and by a user-drive version which should be more like the classic Eudora, Odysseus

A lot of us Eudora users are beginning to lose hope. As one Eudora user put it: “I’d resigned myself to using Eudora until it no longer worked, then throwing myself out a window in despair.”

Eudora, Penelope, Odysseus
http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2007/12/15/10803.html

WordPress Mulituser (e.g., http://edublogs.org and http://wordpress.com) don’t allow posting by email. I have never gotten BlogMailr to work, as a substitute.

(click image to see original)
I am trying a Tumblr as a way to post to WordPress by E-mail: that is, I often have brief links or “bits and pieces” which need mentioning but not discussing. An example is Briefs 5a, now Tumblrd

//engtech guest blogged at Lorelle’s place about
What is Microblogging or Tumblelogging? Pros and Cons He also has done several greasemonkey scripts and Yahoo Pipes that make this process (sharing information via WordPress Multiuser, i.e., Edublogses) easier. (Internet duct tape to keep your on-line life together.)

Tumblr in its set up directions mentions the ability to microblog by cell phone. In fact, this is the same recipe for microblogging by E-mail. There are some quirks in the processing and display which I mentioned in my first test, Test by email.

Here are some other quirks I’ve noticed.

• The e-mail “subject” became the “title”
• The message body is the post
• A signature can be added by Eudora (all scrunched up. No paragraphs) but it takes a bit of extra coding to have it display reasonably. see example below
• Not much width allowed
• blind-copy emails aren’t posted
• cc or “carbon” copy e-mails are posted
STOP. Before emailing to your Tumblr– Tumblr doesn’t care who sends stuff to your secret Tumblr email address, so don’t broadcast the email address for posting.
• tags or categories are not added automatically. I borrowed //engtech’s http://engtech.tumblr.com/ idea of using square brackets [bird flu, teachers] as the initial E-mail subject line. Then hope that users will use their browser search function to find the correct posts (or later, you can add tags from within Tumblr’s edit function). The html site search tag doesn’t work,
• be sure to remove quotes from your E-mail forwards (strip those weird characters)
• Eudora automatically detects URLs and hotlinks them. However, this is lost when forwarded into Tumblr. The solution is to select the hotlinked text, click on the make link button, copy the URL, then paste into the e-mail message.
• Eudora sometimes translates URLs in messages with an angle bracket at either end < >
  Remove these from the E-mail (or space them away from the URL) so Tumblr will hotlink them automatically.
• It does make a difference if mail is sent “plain” or “styled”. Styled isn’t at Tumblr’s end, but Plain is styled. (Now I’ve solved the problem of why some earlier Tumblrs looked differently from others.)

Here’s how I coded the latest signature in Eudora; check it out here–

<br /><hr /><ul>
http://hlthenvt.tumblr.com for <li><a href="http://ykalaska.wordpress.com">Grassroots Science</a></li>
<li><a href="http://13C4.wordpress.com">Biocultural Science & Management </a></li></ul>

Site Search Tags: engtech, Lorelle, Tumblr, micro-blogging, notetaking, RSS, Eudora, E-mail, email

Today is the official birth date of the Edublogs Magazine. It’s been almost a year from the idea-dancing-around-our-head stage, trying to come up with a way to create an umbrella blog that would bring together the exciting Edublogs community.

We wanted to feature bloggers and news from within the Edublogs Network represented by Edublogs, Learnerblogs, Uniblogs, and ESLblogs.

We wanted to provide a place where Edublog members could publish articles offering their special insights into education today, past, and the future of online education technologies.

This link will get you started. It includes the direct links to the RSS feeds for specific categories of interest or to the magazine as a whole.

• http://magazine.edublogs.org/2008/01/28/ the-birth-of-an-online-education-magazine/

I hope you enjoy an article I wrote as well as the rest of the mag.

• http://magazine.edublogs.org/2008/01/28/ 6th-grade-entrepreneur-wins-top-volunteer-award-for-splat/

Simon mentioned using MS Live Writer currently in beta.

Another tool, I mentioned here,
http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/2006/05/20/coding-long-urls-in-comments/#more-54 is the nice little Show HTML Coding and is from Finn Ekberg Christiansen living in Copenhagen, Denmark. http://hjem.get2net.dk/fec/shtmlc/shtmlc.html

Here’s the direct link to the Live Writer extensions to be able to add code to posts. It’s hard to find their stuff. http://gallery.live.com/default.aspx?pl=8

NB–
The website for adding extensions will not open in FireFox but only in MS Internet Explorer Here’s how to configure a customized tag for searching the blog (site search). Click photo to enlarge.

Social Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: coding, Live+Writer, BlogHerald, Lorelle+VanFossen, FireFox, search+tags

This is what I did:

• Published post is opened from the blog in Live Writer.
• I clicked on the image but changed nothing.
• Post was published as “Post draft and edit on line”

In the text below, the original published post in the blog editor window with image thumbnail that displays correctly. Below the line is the text from after the draft is published for editing.

<p>This was developed as a central place for people (inside and outside the region) trying to plan meetings and trips. Too often meetings overlap or the limited number of venues are full or there are successive meetings requiring people to spend limited travel dollars several times over for the same itinerary.</p> <p>The calendar site is free and pretty easy to use. Holidays and language may be altered.<br />http://www.calsnet.com/ykalaska</p><a href=’http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/files/2007/07/ykcalendar.jpg’ title=’YK Calendar static image’><img src=’http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/files/2007/07/ykcalendar.thumbnail.jpg’ alt=’YK Calendar static image’ /></a>
—————————-

<p>This was developed as a central place for people (inside and outside the region) trying to plan meetings and trips. Too often meetings overlap or the limited number of venues are full or there are successive meetings requiring people to spend limited travel dollars several times over for the same itinerary.</p> <p>The calendar site is free and pretty easy to use. Holidays and language may be altered.<br />http://www.calsnet.com/ykalaska</p> <p><a title="YK Calendar static image" href="http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/files/2007/07/ykcalendar.jpg"><img alt="YK Calendar static image"/></a></p>

My expectation is that what comes down must go up unless I make a deliberate change and save that change (left or right clicking to see what happens but not saving shouldn’t do anything).

