Moving to new blog at Clear.bluedei.com

Hi! During the course of testing many different blog engines, I ended up with 3 different ones that all had the same posts. Now I am trying to consolidate so I am moving to new blog at Clear.bluedei.com. I just finished a 3-part series on which blog engine I liked the best. You can see the third and final post at my Clear Bluedei blog.

The results were that I liked Google Blogger best for ease of use, functionality and for when you don't have your own web host that you can install your blog on. And if you have your own web host and are technically inclined and enjoy playing around with ftp and html and unix and all, I like wordpress.org using your own self-hosted blog for the greatest functionality and control.

And I have set up my own wordpress.org blog on my domain clear.bluedei.com so I plan to consolidate my blogs into one at some point and it will be that one. I also have one at allthingsweb20.wordpress.com that I actually would rather have closed down so that I would have had only my own wordpress blog and a google blogger blog, but I have the most people by far who read my allthingsweb20.wordpress.com blog so I am keeping it running in tandem with my own clear.bluedei.com for the moment.

But this blog's hits have slowly dwindled to the point that I feel comfortable putting it on hold and redirecting everyone to one of my other blogs. I wish I could make clear.bluedei.com my primary but everyone keeps going to and reading and quoting my allthingsweb20.wordpress.com so I'll keep it going also.

So please go to my clear.bluedei.com blog for my new posts. I will keep this blog with all the posts thus far, but from now on will be posting only on my other 2 blogs (and hopefully just 1 at some point).

Thank you for visiting and please come check out my All Things Web 2.0 blog at clear.bluedei.com.

~Susan Mellott

Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars Part 2: The Results

So as you know from my first post on this "Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars Part 1: The Test", I am reviewing and evaluating several different blog engines, with an emphasis on Google Blogger and WordPress (.com and .org). You can see my previous post to see the different blogs in action. And I'm sure this is going to be a large post, just reviewing the Blogger and WordPress blogs, so I will have a "Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars: The Other Options" post following this one where I'll talk about the other blogs I looked at. But for all intents and purposes, it came down to Blogger and WordPress (2 ways).

I wanted to decide which type of blog would work best for my needs and which one I would recommend to others. It turned out to not be quite that simple. Each of the 3 main blog engines (Blogger, wordpress.com hosted Wordpress and self-hosted Wordpress) had some serious advantages and some serious drawbacks. So as it turns out, rather than recommending one above all others, I will give an overview of each, what is good and bad about them and why and for whom I would recommend each particular one.

And to make a long story short, I recommend Blogger for people who want someone else to host their blog, don't want to pay for a web hosting service and/or who want a quick and easy blog that takes hardly any maintenance or technical know-how.

For people who want the all-around best solution, who have their own web host and like to get 'techie' (and know how to do installs, use unix and ftp, etc), it's definitely WordPress from wordpress.org. This is the most flexible, you have the most control over it and your data and it will do almost anything you want if you find the right plug-ins or code. But you have to have the know-how and desire to use it and it is only as good as you make it. And you have to have somewhere to install it like a web hosting service.

Google Blogger: I personally give Google Blogger the edge over WordPress.com hosted WordPress for anyone who doesn't have their own web host and/or wants an easy and quick blog. I think it is good for:

1. Anyone who doesn't have a lot of programming, moving files, installs, bits and bolts of how things work experience
2. Anyone who wants an easy setup with the most features for a blog hosted by the blog provider and the most options for adding plugins and html code easily.
3. Anyone who wants to have their own domain name, but use a blog hosted by the blog provider. In other words, who wants to buy a domain name like say, www.allaboutme.com (costs about $10/yr) but doesn't want to have their own web hosting service where they can put and maintain their own data and blogs (costs about $10/month). Redirecting is free in Blogger, it costs $10? (10 credits) in Wordpress.com
4. You might want to have commercial usage on your blog. WordPress.com's term of service prohibits 'commercial usage' (although its unclear to mean exactly what they mean). It appears OK on a Google Blog (see this post from the Blogger Help group).

Google Blogger has the most features, the most choices and the ability to add html code easily including that using javascript. That means that when you find something you like (like say Odiogo, which is the text-to-speech widget you see at the top of my posts on my google and personally hosted wordpress blog), you can add it to your blog posts very easily. You cannot add Odiogo to a Wordpress.com hosted blog because it doesn't allow javascript. I've run into several widgets that I wanted to add to my blogs, but could not easily do it in Wordpress.com. You can easily redirect it to your own domain name so when they type either your original blog name or your domain name, both will go to your blogger blog. It is an easy, attractive and flexible blog engine. It doesn't have as nice a built-in statistics page as wordpress, but you can use Google Analytics (which is nice, but isn't real time) or any other stats tools like ActiveMeter or Sitemeter or ShinyStat (or I'm sure there are others) to keep track of it.

