Communicating in a networked world
Mashable is a good source of leads – on a bunch of topics related to online activity. Today they’ve put up a post that lists more than 40 “free blog hosting” sites.
I use WordPress and I run it on my own servers, as well as running it for a dozen or so clients. Gives me a lot of control, and more features than I would have if I used wordpress.com as a host.
But I get asked all of the time where one can find a good (and free) blog-hosting site.
So, Mashable has their 40+ answers to the question.
Found a good post on mashable.com that lists 50+ WordPress plug-ins that come in handy for site administrators. Go read it. Amazingly, I use a bunch of good plug-ins but I did not use even one of those recommended by Mashable. Some of them are a bit lame … the 404-checker sounds really good on the surface of it, though I haven’t figured out why a WordPress page would ever go 404 because they’re basically manufactured on-the-fly.
One that really does sound useful is the Instant-upgrade plug-in, that permits you to perform a WP upgrade automatically with a single click. WP upgrades generally take me around 5 minutes per site to perform and I do about 20 of them each time WP clicks over to the next version, so this could save me a couple of hours here and there! (It requires careful setup by a server admin, but looks like it probably does things correctly.)
[More in my series about cyber-nomads, entitled “I’m a Turtle”]
Wayne Hodgins runs a great blog Off Course-On Target – he is the e-learning guru at Autodesk, just north of here. And is involved in many important initiatives related to online learning. And Wayne travels. A lot.
In a recent post (11 May 2007), Online vs. Offline, he discusses the current trend toward web-based “applications” (such as Google Docs), but at the same time raises the question of whether these applications can thrive when individuals do not have “always-on” or even very good Internet connectivity.
Here’s what I wrote in response to Wayne’s article (with slight paraphrasing because you already have more background because you read my blog)…
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| The Internet/computer room – Chonor House – Dharamsala, India |
If you travel to even-farther-removed places [than the US and EU], the connectivity issue becomes really critical. When I’m in Northern India – Dharamsala H.P. – we used to always use Internet cafes. Up to about 12 months ago you had to use their computers – you couldn’t plug your computer into their router unless you could convince the proprietor that it was safe – or that it could even be done. Then they got wise and now we plug in directly – paying the same fee as if we were using their computers, but we’re wired right up. Back then they had 10 to 15 computers sharing one DSL line (128k bi-directional is pretty typical for 10 people to be sharing). Now bandwidth is a bit better, but still limited. I work alongside another org that has community mesh wi-fi available in the same town, with broadband uplinks to the Internet, and I can use that if I arrange it in advance and pay for the bytes I transfer, but I have to really do it at night when traffic is low, which entails a walk down a steep hill in the dark to another hotel where they have a wi-fi access point to the mesh, in the lobby, and then I sit in the lobby and get decent connectivity – generally about 512k bidirectional all to myself. [Read more…]
If you got to my blog via a Google, Yahoo, or (Microsoft) Live search, then you’re actually in the minority, but these days that’s how zillions of people find absolutely everything when they’re online. It’s what I call the I-forgot-the-name-of-that-site-but-I‘ll-just-bring-up-Google-and-search strategy. Over the past couple of years, specialized search engines that are focused solely on blogs have risen in prominence — and the one I pay most attention to is Technorati. Google also “knows about” blogs and your blog “places higher” in Google searches if it has lots of connections from other blogs. But, there are other such blog-search nexuses as well.
Here’s what I want to point out. The conventional wisdom from 1995 to maybe 2003, was that a web site had to keep its visitors “on the site” and never give them a chance to leave. A visitor who went off to another site was equivalent to a lost sale. So web sites jealously guarded their links and seldom contained “offsite” links (those whose targets are outside the web site). The sites that did contain “links pages” (meaning pages of reciprocal links with other web sites) were primarily those of individuals — and search engines like Yahoo.
Now today, in the blogosphere, it’s become an accepted belief that people who search for information about “X” would be interested in reading about “X” no matter whose blog it’s in. So if you’ve searched for “Dalai Lama” and gotten to my blog, the assumption is that you’d like to read other blogs that mention the “Dalai Lama.” How is that accomplished? And is it even good for me, as a blog-writer, to facilitate your going off to read other blogs?
Microsoft is countering the free software movement with “nearly free” software (announced by Bill Gates in April 2007). This in addition to their many other efforts to stymie the free software providers. The New York Times has a good article “Software by Microsoft Is Nearly Free for the Needy.” The writer suggests, and fairly, as you might suspect, that once a young user gets used to Microsoft software, they’ll become a lifetime user. So at $3 per installation, that’s a tiny “marketing” expense to Microsoft, which will eventually reap much more from these potential MS customers.
It’s called the Microsoft Student Innovation Suite.
C|Net news also reports on Bill Gates’ speech in Beijing, entitled “Microsoft aims to reach next billion PC users.” The software bundle includes Windows (XP Starter Edition), Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail Desktop and several educational products. To be eligible, a government must pay for at least 50% of the cost of the PC involved.
BBC News reported (19 April 2007) “Microsoft aims to double PC base.” They report “Governments will be required to provide free computers to schools, capable of running Windows, to be eligible for the discounted software.”
You know that these efforts were given additional impetus by (or according to some were direct ripoffs of) the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. Nick Negroponte talked about OLPC at TED (video) in February 2006.
AMD and Intel have been aggressively-competitive for years, and both companies have announced initiatives to put inexpensive computers in the hands of students in developing nations. Intel’s Classmate is their entry (at $400) and AMD has announced its 50×15 program (50% of schools by 2015).
Now, the trick is to get the cost of the computer itself down with reach. At $50, a reconditioned computer might be affordable many places, if reconditioned computers can be made available. At $400 the Intel Classmate is pricier, but can run Windows and its associates gizmos.