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Another collection of interesting items that have caught my attention over the past week, sorted by category.

TOP OF THIS WEEK’S LIST: Why can’t a newspaper be more like a blog? This is a brilliant and thankfully blunt series published June 2004 in Barry Parr’s excellent blog MediaSavvy. Here is an index to the series, with a brief excerpt from each article:

1. RSS: “Newspapers are treating RSS as a threat to their core business. They are desperately afraid of ‘aggregators’ grabbing their headlines and treating them as wire services. …Publishers want you to read their sites because it’s a habit and not because they’re producing must-read journalism.”
2. Comments: “Newspapers demand registration and acceptance of advertising email as a condition for reading their news, but none use those registrations to create a community [by allowing comments]. It’s hard to find a better example of how newspapers still treat the Web like a broadsheet.”
3. Archives with permanent URLs: “[Newspapers] don’t understand that links from interested outsiders add even more value to their news by creating dense and useful meta-information that they couldn’t buy even if they wanted to.”
4. Trackback: “Until newspapers embrace trackback, they’re not really part of the Web. …If they’re going to succeed on the Web, online newspaper publishers are going to have to let go of the paralyzing fear that somebody, somewhere is going to make a little money from pointing people to their content.”
5. Community and karma: “The typical newspaper web site’s home page is a roach motel: readers can enter, but they can’t get out, unless they click on an ad. …If newspapers are going to survive, they’re going to have to get local in a hurry. Why is the A section of most newspapers national and international news and the B section local news? That’s backwards. And local news is even more important on the Web. People are going to the local daily for local news. And they should be going there for other links to the community.”
6. If newspaper Web sites aren’t like blogs, at least they’re not like Fox News: “I’ve been pretty tough on newspapers’ Web sites for the last week or so. But newspapers actually do a pretty good job compared to the typical television broadcaster. …Fox News just redesigned their site, and the result is godawful.”
7. Conclusion: “News sites have been wringing their hands about whether blogging is journalism and whether newspapers should let their reporters blog. They’re missing the most important point about blogging. Suddenly, millions of their readers now have better-managed web sites that are better integrated with the Web than any online news Web site.”

Read the rest of this week’s grab bag…

BLOGGING:

• What is (and isn’t) blogging? Over at Webblogg-ed, Will Richardson had the guts to venture into this controversial topic back on May 5: Blogging Thoughts…Again. Looking at blogs from an educational perspective, he listed various types of posts that he considered to be real blogging, or not. Personally, I don’t think it’s constructive to try to define what kind of content constitutes “real” blogging. To me, that’s like trying to define “what’s a real book?” according to the type of content packaged in book format. Still, the discussion is interesting.
• What’s a Blogger? Not This … In this Oct. 4 E-Media Tidbits item, Peter Zollman disputes the definition of bloggers offered by CBS Marketwatch columnist Bambi Francisco: “a group of nontraditional, make-your-own-rules-as-you-go journalists.” Yeah, I’m with Zollman on this one – Yuck!
• How do you write a blog post? By Dina Mehta, Sept. 15. Excerpt: “Sometimes my experiences just trigger off thoughts and i use my blog as an outlet to share thoughts, sometimes feelings, test ideas, and even rant. At other times, i voice my point of view on a subject and try to add value by linking to relevant posts or articles. And some posts are more ‘constructed’ - i read something and pull together pieces that somehow come together in my mind.” (Thanks to Bill Ives for this link.)

CONTENT MANAGEMENT:

• Effective Content Management Comes Of Age, by Robin Good, June 11. Excerpt: “A great new breed of content management systems provide a lot of brave new features without requiring you to step beyond your assigned budget, or requiring you to know PHP, Perl or some other programming beast just to see the ‘animal’ at work.”
• The “List User Interface: Next step in managing information overload? The folks at UI Designer ponder the limitations of the ubiquitous graphic user interface (GUI) when it comes to accessing and managing large amounts of information.
• What is Device Independence? by Peter Mikhalenko, XML.com, Sept. 22: A crucial backgrounder to read if your content is or will be received and read on a variety of device types (web browsers, PDAs, cell phones, etc.). Excerpt: “Content authors can no longer afford to develop content targeted for use via a single access mechanism. The key challenge facing them is to enable their content or applications to be delivered through a variety of access mechanisms with a minimum of effort. Implementing a web site or an application with device independence in mind could save money and assist authors in providing users with an improved user experience – anytime, anywhere, and via any access mechanism.” Examines this issue from the perspectives of the use, the author, and the delivery mechanism – a very useful way to break down this topic.

CONTENT STYLE:

• Your Writing Style Should Influence Your Blog Layout, E-Literate, Sept. 23: Michael Feldstein puts my recent series on common blog posting formats in context with the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack II study, and comes up with some intriguing and practical advice. Excerpt: “For example, the study found that pages with large headline font sizes relative to the article text encourage scanning and discourage careful reading. So if you tend to do a lot of link or blurb posts, then large headlines probably serve your readers well. However, if you tend to write a fair percentage of longer posts, though, (assuming that you want people to actually read those posts), then you probably want to keep the headlines smaller and in line with the main text of the post.”

