ArborBlogs

Arborblogs has moved!

2004-05-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

If you are a arborblogs writer and would like to get instructions about how to post on the new system, email "george at hotelling.net."

Coolest of Ypsi Winners Announced

2004-03-18T08:47:00.000-05:00

Seat of the Revolution's Coolest of Ypsilanti 2003 contest is over and the winners have been announced. Some of the highlights include Coolest Thing About Ypsi, Coolest Building, Honorary Ypsilantian (none other than the anonymous ann arbor is overrated) and Ypsilantian of the Year (ArborBlogger and all-around-Ypsi-booster Leighton Mann). Congratulations to all the winners!

Blog / LiveJournal Survey

2004-03-17T14:52:00.000-05:00

LiveJournal user mooninabox is conducting survey of bloggers and LiveJournal users for her class at Eastern. You can either respond with a comment to her entry or email her at piscobandito (at) hotmail.com. Hopefully she'll post her work when she's done with it for all of us to see.

UofM now has a "Blogging Craze"...

2004-03-16T08:40:00.000-05:00

... at least according to the Michigan Daily. They posted Profs join students in blogging craze (via aaio) to discuss blogging at the Uni. Professor Juan Cole's Informed Comment is highlighted, although for some reason not linked to and the address isn't given.

Cole himself started his blog in spring of 2002. He studies modern Islamic movements and speaks Arabic, Persian and Urdu. On his blog, Cole discusses areas of his academic specialization — the Middle East, history and religion.

“I feel a responsibility to try to speak to the public about unfolding events from the perspective of my own expertise and life experience,” Cole said. “I think they are wonderful in breaking down the barriers between academics, journalists and readers.” Cole’s efforts won him a Koufax Award for “Best Expert Blog” last year.

The article also fails to explain why or even mention that Urban Planning and School of Information students have such high percentages of bloggers.

ArborBlog Feeds

2004-03-15T08:43:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention this here, but you can now watch updates from ArborBloggers on this site. It's like Localfeeds, except it doesn't need GeoURLs and it's working right now. If your blog isn't listed and you want it to be, either add a comment here or get in touch with me.

Why You Should Use Upcoming.org

2004-03-11T16:48:00.000-05:00

If you haven't already checked it out, Upcoming.org is a community-edited events listing organized by metropolitan region. The service works something like friendster - you can affiliate yourself with "friends" and then view a listing of just their events. There are already a good number of Ann Arbor area users, but I like the service because it helps spread word about interesting events and theoretically could host online discussions about them as well.

More to the point, if you have a blog, you should use Upcoming.org to run your events calendar. The way it works is like this: I put the events I would normally manually put in my "events" listing on Upcoming.org. I then use Feedroll.com to create a little Javascript to drop into my site's code, which automatically converts my Upcoming events into a little list on the side of my blog. Once you have it set up, adding an event to your calendar couldn't be simpler: just enter it on upcoming.org. Feedroll allows you to list only a certain number of events, so you can enter lots of events far in the future, and they'll magically appear on your site when the date gets closer.

Unlike blogrolling, the service hasn't seemed to slow down the loading of my site very much at all. I think that if a lot of Ann Arbor area bloggers set up Upcoming accounts and use them to add events to their blogs, more people would hear about more events they'd like to attend. Also, if you're going to enter events somewhere on the web anyway, why not do it in a way that allows interested friends to hear about, discuss, and promote on their blogs these events. (How many times did you hear about something cool only after it happened!) If anyone needs help setting up anything, feel free to contact me.

Be the media!

LiveJournal Bloggers

2004-03-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

I just did a search on LiveJournal for users in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti who have updated in the past month. The searches are limited to 1000 results and ordered by last update time. Ann Arbor turned up the maximum 1000 people and Ypsi has 335. Not only that, but user #1000 on the Ann Arbor results updated 3 weeks ago. That means that there are over 1300 active ArborBloggers just in LiveJournal. Wow.

Does Blogger have a search-by-location feature?

Beyond the fields we know.

2004-03-09T00:53:00.000-05:00

I observe with some pride that we've assembled a directory of Arborbloggers, a collaborative events calendar, and a decrepit dustbowl wiki, from the most humble of beginnings etc.

I wanted to take a post to ask -- what else? What could we do that would (a) be cool and (b) we're not doing? What's good or terrible about this site? What's missing? Just describe what you'd like to see and maybe some damn fool will nibble and try to make it happen.

