A Tech Sensei's Blog from Chicago's Barrio of Pilsen.
News, rants and stuff from a Post-Constitutional America!
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Team Tasks Tool. |
Last year we spent some time working on a Radio UserLand tool which we were calling Team Tasks Tool. The basic idea was leveraging on the power of Radio's embedded object database, outliner and web server to create a p2p task management and tracking tool.
We went pretty far with the development, we were actually using the tool internally, until our company's downsizing forced us to freeze the project (we didn't have the necessary resource to finish it nor enough tasks and people to manage). I had totally forgot about this tool until a few days ago I received an email from Robert Barksdale asking me about it. We still have no time to work on it, but maybe somebody out there is willing to work a little on it or simply use it (it already works). So, just as a test, we are releasing it under a Creative Commons License.
Feel free to contact me ( I have to check that out...
9:50:23 PM
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Shrook. |
Criminny! There's a new RSS reader in town, and boy does it look shiny. OSX people! check out Shrook. first... [Ben Hammersley.com]
Another kickin RSS reader on OSX
9:13:21 PM
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Roles and responsibilities. |
This excellent resource was listed on brandon-hall list as part of a discussion on roles and responsibilities in elearning design. The resource itself is not focused on elearning...but it transfers very nicely. It covers the spectrum, including process review, stakeholder analysis, building a team, implemenation, evaluation...and much more. [elearnspace blog]The question of the how we get the ball rolling around a vision or idea is critical. It means a true meeting of the minds and true collaboration. I think it is here that good ideas turn sour or just do not get off the ground. One needs to leave one's ego at the door.
9:07:23 PM
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Word cleaner. |
"We must put all our Word documents online." Eight words that strike fear into the hearts of web professionals everywhere. Why MS Word generates bad HTML. A free tool that fixes Word's bad HTML. Other things you can do to improve the health of web pages that started as Word docs (including talking to your colleagues who write the documents). [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]
I did tip... not because of the free software but because I want to see an independent developer succeed and I want to see textpattern live!
11:30:22 PM
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Think outside the semester box |
Reflections on WebCT.
Interesting reflections by Emily at Filament on using WebCT:
Absolutely! Knock down the walls says I! [James Farmer's Radio Weblog]Imagine an educator who has her or his students having a great debate or discussion online during a course and then..... where does this great conversation of ideas, thoughts, and notions go after the course is over... does it get "thrown out" like so many things these days? After you get into weblogging, you see where something like webct may be coming short and has the potential to be better than it is. or not? I have been thinking about that myself when some of our staff have classes at the local university. I say.. why not blog your cousework as an option.. some are willing.. but the professor is another story. I do not get emails back from professors on this. If work for a class is to be authentic as it can be, the journey to one's answers and conclusions should be posted. Teachers can take the knowledge they have gained and extend and refine their thinking and practice as they work though the year. This is heavy.... Why am I, a elementary school techie thinking over a challenge that people who make a lot more money than I do at the university level, should be seriously looking at. |
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WIRED: BLOG SPACE. |
Another good quote: "What happens when you start seeing the Web as a matrix of minds, not documents?" Good question! [James Farmer's Radio Weblog]Had to post this for the quotes!
6:02:26 AM
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Weblogs in Education by David Carraher. |
David Carraher presents some valuable ideas; his Quicktime map attempts to integrate a number of players into an educational feedback matrix.
JH
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Weblogs In Education - Part II. There are barriers separating teacher education, curriculum development, and research about learning and teaching.
When I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, some folks asked me to clarify my views about how these separate activities might be united. Here are some "thoughts about an online course" (.mov 600 kB)--sketches about how a course in math or science education might be structured to address these concerns. The part about the weblogs comes near the end. Sorry for being abstract. In the coming weeks, I'll try to think about specific implementation ideas for classrooms. [David Carraher] [EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online] Cool
10:26:00 PM
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Cetis - Pedagogy. |
Good list of presentations from the Cetis Pedagogy Forum launch meeting in April. [elearnspace blog]
8:21:04 PM
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Treat Educators as Professionals... |
Organizational learning.