The one thing that seems to keep a lot of people from recommending Google Blogger is that it does not allow you to back up your posts. Therefore, if anything happened to Blogger, you could lose your data. Also, you can't move the data to another google blog if you wanted to. And looking at the hacks to backup your data, there really isn't a good way to do it. Except...

What you can do is to create a WordPress.com blog and import your blogger data into your wordpress blog. It is very easy in WordPress.com to import posts and comments from other blog engines, basically just point and click. Then you can export the data from your wordpress blog into a file of your own. You can't reload that file back into Google Blogger, but you have all your data and can recreate it in wordpress easily. Which is better than losing it all. And if you use a redirect to your own domain name in Blogger, if something happened, you could change the redirect to point to your Wordpress blog (for $10/credits per year, I believe). It's a work-around, but I tried it and it works just fine.

There is some concern about losing your rank if you move (which I don't totally understand about rank and all yet) but here is a post that explains things you can do to help with that, called "Moving from Blogger to Wordpress without Losing Traffic and Page Rank" (Actually, when I qit blogging on all my blogs and switch to one (clear.bluedei.com), I may have to figure out what all this means.) Also, as I understand, Blogger (as would be expected) integrates very well with Google Adsense, which I gather is a way to make money from your website, with advertising, I guess.

Also, if you start with Blogger, you can choose later to go to WordPress. You can't go the other way because Blogger doesn't have an import or export function. For the life of me, I don't know why.

WordPress on wordpress.com: This is the most middle-of-the-road bet. It doesn't really do anything as well as any of the others (except for import/export) but it doesn't have anything really wrong with it either. Many people would recommend it over Blogger. But it seems that it is mostly because Blogger doesn't provide a way to back it up and my work-around takes care of that, in my opinion. One thing that I really like about wordpress.com is that they provide an easy to use stats page that tells you how many page views you've had each day, which pages were viewed, how people got to your site and what they clicked while there. The one thing it doesn't tell you is who actually viewed your site. You have to use another stats package like sitemeter or ActiveStats to see that. And Google Analytics will not give you as much information using wordpress.com as it would if you were using Blogger because it requires some code to be added that you cannot add to Wordpress.com blogs.

This appeals to all the people that Blogger and would be a better choice if:

1. You really want to be able to export your data and import it back into Wordpress easily, or want to be able to import posts/comments from other blog engines.
2. You plan to go to a WordPress blog that you host yourself and you just want to get started now with WordPress.com and then import your posts and comments into your own hosted WordPress blog.
3. AND you don't plan to have to have commercial usage on your blog. wordpress.com's term of service prohibits 'commercial usage' and you are supposed to use wordpress.org (your own hosted site) if you do...
4. UNLESS you are a big business and want wordpress to host your blog using their VIP Hosting Service that costs $600 to setup and $300/month hosting fee. If you have that kind of money, you can decide if that is worth it. Briefly looking at it, I would think not. For that kind of money, you have many, many options. But if you have that kind of money for a blog, I doubt that you are reading my post :)

As I said before, Wordpress.com has some drawbacks. It is not as flexible as Blogger. There are things you want to add that you can't (but you can in Blogger). You can't use javascript and you cannot have any commercial usage or you run the risk of being shut down. You also have to pay to redirect your blog to your own domain name (this is something you very well may want to do at some point) and for many other things too, like more upload storage space or the ability to customize your css or unlimited users.

Self-hosted Wordpress from wordpress.org: This is, in my opinion, the very best option for:

1. anyone who is 'techie' (understands files, uploading, ftp, unix, etc) and
2. who likes dealing with the bits and bolts, likes installing, maintaining and customizing their own blog and templates and all and
3. who has a host server to put their install on.
4. who wants to be able to do pretty much anything they want to their blog, wants to add all sorts of plug-ins and who wants to really 'pimp their ride'.

Self-host Wordpress offers the most options and is the most flexible of any of the choices. Really, it is about the only option I've found for being able to have total control of your own blog, outside a CMS (content management system) like Drupal, which is extremely more powerful than just a blog engine and requires a lot more knowledge and programming know-how.

