odd-lot thoughts

Study: Training Executives Believe Interpersonal Effectiveness Training Works

2006-02-14T11:24:00.000-05:00

Now this is getting scary! From Chief Learning Officer

A research study released reveals business trends in Interpersonal Effectiveness Training (IET). Interpersonal effectiveness is the ability to create productive interactions and maintain positive working relationships. The study of corporate training executives confirms their belief that IET is effective. Most researched companies integrate IET into a broader program such as leadership development and use Social Style, Myers-Briggs or DiSC as a tool for IET training.

Are we that starved for metrics that we need to put up bogus numbers like these?

73 percent of training professionals believe Interpersonal Effectiveness Training works.
More than 94 percent confirm the importance of interpersonal skills in building and maintaining co-worker relationships, communicating effectively, managing conflict and retaining valued employees.

Emphasis mine. What about the numbers that show this stuff actually works?

Sorry, I just don't buy it.

Why train if there's no purpose?

2006-02-09T14:35:00.000-05:00

I just read this in the latest Training Directors Forum e-net, and it just made me want to smack someone. This is a subscription newsletter (but it's free) so I'm quoting the entry here:

4. CHALLENGE: DON'T WANT TRAINING?

"After seven years, 99 percent of workers have been trained with mandatory and beginning computer classes," a reader says. However, the reader also teaches intermediate and advanced computer classes, and most employees are not taking these classes Â for the following reasons:

They do not feel they will need or use the features covered in the courses.
It is hard for trainees to find time to attend classes.
Trainees' bosses say that they do not need to take the classes.
The reader says classes are free of charge, so money is not a factor. Can others help with ideas regarding:
How to generate interest in intermediate and advanced computer classes?
How long should the classes be (one hour, two ... )?
Typical saturation points for such courses?

Come on, folks. Get real! If a) they have no time and b) they don't need it, why is someone trying to get people to want this?

This is a symptom of the typical competency-driven approach. Somebody decided that employees needed to have a certain skill level, and they're gonna make them train and train, until they get it, or they get the checkmark that says they got it.

If employees don't think they need it, they obviously don't. Believe me, they'll tell you want they need.

And there's plenty more things they do need that they're not getting to worry about unneeded stuff like this.

This is also a symptom of some poor schnook trying to justify a job as a trainer, instead of focusing on the larger goal of helping people do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

I don't entirely blame the person who wrote this plea -- the system is broken. Time for organizations to get a clue.

Keeping an Opinmind

2005-12-28T10:21:00.000-05:00

I recently ran across an interesting new blog search engine, called Opinmind ("opin" as in "opinion"). This is a site that gathers opinions from blogs, and sorts them into pros and cons. They include a "sentimeter" to gauge the overall reaction.

I thought I'd check out some terms used in the instructional design field and see how they did. This is a new search engine, so the results vary widely and wildly. But it was fun to check out.

online learning Pro:47%
training Pro:70%
corporate training Pro: 33% (only 3 results)
simulations Pro:60%
WebCT Pro:33% (9 results)
Blackboard Pro:47% (includes results for the old-fashioned blackboard)

Terms not found:

web-based training
informal learning
connectivism
performance support (sigh)
workflow learning

If you're blogging, you can submit your site at the bottom of any search results page.

Let's get to work, people!

Be careful out there -- a blogger gets sued.

2005-08-29T07:04:00.000-04:00

There's some controversy swirling around the blog world the last few days. Apparently, a blogger is being sued over comments someone left on one of his blogs. Amy Gahran's post on this subject is one of the most comprehensive I've found. This issue is understandably making a lot of bloggers nervous and concerned, and has sparked a lot of conversations about liability, libel, and free speech. Some bloggers are seriously considering turning off the comment function in their blogs.

We bloggers do have to be concerned and aware of this problem, but turning off comments in an effort to play it safe would be a mistake. Here's why.

Comments on blogs are one of the ways we hear what others want to say to us. Yes, we'll also hear from a few wackos, spammers, and other internet creatures of the night. But those problems can be mitigated and they do not outweigh the value gained.

We can't play it safe, anyway. There's just no way of knowing who will be offended by something and no way of completely bullet-proofing your blog. Even staying silent has its risks, as the Kryptonite lock company discovered.

