Electronic Participation

Connectivity, IRC, Blogging

Blogging at the Colston Symposium 2004

Authors: Paul Shabajee and Simon Price

This page gives a basic introduction to Blogging and specifically the Blogging facilities as made available as part of the Colston Symposium 2004. For more comprehensive information on Blogging see the 'finding out more' section at the end of this page.

What is Blogging?

Blogging is short for WeB LOGGING, it is a way of instantly and very simply publishing Web content from any computer with an Internet connection (or almost any other communications device, PDA, Mobile Phone, etc). The content is made available on the Web on a Blog Web site.

Blogger [1] the largest blogging service provider (see below) defines a blog as "A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically like a what's new page or a journal. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly?from links and commentary about other web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction."

It has been estimated that there are as many as 2.9 million blogs or more [2]. Blog Web pages often provide other complementary links alongside the blog content, including links to other Web content of interest to the blogger(s) who own the site, and/or links to other related blogs (this is called blog rolling).

See http://educational.blogs.com/ for an example of a more educationally-focused blog. The blog entries can be browsed or searched. Older entries are generally stored in an archive. In most cases every individual entry has a URL of its own and so it is possible to link directly to it from external (or internal) Web sites.

There are many types and uses of blogs - see http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/blogging_part_1.htm for a good basic introduction to these. They include personal diary blogs, knowledge sharing and knowledge management blogs, customer service blogs, interactive journalism blogs...

How Does Blogging Work?

In practice Blogging involves typing the content, for example a comment or Web link, into a form on a Web page or within a piece of blogging software, similar to a form you fill in when buying something online. When the send button is pressed the content is automatically put up on the Blog Web page for anyone to read. If you have a digital camera, pictures [and in some cases movies and other multimedia content] can be uploaded just as easily.

Special Web page templates are used to create the layout of the content. These templates can be customized by individual users to produce the look and feel and additional links etc. they would like.

Broadly there are two types of Blogging system:

1. A piece of software runs on the user's (blogger's) computer. They enter their blog content into a form within that program - press a button, and the content is automatically added to their blog and uploaded to their blog Web site, by that software.
2. The blog software runs on a Web server (the Web site that hosts the blog). To add a blog entry the user uses a standard Web browser to a blog entry Web page. They complete a simple form, click send, and the content is automatically published to Blog Web site.

The latter approach has the advantage that blog entries can [in general] be created and posted from any computer or device with Web access - with some systems it is also possible to post blog entries via e-mail and mobile phone text or multimedia messaging.

Systems that use approach 2) either require that the user has access to their own Web server or that companies provide a service hosting blogs. These hosted services mean that users need minimal technical expertise. The largest hosted service provider is called Blogger (now owned by Google) which has thousands customers.

See 'software' below for examples of blogging software

Beyond Basic Blogging

Comments and Trackbacks

Most blogging systems provide facilities [if desired by the blog owner] for visitors to the blog to leave a comment(s). This means that blogs can be used for ongoing discussion as well as simple one way publishing.

An additional facility built into some blogging systems is the ability to make two way links between blog entries. Normally web links are one way, i.e. one web page links to another, but for a link to go the other way the owner of the linked to page must create a link. Some blogging systems (if desired by both parties) allow such two way linking to be made automatic. This means that when one blog cites (links to another) a link called a 'trackback' is automatically added to that blog entry that links back to the citing entry.

Syndication and Aggregation

The simplicity and instant nature of blogging are major aspects of why Blogging has become so popular. However an equally critical aspect of blogging is the ability to automatically aggregate and syndicate blog content.

Most blogging systems allow blog content to be produced in a standard machine readable format called RSS (Rich/RDF Site Summary) in addition to the main blog Web page. RSS is widely used within the news industry for sharing and publishing categorized summary news feeds [3], to alert news agencies and customers of timely relevant news items.

Users can thus set up personal aggregators using various [often freeware] software [e.g. http://disobey.com/amphetadesk/] and choose which blogs/news feeds to collate. The aggregator then continuously monitors the RSS feeds from those blogs - producing a personalized news feed. These systems are very widely used by people in many academic areas.