By the way, I’m using Firefox. Can anyone else figure out what I’m doing wrong with the image?

Gizmo’s latest newsletter continues his series on portable computing security and his experience with U3 and proprietary USB program launchers. see Port-a-puter for the roadless warrior: U3 and thumbtops, portable computing and How to make a Thumbtop PC

Issue 147, 19th July, 2007

• http://techsupportalert.com/issues/back_issues.htm

Editorial

Securing USB flash drives is not quite as simple as you might hope. Simple no, but possible yes. That’s because drive encryption, one of the simplest and robust forms of protecting a PC, won’t work unless you have administrator privileges on the host PC you plug your USB drive into. This immediately rules out most hotel computers, internet cafes and other public terminals.

2.3 Flash Drive Management Systems

If you are getting into USB flash drive computing you are going to have to quickly make a decision about the approach you are going to take to managing and organizing your portable applications.

4.3 Running Linux from a USB Flash Drive

5.1 How to Improve Your Security When Using a Public Terminal (Part 3 of 4)

Last month [1] I showed you how you can enter passwords more securely using obfuscation techniques. This is fancy way of saying that when you type your password you insert and delete random letters to mask the real password. It works because most keyloggers just record a long string of characters containing the keystrokes you have entered so adding and deleting random letters makes it very hard for an attacker to work out which of the recorded keystrokes form part of your actual password.

Social Bookmarks:

This was developed as a central place for people (inside and outside the region) trying to plan meetings and trips. Too often meetings overlap or the limited number of venues are full or there are successive meetings requiring people to spend limited travel dollars several times over for the same itinerary.

The calendar site is free and pretty easy to use. Holidays and language may be altered.
http://www.calsnet.com/ykalaska

---

Site Search Tags: Live Writer, testing

————————————
below is the code in Live Writer. It seems to have made the image URL a relative URL. The post displays correctly within Live Writer in what ever view is selected.

<p>Live Writer seemed to be adding code to the earlier published post that ended up stripping the image out. So here is a test (the original post has been corrected)</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>This was developed as a central place for people (inside and outside the region) trying to plan meetings and trips. Too often meetings overlap or the limited number of venues are full or there are successive meetings requiring people to spend limited travel dollars several times over for the same itinerary.</p>
<p>The calendar site is free and pretty easy to use. Holidays and language may be altered.<br><a href="//www.calsnet.com/ykalaska">http://www.calsnet.com/ykalaska</a></p>
<p><img alt="thumbnail calendar click to enlarge" src="//img498.imageshack.us/img498/1264/regionalcalendar0yh.th.gif"></p>
<div class="wlWriterEditableSmartContent" id="0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:38926c4b-9a03-4aa8-8a9d-4c0a0f0b1091" contenteditable="false" style="padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; float: none; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px">
<hr>
<b>Site Search Tags:</b> <a href="" rel="tag" ?s=’Live%20Writer"’>Live Writer</a>, <a href="" rel="tag" ?s=’testing"’>testing</a></div>

here is the code as stripped by WordPress

<p>Live Writer seemed to be adding code to the earlier published post that ended up stripping the image out. So here is a test (the original post has been corrected)</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>This was developed as a central place for people (inside and outside the region) trying to plan meetings and trips. Too often meetings overlap or the limited number of venues are full or there are successive meetings requiring people to spend limited travel dollars several times over for the same itinerary.</p> <p>The calendar site is free and pretty easy to use. Holidays and language may be altered.<br /><a href="//www.calsnet.com/ykalaska">http://www.calsnet.com/ykalaska</a></p> <p><img /></p> <div><hr /><b>Site Search Tags:</b> <a href="/?s=Live%20Writer" rel="tag">Live Writer</a>, <a href="/?s=testing" rel="tag">testing</a></div>

Mr Joe Cheng has been very helpful pointing out my errors in this testing 7 responses to “This is a test of the newer Windows Live Writer 1(12)”. Not all the errors are yet corrected.

Social Bookmarks:

The bookmarks below were generated using the GreaseMonkey script from Social Bookmarking Helper 4 Wordpress.Com – A Greasemonkey Userscript July 7th, 2007 — Satya Narayan The bookmarks generated at other posts come from a modified bookmarklet from http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/social-linking/

I don’t know if all these bookmarking sites are useful to readers and will have to figure out how to trim the script the way I trimmed the bookmarklet.

Here are screenshots of the difference between the human-eye view of using Live Write and the WordPressMU editor.

If the post needs revising after posting (I haven’t found the post as draft feature yet), Live Write makes it difficult. I like the ease of adding tags, but not all themes use the horizontal rule and others highlight URLs differently. It would be nice to have something that that also includes the equivalent to MS Word’s “view non-printing characters”.

1) normal view in Live Writer

2) post then viewed in WordPressMU editor (non-RTF)

3) human-friendly view of another post in edit mode

Social Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: live+writer, blog+clients, screen+shots

“Click photo to visit http://wellingtongrey.blogspot.com/, the source of the Computer is a Skinner Box *
The computer is not your friend. The computer is a Skinner Box

via

    * Brainbiter http://sophronismos.wordpress.com/

Skinner Box”

Live Writer above and blog editor below–
This is not nearly as awful as the earlier version . It doesn’t add a lot of extraneous coding that has to be cleaned up, but there is still some. It is Beta but certainly has some good possibilities.

