stevendkrause.com

… all from this entry at kottke.org. My favorite is the first one, “Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle,” though there are many others.

… but I know a lot of people in the computers and writing community do. So I thought I’d pass along this link to the Drupal Cook Book | Nancy’s Information Site. I have no idea if it is any good or not, but I do know it exists, and I might be looking at it more closely when (or if) I get time. I’ve been thinking lately that some of the options that drupal offers might make it worth it for me to abandon emuonline (the local tool for online teaching) in favor of something I run myself, either something like drupal or something like moodle. We shall see….

I haven’t read it yet, but I’m posting a link to “Clancy Ratliff: Blogger Scholar … Blogger-Scholar” in Computers and Composition Online for three reasons:

• Clancy almost always has smart stuff to say.
• I can see this figuring into the class I’m teaching right now.
• One of the interviewers, Meredith Graupner, was one of our best and brightest in or MA program at EMU and took several classes from me. Congrats, Meredith!

I’m not sure if this is the sort of thing I should be posting on my blog now or not, especially with the project I’m working on, but I think it is awfully spot on: it’s an entry from Design Observer, “What’s in a name?” I mean, part of my research has to do with the ways in which bloggers and commentators portray identity online, and I guess I should appear to be neutral on that. But as this and other posts from the past suggest, I’m not neutral on this, and my experiences as the sitedad over at EMUTalk.org have made me even less neutral. Anyway, a long passage that sort of sums up the problems here:

A rose is a rose, and a real name at the end of a blog post is an indication that the person who authored the statement is taking responsibility, indeed ownership of the words — it is a simple act of honesty. For too long bloggers have been given license that is not tolerated in letters-to-the-editor columns of newspapers and magazines (except in extraordinary circumstances). If one is willing to expound, exclaim, or critique it should be done under a real name and with links to a valid email or website address. If transparency on the web is the new black, then there should be no secrets.

Pseudonyms like “miss representation” or “Xman” or “Pesky Illustrator” or “Inaudible Nonsense,” or even the passionate, erudite “DesignMaven,” are not cute, they are cowardly. This indictment holds true for those who only use their first names as well (the many known only as Nancy or Chris, Dan or Steve). If a blogger or responder does not have the courage to own up to his or her ideas then why should readers accept or respond to them? Having a pseudonym is not about, as some argue, building a brand story or mystique; it is about masking identity, which is inherently deceitful. Unless one has a good reason — like being on a black list or having a life in peril by a repressive government — the practice of anonymity should be considered unacceptable.

Maybe this will show up in a book chapter on identity eventually– maybe with some counter-arguments from the “pro-pseudonym” camp.

“You have a blog. You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web.” Well, if you’re lucky. “The Life Cycle of a Blog Post” is a kind of fun/kind of informative Flash (I guess?) animation on Wired.com. Via Weblog Tools Collection.