BIT320 Remix: blog Archives

RSS Specifications and RSS Feeds

Information related to RSS and XML, including software, newsreaders, specifications, content syndication, and the history of rss.

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 12/19/2005 | Original | Archive

Bloglines

Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install -- simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive

Brilliant Button Maker by LucaZappa.com

Make buttons, easily

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/13/2005 | Original | Archive

Apples To Oranges - CSS For Bar Graphs

Having a working knowledge of XHTML and CSS when developing applications is a big help in knowing what can be done client-side and what should be generated server-side.

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 12/11/2005 | Original | Archive

Win XP 20 things you do not know - Windows Tips 'n' Tweaks

20 things you don't know about windows XP

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 12/11/2005 | Original | Archive

NewsIsFree: Your Personal News Portal

Use RSS feeds to create your new portal

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 12/11/2005 | Original | Archive

Blogdigger : RSS / Atom Search Engine - Search Blogs

Search RSS feeds

In del.icio.us/supermatt, 12/11/2005 | Original | Archive

Why Blogging is a GOOD idea

I talked before about the Benefit about knowing 5 languages and while don’t even claim proficiency let alone fluency it has been an interesting semester. It is obvious that learning the 5 languages is a lot like learning a foreign language. I have always felt that it would be easiest for me to learn a foreign language by being put in the middle of a country that speaks the language. The reason for this is that people learn best from multiple sources. Therefore if I was in a foreign country there would be many people teaching me, as opposed to a class room which traditionally has one professor teaching many students. Bud has completely changed this in his class. First he has basically dropped us off in the middle of a foreign country having us dive head first into XML, and just like how we would really be if we were put on a foreign land we were scared and confused as everyone around us was speaking a foreign language, but now just a few weeks later we all seem to have a much better understand of the new languages we are starting to comprehend. Also he has shifting the job of teaching from just him to the entire class. We all help each other learn, in essence making more teachers. This helps in two ways. First whenever I have a question I don’t just have to go to Bud, I can blog about it, or ask a classmate for help. Second, when we help each other or tackle questions together we solidify and internalize concepts. Another idea that makes this class exceptional is the use of the internet in the class. Most classes only use textbooks as reference, but frequently we are encouraged to find websites that provide answers to our questions, references, or further information about a topic. When students find these they post them in their blog. Which brings me to my final point as to why this is a good class. The blog. Sure it is difficult and sometimes unpleasant to post in your blog because we are busy or can’t think of a good topic, but if you look at all of my points you will see they all revolve around blog. Of course, if we were not required to blog or it was worth a little portion of our grade we would not do it, but with emphasis put on it, we are all using it and benefiting from it.

In SuperMatt, 12/09/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Fabprefab

fabprefab is an information resource dedicated to investigating the market for affordable modernist factory-built residential architecture. The subject matter is limited in scope to single family dwellings.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/08/2005 | Original | Archive

Inhabitat

weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/08/2005 | Original | Archive

A Perfect Remix Cont…

I agree completely with Matt M when he says

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’d love to see this remix continue and grow once the class is over.

I think we need to continue this site after the class is over. I know FOR A FACT we will not blog 5 times a week, but it would be easy to do, and an exciting way to keep up with each other well after graduation. I’m sure after Project2 or with the help of Bud, any of us could set up a site that would use RSS feeds to pull our articles and put them in a blog. Now this would not need to be fancy, but it would be a easy way to keep up. Not only would this be a fun/social thing, but it could be another networking tool. For example, if in a few years, I want to connect someone with Microsoft, I can simply get on the blog site and I know that at least 2 people reading the blog site will be Microsoft employees. One thing I have learned about networking is the best way to keep up contacts is to remind people of yourself without bothering them. Blogs are a great way to do this. With a blog people always have the option of reading what you have to say without bothering people. I would encourage all of you to even think about creating similar sites with your friends. In my case I was thinking about creating a RSS feed blog site for my business school friends and my fraternity brothers. It is such an easy way to keep contact and with virtually no cost.

In SuperMatt, 12/06/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

You won’t see my blog listed on my resume

Privacy is becoming impossible as Matt points out in his blog. He makes a very understandable argument saying

I’m curious as to all of your opinions on this subject. Personally, I would like to think that my personal life would be kept seperate from my job life. What I do at home should be my business and my business alone

I think this is an all too real problem. In the past, I have heard of background checks and even sometimes private investigators used to lookup histories on potential and current employees. While this process is time consuming about difficult, Googleing someone is cost effective and easy. For this reason, I could see many HR departments doing such things.