Organizational Learning is No Accident makes an important point: effective learning requires time to reflect...and our "right now" form of communication (email, IM, etc.) doesn't allow reflection time...making it difficult for people and organizations to change (time being an important component to acclimate to changes). [elearnspace blog]
My hypothesis is that blogging or any other disruptive technology tool may be appropriate for educators to put their thoughts and ideas onto digitial paper. We need more voices from the field of teachers who successful despite tbeing oppressed by politicians who have no notion on how to constructivetly help educators in the field nor about how children learn.
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The Whittier School Manila Hub |
Right now, I am focusing on working on the Whittier School Manila Hub and slowing figuring out our Plone server. What seems cool about Plone is that one can show off as much as one wants to and yet maintain a private area on one account. Most of my time is spent working on Manila and catching up on the new additions. I am working with a community organization on developing a space we have provided them . I am also trying to document my march with Manila and Plone on our Praxis with Manila and Plone weblog.
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Online Communities. |
Online Communities for Professional Development...extensive links and commentary on the definition, role, and process of developing online communities [elearnspace blog]Good Resource on a challenge for educators to develope communities online. Like it has been said, a community of practice is a way to start.
5:58:19 AM
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Its about the Benjamins!!! |
![]() Follow the MONEY! |
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Say no to the digital robber barons |
Media conglomeration. On 2 June 2003 the FCC proposes to remove laws that prevent any single company from owning every TV channel or newspaper in your city. Learn more and fight back. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]
Say no to the digital robber barons |
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Whittier School Learning Commons on Plone |
Thanks to Jim Roepcke of Tyrell.Com for helping me install Plone to run on port 80. Right now I am just getting used to the way Plone works. Next is installation of a Wiki and RSS feed maker.
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Manila 9.1 Update will be Greatly Appreciatied!!! |
Frontier 9.1 feature list and release date. UserLand has announced a May 19, 2003 release date for Frontier 9.1.
See this page on the Frontier site for a list of changes since the last major release. [Jake's Radio 'Blog] Jake Writes, Hi Al, I spoke with John Robb earlier today about this, and we've slated it for the 9.1 release. Keep an eye on the manila-dev mail list for a beta of the required changes within the next couple of days. Thanks, -Jake
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Internet Search Skills: Tutorials and Courses. |
I'm re-posting this valuable article about learning Internet search skills from the Web Tools Newsletter maintained by the Education Development Office of the City University of Hong Kong (I first saw the article mentioned in the Ed Tech Dev weblog). Consult the home page maintained by the Center, on Web Tools for Learning, for additional articles. (Click on the enclosure.)
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Internet Search Skills: Tutorials and Courses. The latest Web Tools newsletter concerns learning to better search for information on the web. There's now a substantial range of help organised as tutorials and courses for every level: in this week's Web Tools Newsletter, we look at some of the best available. [Ed Tech Dev] [EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources Online] Book it!
7:08:47 AM
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Manila Praxis at Whittier School |
Started a Praxis weblog on using Manila. A space to plan, take note and get a better handle on Manila use in my school community
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FTP Static Rendering Beta. |
Eric Soroos has released a beta of an FTP filewriter for Manila's static rendering. Instructions for installing and testing are in this message on the manila-dev mail list.
Keep an eye on ProductNews.UserLand.Com for announcements of new features. [Jake's Radio 'Blog] Got this bookmarked!!!
10:39:03 PM
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BlogTalk paper: personal characteristics that support blogging. |
Responses to the Question 7. Which personal characteristics support blogging? Somehow I[base ']ve got into a funny style with this one :) So, the collective portrait of bloggers. Bloggers
Some bloggers
My conclusions in brief: Coming to the previous entry (posted on purpose ;): it seems that most bloggers belong to the [base "]knowledge seekers[per thou] and [base "]knowledge sharers[per thou] tribes. [Mathemagenic]
7:58:37 AM
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Open Source Courseware -- Evaluation and Rating. |
Rob Reynolds over at Xplana has posted this useful piece that helps frame some of the issues an institution should factor in when considering looking at an open source solution to course management systems, proposes a rating scheme based on these factors and rates many of the currently available options. While I might differ on a few small points (OCW is not a CMS!!) I think I would also end up suggesting the same four products that show up in his 2 top 3 lists (CHEF, LON-CAPA, Moodle, FLE3) are the most likely contenders. There are a few things I think we at edutools can learn for the factors he highlights as important (we allow reviews by features, but don't tie features to these kinds of factors in any strong manner). That said, one lesson I think we've learned is that you end up getting way to much clumping in the middle on a 5 point scale (mean on this was 21 with highest score 24 and lowest 17). But I'm probably getting nitpicky as it is getting to the end of the day - SWL [EdTechPost]Very good overview of what is available out there in Open Source.