Windows Live Betas – Home (No, these aren’t fish. )

The website for adding extensions will not open in FireFox but only in MS Internet Explorer http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?c=0&bt=9&pl=8&st=5

Here’s how to configure a customized tag for searching the blog (site search). Click photo to enlarge [REVISED]

Until I get the revised image in place, the correct coding should be
<a href="/?s={tag-encoded}" rel="tag">{tag}</a>
Thanks to Joe Cheng http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/2007/07/16/live-writer-test-screen-shots-of-editor/#comments

Previous client tests (2006) are here testing blog clients (off-line writing and editing)

and Referrers (referer, sic)

Editing or managing of previous posts must be done on-line, unlike Zoundry.

Social Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: Live+Writer, testing, blog+client, tags

Click photo to visit http://wellingtongrey.blogspot.com/, the source of the Computer is a Skinner Box *

via

• Brainbiter http://sophronismos.wordpress.com/

Skinner Box

via

• Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/

Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad

Skinner Box at Wikipedia

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_Box

Social Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: Millard+Fillmores+Bathtub, computers

Click to enlarge the roadless version of a USB flash drive. The card reader was something like $9.00 and the CF card was maybe $12 or $20, special at that time. There are shorter USB extension cords available out there.

Below, the CF card in its protective PCI adaptor card is on the left The connector end is inside the adaptor shell. The genuine thumbdrive (SanDisk) is on the right. The split ring is fairly flimsy looking to me. It won’t be easy to replace that as the space to switch rings is tight. I added the “carabiner” clip to make it less likely to misplace or lose. The USB connector is slid inside.

Lorelle VanFossen illustrates a portable drive.

Social Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: PCI+adaptor, thumb+drive, USB, U3, , USB+flash, camera+card, CF+card

Gear pictures here

• http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/2007/06/27/illustrated-portable-computing-devices/

On the Roadless Again –

Because I’m on the roadless system and needed to go to the nearest Wal-Mart 400 miles away, I decided not to lug the laptop. Extra weight and it left no room for a change of clothes, much less anything I might find at Wal-Mart if I got that far, and no liquids or gels.

First, all I had was a camera card. The laptop I had was too old for USB ports but did have PCI slots. My camera card reader also read CF cards, which held a lot (256 Mb) and were much cheaper than jump drives or thumb drives. Soooo, transfer data from desktop to card reader to CF card to PCI adaptor to laptop. Or, for roadless travel, simply to CF card and slim card reader (USB). I put Firefox Portable and Roboform 2Go on the card.

The motel had a “business center”, two older PCs with Windows XP but did have Internet connection. I found the USB connections (on the back of the machines) but these were only the slower USB1 ports. Nevertheless, I could access my drivette. Unfortunately, the network was set not to allow an Internet connection (also wouldn’t allow other people access to their corporate E-mail. They are working on a solution).

However, I did find a university library. USB2 ports on the flat monitor! (and on the back of the machines). I was able to get everything to work from the camera card. (With an Internet faster than I could read the screen to decide what to do next. Roboform found me in its database to configure itself properly to allow me access to all my passwords.)

A third situation was the only public “terminal” at the medical center, located near the Emergency Room. It was a PC but configured to only access the Internet. It did have a USB port but I had no way to explore my drivette and run Firefox.

The card reader, CF card, the PCI adaptor (to protect the CF card), and the USB extension cord (protects the USB connection from damage) are smaller than a cigarette package but larger than a thumb.

Enter Wal-mart (I finally had a chance to get away) and look for thumbdrive. Wonder of wonders, a 1 Gb SanDisk was only $20. I chose it because the comparable Lexar drive had an indicator of used space which seemed silly. The SanDisk had U3, a term I had seen but knew nothing of. Plus, there was no protector cap to lose (the connection slid in the casing).

What did I learn?

I had to find out what a U3 was. It is not a yet faster USB. It is a pre-configured way to partition a thumbdrive into an “operating system” partition and one for everything else (files and software). Basically, it makes the thumbdrive emulate a CD-ROM drive for the host computer. It also provides a launch menu of your applications, including an explorer function to find what else is there.

There are several U3-configured applications (see below) including Firefox, Skype, etc. However, it is possible to arrange your drive without U3. SanDisk even makes an uninstaller. The PortableApps suite at PortableApps.com also has just a menu launcher. Then, simply drag your portable application folders into the main directory and they are automatically detected. This is simpler than installing U3-configured applications.

I have not tried any of this on public systems like the three examples above. Although the portable applications are designed to run off the thumbdrives they do make some use of the host computer. (Unless you carry Windows XP on the drive, I think.) I suspect that the U3 partition has a chance to work on the hospital ER machine because the ER machine may just think there is a CD-Rom drive attached. Both menu launchers can be configured to automatically load when the USB is connected, just like a CD is on a desktop computer. (Not together, just one or the other.)

I have settled for now on keeping the U3 partition and default launcher. I also use the PortableApps launcher and placed Firefox and Roboform 2Go there, along with an anti-virus program and the portable version of Abi-Word (so I can retype my resume if needed which is normally processed in MS Word. Gone are the days when nearly all of Word could be put on one truly floppy disk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk) and documents on another for use anywhere.)

One thing overlooked in much of the thumb drive discussions is the reminder that these drives use “flash memory” and after a period of use, the drive is jaded and must be discarded. In comparing jump drives for purchase, no one seems to mention lifespan. I don’t know what happens at the end of life. This is another reason for not adding everything to a portable flash drive and relying on it for a primary computer or storage device (back up!!!).

Another concern I have is security of the drive from the host computer and Internet. I suppose the anti-virus may help, but this is most useful when returning home and plugging in the drive (Don’t transfer files without checking for viruses first.) Getting a portable firewall is evidently challenging because of the host-symbiont relationship necessary to get to the Internet. Encryption and virtual machines are possible, evidently, but make things slow. It’s not yet that big a risk for me to figure out. (Password protect your goodies on the drive.)