Collaborative Calendar

2004-03-08T23:54:00.000-05:00

We now have a collaborative calendar for all our events. It pulls events from Upcoming nightly, so if you want to add something just post it there and it will appear on our calendar the next day. If you aren't a member of Upcoming, let us know when you sign up so we can add you to the list.

Unless you care about how it works technically, you can stop reading now. I wrote a script to convert Upcoming RSS feeds to iCalendar while Andy at Upcoming works on building that into the site. ArborBlogger's RSS feeds get converted nightly, and then php iCalendar aggregates and displays all the iCal files. You can watch for new events at this RSS feed.

Toledo Bloggers

2004-03-07T23:41:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's right, Toledo Bloggers!

Cool Cities Meeting

2004-03-07T22:46:00.000-05:00

All interested Ann Arbor area residents are invited to attend a town hall meeting organized by the city task force I am a member of:

"* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Art ... Housing ... Culture ... Small Business ... Justice ... Zoning ... Studio Space ... Integration ... Urban Planning ... the Environment ... Music ... Tolerance ... Noise Ordinance ... Creativity ... Affordability ... Sprawl ... Density

WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE AROUND HERE?

Ann Arbor's "Cool Cities" Task Force want to hear from you!

Join the Ann Arbor Cool Cities Task Force for a Town Hall Happy Hour

When?
6-8pm, Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Where?
Arbor Brewing Co.
114 E. Washington

Ann Arbor's Cool Cities task force is preparing a report to submit to city hall on what can be done to improve life in our city - please come to contribute your ideas!

For more info visit:
http://www.michigancoolcities.com/
http://astrogibs.com/coolcities/

Questions? Coolcities at umich.edu

"The Creative Centers are not thriving for such traditional economic reasons as access to natural resources or transportation routes. Nor are they thriving because their local governments have given away the store through tax breaks and other incentives to lure business. They are succeeding largely because creative people want to live there. The companies then follow the people - in, in many cases, are started by them. Creative centers provide the integrated eco-system or habitat where all forms of creativity - artistic and cultural, technological and economic - can take root and flourish." - Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, p. 218

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *"

Bloggers Wed!

2004-03-03T09:35:00.000-05:00

Ypsi celebribloggers Steve and Hillary Cherry (née Bough) got married yesterday. They blogged their wedding as a matter of course; be sure to read Steve's and Hillary's accounts. I think that I speak for the entire ArborBlogging community when I say congratulations and wish them a happy future.

Upcoming.org Roll Call

2004-02-29T20:27:00.000-05:00

As part of the ArborBlogs calendaring ninja strike team initiative, I'm assembling a list of ArborBloggers with accounts on Upcoming.org. If your username isn't in this list (or is and shouldn't be) please leave a comment on this message with your username and I'll go ahead and fix the problem.

The list: aaio, actionchrist, Allen, anarchivist, bkerr, brandonz, britain, BrokenLyre, Btrfly9IRL, c0nsumer, Davidissimo, deusx, EdgeWise, emv, jessicabreck, leighton, mhollerb, nakednerd, nerdtech, otterpop, revgeorge, robg3, roboranch, snotrocket_phd, tomo

After the quake.

2004-02-25T11:48:00.000-05:00

George has started to do some work that will result in our being able to put a page on this website that shows all of events at Upcoming.org 'belonging' to ArborBloggers. Yep, an ArborBlogs event calendar -- sounds kind of cool to me.

If you're interested, there are a few things you can do.

First of all, if you already use Upcoming.org and want to be included, check your Friends listing. 'ArborBlogs Community Calendar' should show as one of your friends already -- George and I added all of the Upcoming.org-using ArborBloggers we knew of. If you're not included and want to be, post a comment here. Alternately, George could perhaps share the user/password for the ArborBlogs Upcoming.org user and let folks change it themselves.

If you're not using Upcoming.org, now might be a good time to consider it. I think it's been a reasonably successful venture for some who've tried it, and the more the merrier.

Blog Geography

2004-02-21T12:59:00.000-05:00

I lifted this list from the D.C. Bloggers website:

Austin, Texas
Boston, Mass.
Chicago, Ill.
Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
Kansas City, Mo.
London, England
Los Angeles, Calif.
Madison, Wis.
New York City
Phoenix, Ariz.
St. Louis, Mo.
San Diego, Calif.
Seattle, Wash.