E-LEARNING:

• Less is More: Designing an Online Course, by R. Thomas Berner. He really, really nails this topic. Excerpt: “Someone developing an online course needs to go from being the center of attention to being someone on the sideline. The catchy way others have expressed this goes like this: Don’t be a sage on the stage, but a guide by the side.”
• US News & World Report’s E-Learning Directory, updated Oct. 2004. A great primer for people new to e-learning, who may be skeptical of its diversity and validity. It focuses mainly on degree-oriented online courses from colleges and universities, which is only a portion of the e-learning pie. Still, it’s a great introduction to e-learning for people who are new to the concept.
• The dynamics of group online learning: It’s rather dense and academic, but check out this paper published May 10 in James Farmer’s weblog Incorporated Subversion: Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments.
• PowerPoint, No! Cyberspace, Yes! By Tom Creed, National Teaching & Learning Forum. This article is a bit dated now (May 1997), but its core truths still hold true. Excerpt: “Using PowerPoint in the classroom doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. It does, however, mean that your emphasis is on the quality of your presentation rather than your students’ learning.”

TOOLS & TIPS:

• Tiddlywiki: This may possibly be the answer to my need for a backup brain. Infosential describes this tool pretty well: “It’s a standalone wiki. …There’s no server software, no need to be online, no software to install. One file is all you need, and it gives you more-or-less everything you’d expect in a wiki. You simply open it in your browser and edit away.”
• Onfolio: Several CONTENTIOUS readers have mentioned this software to me as an alternative or supplement to Furl. Here’s how Onfolio describes itself: “Onfolio is a PC application for collecting, organizing and sharing information you find online. Fully integrated with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Office, Onfolio has tools for capturing a wide range of content including links, text snippets, images, web pages, and documents. Onfolio lets you organize and find captured content quickly and easily. And with Onfolio, you can easily share your research in documents, presentations, emails, and research reports.” I haven’t tried Onfolio and don’t intend to, since I mainly use a Linux computer and since I’m satisfied with Furl’s functionality. However, several people have told me they like it, so I thought I’d pass the information along.
• Feed readers getting built in to web browsers. See E-Media Tidbits, Sept. 15: RSS Steps Into Mainstream, by Steve Yelvington. New webfeed features for Firefox, Thunderbird, and Safari.
• Blogger Weblogs: Tweaks for Non-Geeks: Creativity/Machine, Sept. 21. Excerpt: “If you have a BloggerFree-powered weblog that you are keen to make more interactive without making the move to a higher-end blogging application hosted on your own server, and/or you aren’t a supergeek, you might find some of these tips useful.” Covers comments, webfeeds, and pings/trackbacks.
• Blender. This is a cool-sounding prototype tool that a bunch of people have been talking about lately. Basically it allows webfeed publishers who are also Amazon affiliates to make money off of their webfeeds by splicing in books from Amazon related to the topics of webfeed postings. Haven’t tried it yet, but I might. For more info see Robin Good and John Battelle. (Thanks to Pamela Heywood for this link.)

WEBFEEDS:

• Feed Splicing and “Splicensing:” On Sept. 28, New Media Hack wrote about how the folks at Feedburner are looking at ways to “splice” webfeeds together. This is a thorny issue – not just in terms of technology, but also copyright. (Yes, the content of webfeeds can indeed be copyrighted!) Lots of potential for opportunities and pitfalls here. Worth watching.
• My RSS reader saves me about 300 hours a week, Aug. 23, from Greg Hughes: Actually, he admits right up front that the “300 hours” figure is an exaggeration. But still, if you’re trying to make the point to someone about how webfeeds can save people considerable time on a regular basis, this is a good, short blog posting to point to. Interesting excerpt: “I use RSS feeds for practically everything now. Rarely do I browse to a web site these days as my first method of gathering my daily doses of information.” Incidentally, Tim Duckett of Infosential echoes this perspective – and so do I. Most of what you see here in CONTENTIOUS I’ve found through webfeeds.
• What happens when you try to track too many feeds? The time crunch inevitably hits again. I’m already discovering this – currently I track 326 feeds, but I’d say I only actively read about 20-30 daily, plus an additional 40-50 weekly. Most others I barely glance at. Brain Tags discussed this problem on Sept. 28: Time to Read. Also on Sept. 28, Robert Scoble posted on the same topic, Dealing with the information flow.
• Show Me State of Missouri News: On Sept. 1, RSS in Government highlighted the innovative ways various state agencies in Missouri are putting webfeeds to good use. Again, feeds are not just for bloggers are news sites. They can be used for ANY type of announcements or updates.

JUST TOO COOL:

• Mt. St. Helens VolcanoCam: I kid you not. Normally I loathe webcams, but I find myself checking this one a couple of times daily. Call me morbid…