Entries from June 2007 ↓

If you’re a blogger, no doubt you’ve sometimes wanted to add more information or make corrections to one of your existing blog posts. You can use the editor in Blogger.com at any time to make your changes.

Here’s how to update your blog post in such a way that readers of your blog will notice the entry and see what has changed:

• To get into the editor, sign on to Blogger.com to display your blog(s).
• Click on “Manage Posts” for the desired blog.
• Select the individual post that you want to update.
• (If you are already signed on to Blogger.com, and the blog is on your screen, you can begin editing by clicking on the pencil logo beneath the blog post that you want to update.)
• Type in your changes to the body of the blog post.
• Add a line of text to indicate what has been updated. If possible, the line should be bold or highlighted in some way.
• You can also update the blog post header. It’s safe to do this, because changing the header for an existing blog post will not change the blog post URL.
• Change the blog posting date and time:
  • At the bottom of the text box in the Blogger.com blog post editor, there’s a Post Options selection with a “flippy arrow.”
  • Click on the “flippy arrow.” This will reveal various options, including the blog posting date and time.
  • Overtype the blog post date and time to change it from the past to the immediate future. This will cause Blogger.com to treat this blog post as the newest, and to reposition it to the top of the list.
  • Blogger.com differs from some other blogging systems in that Blogger.com will not hide a future-dated blog post until the future date and time arrives. On the other hand, Blogger.com will recognize this blog post as having the newest date, and reposition it accordingly on the screen.
  • If you are using Blogger.com’s feed option, Blogger will re-stream the updated version of the blog post into your Atom feed.
• Publish your blog post as soon as you are satisfied with it.
• Note that the changes to your blog might not appear immediately on your screen. To see the changed version, it may be necessary to clear your browse cache by deleting the temporary files in your browser.

Technorati tags:
Blogger.com
blogging
feeds
software
tech tips

Sooner or later, every forum moderator, blogger, blog admin, wiki organizer, or Web 2.0 aficionado will have to confront the issue of comment spammers. There are no easy answers. Posting a comment policy statement, such as that shown under the About page tab, may help to discourage human-generated spam, but ‘bot-generated spam will require other measures.

Here are some articles on the topic that may be helpful:

• Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win?
• Comment Spammers: Internet Pigs
• Spamming Social Networks is a No-No

Sometimes, though, the bloggers and webmasters themselves are to blame for degrading the quality of the blogosphere:

• Content Hypertext Spam

Technorati tags:
blogging
comment policy
forum
spam
tech tips
Web 2.0
wikis

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“What’s an RSS feed, and why should I care?”

Good questions. First, here’s why you should care.

Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.

You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list.”

One click, and poof… the subscription is gone.

Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you.

That’s right… no more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions.

You won’t need to suffer through the legalese in the privacy policy (if there is one) looking for loopholes that will send you deeper into inbox hell. No more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts “just in case.”

Again, if you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click.

Pretty cool, huh?

“That is cool! Umm… What’s RSS?”

All right! Now we’re ready to get to that part.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed - you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

If you actually want to know how RSS works, click here.

“What’s a feed reader?”

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters.

“Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a feed?”

First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).

If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like Copyblogger and many other popular sites), you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the new standard RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):

Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription function.

Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again.

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.

The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.

If there’s anything here that is confusing, or you have a question, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help!

Thanks to Copyblogger for a helping hand with this tutorial.

Learn More

• How to use the little orange square to get your news anywhere!
  
• What Is RSS: A Guide To Really Simple Syndication Benefits, Best Uses And Applications

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Walk2Web is a new web exploration tool that starts you out with a preview of the starting site with its outbound links. From there, you can explore the web visually by “walking” from one link to the next as Walk2Web builds a network of links on your screen. Walk2Web shows the site at your current position in the main preview window, which offers tools to vote the site up or down, to set a public or private bookmark, and to post tags and comments about the site. Registration is free and allows you to use personalized features.

In addition to the main preview, smaller preview windows pop up as you mouse over other links on the screen. You can scroll the screen, either by moving the mouse to the edge of the viewing area, or by using the scrolling arrows. You are not restricted to the path you selected; you can click on any other link on the screen and restart your journey from there.