A specific example of how this works in an academic/technical development area is that Dave Beckett (at ILRT) has set up (with others) a community blog that draws content from multiple individual blogs http://planetrdf.com/ related to the topic of RDF. This is drawn from blogs of many active members of the RDF development community.

At the Symposium

As an integral part of the symposium we have created a simple blog system based on MovableType (see software below).All delegates will be given an individual username and password so that they can contribute blog entries to the symposium Blog. Passwords will be the same as those for logging onto the symposium wireless network.

The Community Blog will be available at: http://blog.ilrt.org/colston/

The blogging entry page is at: http://blog.ilrt.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi

Figures 2 to 7 shows the sequence required to create a basic blog entry. Note that MovableType allows entries to be categorized. We have created a number of categories for the symposium e.g. each keynote and paired session has a separate category. Please choose at least one appropriate category when making a blog entry. This means that it is easy for visitors to the Blog to locate and view entries on the same part or aspect of the symposium.

Figure 1 - Go to http://blog.ilrt.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi - enter your user name and password

Figure 2 - click "New Entry"

Figure 3 - Enter a title and the text of your entry in the main box. You can use the icons above this box to format the content. To do this select the text and click the relevant icon.

Figure 4 - Choose an appropiate catagory from the 'Primary Category' drop down box.

Figure 5 - Click preview to review the entry before you publish it. If it is ok click 'Save This Entry'. The entry is then posted. If you wish to make changes click 'Re-edit This Entry'.

Figure 6 - Click on 'View Site', a new window will open which will show the main blog page with your new entry, (Figure 7)

Figure 7 - New entry shown on the web site

When making an entry PLEASE BE AWARE that the blog is publicly available and will remain available following the event. Whilst only conference delegates (or others given specific permission) can make blog entries anyone viewing the blog will be able to make comments.

You can edit entries once you have made them by clicking on the 'Edit Entries' button (see Figure 6). If you are used to using MovableType or wish to explore the more advanced options. Click the 'Customize the display of this page' link on the bottom right hand side of the blog entry page (see figure 3). These options allow you to customise the blog entry form to include other types of information e.g. key words and options.

Blogging Etiquette

Etiquette when blogging is similar to that of any other type of community based Web discussion system (see http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html) e.g. be courteous, don't SHOUT, etc. however there are a few points that may are useful to bear in mind when posting.

Blogs are dissimilar to more real time messaging systems - generally blogs belong to one person or a small group. Entries are therefore generally self contained and discussion about their content takes place in the comments about that entry rather than as a different entry. However obviously if a significant point is made a new entry may be appropriate, however a link to the previous blog entry should always be made.

Keep entries relatively succinct. Blogs tend to work best (esp. in community contexts) when visitors/participants can scan entries relatively quickly.

It is a good idea to raise or highlight your main point in the first few sentences as these are used in the summaries that visitors will see when they are searching for relevant entries.

Software

There are literally hundreds of blogging related pieces of software and online services, below are listed a few of the major and widely used systems. There are many online reviews and comparison sites - one good place to start is: The Microcontent News Blogging Software Roundup, by John Hiler - http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/blogware.htm

Personal Software Systems

Blogging program is stored on the users (bloggers) computer

• Radio Userland (http://radio.userland.com/)

Hosted Services

• Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/)
• TypePad (http://www.typepad.com/)

Server Based Systems

Requires users to have access to their own server, generally running specific scripting or program languages such as PERL or JAVA

• MovableType (http://www.movabletype.org/)
• Graymatter (http://www.noahgrey.com/greysoft/)

Aggregators

• Amphetadesk: http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/
• Radio Userland - includes news aggregator (http://radio.userland.com/)
• See also http://www.ourpla.net/cgi-bin/pikie.cgi?RssReaders for a more complete list

Finding Out More About Blogging

Blood, Rebecca (2000) Weblogs: a history and perspective, from her Blog, Rebecca’s Pocket, 7 September 2000. Available, http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

There are a few good books about Blogging for example see Amazon for examples.

There are many blogging awards for example the Guardian's British blog awards http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1108883,00.html

References

[1] Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/about.pyra)

[2] Lyman, Peter and Hal R. Varian, "How Much Information", 2003. Retrieved from http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info-2003

[3] See for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,781838,00.html