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!