be updating it starting from about now.

I guess you can expect maybe a couple of posts a week over there. It should be pretty interesting (if you are interested in project management…) Still, to help differentiate it from this one I really do need to apply a new theme to it…

Does anyone know how I can insert trackbacks to posts I am quoting or writing about whilst within BlogJet?

At the moment I am having to edit posts while online to add them in, which kind of defeats the object of the exercise…

8 Secrets of the New Super Blogs from Vaspers the Grate

8 Secrets of the New Super Blogs:
Blog Revelations from Otherwhere

(1.) Blogs will be interesting…or die.

(2.) Blogs will be unusual, abnormal, unique…or die.

(3.) Blogs will be practical, helpful, valuable…or die.

(4.) Blogs will be creative, innovative, artistic in both literary and graphic stylings…or die.

(5.) Blogs will be authoritative, reputable, credible, reliable…or die.

(6.) Blogs will be imaginative, original, personalized, customized…or die.

(7.) Blogs will be strong, loud, brilliant, brave…or die.

(8.) Blogs will be ethical, moral, legal and legitimate, altruistic…or die.

An article by Dan Gillmor: Operating Systems and Recent History

Early last week, Bill Gates demonstrated Microsoft’s next Windows desktop computer operating system at a conference for manufacturers of computer hardware. Later in the week Apple started selling its latest version of the Macintosh operating system, known as Mac OS X Tiger.

Interesting article on Michael Howard’s signal of his intention to resign as leader of the Tories on the BBC.

The last thing the Tories want is another instant resignation similar to William Hague’s the day after the 2001 election defeat.

And there is no clamour for Mr Howard’s head after what most believe was an effective election campaign.

Mr Hague clearly believed he was also doing the best by the Tories, but that is not how it turned out.

Thanks to the recently introduced election procedures, it tipped the party into a prolonged battle which ended with outside candidate, “quiet man” Iain Duncan Smith winning as a result of the grassroots vote and then suffering an unhappy spell in the leadership.

The Tories are determined not to go down that route again and Mr Howard has given them time to sort out a new leadership election procedure – which will inevitably mean giving MPs the greatest say.

And he has also ensured that should be a swift process to allow his eventual successor time to bed in before the next election in 2009 or 2010.

There will be some in the Tory party who will grumble that he has not given them time to recover from the election defeat before being thrown into another, internal campaign.

And there is no doubt that the contenders will start positioning themselves immediately for the contest which most will hope comes within the next six to 12 months.

But most Conservatives probably believed the best they could hope for from this general election was an honourable second place, and Mr Howard has delivered that.

When I first heard that he was quitting I was under the impression that he was doing it straight away, Major and Hague style. But leaving a break of 6–12 months does make sense.

Blunkett returns in new Cabinet, according to the BBC:

David Blunkett has returned to the Cabinet as work and pensions secretary as Tony Blair reshuffles his top team.

Patricia Hewitt has been appointed health secretary – with John Reid moving to defence and Geoff Hoon becoming Commons leader.

In other changes, Alan Johnson takes the new post of secretary for productivity, energy and industry.

Chancellor Gordon Brown, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Home Secretary Charles Clarke remain in their posts.

David Miliband enters the Cabinet as community and local government secretary.

The shake-up came after Mr Blair won an historic third election – but with a majority cut from 167 in 2001 to 66.

Mr Blair said he had “listened and learned” after the election result.

The prime minister acknowledged the Iraq war had been “deeply divisive”.

But he said he believed people wanted to move on.

Am working on a large list of links of pages I regularly visit. At the moment it is very incomplete, so have temporarily password protected it.

Backpack lets you create and share lists, photos, documents and more in a wiki-like editable Web site you can share – like this one. I am trying it out to share blog links with my client and I love it so far, though I wish it enabled RSS feeds for each page. I see lots of applications here for the PR community including instant press rooms that can be set up in the event of a crisis. Kudos to 37 Signals. It’s also generating a ton of buzz. I bet they’re going to give Jot and Socialtext a run for their money at least in the small biz market.

And here is my del.icio.us page. Both this and the Furl one have RSS feeds to subscribe to.

del.icio.us/theclosedcircle

Furl is a bookmark manager, rather like del.icio.us, I think. I am going to give both of them a try and see which is most useful, if either. Here’s the link for my Furl page which as yet has only this blog’s index page in it – how sad!

LookSmart’s Furl – The theclosedcircle Archive