This Week’s Grab Bag

More miscellaneous cool stuff I’ve recently stumbled across and would like to share.

Topping this week’s list: Writing Tips for E-mail Distribution of Your Article or Message (by Bill Platt). As always, I love succinct and practical tips articles – and this one succeeds on both counts. Many people and organizations (myself included) continue to publish text-only e-mail newsletters. This surprisingly demanding and quirky medium needs special attention. The tips in this article will help you create e-mail newsletter content that displays and works well for your subscribers.

SPECIAL MENTION: Being an avid bookaholic, I’m forever touting the joys of reading to, well, everyone. Now you can too – and win $1000 worth of books in the process. Powell’s Books is currently running an essay contest. Just answer this question in 350-750 words: What was your most memorable reading experience of the last ten years? Entry deadline: August 31, 2004, 11:59 p.m. PST. For each entry, Powell’s will donate $1 to Reading is Fundamental (a leading children’s literacy nonprofit).

Here’s the rest of this week’s list…

How to Write a Better Weblog (Feb. 22, 2003, A List Apart, by Dennis A. Mahoney). I mention this article mainly because it’s become a rather seminal work in the emerging field of blogging style. It offers sound advice, and is well worth reading and saving. The first two sections are intended to help inexperienced writers sound more polished. The last four sections are the most intriguing, in my opinion.
They Rule: An online project, experiment, and tool created by digital artist Josh On. I absolutely adore this site. I think it’s a great example of how the Internet can help elucidate and highlight interconnections between disparate, even arcane pieces of information. Basically, this site allows users to find connections between interlocking corporate boards of directors. However, I could see this concept expanding into applications involving science, politics, engineering, education, literature, music, and more. You’ll only really grasp how fun, engaging, and visually striking this experience is if you try it for yourself. (More info from the Whitney Museum’s Artport)
While I’m on the subject of interactive digital art, take a few minutes to explore the Whitney Museum’s Artport site. It’s a visually stunning yet incredibly usable and navigable portal for Net art and digital arts, and an online gallery space for commissioned Net art projects. Great art is great content too – especially online.
RSS Ads – let�s get it on!!! (July 5, The Nanopublishing Weblog, by Jason Calcanis). One of the main controversies in the emerging, evolving communication medium of webfeeds is advertising. Should there be ads in webfeeds? If so, how should they be presented? How would the business model work? Should this medium be an ad-free preserve? I’ve covered both sides of this issue before. My own perspective is, why not – provided the publisher wants it and it doesn’t drive away the audience. In this article, Calcanis comes down firmly in favor of webfeed ads. He notes, “How many people out there take the perpetually free �day pass� at Salon vs. subscribing? Exactly – users have voted and they are totally down with free content supported by reasonable disruptive advertising.” Well, I think that depends on the publication and the audience, but point taken. Read the comments to Calcanis’ article to see how controversial this topic is.
Can you feel the love? (or How do you value a blog?). I couldn’t pass up this article, also from Nanopublishing’s Jason Calcanis. Here, he enumerates several statistical guides to measure blog traffic and popularity. But then he observes, “I think the greatest way to value a blog is by the level of trust and love between the blogger and the reader. If the readers trust the blogger then they can love the blogger. Without trust there can be no love. If your blog is loved all the business questions go away. That is the secret, it�s that simple.” It may sound sappy, but I find that’s very true. All bloggers – especially people who create corporate blogs, should read this article.
Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars Wiki as a PIM and Collaborative Content Tool (Information Today, April 2003, by David Mattison). Need a good guide to understanding the basics of what wikis are are why you should care? This is your starting point. The technical details and some of the links may be a bit out of date, but this is one of the best overviews I’ve found.
Also from Information Today (Jan/Feb 2004): Blogging and RSS � The “What’s It?” and “How To” of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators, by Will Richardson (creator of the excellent education weblog Weblogg-ed). This is a pretty thorough but basic backgrounder, from an educator’s perspective, about how weblogs can aid the educational process for both teachers and students. Many specific examples are provided.
Speaking of e-learning, ATutor looks like a very cool tool. It’s an open-source, Web-based learning content management system (LCMS) – that is, an environment for creating, hosting, and delivering online courses. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m dying to – mainly because Scott Leslie recently commented in EdTechPost on this tool, “Caution: Use of this product may actually enable learning amongst an entire class of people who are otherwise discriminated against by badly designed, inaccessible technologies.”
More thoughts on e-learning: On July 7 Contentology published an interview with Canadian e-learning expert Stephen Downes. Despite the fact that he deals with deeply technical stuff every day, Downes has a gift for clear, simple insight. My favorite quote from this interview: “E-learning is an extension of ourselves in the sense that it greatly increases our capacities. With appropriate incentive and a little bit of work, it is possible today to become well educated in just about any academic field (professions, of course, with a significant practical component, resist this trend). This means that the imbalance between the formally educated and the uneducated in a discipline has shifted.” If you like this interview, check out Downes’ own weblog, Stephen’s Web (one of my favorites).
Press release: Mayo Clinic Goes Digital. In my entire lifetime, I have never been able to decipher a doctor’s handwriting. It’s amazing that my asthma prescription doesn’t get filled with thorazine. It has long seemed beyond ridiculous to me that so much of the US medical system relies on handwritten paper records and notes. The Mayo Clinic has had enough of that. From now on, all medical records will be created and stored electronically for nearly 1.5 million annual outpatient visits. More power to them!
Too much of a good thing – reflections on the hassles of coping with legitimate e-mail. Salon, July 16, by Farhad Manjoo. My favorite anecdote: The guy who declared “e-mail bankruptcy.” I’ll keep that in mind…
Technorati would be perfect if…. This was the question posed by Judith Meskill in Nanopublishing. I’ve linked to the answers. I use Technorati a lot – it’s one of the best ways to track who’s been commenting on and linking to my weblog postings. But it’s kind of buggy, at least at times. I know it’s a work in progress, but the comments I’ve linked to should give the Technorati creators useful guidance, if they listen.
Kill the Spyware! Lately, I’ve been on a quest to eradicate spyware, adware, and “malware” from my laptop. My friend and colleague Michael Worth has been on the same quest. There are a lot of anti-spyware tools to choose from – but which is best? In Spyware Removal Tools, Worth pronounces Webroot’s SpySweeper the winner, and he explains why. I concur – I’ve tried SpySweeper, and it’s very thorough. It takes forever to run, but it’s worth the wait. The demo is free, and the subscription costs $30. If you insist on free protection, try Spybot or Bazooka. And of course, the best way to prevent Spyware from getting onto your computer in the first place is to ditch Explorer.
More on Killing Spyware: Apparently it’s not enough to just top using Explorer. If you’re not actually going to remove Explorer from you machine, you need to go into its options and turn off all functionality even remotely related to spyware vulnerabilities – even if you’re not using Explorer! That’s what Daniel Gray did – and I’ve followed his instructions . It’s easy.