I like something the folks in Madison did: commenting on each blog! I'd add a couple more:

MI Blogs
MLive.com's Weblogs section

And the city near my hometown is trying. We're a little behind the times in Maine, what can I say?

Portland, Maine

Shamless Plugging

2004-02-18T15:01:00.000-05:00

I feel a little dirty doing this, but I have two new projects that ArborBloggers may be interested in.

The first is the LinkText Project, which aims to come up with structure for what words should and shouldn't be linked in HyperText. The goal is to come up with a (Creative Commons licensed) style guide. There's a Wiki for people to post their own rules, and just to get the general discussion going.

The second project is TidyText, a Moveable Type plugin. It will fix bad XHTML and HTML in Moveable Type posts so that you know lone posts won't screw up your validation or the rest of your site's layout. If you use Moveable Type and care about web standards, try it out.

del.icio.us

2004-02-15T13:31:00.000-05:00

del.icio.us is a social bookmark manager on steroids. There are only two things you can really do with it, but that simplicity belies its power. The first thing is to post links. It provides a bookmarklet for adding links to the site, with a title, one line description and free-form one word categories. The links then get added to your del.icio.us page. Look at my del.icio.us page for an example.

The second thing it lets you do is subscribe to other people's feeds. I have a few people subscribed to and their links show up in my inbox. I can even watch my inbox with an RSS reader, so I can keep track of the interesting links my friends are saving.

The neat thing is that it can provide a platform for quick 1-line links on your own blog. I was using it to generate a daily linkdump (example) of interesting links I'd come across. I found that I was using del.icio.us so much that it was better for me to move my linkdump to a sidebar on my blog. I used Magpie RSS to read the RSS feed from del.icio.us, but if you don't have PHP access you could just as easily use Feedroll.

So if you want a way to record all those interesting links you come across in a day, check out del.icio.us, and let me know so I can subscribe to your feed.

[Update: You can see links that have been tagged as local by visiting http://del.icio.us/tag/annarbor]

Hosting

2004-02-11T13:21:00.000-05:00

If any of you LiveJournal or Blogger people would prefer a MovableType system, I'm looking to host more people on astrogibs.com (for free). Go to that URL and use the email link to ask. You can run PHP and Perl scripts, and I'll give you a MySQL database if you want it. The domain tends to have a left-leaning / vegan / anti-war crowd, but I'm certainly willing to host most anyone.

I have a couple of hosted weblogs already, but they aren't active. I would like to see more activity on the domain.

Syndication

2004-02-03T09:16:00.000-05:00

Blogger is supporting Atom, and if you run a Blogger site, you should too. It's incredibly easy to set up, and allows people track your site for updates. It's sort of like TiVo, it's hard to explain how useful it is without living with it for a little while. If anyone's confused about how RSS and Atom syndication are important to weblogs, I'd be happy to set up a meatspace presentation somewhere.

Domain Name

2004-01-26T11:48:00.000-05:00

We're going to move ArborBlogs over to its own domain name, http://www.arborblogs.com/. Be sure to watch that space for updates. Also, we'll be publishing an Atom feed at http://www.arborblogs.com/atom.xml. Atom is a competitor to RSS that allows people to watch for updates. If your newsreader supports it, that will probably be the best source of updates for this site.

Upcoming.org

2004-01-23T21:55:00.000-05:00

An interesting calendar website I'm planning on joining.

ArborBlogs Meeting -- Reminder.

2004-01-21T00:20:00.000-05:00

WTF: ArborBlogs Meeting.
When: 7PM, this Friday.
Where: Cafe Ambrosia.
Why: Tentative agenda.

If this sounds cool, try to stop in. Details in the original post.

Food for Thought

2004-01-17T03:32:00.000-05:00

"Many Creative Class people I've studied also express a desire to be involved in their communities. This is not so much the result of a "do-good" mentality, but reflects their desire to both actively establish their own identiy in places, and also to contribute to actively building places that reflect and validate that idenity. In Pittsburgh, for instance, a group of young people in creative fields, rangign from architecture and urban design to graphics and high-tech, has formed a loose association they dubbed "Ground Zero" ... While the initial impetus for the group was to combat a redevelopment plan that would have replaced an authentic downtown shopping district with a generic urban mall, they quickly began to focus their efforts on shaping the creative climate and idenity of the city. Their initial "manifesto" speaks so directly to the nexus of creativity, place and identity that it is worth reproducing here in full.

