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@media Ajax London, here I come

@media Ajax London, here I come
Just a short note that I’ll be attending @media Ajax London, 19th-20th November. If you see me, come by and say hello!

Min-width and Max-width template
Some problems seem to appear again and again, and one of them is page width. How wide should a site be? Should you adapt to 800px resolution? 1024px? Fully fluid with percentages? Perhaps elastic using em-units? There are lots to choose from. What I’ve found is that there’s one solution that almost always works. You […]

The future of friendlybit.com
It’s vacation time and you’re allowed to lean back and just relax. A blog it’s always there though, you post to it on your spare time, and as soon as you have some a little glitch in your schedule you need to consider blogging. It’s a full time job. Current situation I use Friendly Bit as […]

Quick Accessibility Testing
A recent project of mine required me to do a quick review of the accessibility level of a site. Nothing serious, just to show what was possible to test and where the site scored right now. I managed to assemble a small list of tools that I believe did a rather good job. This article […]

Manipulating innerHTML removes events
Others have written about this before, but I thought I’d mention it again, just so you don’t miss it. Aleksandar Vacić found it while playing with tables and their cells. I found it when Robert and I played with nested lists. It works the same across browers. Let me show a quick example: You have a […]

IE8 renders the acid 2 test
I’m not sure why I don’t see that many people talking about the fact that IE8 renders the acid 2 test perfectly now. It really seems Microsoft is starting to move forward again, after starting to feel some pressure from the open source world. Will they be able to pick up the speed needed to […]

Usenet Newsgroups: Anachronistic Service or Useful Communication Tool?
Earlier this week ITS announced that it would be taking down the Usenet news server as of December 5, 2007. In a fit of nostalgia, I opened up my newsreader (Mozilla) to leave a farewell message on cwru.general. Oddly enough, my message got a response; others (not many) were still using Usenet! This led me to wonder what had happened to newsgroups. Did the generation that grew up on the Web not know about newsgroups, or did they know about them but prefer the Web? In this age of Web 2.0, where some update their Facebook status by the hour, users pose questions on discussion boards such as http://forum.case.edu, and writers merge their Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku posts into central RSS feeds that can be shared on their Tumblr blogs, is there still a place for Usenet news?

Seamonkey Reader

Google Groups
alt.politics.usa.constitution as seen in
Seamonkey (above) and Google Groups (below).
Click on the images to enlarge.

Earlier this week ITS announced that it would be taking down the Usenet news server as of December 5, 2007. In a fit of nostalgia, I opened up my newsreader (Mozilla) to leave a farewell message on cwru.general. Oddly enough, my message got a response; others (not many) were still using Usenet! This led me to wonder what had happened to newsgroups. Did the generation that grew up on the Web not know about newsgroups, or did they know about them but prefer the Web? In this age of Web 2.0, where some update their Facebook status by the hour, users pose questions on discussion boards such as http://forum.case.edu, and writers merge their Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku posts into central RSS feeds that can be shared on their Tumblr blogs, is there still a place for Usenet news?

I think perhaps there is. But before we ponder that, perhaps we need to review—for those who don’t know—what Usenet is/was all about.

History

Many users today think of the World Wide Web and the Internet as being interchangeable. But as most of you know, the WWW is only one of many protocols used on the Internet. Back in the era before the WWW (which most users didn’t access until 1994-95), Usenet was one of the most popular features of the Internet. To some it still is.

First created in 1979, Usenet allows users to share thoughts and ideas with one another on a variety of topics ranging from the Internet itself to the latest episode of CSI. While T. V. viewers now discuss their favorite show on Web-based forums, in those days folks dissected X-Files episodes on alt.tv.x-files. (Actually they still do.)

How Usenet is used

As one uses a Web browser to surf the Web, one uses a newsreader to subscribe to and read/respond to newsgroups. Some news readers are stand-alone programs, while others are built into e-mail programs or Web browsers and Internet suites. Once the reader is installed, the user configures it to connect to a news server just as one would configure an e-mail program to use a certain e-mail server. Most Internet service providers offer news server access.