9:30:43 PM
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Ride the MetaMap Train |
MetaMap - Graphical Map of Metadata and other Standards Initiatives.
"The MetaMap is a pedagogical graphic which takes the form of a subway map. Its aim is to help the information science community to understand metadata standards, sets, and initiatives of interest in this area." Now this is extremely cool and helpful - this map shows both what issues particular standards and initiatives try to address (the 'lines' they reside on), the media types they apply to (the colours of the subway 'lines') and also the interrelation of various standards and initiatives (where the lines have shared 'stops'). Cooler still is that it seems to run off of (or at least have a connection to) a structured directory that catalogues these standards and initiatives. Does require the SVG plugin, and they explain why they have chosen this format. - SWL - via David Mattison's [TenThousandYearBlog] which I subscribe to, yet only found this by chance as his main RSS feed seems to be broken. Still, dig further into his categories as he is still blogging and finding great stuff. [EdTechPost]Ride this train. The end product of a university course. Nice to see where we have been. |
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Off to California |
Off to Santa Barbara til Sunday. National Writing Project Urban sites meetings.
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Smarter, Simpler, Social. |
Smarter, Simpler, Social Quote: "In some respects, this first wave of online communication technology adoption is coming to an end... [elearnspace blog]
Good Article! For some reason,centralized bloatware is something that will haunt us for a while.
7:02:12 AM
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Even the General Accounting Office doesn't believe Bush Voodoo Economics |
MEANWHILE ON THE HOME FRONT.
Even the General Accounting Office doesn't believe Bush Voodoo Economics. The GAO boss is a Republican and they can't figure out how Bush comes up with his conclusions |
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IF WAR ISN'T THE ANSWER, WHAT IS?. |
This is a inquiry life and civics problem, if there ever was one! The idea is to use higher order thinking skills to come up with possible solution or solutions.
10:44:18 PM
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Montana Forum : Hold threats to freedom in check |
No Sunset for Patriot Act. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, wants to remove the sunset provisions from the USA Patriot Act, according to this article at Montana forum.com. (Thanks to Ed Cone for the pointer.)
The Patriot Act already has fairly weak sunset provisions, as significant portions of the law are not open to review -- in particular, provisions regarding new electronic surveillance measures. You can read more about what does, and does not, sunset in this Electronic Frontier Foundation review. Note the numerous sections of the bill labeled DOES NOT SUNSET. But Hatch seemingly wants to remove any review of the bill, no doubt recognizing Americans' past intolerance of such abusive laws once the immediate need for them has passed. It is a shame we have anyone in our Government who would consider such a review unnecessary, given the sweeping new powers created by Patriot, and Hatch should be roundly rebuked by his constituents at the next election.
[...] Once in a while, you have to thank goodness for the extremists [^] or at least those people with steady, definable values.[b.cognosco] Shame, Shame Orrin. What makes a democracy strong yet frustrating is the idea that making law is a public event and the law can be open to revision. What is not open to revision are our basic rights as an American. What are these men scared of really? What good does it do to sell one's soul... Orin
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Reality-check!. |
I know from my parents who are both doctors, that things have been getting pretty sketchy in the medical profession here in the US for the last few years, but at least they're not this bad:
"...Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime.[Jake's Radio 'Blog] no comment
1:22:44 PM
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Jake is smokin! |
22 new or changed parts on Manila! Man Jake is smokin!
0 new parts added to Frontier.root. 5 new parts added to mainResponder.root. 17 new parts added to manila.root. 0 new parts added to prefs.root.
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Scott Rosenberg: Digital Storytelling Festival returns. |
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Dave Winer wants to get Harvard blogging. |
Dave Winer says in this article: "The idea of having a laboratory like Harvard University for learning about this technology is incredible." I would rather say: "the idea of having a laboratory like the World Wide Web for learning about this technology is incredible." To my knowledge none of the educational and pedagogical pioneers in "Blogland" can be found at Harvard... and if there are some, they are really trying hard not to connect with the folks that George Siemens recently indentified as Current Edu-bloggers. [Sebastian Fiedler] [Seblogging News]Right on Seb! Dave should know bettern than anyone regarding bootstrapping. Bootstrapping in regards to blogging crosses most boundaries. Getting and giving help does not stop at ones institutional doors. Quite the contrary.