Here are references I found most useful in addition to those earlier http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/2007/06/05/how-to-thumbtop-pc/–

Portal for Portability
http://www.no-install.com/ (news, views, self-help)

U3 – ‘Official’ Portable USB Apps Platform
http://www.everythingusb.com/u3.html also a U3 Newbie Guide with USB Apps Popular Questions Answered

Tools and Utils for your USB Drive
http://usb.SmithTech.us

Portable USB Apps – TheInfoBox.com
http://www.theinfobox.com/index.php/Portable_USB_Apps

======================================
“Gizmo’s top picks of the best tech resources and utilities” Issue 146, 21st June, 2007
http://www.techsupportalert.com/

5.1 How to Improve Your Security When Using a Public Terminal (Part 2 of 3)
There is no 100% safe way to enter passwords from a public terminal. That’s a fact….
So what can you do to improve your security when entering passwords?

USB Flash Drive Security
# 1 Encryption
# 2 Password manager
# 3 Virus Scans
# 4 Key Loggers
# 5 Backups
http://www.theinfobox.com/index.php?title=USB_Flash_Drive_SecurityUSB
Flash Drive Computing: Heaven on a Stick?

USB Flash Drive Computing: Heaven on a Stick?
Support Alert subscriber “Briard” takes a break from his expeditions into Linux-land and wanders instead into the very different realm of portable computing (June 2007)
http://www.techsupportalert.com/briard_in_usbland.htm

=======================================

Customize Your Drive’s Autoplay Action, Drive Icon, and Disk Label
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1849712,00.asp

RoboForm2Go-U3 Version and Roboform2Go regular
http://www.roboform.com/
RoboForm, via Fred Langa’s recommendation, really is worth the purchase. So is Roboform2Go to make sure your passwords aren’t left behind. If you need only a few portable passwords then things such as Chris Seaton’s CSPassword (last version, 9.0 is from here http://cspassword.tripod.com/ ) or Oubliette (last version from here: http://www.tranglos.com/free/oubliette.htmll) will work.

« Telecommuting Tools – Pandemic Plan: Preparing for the next flu pandemic.
http://reports.typepad.com/pandemic_plan/2006/04/telecommuting_t_6.html

U3 Software Central
U3 Smart Application Update
http://u3applications.blogharbor.com/blog

Social Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: portable+apps, jump+drive, thumb+drive, USB, U3, RoboForm, mobile, Gizmo+tech+support, techsupportalert, USB+flash, telecommuting, pandemic+flu, preparedness, continuity+of+operations, H5N1

Wibowo at http://nooventures.edublogs.org/ started this discussion by mentioning www.skweezer.net. He added a whole group of interesting “Dial-up and Mobility Survival Kits” that he uses. Must see his list at http://edublogs.org/forums/topic.php?id=784&replies=5#post-3762

Skweezer can evidently act as an Internet portal but also strips the CSS styles off webpages. This makes for quicker access for dial-ups and those who pay minute by minute for Internet access. It struck me similar applications might include “tiny apps” or software on a “stick” or pen drive or other flash drive. If you use public computers, these can also protect your privacy. And why eat up that heavy laptop storage space when you could be using it for blog research and photos?

I haven’t tried all these out but they are worth exploring for those needing to remain publicly anonymous or to lose weight.

——————————————-

Gizmo’s Support Alert Newsletter Issue 145, Premium Edition, 24th May, 2007 , lists replacements for an on-the-road computer– the thumb drive (or camera flashcard) including windows XP on a USB Flash Drive http://techsupportalert.com

——————————————–

from Fred Langa of LangaList now Windows Secrets Newsletter at http://windowssecrets.com/comp/

http://www.TinyApps.org/

a collection of very small PC apps, from email clients to operating systems, under 1.44mb, though most are *much* smaller (in the 100-200k range). Miles Wolbe http://www.tinyapps.org/blog/

Flash-Drive Software , Kim Komando’s site at
http://komando.com/shareware_show.asp?showID=9675

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/thumb-drive/

http://portableapps.com/

searched using Google: http://tinyurl.com/s2uak

“More OS-On-A-Stick Options”
http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-02-09.htm#3

and a step-by-step article on Windows XP On Your USB Thumb/Flash Drive
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102101

——————————————-

applications that are small, portable (i.e. no registry dependencies, relative pathing, etc.) and, ideally, free or low cost. http://www.usbapps.com/

Powered by Zoundry

Social Bookmarks:

Web4Lib is specifically aimed toward librarians and library staff involved in World-Wide Web management, but anyone is welcome to join the discussion.

Guidelines for Appropriate List Behavior

The following guidelines are offered as advice for how to best participate in this discussion in a manner that will both contribute to the experience of all readers and also reflect well on you.

* Say something substantial. Simply saying “I agree” (in so many words) or “I disagree” (in so many words) does not meet this guideline. Specific technical questions are, however, quite appropriate, as are brief answers to such questions.
…
* “Getting the last word” is for children. We’re all beyond the age when we should be concerned with being the one to end the argument. Just because you are the last to speak doesn’t mean you won the argument.
* Agree to disagree. The likelihood of convincing someone to change a strongly held opinion is nil. State your case, but give up on the idea of converting the heathen.
…
* Remember that you are being judged by the quality of your contributions. No matter whether you are employed or not, or a certain age, or have a certain education, you can create a good professional reputation by how you contribute to a large electronic discussion like Web4Lib. On the other hand, you can ruin your reputation even faster and easier.
…
* Respect the rights of others. An electronic discussion is a commons. Your right to post ends at the right of others to not be insulted, badgered, or to have their time needlessly wasted.

http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/

Social Bookmarks:

Quick but works. Also acts as a previewer for your files on the disk.
Microsoft’s Image Resizer
This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

IrfanView, also easy to use but does a bit more
http://www.irfanview.com/

Try these too:

http://snipshot.com/
http://www.picnik.com/

Lorelle has been suggesting picnik, as well, and will offer other looking for suggestions. [2007-05-08 See comments]
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/03/25/online-image-editing-any-good-ones-out-there/

Also, both ImageShack and Flickr will automatically resize files if you host your stuff there and link in your blog.

