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Saturday, July 06, 2002

How to publish a category to a different FTP server

This post should appear on the Home Page but not in the pwd-protected directory at www.tfrazier.org.

Well, this seems somewhat hosed. Now the Radio server version of the site is munged. And I still can't get anything posted to the ftp site. Bummer.

Weblog by e-Mail

As for me, well, it just creates on more way to be ignored...

Blogging by email. Radio wishlist > Post to email..

Dale Pike writes:

I want to be able to designate a category and have that post sent as an email message to a pre-determined address. This would allow me to further consolidate my communications and have a more streamlined "write once" approach to my messaging.

[a klog apart]

» I need exactly the same thing to keep legacy people in the loop.  I'm trying to knock up something very quickly as a tool in Radio.

Basic features:

• preferences per- subscriber email
• filter by category & by liveTopic
• immediately, hourly or daily feedings
• send either complete post or permalink+title

I had originally thought about making it a program that subscribed to an RSS feed and emailed it out.  However this seemed like a lot of work and a way of re-inventing my.userland.  I'm trying to KISS!

About This Weblog

But along the way I have found myself going down the rabbit hole. The revolution in personal publishing being wrought by the weblog is astounding. I think it has enormous implications for the publishing industry's future. And I realize that to meet my objectives for this weblog I need to really, truly understand both the technology and methodolgy of blogging.

I also need to understand the implications for sharing what I learn and what I'm learning. I have a deep-rooted interest in collaborative computing, knowledge sharing, and the impact it can have on a company, a small business, or a project.

I have my own small business in mind -- one that addresses some of the gaps I see forming in the print/publishing industry. To make it work I need to understand how to bring a geographically dispersed team together, to keep them focused, and to keep them all moving full-speed ahead in the right direction.

I've been party to too many failed virtual efforts. I've seen companies stagnate, and even come completely apart because they couldn't manage a virtual business. I must learn how to do that if I am to succeed. So forgive my digressions into blogging, klogging, and intranet design.

My primary point, and I do have one, will become apparent once I have mastered the basics. Right now the information regarding my topics of interest -- new publishing distribution models, new print production models, new consumer models -- is widely dispersed, disconnected, and hard to find.

Publishers don't like what's happening becasue it will force them to change. Printers don't like what's happening for the same reason. Consumers don't like it because the benefits are still just a gleam in the eye of a few visionary people. But it will happen. I plan to be a part of it. I plan to share much of that ride with you.

In the mean time, I'm thinking out loud, trying to share what I learn along the way. I will get back to the point when the time comes. I hope you still find this weblog useful in the interim. Thanks for hanging with me.

A Solid Intranet in Eight Steps

4. Put usability before consistency.
5. Start small and grow iteratively.
7. Evaluate against measurable objectives and criteria.
8. Make your intranet accessible.

Thanks Paul!

Article: A solid intranet in eight steps. I've never built a built a full-corporate intranet site, though I've been in a few efforts to build group sites. Even those efforts could have used the information in the article Theo Mandel has written: A solid intranet in eight steps" [Paul Holbrook's Radio Weblog]

Business Requirements for Classifying Content

A couple of articles from KMConnection I found from Paul's site:

Business Reqs.

Can't get enough Classification. I picked a reference to something called faceted classification from High Context. The back credits on where this comes from are getting a little deep for more (more on that later), so I'll just quote the item:

Faceted Classification.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Among others, Paul had this interesting post on what happens when you start to research something via blogs:

Down the rabbit hole of blogging .... Sometimes following other people's blogs is like talking to someone who won't shut up: you ask one question, and you're in for a 15 minute answer. Well, it's a little like that, except it's not: it's a lot more interesting. Case in point: I pulled a little piece out of my news aggregator this morning on a k-log pilot experiment, and many hours later, I'm left with a pile on interesting pages scattered around my screen that I'm trying to make sense of. (I can't even remember where I found the reference to the k-log item; it's already gone from my aggregator.)

BTW Paul, I got my RSS feed truncated. I've added you to my Aggregator and my blogroll. This k-log stuff is getting really interesting.

