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OK, I’ve found a ton of interesting material this week about a variety of topics. However, I’m short on time. Normally I prefer to say a little bit about why I’m recommending each item, but this week I can’t do that, and I don’t want to let this stuff get too old. So this time I’m just presenting categories and article titles. Hope that suffices, O hungry readers of mine!

Of course, I need to tell you what’s at the TOP OF THIS WEEK’S LIST: Wiremine, the bliki of Brian Tol. Again, a bliki is a form of online publishing that combines features of weblogs and wikis. It’s still in the early stages and has a bunch of kinks, especially in terms of usability and readability. Still, I think the bliki is a powerful concept – and it especially holds considerable potential for online learning environments. I can’t wait until IdeaGlue, the bliki tool Tol’s developing, gets far enough along that a semi-geek like me can try it. (Thanks to Bill Ives for that link. More on blikis from Nova Spivack.)

…Here’s the rest of this week’s list:

Arranging Ideas (Knowledge & Content Management, Memes):

• The Power of Context, by Julian Elve, Synesthesia, July 27.
• From documents to conversations – even in the KM world, by Jonathan Price, May 28.. Excerpt: “KM used to focus on data mining. …But once you have identified and organized all that information, what good is it? You have to get some conversations going, and, when most of your experts are spread out around the world, many of those conversations are going to be virtual.”
• Infinite Possibilities, by Kathleen Bennett, Reflections, Aug. 24.
• Mind Mapping: An interesting way to work with information, created by Tony Buzan. Excerpt: “Mind Mapping harnesses the full range of cortical skills – word, image, number, logic, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness.”
• The Lifecycle of Memes, an academic paper by Henrik Bjarneskans, Bjarne Grønnevik and Anders Sandberg
• Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, a wiki used by people who contribute to Wikipedia as a way to coordinate their efforts. A lot of interesting meta-level thinking goes on here.

Blogging:

• Zen and the Art of the Blogger, by Chris Lott, Ruminate, April 8.
• When Is a Blog No Longer a Blog? by Pamela Parker, ClickZ, Aug. 20.
• Eliminating the obstacles to developing conversations, by Neville Hobson, NevOn, Sept. 9. Excerpt: “…a very interesting development – write a commentary for publication in the traditional manner on a media website, then offer additional, different or extended further commentary on your blog and actively solicit feedback. This is the way to go. “
• Blog of Death, by Jade Walker. All obituaries, all the time. Talk about niche content!

Content Style:

• Web writing: How to judge a good website from a bad one, Sept. 6, by Gerry McGovern
• Frankenstein’s Documentation, by Sean Hower, WriteThinking, Sept. 10. Kind of reminds me of my own schtick, Effective Writing for the Real World.
• How many spaces after a full stop?, by Stephen Bainbridge, Sept. 15
• Review: Secrets of Mouthwatering Marketing Copy. Nick Usborne loves this report by Marcia Yudkin. I agree, it sounds pretty useful.

Corporate/Organizational Blogs and Wikis:

• Blogs and blogging: advantages and disadvantages, by Gerry McGovern, Aug. 23.
• Ghost Writers For Hire – Good Or Bad?, by Fredrik Wackå, Sept. 11.
• Wiki software provides free shortcut to cost savings, by Natasha Netschay Davies, Globe and Mail, Sept. 16.
• Mitsue blog configuration service, an example of a turnkey option for corporate blogs.

How People Think and Communicate:

• They Don’t Have a Word for It , Washington Post “Science Notebook,” Aug. 23.
• It’s Not Just Usability, Joel on Software, Sept. 6, 2004. Excerpt: “My goal today is not to whine about how usability is not important… usability is important at the margins, and there a lots of examples where bad usability kills people in small planes, creates famine and pestilence, etc. My goal today is to talk about the next level of software design issues, after you’ve got the UI right: designing the social interface.”
• How to give and receive criticism, by Scott Berkun, UIweb, September 2004
• Groupthink, an explanation from Disinfopedia

Journalism and the News Business:

• Hyperlocal Citizens’ Media, Medill School of Journalism, new media publishing class project, Spring 2004. (via Dan Gillmor)
• Wikipedia as a tool for editors and journalists, by Bertrand Pecquerie, editorsweblog, Sept. 9.
• Abused by the News, a hilarious news parody site. Too cool. Even funnier if you’re a journalist.
• NewsML: This is a special flavor of XML intended for the news industry. There’s also a NewsML Toolkit: an open-source Java library for processing NewsML XML packages and for testing conformance. Geeky but very useful.

Learning Online:

• From Classrooms to Learning Environments, more essential reading from the indefatigable Stephen Downes, College Quarterly, Summer 2004.
• When do we need independent rather than collaborative learning? by Evan Straub, blog.IT, Aug. 25.
• Thanks, Cyber-Professor Scalia, Legal Times, Sept. 9, by Tony Mauro. It’s about Concord Law School, the first US online law school.

Search Engines and Content:

• When Search Engines Become Answer Engines, by Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox, Aug. 16. Excerpt: “A major change over the years has been a declining emphasis on using search to identify good sites as such. Rather than hunt for sites to explore and use in depth, users now hunt for specific answers.” (viaAaron Dragushan)
• Google Is Dying, Daniel Brandt, Google Watch, Aug. 29. Excerpt: “On sites with more than a few thousand pages, Google is not indexing anywhere from 10-70% of the pages it knows about.”

Tools:

• Download Accelerator, a great tool for downloading huge files. It can be a life-saver for folks with dialup connections to the internet. Windows only.
• FeedMesh, a brand-new effort to spread the word when a site or blog updates its content. It takes the decentralized network approach.
• Ping-o-matic, to simplify the process of pinging blog aggregators and other sites when you post a new blog item. The point of this is drawing more traffic to your weblog. (More on this from Mike Golding.)
• Storyboarder, a storyboarding tool specifically for instructional design applications, by WhizID. I haven’t used it, but would really like to try it.
• WordIQ: Does your need for definitions extend beyond dictioniers? Search results from a diverse array of dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and other valuable references.
• WordPress related entries plugin. I haven’t tried this yet (I honestly don’t know how safe it is), but I like the concept. It’s a way to add metadata to your blog posts to relate them to other themes or memes being discussed online, so it’ll turn up in search results where a keyword search might have ignored the connection. (via E-Literate)

Webfeeds:

• Webfeed tracking still lags, The Power of Many, Aug. 30
• RSS: Marketing’s Next Big Thing (Part 1 of 2), by Tom Barnes, premium content on MarketingProfs.com, Sept. 7.
• How to lure more RSS readers, by Paul Boutin, Sept. 8. (via The RSS Weblog)
• WWW cubed: syndication and scale, by Bill de hÓra, Sept. 12. Excerpt: “The argument, it doesn’t scale, in it’s worst form is an invitation not to think, and can be something of a dangerous and loaded accusation in technical communities, not unlike the way you are in league with devil used to be in village communities.”
• RSS Usability Guide, from Lockergnome