Blogging is still a new phenomenon and there will be problems, like this bullying by lawsuit, which will arise and be worked out in the days to come.

Blogger takes steps to combat spam

2005-08-19T07:30:00.000-04:00

I've noticed that Blogger blogs have started being hit by peculiar spam messages about stock picks. They're peculiar because they have no links in them, and no URLs are mentioned, either. Instead, they consist of long screeds about how important it is to snap up shares of some stock that's poised to "REVOLUTIONIZE" some industry or other.

I'm sure the lack of links is due to the different anti-spam protocols, such as Spam Karma. These use the number of links in a comment as one way of filtering out possible spam.

Well, Blogger isn't ready to implement blacklists or spam filters yet, but they're taking a step in the right direction in at least stopping bots from spreading destruction, with their new word verification for comments.

I can't figure out what these peculiar spams are supposed to do, though. Do spammers really think they're effective? Don't they know that on the web, no one will ever read the comments because they're just too long!

Blogger and FTP

2005-08-18T11:22:00.000-04:00

I recently created a weblog using Blogger, but I thought I'd try hosting it on my own site. Yes, I've plunked down dollars so that I could have a neat sandbox to play in and explore stuff such as blogs, wikis, whatever.

The Blogger interface for creating a weblog can't be beat. It gets a little more complicated when you want to host the blog yourself, however. I thought I was doing everything right, but I couldn't see the blog -- just that directory view you get when there's nothing at home, and no index or default html page. I hate seeing that -- it's like seeing underwear.

It turned out that I had the ftp path incorrect. I should have omitted the "www" part in the path name. But Blogger gave me no indication that anything was wrong. It seemed to publish fine, and gave me success messages! So where did those uploads go? I wonder if there's a server somewhere out there with my initial efforts stashed away?

Once I corrected my ftp path, I was golden. The weblog is now up for all to see, except that it's in stealth mode at the moment. I haven't linked to anyone, or pinged anyone, so I haven't been "outed" yet.

I imagine Google could spider my site and find it, though. I'll have to see if that happens at any point.

I'm also experimenting with Word Press. It's an open source blog app, and it's pretty good too. But the posting interface is a bit more techy than some people would prefer. No wysiwyg editor, or "compose" mode, as Blogger calls it.

That's fine with me, it's still got little buttons to save on that tedious typing of code. For example, it has buttons for creating bullets and numbered lists. However, they're labeled "ol" and "ul."

Luckily, I know what those mean. And there may be a more novice-friendly posting interface in WordPress that I just haven't found yet. But I wonder -- how useful would a "ul" button be to the novice? And is that a barrier that we want to keep up? If I wanted a group blog for students, for example, I think I'd go with Blogger over WordPress.

But WordPress does have features, and more control. That's always the trade-off, and probably always will be.

Keeping the blogging conversation going

2005-07-01T15:41:00.000-04:00

I use an aggregator (Bloglines) to read my blogs, and one of the problems I have with it is that I tend not to read the comments very often, since I don't visit the actual site. I miss this, but find I'm addicted to the speed at which I can check my 68 blogs in an aggregator.

Some blogs have RSS feeds for comments, but they don't make much sense to me either, since they're not attached to the post.

I've noticed that what some folks do when comments on their blogs get interesting, is create a post about the comments. This is a clever idea, and one that almost always gets me to click on the post and read.

I ran across one great example of this in Michael Feldstein's blog, e-Literate.

He posted his opinion about the LMS Sakai. I don't really know much about this and it's not something on my personal radar at the moment, so I only quickly read the article. But then, a few days later, he posted about the great comments he'd been getting from some of the Sakai developers.

Then my interest was piqued. I had to check it out.

Ok, I still don't get a lot of the details about Sakai, but I loved the way people were posting comments. There was some great back-and-forth, with developers offering their views, Michael posting replies which acknowledged them, and continued the conversation.

An excellent example of the way these things should work!

I'm still thinking about how to nudge myself to check out comments more often. If you're not reading the comments and commenting yourself, you're missing out on half the fun in my opinion.

