New Blogger in Draft

I routinely use Blogger in Draft when developing Weekly Reader posts for Library Cloud; it allows for article quotes to be easily inserted in compose, line breaks are simpler between titles and blurbs, and the preview option lets me see how it will look within the template (as opposed to a general preview). I use the traditional Blogger interface with library and IRC blogs because the insert image option is a bit clunky, you cannot drag the image for resizing in draft mode (its draft for a reason). The Blogger in Draft Blog post provided information regarding a platform redesign available, Bloggers Updated Interface Now Available for All Draft Users.  I read the article with interest and promptly forgot about the announcement ... until I logged in.

The layout is clean and intuitive, has expanded post editor options, and the post work space has been significantly increased. I was quickly able to locate most everything I needed, but for some reason am unable to find the post link option allowing me to link a post title. Insert images remains awkward in my opinion; in addition to not being able to manually adjust the image size once the image is inserted it's difficult to change page alignment. For instance, the image of a recent Library Cloud weekly reader post inserted above is centered. I should be able to align subsequent paragraph text using the alignment tool.  No such luck, regardless of how many times I changed alignment the post editor continued to automatically generate centered text. I resorted to the post editor html option, removed center command div, and continued. Overall, I like the new design and may soon choose Blogger Draft as my default dashboard.

Well, of course

On overload from a busy day, my mind is wandering a bit as I decompress by watching Designed to Sell on HGTV.  Out of the blue, a technology a-ha moment. Interestingly enough, it highlights a study discussed today on the ALA Learning Round Table blog. But I digress.

The university web team recently updated the current students page. Included within the page is a new rss feed that features the library news blog. It's a great marketing function for the library - I've already scheduled posts for first year instruction sessions - and provides an opportunity for our blog news to reach a wider audience. When students select the headline, they are taken to a separate page generated by the Drupal module. I noticed, however, it displays only a snippet of each post as opposed to full text. Wondering if this was a function of the module, this morning I sent a help ticket thanking them for the prime real-estate on the student page and asking if it was possible to present the full post with links or if a link to the blog could be added within the created page.

A week into the new academic year, students in my technology class(es) have already successfully completed their first assignment. Several have worked ahead to the second and third assignment, publishing their first blog reflection post. Looking at their work, I noticed three elected to add social bookmarking links to post footers. I liked the idea and investigated how to add it to this blog and the library blog. Happily clicking the blog tab functions, I located what I needed and quickly adapted blogs footers to feature quick links (see below). While moving through tabs, I selected settings then site feed and noticed this blogs feeds were set to full, short, and short. Aha! I checked and the library news blog feed was set to short. I changed the feed option to full and saved. With luck, when we publish next the post will display as needed.

Now, what about the ALA Learning Round Table post? Today the blog featured a post titled Learn More, Do Nothing. The author discusses how taking a break from a problem and ruminating on it during quiet times often leads to success. Well, of course.

Blog management or blog cheating?

Have you done it? Be honest; have you utilized Blogger's Post Options and either changed the date and time on a post or scheduled a post to publish at a later date?

I admit my initial reaction to this perk was negative. After all, was I not using a blog's journal format to compile and share information in a timely manner? Part of the beauty of a blog is it's instant placing of newest items first; keeping things in an honest, chronological order as opposed to an arbitrary order of importance. If I started scheduling my post publications, was it not counterproductive to the blog's over-all purpose?

The idea sat in the back of my mind, taunting me with possibilities. Next week I am on vacation. Instead of having a week without posting on the IRC blog, what if I scheduled a post or two a day this week while I have the time? Instead of seven entries on one day, the number of juvenile book categories waiting to be posted, what if I did three today, two tomorrow, and scheduled two more for Friday when I am at the CMCIG workshop.

Possibilities are inherently endless. With vacation near, I can post the IRC hours update anytime I want and schedule it to publish Monday morning. I can post reminders for the holiday weekend hours and publish when I want! I can prepare posts on anything I want, wait for someone else to post, and then schedule publishing so my posts are more recent than my blogging buddies ....

With a few planned exceptions, such as hour's updates and a few specific informational posts, I think I will stick with the traditional blogging format and feel secure that I can finesse things if needed and when appropriate.

Deja pipes and Blogger draft

One blog not in my bloglines account is Blogger Buzz; after all, once logged into to Blogger it displays directly below the dashboard for all asunder to see. There have been recent notices discussing Blogger in Draft and several functions currently in beta format, the not ready for primetime ideas and widgets. Yesterday I noticed two things, the first a search box widget for blogs and the second a mention of Pipes (yes, a Yahoo development on Google-owned Blogger).