3:46:57 PM
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Expand the Profile Member options in Multi-Author Manila Sites. |
I asked the following question on the Manila-Dev Group Website. Can one expand the profile member options in multi-author manila sites? That would be cool if we had an answer to that question placed in an update. If you have questions related to Manila join the Manila Dev group
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Radioactive Hiring. |
I have a little theory about how this works: You can't really buy passion-driven people. You have to pay for them, of course, but they have to choose you. Passion-driven people are attracted by many things, but one of the biggest attractions is the desire to work with other passion-driven people who can challenge and appreciate them. As an organization grows, the challenge is to keep the bar high enough that critical mass can be maintained and new people will still continue to be attracted. It's like running a nuclear reactor -- if your fuel rods aren't pure enough, you won't be able to get/keep the reaction going; but if you enrich and purify the material, the reaction is self-perpetuating. . [Better Living Through Software]This sounded good in terms of hiring new faculty and placing in motion a framework of professional developemnt and accountability that lets that synergy happen between faculty. The problem is that the school day is too short and faculty are not paid to stay longer to reflect on their praxis. It is all find and dandy that the Federal and local government mandate so many minutes for Reading, Math and Sience, but what about paying extra for education professionals to meet and talk about the praxis so that improvement does happen
1:27:15 PM
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Edbloggers chime in at Manila Dev site |
With Jake at Harvard working with Dave Winer on tweaking Manila, we should see more improvements quickly. Sam Devore and David Carter-Tod have already chimed in. Edbloggers, chime in at the Manila-Dev Group site. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manila-dev/
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liveTopics 1.1.3 beta test. |
I've created a page for people interested in beta testing liveTopics 1.1.3, please go add yourself if you want to get involved. [Curiouser and curiouser!]
Anybody want to Beta test Matt's Live Topics.. sign up at his wiki. On checking out the new Live Topics... I want to go back and check for accuracy my entries ande the categories I gave them.. Spring cleaning...
1:14:23 PM
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Found on-line. |
Already forgot how I found this - 31 Flavors of Blog - it was open at my desktop for the whole day. Notes on the Background of Back-Links with a bit of history of Internet and differences between referer and Trackback. [Mathemagenic]Good collection of different kind of blogs that are out there.. Cool!
1:02:05 PM
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Cool Radio bookmarklet! |
Exploiting RSS auto-discovery in Radio Userland.
I finally got to understand what RSS auto-discovery was good for by perusing this example page [found thanks to David], which points to Mark Pilgrim's Radio auto-subscribe bookmarklet. Once you have this bookmarklet in your link toolbar,
If you're using Radio, you can try it out here, on this very site (note the sneaky tactic to get more subscribers). It worked for me, at least on the home page. Of course a problem is that not all weblogs support auto-discovery. In the worst case the button seems to just do nothing. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you could start on my page on personal news aggregators. [Seb's Open Research]This bookmarklet makes adding RSS subscriptions to Radio a breeze!!! |
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The Blue Oxen Vision. |
Blue Oxen Associates - that is, Eugene Eric Kim and Chris Dent - had a launch party in San Francisco last week with their first official piece of output: a 20-page research report on how open source communities function. The report features case studies of the communities that have formed around the TouchGraph and SquirrelMail software development projects. It was sponsored by the Omidyar Foundation, the very same foundation that awarded a grant to Tom Munnecke's GivingSpace initiative a few months ago. On the occasion of the launch, Chris wrote a statement of what motivates him in this enterprise. Here it is in full.
Chris is interested in the politics of collaboration, which seems like a hugely interesting topic. A later post of his is titled Anarchic Emergent Collaboration, and reflects on the ways in which we structure collaboration. Chris speculates that "emergent and loose collaboration is the most natural style." (which seems to resonate fairly well with Chris Corrigan's musings on Open Space Technology). Chris Dent writes, [Seb's Open Research] Sounds good to me. A good read and a place to keep an eye on. Thier mission has my interest! It seem little by little folks are focusing on the getting great "stuff" done.
