In that it stopped. Sorry. Was playing with my new toy:

It’s pretty good. It can send emails, which is great, and means I can post to this blog on the move. Using Flickr I can even post pictures straight onto here which I take with the camera! Wonders will never cease.

Had stacks of feeds to get through this morning. Plenty of stuff been posted on the link blog.

Lawrence Lessig on Creative Commons:

Creative Commons offers free copyright licenses to artists and creators. The purpose of the license is to enable the artist or creator to mark his or her copyrighted work with the freedom he or she intends the work to carry. Those “freedoms” are the exclusive rights that copyright grants the copyright holder which the law permits the copyright holder to waive. The design of the system is to be automatic. No contract, or meeting of the minds, is intended. It is simply a license that says “if you use my copyrighted work in ways that would otherwise infringe my exclusive rights, I won’t sue you if you have abided by this license.” (The law makes everything ugly, but anyway, that’s what it does.)

I must have a look at Feedview, an RSS reading Firefox extension.

As linked to by Steve Rubel.

Ken Leebow links to this article by Radley Balko (!) on Fox News.

U.S. News & World Report reported last week that several senior Republican senators — upon hearing that “blogs” had uncovered the Dan Rather scandal, helped to defeat Tom Daschle and pushed for the resignation of CNN executive Eason Jordan — demanded that “blogs” be added to their official Web sites.

Even though, as a Capitol Hill Web consultant told the magazine, most of them hadn’t the slightest idea of what a “blog” actually is.

It’s an amusing story, but the more I read about the weblogging phenomenon from traditional media sources — the more I hear about it from talk show hosts and pundits, and the more triumphalism, tribalism, and group hurt we’re starting to see from the “blogosphere” — the more I’m convinced that even “hip” reporters and tech-savvy bloggers themselves don’t really “get” blogs any more than those senior Republican senators do.

In truth, “blogs” are nothing more than a relatively new way of distributing information, just as radio, television, newsprint, and conventional Web sites once were. Blogs differ from other media in that they provide links for easy referencing, they’re more easily and quickly updated (and, consequently, many times less carefully edited), they allow for more interaction between reader and publisher, and there’s virtually no barrier to entry — meaning just about anyone can start his or her own blog. You don’t need to win the approval of an editor. You don’t need start-up money from a publisher. You don’t need a radio tower.

I have started to plan a new site which will aim to collect together all the information anyone could ever possibly want to know about blogging, from introductory stuff for the beginner right through to techinical articles for the experienced web wonk; taking in personal and corporate blogging; and offering hints, tips and hacks for every blogger out there.

I’m planning that it will be a Wiki, so that once it is up and running, bloggers can come in and add points and discuss entries at will. Hopefully it will be pretty well populated with content by then, so the ground can be hit running.

Where’s the content going to come from? Well, some of it will have to be written fresh, but I am wanting the vast majority to come from blog posts from the blogosphere. Each will be linked to and quoted at length. So, you want a quick summary of how to write a corporate blog? You will be able to read Robert Scobles’s Corporate Manifesto, with a link to the post, and therefore the blog, in question to follow it up.

There is a vast amount of information out there, some really, really good stuff and this will be a way of bringing it all together.

The first thing to do will be to come up with a name for this project, and register the domain. The other will be to decide on a Wiki engine.

Any suggestions will be greatfully received. Likewise, any offers of help. If you have some great blogging articles saved away, let me have them! Send me links, either through my comments or through email. If anyone wants to help put the site together with me, that would be extra cool too.

Cheers!

Great article on the use of RSS, blogs and wikis at the BBC.

Just a few minutes ago, I got an email with the title “Your blog could cost you your job.” Needless to say, I sat up and took notice. It turns out to be a link to this article, which paints a dystopian picture of the institutional blog. However, there is more positive news out there, if you look. Late last year I paid a visit to Euan Semple in the BBC DigiLab, and he has graciously allowed me to interview him about the very forward-looking way in which “Auntie” is taking the new on board and putting it to meaningful use.

…and More Compelling Comments.

How To Write Killer Blog Posts

Some very good advice here. Here’s the first 3 to give you a flavour:

Writing Blog Posts

• Declarative sentences are good. Web readers demand them.
• Link like crazy. One thing that distinguishes blog posts from dead-tree journalism is that bloggers link prodigiously. Link to any mentions in your blog to other blogs, websites, articles, books, products, bios or explanatory materials on other sites. Always provide links to information that clarifies or gives background on information and opinions in your post.
• Write less. Omit all unnecessary words. The best advice I ever got about writing was from my first boss, the late “press agent” Leo Miller, who taught me a game to play with sentences. He’d keep taking out words until removing one more word destroyed the meaning of the sentence. Taking this last sentence for example, the sentence would end up like, He’d take out words until removing another destroyed the sentence meaning. Aim at keeping your posts at about 250 words.

