Twittering Senator Durbin
Twittering Senator Durbin's conversation at the OpenLeft blog. (But the real thing is more interesting.)

http://twitter.com/pfhyper

Labels: blogging, broadband, policy, politics, twitter

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 6:34 PM |

 
Blog search tools II
See 5/26 post too.

The Rollyo searchroll doesn't do a good job with its embedded advertising and it's difficult to tell the ads from the results.

I switched to my good friend Google and so far, it looks pretty good. Ads? Yes. But we are all accustomed to the Google ad concept so that makes their search tool more usable. (Non-profits, schools, and government can turn off the ads.)

Besides creating a search engine for a blog or site, you can access your personal search engine(s) via Google.

Much more control over the look-and-feel and you can specify keywords for tuning your search results. There are also a few advanced features: context, annotations, and refinements. (Sorry, I'm not taking the time to even dig into them right now. You'll have to go look yourself.)

I have invites to the Google Co-op world where these personalized search engines exist. Drop me a line if you need one.

Labels: blogging, search, tech

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 9:53 AM |

 
Blog search tools
I had a Technorati widget over there on the right for searching my blog but it wasn't working. In fact, a direct search on my blog at Technorati also failed. Don't have any idea why.

So I now have a Rollyo widget over there on the right. It generates a confusing array of results along with a bunch of ads that look suspiciously like results. I am not amused.

Stay tuned. I suppose Google must have something I can use here.

Labels: blogging, search, tech

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 4:29 PM |

 
In search of auto tagging
[Update: Doesn't work. No time for debugging this evening.]

On the old Blogger (Blogger Classic), before I switched to the new Blogger Beta, I had this Greasemonkey script that gave me a tags field and that connected with my pfhyperblog del.icio.us account. The script broke in Blogger Beta and I started using Blogger's Label feature. But that doesn't get you to wonderful world of tags (where both del.icio.us and Technorati live).

I found a new script and installed it (thanks Singpolyma). This is the first test. It should generate tags from the Blogger label field.

Labels: blogging, greasemonkey

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 8:34 PM |

 
Sifry's State of the Live Web
Doc Searls summarizes David Sifry's State of the Live Web and adds some interesting commentary concerning the Live and Static Webs.

Technorati is tracking over 70 million blogs and 120K blogs are coming into being daily.

Check out the full report; there are some great graphs.

Technorati Tags:
blogging, live_web

Labels: blogging

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 9:24 PM |

 
The LCG Feed on the right
I started a class blog for the course I'm taking at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs (U of Minnesota). The blog is titled LCG which stands for Leadership for the Common Good.

Today, via Google Reader, I added a widget that pulls in the LCG feed. The raw Javascript widget code is provided for pasting on any blog template and it does not require that you use Blogger.com for blog hosting. You can also control number of entries displayed and the color scheme. What's shared is controlled by the label/folder action in Google Reader so you can share several blogs making it easy to provide a blog roll.

The LCG blog is a class blog with multiple authors. I invited anyone who is taking the class and there are nine (of twenty-five students) listed as authors although not all have posted.

Labels: blogging, policy, UM

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 9:10 AM |

 
Life Time Fitness Meets Buzz
Star Tribune's Buzz.mn is definitely worth checking out for local stories written by people just like you and me. They have some true citizen-media-journalism hyperlocal placeblogging going on. I think anyone can get an account and publish.

Make sure to check the Life Time Fitness thread by nmdevitt:

Are you a member of LifeTime Fitness, which now operates all the (former) Northwest Athletic Clubs? Am I the only one who is ANGRY that the two oldest, worst-equipped clubs are in a tier (eg, St Louis Park and Crosstown) with higher monthly dues than the newer, far-better euipped clubs (eg, Chanhassen, Plymouth clubs)?

She's started a grassroots campaign and hit a serious nerve regarding Lifetime and it's fee structures. She got a story in Star Tribune (which I cannot locate in their search engine). She has managed to get her own membership terminated by the corporation (bad move, Life Time).

This would have been soooo hard to accomplish in pre-blog days.

You will note that sometimes I use "Life Time" and sometimes "Lifetime." If you go to the Life-Time site, you'll see that they are not sure who they are either.

Labels: blogging, newspapers, placeblog

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 6:28 AM |

 
Peter Speaking at U of M’s Wireless Cities Conference
Garrick beat me to the post but I'll carry on with my announcement that Garrick and I will be part of a panel at the University of Minnesota Wireless Cities Conference April 16 at Walter Library. Our panel, Media and Wireless Communities is at 3:15. We'll share the stage with Christina Lopez of the U's Digital Media Center; Jeremy Iggers, former Star Tribune restaurant critic and current Director of Twin Cities Media Alliance (parent organization of TC Daily Planet); and moderator Nora Paul, Director of the Institute for New Media Studies. The conference runs two days and the cost is $175 ($75 for U of M attendees).