Creative Friends,
Now is the time for us to come together to Speak Up and Act Up.

We the people who make things, who make the culture of this city, need to connect and engage. We want you to come and join us. We all hear about how to make Pittsburgh a better place to ba a consumer or a sports fan or an entrepreneur. We hear about strategies to such in the young suburban consumers so they can park their cars, shop and leave.

This isn't us. We are already here. We are actively creating, whether it be food, stories, photographs, music, video games, paintings, buildings, performance or communities. We are making the culture of this city. We already know what makes Pittsburgh unique, interesting and attractive to people of all ages. We want to work to preserve its authenticity as a place, to make it more authentic.

We want to capitalize on what is already here, not destroy, demolish or suppress it. We want City policy that encourages culture to grow from within instead of promoting removal and replacement. We will then work proactively through ALL forms of media to make our voice heard. To make our city better.

We want to provoke awareness, discussion, argument, debate, and maybe even local pride thorugh what we will accomplish. And we want the voice of young creators to be heard lound and clear by those who make public policy."

(From p. 230-231 of Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class)

2004-01-15T15:32:00.000-05:00

our commenting system is involved in a hostile takeover or rather the system couldn't deal with it all, so it was moved over to haloscan, but the comments are supposed to be intact... not seeing it, suppose it doesn't really matter.

ArborBlogs Meeting -- Time & Place.

2004-01-14T17:09:00.000-05:00

Seven intrepid human beings responded to last week's call for meeting times. The tentative plan is to meet at 7PM on Friday the 23rd at Cafe Ambrosia (on Maynard between Liberty and William). Location chosen for its good/cheap beverages and relative centrality. If a lot of people show up, we'll joyfully cram 'em in.

Now... what should be on the agenda?

As always, e-mail or blog your ideas if you don't like Wiki. Or, if somebody 'in the know' would be so good as to repair the comments, we could discuss agenda items there too.

Comments?

2004-01-13T00:42:00.000-05:00

Does anybody know where they went?

Let's have an ArborBlogs Meeting.

2004-01-07T13:03:00.000-05:00

At the December Weblogger Meetup, we had a significant conversation about ArborBlogs and what might happen next. We also learned that the Weblogger Meetup time was inconvenient for several of the folks present.

I'd like to try to organize an ArborBlogs Meeting, time, date, and agenda TBD by any and all interested. I'll simplify things a bit: I propose that we try to meet during the week of January 18 through 24 (the week of the next Weblogger Meetup). Once we know how many will attend and when, we can pick an appropriate space on or close to U of M central campus.

If you would like to come to the meeting: please contact me with which times, at 7 or 9PM, on January 18 through 24 inclusive, you're willing and able to meet. I will collate responses and try to find a time that works for everybody or the greatest majority of whoever responds. You can give me your meeting times by e-mail or AIM, by leaving them in the comments thread for this post, or by entering them into the Wiki.

If you would like to help set the agenda: there's an empty Wiki page for a meeting agenda. Wiki spooky? You can also post ideas to this weblog via new posts or comments, or e-mail them to somebody who wouldn't mind posting them here or on the Wiki.

Iraq Blog Count

2003-12-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

Iraqi Webloggers

Just thought I would point this out, it seems to be one person doing a ArborBlogs type thing.

Hippie Hash

2003-12-22T02:34:00.000-05:00

Nothing says it more: Welcome to Ann Arbor Michigan, USA

Atlanta Blogs

2003-12-21T23:13:00.000-05:00

via The Dread Pirate King
Nice looking, but seems really complicated.

randomWalks headlines:

2003-12-21T15:11:00.000-05:00

randomWalks headlines:: "The University of Illinois is in its 77th year of celebrating a racist Indian mascot, and the great-great-granddaughter of Sitting Bull, a junior there, doesn't like it."

Blog Meetup tomorrow night @ Leopold Bros.

2003-12-16T14:10:00.000-05:00

The next weblogger meetup is tomorrow, Wednesday the 17th, at 7PM. We're meeting at Leopolds' on Main Street. If you're reading this, you might be interested in stopping by -- should be a fun time.

Bloglines

2003-12-16T04:13:00.000-05:00

Web based rss reader...basically, ArborBlogs community headline news.