Naturally curious about a search box widget I signed in to Blogger Draft with my regular Blogger login and explored. You are able to set tabs that display when the search box is utilized and choose from a list of predetermined links. I chose the "this blog" and "linked from here" options and let the page element choose my link lists. Search results display with a This Blog header, the link list, and the blog posts returned.

The sample search image (left) was for ALAO and returned four posts with an option for more results. In what could be labeled an odd quirk, yesterday searching for alao verses ALAO returned completely different posts; "alao" had no posts, "ALAO" had the most recent four plus. This morning both searches returned the same posts, guess that's why the widget is in draft. As a plus, the search box results display within the blog and may be closed, returning the user to the original blog post. This, I liked.

I have already added the search box on my AU library blogs. It will be a useful tool for users to search for particular books on the collection and book review blog and possibly more so for students using the 131/504 blog to find topics specific to assignments.

Google's recent acquisition of Feedburner has added a few interesting perks (see More for Free) to existing accounts. In the Attention Feedburner Fans and the Feedburner Integration for Blogspot Blogs posts, both entities are promoting a new service to make feeds work more efficiently.

"... you can now specify a URL to which Blogger will redirect your feed's traffic. This means you'll no longer have some subscribers getting your Blogger-hosted feed while others get your FeedBurner feed, and your subscriber count should (as a result) be more accurate." (Blogger Buzz, 7/11/07)

Look closely at the post for this note:

"Note: this feature isn't limited to FeedBurner alone - you can use any feed-mashing service (like Pipes) with it." (Blogger Buzz, 7/11/07)

Feed-mashing, another new term.

Tags: Blogger Draft, Search box, Blogger Draft, Feedburner, Pipes, Feed Mashup

Blog header images

I have been preparing screen shots for my blog-themed poster presentation at ALA and pondering a way to add the IRC logo to the IRC Blog. While I have changed the blog colors to match the IRC web page color palette, the logo would provide a nice visual element currently missing. I knew it was an achievable goal, I did it here. But to insert the Library Cloud logo it was necessary to mess (a technical term) with the blog html and then find a way to access the picture. Doable, but cumbersome, and not suffice for my current needs; I wanted to keep the deep purple background as a frame for the IRC logo by inserting it into the existing page element as opposed to replacing it as I did here. I reasoned that with the new "drop and drag" options accompanying updated Blogger templates there had to be a better way. There was!

I discovered a new option, at least a new to me option, in Configure Header. Choosing to change an existing header, users are able to add images by either uploading from a computer or linking to an existing online image. Once the image is added placement options - behind title and description - and - instead of title and description -are available to personalize the selection.

I needed to adjust the size of my logo/image, it was bigger than the allotted space and bled out over the background, but was able to add the IRC logo to the blog header quickly and without any problems. I chose the instead of title and description option, but left the blog title showing. Now the blog title is not on the blog, but does remain on my dashboard.

With some irony, a new Blogger Buzz feed was present in my Bloglines account this morning. It was a post from Pete at Blogger Buzz: Learn How to Add an Image to Your Blogs Header.

Tags: Blogger,Blogger header images, Academic library blogs, Blogger Buzz

Blogging about comments

Hot off of the e-journal press is the latest issue of Cites & Insights (Vol.6, No. 14, December 2006) from Walt Crawford. I always find something of interest when reading C & I, even more so when space is devoted to library technology and blogging. One of the topics discussed in this issue’s Net Media Perspective column is blog commenting, or lack there of. Rebecca and I agreed we wanted blog comments enabled when ironing out details before launching Library Cloud. A step beyond comments was the question of how to determine if anyone was reading our blog. The blogsphere is huge so we did not want to fall into the trap of thinking only people we know read our blog, nor did we want to rely singly on comments and blogger page views. I admit to bulldozing when it came to adding the counter as a means of gathering statistics, but it has been eye-opening to see what posts are being read most often (Ms. Dewey is the most popular) and from where people are reading. Without those particular statistics we would have little to judge statistically as blog comments have been sparse. Not particularly concerned, I was nonetheless glad to see Library Cloud is average when it comes to comments:

“Most library blogs don’t get very many comments and a few blogs tend to have mostly comments that agree with the posts.” (Crawford, C & I, December 2006,
p.4)

“For this year’s study of liblogs, the media comments per post was only 0.42. Most blogs had less than half a comment per post but more than a dozen averaged at least three comments per post.” (Crawford, C & I, December 2006, p.4)

I began thinking about my own habits regarding blog reading and commenting and took a quick survey. Here is what I found; as of today I have 39 blog feeds in my Bloglines account. Those thirty-nine blogs fall easily into five categories: library related (6), technology (8), Ashland University & Library Cloud (4), professional development (10), and just for fun (11). I have commented on ten of the thirty-nine blogs somewhat regularly and each of those ten fall into the just for fun and professional development categories of blogs. One step further, I can honestly say I post frequently, at least every two or three posts, on four of those ten blogs. Therefore, out of the original thirty-nine blogs, I comment on approximately 10% of the list. So, what does this mean?

