Blog@Case Topics: bloghttp://blog.case.edu/topics/blogDavid Porterdavid.porter@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/ccrhdJeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithCarmen Fontanacarmen.fontana@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/ccb3Anirban Duttaanirban.dutta@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/axd101Roobal Sekhonroobal.sekhon@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/sekhonBrandon Siegelbrandon.e.siegel@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/bes72005-05-19T01:40:06ZBlogging and Tweeting about donating a kidneyhttp://blog.case.edu/ccrhd/2009/06/24/blogging_and_tweeting_about_donating_a_kidney2009-06-24T15:45:00Z2009-06-24T18:25:35Z
Pamela Paulk, the VP of Human Resources at Johns Hopkins is keeping a blog about her experience donating a kidney. She writes:
I am writing this blog in hopes of bringing more attention and awareness to the need for kidney donors … and to show that ordinary people can be donors. My hope is that maybe one person who reads this will hear about someone else needing a kidney and will say, “Hey, I can do that. I can give my kidney.â€
Her most recent blog post was made prior to the day of the surgery. However she updated her Twitter feed up to and after the surgery. Click on the image for a full sized version or click here.

Twitter is becoming an important tool for getting information out to friends and family members. Last month a transplant team used Twitter to keep a family updated while their 3 year-old received a new kidney.
David Porterdavid.porter@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/ccrhdMovable Type Scalinghttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2007/02/26/movable_type_scaling2007-02-26T19:23:17Z2007-02-26T19:22:56Z
There has been a little bit of a dust up regarding Movable Type and its ability to scale. I thought I would add to the conversation with my experiences. I run the blog.case.edu system. It runs on a semi-modified installation of Movable Type. You can check on its web server stats here. There's some more stats here and here. Here are some summaries of some of the actual numbers: Approximately 50 GB/month is served over the wire on average (for February 2007, we're doing about 2.3GB/day for a total of 60.7GB so far this month) 446 entries were created in the last 30 days 5303 comments were made in the last 30 days (this number does include spam that got past the anti-spam measures), which is an average of 177 comments per day (the median number is 166 comments per day) That would be a general summary of what we're serving here. We haven't had to "scale" it. It runs on one Dell 1850 with nothing fancy going on -- no mod_(perl|FastCGI) or advanced caching mechanisms -- it's a MySQL install, Apache install, and the Movable Type CGIs 1 all running on the Dell. This isn't to say we've never had performance problems. It's a constant war with the spammers; one that is constantly fared with any large installation of weblogs or wikis. Sometimes we are on the losing edge of the battle, but that's mostly due to lack of engineering man-hour resources to implement all of the recommended anti-spam measures, and that blame should not be totally shouldered by MT. The CGIs aren't as responsive as I would like them to be, and we've been working to alleviate that problem. But overall, the performance of the system is good. I'm not saying there is not room for improvement, but in general, the system has held up. In the original article questioning MT's ability to scale, they don't post any actual numbers of where its limitations begin to reveal themselves; so I'm not sure if the loads they are seeing are significantly higher than the numbers I'm talking about here. That may be the case. 1We are currently beginning the work on building the replacement for the blog.case.edu system, which will include performance enhancements such as running the CGIs in mod_fastCGI, running the comment and trackback handlers with a separate Apache instance, all new anti-spam counter-measures, and a host of other tweaks and improvements that we've been able to identify by running the system in production and analyzing server logs and load times. Our findings and tweakings may well deserve a separate blog entry.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithre-direction to my bloghttp://blog.case.edu/axd101/2007/01/05/redirection_to_my_blog2007-01-05T22:17:02Z2007-01-05T22:20:56ZAnirban Duttaanirban.dutta@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/axd101Testing Word 2007 Blog Integrationhttp://blog.case.edu/bes7/2006/11/05/testing_word_2007_blog_integration2006-11-06T04:21:38Z2008-04-22T19:00:26Z

It seems that Word 2007 has direct support for posting blog entries through services such as Windows Live Spaces and Blogger. While Windows Live Spaces is not surprising, is the inclusion of Blogger (a Google service) a sign that things are changing at Microsoft? What is more, they have also added support for any blog service that supports either ATOM or MetaWebLog API. After some digging, it turns out that blog.case.edu does use the MetaWebLog API, so I'm giving it a test.