With the newsreader installed and configured to access the appropriate server, users can then subscribe to any of thousands of newsgroups based on their interests. This will be familiar to those of you who use RSS readers to read blogs. With a newsreader you would typically call up a searchable list of the newsgroups provided by your server and subscribe to those you like. Once subscribed you would select a group from your subscription list and download the latest headers (subject lines, that link to messages) to read the various posts. From there you can respond to an existing discussion or start a new thread, just as you would on a discussion forum, but more similar to e-mail in that you can include attachments.

There are thousands of newsgroups available on the internet with topics ranging from alt.tv.survivor to alt.politics.usa.constitution. Many of these will be available through your Internet Service Provider’s news server, but some may be limited to certain servers.

To learn more about using Usenet newsgroups refer to the resources listed at the bottom of this entry.

Is Usenet still viable?

Given the research I’ve done today, Usenet seems to be alive and well—particularly in certain circles. Those circles would be those interested in file sharing. As I’ve been exploring this issue I’ve noticed two trends:

  • Newsreaders such as Binary Boy geared towards optimizing music, picture and movie sharing
  • Uncensored News Servers, such as Tera News offering uncensored access to groups, anonymous posting and firewall counter measures

I’d like to think that the above are being used to provide more efficient news reading or to give access to users living in countries with unreasonably strict censorship laws; but I’m guessing these folks are making their money by offering an easy way for people to trade naughty pictures and pirated media. With prices for some servers ranging anywhere from $7 to $49 (and up, depending on download limits) per month, I don’t think folks are signing up to share their grandmother’s bundt cake recipes.

What about the rest of us? Is Usenet still a good way to share information, discuss politics and find out how to clean the headlight lenses on your ‘96 Passat? I think it could be. This evening I installed Mozilla’s Seamonkey Internet Suite, on my home computer, to use as my newsreader and subscribed to some of the groups I’d read in the past such as alt.www.webmaster. The group was alive and well, filled with the same kind of reasonable questions, helpful advice, spam and people who shouldn’t be thinking of starting a Web design business, as it always was. Newsgroups are like that, but so are discussion boards. Some members will be knowledgeable, others never will be, and some just want to push their product or start a flame war. A lot of good information can still be traded.

If one is looking for discussion geared towards very specific topics I think Usenet works well for two reasons.

  • One Stop Shopping: One can subscribe to groups on cars, sports, T. V. shows, politics, philosophy, etc. and view them all in one place as one does with RSS readers.
  • Threaded Discussion: This format is really easy to use. You are presented with a list of headers, so you can choose which topic to read, and then all the messages in the thread are listed below (the way this works may depend on your reader). Google Groups offers Web-based access to newsgroups, but if there are more than a few messages in a given topic it can be very hard to follow. Google presents them in full in order, rather like Gmail. But when you get a few hundred this also involves multiple pages and can be tricky to navigate.

Perhaps I’m just being nostalgic, but this still seems like a pretty efficient way to communicate. Back in the day, I got a lot of good information from newsgroups, and I think if one chooses a group with an active, knowledgeable subscriber-base one still can. And if that is the case one can use these to network, share ideas, promote Web sites and blogs (but only in the context of providing meaningful content to the group) just as one can with Web-based services.

What do you think? Is there a place for Usenet in your social media world?

Usenet News Resources

P.S. When mentioning specific newsgroups I linked to them using the news protocol. These will only work if you have configured a newsreader in your browser and are using a server that includes that particular group.

Web Content: Not just YOUR words and pictures
If they read what you write, they may also want to read what you read. Webmasters and bloggers know this. That’s why we’ll embed links within our text, build pages with links to recommended sites and/or add linkblogs to our side bars. In a world where most of us don’t have the time to research and write everything we’d like to share, such resources add value to our existing content and give readers guidance on where to look for additional information.

Google Reader Shared Items
My Google Reader Shared Items

If they read what you write, they may also want to read what you read. Webmasters and bloggers know this. That’s why we’ll embed links within our text, build pages with links to recommended sites and/or add linkblogs to our side bars. In a world where most of us don’t have the time to research and write everything we’d like to share, such resources add value to our existing content and give readers guidance on where to look for additional information.