On Walk2Web’s home page, you can request live help, access the Walk2Web surfer’s blog, and build widgets for your blog or website, such as this button that launches Walk2Web with your site as the preview starting point.

Try it and see!

Technorati tags:
blogging
social bookmarking
tech tips
Walk2Web
Web 2.0

Our Suspicions Proved Correct

Quadrant: The True Genesis of Amnesty International

Read the above article by Claudio Veliz in Quadrant Magazine: Australia’s independent review of literature and ideas. Veliz was involved with the organization from its founding. Just for starters, Amnesty International came into being much earlier than its official founding date of 1960.

And if you have ever suspected that Amnesty International is anything but politically neutral, despite its stated policy of representing “prisoners of conscience” from both the left and the right, you will learn exactly how and why your suspicions are correct.

According to Veliz:

The Cold War experience would also have confirmed Münzenberg’s conviction that waged urbi et orbi, such campaigns would be ignored inside a communist world undisturbed by a free press and public opinion, but would undermine the moral status of policies advanced by the United States and its allies.

Vatican Calls for Catholics to Stop Supporting Amnesty Int’l

This article sheds additional light upon the hidden leftist agenda of Amnesty International. One need not be a Catholic to regard AI’s recent activities as a grotesque betrayal of the organization’s stated aims:

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican, called on Catholics to stop supporting the group.

“If in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organizations must withdraw their support, because, in deciding to promote abortion rights, AI has betrayed its mission,” the National Catholic Register quoted him as saying.

(Stein hoist to Gop3.com: The Triumvirate!)

More:

• Winds of Jihad: Amnesty calls for Bali bombers’ lives to be spared

  * Amnesia Intentional, Irene `Gulag’ Khan’s far left Islamo-fascist front against freedom and democracy, is looking for bleeding hearts and other useful idiots to save the lives of the good Muslims who blew up 200 Westerners in the Bali bombings.

  FRIENDS and relatives of Bali bombing victims have rejected calls by Amnesty International for the lives of three Bali bombers to be spared.

  The human rights group has called on Australians to write to the Indonesian authorities in a bid to avert the execution of Imam Samudra, Ali Ghufron and Amrozi bin Nurhasyim…”

  Hmmm…I thought that AI made a big deal out of their policy of not helping anybody who has “used or advocated violence.”

• Amnesia Blasts US on Terrorism War

  “* AI is rotten to the core, just like the UN. Their sole purpose seems to be to hide and excuse the embarrassing filth and depravity of non-Western (Islamic) countries, by exaggerating and lying about what Western countries do.

  * More proof that human rights organizations have degenerated into a front for Muhammedan agent provocateurs like the excremental Irene “Gulag” Khan, with help of her Marxist enablers:

  
  [Amnesty International (AI) Secretary General] Irene Khan is a Muslim and was born in Bangladesh. Obviously Bangladesh has become a paragon of human rights and equality in the past few years, unbeknownst to all of us, for someone from there to righteously preach to the rest of us about rights as if it was invented by them.

• New York Sun: Scrutinize Amnesty International

  …In contrast to the democratic governments that Amnesty officials frequently denounce and condemn, including Israel, NGOs are not subject to independent accountability.

  No one outside the inner circle knows how or why they choose their particular “targets,” or how they assess the “evidence,” or write their reports. And officials such as Amnesty’s Irene Khan are often in power and in control of massive budgets for many years, without significant challenges or competition.

  Given this situation, the time is long past due for ending the “halo effect” that surrounds powerful groups such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Their reports should not be given automatic credibility by journalists, diplomats, academics, and individuals genuinely committed to the universality of human rights principles.

  Rather than publicizing their reports and endorsing their campaigns, the publications of Amnesty and similar groups need to be subjected to the same type of independent questioning as is done for reports issued by governments and other political organizations.

It is no exaggeration to say that the recent U.S./NATO/EU war against the Serbs, and on behalf of the sl-Qaeda-linked Muslim jihadists in the Balkans, was the product of the slickest propaganda and disinformation operation in recorded history.