Some drawbacks of it are that you have to have a host to install it on (either your own, or from a web service that costs about $10/month) and you have to install and maintain and customize it yourself so you have to have some experience with these things and you have to want to do it or it will just be a hassle and frustrating. And your blog will only be as good and functional as you make it. It comes as basically vanilla and you have to add everything to it.
You also have to be sure your host is stable and has good backups in case something happens. The other blog engines are as stable and well-backed up as google.com and wordpress.com can make them so it doesn't vary so much. But your own host system can be very good or very bad, depending on who you are going with.

Also, I tried exporting from my wordpress.org blog to import into my wordpress.com blog (as if I had a problem with my web host and had to move) and it didn't move my extra pages (like about me and books I am reading). Nor of course, any of my plug-ins or customization. So it is important to save your plug-ins and files. Since they are just files on a server, you can back-up any or all of it any time you want.

Here is an article that talks about the differences between Google Blogger and self-hosted Wordpress from wordpress.org that has some good information. It is part one, but for the life of me, I can't find part two. It still has good info.

So to me, it comes down to Google Blogger for flexibility and ease of use vs. self-hosted wordpress for control and customization. And that is a choice that depends on what you are looking for and how much you want to do.

I will post my reviews of the other, less well-known blog engines in my next post on this subject.

-Susan Mellott

Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars: Part 1 - The Test

I have recently gotten into blogging and in the process, wanted to determine which blog engine I felt was best. So I created a working blog in the following engines:

• Google Blogger: AlongthePathto20.blogspot.com
• Google Blogger, redirected to my domain: BlueDei.Blogspot.com redirected to blog.bluedei.com (either of these addresses go to the same place, my google blog)
• WordPress.com (hosted on WordPress): AllThingsWeb20.wordpress.com
• WordPress.org (installed on my subdomain): clear.bluedei.com
• WordPress.com (used to test backing up a blog, this is the vanilla wordpress.com blog with just an import of my posts from my Google blog, AlongthePathto20): clearbluedei.wordpress.com
• Vox blog: smmellott.vox.com
• LiveJournal blog: smmellott.livejournal.com
• TypePad and MovableType: didn't create because they charge for them and I would have made a "free trial" blog but it wanted me to select a plan and put in my charge card info and I gather the free trial meant I could cancel it for free. So of course, I didn't do anything with either of these.
• UPDATE: just added Instant Spot: clearbluedei.instantspot.com (this is just another blog engine I found) NOTE: click on the blog tab.
  

You can go take a look at each of these to see how they look.

I have been actively customizing, testing and using the Google blogger blog: Alongthepathto20 and the Wordpress.com blog: allthingsweb20 and the wordpress.org blog: clear.bluedei.com.

These 3 were my primary test cases and I have been copying any post I write to each of them. I have also been trying out their different features and seeing what they can and can't do. So they are all highly customized.

The others I created for testing some particular feature (like redirecting a google blog to a domain name or testing the import feature of wordpress.com) or for trying some of the other, less popular blogs just to compare and see if they had something worth looking at. The vox and livejournal blogs I did very little customizing to. I mostly just set a template and posted a post and poked around.

I also found this one called InstantSpot after my testing. I know nothing about it but may set up a blog on it to test it. Then I'll update this list with my Instant Spot blog.

I did not test ExpressionEngine, (someone commented they use this but I didn't look at it, might be a Content Management System) TextPattern,(actually Content Management System) Joomla, (also Content Management System) Windows Live Spaces, or B2Evolution. Nor did I test Drupal, which is considerably more than a blog and worth a whole evaluation of its own (with the other similar tools, like Joomla) Those are actually Content Management Systems so are outside the scope of this test.

So now you have what I used for my testing. Go look at each of these to get a feel for what each is basically like. And stay tuned for "Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars: Part 2 - The Results"

~Susan Mellott

Web 2.0 - Odiogo on WordPress (self-hosted)

Late last week, I had found out about Odiogo which changes your blog text to speech (see my post on 8/11/2007) and had tried adding it to my blogs. At the time, I had a Google Blogger blog and a WordPress blog hosted on WordPress.com.

It worked just fine adding it to my Google Blogger blog, but it turns out there is no way to add it to a WordPress.com hosted blog. This was a big black mark against WordPress.com blogs in my opinion.

Since then, we have set up our own domain and I created a subdomain of my own (clear.bluedei.com) and set up my own WordPress blog on there and supposedly, it was possible to use Odiogo on a self-hosted WordPress blog so I created my feed and submitted my request to Odiogo and waited impatiently for my confirmation email to arrive from them.

