Category: blogNews

Feeds switch

I’m going to try using summaries in my feeds for a while. I plan to track the stats and see if it matters in my traffic count.

I sort of resent it when I have to click through from my RSS reader to get the rest of a post. But I’m doing it to you anyway. It’s an act of desperation.

I’m going to try using summaries in my feeds for a while. I plan to track the stats and see if it matters in my traffic count.

I sort of resent it when I have to click through from my RSS reader to get the rest of a post. But I’m doing it to you anyway. It’s an act of desperation.

OK. Maybe I’m not actually desperate. I just want to try it out and see if it makes any difference. Will I lose visits? Will my visits increase?

Will YOU hate it or not even notice? If you hate it (or love it) (or don’t give a fig) (or whatever) I’d like to know. Thank you. Thank you.

Organizing topics for blog posts

I post here, I create a daily writing prompt at First 50 Words, I post twice a week at BlogHer I write a number of how-to articles each month for eHow, I come up with a weekly writing prompt for a group at Elderwoman Space and I just agreed to do a twice monthly stint as the “Elder Geek” for Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By. Good grief, no wonder I’m always in search of a topic.

I scour the news, blogs, newspapers, magazines and everything else that passes before my eyes for ideas. Once I see the germ of an idea, I need a way to save the idea for future use, and to start building resources around the idea that will help me elaborate on it when I’m ready to write a full post.

Several tools are available that can help you organize your ideas as a blogger. I have a favorite.

Many people may prefer delicious or digg for organizing links to posts of interest that you want to blog about, but I like Tumblr. With any of these, you can save a link to a post of interest and have an easy way to go back later to find the information when you are ready to write. Here’s my Tumblr page, if you want to see how I’m using it.

I used to keep a text file of ideas for various blog sites I write for, but now I keep it all on Tumblr.

The reason I like Tumblr is that I can add so much information when saving the link that will help me remember why I saved it and what I was thinking about. I leave notes for myself to document how I’m hoping to use the link and how I want to connect it to something else I’ve saved. It’s a little like commenting your code.

saving a link on Tumblr

The dialog that opens when you Share on Tumblr has all sorts of helpful options that help organize ideas and save quotes or other information about the idea.

Tumblr pages are searchable. The one feature I’d like to see at Tumblr is the addition of a tab in the Share on Tumblr dialog window for tags. I put a semblance of tags in the description because I know what I’ll want to search for later. But tags would be an improvement.

One other tool I’m beginning to explore is StumbleUpon. So far, I’m using it to save pages I think are really cool for one reason or another and I’d like to spread the link around for other people to enjoy, too. I’m not using it to collect information I might want to refer to later.

I’d like to hear about the idea saving tools you think are helpful, and why they are especially useful to you. For example, is anyone finding StumbleUpon useful for  idea collecting, or are you using it to spread the word about good sites the way I am?

What’s hot here and at eHow

Here are my most popular articles at eHow right now:

And right here at home, these articles at Web Teacher are getting the most attention:

Giveaway: Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Classroom in a Book

Dreamweaver CS4 Classroom in a Book Get a copy of Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Classroom in a Book absolutely free. Leave a comment with a good email address (in case you win) and tell me how this book could help you.

I’ll pick a winner in a few days. The process will be random. If your comment gets picked, I’ll contact you by email for a mailing address and send you the book. Easy. Free. Great deal, go for it.

One rule: I’ll only ship to and address in the United States. Sorry, but that’s how it is.

December 11, 2008: THE WINNER IS SELECTED AND HAS BEEN NOTIFIED. DO NOT SUBMIT ANY MORE COMMENTS TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE GIVEAWAY.

The number 14 was the random pick, which means the winner was David J. Dahl. Enjoy the book, David.

Useful Links: History of HTML, end of life for print?, social media and recorded history, slowblogging, and Useful Links in general

HTML History on the ESW Wiki at the w3.org site may be useful to teachers. I can’t find any explanation of what ESW means, but the wiki purpose is

for connecting the people who make the specs with the people who build on them. Pages here have no formal status but may have WikiConsensus. Questions & answers here may be misleading, or just plain wrong. Or, they may be useful.

There’s an RSS feed.

PC Magazine Goes Web Only. It started  in 1982. The last print issue will be Jan. 09. This is on the heels of similar announcements from US News and World Report and Christian Science Monitor. The times, they are a changin’.

5 Ways Social Media Will Change Recorded History by Ben Parr at Mashable talks about how the plethora of available information created by social media will change recorded history. One of his conclusions:

It’s often said that history is recorded by the victors. Now history is recorded by computers and anybody can pick up that data and come to their own conclusion. The study of history will dramatically change as more and more people use and rely upon social media for daily interaction. No diary, history book, or recording can compare to the data available through social media. My belief is that social media may prove to be as pivotal as the printing press in the study of history.

Haste, Scorned. Blogging at a Snail’s Pace about a movement toward slowblogging. Slowbloggers post less and think more deeply. One comment really struck me as significant:

Technology is partly to blame. Two years ago, if a writer wanted to share a link or a video with friends or tell them about an upcoming event, he or she would post the information on a blog. Now it’s much faster to type 140 characters in a Twitter update (also known as a tweet), share pictures on Flickr, or use the news feed on Facebook. By comparison, a traditional blogging program like WordPress can feel downright glacial.

In evaluating my own blogging habits in light of the paragraph just quoted, I thought about my Useful Links posts. These really are a kind of mental bookmarking process for me, a way to keep what I want to remember here in one place. But I’m using Tumblr to store links I know I’ll want to return to for one reason or another. I’m using StumbleUpon to share links to pages that I think are excellent and worthy of notice by others. I’m using Twitter to share links and stay in contact with people. Should these useful links posts be retired from service? Are they at the end of life just like the print magazines mentioned earlier?

Are these posts of useful links only useful to me, or do you find them helpful as well?