Only now is the real story beginning to get any traction…and some of us have worked for years to get this to this point. Even so, it is a rare thing for anybody with political, media, or academic connections to come out of the woodwork and admit that the mainstream media, together with official sources, enforced a totally false portrayal of a war and of an entire people. But the tissue of lies is finally starting to unravel, and the truth is coming out, whether anyone likes it or not.

At least one person, evidently without having read any of these articles, has already vilified me, by accusing me of “peddling genocide denial,” simply for having raised this issue. I knew that was going to happen, because the mainstream media have usurped the roles of judge, jury, and executioner. The unthinking mob follows like lemmings, never imagining that the same thing could someday happen to them. The instant that the media have accused someone of a heinous offense, whether there is any basis for it or not, it’s already too late. From then on, anyone else who dares to say, “Let’s take another look at the evidence!” is immediately tarred with the same brush.

Have Americans learned anything from the Michael Nifong bogus-rape case? Or from Nifong’s disbarment and suspension for numerous acts of prosecutorial misconduct, such as withholding exculpatory evidence? Or from the fact that Nifong was more than willing to continue ruining the lives of innocent people, rather than man up and admit that he had been mistaken?

Evidently not! So many people still want to believe that the Nifong debacle is an isolated instance. Not only is the Nifong case far from unique; but also it is a mirror in microcosm of the vast scope of deception, the prosecutorial abuse, and the total absence of due process of law, that have accompanied the recent wars against the Serbian people and their ongoing aftermath.

Just read these articles! Read them carefully. If you disagree with what you see, it behooves you to research the facts yourself before you comment. If you are afraid to read these articles, ask yourself why. And if you discover that you have had a mistaken impression of what was going on, grow up and admit it!

• By Svetlana Novko on the Byzantine Sacred Art Blog:
  • Shameless Liars, Thieves, and Thugs…Please Keep Them
  • A review of the book Travesty, by John Laughland
• By Tara McCormack in Spiked Online:
  • How did Srebrenica become a morality tale?

Technorati tags:
1389
current events
fraud
jihadism
Kosovo
MSM corruption
politics
Serbia

Those of us who enjoy social networking through bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, and Newsvine are familiar with those little shortcut buttons, chicklets, and quicklinks that allow us to submit, vote for, and comment on our favorite web articles quickly and relatively easily.

But what if we’re reading an article with no shortcuts? Yes, we could still bookmark these the “old-fashioned” way (sign on to the various social bookmarking sites, and post the information using the url…sigh…yawn…)

OR we could take advantage of our browsers’ “links” button. Newsvine has posted a 10-second demo on how to do this with its Seed-the-vine service. It works exactly the same way with Socializer 2.0, which allows you to bookmark to multiple sites from a single page with its “Socialize this” link (Don’t forget to check out the “Create a Short Socializer Link” feature, which saves time when posting to multiple sites by providing a short url and pre-formatted post title!).

It takes a couple of minutes to set up the links initially, but for active social networkers, these little buttons will save a lot of time over the long run. All you need to do when you are on a page you want to bookmark or submit for promotion is click on the link!

Technorati tags:
blogging
Digg
Jenn Sierra (author)
social bookmarking
social media
Socializer 2.0
tech tips
Web 2.0

First National Consensus On Ovarian Cancer Symptoms Stresses Education For Earlier Diagnosis

From the article:

Researchers, including Dr. Barbara Goff, a gynecologic oncologist at the University of Washington, have conducted conclusive research that demonstrates that the following symptoms are much more likely to occur in women with ovarian cancer than women in the general population. These symptoms include:

• Bloating
• Pelvic or abdominal pain
• Difficulty eating or feeling full quickly
• Urinary symptoms (urgency or frequency)

Women who have these symptoms almost daily for more than a few weeks should see their doctor, preferably a gynecologist. [emphasis mine]

This is an important breakthrough because, up to now, ovarian cancer has been known as the “silent killer.” Without obvious, clear-cut symptoms, it has been difficult to detect ovarian cancer before it has spread too far for successful treatment. But now we know what to look for, and this can offer women stricken with this disease a much better chance for early detection and cure.

Whether or not you yourself happen to be an adult woman at risk for ovarian cancer, please pass this information along to the women in your family. It could save someone’s life!

Technorati tags:
cancer
ovarian cancer
PSA

More about ovarian cancer at Science Daily.