2) Pacific Golden Plover sound (ogg)

3) [audio http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/files/2007/05/pacificgolden-plover.mp3]

4) [embed http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/files/2007/05/pacificgolden-plover.mp3]

5) http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/files/2007/05/pacificgolden-plover.mp3

Don’t use the  players above (they play back too fast) but try clicking on the file itself to play in your browser.

See also Sitemeter work-around

and check out Lorelle vanFossen (see sidebar)

The Pew Internet and American Life Project announces the release of:

Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace

The majority of teens actively manage their online profiles to keep the information they believe is most sensitive away from the unwanted gaze of strangers, parents and other adults. While many teens post their first name and photos on their profiles, they rarely post information on public profiles they believe would help strangers actually locate them such as their full name, home phone number or cell phone number.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of teens with profiles (63%) believe that a motivated person could eventually identify them from the information they publicly provide on their profiles.

A new report, based on a survey and a series of focus groups conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project examine how teens, particularly those with profiles online, make decisions about disclosing or shielding personal information.

Some 55% of online teens have profiles and most of them restrict access to their profile in some way. Of those with profiles, 66% say their profile is not visible to all internet users. Of those whose profile can be accessed by anyone online, nearly half (46%) say they give at least some false information. Teens post fake information to protect themselves and also to be playful or silly.

Here is a link to the complete report:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/211/report_display.asp The Pew Internet Project is a non-profit, non-partisan initiative of the Pew Research Center that produces reports exploring the impact of the internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care, and civic/political life. Support for the non-profit Pew Internet Project is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Please feel free to forward this email alert to colleagues, friends, or family members who might be interested in it. If you have received this message from a subscriber, you can sign up to receive your own alerts at: http://www.pewinternet.org/signup.asp

Social Bookmarks:

====== In The News ====
>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2007.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

19. Code of conduct proposed for blogs (click here for hot links)

Web pioneers say code of conduct needed to clean up manners online
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=547872007

Bloggers disinclined toward suggestion of Net civility
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/10/BUGH4P5G1S1.DTL

Bloggers code of conduct
http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/BCC

Blog 100
http://news.com.com/2310-10784_3-0.html

BuzzMachine
http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Legal Guide for Bloggers
http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/

Internet Scout Project Weblog
http://scout.wisc.edu/Weblog/

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, and reasonable estimates of
the number of blogs approximate that there are over 60 million blogs. While
most of the discourse and commentary on blogs remains civil, there have been
a number of recent events that have caused some to wonder whether there
should be an official blogging code of conduct. This past Sunday, Tim
O’Reilly who is both a conference promoter and a primary figure in the Web
2.0 world posted some initial suggestions for just such a code. Of course,
shortly after Reilly posted these suggestions, there was a veritable
snowstorm of responses posted within the blogosphere, some of which were
quite vitriolic, and others which were a bit more detached, but still upset.
Jeff Jarvis, a professor at City University (and an active blogger),
responded after hearing about this proposal by stating “I’m rather resentful
of someone who has the temerity to tell me how they think I should behave.”
Some of Reilly’s initial suggestions included banning anonymous comments,
and he also called on bloggers to not post material that harasses others or
is knowingly false. Not surprisingly, Reilly’s own blog was quickly filled
with a variety of comments, including one user who quoted Benjamin Franklin
and another who referenced the Council of Nicea and its attempt to reform
the Christian church in the 4th century. [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to an insightful piece about this proposed
code of conduct offered in this Tuesday’s online edition of the Scotsman. On
a related note, the second link leads to a fine piece by the San Francisco
Chronicle’s Verne Kopytoff on the reaction of bloggers to this proposed
code. The third link whisks users away to the proposed code of conduct,
which is referenced as a “starting point for discussion” on the whole
matter. Given the sheer number of blogs, the fourth link will be most
welcome. It is a listing of the top 100 blogs as determined by CNET
News.com, complete with a smattering of recent posts. The fifth link leads
to the very compelling blog of Jeff Jarvis, who is the director of the
interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s Graduate
School of Journalism. The sixth link is definitely worth a visit, as it
contains a number of helpful sections on the legal liability of bloggers,
and a FAQ on both intellectual property and defamation. Finally, the last
link leads to our very own blog here at the Internet Scout Project. [KMG]

Site Search Tags: Internet+Scout+Report, conduct, weblog, web+2.0, civility, cyber+bullying, bullying, edublogs.org, blogosphere

• http://library.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC/archives/cat_websites.html#002196

March 30: Stop Cyberbullying Day

Andy Carvin, blogger on PBS’s learning.now http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/ has declared March 30th as Stop Cyberbullying Day.

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2007/03/march_30_participate_in_stop_c_1.html The MedlinePlus Health Topic Bullying http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/bullying.html includes links to cyberbullying and online harrassment.

Social Bookmarks:

Tag Cloud Generator for Wordpress.com
http://engtech.wordpress.com/tools/wordpress/tag_cloud_generator_for_wordpress/

Here are the results here–

AI/AN   Alaska   blogging blogginess   edublogs.org   in process   organizational culture   public draft   sciencing   Teachers   Uncategorized  

Created by Wordpress.com Tag Cloud Generator by //engtech

ProBloggers – Blogging for Beginners Series

Whether you are a novice, beginner, intermediate, or advanced blogger, take time to read through the Blogging for Beginners series by ProBlogger.