To give you one such example, I myself and interviewing with a company later this week. In my blog I have specially pointed out flaws this company has. If someone could track my comments, I could be in danger of no longer be considered for the position. For this reason, I did not put my real name with the blog.

In SuperMatt, 12/05/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Zenphoto

Zenphoto is an answer to lots of calls for an online gallery solution that just makes sense. After years of bloated software that does everything and your dishes, zenphoto just shows your photos, simply.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Chromasia

Photographer from Blackpool, UK

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Floderblog

Folderblog is a free PHP script that automatically displays the images placed in a given directory, no database needed. It can be used as a blog or gallery — and anything in between.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

photos.klavina.com

This is the photoblog of a freelance web designer Gunta Klavina currently living in Riga, Latvia.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Photoblogs.org

Photoblogs.org is a resource designed to help people find all kinds of photoblogs.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

DIOPTER

Photographer from San Juan, Puerto Rico

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Messy Pics

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Lomat.org

Lomography

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

A Year in the Life of a Subway Commuter.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 12/03/2005 | Original | Archive

OSNews

News, reviews, and blogs on the future of computing and operating systems

In del.icio.us/kevlers, 12/02/2005 | Original | Archive

Adding a counter my second try

Well here I go again, for some reason I’m curious about how many viewers are making their way over to my site. Taking Supriya’s advice, I followed the link in here blog, to get free html text that should display a counter and other visitor statistics about my blog. After writing in my blog nearly 60 times, of course I want to see if anyone is reading. If this works, I suggest that you add it to yours. One thing I have noticed is that everyone in the class is very cognizant of people outside of the class reading their blog. This is another way to track activity.

Website Counter

In SuperMatt, 11/30/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Screen Shots in Posts

In one of Aga’s posts she talks about the idea of using the print screen function. This is a good idea because it saves students time, and ensure an exact replica of text. However I’m worried about the clearly of the reading. Also it is a huge pain to do. In fact, I have tired numerous ways to insert a screen shot and it doesn’t seem to work. This first way I tired was to save the screen shot as a file then insert it in the blog. That did not work. Then I tired to copy and paste the image in, but that did not work either. In both of these tries, the computer basically tries to post a local file into my blog. The only way I figure I could do this is to post the picture (screenshot) on the internet somewhere then have the html code pull the picture from the website where the file is located. All of this is much harder than just coping and pasting the XML text. Does anyone have an easier way?

In SuperMatt, 11/30/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

IP blog

Weblog on intellectual property issues.

In del.icio.us/kevlers, 11/26/2005 | Original | Archive

[daily dose of imagery]

a simple view of my day to day visual experience. You can simply call it my photoblog. I post one photo a day on this web site. It could be untouched or altered. I started this experimental project as a visual practice.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/19/2005 | Original | Archive

Falling behind, Falling asleep

A few people, Zee, JB, Matt, and Tigerlilly have all talked about how they have come to enjoy blogging. And I have to second it. Especially since many people have said that they hope to continue after class, like Matt saying:

At this point, I most certainly intened to keep blogging. I’ve found myself at so many times this semester saying, “I really want to blog about that.” But since it’s not in the scope of this class, I don’t. So I definitely want to start…

And I totally agree! That’s what happened after BIT last year. I just kept going, I had already started and I sent the link out to a few of my friends and let them read whenever, since I’m really bad about calling people and telling them what’s going on with me. Also, Tigerlily was talking about the benefits saying:

Plus, i think bloggin has been therapeutic in a way because we can vent all out frustration…

And I agree with that, one of my friends who’s in Med school now, his blog, its tagline use to be “bloggin is therapeutic”.

But Matt did point out a very good concern:

but I wonder if the hurdle of knowing I won’t have a dedicated audience when I start my new blog will be too much and I’ll stop after a while?

There are a few options You can open your audience wider so that more people will see it. Or we could try and keep going within this class. I think it would be interesting if we kept it up. There aren’t that many of us and it’s more personal that way. But I do know that, it is hard to keep up and not fall behind in your life when there aren’t things like grades pushing you or you don’t have a lot of extra time. I had a lot of extra time this summer and would post alllllll the time. Now I don’t post much on my other blogs, because I don’t have time, and I’m posting here…all my creativity is spent here But those are some options, yeah no?