Google AdSense

2005-03-18T12:18:00.000-05:00

There's been a lot of chatter in the blogs I read about Google AdSense. Apparently some folks have made good money from it. Although it was hard to tell, I did have some Google ads at the bottom of the page of this blog. But after reading this post from PCPitStop, one of my favorite sites for checking out my computer's performance, I decided I don't want to participate in AdSense any more. Not that Google will care, of course. But I do.

Here's a quote:

Google has a squeaky clean reputation for "being nice", staying clear of the dirty doings of web hucksters that push adware, spyware, and other worthless products. But does it deserve that clean reputation? Google Adwords advertising has become a favorite of scumballs looking for their next victims. Google must surely be aware of the problem, yet it has done nothing to stop it. PC Pitstop users have been bitten by Adwords and they let us know about it in no uncertain terms. How long before Google Adwords become synonymous with scams, ruining what Google pioneered?

Ads for blogs is an interesting topic. More and more blogs have them. And more and more will have them. One thing I liked about the Google ads was that you could choose to have the text ads, instead of obnoxious, flashing, focus-destroying ads. Another blog I read, Boing Boing, has started putting ads in their RSS feed. And even though they're text ads, I can't stand them, so I took them out of my aggregator. I find it very intrusive to have an ad after every post -- especially when the post is only a few lines. I still read the blog, but I read it from the site, when I think of it, and with images turned off. Not that they care. But I do.

Podcasting: Amy Gahran adds her voice

2005-01-02T09:58:00.000-05:00

It was neat to hear Contentious creator Amy Gahran's first podcast. She's had a series of articles about the phenomenon, collected in her Voices, Blogs, thread, which are well worth reading.

In this podcast she explains some of her objections to the term "podcasting." The reason which resonates most with me is when she talks about the mistake tying the name of a medium to a particular device, since devices and technology are ephemeral. Good point.

And her line about a possible future device made me laugh out loud.

I have no problem with the name podcasting, myself, although I can see how some people might be put off. Something that sounds like it came from a science fiction movie is not necessarily a bad thing. I think the name is actually part of what attracted the early adopters -- techy types who love to play as much with the devices as with the output. It's a clever turn of phrase, a twist on "broadcasting," and sounds like a cool hack. But that name will be a hinderance to catching the imagination and interest of the majority of people. In a sense, it's a usability issue.

I hope we'll be hearing more from Amy. I thought her podcast was fine and sounded just the right note -- not slick like a radio DJ, but still organized and professional.

Podcatching with Otis

2004-12-16T13:25:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, you just have to work with what you've got. I have two small devices which can play MP3 files: my Audible Otis, and my Tungsten T3.

For some reason, my T3 seems to balk at playing larger MP3 files, so I use that for my Audible.com downloads, which are in a secret format only Audible knows, and for my regular tunes.

I use the Otis for podcasts. While I can't do the slick sync that iPod users can do, I can get darn close. And I don't have to hack the software to delete files, either.

Here's how to get this to work:
(As stated in my last post, I use Doppler to download the podcasts.)

If you wish, created a folder (such as "podcasts") for those podcasts in Audible Manager Personal Library by right-clicking on "Personal Library" in the folders view on the left, and selecting "create subfolders." Note: Once you have created this folder, go back to the "audio" folder. You'll see why, later. Or you can just use the already created "Audio" folder.
Tell Audible Manager to watch the Doppler folders for new content and add it to the podcast folder, like so:
a. On the menu, click "Tools," then "Watch Folders." This brings up the Audible Manager options box.
b. Click the "add folders" button and browse to the folder with the MP3s you wish to import.
c. Once you've selected the folder to watch, change the location of the folder the files will be imported to. The default is "audio." If that's ok, you're fine. If you created a new folder, click the "change" button to navigate to the new folder. Note: If you don't get an "ok" button once you've selected the folder, you've found a bug in the software. You need to go back to the note in step 1.
Click "OK" to finish.

Now, whenever you open the Audible Manager, it will import the new podcasts you've downloaded through Doppler into the Manager. From here, you can add them to your Otis in the same fashion as the regular Audible files.

One last note about Otis and podcasts -- I've found that if I stop a podcast, I'm back at the beginning when I re-start, unless I hit "pause" instead of stop, and then press and hold the stop button until Otis shuts off completely (about 5 seconds). That's the only way I've been able to save my place.

It ain't pretty but it works.