I have made a few changes to the blog layout, all on the strip down the right hand side.

Most noticable is the list of recent links from the Link Blog, which is created using FeedRoll. Not entirely happy with the presentation at the moment, but it might be useful for casual readers to see what I’ve been linking to.

Also, I have added a new subscribe button for users of My Yahoo! Not entirely sure if this works properly as my experiences with My Yahoo! have never been terribly positive.

The other day I added a link to an image of the cover of the book I am currently reading. This links to an Amazon associate account for Palimpsest, the book discussion community I help run, for which any financial help is much appreciated. This will obviously be updated as I get to read more books…

Lastly, links have been added to BritBlog, which is a directory of British bloggers; and also Technorati.

Stephen Pollard, a UK based political journalist and quite regular blogger, has sadly been forced to remove the comments facility on his blog:

I’m afraid I have had to disable all comments from now on. I do not have the time to monitor the site for the abusive, defamatory, racist and anti-Semitic remarks which some people seem to think are fine to write in the comments section. Even though the overwhelming majority are sensible, as always it is the minority who cause sufficient trouble to end up penalising everyone.

I’m sorry to have had to scrap comments. I might reconsider, but don’t hold your breath. Life is too short to spend hours scrutinising the rantings of morons.

I’m not certain what facilities he has on his blog system for moderating comments, but it seems a shame that this has had to happen. Perhaps if someone were to volunteer to do the moderation on Mr Pollard’s behalf he might reconsider?

Have attempted to trackback to his posting, but it isn’t clear whether that part of his site is disabled too…

IT Safe is a new site created by the UK government to keep the populace updated with IT security news. The BBC report is pretty thorough:

A rapid alerting service that tells home computer users about serious internet security problems is being launched by the UK government.
The service, IT Safe, will issue warnings about damaging viruses, software vulnerabilities and weaknesses on devices such as mobile phones.

Alerts tell people how the threats affect them and what they can do to avoid trouble and protect themselves.

The service will be free and those who sign up can get e-mail or text alerts.

The scheme is aimed at home users and small businesses. The government estimates it will issue security alerts about six to 10 times a year, based on previous experience of virus outbreaks.

“There is a clear need for easy-to-understand and simple independent advice for non-technically minded people who use computers either at home or at work,” said Home Office Minister Hazel Blears.

“The purpose of this new government service is to ensure computer users are aware of the risks involved and how to deal with them easily and effectively without causing alarm.”

Those signing up will only be told about the most serious security threats that have the potential to affect millions of people.

Bugs and flaws

Full-time staff are being employed to comb through the many hundreds of alerts issued each year by computer security firms to spot which ones have the potential to catch out a large number of people

Between alerts the service will occasionally send messages giving people advice about safe ways to use their computers and phones.

“IT Safe will take our technical expertise and use it to help home users understand the risks and keep their computer systems, mobile phones and a range of related consumer electronic items, safe,” said Roger Cumming, director of the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre (NISCC).
The NISCC, which is running the service, also stressed that those signing up would still need to use anti-virus software, firewalls, and software updates to stay secure.

Warnings about security problems will tell people what the problem is, how it affects them and what they can do to avoid trouble.

Alerts will not be issued unless users can do something to protect themselves against the threat.

This might include downloading an update from an anti-virus vendor or updating software to close loopholes and fix vulnerabilities.

However no software patches or programs will actually be dispensed through the site. The alerts will tell people how to go about getting hold of patches from security firms.

The NISCC spokesman said the site and alerting service would stay in existence for as long as there were security bugs on home computers and other gadgets.

Unprecedented volume

Government statistics show that more than half of all UK households own a home computer. It was estimated that almost 13 million of these were able to access the internet in 2004.

The launch comes as the number of viruses and other malicious programs in existence is reaching unprecedented numbers.

In September 2004, the number of malicious programs circulating topped the 100,000 mark. Some fear that this figure could hit 150,000 by September 2005.

The creation of the national alert service follows similar efforts in the Netherlands and US.

The National Alerting Service for the Netherlands (aka De Waarschuwingsdienst) and the US National Cyber Alerting Service also tell citizens of serious security threats.

The site itself is pretty poor stuff at the moment, the sum total of the How To section being Updating Windows XP, How to use Windows Automatic Update and How to update Microsoft Office. Great.

Robert Scoble posts over on The Red Couch blog about the name of the blog just started by the publisher of his and Shel Israel’s book.

…our publisher, Joe Wikert has started a blog. Shel linked to it the other night. And he made a common first mistake: he didn’t think through his title very well.

Quick. Tell us what “The Average Joe” means to you?

It doesn’t mean anything to us. It’s like wheat flour. No shape. No meaning. If this were just a personal blog it’d be OK (although I argue that even a personal blog is better if you get more specific).