It covers a wide range of topics that you need to know to help you get started with blogging. And when you come back here, the following related articles will also help you get your blog up and running and doing it with style and not stress.
Lorelle VanFossen http://tinyurl.com/2e2fkj

WordPress.ORG Codex
Introduction to Blogging
Introduction to WordPress Terminology
WordPressMU and wordpress.com

The edublogses are based upon WordPressMU (multi-user) and not WordPress.ORG (self-hosted) or the WordPress.COM Confusing? yes. There are general similarities amongst the three flavors, but also significant differences at the operational (user) level.
WordPressMU and wordpress.com

WordPressμ http://mu.wordpress.org/

• http://lorelle.wordpress.com/?s=plagiarism&searchsubmit=Find+%C2%BB
• What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content –
  http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/

Can photographers be plagiarists?
Click here for a slide show about two similar shots of Shanghai’s Nanpu Bridge..

Thoughts on Turnitin.com
A fellow blogger asked for a dean’s-eye-view impression of turnitin.com.

Lethem, Vaidhyanathan, et al talk copyright and plagiarism on NPR tonight
Cory Doctorow: Science fiction author and MacArthur genius grantee Jonathan Lethem had a stupendous article on copyright and plagiarism in last month’s Harper’s (be sure to read it right through to the end!).
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/07/lethem_vaidhyanathan.html

“The Ecstasy of Influence. A plagiarism
Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007. Originally from February 2007. By Jonathan Lethem.

Chuck Colson hoaxed, or hoaxing; you should act

The list below isn’t intended at the moment as a classification or thesaurus of terms. The new tag clouds in the forums will help locate information, but the existing tags lack consistency (and lack consistent use) to be of best help. Please suggest additions, re-naming, or deletions.

Don’t forget that the search box will find posts containing your search term. That is, “IP address” is related to “referrer” but “referrer” is a more often useful and used term. [Also, "referrer" is the proper spelling, and tagged, but "referer" [sic] is found in old wordpress MU posts and better found in the search box.] Please add your own tags to posts in the forum. I’m suggesting we share a common set of most useful terms because the poor computer bytes are truly stupid; whereas the users aren’t [see Steps to edublogging happiness]. Don’t forget your towel.

• learnerblogs or uniblogs or eslblogs (for questions specific only to http://learnerblogs.org/, http://uniblogs.org, or http://eslblogs.org)
• privacy
• referrer
• akismet
• spam
• moderate
• comments
• themes
• multi-users
• newbie
• users
• authors
• page
• post
• plugins
• rss [but wouldn't "feeds" be more useful?]
• widgets
• wikispace
• sidebar
• uploads

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Blogging and the Internet, like computers over the past 60 years*, can be extremely useful for some things. But they are mostly famous for doing exactly what we say and not what we mean.

To avoid overdosing on frustration, follow these steps.

As the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy states–

• Don’t Panic

(written in large, friendly letters)

• Step refresh your browser. (reload the webpage)

• Step switch browsers.
  (what may look odd in one browser looks fine in another. However, MS Internet Explorer does not behave according to the generally acceptable rules of Internet design. Any blog may look better in Firefox or Opera or Safari or Flock browsers.

• Step enable cookies (referrers) in your browser.

• Step empty your browser’s cache

• Step log out of your account. Refresh. Log back in.

• Step change themes.
  WordPress is open source. Themes do not all have consistent options. Some themes may not offer page comments or may truncate wide images. Some themes give extra help.

• Penultimate Step — go to bed and try again in the morning. This avoids the

• Ultimate Step — throw the blxxdy thing out the window.

* remember, the first computer bug (some 60 years ago) was analog, a moth, which flew into the wiring.

Please add missing steps in the comments. Also, I’d appreciate your suggestions for ordering the steps in their most effective order.

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/13/teacher_faces_40_yea.html

teachers at this school were prohibited by policy from turning off school computers, which would answer the “why didn’t she just shut down the PC?” questions. Amero testified that she told four other teachers and the school’s assistant principal about the popup problem, and nobody responded with help. The school’s internet filter license had expired…

And beyond the question of what constitutes justice for Ms. Amero, how might this ruling affect other teachers using computers with children? Will some teachers limit their use of technology in the classroom, fearing greater liability risks if porn they didn’t ask for shows up on an unsecured, school-owned PC?

Discussion is here
lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/ akismet-auntie-spam-firefox-greasemonkey-page-viewing-script/

The script is here
engtech.wordpress.com/tools/wordpress/akismet-auntie-spam/

[Title makes more sense if your aunt is an ant]

“Find Wide Images is a GreaseMonkey script for Firefox. I use it to find images that are too big and would “break” fixed width blog themes.
What it does

* Warns if images are too big and will break your blog.
* Suggests dimensions for resizing images so they will fit.”

http://engtech.wordpress.com/tools/wordpress/findwideimages/

Actual size (800 wide by 600 tall)

Note that with this theme, images which are too wide are simply truncated (actually, the image is overlain by the sidebar).

440 wide by 330 tall and 4.24 KB (4341 bytes)

The original context is

• Nazarene or Baptist –
  http://hedwardpruitt.edublogs.org/2006/09/20/nazarene-or-baptist/

Testing the new Flickr plug-in for edublogs. The image must be left-clicked, not dragged, to get the proper code into the edit box. However, this only presents the “square” size image.