Fresh blood in the Weblog Directory

2003-12-11T22:22:00.000-05:00

The following folks have e-mailed asking to be added to the Weblog Directory. I think there have been other additions over the past day or two, as well; these are the ones I know about.

Brocco Li
Devon's LJ
disjointed.org
plattitudes.com

Bloglines | arborblogs's Blogs

2003-12-11T14:48:00.000-05:00

Is there a way to get these to be aggregated? Bloglines

ArborBlogs RSS feed collection.

2003-12-11T08:23:00.000-05:00

I've started to maintain a directory of RSS feeds culled from sites in the Weblog Directory to your left. If this sounds interesting, you may want to view the feed listing and read this page about the listing. The page contains (1) some background information on the RSS feed listing; (2) steps for making changes to the listing; and (3) a link to export all those RSS feeds into your aggregator / software tool of choice.

This collection is distinct from any LocalFeeds view because it does not rely on GeoURL or other metadata. Since it's hand-rolled, we can do other interesting things with it in the near future (like organize blogs by Ann Arbor Neighborhood -- a way to start collecting the data req'd to make Rob's Blog Maps concept a reality). The only requirement is that a blog must have an RSS feed to be included; of the 56 weblogs listed to your left, only 29 offered feeds (that I could find) as of today.

Localfeeds

2003-12-11T01:37:00.000-05:00

Noted this new GeoURL based local blogging aggregator today: Localfeeds for Ann Arbor. To publish to it, you need to be able to put a META tag into the header of your blog, which they describe in fairly simple terms for you. I appear to have been successful in getting Typepad Pro to do the right thing, will see if that's really true.

Of course, it doesn't have a soul, and it doesn't know where to throw a party, but it's handy as an aggregator.

Blog Maps

2003-12-09T15:12:00.000-05:00

Anyone want to take an AATA route map and make it into a clickable blogmap, perhaps like this one for Washington, D.C., or NYC Bloggers? See this story in Slate about D.C.'s blogs.

Is IMC a blog?

2003-12-09T03:09:00.000-05:00

Michigan IMC

good - then it is added. I wished I could add it like I would in a wiki, then I realized I had access, duh.

New Blog

2003-12-09T03:00:00.000-05:00

Just added "Not Just Another Brick in the Wall" to the list. Also, I cleared something up: it's Arborblogs, not Arborbloggers.

Online Communities

2003-12-09T02:16:00.000-05:00

My friend SST send me this link to an interesting tool, although I think we're finding each other alright without it.

New layout (sorta).

2003-12-09T00:34:00.000-05:00

At Rob's behest I whacked at the template for this weblog a bit. It's not great, but it's better than it was before.

Notes: We agreed that the technology / weblog crap belonged at the bottom, so that's where it is. I decided to tidy up the text treatment a bit and move the Weblog Directory towards the top of the template to make it easier to change within Blogger. The new CSS passed my quickie browser checks. I'll try again tomorrow when I get to more/different hardware. If there's something you hate about this, please change it! If you don't know how and/or don't want to fuck with CSS, e-mail me and I'll hop on it. Bonus: I realized that I could change the colors on those blogspeak comments, so I did.

Even though this blogspot is only temporary, it's that much nicer if it looks, uh, that much nicer. :)

Group Blogs, Blog Communities

2003-12-08T04:10:00.000-05:00

Dave Winer links to a piece by Robert Scoble about why he doesn't like group blogs. via Just Looking: Luke Francl's Weblog

Del Rio Blog / Wiki Problems

2003-12-08T02:32:00.000-05:00

So I added the Del Rio Workers Union blog using Wiki, but it doesn't seem to be reflected on blogger - do one of the administrators need to copy and paste over the list into the blogger template, or is this supposed to happen automatically?

Geography

2003-12-08T00:10:00.000-05:00

Ok, what do we think about making this site Arbor-Ypsi bloggers? The public transit is integrated, and while the rich elite of both cities may resent each other, the rest us seem not to care.

Intra-postmetablogging.

2003-12-07T05:55:00.000-05:00

I wanted to call your attention to Murph's latest, Wiki ArborBlogging. Obviously the result of some real thought on this project, its potential, and issues surrounding.

Noting some other city blogging efforts

2003-12-06T23:43:00.000-05:00

Thanks Rob for organizing this.

There are a bunch of other cities that have blogger collectives doing things together. The one I'm most familiar with is the Austin Bloggers who use RSS to aggregate together a community blog. It requires a modest level of sophistication of blogging software at the center, but the rest is pretty much all standards based and should be straightforward.