In Shady Waters, 11/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Webstats4u.com

Trackers for your Website

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/17/2005 | Original | Archive

Looking at who’s looking at you

Yes, I know you all want to know. You want to know who’s looking at you so that they can look at them looking at you, you looking at them looking at you. Confused yet? Yeah I am too

Matt happened to be trying to get a tracker to work on his blog. I commend his efforts because, yes wanting to look at who’s looking at you when you are looking at…yes that again. HAHA. Anyways, on my own blogger, I happened to use, Webstats4u.com. I found it from a friend’s xanga or blog.

The nice thing is it tracks all sorts of things. If you look at my blogger tracker stats, It keeps things like, how many, the countries, what time during the day, how they connect, through what websites they come from, and what kind of browzer they use. So cool eh.

But the one problem with our blogs is that it doesn’t let us edit the http and layout of the blog. So what you have to do, is they will send you the links in an email that you need to have on your blog. The only way the tracker will work is if you link back to the main page of webstats4u.com, not just your own tracking site. You know, you link me while I link you linking me linking you and I coun’t your stats. Got it? get it? good

In Shady Waters, 11/17/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Will the Button Work?

What I can I say, it appears my first FrontPage blog didn’t go as planned. Basically I thought I could insert a counter into my blog by adding the pre-made HTML that FrontPage. However, it didn’t work. So I thought I’d try another function. , I made an interactive button which should act as a link to bring interested people to my blog with the phantom counter. If anyone knows how to add a counter to a blog using HTML I would be interested. Hopefully, this feature will be more successful than my first. I think it will work except that my Button is currently clear. Hopefully I can solve this problem and repost.

In SuperMatt, 11/16/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

FrontPage - My New Blog Editor

After Kevin , had a problem with his blog. Bud suggested that we use FrontPage to write and edit our blogs so they are neat and organized. This will be my first blog written with FrontPage. Obviously when adapting to new software there will be set backs, but I think FrontPage offers a lot more functionality. It is great for learning HTML because if I can’t figure out how to write something in HTML, I can click on the Design tab, add whatever to the document then click back on the Code tab to see how to do this with html. Of course most of the time I will simply write my blog in WordPress, but every once in a while I will try to add something new. Today’s feature is a counter.

In SuperMatt, 11/16/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Blogs of War

At times the focus has leaned heavily towards politics (and political humor) but I'm currently focused on aerospace, defense, and technology issues.

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/15/2005 | Original | Archive

The Open Source Classism, Racism, and Sexism Project: Hurricane Katrina, The Blogosphere And Corporate Media...

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/14/2005 | Original | Archive

For Democracy in Nepal

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/14/2005 | Original | Archive

The Kimchihead

Random blog that I found that talks about himself and his experiences

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/08/2005 | Original | Archive

I killed time Blog

Killing Time... Before Time kills us!

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/08/2005 | Original | Archive

CNET News.com's Blog 100

Listing of blogs consider worthwhile reads by CNET News.com

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 11/08/2005 | Original | Archive

Errors, errors, I still got the upper hand.

Yep I’ve gotten them too every single time I post. What I recommend doing is every time you write a post to “save and continue editing.” Not only will your categories get updated appropriately but in case the post doesn’t go through you have a saved copy. In the meantime, supriya, jb and everyone else: do a little dance and say HAHA when you click on view site and despite errors, your post is there.

In Pink Footsie, 11/08/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

China pulls plug on blog

China reportedly shuts down blog

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Teen blogs in bloom

Survey: One in five teens have own blogs

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Opinionslug on a tiny rant

By the way most of us have become one of two backgrounds and it is slightly annoying (though not of any of our faults). It seems like WordPress managers deleted several of the presentation formats (including my red chairs) and now I’m back to picking from 1 of 4 Themses. I’m not a happy camper because like any Marketer I like to differentiate myself, yep a brand of my own. Is there any way to coerce them to put them and others back on? I mean, they do want to become more popular as a service right? I think the uniqueness and character formatting/ability is what truly differentiates one blogging site from another (aside from reliability).

