Column Two

Regular readers would be aware that a lot of my posts are links to interesting articles, resources, and commonly, blog posts. I confess: I do this primarily for my own benefit, so I can find these resources again later when I need them. I hope these posts are also of ...

Jakob Nielsen has written an article on the usability of weblogs, providing some guidelines on better practices. To quote: Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to ...

Lee LeFever has posted a blog entry on weblogs and conferences. To quote: Over dinner last weekend, I had a discussion with some folks who run conferences for a software company here in Seattle. These folks were concerned about the weblogging of conferences. Their concern wasn't rooted in the fact ...

Just for interest, the last two entries were posted using Zempt. This is a nice multi-platform posting tool for Movable Type, that significantly improves on mucking around with the sometimes-slow web interface. So far, so good. I'll report any news (good or otherwise) as I continue using this tool.

I'm pleased to report that an article on weblogs, written by me, has appeared in the latest edition of Image and Data Manager. Titled "Clever blogs", it provides an answer to the question "what is this thing called a weblog?", and explores the potential benefit for organisations and individuals. I'll republish ...

Michael Angeles writes about the value of k-logs (knowledge weblogs) within an organisation, from a librarian's perspective. To quote: Web-logging software has received plenty of attention as a quick and easy way to post content to a web site. Web logs (blogs) tend to fall into two categories: personal web ...

Haiko Hebig has put together an extensive list of news aggregators, broken down by operating system. Love it! [Thanks to The Shifted Librarian.]

I've been using AmphetaDesk for a while now, but I've finally made the switch across to another system. While AmphetaDesk has many desirable features, what was crippling me was the inability to mark items as "read". When you are reading 40+ weblogs, not having the "new" items clearly marked ...

I've just come across another weblog popularity service: Technorati. This provides a good summary of who is linking to your blog, and other useful information. For a little money, you can even get an RSS feed of the same details...

I have just come across a very handy weblog comparison site. It works like this: you pick up to five different packages to compare, and it builds you a table of features, showing which package does what. Very, very handy. [Thanks to ia/]

You may have noticed that I don't tend to post much on weblogs themselves (I feel it is way too "introspective"). That being said, a new initiative has caught my attention: BlogMD. This has the following aims: The guiding principle behind the BlogMD initiative is that by creating standards in ...

Ray Ozzie has released a draft of the Groove policy on employee weblogs. While encouraging personal weblogs by employees is an interesting and challenging way of connecting with customers, it does potentially expose the company to additional legal liability. This draft policy presents a sensible middle ground that spells ...