Another useful tool is blogrolling.com which is a hosted list-of-blogs service that lets you manage same like a list of everyone in the Ann Arbor space without hand-tweaking a template. I've seen useful sites for that.

On a recent blog post Wiki as travel log I write about geographical metaphors for organizing online space. New Yorkers have organized their blogs on a map by subway stop, and Londoners by tube stop - is there any compelling geographical features of this town that map neatly? Voting wards, bus routes, neighborhoods per the Ann Arbor Observer "City Guide" etc.

Lots good to think about.

Meetup

2003-12-06T23:17:00.000-05:00

So now that things here seem to be getting organized (thanks for the comments, Mark!) The next Ann Arbor blogger meetup is December 17th, I've already signed up.

Hmmmpf

2003-12-06T13:39:00.000-05:00

Not working now. Any ideas? --- well at least open comments seem to be up now.

tweak

2003-12-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

Tweaked the author so that it doesn't truncate.

WikiWeblogGuest

2003-12-06T08:24:00.000-05:00

To post easily in this community weblog sign in as a WikiWeblogGuest at the FrontPage

Wiki Blogging

2003-12-05T14:16:00.000-05:00

Hello Folks, I think we are just in this navel gazing stage - to figure out what we want to do, not worried about us doing it! (yet :-)

I have advocated wiki for the last two years from a non techy, community building, point of view for the last two years. It has been a complete and misserable failure. The technology is simple, anyone can edit anything. The main things about wiki that I think are important are recent changes and versioning (to protect from vandals).

What I have recently worked on is some bastardization of wikis and weblogs. They Call Us Troublemakers is a weblog that is *organized* like a wiki. I think that it would be good if this weblog were the Front Page of our collective space. Using Rss feeds we hopefully can create a recent changes page for all involved weblogs/wikis.

I don't have the technical knowledge to do this stuff, as shown by the website above not being complete, but I think it can be done.

Content wise, because I am used to wiki, I tend to want to write across several weblogs/wikis and have trouble keeping my own space updated.

Content before form...

2003-12-05T12:49:00.000-05:00

Some input on figuring out what ArborBlogs should be, so that we can figure out how it should be, resulting from off-site conversation. Feel free to disagree.

First, ArborBlog(ger)s should not duplicate other things. In my experience, group blogs fail, because the only people interested in blogging want to blog on their own sites and not on the group blog. This site should also not duplicate sites like localfeeds, because those sites can probably do what they do better.

This points to things like human-created directories/categorizations of blogs and collections of "classic posts" or "about me" pages/posts; lists of ArborBloggers who are willing to help others start blogs, add comments or RSS feeds, migrate from Blogger/DiaryLand to Movable Type/bBlog, or otherwise improve their blogs (courtesy of Brian); or other such things that aren't done well by more general/automated existing tools.

Second, ArborBlog(ger)s should be as open a community effort as possible. I don't know yet who has posting access to this site (and I'm sure Rob will bestow upon anybody who asks) (wikiweblog edit: I think an Editors category to start off would be good, until we go wiki :-P MarkDilley), but getting involved in this site/the community should be made as easy as possible. It should not be something that only the experienced/elite do. Whatever the form is, those with too many technical skills and free time for their own good need to make sure that those without don't feel intimidated away from participating; tools need to be well-explained and easy to use, experts need to be approachable, and there need to be copious amounts of social activities so that everybody can meet and get to know each other. (Suggestions for tools to use for the ArborBlog(ger)s Social Calendar?) Check out SocialText's *Happening* - for geeks, but I think it would be good after a face to face F2F - Best, MarkDilley

Update to Blog Directory

2003-12-04T20:37:00.000-05:00

Hey folks, last post and then I'll shut up for a while.

I worked with the blogs directory to my left a little bit. To make it easier to determine whether a blog is already in the list or not, I alphabetized the list. I'll do so again if/when more blogs are added.

(maybe using the wiki will be eaiser for a task like this?)

Postmetablogging?

2003-12-04T18:57:00.000-05:00

It's a bit too self-referential, but that's part of the problem with trying to have this kind of discourse on a weblog. Maybe it'd be more fruitful to talk goals or ideas instead of technology. If we agree on some things to do, then it's going to simpler to pick the right technology to do it. So what are the objectives here?