Podcatching without an iPod

2004-12-06T07:21:00.000-05:00

I don't have an iPod, and I've got better things to spend that kind of money on. So until I get a raise, here's what I do to find and automatically download podcasts.

Finding podcasts
Two of the best sources for podcasts are Podcast Alley and ipodder.

ipodder has an extensive directory, maintained by volunteers, arranged by category. This is the site started by two of the main instigators of the podcasting phenomenon, Dave Winer and Adam Curry. At ipodder, you'll find the resources they mention in their podcasts.

However, Podcast Alley is the better site for folks new to podcasting. What I like about this site is that there are brief descriptions of the podcasts. That way, I can get an idea of whether or not I'd like to subscribe to that podcast feed.

Podcast Alley also has a good overview of the available software for automating downloads of podcasts.

Downloading podcasts
The best way to get podcasts is, as with blogs, through an aggregator. Sure, you can go to every site you like, and check daily and then manually hit the download link. But that's heavy lifting, in my opinion. Best to find the podcasts you like and put them all together in one tool which searches, and then downloads into a directory you specify.

I use Doppler. It's a very user-friendly and free application. And what I really like about it is that I can tell it to sync content to my Windows media player. This automatically puts the titles into my media library, so I don't have to go hunting.

Before you start downloading using Doppler, it's important to set the options. Go to Tools, Options from the menu. First select the folder into which you'd like the mp3 files downloaded. Then, to add a feed, here's what I do:

Get the URL of a feed to add.
Click the Add a Feed button.
Copy the URL into the URL field.
Check the box for "Only download last ___ podcasts, and change the number to "1."
Click "Enable playlist support."
Check the box for "Add to Microsoft Windows Media Player."

That's it!

Now, one thing I haven't seen or even heard mention of in any podcast aggregators, is an easy way to delete files once you've heard them. That still requires heavy lifting, unfortunately.

Next time I'll write about my experiences with my crappy little Otis player. It does podcasts, after a fashion.

Podcasting

2004-11-19T07:35:00.000-05:00

Well, the best laid plans... oft gang agley, as Browning said.

After deciding I was going to go on a blogging spree, I immediately became ill, and didn't write a word until a few days ago. And that post, for the blog CT ISPI Eye, netted me about 500 words, (now more -- check out the gauge!)or 1% of my goal. Doesn't look good.

But, the good thing about being sick is that it gives me time to think. And stare into space. Or the TV. Usually, the TV is on a lot while I'm sick. But this time, instead of watching the junk on the boob tube, I got to listen to a lot of new audio content syndicated over the web. I'm talking about podcasting.

I've been watching this phenomenon grow quickly.

What is it? In a nutshell, it's creating an audio file which, via the magic of RSS, can be automatically downloaded to a computer and then installed on an iPod. That way you can time-shift audio content automatically, the same way people with Tivos can time-shift TV. Wikipedia has a good definition of podcasting as does Phil Windley.

However, you actually don't need an iPod in order to participate -- any MP3 player will play the file. I have an Otis, which is something I got when I signed up with Audible.com. I can't yet automatically sync the new content with my player, but I can still put it on Otis and listen in my car, or while brushing my teeth, or while being sick and staring into space.

From what I've seen, the major buzz about Podcasting has come from people such as:

At least, this is where I read & heard about it first.
The links above are to their blogs, not to any specific post about podcasting.

And for us instructional design folks, here's a list from Stephen Downes.

Podcasting fascinates me for two reasons:

It's a cool, geeky thing that even I can understand.
It's another way for me to ride that tsunami of info and content that I love to surf.

Here is an excellent overview of podcasting done by Amy Gahran. (This woman is one of the best writers I've ever had the pleasure to come across -- her posts are always insightful and wonderfully written.)

I plan on writing more about podcasting in the next few days, including details on how I got the podcasts to almost sync to my crappy little Otis player -- meaning I made it "semi-automatic" with just one manual step.

NaBloWriMo Update

2004-10-28T07:05:00.000-04:00

Ok, for my personal rip-off of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which I'm calling NaBloWriMo,* I have now found a slightly more high-tech and complicated way to do my word count.

Since there's a problem with Blogger, and I can't rely on the word count in my profile, I need to do it manually. However, I did find a cool graphic to use to show that word count. It's now on the sidebar of this blog.

