onfocus

geez, Wget/1.7, let my server be! Don't make me block you. The same goes for you Hatena Antenna/0.3, I'm keeping an eye on you...

We Blog Chapter 8 Now Online!

We put up a full chapter from We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs on Blogroots tonight. It's a look at how businesses can use weblogs both inside and outside the organization. It includes an interview with John Robb (President of Userland) about K-Logs (knowledge management weblogs) and Sylvia Clark (a project manager at Cisco Systems) about using weblogs on an intranet. The chapter is appropriately called Using Blogs in Business.

It's fun to start sharing some of the work we've done. Like we said on the site—we're used to the quick feedback that Web publishing provides, so waiting to share longer form writing like this is something new. We'll be adding more chapters soon, and eventually the whole book will be online. We hope you'll like what you read and pick up the print version. It should be available in a few weeks.

This is somewhat old news, but you can now sign up for a weblog on Salon without the hacking that was required last week. $39.95/year, powered by Radio UserLand. I'm surprised they didn't tweak the interface so it is integrated even more into Salon's design. The UserLand look/feel seems out of place on Salon.

TrackBack Redux

Matt has added TrackBack functionality to Metafilter as an experiment. I've done the same here as an extension of my previous experiment. Now, if you blog with Movable Type via a bookmarklet while on this page, you'll get a list of the posts that you can TrackBack. It's pretty cool.

It wouldn't be very tough to write a TrackBack Blogging extension for any tool that supports the Blogger API. That way people with other tools could participate. It's definitely easier when it's built directly into the tool, though.

I looked at this site on a friend's Mac yesterday, and what I saw wasn't pretty. For some reason the stylesheet for IE isn't working the same way across platforms. If you're reading this right now on a Mac, this font shouldn't be Times, and the posts should be indented. There should also be a top margin to space the post away from the date. Please switch back to a PC. Thanks.

Recently updated blogs on TV via TiVo. Now that's convergence. [via Anil] If he could just get the most recent posts scrolling across the bottom like a news ticker, he'd have a new product. (Then you could get just those posts that mention the show you happen to be watching.)

Oh great, this is just what we need to strengthen communities: the possibility that we're all spying on each other for the government. Do people get payed for being in the Citizen Corps and reporting on their neighbors? Do they get patriot points they can eventually trade in for a better community to live in? I guess this post goes in my file, eh?

I don't have a Radio Userland or Manila account, so I haven't been able to test BookPost with those tools. I know it works with Blogger and Movable Type. If you happen to try it out with Radio or Manila, let me know how it works for you. I've found the implementations of the Blogger API are all different. I tried to keep my code as generic as possible so it would work with them even with the differences, but you never know until you test it out.

API Convergence: BookPost

Amazon released their new Web Services today. As an experiment, I put together a little tool for weblog authors called BookPost. It uses Amazon's new Web Services along with the Blogger API. BookPost assembles all of the HTML involved with linking to any given book on Amazon (and/or using an image of the book cover); which lets you focus on posting about the book. You can either enter an ISBN, or click on it as a bookmarklet from any Amazon.com product page. Let me know what you think! If you have any ideas about how to improve it, bugs to report, or ways to make the process easier, send them my way. Here are the bookmarklet and details. (with screenshots!)

If you'd rather skip the instructions and start playing around, here's the link:

Bookmarklet: BookPost (drag to your toolbar)

I wasn't too happy with this Joy of Tech cartoon about blogging [via Rael] until I realized she left him because he called it a blog site instead of simply blog. I'm sure she appreciates the efficiency of not repeating information vocally when it's already been blogged, but how could Samantha stay with someone who uses such a redundant phrase?

The film Metropolis has been restored and re-translated (NYT) to bring back the director's original vision. From the article: "Far from a historical curio, 'Metropolis' arrives, three-quarters of a century late, like an artifact from the future. At last we have the movie every would-be cinematic visionary has been trying to make since 1927." Check out these accompanying cool photos from the making of metropolis (pop-up). I hope they do a wide release to theaters. Luckily they've restored the original score and decided not to use the 1984 re-release soundtrack featuring Pat Benatar, Billy Squier, and Adam Ant. When I rented that version I had to turn off the sound completely.

Speaking of scary, the LA Deputy DA who called into a radio talk show to speak with the guy who shot video of a man being beaten by the police was sending a message to public: if you videotape the LA Police beating people, you will be harassed and intimidated. This seems like exactly the wrong public relations tact for them to be taking after something like this.