If any of those other bloggers are relying on my comments to judge their blog usage, very few of them are going to be satisfied with my participation. This begs the question; where do I post comments, and why? Here are the four blogs I comment most frequently on (alphabetically):

• Argh Ink (fun)
  Author Jennifer Crusie's blog
• He Wrote, She Wrote (fun)
  Jennifer Crusie & Bob Mayer
• Read Roger (professional & fun)
  Roger Hornsby, Hornbook Magazine editor
• Running with the Quills (fun)
  Authors Susan Anderson, Stella Cameron, Lori Foster, Jayne Ann Krentz, Elizabeth Lowell, Susanne Simmons

The why portion is pretty easy to answer. These blogs are fun, invite comment, and have many other interesting people commenting as well. I have learned about writing and publishing, both recreational and children's, from these four blogs. I have alss on occassion posted to the more professional entities of the Chronicle's Wired blog, Weblog-ed, and Walt Crawford's blog, all for the same reasons.

This blog is still in its infancy and comments will come and go as we grow. But curiosity compels me to ask, what makes a blog reader decide to comment? Is it agreeing with a post? Is it disagreeing with a post? What do you think?

Tags: Bloggers, Blog comments, Academic library blogs

A different blog, an odd glitch

Welcome to the ALAO conference report blog intermission. I do have two sessions and possibly the pre-conference workshop I would like to discuss, but a CMCIG blog template glitch has put my musings on hold.

Yesterday afternoon Greg Martin, Cedarville University, CMCIG chair, contacted me about some of the sidebar information on the IRC blog and the CMCIG blog because we are all learning blogs together. During the course of looking at the CMCIG template, he noticed all of the sidebar links were gone. The existing blog had all of the pertinent information, but the template did not reflect it. Our main concern was if anyone posted to the blog about the conference, saving and publishing would "update" the good blog with the bad template. Why the worry? Any time you choose a new blogger template, it overwrites the existing template and effectively erases sidebar information. Just to be on the safe side, I did a quick view page source and saved the file.

Today, I tested our theory and was unfortunately proved correct. As you can see on the most recent post, CMCIG blog glitch, we currently have only the generic preset links and a completely different template. It's not pretty.

Because luck was with us and Greg noticed the oddity, the links are saved and just need to be re-established on the template. Right now we are deciding if it's time to switch over to Blogger Beta, maybe fool with the template css and set it to reflect the colors on the new ALAO web page, or just rebuild and be done with it. Additionally, the blog is a bit stagnant and I'm hoping we can set up a quick statscounter to see if it is being read even though posting and comments are sparse.

I brought my conference notes home from work this afternoon and will try to finish my reflections this weekend so as not to drag out the process too much longer. In the mean time, wish me luck with the CMCIG blog repairs.

Update: 11/13/06

The CMCIG blog is back to normal, the template has been reset and all of the sidebar links re-established. After discussing a few additional options with Greg, I added StatCounter and a few Feedburner "chicklets" for site feeds. We hope this will help with the IG's blog readership. If not, the counter will give us a basis for comparison should the time come to disband the project. By the time spring workshops begin for IG's, we will have a good six months of statistics to review.

Tags: Blog template issues, ALAO Interest Group, Curriculum Materials Center Interest Group, CMCIG, CMCIG Blog

Blogger issues

This has been a challenging for blogs that use Blogger, the servers have been down with both planned and unplanned maintenance issues. Trying to post has been difficult, trying to read other blogs using Blogger has been difficult, I don't want to even discuss trying to comment on blogs, and moving the blog to the new Beta Blogger software looks appealing even when reading the Known Issues for Blogger Beta blog that has almost daily issue posts.

• Blogger Buzz: The Blogger Outages (a novel)
• Known Issues for Blogger in Beta
• The Official Blogger Buzz

Rebecca and I have talked about moving this blog to Beta Blogger because some of the new features include access control, labeling posts, and site feed options. At this point we are planning to wait until they have a few more of the bugs worked out or until all of the blogs are moved regardless of the remaining issues.

Tags: Library Cloud, Blogger Beta, Blogger, Blogger issues