Category: Blogging about blogging

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WordPress as a CMS

This looks pretty cool and promising: a series of posts/articles/ideas on how to use WordPress as a CMS, which is something I am particularly interested in doing as I figure out more ways to use WordPress in my teaching and with “publishing,” especially things like my soon to be available research writing textbook project. One could make the argument that if you want to use a CMS, you should use a CMS– like drupal or something. But the thing is I like and vaguely understand WordPress, and hey, why change now?

BTW, another cool thing about these tips/instructions: the web site bloghelper is written by a 20 year-old economics student in London.

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Spring/Summer Blogging Interim (sort of)

I haven’t been posting here lately for two basic reasons. First, as this, this, and especially this post suggest, my unofficial (eg, “real”) life has been very busy lately. It’s likely to be that way for another week since I’m off to Iowa and then Chicago at the end of this week.

Second, there really isn’t as much going on right now. As is the case everywhere, the spring/summer terms are a quiter time on campus. I have a few meetings with new students here and there, but not even too much of that, really. And it will get a whole lot more quiet around here in about a month; that’s when my online class will be done, and that’s when we’ll be getting ready for our Europe trip in earnest.

Anyway, if you’re curious about my “real” life, go check out those links.

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MySpace losing the "cool" factor

See this article from the June 3 NYT, “MySpace No Longer Their Space?” Basically, the article reports that, while MySpace is still enormously popular, its use has fallen off since April. Blamed in the article are the fact that MySpace is “going corporate” (Ruppert Murdoch bought it a while back) and is thus no longer a “cool” activity for teens; users are realizing that it might not be a good idea in the long-term to post drunk pictures of themselves; and users are starting to realize that it’s annoying to browse web sites that blare bad music at you and that are cluttered with eyeball-numbing graphics. (I’m paraphrasing here).

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Two cool tech/computer things

I came across a couple of interesting tech things this morning. I know that the first one, Flickrexport, which I came across via cbd, actually works. Basically, it allows you to export from iPhoto directly to a Flickr account. Reason number 3,404,678 to get a Mac.

The second one is a WordPress plugin, a Trackback validator, which mainly seems to be a way to track spam. I haven’t tried this one out, but it reminds me once again that the “to do” list this summer includes updating this and my unofficial blog.

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If Blogger and MySpace had a baby which grew up to have plastic surgery by Apple…

Via the blog TechCrunch comes news that SixApart is going to be introducing “Vox,” which TechCrunch describes as “half a blogging platform for newbies (albeit with rich and deep functionality) and half social network.” There are some screen shots on this site, and that’s the reason why I suggested the plastic surgery make-over curtesy of Apple: it looks a heck of a lot like iWeb to me.

All of which reminds me that one of my “to do” items this summer is to redo the look of this blog….

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See you in… Perth?

Via Jill Walker, I’ve learned that the CFP for the seventh annual International Digital Arts and Culture Conference is out. It sounds like a great conference that will be an interesting mix of digital stuff; among other things, the call says:

Topics of interests may include, but are not limited to, computer games, hypertext theory and literature, new media narrative, streaming media, interactive and networked performance, digital aesthetics, interactive cinema, theory, art, bio-art, nano-art, augmented reality, cyberculture, electronic fiction, electronic music, electronic art, games culture, games system design, games theory, interactive architecture, cinema and video, MOOs, MUDs, RPG, virtual reality, virtual worlds.

Oh yeah, just one thing: it’s in Perth, Australia.

Despite the fact that, from here, the directions to Perth are basically “go south and west halfway across the planet, and then turn right,” I have half a mind to submit a proposal. I looked up a flight from Detroit to Perth and was somewhat surprised to find that it was “only” $1500 or so. It costs $1200 to fly to Sydney, so to go all the way to Perth seems like a bargin. Heck, it was going to cost me $600 or so to fly to Lubbock; so compared to that, it’s down-right cheap!

Besides that, what are my chances for visiting Australia and getting (at least some) money from EMU to do it and writing the rest off on my taxes? Hmmmm….

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Word Blogging (and why I probably won't use it)

Relatively reliable rumor has it that the new version of MS Word will include a “blog this” kind of feature. I found this via Alex Halavais’ blog.

I think my main reaction to this is “big deal.” First off, Microsquish comes out with Apple versions of its software almost exactly a year behind the versions for the PC. Second, if Word does “blog stuff” half as well as it deal with HTML code, then we’ll have a mighty mighty crappy product indeed. Third, it will probably remain much easier and efficient to just use something like WordPress or Blogger or whatever because there are all the complications of the server that have to be figured into the process. It’s like using the “publish” feature on something like Dreamweaver: in the end, I just find it easier and a lot more exact to use some kind of ftp or sftp software.

iLife 06 has a blogging software of some sort, one I might play around with more when I have time. For the time-being though, I threw it away to save precious hard drive space.

It would be nice if WordPress had a spell-check though….

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DOPA is dopey

Will “weblogg-ed” Richardson and Alex Halavais have both posted about a bill under discussion in the U.S. Congress that would require schools to ban any web sites where students might see sexy things and/or be exposed to sexual predators. Apparently, the legislation is targeting sites like MySpace but it’s likely to catch all kinds of other services (wikis, blogs, etc.) in its net. Will and Alex say smart stuff about all this.

Personally, I still think MySpace is kind of stupid, and in a way, I don’t have much of a problem with schools blocking it from their computers. I mean, students while at school probably have better things to do than to browse MySpace. But my sense is that most of the kids using MySpace aren’t messing with it at school anyway.

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Something you are not likely to see here

From an Inside Higher Ed article titled “Overexposed?” comes this:

Diana Blaine, who lectures on feminist theory, recently linked her blog to an online photo album that has topless photos of her near a painting of a topless woman, and at “Burning Man,� an annual weeklong festival in Nevada where clothing is optional.

After a student who has made a habit of criticizing Blaine on his blog, “ Cardinal Martini,� linked to the photos, an NBC station in Los Angeles reported that the pictures are “causing concern,� bringing Blaine even more exposure.

Okay….

First off, USC (where Blaine teaches) has basically said that she hasn’t violated any of their policies, so they aren’t pursuing any action against her. And this is a good thing since these photos etc. (there are links in the article, if you’re curious) are on her Flickr account and her own web server and such.

Second, while I understand and basically support the feminist politics that Blaine is putting in play here, it personally strikes me as falling into the category of “too much information.” Or let me put it to you this way: you won’t be seeing any topless or otherwise exposed pics of me either here or on my unofficial blog anytime soon.

Third and perhaps most distrubring are the angry student(s) keeping a blog that seems directed at attacking Blaine. She seems to be taking it in stride, but if I had former/current students who seemed hell-bent on this sort of attack against me, I don’t think I’d be quite as passive about it.