RSS URL has changed

Just another reminder that the blog has moved to http://www.learnandteachonline.com

And the feed is at http://learnandteachonline.com/?q=node/feed

Switching over

I'm moving this blog to http://learnandteachonline.com/

The new feed is http://learnandteachonline.com/?q=node/feed

Consumer Report-style comparison chart for blogs

Check out the feature comparison chart at the Online Journalism Review. Looks like Expression Engine, the CMS I use at work for dozens of blogs, fares well.

Since I'm taking a break from my podcast, I hope to have some time to catch up on some neglected avocational online things, like this blog. It's made with pMachine, which is no longer being developed, now that Expression Engine gets all the company's attention. I don't know if I want to pop for an EE license or not, so I'm sort of shopping for a blog. I've been having fun experimenting with the OPML blogs, but I'm not sure I want to go that way, at least not in the short term, since it's still in beta.

I need to do something. The RSS feed for this thing is .91.

Verisign is looking beyond blogs

Terri Wells at Devshed speculates on what Verisign will do with weblogs.com. This is most in-depth write-up I've seen on this. I think the backstage world of pinging is something most tech writers don't want to get into for fear they'll sound stupid. It's a mystery to me.

On a more personal, simpler note, it looks like Verisign will be making the XML parser more forgiving, so that when I start my podcast back up audio.weblogs.com will know it when I add an item to the feed -- and other services, like Odeo, that get their info from audio.weblogs.com, will know about it too.

Andreas Gerdes comes to town

Great story of subverting the established communication system. Andreas Gerdes, with money to spare, pretty much takes over phones and internet in his adopted village in the Catskills.

Group dreams

I wonder if utopian dreams might find a renaissance as baby boomers age and look for nicer and cheaper ways to live the rest of our lives. As more of us reach retirement age it's going to mean big shifts in the economy, including workplaces and consumer markets, but it doesn't have to be all about marketing science and demographics. In fact, our generation in its old age could become a force that's consciously not about organizing life around markets.

I've always been a uptopian dreamer. The idea of having like-minded people around all the time is appealing. And if the group also produced something worthwhile, that seems like heaven to me.

The product wouldn't have to be a corn crop, and I don't relish the idea of making my own shoes. It could be a technology product or an internet service grown out of some legitimate human need. Not the ass-backwards approach that's more usual, wherein the organizing goal is to make a killing, then a product or service is contrived to meet that need.

Too bad communes got such a bad name from association with Manson and cults and pagans and stuff. Maybe the word colony is a more palatable way to think of it if you care about acceptance.

Update on new audio.weblogs.com

Heard from Verisign. They're making the XML parser more lenient so that podcast feeds like mine that have some errors can get in on audio.weblogs.com pings. (My RSS feed is generated by Loudblog, but it didn't have ping problems until the week before last.) It was a big problem for me, because it meant that places like Odeo weren't picking up changes in my feed either. Good of Verisign to be so responsive, even though it doesn't seem like it affected very many podcasters.

It's my anniversary

I became a feminist forty-odd years ago tonight.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, and my brother was 7 or 8, we wore storebought Halloween costumes of Jackie and John Kennedy. It must have been around 1962. As we went around the neighborhood trick-or-treating, the grownups opening the doors thought we were darling and instantly recognized our masks as the famous couple.

Then my brother got sick -- too much candy, probably -- and I had to go on alone. Nobody knew who I was anymore. I'd trudge up to a door with a group of kids and the neighbor would say, "Oh, there's a ghost and a witch, and a skeleton... and a.... ah.... pretty lady!"

I had no identity except in relation to him, and I remember that it made me sad and it pissed me off. All 60 pounds of me grasped the significance of it, and I distinctly remember being able to generalize the incident and see a problem that belonged to my entire gender.

The verbizing of the language

Heard this absurd one from my kids: to verse. Used mostly by young teenagers and means facing an opponent. Examples: "I'll verse you" or "Want to verse?" From versus, which I always thought was directly from the Latin, but dictionary.reference.com says the Latin word is vertere and versus evolved from Latin to Medieval Latin to Middle English to English.

Blogs have arrived?

Steve Baker at Business Week's Blogspotting tells about an e-mail from Bacon's asking for information on his blog for the directory. This means blogs have arrived as a medium in the wider establishment world if the call for info has been widely circulated. Bacon's is the authoritative media list source for PR folks. Used to be, anyway; sounds like Steve is saying it still is. He says there was no mention of Business Week in the request, but I'd be curious to know if blogs not associated with mainstream media also have been contacted, and how wide the net has been cast, and what sources have been used.

I haven't practiced the Black Art for 15 years or so. I shouldn't call it that. There's a need for PR, I guess. It just wasn't for me. I did it for a long time and it gradually got to me, especially in agencies. You'd be effervescing one opinion that was not your own, then switch focus to another client and schizophrenically advocate a different position. Lawyers who have hearts and a sense of self have that problem too.

I'm impressed with VeriSign

A developer on the new weblogs.com team at VeriSign called me at home yesterday about the post on my OPML blog that expresses confusion over the audio.weblogs.com ping form. I didn't email them or anything. I thought it was encouraging that they're scanning the environment, that he took the trouble to find me and phone, that he really wanted to know what I did and what went wrong, and that they're looking into my problem with so much care and interest. Can't beat that.

Later in the day, I learned in email that there is a problem with my feed. I posted on the Loudblog forum to ask about it. Loudblog is the PHP/MySQL app I use to do various steps of the podcast such as the blog part which includes generation of the feed. Funny it worked until last week, when the cutover from Dave to VeriSign happened. The nice developer guy said they're discussing making the XML readers a little more forgiving.

'Down with podcasting!'

More on podcast naysayers in the academy. Wesley Fryer says educators have a professional obligation to embrace podcasting. I don't think I'd go that far.

2,000 and counting

We hit 2,000 military casualties in Iraq today. MoveOn has info on starting or finding a vigil tomorrow night.

Soldier bloggers

This weekend on This American Life. From the radio show's teaser:

What War? Though we all know that we're at war in Iraq, for those of us without family in the military, the reality of that war is easy to ignore. This week, we return to what's happening there. ... we hear from American soldiers who blogged from Iraq, including Trueman Muhrer-Irwin who blogs under the name "Rebel Coyote," and Colby Buzzell, a machine gunner who has published a memoir called "My War."

Rebel was injured and has been discharged, but he's still blogging. This is the machine gunnner's book.

I made it!

I had planned to try to get to 100 podcasts before taking a break. One way to rationalize away your slackerosity is to change the rules. But real champion rationalizers know that changing the unit of measure is the only way to go if you want to completely trick yourself. Now I get to say, "I did too make it to 100." In base 9. It wasn't hard at all to persuade myself that a hundred in base 9 is an ever so much more lyrical and centered place to stop.