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Monday, June 30
by
Jason
on Mon 30 Jun 2008 11:42 PM CST
When Jessamyn West was here for SLA, this topic came up at the after-event gathering. I meant to post something about it at that time when the story was still somewhat fresh but never got to it, being as busy as I was with much more important matters like cute baby pictures and Flash-based Friday Fun Links.
A recent invite to the annual Sask Blogs summer picnic reminded me of the fact that the Sask Blogs Aggregator, a site which creates a rolling summary of posts from various Saskatchewan-based and Saskatchewan-themed blogs, is still down. But I'm getting ahead of myself... In mid-April, a right-wing, Sask-based blog named "Small Dead Animals" posted a link to another conservative site named FreeDominion that had posted a story about Canadian civil rights lawyer, Richard Warman. As with most blogs, FreeDominion accepts comments. Warman saw these and made the claim that the comments were defamatory. He sued but in a unique twist, he didn't just name FreeDominion (which allowed the comments) but also sites that linked to the FreeDominion story such as Small Dead Animals (and therefore, were re-publishing these comments indirectly in his view.) Although the case was still in the works and linking to a third-party site that may contain libelous or defamatory material hadn't yet been defined as legal or illegal by a court, the Sask Blogs aggregator shut down their service completely out of concern that a similar charge could be leveled against them - either for linking to Small Dead Animals or to any of the other dozens of blogs that who were part of their feed and which may contain similar borderline comments which could be actionable. Here's a summary from the Regina Leader-Post of the whole situation. I gotta say, I'm with the right winger on this and think that the civil rights lawyer is stretching too way far. If FreeDominion libeled you or allowed you to be libel, that's one thing. But suing every single site that links to the story (or links to a site that links to the story - hey, I just realised, because of all the links I've thrown out to the various sites involved in this case, I'm implicated now too! In fact, because of the interconnected nature of the Internet, every possible site that includes links to other sites is guility as well! Oh-oh - do you know what that means? That's it - shut down the Internet - it's over. Links are no longer allowed!) Okay, kidding aside, does anyone see the irony in a civil rights lawyer being responsible for an action that's stifled freedom of speech and sharing of information, not only in the original offending site but for numerous harmless bystanders? To me, this is sort of like the copyright issue where someone is trying to apply old-world views of how things work now to a new world. In the old days, yeah, if someone else repeated a libelous statement, they were responsible. But in the Internet age, where a link is a click away, a statement can go out to a million people as easily as to a dozen, the old paradigms simply don't work anymore. "The genie is out of the bottle" is a phrase I think of all the time in situations like this. Warman is trying to corral the spread of whatever libelous statements were made but somewhere, someone is going to be able to access them. That's the new world and we all have to accept that. At any rate, the Sask Blogs aggregator was a great, volunteer service that I miss a lot. I tend to read blogs that are in my narrow areas of interest or written by people I know so Sask Blogs was a simple way for me to get an overview of what people were writing about across the province - from all viewpoints, all writing styles, all geographic locations, all manner of topics from personal to political and everything in between. Hopefully this case will be resolved and Sask Blogs will be back soon. Wednesday, June 25
by
Jason
on Wed 25 Jun 2008 11:24 PM CST
Friday, March 28
by
Jason
on Fri 28 Mar 2008 09:39 PM CST
A recent post on Librarian.net reminded me that this year's list of Library's Journal's 2008 Movers & Shakers is now out.
