This technique involves the inclusion of special markup that is called by the plugin (see above with last part of the document ID obscured for security). The technique works, but after experimenting, I now consider it more appropriate to WordPress pages more so than blog posts. The one situation I can think of that might relate to blog posts would involve making groups responsible for posts to a protected blog. The blog administrator could share a Google doc with specific individuals and establish a link from different docs to a post in WordPress using the unique document IDs. This still would seem a more likely page than post technique.
I have added a RSS feed to the sidebar of this blog (near the bottom to be less distracting). This feed offers the titles of the 15 most recent blog posts I have saved at my feed reader site. I am presently reading blogs using a self-hosted aggregator called Fever . Fever offers some interesting features I am evaluating. The feed identifies the posts of others I have saved for later review. I guess this feed would be similar to recent additions to the public view of a social bookmarking site.
It is hard to keep up with blog feeds. I kind of run hot and cold on whether I think reviewing blogs provides me information useful to my professional interests. Perhaps I value the process of writing more than reading. Having said this, I am also afraid I will miss something. I have decided I need a strainer for my aggregator(s). I think some folks use Twitter in this way. They rapidly scan and look for things to follow-up on. I am not convinced this helps – you are processing shorter prompts, but you read more comments of limited relevance.
I keep searching and exploring attempting to either create a system or locate a tool that will prove useful. Here are the two tools I am presently exploring.
Feedly
Feedly is a Firefox plug-in that synchs with Google reader.
Feedly asks that you classify your themes into categories and that you differentiate favorite and non-favorite feeds within categories. Your actions when using feedly (selecting items to share, what you favorite) influences what is selected for most immediate access.
Fever uses a different and somewhat mysterious approach to “straining”. This one is not free ($30) and requires that you have access to a server (PHP and MySQL). I am a sucker for tools I can run on my own servers.
There are some similarities – with fever you differentiate those feeds you follow intently (kindling) from those which you sometimes examine (sparks). What fever identifies are trending themes – what topics are hot (I am trying to keep with the fire theme here). How this works is a little unclear. I have included a couple of related articles and one speculates that the categorization process may be based on common “out links” – links of high overall frequency generate a higher temp and also serves to organize posts into themes. Makes some sense.
Both of these services allow you to read feeds in a conventional manner. Feedly offers an advantage if Google Reader is your traditional tool because of the synchronization. If you use multiple “strainers”, you may end up spending more rather than less time. What you star, share, or save (or whatever) with one tool does not carry over to the other tool. So, what I am doing here is still experimenting.
Check this interesting blog project starter created by a couple of Grand Forks teachers. I will offer more information on the unique technology used in a future post.
Here is an update to my recent post describing problems with Bloglines.
My Bloglines account is working again and it appears others have had the same experience. This link from TechCrunch provides additional information regarding the financial challenges faced by the company.
Technorati takes it upon itself to publish a state of the blogosphere report. I pay attention because I like the numbers. This edition looks more detailed than most and is emerging by topic over the course of this week.
Basic Stats
One of the first things I noticed was their break down of bloggers by age. Given the hype regarding the interests of young folks in “new media”, I was very surprised by the low percentage of 18-24 year old bloggers. I am thinking that Technorati does not consider posting to Facebook or MySpace as blogging. The study did not consider individuals who would be in a K-12 settings.
The report also indicates there are more male than female bloggers. For some reason, I thought I had read otherwise. Bloggers tend to be well educated – 74% are college grads and 42% have some graduate school experience.
Only 8% of blogs have been active for 6 years. Hooray for the persistent ones.
I met my two Fall classes for the first time today. A total of 270 students and an impossible situation for making a personal connection with many of them. In commenting on this topic, I noted that my syllabi offer a link to this blog and suggested that I use this blog to comment on professional and personal topics. I indicated that most of them were probably more familiar with MySpace and FaceBook and I suggested that I would leave those sites for them.
I do have a FaceBook account and within a couple of minute there was an invitation.
I do think the social networking sites are interesting, but I have mixed feelings about the “friending” thing within university academic settings. I remember listening to a presentation in which the presenter basically said – let’s let them have their space. The power of the sites for multi-way and multi-level interaction is what makes the sites so powerful, but also what makes them a little weird in my situation. My daughter is my friend, but the site suggests I might want to “friend” these other 20-somethings who are friends of my daughter. Hmm. Whether or not I had ever actually met any of them with a few reciprocated clicks of the mouse I might introduce them to 200 Intro Psych students at UND. Not saying this would be a bad thing, but I think I will concentrate on writing blog posts.
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