Some one who I believe is named Jeff Lee created a NaNoWriMo progress meter, and is making it available to the NaNoWriMo (and stealth NaBloWriMo) community. I still have to paste in text, and ASCII text, to boot, but I don't have to update the graphic. That should happen automatically.

I hope.

We'll see how it works.

I just learned that 50,000 words is about 6-7 pages of printed material per day. Yikes! There's almost certainly no way I can do that this month, but I'm still keeping that as my goal. If I just say "I'm going to write as many words as I can in a month," I won't do as well because I can define that to be any number I want.

______________
*Unless anyone's got a better idea for a catchy title!

Email subscriptions vs RSS feeds

2004-10-26T07:07:00.000-04:00

My email subscription experiment through Bloglet is a failure. (See the post Adding Subscriptions Via Email, below).

I tested it out on myself, and found I was getting updates with the text of draft posts as well as completed posts. Blogger allows me to create a post and save it as a draft; I assume other blogging software has that feature but I don't know for sure.

Since I tried the email subscription on myself, I started getting emails when I started a draft. I tried contacting the person behind Bloglet, but no answer. So I've expunged the form from the sidebar, and unsubscribed as well.

Email subscriptions are not useful anyway, in my opinion. I subscribed via email to a few blogs which then added RSS. I'm in the process of unsubscribing to the email now. Soon most subscriptions will be offered via RSS, I hope. It's just so much easier. And RSS will be easier for new folks to set up, too.

And speaking of RSS, here's a tutorial put together by Alex Halavais, on how to subscribe to feeds using Bloglines. It's a good step by step which he put together for his students. I found this via Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion blog, which is always interesting, even though I'm not in PR or Marketing. That's might be his focus, but it's certainly not his scope.

My blogging challenge to myself

2004-10-22T07:39:00.000-04:00

I've been reading about the National Novel Writing Month, and I'm intrigued and tempted. Not because I feel a novel inside me clamoring to get out, but just because I enjoy writing. Essentially, if you join at this website, you're publicly committing to completing a 50,000 word novel in November.

And then I got a further jolt when Blogger folks decided to hook up with that event and create what they call A National Novel Blog writing month.Here they add the challenge by providing a place to showcase folks who want to try writing the novel on their blogs. I love a challenge!

But a hard look at my schedule convinced me that it would just be insane to try this (I usually consider that a plus, not a minus). But I just couldn't let that challenge lie there. So I'm going to try to write 50,000 words in November, in my blogs. I have several, not just this one, so don't panic. This blog won't be inundated with word-count drivel.

I have no idea of how difficult this will be, but I need a kick in the pants every now and then so this is it. For some bloggers, 50,000 words would probably count as a slow month. The only metric I have is the one on my Blogger profile, which shows Blogger stats, including words written. I'll take note of that on October 31st, and then on November 30th, I'll know how productive I've been.

Now I'm off to fire an email to Blogger, suggesting they create a showcase for National Blog Writing Month.

Any one else interested in participating?

Update: I just found out that there's a bug or as they like to call it, a "known issue" in the word count in Blogger. It's not getting updated at the moment. I guess I could implement a work-around and create everything in one big Word file first. But I like writing right into the create post interface of Blogger. I guess I can deal, but it's just not as much fun.

But I'll save my pouting until after November 1st when it counts more.

Adding email subscriptions to my blog

2004-10-07T07:03:00.000-04:00

My goal for this blog is to learn about blogging by doing. I know html, and I use Dreamweaver at work. I'm learning more about CSS and JavaScript as well. Those skills help me when I try something new on Blogger. I can't always figure out how to do it myself, but I can usually figure out how someone did something, and make it work for me with a minimum of fuss. I like to play around with this stuff, but I'm not a big fan of fuss (unless it's really cool; then I don't mind the fuss at all).

So the latest thing I've done, which is amazingly easy, is to add an email subscription link on the sidebar. This is to accommodate those folks who, for some reason, don't want to try an RSS aggregator, but do want some easy way to find out when there's been a new posting on the blog. They might be just starting looking at blogs, and just want to read a few, without diving headfirst into the blogstream. Or, launching headfirst into the blogoverse. Insert your overworking metaphor of choice here.