In Pink Footsie, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Thou shalt not blog

School orders students to remove blogs

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 10/27/2005 | Original | Archive

PostSecret

a blog where contributors send in their secrets for all readers to see

In del.icio.us/jbartko, 10/26/2005 | Original | Archive

WIL WHEATON DOT NET

the popular blog of Wil Wheaton - actor, comedian and writer

In del.icio.us/jbartko, 10/26/2005 | Original | Archive

Expect to be spammed a lot

November spamalanche bears down on PC users

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 10/25/2005 | Original | Archive

Matt’s featured Feature

In the spirit of the midterm tomorrow I thought I’d blog about my favorite feature in Oracle the IN operator. Let just say the IN operator did exist and I wanted to list the number, name, and credit limit for each customer with a credit limit of 5k, 10k 15k. My sql script would be:

SELECT CUSTOMER_NUM, CUSTOMER_NAME, CREDIT_LIMIT

FROM CUSTOMER

WHERE CREDIT_LIMIT = 5000

OR CREDIT_LIMIT = 10000

OR CREDIT_LIMIT = 15000;

But thanks to the IN Operator it looks something like:

SELECT CUSTOMER_NUM, CUSTOMER_NAME, CREDIT_LIMIT

FROM CUSTOMER

WHERE CREDIT_LIMIT IN (5000, 10000, 15000);

Anything that saves me typing is a great help. Are you interested in more ways to use the in functions? Check out what these bloggers had to say about it.

In SuperMatt, 10/24/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Trying to Stop what I’ve Started

When I wrote my last post I was hoping to create some buzz about the grading scale. My complaint was not that it would force or change competition but rather I think that we are all exceptional students and I wish we could all be fully rewarded for that. BIT320 is a unique course that requires more collaboration and multiple points of learning than most courses. To me it is like learning a new language and unless I have someone to practice the language with I will never be fluent. Bud does his best by pointing out in his post that:

the lion’s share of credit in this course is given based on your contribution to the class knowledge

To that end, I would encourage all of you to collaborate as much as possible, and don’t worry about studying for tomorrows quiz, I’m sure we’ll all do just fine.

In SuperMatt, 10/24/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Bloggers charge by the wit

Bloggers will interpret news — for a fee

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 10/23/2005 | Original | Archive

Bite My Blog

The power of RSS, PHP and automation and Blogs

In del.icio.us/hiccups, 10/23/2005 | Original | Archive

Bite me & I Bite you Back

So I happen to become narcissitic for two shakes and I googled “shadywaters”. I then went out to google some of my other blogs and whatdoyouknow I’m first Woot. Ok but that’s not the main part of the story.

I came across a site called Bit my Blog. It’s kind of interesting and relevant to the class. It really demos the power of RSS, PHP, and automation -> phrase pulled from the site.

Check it out. Cause it has 621434, one of which is yours!c

In Shady Waters, 10/23/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

SuperMatt is #1 2

After reading Kevin’s #1 blog I thought I’d check the Google-ability of my blog. I was happy to find out that when I searched “SuperMatt” on Google my blog was the first to populate. Unlike Kevin, I have decided not to use my real name in the blog so if I Google my name nothing related to my blog appears. I don’t think any harm can come out of having my name attached to my blog, but to me better safe than sorry.

In SuperMatt, 10/22/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Tagging interfaces

Shady makes a great remark:

So I happen to notice something interesting about the categories listing of tags on our write page regarding. Its ordered in the listing of when you put it in. But doesn’t that seem wrong? then if you start having lots of tags, which I do…sometimes you miss them because they are in an easily searchable order.

I agree. This is a real drawback. As I see it, Wordpress is ahead of all blogging platforms because it lets you create categories on the fly. However, no blogging interface is as good as the del.icio.us interface, and even that could do with some improvement.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 10/16/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

The Ordering of Your Life & The Ordering of Your Tags

So I happen to notice something interesting about the categories listing of tags on our write page regarding. Its ordered in the listing of when you put it in. But doesn’t that seem wrong? then if you start having lots of tags, which I do…sometimes you miss them because they are in an easily searchable order. Alpha order might be nice, but currently it is just adding the next tag to the bottom of the list. I’m lost.

Perhaps I should spend sometime…ordering my blog.

In Shady Waters, 10/15/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

SQL, XML, & Ice Cream

A remixable web learning project at Michigan's Ross School of Business

BIT320 Remix — blog