Gerry McKiernan has started another blog, this one called Mobile Libraries.
Subscribed.
I just finished listening to episode 64 of CBC's Spark, and it began with a couple of really interesting interviews with people who are turning new media into old (ie. newspapers or magazines).
Ben Terret and his friend Russell collected their favourite blog posts from 2008 and arranged to have them printed on actual newsprint in a project called Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008. But what struck me was his idea of how this could be personalized. Imagine tagging blog posts during the week or month and saving them to delicious. On Sunday morning, delivered to your house would be a newspaper containing the text of all those blog posts. I would pay good money for something like that! There are a bunch of bloggers who write lengthy posts that I don't give enough time to fully digest. The screen is bite-sized media - I always have to move on to something else. But if I had something printed, laid out by a graphic designer, I think I would spend a lot more time on these thoughtful posts. Actually, there must be some utility that will do something similar to this and allow me to print on my home printer - anyone? Oh wait, read on...
The second interview was with Dan Pacheco, who has a similar idea in a website / service called Printcasting. This time the print format is a newspaper, magazine or newsletter, but locally targeted. It will be supported by local advertising, and "they'll only pay for the ads that run in Printcasts that we know are delivered." Here's the full FAQ on the service, which is scheduled to launch in Bakersfield, CA in March. Looks like they'll take some time before it's available worldwide - guess they're really sticking with that local angle. Oooh, but at the very end of the FAQ they mention that "Printcasting will be developed as an open source product, meaning anyone will be able to download and use the software for free." Cool.
And more Kindle news. Earlier this month I found out my blog was available for purchase via the Kindle store. MakeUseOf.com has a post about how you can subscribe to RSS feeds on the Kindle for free using Kindlefeeder.com.
Act fast though, as the following notice appears on the kindlefeeder home page:
Someone has brought it to my attention that scheduling feed delivery on kindlefeeder.com may violate the Amazon Kindle's terms of service. Please read this blog post on TeleRead for details.
I've written Amazon's legal department for clarification. Until I receive a response, kindlefeeder.com's automated delivery feature will remain available.
Ha! My Google rank's going to go up with a headline like that! Dave Pattern of the University of Huddersfield recently launched a new library blog-monitoring tool called HotStuff 2.0. HotStuff 2.0 monitors the RSS feeds of over 800 library related blogs, and analyzes the content
in an attempt to discover new and/or interesting topics... a daily blog post is generated using a single word that has seen a marked increase in usage over the last few days. A “Word Wheel” image shows the strength of the links between that word and other words that have also recently seen an increase in usage. This can sometimes help to put to the words into context, but mostly it’s just an excuse for some eye candy!
Just for fun, every day the last 3 blog posts from each blog are analysed to give a “Hot or Not” score. Points are gained for using words that haven’t been used frequently in the past, but lost for using words that are declining in popularity. You can see the current scores on the Hot or Not page!
Some fun and interesting stuff to be found by poking around. Today's word of the day is "stewardship":
You may recall that last year I discussed some options I was considering for commercialization of this blog. I have gotten one $25 payment from Newstex in the last year, so my content's obviously trickling out there somehow. Just got a notice that I'm now available in the Amazon Kindle store, where you can now subscribe to me for $.99 per month! I didn't set the price, and obviously I don't suggest you pay to receive my content when you can get it here for free. But I guess if you live and die by your Kindle you now have the option. :-)
I missed this when it was first "announced", but apparently the first RSS to email utility that I fell in love with is no more. About a year and a half ago, NBC purchased Rmail and rebranded it as SendMeRSS. Apparently NBC just stopped supporting it; the SendMeRSS website is down, and Randy Charles Morin, the original developer of Rmail, is reporting that NBC is threatening legal action against him for pointing out the fact that they're no longer supporting SendMeRSS. Seems a little heavy-handed, eh? Interestingly, in his post from August 24, 2008 Randy points to a library blog that detailed some of the problems being experienced with the now defunct product. Scarily, that blog no longer exists, though of course you can still read about the problems (and here) on Google's cache. Pittland simply ceased to exist after the last August 1, 2008 post. Wonder if I'll be next? ;-)
Since it was one of the first RSS to email options I offered on this site I suspect there may be a few folks either receiving (or not) content from me via that channel. I'd be really interested to hear whether you're still getting stuff from me, or NBC, or ? I know it's a long shot, kinda like "raise your hand if you're not here", but it's worth a shot :-)
Saw a mention of AideRSS go by on Twitter the other day, and just tried it out. The idea is great - give
AideRSS a blog URL and it purports to sift through all the posts and then offer separate feeds to you so you can subscribe to only the "best post" the "great", "good" or all the posts (the naked feed, if you will). Supposedly it's a way to deal with overload, by only getting the best of the posts from the bloggers you want to follow. Sounds great, right?
Maybe, but IMHO they've got some work to do on their algorithms. With someting like this I like to compare myself to someone I know is a "better" blogger. In this case I picked Meredith at Information Wants to be Free. Yeah, we blog differently, but AideRSS appears to place a lot of weight on how many links and how much of a conversation a given blog post has. In that case Meredith definitely blows me away. And yet, here are the screenshots of her blog and mine. Take a look at the highlighted sections. Any rhyme or reason there? Look how many posts, saves and comments her posts have, and she doesn't even get a "best posts" category! Maybe they're placing way more weight on # of recent posts than they should? (click for bigger versions)
By all means go give it a try - maybe it'll be useful to you.
The timing couldn't be better as I'm updating a presentation on Blogs and RSS. Technorati has posted the 2008 State of the Blogosphere report. While changing it up each year is interesting (this year they're kinda focusing on blogger demographics and blogging for profit), I wish they'd keep the basic stats going consistently from year to year :-/ Near as I can tell Technorati claims we're up to 133,000,000 blogs indexed by them. In the 2007 report that number was only 70,000,000. I sure would've like to include an updated graph showing the continuing rising curve like the one shown in 2007. I'm not gonna make one myself!
Well there are no frills at all, but it'll deliver RSS content to your email: Feed My Inbox. I like SendMeRSS and Feedburner's solutions better.
David Rothman just posted a wonderful list of his Favorite RSS Resources and Tools. You'll get links on
"...NewsGator also announced that all of its client RSS reader products are now available free of charge and include free synchronization along with other services." Full press release here.
Might have to give them a looksee - I seem to recall that one of our databases only allows RSS feeds to work within Newsgator - maybe Factiva? I'll try to follow up on that, but right now I'm out the door.
Technorati Tags: NewsGator, RSS
To go along with their other ...in plain English series, Common Craft has released a new paperwork video entitled Blogs in Plain English.
D'Arcy Norman in our Teaching and Learning Centre appears to have had some spare time over the past couple days and has unleashed an altruistic project upon the citizens of Calgary - CalgaryBlogs.net. The front page of the site reads:
CalgaryBlogs.net is a free weblog hosting service. There are no ads, and no subscription fees. What’s the catch? There isn’t, really. I had some spare space on a server, and threw a copy of the excellent open source WordPress Multiuser blogging software on it. If you want a blog, help yourself. I do reserve the right to nuke any spam splogs and link farms. Assume your mother/firstborn/spouse/boss will read your blog. The only rule at the moment is “don’t be evil.”So hey, if you're a Calgarian, were a Calgarian, or maybe even wanna be a Calgarian, why not sign up? Tons of themes available - easy customization, and you can't beat the price, eh? Thanks, D'Arcy! (Wonder how we can get an announcement about this into Facebook w/o paying for ads...)
Oh this is good - saw someone reference the Blog Readability Test (what level of education is required to understand your blog?) and of course plugged mine in to learn:
Then just for fun I grabbed the first blogger I thought of who actually writes, and this is what Meredith at Information Wants to be Free gets:
That's absolutely hilarious. I suppose it could be a compliment that she writes so well more people can understand... Make up your own mind if you want to trust this tool :-)