So I tried a new service called Bloglet.

This is a pretty low-profile site, as far as I can see. No indication of how many folks have tried it, or who is using it. In doing a quick search on Google, I see that Jay Cross also tried it. No mention of how it's worked or not worked for him.

I signed myself up first, and waited to see if there was any marked increase in spam. After all, I'd never heard of these folks before. No spam yet, but there are no guarantees here, folks.

(By the way, one thing I've done, just as a general measure to protect my main email from spam, is to create an email alias just for newsletters or registration that I'm not sure of. It all funnels into my email client, so it's not much hassle. So far, so good.)

When someone hits the submit button on this subscription form, as a default option, he or she is sent to a Bloglet page as a way of getting feedback that the subscription has been successful. From there, there's a link back to Odd-lot Thoughts. The subscriber also gets an email with username and password for Bloglet, and info on how to unsubscribe. It sounds straightforward enough, considering it's a third-party solution.

So I created an account, and, as in most services of this type, such as Feedburner (a way to create RSS feeds for your blog), I was walked through the process of creating the code to put in my sidebar.

Once I entered the URL of my blog, I was given the ready-made code to copy and paste into my template. This is the trickiest part for folks not familiar with html conventions. Basically, I was looking in the template for the section where it says: ‹!-- Begin #sidebar -- › That's easy enough, but you need to know just a little bit about how html tags work, so you can find the right place to stick in the new code without messing up the old.

The latest neat place I found for learning about html,and CSS is www.htmldog.com

With Blogger, the template is accessed via a tab in the blog desktop. There's no interface to help parse the code, but with Blogger you have the option to preview the change. This brings up the blog in a new window so that you can scan for damage. And, thank goodness, you also have the option of clearing all changes. This really comes in handy when I get carried away with tweaking and then forget where I dropped in the new code.

Next I want to figure out how to create my own feedback page, using only Blogger. My idea is to create a post that says in essence, "Thanks for subscribing. You'll receive an email from Bloglet with directions on how to access or change your subscription." The trick is, I don't want anyone else to see it except folks subscribing via the Bloglet form. So I'm thinking that by backdating the post to June or something, I can force it into the archives immediately. Unfortunately, I think people subscribing with an RSS aggregator will still see the post in their aggregator.

Augmented reality and what it might do

2004-09-30T07:29:00.000-04:00

I just learned today (thanks to Robert Scoble's Scobelizer blog) about a concept called "augmented reality," and the work being done by the Vienna Institute of Technology on The Invisible Train game, and their Outdoor Collaborative Augmented Reality project.

What these projects show are ways to use PDAs with a video see-through display* (and some hidden computing power) to access additional information about objects in reality, just by aiming the PDA in that general direction.

The Invisible train uses a real model train track (just the track) to play a game where virtual trains running on that track have to be kept from colliding. The only way to see the trains is through PDA video. They call this a "magic lens" type of effect.

There are pictures and more information (but I want to know even more) on the TU** links above.

This just boggles my mind! When I read this, my mind raced in several directions at once.

For starters, the Outdoor project made me think back to when I first played Myst. I became immersed in that game, and the exploration that was possible just by clicking my mouse on every object I could find. At one point in the real world I was riding in a car and thinking, "I wish I could click on that house, or that sign, and have it tell me something."

Well, with the Outdoor project, you can do just that. I want it now!

Then I started thinking of ways to incorporate that in elearning & simulations. Now, that's the true power of elearning. Not boring page-turners, using "click to continue" and claiming it's interactivity, but true action mazes and simulations coming at you from the objects themselves, only in the PDAs of those enrolled in the course.

And that reminded me of a great website called "Free-range learning."

And then I started thinking about -- what if this were combined somehow with social networking efforts, like blogging, or IM, or Furl? Who needs a list of restaurant reviews in the paper, when you can aim your PDA at the restaurant and see what others have said? (Well, you'd still need reviews, if you were planning ahead and not just wandering down the street.) But still, there are big possibilities in there. More than I can think of offhand, that's for sure.

And then what you'd have is not the world-wide web, but the web-wide world.

I want that.

__________________
* Ok, I'm not entirely sure what that is. But I hope it's something I can get for my T3.
** Technische Universitaet Vienna (Vienna Institute of Technology). Don't worry, the site is in English.