However, if one changes the last letter, after the underscore but before the jpg or gif or whatever extension, then the size should present differently.

here is the test for this (substitute a letter o for the letter s)

That works but only if I also delete the size coding (delete the width= and height= from the coding)

……. cf0_s.jpg” width=”75″ height=”75″ alt=”Sun mittens” replace with

……. cf0_o.jpg” alt=”Sun mittens”

Another thing to note, It seems the plug-in only gets public Flickr images (from anyone’s account, I guess)

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Referer is a common misspelling of the word referrer. It is so common, … More generally, a referer is the URL of a previous item which led to this request …

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer

I have the larger versions of the images here –

• http://flickr.com/photos/hlthenvt/sets/72157594304156911/detail/ Edublogses

Log into your edublogs (or uniblogs, ESLblogs, etc.). Under admin go to
dashboard | manage | referers

You’ll see something like the following, but without the green and red colors. I normally turn off the display of internal referrers since they are all me fussing with or correcting posts.If you time it right, you won’t see any referrers because wherever the marker is, it’s midnight.

In this case, look at the monthly results.

There are 2 columns. The left column identifies whence the visitor came. The right column shows where they landed (which post or URL they clicked). Normally these data are not colored. With Firefox I can check to see if any of my blog pages are incorrectly coded (remember the slash that could be so forward?

There is another problem which can be revealed with the referrer. When inserting links into a post, be sure that the link begins with http:// If the URL is inserted without the preceding http:// then the visitor will be returned to your non-existent page, instead of to the site you wished to send them to. This appears in the referrer as year/month/date/www.othersite.com as if it were a regular post slug. Clicking on this in the referrer will bring you to a non-existent post in your blog. Unfortunately, you’ll have to track your incorrect entry, but it isn’t usually too difficult to figure out.

The right hand column is your URL (slug) of your entries, not the title of your post. Clicking on the link (URL) in the left column should take you back to where your visitor left before coming to your blog. In some cases you will not find valid links, indicating possibly that someone received your blog entry in an E-mail or feed reader. The right hand columns may be sorted by clicking the column header (number of hits, time, etc.)

Closer view of the most interesting part of referrers — are your posts and pages coded properly, i.e., does your blog have valid links? Broken links may occur because the date was changed on a post, but not all the references (citations) to that post. Changing the slug (the hyphenated text after the date) will also result in a dead link.

Keep in mind that the logs are for all visitors and all the entries they see. It isn’t possible with this plug-in or with multi-user WordPress to trace the viewing habits of a particular visitor (I think). Each entry in the blog, page or post, has a number so there is no need to uniquely identify each entry by its date and slug. Life would be less complicated without the date/slug (see Lorelle VanFossen’s blog).

Wishyoubest referrer.

Who knows what this really is? I think the wishyoubest came originally in the form of a spam comment. They may have coded themselves badly so whenever “they” clicked on their link, it leads to a “Not Found”, see next.

If, at step Referrers 2, you can recognize a spam referrer, then one can check the box marked blacklist.

I don’t know if that then prevents them (spammer) from gaining access to the blog, from that address. However, those websites are logged in your blacklist.

This was [maybe] posted using the MS Windows Live Writer Beta, a possible blog client which can save and retrieve blog entries (like w.bloggar) and write and edit off-line, to multiple blogs. It also can spell-check before publishing (like MS Word) and automatically creates backups at intervals during writing.Unfortunately, it has timed out during posting so I have copied the html code into the edublogs editor. The hyperlinks aren’t coded properly (incorrectly displayed but accurate) so will have to see what that problem is. There is extra coding (maybe endemic to MS and the web). However, manipulating images is easier. Not really. Half the images have been coded wrong so aren’t yet apparent. Well, it is beta

Hmmm, each time I add text, the images disappear. Will fix later.

Fixed with Flock

Blogged with Flock

Technorati Tags: wordpress+tips, referrer, referer, Live+Writer, blog, flock, edublogs

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See also the sidebar under Blog & PC Tools

I am working to re-index those pages. In the meantime, if you are looking for something, especially through a search engine, and end up at a missing page, please use the search box for the blog to your right. Your keywords should find the relevant pages, even if under a new title. Sorry for the trouble.

http://YKAlaska.uniblogs.org

I have been adding emendments (obscure large word for me and other people to mean changes) to existing posts without messing up the permanent link (the slug plus the date).

However, the comments boxes automatically format any URL as a hot link. This makes it difficult to force links to open into new pages or, if the URL or permalink itself is very long, then it appears all over the web page instead of wrapping properly. I figured out how to do this, but to keep from forgetting it and in case anyone else wants to try this, I’ll make a stab at explaining.

Here is the example in context
Professional Literature (H5N1) -
http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/03/16/professional-literature-h5n1/ and the comment itself is
http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/03/16/professional-literature-h5n1/#comment-193

Here is what the comment looks like to the human reader

VetGate, mentioned
here is part of BIOME one of a number of Internet subject gateways that together form the Resource Discovery Network (RDN).

Here is what it looks like to the human’s browser.

<strong>VetGate</strong>, mentioned <a HREF="http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/05/19/avian-influenza-in-other-animal-species-2/" TARGET="_blank">here </a>is part of BIOME one of a number of Internet subject gateways that together form the Resource Discovery Network (RDN).

Note—This may only apply to multi-user WordPress blogs. I don’t use the rtf editor but the plain editor.

1) After adding the link to your comment, view the site. In uniblogs, there is a little teeny-tiny e in the comment box of the comment just made.

This stands for edit. When that is clicked, the comment is opened into something which looks more like the “write new post” box, that is, there will be some “quick tags bar” . One can then format the comment (bold, italic, etc.) and add a “link”. Cut the URL. Highlight a piece of text (in the example above I used “here”), select the “link” button and paste your cut URL into the box which pops up. Close box and save (”edit”) comment.

The text link disappears but the hot linked text is still there. This prevents the comments box from doing weird stuff to the link.