Congrats to Amy Buckland for getting the nod! (<old man voice>I remember when Amy was just a wee lass, firing off e-mails to library school-focused blogs asking about the merits of various schools.</old man voice> Obviously I didn't do a good enough sales job for UWO and she landed at McGill. London's loss is Montreal's gain.) Looking at the list of recipients and seeing how many of those named have blogs (and/or are doing work focused on technology and Web 2.0 stuff), it made me wonder what sort of relationship there is between having a blog and the "real world" of libraries? Classmate John Miedema of the Slow Reading blog recently presented at Salt Lake City Public Library's "Thinking Ahead" conference. I'm not sure if his blog was how they found him and/or if it helped lend credibility to his application if he "cold called" them as a potential speaker but I'm sure it didn't hurt. Maybe that's part of it - you need to have a certain specialty or theme that you're "known" for? (See #4 here.) Amy runs Library Student Journal, John has become a leading proponent of the Slow Reading movement. I haven't won any awards or been invited to any conferences because of my blog (yet! (Of course, I also have my days when I think bloggers are a lot like poets and professors - namely, a group of people who are mostly interested in what other people in the same area are doing while no one else gives a toss. I've organized enough poetry readings in my life to know that 99% of the people who come to them are other poets. And the citation count wars of academics trying to get their papers cited by other academics often seemed like more of an academic circle jerk than anything. Er, anyhow, ranty tangents aside, being a part of the conversation has been useful, even if it hasn't paid off in awards, conference invites or Google-buyout offers. Even something as simple as being able to post the full version of my essay that won second place in the CLA student essay contest last year since CLA didn't have room to print anything but the winner in Feliciter has generated the a couple hits from people who searched for it after the winners were announced last year. And who knows - it may do so into the future as well. And then? That CLA conference invite can't be far off! (How can you tell it's conference season? I'm hoping to go to SLA this year - and to maybe get a chance to meet the famous Jessamyn West of librarian.net and MetaFilter.com - but CLA looks like it's not going to happen, what with the price of diapers and whatnot.) Sunday, March 23
by
Jason
on Sun 23 Mar 2008 12:08 AM CST
I recently
posted the second annual "Head Tale Blog Survey" to find out a bit
about the visitors to this site - how they get here, what they like
about the site, what they want to see more of and so on.
Here are some of the results... - 75% of respondents read the site via RSS with 55% occasionally clicking through to the site and 20% never clicking through. 25% visit directly via a bookmark. - it was pretty evenly split between Google Reader and Bloglines with 60-40% for each respective service. Even though I love it and have raved about it on this blog multiple times, no one uses NetVibes. - 30% of people read/visit the site when they see a new post, 12% visit multiple times per day, 20% visit daily, 20% visit every few days, 6% visit weekly and 12% visit "whenever the mood strikes me". Nobody answered "monthly or less frequently" but then again, I don't think I've had the post up for a month yet! - Given that the blog started when I was in library school and is known mostly to people who are either professors, alumni, former colleagues from when I was attending FIMS or current students there now (and the same categories from other library schools to a lesser degree), it's no surprise that "Library related" and "Library school" are, by far, the most popular types of posts being picked by 87% and 73% of respondents. Other popular categories with more than 50% of people picking them were "Work-Related" (a new category I added to the survey this year) and "Miscellaneous Ramblings" (which sort of surprised me as I don't do a lot of these and tend to not like them as they often feel unfocused and random. But hey, didn't I just describe 90% of blogs in general?) - "Baby-related", "Pop Culture", "Technology" and "Humour" were all just under the 50% level in terms of popularity with survey respondents. - Everything else got at least a double-digit approval rating except "Hockey" which only got a 6% approval rating including one person who went so far as to write-in "I like everything you write about except hockey!" - Sending a strong message to get back to the theme that this blog started with (a message which I may or may not hear! - "Comments" were by far the most popular widget with people indicating that they read them, even if they don't post them. Every other widget got at least a vote or two except for the LastFM "last song played" widget and the Regina/Calgary/London weather widget (but I use that one on a daily basis so it ain't going anywhere!) - Maybe surprisingly, 100% of respondents who answered the question liked that this blog has daily posts! (If I remember correctly, last year, it was only a slight majority who thought this was important.) Thanks for the vote of support folks. I'll try to keep it up (even if I have to occasionally "fudge" time stamps the following day to do so!). - the general comments were very supportive of what I do with this blog