Feedback from a K-Log Experiment

[...] My own experience returning from a week of vacation really illustrates the benefits it has had within our own team. The first thing I did yesterday was fire up our team klog and read what had been going on while I was out last week. I immediately saw a couple items that needed my attention (which I dealt with in a few minutes each) and got up to speed on what the rest of the team had been focusing. All before I had finished my first cup of coffee and long before I had made it through my backlog of 200 e-mails and a few voice mail messages. (See John Robb's comments on the communication efficiency of klogs.) [...]

David has lots of other good KM and Usability items, too.

What We're Doing When We Blog

As bloggers, we're in the middle of, and enjoying, an evolution of communication. The traits of weblogs mentioned above will likely change and advance as our tools improve and our technology matures. What's important is that we've embraced a medium free of the physical limitations of pages, intrusions of editors, and delays of tedious publishing systems. As with free speech itself, what we say isn't as important as the system that enables us to say it.

Requirements for K-Log Home Page

[...] Here is what should be on a K-Log home page (it is easy to set up the K-Log install process to ask for this info and insert it into the template):

1. E-mail link (or spam free e-mail link if it is publicly accessible).

2. IM link. IM status (online, busy, be right back, away, on the phone, etc.).

3. Phone number.

4. Address.

5. Bio. Including current position and responsibilities.

6. Picture.

7. Extranet weblog implemented as a category. As much or as little data on what you are currently working on as warranted. [...]

Maybe Scott can see what's required to get a live Jabber status icon going as part of his Jabber research.

Cool Tool: Summarizer Free Form Page Summaries

On Matt's home page I saw a review of Copernic Summarizer:

[...] Often when I am browsing I come across a long article that I'm not sure I want to read. If I have it in front of me I can click the summarizer button on the IE toolbar and let it go to work. If it's a link on a page I'm on I choose "Summarize target" from the context menu. Summarizer also has a live in- browser summary option.

Summarizer opens and downloads the page. It does a statistical analysis of the text to determine the key concepts. Then it works backwards to identify the sentences that are most important in the document based on those key concepts. It presents this as a summary list. At this point I can read the summary, email it or print it. I can also save it as an XML document (using Copernic's summary XSD scheme). [...]

This looks like a very nice tool for researchers, quite configurable, and probably something worth looking at if you write longer, expository posts on your weblog (Hmm. Wonder who that could be?)

Searching for ZCB -- Zero Contribution Barrier

Thinking about this got me to thinking again about finding the maximum number of ways to get info into and out of an intranet. A search for NNTP in Yahoo! Groups: K-Log lead me to "Duncan Smeed", a university professor in Glascow. Duncan uses "Conversant", a Radio-compatible groupware product from Macrobyte Resources. Here's what he said:

[...]

Fourthly, Conversant provides subscribers to the site to create, and respond to, messages via (i) a web interface (HTTP), (ii) an e-mail interface (SMTP), (iii) a newsgroup interface (NNTP), and also to a certain extent (iv) a remote procedure call interface (XML-RPC) which allows other forms of interaction to be built; for example using Userland's Radio

. This richness and variety of interface means that I, and my subscribers, get to use the interface that we find most convenient. In my experience the easier something is to do the more likely you are to do it. For example, posting a quote from a page on the web is, in my case, a simple matter of highlighting the text of the quote, then clicking twice - once to invoke the javascript bookmarklet I use to capture the text and the URL from the page which is then used to prime a textarea form in a new window, and the other to submit the form to my weblog. Two clicks. Two seconds. [...]

Macrobyte makes several products to support Radio Community Servers so I suspect there is some synergy here, and it looks like part of the Macrobyte site is created in Radio (similar look and feel, don't you know). I don't see anything about RSS syndication in Conversant, maybe that's a Radio thing.

Macrobyte software is affordable and they offer a hosted service. They also offer system design and consulting. Maybe someone to talk to for triangulation...

Big Business Pressures for Palladium

What do you think your corporate IT department says to Microsoft when they come calling? I can just imagine it goes something like this:

1. "We want the ability to know what our employees are doing with our computers."
2. "We want to know who they sent email to (even if it's on a Hotmail site)."
3. "We want to know what files they send via Instant Messaging."
4. "We want to know what Web sites they both looked at and published to."
5. "We want to be able to search any employees' hard drive for any piece of information and get it fast."

[Scobelizer]

Business has legitimate productivity, competitive, and liability motivations for wanting this kind of info. Our litigious society has made BigBiz liable for virtually anything the employees do, whether the business knows about it or not. BigBiz simply has too many employees. They can't know them all, they sure can't trust them all, yet the courts hold them accountable for the actions of each. This kind of response is only natural.

I'd like to blame the lawyers, but that misses the point. Lawyers don't file suits if they can't find plaintiffs. I'd like to blame the courts but typically these things get jury trials. I'd like to blame the government, but we voted for them. Who does that leave?

Denmark Case on Linking Counter to Internet Principles

via [Ernie the Attorney]

Dave Winer's thoughts on deep linking decision from Denmark

"In Denmark today, a judge rules against a search engine that respects the robots.txt convention, and stops it from "deep linking" into sites run by the Danish newspaper association. All these court cases are as stupid as dirt. Several good technical preventatives exist...[so] save the lawyer's fees. ...  We know for sure that when a company goes to court for "deep linking" that they aren't talking to, or listening to, their technical people. BTW, deep linking is an oxymoron. There's only one kind of linking on the Web. Why would you ever point to the home page of a news oriented site." via [Scripting News]

Amen Brother!  The law shouldn't help those who don't want to help themselves.  Of course, the site operators may not know about the technical solution.  One thing's for sure: most lawyers have zero incentive to figure it out on the client's behalf because it deprives them of the opportunity to file a lawsuit that, while not frivolous, won't win any Academy Awards either.  But lawyers file suits to make money, not to collect awards.

Bill Campbell Your Radio Host

A sad day for Atlanta when the Mayor responsible for driving the city to the brink of bankruptcy despite a decade of booming economy gets his own talk show. Too bad it won't be broadcast from the Georgia State Pen.

Ex-mayor gets a radio show. AccessAtlanta Jul 5 2002 12:27PM ET [Moreover - Atlanta news]

Jobless Rate up to 5.9 Percent

The job market doesn't just feel bad, it is bad. According to this NYT article it's not looking to get better any time soon. If you got one, hang onto it. If you don't well, let's go make one.

Jobless Rate Edges Up to 5.9%; Payroll Growth Remains Weak. The nation's work force rose by 36,000 jobs last month, but the increase was not big enough to prevent the unemployment rate from inching up to 5.9 percent. By Kenneth N. Gilpin.

RIAA Goes After Corporate P2P

I have reservations about posting this, since it just helps spread the public scare tactics of BigContent. But it's important in as much as I think P2P can play an important role in corporate information exchange and it points out the need for som epolicies about just how and what can go on a P2P server.

BigContent strikes $1 million deal with Arizona corporation over an internal P2P server with illegal MP3s.

Peer-to-Peer Web Sites Grow 535 Percent. Lawsuit Settlement Finds Corporations Liable for Allowing Access to P2P Apps

K-Logs, NNTP, and Knowledge Management

Jon's book, Practical Internet Groupware (out of print but available used and online at Safari) was one of the first, and maybe the best, book available on using standard Internet protocols for groupware. It's a great book to read for ideas. And Jon ran the entire Byte publication team on a system similar to that he describes.

But he later admitted that the structure required for NewsGroups to work was cumbersome. I wish he would discuss how he thinks NNTP could fit into a POMO KM (a JOHO term) system. I like the idea of simple, open protocols. And I like using NewsGroups for support when companies offer moderated groups. But I'm having trouble weaving the two together.

Microsoft, NNTP, and the mismanagement of knowledge management. Robert Scoble has a theory about why Outlook doesn't include a newsreader: ...

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This Page was last updated: 2/9/2003; 11:17:02 AM