Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

There will be no Webcast.

Agenda

Notes:

• Still working on getting stuff for the Webcast
• JA: What’s our goal for the group?
  • j, always the cynical realist: Do we need one?
• LW: I’m here for the schwag
• WK: I have Chilling Effects keychains. Would anyone like one?
• ::WK hands out keychains::
• LW: If we invite software developers and Webmasters, maybe we can get some logo mugs. Let’s invite some.
• LW: I want to use this group to learn things I don’t know.
  
• LW: let’s invite some people to come talk to us.

• Frassle is free, please try it. You’ll like it.
• Frassle It: a nifty link for starting a blog post in Frassle based on what Web page someone’s looking at.
• Categories
  • JA: each category has its own RSS feed
  • RF, a library staff member, is drooling: can I put things in multiple categories?
  • SR: Yes!
• relates other notes on the same subject
  • SR is demoing how Frassle makes these connections
  • Related Items view shows other feeds with similar categories, subjects
  • Frassle looks at the categories and the URLs linked in those categories and compares them across blog posts
    • it looks at the link under the title of the blog post, not links in the body of the post
  • LW: One problem is that Frassle doesn’t have many users, so the universe of posts it’s pulling from to decide what’s related
    • SR: Frassle also sucks in all the feeds that people subscribe to, so the universe is larger than just the people writing on Frassle
  • LW: What about having a link log as part of a blog? I’d like to have one, but I don’t want to move my blog. Is it possible to encapsulate something like that on my blog?
    • SR: Why, yes! Yes, there is: the Frassle Publisher. If you paste certain code into your blog, you can get what you want. That’s how the Publisher works.
    • SR showed some of the programming for the Publisher people can use to set up what displays
  • LW: How do you spend time doing this stuff? Binges? Set blocks of time? What?
    • SR: Well, we had a bootcamp a few weeks ago. He’s so familiar with this stuff, he needs to find a way to get some distance, so he invited some friends over and they spent the weekend playing with Frassle. He spends time in very little chunks.
  • JD: wants to play with it, but wants it on his own terms
    • SR: We’re thinking of going open source
  • LW: What about the ability to publish Frassle content to another server?
    • JD: syndication on there might work for me
  • JD: server/server admininstrator problems put things in jeopardy
    • SR guards against some of that, but recognizes at some point, he might vanish into the night
    • WK: backup your blog
  • RF: with regards to finding blogs to read, is Frassle part of the problem or part of the solution?
    • SR: hopes it’s part of the solution. It’s ability to relate posts and stuff should help someone find things worth reading
  • WK: Frassle seems to have a learning curve
    • j finds Frassle easy to use. Bug her for assistance.
  • LW: I don’t think it’s too bad.
• RF: what’s an aggregator and what’s a feed?
  • LW: You use an aggregator to receive feeds; it’s easy