Now, think about someone searching Google. Why will someone want to read Joe’s blog? Just cause Scoble said to? I don’t think so.

Here’s a better approach: own a niche.

Bad: my blog about something made with flour
Good: Scoble’s blog about artisian bread made in Santa Cruz.

This has immediately made me think further on the titling of this blog. Now, The Closed Circle is about as nebulous a title as you can get. What does it mean? In truth, nothing. I needed a title quick and that’s what I chose. I guess it could be said that it has the advantage of sounding a little mysterious maybe, but as Scoble points out, it hardly encourages people to read my posts – they have no idea of the content.

It becomes even more silly the more I think about it, for if there is one thing that a blog isn’t, it’s a closed circle. There’s nothing closed here, the aim is to be as open as possible. So it’s a really crap title. But hell, that’s the one I have got, and I am sticking to it. I just need to think of a really good reason why this is a good idea…

But the subtitle is something else. Dave Briggs’ Online Diary. That really is crap. I really need to get some ideas of what this blog is about. OK, so it’s pretty varied stuff a lot of the time, but there are two main threads here: blogging and books. So, a subtitle is needed that incorporate’s these things. I need to give it some though – will update later, and of course any suggestions are welcome.

Great link from Ken Leebow’s Blogging About Incredible Blogs, er, blog.

It’s called Don’t Blog, and is very amusing.

Like this:

Bloggers abandon their families as they compulsively blog. One result: “blog widows.” Common activities:

• Apologizing to friends for all the “blog talk.”
• Arguing for quality time for the relationship, for the kids.
• Learning the blogging lingo just to be able to talk to their other.
• Accompanying their blogger to real world blog meetups, just for the support of other blog widows.
• Worst: trying out blogging.
• Who is going to start Bloganon for the families of hard core blog addicts?

I have just posted to the Link Blog about the results of a poll run by Phil Bradley, which contained some quite revealing, and surprising, results.

Well worth checking out.

Phil Bradley points out a useful link on the topic at The Two Way Web.

edit: Google Watch discusses the issue.

Good in depth article here. Link from OS News.

I started using .NET when it was in technical preview at the beginning of 2000; at that time it was called COM+2 and the main language was something called Cool. The framework briefly became Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS) before some marketing wonk came up with a term that really would confuse Internet search engines: .NET. How many times have you been asked what .NET means and what relationship it has to .COM and .ORG? Of course, Cool faired no better. Some bright spark decided to call it C#, which initially confused search engines and users alike. The search engines did not like the # character and the users did not know how to pronounce it (C-pound? Or for those of us on the eastern side of the Atlantic, C-hash?). Almost the first thing I posted on the technical preview newsgroups was a simple console application in Cool, and its equivalent in Java with the rhetoric question to spot the difference. That solicited a robust response from the Visual Studio Product Manager who didn’t really see the point that I was making.

Jason Kottke has given up his job and is going to live off the proceeds of his blog.

I’ve been self-publishing on the web for almost 10 years now, first with a little site on my school’s web server, then on various ISP accounts, then 0sil8, and finally kottke.org for the last 7 years (almost). Looking back on it all, this little hobby of mine has been the most rewarding, pleasurable, maddening, challenging thing in my life. I’ve met so many nice, good people, formed valued relationships with some of them, traveled to distant lands (and New Jersey), procured jobs & other business opportunities, discovered new interests, music, movies & books, and lots of other stuff, all for putting a little bit of me out there for people to see.

And yet, I almost quit last spring. The site was getting out of hand and wasn’t fun anymore. It was taking me away from my professional responsibilities, my social life, and my relationship with my girlfriend. There was no room in my life for it anymore. As you can imagine, thinking of quitting what had been the best thing in my life bummed me right the hell out.

After thinking about it for a few weeks, I had a bit of an epiphany. The real problem was the tension between my web design career and my self-publishing efforts; that friction was unbalancing everything else. One of them had to go, and so I decided to switch careers and pursue the editing/writing of this site as a full-time job.

I am seriously jealous that he can even consider this. I seem to spend a greater and greater amount of time on my blog, and I have been running for months, let alone years. I dread to think how many blogs I will have to read after ayear of this, and even if I just comment on a few and link blog the rest, it’ll still take up a large chunk of my time, which as an ‘amateur’ – by which I mean not only that I don’t blog for a living but that I am not in a job where blogging is exactly part of my job description… – I don’t have a great deal of.

Here’s some other views on this:

• Steve Rubel
• Guardian Online Blog
• Guardian News Blog

More to come as I see them.

The BBC just got round to commenting on the Google Toolbar 3 upset, so maybe I ought to quickly post a summation of what’s happening.

Search engine firm Google has released a trial tool which is concerning some net users because it directs people to pre-selected commercial websites.