and it was nice to see that the respondents included a few former classmates/colleagues from FIMS because I didn't know if those folks were still "out there" reading now that we've all gone our separate ways. - Pace got lots of kudos as well and I'm sure he'll continue to be a regular feature on the blog. (Idea for a future post - the security/privacy issues around putting up pictures and updates about him - something I've thought about a lot while doing my computer/Internet training sessions the past three months. I didn't show Shea's Flickr account or our YouTube videos at every workshop but occasionally it would come up and then I often had to explain our choice to put this type of material on the Internet to people who still buy into that media-generated hysteria about pedophiles lurking around every URL and IP address.) - as for ideas for other future posts from the respondents, I can address this one right now: "Will a Large Hadron Collider experiment create a mini black hole that consumes the earth? Or, do aliens blog more than humans?" Answer: Uhm, no idea. And also, no idea. (Next time, I'm going to include a question about what you're smoking when you fill out the survey! Saturday, March 15
by
Jason
on Sat 15 Mar 2008 01:42 AM CST
Just clearing up some things I've come across recently. I sometimes forget to make a note of where I found stuff so if I got this from you or your site, apologies in advance - feel free to post a comment or drop me a line to let me know (although admittedly 90% of my stuff tends to come from Reddit these days so you can usually find the discussion for these sites there by doing a search on the relevant topic.)
Also, this is a good place to remind you that my annual blog survey is open right now. If you haven't already, please take a quick moment to fill out the 10 questions (most of which are checkboxes - can it get any easier?) Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to respond so far. I can only make educated guesses as to who's reading this blog from the various programs I have tracking traffic to this site. So it's especially nice to see responses from former classmates and colleagues at FIMS when I wasn't sure if they were still "tuning in". On to the links... Bookshelf Blog BookShelves By Colour R.E.M. to debut new album on the social networking application, iLike The World's 50 Most Powerful Blogs And for the survey respondent who said "Pace rocks - more Pace!", here you go... ![]() ![]() Tuesday, March 11
by
Jason
on Tue 11 Mar 2008 09:49 PM CST
I did a blog survey last year which was very informative about who's reading my blog, how they get here and how often they visit, what they like once they get here and what they'd like to see more of. For that reason, I've decided to repeat the survey again this year.
I thank-you in advance for taking a few short minutes to fill out the survey. I don't think I posted the results last year but I think I'll do so this year (mainly because I'm always desperate for content! Saturday, February 2
by
Jason
on Sat 02 Feb 2008 12:00 AM CST
So I was giving my standard "these days, buying online or doing your online banking is as safe, if not safer, than doing it via a real world transaction" line during a public Internet session the other day when some old guy puts up his hand and goes "What about that Silent Banker virus they were talking about on the news the other night?"
I've been on the road for most evenings lately and hadn't seen that particular report so I admited I hadn't heard about it, bluffed some answer about making sure you have your anti-virus program up-to-date and quickly changed the subject. But after doing some research with the librarian's best friend it sounds like this is a very nasty little program. Anybody have any more details? How does it get on your computer? Are most anti-virus programs able to catch it with their latest updates? Is there a program out there yet to specifically check for it? The people of rural Saskatchewan (including me!) need answers! Oh, and speaking of the librarian's best friend, in my training sessions, I always point out that Google isn't the be-all-and-end-all and that there are other search engines that often have vastly different results - Ask.com, MSN Live and Yahoo! being the other main ones right now. I also get my branch librarians to do a "vanity search" for their own name, first without quotes then within quotes then with a relevant keyword related to themselves ("Saskatchewan" or their community name or "librarian") to illustrate how to use different techniques to improve and refine a Google search. Even though this is part of the training, I hadn't done a vanity search on my own name for a long time and guess what I realised when I did - "Jason Hammond", even without quotes, brings up my blog as the first result in all of the search engines I listed above EXCEPT Google. I can't figure it out - before starting my blog, my regular web page used to be the first result for Jason Hamond as well. Now, even though I've submitted my new site to Google via their own URL submitter, it's just not showing up at all - even in the first few pages of results. Using quotes doesn't help and even a search for "head tale" only brings up my site via a third-party listing service called MyBlogLog.com. Very weird. Monday, December 31
by
Jason
on Mon 31 Dec 2007 03:07 PM CST
I did this last year and found it a good way to sum up my year so I thought I'd do it again today as 2007 comes to a close.