Recently I’ve come across some other good ways to share what you read, so I thought I’d share those with you today.

Publish your OPML file to share your blog subscriptions

A few weeks back I was reading an entry on David Bradley’s blog, Sciencebase, when I noticed something interesting in his footer. There, at the bottom, he has a section called “Geeky Fun Stuff” in which he shares, among other things, a link to his OPML file. That, I thought, is a really good idea. For those of you who don’t know what this is, an OPML file is basically a type of XML file that includes the links to the RSS feeds of the various blogs one reads through RSS Readers such as Google Reader, Bloglines, etc. Such services allow you to import and export these files so that you can easily switch services or add a batch of feeds to your existing service. Thus, if I wanted to subscribe to all of David’s feeds I could just save that file and import it into Google Reader myself. Or if I wanted to subscribe to only a few I could edit the file (in Dreamweaver or any plain text editor) to delete any I didn’t want.

If you are already using an RSS reader, sharing such a file is fairly easy. Just export your file from your reader and save it to your computer. If you don’t want to share everything, just open the file in a text reader, and delete the extraneous feeds—lolcats, curling news from In the Hack and anything else that may not be of interest to your readership. Once the file is ready, just upload it to your site and link to it as you would any other page.

Using Google Reader to share specific stories

Google Reader recently added some enhancements to its sharing features. I first noticed this when Robert Scoble posted a note on Pownce with a link to his Google Reader shared items page. When I went to view the page I realized that this could be a useful feature, one that made me want to revisit Google Reader.

When you visit a shared items page you will see a site that looks pretty much like a typical blog. Stories are posted on the left, information about the page owner is on the right—along with links to other resources, a feed, etc. The main difference is that the stories are things the page owner has read rather than written (though, if you subscribe to your own feed, you can share your own entries as well). Each story also includes a link to the original entry and the original source—so the material is not mistakenly attributed to you.

After viewing Scoble’s page, I immediately thought of my friend X, who says she wants to establish an online presence, but isn’t quite yet ready to blog. Sharing stories on a page she can link to might be a good way to get her feet wet and let people know what she is thinking about.. For those of us who already have one or more blogs and Web sites, the shared items page adds to our online mix and provides an easy way to share stories with our readership.

Getting started with Google Reader

Getting started with this is pretty easy. Just go to the Google Reader site and sign-in. If you don’t already have a Google account for Gmail, analytics, etc. you can create one there. Once your account is set up, just subscribe to some of your favorite blogs and start reading. A menu at the bottom of each story gives you the option to share the story so it will appear on your public shared items page. (There is some controversy about this, but you just have to understand that it’s a public page that can be seen by anyone who has, or discovers, the address. For us, that is what we want, so it’s not a big concern.) If you change your mind later, you can unshare the story the same way. You can also organize your subscriptions into topic folders and share topics rather than individual items. To learn more about using Google Reader visit the Reader Help Center.

If you don’t want to send readers to your Google page, but still want to share stories, you can also share a clip from the feed on your own site, as I have done on my “What I’ve Been Reading in the Blogosphere” page.

More sharing options

Streamy Screenshot
My Streamy Subscriptions

Google isn’t the only service that allows sharing, but aside from the hubbub regarding privacy settings (pertaining to how and with whom one is sharing—see links below) it’s very easy to use and will be familiar to a large audience. I’ve been sharing blog stories with groups on Streamy since last summer, but my Streamy shares aren’t fully public. Another friend has recently recommended Feed Each Other which looks promising and also produces a public page. StumbleUpon, while not a reader, is also a great way to share blog stories and other Web sites. (Stumbling is quite popular with insomniacs and is a great way to learn about other sites.)

These are all useful services, but how you share is less important than what you share. If you can find articles and sites that offer additional information on the topics you discuss, or even stories that add insight to your personality or world view, you’ll be providing a helpful resource to your readers.

OPML, Google Reader and Sharing Resources

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 4:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “@media Ajax London, here I come”

  1. Eric…

    Cool post. 100% great content everytime. Thanks for sharing….

  2. Jessie…

    Truer word have never been uttered, indeed. Your point is sound and excellent. Thanks for sharing….

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