Practically deploying blogging part 1

So I have the reasons why blogging should be put into the college for next year, but how am I going to do it? Well here's a few issues and thoughts buzzing around my head at the moment.

First up, how is blojsom going to cope with 1100 students and staff using it?
I know it scales but how far does it scale really? I mean blojsom like most blogging systems seem to be made for single people or groups of trusted people.
What were basicly building is something like moveable type or blogger, the system in which blojsom will exist as such. Here are a few ideas for the system…

1. The simple way = the way i can see it working for now.

We use blojsom on one server under one servlet only. There will be no xmlrpc access, people can only blog by putting the entry files in a certain directory. That directory will be mapped on to there desktops or user area. We will use standard file system authentication to stop people changing other peoples files, etc.
They are welcome to use any kind of text editing tool they like, but we will deploy and have training on one we rate highly. More than likely this tool will support xhtml and be multiplatform for osx and nt support.

2. The email drop

Basicly the same as above but we add email to blog feature for those's who want to blog offsite. I have not yet tried this feature out, but it could be the same authentication problem as xmlrpc, where the person blogging can blog to any part of the system. Which is not what we want.

3. The xmlrpc way = the way were doing it at the moment

This way we use one server and blojsom but allow blogging over xmlrpc only. We deploy a blogging app on peoples desktops and direct people to use that to blog. Now this runs into the major headache of xmlrpc authentication.
First up how do you maintain the list of authenticated users?
And how do you stop people from publishing to areas where they shouldnt?

4. The xmlrpc way 2 = I think the best way at the moment

This is the same as above but we deploy a staff blojsom and a 2nd servelet running the student one. That way students can fight it out and the like but not interfere with the critical newsletter system.

5. The multiple servlets

We deploy multiple servlets and allow different departments or areas of studies to take care of one. But its pretty much the same as the above solution and has the same problems too.

6. The webdavvy

This is based around version 1, but allows offsite access by the webdav protocal. Each persons weblog folder will also be a webdav folder.
Nice idea but it adds another layer of confusion to the system, but this would also allow the uploading of images, audio and video.

So the issues are,
We need to check against our ldap server to make sure the person writing the weblog is writing to the correct folders. And what kinda of configuration are we going to deploy for blojsom?
On top of all this we have to decide on the input for users. We have the oppotunity to deploy a application on the desktops and that also requires great consideration, which I wont go into now…

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Books delivered to your news aggregator

Dave dropped me a email today pointing me at Amazon RSS.

Another Amazon Web Services experiment. The idea is this: say you're interested in books about weblogs. Wouldn't it be nice to have an RSS feed for all weblog-related books at Amazon, so that when new books became available you'd know about them? Thanks to the magic of web pipelines (Amazon >> XML over HTTP >> XSLT >> ASP >> RSS >> Your News Aggregator), it's become a pretty trivial thing to put together.

Yep this a fantastic use of standard technology, all i need to do now is swap the ASP for XSP…

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HP demos BlojsomIT!

HP have just realeased a demo of there blogging app, blojsomIT!. At the moment it does a small amount of things but the next step SemBlogIT! looks to be really powerful and clever app which could come in useful later.

I have set it up for testing here. Obviously you need a user name and password to use it unfortually. But you can try out HP's own here.

I hope to add some serious feedback once I try it out over time.

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Syncing my 3g phone

Ok i'm little pee'd off with my 3g phone at the moment. I have quickly realised that the Nec e606 has bluetooth and not my e808. So I have to sync everything over a pain in the arse usb cable.

And that would be great if it actually worked. But at this moment it doesnt. It moans that the phone is locked and I will not beable to transfer anything. So even after looking through the pdf which are the cd, and following the procedure to the exact letter, it still does not work.

Has anyone had this problem before? It doesnt look like it, but its a new phone and 3g is only in a few countrys at the moment. So I could be waiting ages for help.

What also drives me nuts is that there are very few specs on the phone its self, is the browser a wap, xhtml, chtml browser? I have no idea, all i know is that I cant seem to connect to any other websites or wap sites. Maybe its a walled garden, but why would they provide a enter url option?

I have no idea, all I know is I cant install any j2me files at this moment.

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Testing the textism plugin

Dont mind me, I'm just testing textism and html input in Blojsom using Chronicle lite.

h2. This is a title

h3. This is a subhead

This is some text of dubious character. Isn't the use of “quotes” just lazy writing — and theft of 'intellectual property' besides? I think the time has come to see a block quote.

bq. This is a block quote. I'll admit it's not the most exciting block quote ever devised.

Well, that went well. How about we insert an old-fashioned hypertext link? Will the quote marks in the tags get messed up? No!

“This is a link (optional title)”:http://www.textism.com

An image:

!/common/textist.gif(optional alt text)!

# Librarians rule
# Yes they do
# But you knew that

Some more text of dubious character. Here is a noisome string of CAPITAL letters. Here is something we want to _emphasize_.
That was a linebreak. And something to indicate *strength*. Of course I could use my own HTML tags if I felt like it.

h3. Coding

This is some code, "isn't it". Watch those quote marks! Now for some preformatted text:


	$text = str_replace("
%::%
","",$text);
	$text = str_replace("%::%
","",$text);
	$text = str_replace("%::%","",$text);

This isn't code.

So you see, my friends:

* The time is now
* The time is not later
* The time is not yesterday
* We must act

Ah it does work and only requires a small amount configuring. Great stuff…

http://blojsom.sourceforge.net/plugins-textile.html

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3g in the palm of my hand

So finally I got my 3g mobile phone yesterday. Its from three and I picked the NEC e808 which has 2 full motion cameras, 64meg and a full qwerty keyboard. Hence why its quite big, everyone yesterday said Its too big, its far too big. But come on guys its got a full keyboard and its the first set of 3g phones, what do you expect? More information to come, specially if i can get mobblogging working with it.

By the way this was posted via Chronicle Lite, a java application which works on all platforms which blogs via xmlrpc perfectly. Now if I only get textism working inside of it.

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AMD 64

AMD Ready To Rock MML2 With Athlon 64!
Mobile & Desktop Version Of Athlon 64 For All To See
Perhaps the most anticipated announcement at MML2 is AMD's intention to show publicly, for the first time, the Athlon64 desktop and notebook systems. Through what can only be described as a Herculean effort by both Philip Stein and David Makin from AMD, MML2 attendees are going to get the chance at 10PM EST this evening to see the new Athlon64 desktop and notebook systems in action.

YES you read it correctly, Desktop and Notebook with 64bit processors!
Will AMD beat apple to the first 64bit laptop?
If AMD get this right, we could be talking some serious damage in the apple and intel camps…

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Digital Shoplifting

Japan's Digital Shoplifting Plague – Fantastic use of camera phones, I love it!

It's becoming increasingly clear that we live in a world where the majority of people simply don't understand “digital”. Over in Japan, the Japanese Magazine Publishers Association is on the warpath trying to stop browsers in bookstores from taking camera-phone photos of their magazines, calling it “digital shoplifting”.
As an example, they say that a woman may flip through a magazine and see a new dress or hairstyle, and snap a photo to send to their friends to ask what they think. The magazine publishers are angry that this is (they believe) taking money out of their pockets. Of course, that assumes (probably incorrectly) that the person would have bought the magazine in the first place or that they wouldn't then go and buy the magazine anyway.
Meanwhile, bookshop employees say they'll have trouble stopping this activity, since they can't tell whether someone is just sending a text message or if they're using the camera phone.

Based on this idea, shouldn't we be forced to claw our own eyes out? Or, at the very least, have all magazines and books wrapped in black shrink wrap to prevent someone from (gasp!) actually seeing any part of it before buying. Perhaps it really is time for someone to invent the DRM helmet and make sure that anytime you see anything, you get charged for it.

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The case for educational blogging part 2

Been thinking hard about blogging for students again.

How am I going to put all this into action?

I think I need to write a paper and presentation, as that is only thing managers and course leaders seem to understand.
What i should do is use main parts of other peoples presentations as the base of mine. I've been looking at the blogtalk 2003 presentations and theres a lot in them i can use to explain the basics and advanced concepts of blogging. Then I can use my personal experience with the last project i ran to put the killer blows in? Hummm maybe i should start writing the paper now rather than talking about it…

the draft outline i've drawn up so far in outline (opml format) and
html for those without a outline viewer

Interesting maybe i should sign up

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