2) I use Firefox or Opera as a browser which allows me to open links in a new tab, rather than replacing the page I’m still trying to read. One can also make links do this for the reader. You will see in my example that there is a TARGET=”_blank” (See Lorelle VanFossen for why this might be a good idea. OK, I didn’t code this special but just through the quicktags toolbar on my “write post” page.
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/10/12/the-power-of-the-link/)

3) The only reason you the reader can see the coding in the example above (and not the finished product) is because it is coded specially.

I don’t remember how to do this special coding stuff, so I found two tools which do it for me. The Easy Text to HTML Converter is great for taking a copied URL and creating the hot link coding however you want for pasting back into one’s post. It is available here—
http://www.easyhtools.com/

The second tool is Show HTML Coding and is from Finn Ekberg Christiansen living in Copenhagen, Denmark.
hjem.get2net.dk/fec/shtmlc/shtmlc.html

4) Regular post page in non-rtf format click in image to view larger

5) Editing Comments page click in image to view larger

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2007-02-28 In this recent post, it seems most sites are not so picky about slashes any longer, including this one. But to be on the safe side, I would still use that trailing slash if present.

What’s a URL to do? – How to Save URLs

2007-03-22 There is an interesting, though tech discussion at http://www.dailyblogtips.com/speed-up-your-site-use-slashes-on-your-links/ It is directed more at people who can manipulate their sites but may still be of value to shared MU sites like the edublogses.

Technorati Tags: edublogs+tips, WordPress+Tips

UPDATE–
It worked to add the image or badge/button, etc. Start here.

How can I post buttons and images links in my sidebar?
October 27th, 2005 by faq

If you want to display a Del.icio.us or Bloglines button or any image link, you can use the Link Manager to do it!

Click “Links” from your Dashboard and then “Add Link”. If you scroll down, there’s a box for you to enter an image url. Fill that in, and an image will be displayed instead of the link text. The image doesn’t even have to be hosted here either.

But this won’t work completely unless you enable the image to be viewed. Also note that often you are given the code to the linked site and it’s image in one piece of code. The trick is to add the new link per usual. But only the URL link to the site. Separate out the link to the image.

Towards the bottom of the page, add the url of the image to URL box. (Add only the image’s url, e.g., http://location.gif)

=================================
UPDATED again
To show the images for links, be sure that under “links” then under “link categories”, enable (check or toggle) the box for each link category which says “show image”.

“2006-07-21T01:57:02+00:00″

"WordPress.com Counter Instructions"
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=manager&area=htmlcode&page=wordpressdotcom

Site Search Tags: sitemeter

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ΣΧ FYI for Sci TEK teachers

I usually use ImageShack which will post the size of the full image one must download if the thumbnail is clicked. This is a boon to those in remote areas on dial-up so you don’t have to wait forever for a too-large image to load.

Flickr has the advantage of taking the viewer to your collection of photos.

Either way, using another image host for the thumbnails also speeds up the display on a blog instead of posting your full sized image on the blog host.

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These clients also do color. w.bloggar comes from wbloggar.com a blog client as defined there is

“The w.bloggar is an application that acts as an interface between the user and one or more blog(s); in other words, it is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer. Because w.bloggar runs over the Windows GUI, it allows the user to edit posts without being connected to the Internet. Posts can be saved locally; and anytime the user wants to publish a new text, one click on the w.bloggar icon in the system tray brings up the editor, and one more click will post it to the weblog.” http://wbloggar.com/faq.php

w.bloggar doesn’t need a browser to work within. In addition, it will retrieve your current posts for re-writing or editing. To set up an account for w.bloggar, www.nnnnn.edublogs.org is your host and /nnnnn/xmlrpc.php is your path w.bloggar will automatically retrieve your categories so each post can be categorized. It will also ping to various blog counting sites, like Technorati, to let them know you posted something into the blogosphere. NB—if you don’t post&publish the entires, you won’t find them through the edublogs dashboard. I don’t know where they go. w.bloggar will handle several blogging formats and will publish a post to several blogs at once (it says). Performancing for Firefox

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs. Performancing for Firefox is for Firefox 1.5 and above only. We’ve made use of a number of cool new features within Firefox 1.5, so you’ll need that version of Firefox to try it.

http://performancing.com/firefox Performancing works from within the Firefox browser. It will work for a variety of blogging platforms, including edublogs. To set up edublogs select the custom blog type in the setup wizard. On the next tab, select Wordpress as the blog system type. Your API URL will be http://nnnnn.edublogs.org/nnnnn/xmlrpc.php The nnnnn is your blog’s name. Performancing will automatically insert tags for Technorati listing. Actually, it will insert a double set, so you’ll have to edit the post later from edublogs. Another way to do this is Xinha Here! This worked great for awhile then, didn’t work (Firefox can be flaky) [24 Jan 2006 Xinha does work but only if you set your options under Options to not use the visual editor. This is actually a faster way to edit and write materials than the visual or rich text editor mode. And it is fancier than the edublogs visual editor. With the visual editor turned off, you can also insert the "more" tag which will put only an excerpt on the weblog's first page. Unfortunately, this doesn't work on edublogs yet, but it is an excellent feature for the long-winded and the short attender. Xinha also counts your words and characters so you can fill in those limited forms on some sites.]

Xinha Here! is a Firefox extension wrapper for the Xinha HTML editor. It enables WYSIWYG editing in any textarea and textbox on any website. Xinha Here! opens a Xinha HTML editor in your browser allowing you to edit the data in a WYSIWYG on any website without copying and pasting to secondary HTML editor. To use Xinha Here! simply select Xinha Here! from the context menu (right click) of the desired text area or textbox. Up will pop a Xinha WYSIWYG HTML editor. Press OK and the valid HTML is pushed back to the original text box. Simple as that. Because the Xinha editor is installed on your local machine rather then a server it is both portable (use it on any website) and fast (files don’t need to be transfered over the net).

http://www.hypercubed.com/projects/firefox/

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