Web 2.0 Round-up
Compiled and edited by Karen Blakeman karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk
Web 2.0 Round-up is a compilation of recent postings and comments to the UKeiG Web 2.0 blog (at http://ukeig.wordpress.com/). The primary purpose of this blog is to provide news and updates on Web 2.0 ‘stuff' and to link to support materials for UKeiG's Web 2.0 workshops and seminars. The RSS feed for the blog is http://ukeig.wordpress.com/feed and the comments feed is at http://ukeig.wordpress.com/comments/feed.
Blogs
Blogs: postings listed with the oldest first
For some applications of blogs it may be more useful to list your postings with the oldest first rather than the standard ‘newest first'. Examples include a CPD blog where you are recording your training, thoughts on your professional development, meetings with mentors etc or a blog that records the progress of a project. At present, neither Blogger nor Wordpress offer an alternative to the standard reverse chronological order: TypePad ( http://www.typepad.com/ ), which is a subscription service, does. Go to Configure and under Post Listing Preferences, Order of Posts, and check the Oldest first (Ascending) radio button. There are several TypePad pricing options ( http://www.typepad.com/pricing/ ) starting at US $49.50/year.
RSS
Converting RSS feeds to e-mail alerts
As well as RSS alerts for new blog postings and comments, you can offer your readers e-mail alerts. There are several services that will convert your RSS feed to e-mail. One is FeedBurner . Sign up for a FeedBurner account and follow the instructions to create a FeedBurner version of your feed. Once it has been set up, click on the title of your new feed, then the Publicize tab followed by the E-mail Subscriptions link on the left-hand side of the page. Follow the instructions and you will be given the code to add to your blog. In Wordpress, add a Text widget to your layout and paste the code into that. In Blogger, under Layout, select Page Elements and then Add a Page Element. Choose HTML/JavaScript, give it a title – for example ‘E-mail Alerts' – and then paste the code into the box.
Blogarithm is another RSS to e-mail conversion service. Set up an account, follow the instructions and then copy and paste the code into a Text widget if you have a Wordpress blog, or an HTML/JavaScript Page Element if you are on Blogger.
Feed icons – different colours and different sizes
The de facto standard for a feed icon may be the orange square, but your style police may insist on a different colour. Feed Icons at http://www.feedicons.com/ provides a file containing the standard orange icon in two sizes and a second file of 50 12×12 coloured icons based on Adobe Photoshop's default colour palette. If those do not suffice, the Developer Kit package includes icons ranging from 12×12 to 128×128 in various formats, including AI, EPS, SVG, PSD, PDF, PNG, JPG and GIF.
How do I delete individual items from a feed in Google Reader?
This is a frequently asked question and I'm afraid the answer is that you can't
Web based RSS readers store old feed items
At a recent UKeiG workshop on ‘Blogs, Wikis and RSS' (April 22nd 2008), one of the participants noticed that Google Reader ( http://www.google.com/reader ) was displaying very old items from one of her organisation's RSS feeds. I suggested that the author of the feed had failed to delete them when updating the feed. When I checked our own UKeiG Events feed in Google Reader, deleted items going back to January 2007 were displayed. Had I also been guilty of not removing old headlines? I checked the code and the feed did indeed only have five items rather than the dozens suggested by Google. So it seems that Google Reader keeps old headlines and includes them in the list when you subscribe.
Bloglines ( http://www.bloglines.com/ ) behaves in a similar way, and goes back even further (February 2006). NewsGator ( http://www.newsgator.com/ ) also had some old deleted headlines but only going back a month.
RSS in Outlook 2007
Outlook 2007 has RSS reading and management capabilities. There are several ways in which you can add RSS feeds to Outlook 2007 but the quickest way seems to be:
- On the Tools menu, click Account Settings
- On the RSS Feeds tab, click New.
- In the New RSS Feed dialog box, type in the URL of the feed or, if you have copied the URL, paste it in by using Ctrl V
- Click Add. In the next box you can change the folder in which it is to be stored.
- Click OK
Twitter
LoudTwitter
Many of us use Twitter at conferences to share thoughts and comments with other delegates, the session moderators or with colleagues back in the office. One of the disadvantages is that the most recent tweets are at the top of your Twitter stream, making it difficult to follow the chain of events and thoughts after the event. LoudTwitter (http://www.loudtwitter.com/) posts your Tweets to your blog on a daily basis in chronological order, with the oldest at the top of the post. See http://karenblakeman.livejournal.com/ for an example of the end result. Thanks to PatrickD for the tip.
Tweet Clouds
Tweet Clouds (http://www.tweetclouds.com/) allows you create a word cloud from a public Twitter stream. Just enter a Twitter Username.
Gordon Brown is Twittering
Actually, it is number 10 Downing Street rather than Gordon who is twittering, mainly via Twitterfeed – http://twitter.com/DowningStreet . Dig around and you can find several mainstream information providers who are twittering, although they are usually just sending their RSS feeds to Twitter via Twitterfeed rather than being actively involved in the community. (Run a Twitter search on the BBC, Times Online and the FT.) The 10 Downing Street twitterstream has a real person monitoring the comments and answering questions from followers.
Start Pages
ActiveIT Pageflakes
ActiveIT in South Lanarkshire have set up Pageflakes pages at http://www.pageflakes.com/activeit/21822620 . As well as the local news, weather and travel, they have a ‘Community language news' tab with RSS feeds from several European and Russian news sources. ActiveIT is the brand name for the learning centres in South Lanarkshire Libraries. More information about ActiveIT can be found at http://www.slc-learningcentres.org.uk .
YouTube
Embedding YouTube videos in Wordpress blogs
If you are having trouble embedding a YouTube video in your Wordpress blog, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NopuJ_OYjsk . It explains why embedding the code does not work with the default settings, and how to change the settings to make it work. The latest Wordpress interface is slightly different to the screen shots shown in this video. You still log in to your ‘dashboard', go to Users and then Your Profile, but the “Use the visual rich editor when writing” box that you have to untick is at the top of the page and not at the bottom, as on the video.
Facebook
The Facebook Classroom: 25 Facebook Apps That Are Perfect for Online Education – College Degree.com
The title says it all. This posting lists Facebook applications ( http://www.collegedegree.com/library/college-life/15-facebook-apps-perfect-for-online-education ) that are particularly relevant for students, teachers and administrators, and everyone.
General
Here comes another bubble by the Richter Scales
This is for those of you who are in the ‘Trough of Disillusionment' on Gartner's hype cycle … well, actually anyone trying to keep up with Web 2.0. The famous Richter Scales video of “Here comes another bubble” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I . Many thanks to Hazel Hall for the alert on this little gem. |