If anyone else is interested in trying this out, simply tell Word 2007 to make a New Blog Post (Office Menu -> New -> Blog post). A wizard will come up asking if you'd like to register with a Blog service – tell it yes, and then for the provider, specify 'Other'. Enter your Case ID and password, make sure 'MetaWebLog' is selected as the API, and enter http://blog.case.edu/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi as the Blog Post URL. If you'd like to have Word automatically upload images to your Filer space, it's really quite simple. When prompted for your Image Provider's information, select 'My own server' from the list, enter https://filer.case.edu/dav/abc123 as the Upload URL (use your own Case ID instead of abc123), and http://filer.case.edu/abc123 as the Source URL (again use your own Case ID here). Finish the wizard and you should be good to go.

What is interesting is that this is a great example of how powerful web services can be. Once your account is set up, you can 'Open Existing' to open any blog posts you've made (even ones you didn't make through Word) for revision or just to look over. You can insert category and tag info into your post (caveat: this was the only thing I haven't been able to get working so far – seems like a bug). Word even has some integration with image hosting providers (none are preloaded yet, though it does support WebDAV interfaces such as Filer). All this works because the MetaWebLog API provides a list of functions to any API client (in this case, Word). These functions are standardized though a number of RFCs so that anyone can make an interoperable blog client or host as long as they abide by the contracts set forth in the RFC documents. Word and the blog.case.edu server then communicate by transferring XML documents which represent the client's requests and the server's responses. Again these XML documents follow a standardized schema which must be adhered to in order for clients and servers to communicate successfully.

The surprise is that the folks at Microsoft have not created their own 'better' schema and API, nor have they 'embraced-and-extended' the existing ones. Instead they have put their ego in check to produce a very impressive, interoperable piece of software. It seems that in the past year or so we've really seen a breath of fresh air at Microsoft, and hopefully we can look forward to more cool, interoperable products in the future.

Brandon Siegelbrandon.e.siegel@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/bes7I'll Be Giving a Presentation Tomorrow on Blogginghttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/07/26/ucite_blogging_presentation2006-07-26T19:37:00Z2006-07-27T18:42:19Z
Tomorrow at noon in the Herrick Room at Allen Library Building, I'll be giving a presentation for UCITE. From the description:
This is the age of the internet and those who are most adept at using it are the ones who get noticed. Personal and professional websites and blogs and other internet formats can make more people aware of your work and raise your profile, provided those are done well enough and take advantage of the kinds of things that search engines use when people look for information.
Stop on by if you want to see it. I'll be posting the slides and my notes here afterwards. Update: The slides are online at Blogging at Case. Notes for the slides are available in the print out version. Audio of the presentation should be coming soon ( Murphy willing).
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithWhat I Read Over the Weekend: Bringing "Web 2.0" Concepts to the "Enterprise"http://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/04/17/web_20_for_the_enterprise2006-04-17T19:53:23Z2006-04-17T19:59:37Z

Interested in what I read about over this past weekend? No? Well... go ahead and stop reading then. Here's something entirely more entertaining.

Yes? Well, the Internet was a-buzzin' with articles, comments, and opinions on bringing "Web 2.0" concepts "inside the firewall" i.e. using them in the "Enterprise" with emphasis on how it all relates to Knowledge Management Tools/Systems.

A lot of it was in reaction to Associate Professor at Harvard Business School Andrew McAfee's article "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration", which the author summarized:

There is a new wave of business communication tools including blogs, wikis and group messaging software — ... Enterprise 2.0 — that allow for more spontaneous, knowledge-based collaboration. These new tools... may well supplant other communication and knowledge management systems with their superior ability to capture tacit knowledge, best practices and relevant experiences from throughout [an enterprise] and make them readily available to more users.

Nicholas Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and author of Does IT Matter?, comments in Is Web 2.0 enterprise-ready?:

No matter how technologically elegant their design, knowledge management "platforms" and "repositories" tend to quickly collapse under the weight of their own complexity. Using them turns out to be more trouble than it's worth - particularly for those employees who have the most valuable knowledge - and the platforms and repositories fall into disuse and are eventually, and quietly, dismantled. People go back to using efficient, direct conversations - through meetings, or phone calls, or emails, or instant messages - to exchange useful knowledge...

He then explains what makes Web 2.0 technologies different. "The good news," he writes, is that the new technologies "focus not on capturing knowledge itself, but rather on the practices and output of knowledge workers."

Andrew McAfee comments on Nicholas's comments in Does Web 2.0 guarantee Enterprise 2.0?:

If you believe that this migration [of enterprises using so-called "Web 2.0" tools] won’t take place, you believe essentially that companies—interdependent groups of people with a common mission and a profit motive — are less able or less likely to engage in free-form collaboration than the mass of previously indepedent volunteer freelancers that have made Wikipedia, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube,  del.icio.us, Digg, etc. so powerful and successful.

