Blurring the Line Between Blogs and News

"Bloggers love to talk about how this RSS-empowered medium is changing journalism forever. What's already clear to me is that blogs and 'traditional' news journalism are ideal partners for delivering, aggregating and analyzing news.

For example, I'm subscribed to around 50 RSS feeds that deliver content to my news aggregator on a daily basis. What's happening here is that you quickly notice patterns where breaking news around the web feeds blog discussions, and vice versa. So in that context, Tech Watch is a natural fit for InfoWorld's news team. Expect to see us blog from events like trade shows, and link to enterprise IT news around the web with our spin. Some of us might even try to be funny (but don't hold your breath).

So what makes Tech Watch unique?

1. Every InfoWorld news reporter has been issued a username and password for posting to this site.

2. Some news stories will get blogged, others will run in the news section. If we develop a formula for exactly how those decisions are made I'll let you know.

4. The copy desk is cut out of the loop. Goodbye production latency, and hello group editing!" [InfoWorld, via Jon's Radio]

It will be interesting to watch how these reporters decide what is "news" and what is a blog entry. Will InfoWorld's famous RSS ads run in blog entries, too? And how does the copy desk (and the higher-ups) feel about being cut out of the loop? When InfoWorld evaluates this project in a few months, what will the consequences of cutting out the copy desk be? Will there be extra rewards or recognition (internally or externally) for those reporters that post more (or less) to the blog than to the news section?

InfoWorld is definitely doing some interesting things these days... [The Shifted Librarian] 
11:21:35 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Extending Movable Type into University Courses

"One of the most active entries I've posted this year was my wish for a good open-source courseware package. I ended up looking at a few of the suggestions, but to get what I wanted, all would have required too steep a learning curve and customization process.

So, today I decided to see if I could leverage my existing knowledge of MovableType to generate something that met my basic needs for courseware. I plan on keeping the grades in our Prometheus-based courseware (saves me the hassle of dealing with password-protected stuff, and importing class lists), but putting everything else into a customized course blog. That allows me to make the course content easily accessible to students, colleagues, and other interested parties--and to allow comments and ideas from people outside of the class to become part of the [sic]

The beginnings of the course site can be found at http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/320/320-031/. I've done nothing yet with aesthetics, obviously, because I wanted to first think through functionality...." [mamamusings]

How cool is it that Liz Lawley is extending Movable Type to become basic courseware and documenting how she's doing it via her personal blog?! The next time someone questions the value of blogging, show them this entry!

Of course, it would be interesting if Liz could work the school's library into the course blog, too - assignments, resources, links to live help if available, etc. The key is for librarians to work with professors on these kinds of projects and then promote these services to the entire faculty.

On a side note, let's see how quickly trackback works to show this post to Liz. It will be yet another wonderful example of how blogs open the lines of communication, collaboration, and good-old-fashioned brainstorming!

[The Shifted Librarian] 
11:17:04 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Firebird Web Panel to posts to blogs
I want a Web Panel that posts to any MetaWeblog API compatible blogging system including MovableType, Radio and Manila!
Hard to say exactly what might be "slightly out of date" in Ben's description of how Web Panels will work, but in a nutshell, it's just another web page that you can pop up on the left side of the current page. Bookmarks can be targeted to the Web Panel, for things like a weblog update page or your blogroll, or you can temporarily drag a page into the Web Panel, for things like search results or a list of links. So far, nice enough, but not too exciting. Now, picture your weblog posting form in the Web Panel, so that while you write an entry about a page, that page is sitting there in plain view, ready for you to copy another quote or make sure you spell someone's name right. Since Firebird's just as happy to display XUL (the interface language that defines the whole browser interface) as HTML, picture your posting form having rich text editing, and being designed in XUL not HTML, so that you get away from the clunky interface that HTML forms force on you, with everything being truly resizable and smooth instead
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog] 
2:40:34 AM      comment []   trackback []