7:43:53 PM
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KnowledgeSpaces. |
from Denham Grey's KMWiki, a large collection of links to various knlowedge tools, including [EdTechPost] VERY LARGE Collection!
6:30:13 PM
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PUTTING THINGS IN CONTEXT: WHY I BLOG. |
Love this narrative on why the author blogs and till continue to blog
2:56:25 PM
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Cato Institute Raises Serious Questions Regarding Patriot Act |
Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute gave a live speech on CSPAN regarding the Patriot Act and the new draft of the Patriot Act II. I give credit to the CATO institute for raising serious questions regarding giving the government more power and more money. The Patriot Act was brought up as a perfect case on how not to pass a law. It was a law that was rammed downed the throats of Congress to pass. The bill should have been submitted in chunks. In addition, there were no sunset provisions so that parts of the law could be evaluated after a couple of years.
Kudos to the Cato Institute for standing up to the Administration. Though the administration is Republican, it is trying to expand federal power at the expense of civil rights. It would seem that "true" Republicans would look at the growing expansion of Federal Power to be philosophically the opposite of what they believe in.
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Praxis |
Knowledge management and weblogs. Knowledge management has been premised on the notion that the knowledge to be managed already exists and simply needs to be collected and organized to obtain the promised benefits.
One reason that so many of us find weblogs exciting in the realm of knowledge management is that weblogs reveal that the most important knowledge needs to be created before it can be collected and organized. This is similar to the argument about the important split between tacit and explicit knowledge but much simpler. There is a category of knowledge that lies between explicit and tacit--what a colleague of mine, Jeanie Egmon, labels as "implicit." This is knowledge that is actually fairly simple to write down once you decide that it's worth doing so and once you have tools that make it easy to do so. It's the knowledge of context and the whys behind the whats. It's the knowledge that's obvious at the time and on site, but mysterious even to its creators six months and six hundred miles later. In the knowledge economy that we all live in, even if we keep trying to stay comfortably ensconced in the industrial economy that used to make so much sense, we need to reflect on and learn from experience on a daily basis in order to maintain any sort of edge. That reflection and learning depends on having high quality raw material to work with. That's what weblogs provide. [McGee's Musings]It is called Praxis, which deals with the construction of knowledge in the here and now. That cyclical endeavor of making sense of our endeavors in light of new insights and information. It is lifelong learning in the concrete. If anything, this is the stuff that we need to be passing on to our students. We need to model this behavior. As a faculty, we need to practice this behavior as a group. If a faculty is not about focusing on practice and refining it, then there is no praxis on an organizational level, and most likely lacking at the classroom level. That is why I think that weblogs may be one tool to expose our practice. School districts should honor teaching professionals with time in the day or at least during the week to reflect alone and with ones co-workers so that looking at the practice and student work is a meaningful ritual.
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Creatvie Commons and Manila |
New feature: Creative Commons, RSS and Manila. [Scripting News]
Manila admins... another update .. another feature. |
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Results of Seb's "weblogs and knowledge sharing" survey. |
Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I have been conducting a survey of weblog use for knowledge sharing. 176 people have heeded my call and answered the survey that was graciously hosted by Blogstreet. As promised, here's the data and the first pie charts to come out of the oven: Seb's "weblogs and knowledge sharing" survey results. Unfortunately I don't have time to provide an analysis right now, but the result I personally find the most interesting is in the answers to question #16 and #17 - they suggest that weblogs provide a unique opportunity to create meaningful links between people in different fields. This correlates with my personal experience as well. I believe that deep insights often come out of such occasions for "creative friction". The wiki pies aren't ready yet, but it shouldn't take too long. [Seb's Open Research]Seb follows Salon by posting data taken from bloggers on a recent survey hosted by blogstreet.
1:09:38 AM
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Salon Radio Blog User Survey |
SALON BLOGGERS SPEAK OUT: USER SURVEY RESULTS.
Interesting mulitpart survey by Radio users at Salon... Do read if you use Radio, to see how other users feel about it.. I still have to digest this. It seems that folks want a easier way to make new themes and would like more tech help from Userland when stuff doesn't work. |
Copyright 2003 Albert Delgado
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