An ancient edublog
This is a good un, I especially like the accompanying quote “James is on it tho’ best support service I’ve had all week, and I can tell you I’ve been attempting to use several crap ones, Dell, Silicon Image etc..”. Perhaps I’m wasted in this blog consultancy game ;o>
Well, if you’re into this sort of thing then this will come as probably no surprise but at considerable interest nonetheless.
Looks like WebCT ‘PowerLinks’ (got I hate their naming!) allow for:
“Open the WebCT system to deliver end-user access to:
-Custom in-house applications
–Open source extensions
-Other third-party applications” [my emphasis]
In particular, “PhpWiki Integration”
Now you don’t have to go through the entire 1.75 MB powerpoint (although you can if you really want to) but the essence is that WebCT, as far as I can tell, are now ‘integrating’ and are planning to integrate a huge swathe of open source tools essentially into WebCT so you can kiss your independent sandpit / development goodbye…. why would you want it when the ‘One Great Solution’ can provide it for everyone.
Somebody please tell me that they haven’t gone near WordPress… please.
And I swear there was a note of gloat in the admin who just conveyed this news to me… we shall see… we shall see!
Oh and in case I didn’t make it clear enough, news is that they have now implemented it….
As we were making breakfast this morning my 5 year old step-daughter, Ibby, sat down and did some thoughtful drawing (as both our girls do a lot… straight from the head). About 10 minutes later she showed us what she’d done and… I think we might be spending a bit too much time on the computer these days… it’s a browser:
But it gets better, have a look at the bottom… we were like ‘huh?’ but it’s ForecastFox of course… complete with happy faces for sun and sad ones for rain. Wonderful!
Long time readers may or may not have noticed that every now and then I get seriously in a fix about email subscription services… moaning about the fact that bloglet seems to be manager-less, notifylist is a pain and I can’t seem to figure out a way to get an easy email subscription service going.
Well, that enormous whinge is now over. 167 feeds and it didn’t filter through to me in February but it has now for I have found the Subscribe2 plugin.
It does pretty much everything you could ask from this plugin including allowing you to mass subscribe your buddies to your blog by email :D, managing subscribers at will, editing all outgoing messages and a fair bit more besides. Wonderful stuff.
The one thing it could do with would be the facility to send out only 1 email a day (a la OLDaily) but there’s also something rather cute about an email getting sent as soon as you post something… well, there is for relatively low frequency bloggers (i.e. me).
Roll on over to blogsavvy to check it out in action. Incorporated version coming soon, but then you’re all reading this through RSS aren’t you so you don’t care anyway ;D
Steven comments that he’s reversed his feeling that everyone should have a blog (and pleeeeeeease get that page layout fixed!) and I agree… as we are using them (publication, conversation) they certainly shouldn’t. But, nonetheless, everyone should have a blog.
The problem is conceiving of blogs as we do as these public utterances to audiences of varying sizes. The same problem that whacked the ‘everyone should have a homepage brigade’ in 1997… we just didn’t need (or want) our own static CV.
But, as I danced around (thanks Tom :o) the other day on blogsavvy, the future of blogs is not as we see them now. Everyone may not want a blog, but blogs are becoming digital identities, digital homes and digital repositories.
Everyone does need a blog… we need to get over what we think blogs are and will become.
I’ve always really enjoyed the accessible, open and innovative publishing of, um, well, Innovate (and The Technology Source) but this dumb login-for-article system they’ve got in place is not only annoying… but also very bad for business.
Put simply, research and writing without avenues for publication, discussion and, in essence, an audience is sadly pretty much useless… it has no impact.
Innovate doesn’t seem to have any commercial model, runs no ads and asks for no fees. So WHY ON EARTH do they restrict access to full -text articles to users with email addys? It:
-Deters probably half your potential readership
-Removes most of your search engine value
-Detracts enormously from your blogger buzz (and this is *very* important, and becoming moreso)
-Ties you unpleasantly to email
So what’s up Innovate??? Why do you force me here? I’d understand (a bit) if you had an ad market to be served through login… but you don’t.
So, please scrap the login, pretty please!