The AutoLink feature comes with Google’s latest toolbar and provides links in a webpage to Amazon.com if it finds a book’s ISBN number on the site.

It also links to Google’s map service, if there is an address, or to car firm Carfax, if there is a licence plate.

Google said the feature, available only in the US, “adds useful links”.

But some users are concerned that Google’s dominant position in the search engine market place could mean it would be giving a competitive edge to firms like Amazon.

Steve Rubel first, to my knowledge, picked up on the similarity to this and another technology called SmartTags which Microsoft were blasted for trying to introduce into Internet Explorer some time ago.

How come nobody is crying foul here? Remember all the heat Microsoft took over its planned Smart Tags feature a few years ago? Gary alludes to it, but I think that there should be more discussion here. Let’s face it, Google is to the Web what Microsoft is to PCs – the operating system everyone uses to search. It has nearly the same lock on consumers’ share of mind (sorry Yahoo). And millions use the Google Toolbar. They shouldn’t get away with what Microsoft was unable to. It’s not fair and it shows that no matter what Google does, they can do no wrong in the eyes of the American public – at least for now. Could you imagine the uproar if Microsoft had tried this with the new MSN Toolbar Suite?

Make sure you visit the post in question as Steve provides loads of useful links in his post.

Dave Winer also makes various good points:

I’m talking with Google PR people later today. To summarize what I said in the podcast, the question is where is the line, what’s permissible content modification and what’s not? Certainly there is a line, right? We don’t mind them changing the font or size of our text, or even converting it to voice to make it accessible to deaf people. Then, the question of trust comes up. When Google bought Blogger, they stated clearly that they would not do anything to tilt the table in favor of Blogger, but shortly after, within weeks, they broke that promise, ironically, using the Google Toolbar. Even worse, they would not engage in dialog. Those were very difficult times, and the people who were responsible may not even be at Google now. Who knows. But the fact is, you can’t go by corporate promises in areas like this, and even if you could, their promises are not binding on other companies. It all may sound theoretic, but I’ve been around this block many times over many years. You have to have a sense where the line is, and not budge one inch. As I said in the podcast, we’ll likely have some powerful allies on this one, it’s content vs technology, the First Amendment and commerce, free speech and money (lots of it).

Scoble then weighed in:

SmartTags and things that add links to content are seen by users as helpful, content producers as evil, and tools makers as strategic. This is one time where the users are not right. Content producers’ rights must be protected (yes, I know I am hypocritical there because of my stance on RSS, but we need to look at prior usage of HTML vs. RSS. That’s real important to do. RSS has ALWAYS been repurposed. It’s a syndication format. HTML, on the other hand, has never had links added to it by big companies. When big companies change the usage model of HTML they are playing on dangerous ground).

Hmm. Pretty clear on the issue of web content. It’s a good point that Scoble make about most users being happy about this – for the majority of surfers, they would consider it to be a real bonus that they don’t have to copy and paste details from one site to another.

But a website owener has to be able to control where his or her links go. If I make my money through adverts to (say) BOL, I don’t, and BOL wouldn’t want, links popping up to Amazon stores. And who would get the credit for passing the business to Amazon? Not me, I’d wager.

Jason Kottke’s ‘analogue palm pilot‘:

It’s simple, and it works. Always the best way.

Melanie Phillips has picked up on Iain Duncan Smith’s article in The Guardian.

Phillips, I shoud point out, is someone I read for the same reason people pick scabs. It irritating, slightly painful, but nevertheless weirdly addictive.

Anyway, her point is that:

blogging democratises the national conversation by providing an alternative discourse to the world view of the left, which the mainstream media (MSM) regards as the neutral middle ground. This warped perception means not only that it presents news through a distorting prism, but that by definition it cannot acknowledge that it is distorted, thus creating a closed thought process. This phenomenon is what leaves the BBC, in particular, unable to fulfil its public service obligation to objectivity and fairness.

Zzzzz. Typical wittering about media bias. The British media has always been biaised towards the party in government. There weren’t many complainst from the Tories during the 80s about not getting enough screen time.

Throughout Phillips seems to take delight in using words like ‘blogosphere’ but clearly doesn’t understand what she is talking about. She doesn’t even allow trackbacks on her posts, let alone comments. Where’s the relationship building here? To me, this is hectoring to a dumb audience who can’t respond.

For political blogs to work, they have to encourage participation. This means making facilities like trackbacks and comments available and taking the time to monitor and respond to them, and to sort out problems when they occur. Otherwise, how does the ‘blog’ differ from any other website?

Heh, well, I’m pretty chuffed. My Ten Thoughts on Successful Blogging was linked by Mr Scoble himself. Many thanks to him for that.

Now, if I have more visitors here, I might need to think up something interesting to say. Gah! Any ideas?