The blogging conversation continues

2004-09-27T06:48:00.000-04:00

As blogs become more popular and more prevalent, you get more conversations. Some are useful, some are just noise.

I spent some time this weekend clicking the "next blog" button on the upper-right, just to see what's out there. In the past, I've found a few good blogs that way, such as The City Birder. This time I didn't see one thing that interested me. And I found a few sites that depressed the hell out of me.

The sites that didn't interest me were either empty, or full of kid stuff -- what a day someone had in school, who likes who, who went out where, and the like. Sometimes that's fun to read, but I guess I wasn't in the mood this time. Kids wouldn't agree with me, of course.

The stuff that depressed me were what I call "link farms." Just a bunch of links and repetitive terms, obviously meant for search engines. There was one about bed-and-breakfasts, that was just a bunch of links to different sites. Each link had a paragraph of description, but the text was identical. Only the link changed -- b&bs in Georgia, b&bs in New York, etc.

That blog (hosted for free on Blogger) depressed me because it's just noise, no content. There's already too much noise. Ironic that Google (who owns Blogger) hosts for free a site designed to get around Googles algorithms.

I think as blogs become more common, the value of the connectors and mavens* will increase. People won't be able to explore as much, so what folks like Robert Scoble, or Amy Gahran, or Michael Feldstein say and who they link to, will be come more and more important.

As will services such as Technorati and Bloglines.

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*See The Tipping Point for details on connectors and mavens.

More on Trackbacks

2004-09-24T07:04:00.000-04:00

The distributed conversation continues. CNET News.com has started collecting trackback information. As yet, the results appear to be hidden, or at least, difficult to find. Still, this is a fascinating trend.

For a quick explanation on Trackback, check out this article: What the heck is Trackback? by Jason Kottke.

It's exciting to see the connections in the web grow deeper and wider. Trackbacks encourage exploration through cross-references. The reader who is willing to do a little work might find some other valuable resources. Or he or she might just be wasting time, jumping from one inane blog to another. It's like a big party -- you have to sample a lot of conversations to find a good one. Or you can start one and see where it leads and who joins in.

I got the news from a blog I regularly read, Micropersuasion. From the header of the blog: "Steve Rubel on how blogs and participatory journalism are impacting the practice of public relations."

He, in turn, got the news from a blog he reads, Photo Matt. Matt is Matthew Mullenweg, who is the founding developer of Wordpress, which is a popular blogging software.

Both of these blogs have insightful posts on weblog trends and their impact.

Fun with blogs -- trying "Trackback"

2004-09-08T20:53:00.000-04:00

Following another tip (#6) from my new blog guru, Simon, I decided to try trackbacks. Trackbacks are automated ways of linking from one blog to another. If you look on a blog that has Trackbacks, try clicking on one and see what it looks like. You'll see a list of links to blogs which have referenced the specific post you're reading.

Why is this good? Because you have added a node to the distributed conversation. To me, that's what blogs are and why they fascinate me.

In non-instructional-designer/web-nerd-speak, you've added a link to the referenced blog, which is always good for increasing traffic to that site. And you get immediate gratification when you look at the trackback and see a link to your site.

The main problem is that Blogger doesn't support trackbacks. But with Simon's advice, I tried to use the manual trackback pinger. The URL he supplies didn't work however. So somehow I managed to find Simpletracks.

It's a easy-to-use web-based trackback form which allows you to create a trackback to another site. But I don't think you can use it to trackback to a Blogger site, since there is no trackback URL for a Blogger post.

Here's how the Simpletracks form works:

Enter the trackback URL. This is the tricky part -- I did it incorrectly several times and got an unhelpful error message. A Trackback URL is not the same as the URL of the post. To get the trackback URL, you have to click on the trackback link of the post you want to reference. There you will see at the top of the page, "the trackback URL for this post is...." Copy that and paste it in.
Enter your blog name, entry title, entry URL, and entry excerpt.
Click "send ping."
Now the cool part -- go back to the post you referenced, and click the trackback link. There, at the end of the list (until someone else comes along) is a link to your site, and a tantalizing excerpt.

Wow!

Cheap thrills are the only kind I can afford. Luckily, I get a lot of mileage out of them. If it weren't for Blogger, I'd probably be doing something important right now. And what's the fun in that?

Truer words were never spoken

2004-09-08T20:11:00.000-04:00

I learned of this post on blogging via an elearnspace post. Every word is a gem, but what hit me especially were these two points:

4. Prepare for the reality that the rest of the world may not share your high opinion of yourself and your site.

5. You know that movie where the guy built a baseball field and waited for some dead folks to turn up and play ball? Blogging's like that. Prepare to slog at putting up brilliantly crafted, accurate and to-the-point insights that will proceed to make no difference to anything at all.

I had to laugh, but it's so true. And not just about blogs, but about life. Thanks for the reality check, Simon! As a new blogger, I plan on reading this post very carefully. In fact, this is something not just to be read, but to be mined.

Incredible Blogger statistic

2004-08-30T09:01:00.000-04:00

I find it amazing that in the space of 10 minutes, 1259 blogs were updated on Blogger.

That's the stat from 5:47 am PDT to 5:56 am.

It might be different now, so I've included the link.

What does this mean? It means that there's a whole lot of folks blogging out there. It doesn't mean that there's a proportional increase in useful information, though. There's no statistic on the signal to noise ratio in blogs. That's because one person's signal is another person's noise.

For example, there are a lot of personal diary-type weblogs out there. Are those "noise?" Some, perhaps. But what about a personal blog that's about someone's effort to quit smoking, or a fight with cancer? Every good story on the web is worth filtering through some noise, in my opinion.

Another Blogger Hack

2004-08-26T17:24:00.000-04:00

Ok, today what I did was add a "blogroll" to the sidebar. This is a listing of blogs to which I subscribe via Bloglines.

Bloglines is a free, web-based aggregator, which will keep track of all your frequently-read blogs in one handy site. It's better than a bookmark because Bloglines will check for new content automatically. All you have to do is show up and look at your list. Any blogs with new content will have the name in bold, with the number of new posts listed as well.

Also, Bloglines gives you the opportunity to share your list (but you don't have to, and you can even pick which blog links to share and which to keep private.)

There are two ways to share: by adding the list on the sidebar, if you have your own blog, or by giving folks a link, like this: My blog list.

Neat, eh?

Anyway, I once again hacked the template so that the blogroll showed up where I wanted it to. I'm not sure how to get those little green bullets, though. The content is actually coming from Bloglines; it's dynamic, and will change if I add or delete any blogs from my list.

So for that reason, I don't think I can get those bullets, since all Blogger sees is a line in the code that tells it to go to a certain URL on the Bloglines site. Bloglines walked me through creating that shared list -- piece of cake. It was almost all copy and paste.

And one note: the wonderful template I'm using for this blog was created by Dan Cederholm. His blog is Simple bits (see list).

Bloglines will walk you through the whole process of finding blogs and adding them to your own list. Try it!

Blogger Hacks -- adding a photo to the sidebar

2004-07-24T11:38:00.000-04:00

I am just so proud of myself. I did some "hacks" to get my blogs looking more like I want, rather than the Blogger default.

I wanted to have an image in the sidebar. But that's not in this template, and Blogger doesn't let you upload images (makes sense, they'd need lots of space for those). But Blogger does have an something called "Hello Bloggerbot." This nifty, free little bot allows you to upload pix, which are stored with Picasa somewhere. What it does is automate posting a picture to your blog.

So, I downloaded that and uploaded the picture I wanted as a post. Then I edited the post, copying the pertinent code, and went hunting through my blog template for the sidebar code. I dropped in the pix code and voila!

You can see the results on free associations. I'm still tweaking it. I need a different image, and I need to fiddle with the spacing a bit.

Still, Blogger makes it pretty darn easy. I love it that I can access the template. But I'd better copy and save that template, just in case! I've gotten into trouble that way before.

The more you hack, the more you must back (up). Ok, only almost rhymes.

2004-07-24T10:58:00.000-04:00

I just saw this link to scanned images from The Project Apollo Archive. They have something called the Apollo Image Gallery. Wow! I guess this site is popular, because when I clicked the link I got sent to a mirror site with "Temporary Mirrror" and "Don't Bookmark This Site!" in huge font size.

So I'll put the URL here, instead.