I think this is going to be interesting.

Required readings... Michael Maranda on bringing folks out of isolation to tell their stories, Doc Searls on the Giant Zero, and Garrick on news by the block.

From Doc's post:

The Net is a giant zero. It puts everybody zero distance from everybody and everything else. And it supports publishing and broadcasting at costs that round to zero as well.

we don't just "deliver information" like it's a Fedex package. We inform each other. That is, we literally form what other people know.

Labels: blogging, broadband, digital_inclusion, newspapers, placeblog, UM

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 7:00 PM |

 
Jeremy Iggers update
Jeremy Iggers recently left the Star Tribune and has been named executive director of Twin Cities Media Alliance, the parent organization of TC Daily Planet. And he's blogging!

Labels: blogging, news

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 11:10 PM |

 
Conversations & Policy at Policy Soup
Nice read at David Curle's Minn Policy Soup about a recent talk by David Lankes. Links to Lankes' audio and slides too.

"Documents, the things that we have been conditioned to think of as "information," are really only weak echoes of the conversations that created them."

Ooh. I like that quote.

Labels: blogging, policy

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 9:40 PM |

 
Placeblogging day at PF Hyper
Check the comments for this post where Lisa Williams (PlaceBlog, H2otown) drops by and promises to give up jargonese for Lent and then I found this VC blog (A VC by Fred Wilson) discussing the placeblogging idea as a "fundable opportunity."

(And check out Fred's music posts [especially if you're a Neil Young fan].)

Labels: blogging, placeblog

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 11:27 AM |

 
Hyperlocal placeblogging citizen media siting in Northeast Minneapolis
Garrick calls it hyperlocal on his latest First Crack podcast where he chats with Dan Haugen, founder of the new (est. Nov. 2006) (The) Northeast Beat blog. But that's so 20th century. For the 21st C we have: Placeblogging.

Terminology aside, it's a good interview that covers citizen media issues and specifically Dan's background and his hopes for Northeast Beat where he's just added a couple of wikis for event listings and publishing community meeting reports.

I will nominate Dan's feed to be included in the new Minneapolis Wi-Fi Portal (aka "walled garden"), currently under discussion. The goal is to have hyperlocal journalism sources (oops, placeblogs) that would be tied to an area. So in Northeast Minneapolis, Northeast Beat's feed would appear in the portal. The portal itself would be available to anyone with Wi-Fi connectivity — you don't need an Internet Service account.

So Dan, please change your current feed so it displays full posts and not just a paragraph. This is of convenience for those of us who like to read everything in one place and it may be a requirement of the portal to prevent linking out to the larger Web.

Labels: blogging, placeblog

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 9:45 AM |

 
Moving the blog, sorry for the mess
I recently moved my blog from Old Blogger to New Blogger. New Blogger does not have an easy way for me to tag and list my blog posts at del.icio.us. (Those tags at the top of the blog connect to the del.icio.us account.) New Blogger does have a labelling (category) feature and I'm using that (see bottom of some of my posts).

My plan is to better integrate the del.icio.us tracking and the labelling. I may stop updating del.icio.us and simply use New Blogger labelling. Ideally, I'd like to use both and I've put out some requests to the Fresh Blog folks to see if they have any answers.

Stay tuned.

Labels: blogging

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 7:01 AM |

 
Blogger: The Switch
Update: Still have an old-style Blogger blog? It looks like if you go to www.blogger.com, there is a log-in available for the old blogs. I can't test it as I'm in the new system. And I'm reasonably happy with it.

Google rolled the new Blogger out of beta several months ago and they have been inviting me to migrate my blog to the new system. I've avoided the move because I was afraid of losing comments (I use Haloscan for commenting because they provide a trackback system) and because I use del.icio.us for categories. I knew the del.icio.us part would break; wasn't sure about the comments.

Yesterday Google forced my hand. I was not able to get past the migrate screen without, well, migrating. I could still post via email or youtube or flicr to the old blog but I couldn't edit any posts. So I pushed the button.

The new Blogger does have categories to replace the del.icio.us tagging system I used.

No other problems so far.

Labels: blogging, tech

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 9:05 AM |

 
Blogumentary @ GoogVid
Local vlogger Chuck Olsen has released his blogging documentary Blogumentary to Google Video.

The film premiered at the Oak Street Cinema here in Minneapolis back in November of 2004. It's a good film and I recommend it. You can download the file in several formats.

Bonus links 1, 2, and 3.

Labels: blogging, film

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 5:55 PM |