Tuesday, October 15, 2002

Trilobites A coworker sent me this link about a place where you can dig up your own Trilobites 3:25:40 PM    comment [] Calling a JSP in a servlet question I mentioned that I was working on a Java implementation of the blog api. Well I also realize that the best way of creating custom tags that people can embed within the pages is via JSP Custom Tags. Now, my only problem is figuring out how to call the jsp engine within a servlet. If any of you have an idea about this, please drop me a line. 1:34:18 PM    comment [] Klogs Kogs=Knowledge Blogs. Great resource. A place where you can go to learn what you need to know. Ask questions and get answers. The only problem that I can see with the whole thing is getting people to do it. Kind of like unit testing with junit. It's a discipline that you need to get people to do, otherwise they just keep making the same mistakes. Toward a theory of klognets.. CommonMe bloggrolled Denmark's own Hoejberg. Hoejberg posted: Andy Chen talks about his company's product called RabbleRouser. The approach, Four Dimensions of Collaboration, taken to design the product looks interesting. hmmm. The 4d: The Connected Worker Provisioned with tools for connection. Supported by incentives and moderation. The Evolution of the Community Begin dialog. Include people inside and outside your organization. Ignore org borders. Conversation stimulates brainstorms and mindbombs. More conversation, more solutions. People take roles. See small group psychology. Recruit action teams from conversation groups.   The Evolution of the Problem Problems form small communities out of larger ones. Problems act as catalysts. They draw the interested and productive, and repell the rest. The problem community moves from discussion to action, from informal to formal. The Problem Portfolio Program management in the network/hierarchical organization. This is a true march toward a theory of klognet behavior. btw, Quovix RabbleRouser is a free project portfolio app, Windows or Linux. see also: Sébastien Paquet's klognet page. David Gammel's How to set up a low-cost klog network (using MoveableType) [a klog apart  klogs] [Phil Wolff: klogs] 1:08:17 PM    comment [] A great use for Radio and Blogs in general The following article is just one of the many things that I think would be useful for me professionally, as well as for my company. Radio Wishlist - Multi-payload klogging: a world of content.. I’ve been screaming for this in my own quiet way since Radio’s Pike days. Make us payload masters! You started with the "blog item" payload. Radio lets us navigate through a database of our items; render them in html and xml; publish, syndicate, and aggregate them. Radio creates web forms that let us create new content using the blog item structure. And we even have web services that let us pass collections of web items from one app to another. Take it to the next level of abstraction. Let me blog multiple kinds of payloads. vCards, iCalendar events, event channels, resumes and CVs using the HR-XML and SIDES standards, purchase orders, semiconductor recipes, project management tasks and assignments and status reports. Starting from an imported or referenced XML schema, generate a preferences page for the new payload. Let me: Name this design Choose which items are optional or mandatory; shown, editable, or hidden. Associate component parts with a channel’s metadata or with a post’s. Choose default html transforms. From this design, generate an html interface. Forms for creating new instances of the payload, and editing them. Database search and browsing tools. What we have for blog items, just with support for other structures. Here’s a story. I saw in my team news feed that we were having a meeting. I clicked on the event icon and loaded it into my Outlook calendar, later synched with my Palm Pilot. I clicked on the event’s agenda and saw the list of system migration tasks we’re going to review. I clicked on one of the tasks and Radio opened it up for me, showing the projected start and end dates, the task deliverable description, and that I’m responsible for it. Right. I see that someone from WidgetFactory will be there. I check IntraDayPop and Google to see if anyone else has background on them. I go to the meeting. Mary and Harry blog it, I take pictures. On my Radio desktop home page, I started writing up my meeting notes. I saved my draft then hit the "add more kinds of stuff" button. I looked at the list of available kinds and clicked "add a picture". On the "add a picture page" I pointed to the picture file, titled it, named the people in it, described what we were doing, when it was taken (obviously not the posting time) and where, and a few notes. I previewed it and saved it, and added four more. I added the vcards of the people in the meeting, which Radio lets me import from Outlook or the company LDAP service. I changed the order of the pictures to show the logical progression of the debate. I used the “add an event” button to create the follow-up meeting. I used the "add a Catering Request" button to order coffee and bagels; Radio emails a copy to me and to catering, pushes the info to SAP updating my cost center.   I saved and published the post. Radio not only appended the pictures with the metadata to my post, it also created a slide show. The fotos, follow-up event, and catering order are associated with the event in my blog’s database, in the RSS feed and on my web page. Because they were mentioned with vCards in my post, my Radio pinged theirs. They should know my feed had updated with something of special interest to them. Their Radios detect the proposed event, and that it is from a trusted channel, and push it into their local copies of Outlook, Netscape Calendar, or Apple iCalendar. Since there were three vendor folk at the meeting, two new to me, the vendors’ vCards were automatically added to my Outlook rolodex. I prep for the followup meeting by doing my project status flash report. I go to my Radio desktop home page, start a post, "add: project flash report", fill out the multipart form, save/preview/and publish. I have a sidebar on my dashboard showing recent meetings and links to my and other posts about them. Coming meetings too. I routinely show them on my intranet and public blog. The meeting description form has a “private” check box so I can the event if I like. The dashboard also has a list of the people I’ve been meeting, and exchanging posts, and emails. Linking to their blogs and to searches of my personal blogspace. Radio updates their vcards on my system by scanning their blogs for the latest version every few weeks. This is how I want to klog. This is the fastest, surest way for Radio to take its place in the enterprise architecture. Multiple kinds of payload. Flowing through blogs, metablogging systems, blogspace, and over web service bridges to the apps of our daily work lives. See also: How to manually include an event payload in a blog post. To Radio, the event or a vcard are just more html or gems. Radio needs to understand them as data objects outside of the item's "description" blob. blogging CVs and resumes with Radio. More payload discussion in Whither blogs? Keyless klogging for the rest of us What is Mediablog literacy? Radio Wishlist - Audio options. Chris Janton makes LDAP calls from Radio!  [a klog apart: klogs] [Phil Wolff: klogs] 1:03:04 PM    comment [] Mediablogging I found the following article interesting, and a good read. Enjoy. What is Mediablog literacy?. I'm learning too much as I bootstrap my audioblog. Everything from cabling, microphone types, and software and hardware configuration. I haven't started on content yet, or post-production. I'm happily over my head. But I gotta ask... What literacy do you need to blog? To blog well? To mediablog well? What is "Good blogging?" My short list: Persistence and frequency Stringing ideas together using words Writing in a way that engages Context, lots of context Themes Voice Authority / Sincerity It's incomplete. What's on your list? What knowledge, skills and abilities does a good blogger need? Given that description of "good blogging": Understanding the medium Mastery of blogging tools Installing Formatting Tweaking Updating Backing up  Working with ISPs and hosting  Ability to write well Self assignment: able to pick topics that fit the medium and the blogger Writing for the web Writing persuasively Tech-writing skills, if writing to inform Mechanical skill: able to conform writing to conventions accepted by your audience. Strunk and White for some readership, eminem for others, and Dogma 2000 for others. Willingness to participate Laws and etiquette: libel, ownership, citation, etc. What is richer media? I'm referring to the content being created. In ascending richness: Words Pictures Sound Video Software/Interactive Objects What is "good blogging" in richer media? That's the billion dollar question. My short list : Persistence and frequency Stringing ideas together using words and other media Communicating in a way that engages Context, lots of context Themes Voice Authority / Sincerity  What knowledge, skills and abilities does a good mediablogger need? I don't know. Let's ask people who: meet newspaper deadlines teach facilitate meetings tell stories make stage performances make live radio make movies make news programs make documentaries make novels and short stories make audio books. The body of knowledge is wide. Look at the above list of rich-media folks. Most have subdisciplines, guilds of specialists. Here are some of the job titles from Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence movie: Film Editor Cinematographer Step 37. Check your makeup before you blog. Lighting technician Audio engineer Audio designers Casting Production design Art direction Set direction Costume design Makeup  Hair Production manager Director, Assistant Director, DGA trainee The body of knowledge is deep. Those are broad occupational categories. My dad was an NBC News and Fox Movietone "sound man" in the early 1960s; did everything audio in field recording for radio, televion, and newsreels. Just look at the AI sound department's job titles forty years' later: Additional sound re-recording mixer, ADR editor, ADR mixer, ADR recordist, ADR supervisor, assistant ADR editor, assistant dialogue editor, assistant engineer, assistant music editor, assistant sound designer, assistant sound effects editor, assistant sound engineer, audio engineer, boom operator, boom operator: blue screen, dialogue editor, digital editorial services, digital sound transferer, engineering services, foley artist, foley editor, foley mixer, foley recordist, house sound, machine room operator, music editor, music scoring mixer, re-recording engineer, scoring crew, scoring stage manager, scoring stage technician, sound designer, sound effects editor, sound effects recordist, sound mix technician, sound mixer, sound mixer: blue screen, sound post-production assistant, sound recordist, sound re-recording mixer, supervising sound editor, sound re-recordist, sound technician, supervising assistant sound editor, supervising music editor, supervising sound editor, video services. A long list. Don't even glance at the special effects department. The music editor has different skills than the sound editor. Different talents too. They know how they fit in the moviemaking process. And they know the skills those roles need. The medium matters. This work changes by medium. Each type of content, each medium has its own life cycles, from inspiration to closure. Some media are live, others are Memorex (synch or asynch). This affects how many people are involved, the kinds of risks taken and managed, the project life cycle, and the tools of the trade. Each medium carries its own vocabularies, grammars, conventions. They play against each other but you have to know what works. Cinema, news, music, journalism, theater, and graphic design have huge legacies and institutions going back hundreds of years. We will pull from each to compose the mediablogging body of knowledge. We barely understand the text blogging medium; mediablogging poses entirely new challenges.    Software and web services as media. You may debate if software components are a type of content, but it's happening now and spreading. Just look at the flash animation-of-the-day sites.  Blog streams of software may be as simple as a screensaver-of-the-day, as dry as the flow of "resumes" across a recruiter's desk, or a new car or weapon for your Grand Theft Auto game. Cheaper, better, faster media tech pours across the land. Mediablogging talent and expertise... that'll take longer, will take cultivation and evolution.   Mediablogging for Dummies, anyone?  [a klog apart: klogs] [Phil Wolff: klogs] 1:00:42 PM    comment [] More on Adam More on Adam. Last night, we were getting ready for bed, and as part of the process, we've decided that we should start having Ben use the toilet before he goes to bed (he's still using dipers). Well, he did his business in the toilet, and Amy was giving him positive feedback by clapping. Well, Adam heard this and started clapping as well...Just excited to hear clapping. Well, after a while, the clapping stoped, so Adam got it into his head that it needed to continue, so he got on all fours, moved about a foot and then sat back down and started clapping. Which is what we have been doing to encourage him to keep crawling. I was watching all this, and couldn't help but laugh and clap...just because that is what he wanted, and because of the way he went about getting the attention. Meanwhile, Emily was in another bathroom, also getting ready for bed, so she yelled out a couple questions on what was happening, and when she finally heard, she exclaimed, "Yea! Ben can wear underwear now!" It's great to see them all get excited for each others achievements. 11:13:21 AM    comment []

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