Here's
another year-end meme where you record the first sentence of the blog
entry that began each month. January February March December Sunday, December 23
by
Jason
on Sun 23 Dec 2007 09:30 AM CST
I recently posted about the lack of access to comments being one of the main downfalls of every type of RSS reader I'd seen - web-based, e-mail based, software-based.
Astute reader, Heather M. sent me the following Bloglines announcement (note how they subtly plug the ability to click ads! Those RSS ads are coming I tells you!): One of the problems with a feed reader is that you can't see the blog in its full glory. We've solved that problem in Bloglines Beta. We've created a setting in 3-Pane View which allows you to get all of that bloggy goodness in your feed reader. Plus, you can get easy access to the comments, other features or, heck, even click on an ad to help you favorite blogger. This is great for highly designed blogs that cover knitting, design, art or funny pictures of cats.Here's how you get access to the feature. Go to 3-Pane View. Click on a headline. Look for the Preview or RSS buttons to toggle between Feed View and Blog View (see below). I don't think this is enough to get me to switch RSS readers...yet. But if NetVibes doesn't add this functionality soon, I'd probably have to think about it! Saturday, December 15
by
Jason
on Sat 15 Dec 2007 08:18 PM CST
I was looking at my blog stats today and started thinking about RSS (really simple syndication for anyone who doesn't know - a technology that allows you to use an external source - either your e-mail client or a web site or a piece of software or whatever) to track your favourite sites.
So, if you use RSS, you don't have to manually visit this site to see if I've posted that day or not. Instead, you can use your RSS reader to track this site (and many others all at once) to see at a glance via a single interface if there any updates to any site you follow, usually via a brief title and a excerpt from the post appearing in the RSS reader. It's a great technology and makes it easy for me to follow dozens of web sites when in the past, I might have only followed a few on a regular basis. But I also realise it has some significant downsides... - most RSS readers (okay, the one I use does this so I'm happy to generalize about all of them - this probably also discourages readers from becoming active participants themselves if they're not right there with the "Submit Comment" button in front of them (I know I'm as guilty of this as anyone with the blogs of friends that I follow via RSS but rarely comment on. Sorry all!) - if you don't at least occasionally visit the blog directly, you also won't know if the blogger has added new widgets or other features. For example, I have a feed of my del.icio.us bookmarks on my blog and often post interesting articles there that I find but don't want to devote a full blog entry to. Unless you visit my blog directly (or subscribe to the RSS feed for my del.icio.us content specifically - yes, it gets that convoluted), you don't see those articles. I also recently added a widget that shows where people are visiting my site from geographically. But for many readers, this is probably the first time they even know I did this. - you also don't see if people have redesigned the look of their site visually unless they tell you in a blog post that shows up in your RSS feed that they've done so. By far, the largest number of referrers I get to my site are from Google Reader and Bloglines, two of the main RSS providers. So, it's hard to tell with my stats package, but I'd guess that RSS readers outnumber direct visitors by 2:1 and possibly even 3:1. (And don't even get me started on Facebook - I syndicate my content there too but am constantly doubting whether this is a wise thing or not for all kinds of reasons - of which this article is just one (big) example.) So yeah, anyhow, the point of all of this is to say that RSS is great (for the most part), I use it all the time (for the most part) and if you use it to visit this site, make sure you stop by directly every once in awhile to see what's new, throw in a comment if you're thusly inspired and see if I ever get brave and decide to change the default style I've had in place for over a year now. |
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