Lots of knowledge workers spend lots of their time on two activities: keeping their colleagues appraised of what they’re doing, what progress has been made, what they’ve learned/concluded, etc. and trying to locate resources within their own organizations... Blogs (like the other Enterprise 2.0 tools) can help with the first of these tasks, and in doing so also help with the second. It’s not too farfetched to envision companies in which people use Enterprise 2.0 tools to report progress, collaborate, and share the outputs of these collaborations.

In another article, Taking Web Services To The Office, Fred Wilson compares how technologies used to emerge for "Enterprises" and consumers with how they emerge now:

Esther Dyson observed in a Release 1.0 issue in 2004 (well before web 2.0 was upon us) that it used to be that technology would start with the goverment (military or space), then move to the enterprise, and end up in the consumer's hands. But, she said, these days technology starts with the consumer and moves up to the enterprise.

Commenting on this thread that is spreading is the article Knowledge Management 2.0 which discusses the growth of current KM tools versus how "KM 2.0" will grow:

Many of the failed knowledge management projects at financial services and professional services firms were top-down initiatives staffed by technology and information professionals. They required complex technology infrastructures and very long implementation timelines. One challenge was getting employees to share information through use of the system; another challenge was proving an acceptable ROI, given a very high level of investment and a difficult to measure return. In many cases no amount of management evangelism could lead employees to share knowledge in a complex and often difficult to use platform.

These "top-down" initiatives usually involve someone (called "a consultant" or a "salesperson") who is master of spin i.e. a person who can BS with the best of them convincing those with decision making power that complex/convulated KM systems will enable their "Enterprise." The easiest way to cut through these persons' BS is to make them step away from the carefully constructed Powerpoint buzzword generating machine and ask them to actually demonstrate how this system they're trying to hock will help Jane in sales find information from Greg in Engineering better than email or a phone call. Make them demonstrate the entire system from creation of "knowledge" all the way to the point where Jane retrieves it. If after the demonstration, it is still incredibly obvious that Jane sending an email to Greg and getting a response back is easier than their "workflow enabled digital repository of knowledge," tell that consultant/salesperson to take their $600,000 contract, 7-9 month timeline, and ROI estimates elsewhere.

The final article I read was a month old one written by Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, entitled An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise. It's a long article and should be read in its entirety (like all of the other links), but I'll pull some quotes from it.

Experience has shown that simply installing a wiki or blog (referred to collectively as 'social software') and making it available to users is not enough to encourage widespread adoption. Instead, active steps need to be taken to both foster use amongst key members of the community and to provide easily accessible support.

There are two ways to go about encouraging adoption of social software: fostering grassroots behaviours which develop organically from the bottom-up; or via top-down instruction. In general, the former is more desirable, as it will become self-sustaining over time - people become convinced of the tools' usefulness, demonstrate that to colleagues, and help develop usage in an ad hoc, social way in line with their actual needs.

I can personally vouch for that in regards to the Case Blog, Case Wiki, and ITS internal wiki.

... consider how social software fits in to the context of their job, their daily working processes and the wider context of their group's goals.

  • What specific problems does social software solve?
  • What are the benefits for this person?
  • How can the software be simply integrated into their existing working processes?
  • How does social software lower their work load, or the cognitive load associated with doing specific tasks?

That harkens back to the earlier mini-rant I did in this post regarding KM contractors/consultants/salespersons. Make them show you, not in Powerpoint or whitepapers — in an actual demonstration, from beginning to end, from creation to retrieval, how this system will help and enable and empower and empassion the users whose job it will be to use the system. If email or a phone call trumps their system...

Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithIncorporating a Blog into your Web Presencehttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/03/17/incorporating_a_blog_into_your_web_presence2006-03-17T22:07:01Z2006-03-17T22:13:11Z
Heidi just posted an excellent article, To Blog or not to Blog, which gives an overview of incorporating a weblog into your department's, college's, institution's, or organization's web presence.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithBlog Minerhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/02/23/blog_miner2006-02-23T17:23:31Z2006-02-23T17:22:43Z
Blog Miner Sounds interesting. Once the project gets going, will there be a feed located at http://vorlon.case.edu/~mxh147/eecs439.htm that I can subscribe to and follow the project along?
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithVisualizing the Blogospherehttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/01/06/visualizing_the_blogosphere2006-01-06T23:31:03Z2006-01-06T23:37:52Z
Visualizing the Blogosphere Conclusion: LiveJournal'ers keep to themselves.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithA new year...A new blog.http://blog.case.edu/sekhon/2006/01/05/happy_new_yearits_a_blog2006-01-05T18:53:46Z2006-01-05T19:25:32Z
Let me start the blog be saying Happy New Year to everyone!! My new blog this year...lets see how it goes.
Roobal Sekhonroobal.sekhon@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/sekhonNew Experimental Feature: Tracking Commentershttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/10/10/follow_case_blog_comments2005-10-10T22:53:03Z2005-10-10T22:52:23Z
Yet-Another-New-Experimental-Not-Officially-Supported feature — http://blog.case.edu/comments. Track the newest comments made on the Case blogging system. You can break it down by commenter according to his or her email address: http://blog.case.edu/comments/jeremy.smith@case.edu Keying in via email address comes with two problems. 1) Users have multiple addresses. 2) There is no guarantee that the user posting under jeremy.smith@case.edu is actually me. But, it may be of slight use to some; so go ahead and play with it if you would like. Send email if you have any feedback. And, of course, you can subscribe to those URLs in your favorite news aggregator in case you want to track all of the comments someone makes on the system.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithFirst Case Blog Podcast!http://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/10/07/first_case_blog_podcast2005-10-07T21:31:19Z2005-10-07T21:31:34Z