I like the blog directory a lot. I think that ideally anybody, or at least several people, would be able to add to the directory. It needs some structure. Whether that means sites are just organized inside a canned, wholly inadequate directory ('News', 'Complaining About Ann Arbor', 'Technical', 'Political', 'Navel Lint') or are given some sort of metadata (with all the problems that entails and we let the data speak for itself, I am not sure.

What about blog-like, useful, but nonblog sites like this?

Maybe a bit more pointed --

What will, or could, differentiate ArborBloggers from a localfeeds view (assuming an ideal world in which everybody has good RSS feeds, etc.)?

Postmodern?

2003-12-04T18:31:00.000-05:00

Does anybody think this is getting a bit too self-referential? All good ideas, Murph, but I am worried about technology in the way - I am fairly tech literate and I don't know the first think about Wiki. Perhaps there is a homebrew solution?

The shape of ArborBloggers

2003-12-04T18:20:00.000-05:00

Brian, I think that blogging about the form of the metablog would either be metametablogging or postmetablogging or something even more ridiculous still.

Personally, I'd rather see a solution as far from blogger as possible--I've found commenting, rss, and other such features to be painful to use in blogger. I can't endorse my personal choice (bBlog), though, as it's single-user still, and I've never blogged on b2/movable type. However, I don't know whether a blog is even the kind of software we're looking for. You, Mark, and Rob have all mentioned the "W" word; I think that would be the most desirable form for this to take. After all, we all have blogs already, right? I would want this site to be more of a community created directory of local blogs, archives of favorite posts/threads within the community, and other things that are not, themselves, blogs. Which would suggest a less structured, more open format, like a wiki. But then we have to pick a flavor of wiki, which is even harder than picking a flavor of blog.

Since I'm going to agitate for our own domain name, I'll pledge one month worth of domain name + hosting costs. I'll also volunteer to keep track of pledges, unless somebody else wants to. I nominate Decafbad, Mark Dilley, and Ed Vielmetti to the Committee for Wiki Recommendations.

While we're talking technology:

2003-12-04T17:59:00.000-05:00

So if Murph calls this 'metablogging', so then is this a metablog metaentry?

What features should be here? Comments? Maybe, probably, sure. RSS feeds -- god yes, the more the better. Wiki? Sure, if we could get people to use it. (Would you?) The 'blogger directory' in the menu to my left could potentially be turned into a publicly editable blogroll or something of that nature.

I'm instinctively unwary of freebie solutions such as Blogspot, rssify, etc. I'd feel more comfortable with a more bulletproof, bird-in-the-hand solution. Maybe there's room to pass the hat and come up with the relatively small funds req'd to acquire a domain name and hosting, which would give us the ability to run Movable Type, b2, textpattern, or similar. Rob has another suggestion in his inbox that I'd rather he mulled over on his own.

What I don't want is for this project to be dragged down by shitcan blogging and content management / syndication tools. But maybe Blogger's fine and I am over-reaching (which is par for course, for me).

Thoughts? I don't know who else is able to post, so if you like, contact me or Rob (I assume he wouldn't mind) and we'll pass the info along.

Wiki blogging

2003-12-04T17:24:00.000-05:00

Hey Rob,

If you made me an administrator I could take a stab at putting comments and an rss feed up. Also I have thought about posting a public username and password for anyone to post. Do you think this is possible? Best, Mark

Imperfection

2003-12-04T16:07:00.000-05:00

The template is ugly, the listing on the right is basically random, and there are no comments. Things will improve. Know a missing site, or want to be in on the editing process? Rob (at) Goodspeedupdate.com. If I were smarter, this would be a Wiki site, or use some sort of miracle open source blog software that enables everyone to work together in techy bliss, but this is a start. I've always tried to be equal parts talk and action.

Welcome

2003-12-04T15:37:00.000-05:00

This blog is not really about Ann Arbor, and not really about blogs written by people who live in Ann Arbor. It is, however, about something I will define as the "Ann Arbor School," a loosely interconnected set of blogs, many of which are of, about, or by people who are in some way connected to Ann Arbor. Foucault may have called such a nebulous being a discourse. So, if you think you belong, I'll add you to the directory. If you'd like permission to post in this space, let me know, and you can, through blogger. Ann Arbor might have come late to the blog revolution, but perhaps we can harness the internet to inflict an intellectual culture on this pretentious city after all.