I have a fairly big writing project that is not going as quickly as I had hoped. It’s not a big deal, I’m making progress, it’s just the 6-11pm block of free time each day gets filled quickly with chores which doesn’t leave much time for big projects in my free time.

After getting excellent advice from a colleague from mpow, I’m taking a week of PTO to really push out content. Since I’m taking time off of work to do this, I’m also going to take some time off from my social networks… expect no blogging or IMing, very little facebooking and email, and though I’ll probably have twitter and brightkite running on a second screen, I’m not sure how present I’ll be.

Hopefully, by the end of the week, I will have measurable progress! Wish me luck!!

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Wow! It’s hard to believe the Comment Challenge is almost half-over! The past week has been insanely busy with our move downtown and three sets of friends arriving in Bangkok back-to-back. It’s been an absolute pleasure to host our guests (including the wonderful Susan Sedro and Chrissy Hellyer) in our lovely new apartment, but having so much going on means that I haven’t been as active in the Comment Challenge as I wanted to be. Thankfully, things are finally starting to return back to normal, so I’ll play a little “catch-up” here and then get back into the swing of things!

I’m taking Sue’s advice and posting my consolidated reflections from the first ten days here:

Day 1: Do a Commenting Self-Audit

My Committing to Conversations post fits nicely under this task, though I did like Michele’s question/idea about commenting on at least one new blog each week. When I comment, I tend to do so almost exclusively on the blogs in my reader, which means I’m more likely to comment on the same blogs each week, but I love the idea of making a concentrated effort to comment on one new blog each week. This will help me open up to more diverse conversations and certainly give me incentive to comment more frequently. I will definitely be adding that tidbit to my commenting habits in the future.

Generally speaking, when I do take the time to comment, I think I do a pretty good job, according to Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments. Honestly, I think it’s the pressure to make sure my comments are worthwhile that leads to my lack of commenting in the first place. Maybe I need to be more cavalier about the whole thing to begin with!

Day 2: Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented on Before

I’ve been enjoying leaving comments on new blogs for the duration of the challenge. I’ve been going up and down the list of participants and leaving comments on as many blogs as I can and it’s been amazing to see the learning that’s already taking place and to find new bloggers to add to my RSS reader. I am also thrilled to see all the video tours of this learning journey that other’s have taken the time to share - what a great way to document this adventure!

Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service

I like these easy ones! I’m signed up on coComment and co.mments.

Day 4: Ask a Question in a Blog Comment

I have to admit, I don’t have a problem asking a question in a blog comment, my problem is remembering to go back and see if there’s an answer. My favorite bloggers usually write an e-mail back with the answer from their perspective, but the real point of this challenge is to start open conversations with all commenters on a single post. Which means I need to make better use of my coComment account.

Day 5: Comment on a Blog Post You Don’t Agree With

Generally speaking, I would say I’m a gentle disagreer. Even though my comment may challenge the ideas in the post, I usually try to be as delicate as possible, often asking questions rather than stating an out-and-out “I disagree.” Maybe the purpose of this activity was to be a little more forthright, but I still used my slightly less aggressive way and ended up starting some good dialog. I think the more angry or opinionated you are, the more chance you have of closing off the conversation entirely - and that seems to be the exact opposite of what we’re trying to encourage here.

I must admit that I tend to read the blogs of like-minded people, which means I am much more likely to agree with a post than disagree. Usually if I find myself disagreeing, I’ll pose some questions as comments and see what develops. Of course, I’m just as likely to forget I posted those questions in the end anyway, so unless the blogger e-mails me back, the whole “conversation” bit is a lost cause with me. Clearly, I need to work on my comment tracking habits. Just because I use the coComment extension doesn’t mean I have a habit of going back to those comments I tracked.

Day 6: Engage another Commenter in Discussion

Thanks to Twitter for the @name evolution of replying to comments. I love being able to look down a long list of comments and trace the conversations back and forth. It’s especially interesting to see how readers can develop their own conversation on a blog post - even without the author’s facilitation, thanks to the clear @name response practice. For me, this means I need to be better at following up on comments to see if there are responses to something I said. Hmm… can you see a trend here?

Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned so Far

So, I’m about three days late on this one… better late than never, right? Either way, I think it’s pretty obvious that I need to actually utilize my coComment account for it’s intended purpose - tracking conversations. Clearly I’m all to likely to forget I’ve started a conversation, which pretty much invalidates the whole point of commenting in the first place.

I’ve started a new folder in my Google Reader for items I’m “tracking.” In there I have my coComment and co.mment RSS. Now I just need to develop a routine of checking every morning and responding to any responses that might have been posted. It’s all about routine for me.

Day 8: Comment on a blog outside of your niche

There are a few tech related blogs that I read on a regular basis, and although I very rarely comment, I am often amazed at the sometimes rude or angry tone that commenters take. I think there’s definitely a more welcoming, thoughtful, and supportive environment prevailing among edubloggers. Of course, that’s not to say that all edubloggers are supportive, there are certainly a few I can think of off the top of my head that seem to enjoy enraging the authors of the posts they read, but for the most part, we seem to be very careful to model good commenting practice, even in our personal blogging experience. It definitely makes me more likely to comment on educational blogs than some of the others I read.

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

I think this is a personal decision. Blogging helps me think, work through ideas, formalize my thoughts, and connect my learning. For me, commenting enhances all of those things, so there is no blogging without commenting for me. When I take the time to comment on other people’s blogs I deepen my learning, question my thinking, and open my mind to new ideas. When other people take the time to comment on my blog I learn something new, have a chance to refine my ideas and connect with other learners. Taking any of those pieces away in favor of only hearing the author’s voice in isolation just seems like a virtual soapbox to me.

There are lots of other places online to start conversations from Twitter to Ning, but there is something special about blogging. It feels more personal, like the author’s “home” on the web - this is the place where we can go to learn more about the many thoughts of the author - not just one specific thread on a forum. I enjoy “getting to know” a new blogger through their previous posts and responses to comments.

Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog

After reading Michele’s post entitled: 6 Reasons People Aren’t Commenting on Your Blog, I think I’m doing reasonably OK in welcoming comments on this blog. I think I have a tendency to write more posts with “finished” thoughts than “unfinished,” which most likely lessens the number of comments I could get, but I think that’s more an indicator of my personality than a conscious decision. I usually take a long time to process information and am hesitant to write anything down until I’m done, which in essence can appear to be more “finished” than I might actually be. It would be nice to write more open-ended/”unfinished” posts to encourage more dialog here, and that would be a real challenge for me!

What do you think? Am I a “welcoming” blogger? Or do I sound like I’m not interested in your ideas? I certainly hope my posts don’t sound like press releases! I’d love to hear your feedback about what I can do to make my blog a more welcoming place!

Tags: comment08, Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, The Comment Challenge, Michele Martin, commenting, comment, challenge, blog citizen,

• Intwition : What’s Being Linked To On Twitter
  Track links to your site that are sent via Twitter.
• mytvrss - air dates for your favorite TV shows
  Select your favorite shows below, and then click "Create feed" to generate your own personalized RSS feed. We’ll then alert you through the RSS feed the day an episode is aired.

More of my links

I really like using Twitter. In fact, I can think of a number of reasons people might benefit from the service. I have seen direct, positive impacts in my own life because I’m on it fairly regularly, and though I don’t think it’s the perfect service for everyone, it’s a pretty good one for me.

Enter Brightkite.

At this point it’s an invite only service, and after weeks of waiting I finally got an invite. I’ve been playing with it for a few days now. Brightkite is a lot like Twitter, but also lets you post photos and location information. As I love multimedia and I love the evolution of web=computer to web=everyday life, I love Brightkite.

So now I’m stuck trying to decide where to spend more time. I don’t have as many friends on Brightkite and there aren’t as many widgets for Brightkite as there are for Twitter. Part of what makes Twitter make sense through the workday is Twhirl, after all.

But Brightkite has some really interesting granular privacy settings, and lets you push content to Twitter, so I’ve been able to adjust my microblogging behavior. Here’s how I’ve set mine up, in case you want to push from Brightkite to Twitter:

First, set it up so your privacy is private:

Modify your account settings for privacy. Change to the red lock icon. This will allow you to customize what people can see. Then you can change information for checkins (about location) and posts (photos and “bites,” the short statements like tweets). I chose to keep my exact location hidden from everyone I don’t know, but make my post totally visible to everyone. I let friends (or contacts) see what city I’m in, and trusted friends (friends) see exactly where I am. I think at a conference I would change this so that friends and trusted friends would see exactly where I am in case we’re trying to meet up for coffee or a meal or something.

Finally, in Brightkite, I changed my account settings for sharing to Twitter. Again, I said to post notes, photos, and to change the location in my account sidebar to my Brightkite location.

So now my Brightkite posts come to Twitter like this:

I still keep Twitter running in Twhirl and get some tweets to my cell phone. If there is a conversation happening in Twitter, I reply there. But my own posts, for now, are originating in Brightkite. And I’m waiting for more friends to join me. I wish I had more invites… they only give 3 when you get an account. Hopefully they’ll be sending out more soon.

This reminds me a lot of SocialLight, which I was super excited about three years ago. And Dodgeball, which would have been awesome if it had ever made it to be available beyond their core cities. This, however, makes up where the other two are lacking, and looks to be a lot more interesting. Hope to see you there!!

Update: Fixed the Twitter photo, thanks to Jenny!

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Since finding Photoshop Express, I haven’t used it … Why not? Because I upload hundreds of photos to Flickr each month and I don’t want to have to upload them to other places too. Now, I have a reason to re-visit Photoshop Express - Flickr support!

This from DownloadSquad:

At the conference call in March, we asked Adobe about their plans for integrating Photoshop Express with other web services and they assured us Flickr support was on the way. It’s available now and we think it adds a lot of value to both services. Now you can download your Flickr photos directly into Photoshop Express for cropping, color correction, digital effects, etc. Photos edited with Photoshop Express can be immediately re-exported/uploaded to Flickr all in one seamless step.

Awesome!!

Technorati Tags: photoshop express, flickr, photoshop

Well - real TV addicts have DVR or Tivo or some such way to get new episodes, but if you can’t afford those and want to keep up with your new TV shows, mytvrss looks pretty neat!!

Select your favorite shows below, and then click “Create feed” to generate your own personalized RSS feed. We’ll then alert you through the RSS feed the day an episode is aired. You don’t have to register!

My mother has 2 (maybe 3) VCRs in her house to record her shows - after I teach her about RSS, this might be pretty handy for her.

Found via DownloadSquad.

• Sakai
  Sakai is an online Collaboration and Learning Environment. Many users of Sakai deploy it to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.
• MagToo
  Facebook slideshows, MySpace, slideshow, photo sharing, zoom, panorama, trip, photo, resizing
• Klok
  Personal Time Tracking made Easy
• Windows Live FolderShare beta
  Keep your latest files with you, no matter which computer you’re using.
• Windows Live SkyDrive
  Password-protected online file storage. Always available where you need it.
• Box.net
  Box.net is a web-based service that lets you store files online, share with other people, and collaborate on projects.
• Jing Project: Visual conversation starts here. Mac or Windows.
  Snap a picture of anything on your desktop. Record video of what you do, or what you see. Share Online Instantly uploaded. Share in email, IM, or blogs.

More of my links

So, today was the first day of work (since becoming a librarian) that one of my family members or non-library friends would have looked at what I’d been doing and recognized it as library work. Interestingly, it was also the first day of work (since becoming a librarian) that I really felt like I wasn’t being my typical librarian self, and maybe felt a little like I wouldn’t want to do this particular task day in and day out.

What were we doing, you might ask? I’ll show you!

We’re reorganizing our periodicals:

And I mean all our periodicals:

… so that we could empty out our periodicals room:

… and move the physical current periodicals into the reference department:

As you know, I don’t normally talk about details from work here, but I am in this case for two reasons.

(1) Roz has managed this massive project and made it easy for us to come in and do the moving quickly. I can’t imagine the amount of work she put into preparing for this.

(2) I found it interesting that this type of work was such a challenge for me. I realize that this type of work used to be much more common in physical inventories, and I know that the people in technical services have to pay a lot of attention to these types of details, but it was a real challenge for me! Every time I organized a stack of journals, I’d have to double check them to make sure I didn’t transpose numbers and get them out of order. I checked and double checked publication dates to make sure that I didn’t reverse them. I felt like I was moving in slow motion compared to my “normal” work. I’m blaming it on being a systems thinker. And this experience, I think, was healthy. It makes me appreciate my main responsibilities (as if I don’t already love learning about new tech, working with students and faculty, teaching, and getting to buy materials) as well as reflect on how much libraries have changed.

The best part? At the end of the day there was a physical thing to look at, that you can point at and say, “that’s what we did today.” For a job that is often intangible, that can be a fun reward.

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I have had “learn to program” on my list of stuff to do for years. It’s always “after I do this…”

But! There is a great new resource created by the fabulous William J. Turkel & Alan MacEachern called the Programming Historian which is also great for librarians and any scholar who wants a way to make programs that are actually useful to your work.

You can find it at the Programming Historian Wiki.

I’ll be working through it over the next week or two, and then I hope to move to some of the other programming resources I never seem to get around to.