Awesome! Blog@Case's first podcast! — The Freedman Center in Kelvin Smith Library: Podcast. And, it worked!

Check out the RSS feed for the Freedman Center blog. It includes the following little snippet where the magic happens:

<item>
    <title>Podcast</title>
    <link>http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/2005/10/07/podcast</link>
    <description>Testing a podcast & learning how MoveableType enclosures work on our blog system......</description>
    <guid>http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/2005/10/07/podcast</guid>
    <pubDate>Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:51:19 EST</pubDate>
    
<enclosure url="http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/podcasts/10-07-05.mp3" length="4412159" type="audio/mpeg" />
</item>

Go head. Check it out in iTunes. Just point your podcast subscriptions to http://http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/rss20.xml and watch the magic happen.

Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithHurricaneshttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/10/07/hurricanes2005-10-07T16:53:01Z2005-10-07T16:50:54Z
If you haven't seen it yet, Ronald Vojacek is volunteering for The Salvation Army to aid those areas and people hit by hurricanes Katrina and Rita; and he's blogging it in Ronald Vojacek's Hurricane Journal.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithAnother Case Law School Bloghttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/09/24/law_school_blog2005-09-24T18:23:31Z2005-09-24T18:22:49Z
Another Case Law School blog — Grotian Moment Blog. But... ummm... there is no XML feed. How am I supposed to follow it? How can you have a blog without a syndicated feed? Does anyone know who is setting these blogs up over at the Law School? Maybe I could assist them in the areas such as RSS feeds.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithScreensaverhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/09/22/screensaver2005-09-22T22:23:17Z2005-09-22T22:23:21Z
So, there's a couple of people working on this Screen Saver project that will read RSS streams and display photos contained therein thus comprising the screen saver. It seems a whole lot better than the screen savers currently found in the computer labs that feature the windows icon blinking in and out of existence. So, I thought to myself, "I wonder if pictures uploaded to the Case Blog system could be used?" "I suppose they could just monitor Planet Case's XML feeds and parse out img tags." But, that seemed entirely undesirable. What would be better is if the blog system collected all of the recently uploaded pictures in one place and provided an XML Feed of those. I don't know... something like http://blog.case.edu/photos. Ahh... perfect.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithTracking Info Via Blog Topicshttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/09/19/tracking_info_via_blog_topics2005-09-19T23:53:59Z2005-09-19T23:59:00ZJeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithMore Blog@Case Topics Featureshttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/09/16/more_blogcase_topics_features2005-09-16T23:17:17Z2005-09-16T23:17:09Z
Blog@Case: Topics Now, with some more features.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithCase Western Global Security Bloghttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/09/14/case_western_global_security_blog2005-09-14T17:07:01Z2005-09-14T19:27:41Z
This is the first I have heard of this (others may have heard about it before), but Case Western's Law School has a Global Security Law & Policy Blog. I found it via the new Google Blog Search for the terms Case Western. Yet another good reason your web site should be publishing Syndicated Feeds of its content.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithMore University Blog Systems Run Downshttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/09/02/more_university_blog_systems_run_downs2005-09-02T18:53:32Z2005-09-09T19:57:35Z
Run down of University hosted blog systems. Wish someone did this for University hosted Wiki systems, too.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithBlog@Case Topics Broken in IEhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/08/31/blogcase_topics_broken_in_ie2005-08-31T06:01:01Z2005-08-31T06:01:22Z
*sigh* I just realized that my work done this evening has horribly broken Blog@Case Topics in every which way possible on Internet Explorer. That sucks. IE is such a momentum killer. Tomorrow. I'll resume work on it tomorrow. I do not have the gumption right now to wrestle with Internet Explorer.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith