Entries from March 2007 ↓

PLCMC Learning 2.0

Originally developed for librarians, but if it lives up to the “an online self-discovery program that encourages the exploration of web 2.0 tools and new technologies,” then it’s for you, too.

If you don’t understand current Internet culture, read Rise of the Participation Culture

Heck, read it anyway.

Based on hype, my extreme boredom at work today, and finding out who is actually on Twitter, I jumped on the wagon. We’ll see how it goes.

You’d have to be living under the Interock for the past two weeks not to know what Twitter is.

Discussion of the application of Twitter to news and newspapers, for networking, GTD (Getting Things Done, etc. has been widespread and creative. I’ve seen a lot of news media people jump on the Twitter wagon.

However, I’m not sure how Twitter could be useful to me. I’m on AIM or have my cellphone with me at all times. I don’t really care if you’re having lunch with so-and-so, watching tv, or grading papers. If I want to see someone, I call or e-mail or IM and ask to do so. Twitter seems to me to take the Facebook stalking phenomenon to a whole new level.

Will I remember to update it? Will my nemesis follow my every move and attack when I’m vulnerable? Will not using Twitter make me look like an old fogie?

What do you guys think about Twitter?

A few months ago, I filled out paperwork to verify my status as a double major in Journalism and Linguistics. Now it’s that time again - I have to register for Summer and Fall classes. After looking over the course offerings and doing some soul-searching, I’ve decided to drop the Linguistics major down to a minor.

I would love to have the major, but the required classes for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences that I have yet to take are not worth it.

This way I can take more interesting classes in the College of Journalism, grab an internship, and relax a little.

It looks like the Gainesville Sun has finally fixed their RSS feed. Yay! No more Dear Abby, Horoscopes, letters to the editor and AP wires.

A while ago I wrote about a number of online political projects, including the Sunlight Foundation’s Congressional Web Site Investigation.

Today I got an e-mail from Bill Allison:

…we investigated 536 congressional Web sites–supported by taxpayer dollars–and found that a staggering 499 members have sites that do not offer basic information about their official duties in Washington.

Members didn’t bother to mention the names of the committees on which they serve, or link to the bills they introduce into Congress, or, in a few cases, even an email address to write them. Not a single member offers or links to the disclosure forms they’re legally required to file on their income, junkets and office expenditures. And just a handful offer information on their daily schedules or the earmarks they sponsor.

Included was information on their next project, Congresspedia.

Now, we want to add the results of the investigation to each member’s “permanent record” - their Congresspedia profile. Below is a link that will take you to the complete results of the survey for each member of Congress you investigated. We’ve set up an easy-to-use, semi-automated process by which you can add the results for Congresspedia’s tens of thousands of daily readers to see when they look up their member of Congress. Hopefully this will help educate citizens about how transparent their members are and serve as a powerful incentive for members to improve their transparency for the next time we conduct this investigation.

I think this is a great way to provide interested citizens with information about their representatives in government. You can see the results from the surveys here or head on over to Congresspedia for more information.

Will CAR (Computer Assisted Reporting) also stand for Citizen Assisted Reporting? Or will we just stick to calling it citizen journalism?

The four positioning properties in CSS are confusing at first. Yet another tutorial I wish I’d seen six months ago.

I learned CSS last semester. It was rushed, covering simple HTML (which I already knew) and moving into CSS at a blinding speed. It took me quite a while to figure out how CSS works.

Today I saw this article, which would have made the learning process much faster and less painful. The writer assumes some basic knowledge of CSS, but outlines very well the process of creating a layout and using divs. He does use one IE hack, but the article assumes the use of IE 5, which had more problems with CSS and is not very widely used anymore.

He also uses a very cool technique for navigation.