It came this afternoon, so I then tried setting up Odiogo on my new blog. It was amazingly easy! I just downloaded the plugin from the link in the confirmation email, ftp'ed it to my wp-content/plugins subdirectory on my subdomain and set it up on my blog. Now I have an odiogo feed button on my sidebar so people can subscribe to my audio feed and each time I create a post, the odiogo 'listen now' button is automatically added to my post.

Here are the actual instructions that were very clear and easy to follow.

1. Download the plugin

2. Upload directory odiogo_listen_button to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory via FTP

3. Login to your WordPress admin account and activate the Odiogo Listen Button plugin through the Plugins menu

4. Click Menu Options > Odiogo Listen Button

5. Enter your Odiogo Feed ID and click Save
Your Odiogo Feed ID is xxxxx.

6. Click menu Presentation > Widgets (or Sidebar Widgets depending on your WP version)

7. Drag and drop Odiogo Subscribe Button from Available Widgets to Sidebar

8. Click Save Changes

Here is a link to the Odiogo FAQ page. I noticed that people have been trying to find out why their feeds were being cut off before they were done. You can find the answer on this FAQ page by looking under "How do I activate RSS full text option on..." and they have one for Typepad, WordPress and Blogger.

It is really a neat and useful tool and I'm very glad I can add it to my new blog.

~Susan Mellott

Web 2.0 - Convert your post texts to speech with Odiogo!

I was looking at a Blog called Just Giblets and I noticed a widget at the top of each of their posts that said "listen now". So I clicked on it and it read the entire post by converting the text to speech! I tried other posts and it did the same for every post. And as I was going down their posts, I found one called "Do you notice anything different?" that explained more about Odiogo.

So I went to the Odiogo website and started looking at how I could add it my own posts. As it turned out, I ran into yet another limitation of Wordpress (hosted on wordpress.com). It does not allow you to use this feature since it restricts some of the things Odiogo needs to use.

So I re-signed up with Odiogo for my Google Blogger blog instead. After I got the confirmation email (it takes about a day), I followed the instructions, which required me to do nothing more than click a couple of links and buttons and voila! Each of my blogger posts had a "listen now" button. I didn't even have to add it to each post, it is automatically added for me. On the some the earliest posts, when you click the listen now button, it says "Sorry, this article is not available yet.", but most all of them are available now. Here is how it looked when I clicked on the listen now button. It is in the process of reading the post.

As you can see, there are other formats you can also listen and download the post as. Odiogo also creates an audio feed stream that you can access from the blog using this button:

This takes you to this page where you can sign up for the audio feed of the posts using various feed readers, or can just listen to them from the page.

We are in the process of converting over to our own hosted site and I will transfer my WordPress blog there, which should allow me to add this to that blog (although not as easily as you can add it to a Blogger blog).

They also market it as a way to create podcasts easily by just writing your text and then converting it to audio. That is interesting but I'm not sure how much easier it is than just reading and recording it and that way you also have a human voice rather than a digital voice. But I didn't really look into that much from their site and I'm sure they have a lot of other good uses for it. You can go here to learn more about their mainstream media, or here to learn more about adding it to blogs.

It is free to add to your blog and for some people, may generate revenue. I'm not sure what they are referring to by "ad income", I have not really noticed any ads except for saying it is from odiogo. But in any case, it is free. This is what the site says "Not only is Odiogo free, it may be able to generate advertising revenues. Once your listenership reaches a significant level, you may qualify for a share of ad income! More technical details about the solution can be found here and in our FAQ. So what are you waiting for? Give your blog voice, and legs, now! "

I have friends and family with low vision and this seems like a wonderful addition to a blog to make it more accessible. And I believe that this is something that needs to be considered as Web 2.0 apps are being developed. Part of the concept of Web 2.0 is inclusiveness and being accessible and this shows how easily you can enhance your blogs to make them easier to access for everyone.

I hope this sparks your interest and helps people think about creating and looking for Web 2.0 applications that help make it accessible by everyone.

~Susan Mellott

Celebrity 2.0 - Wil Wheaton is Web 2.0

I imagine most of you know who Wil Wheaton is. He is an actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Actually, he has done a lot more than that, but that is mainly how I know of him.

But what makes him interesting is his love and knowledge of technology and his leading edge use of Web 2.0 tools. Here is the wikipedia entry that talks about him and what he has done.

From wikipedia: "After leaving Star Trek, Wheaton quit acting altogether. He moved to Topeka, Kansas to work as a programmer for Newtek, where he helped develop the Video Toaster 4000." (I assume they meant he temporarily quit acting)

Wil was a very early adopter of blogging, creating his site wilwheaton.net (see the wikipedia article on his blog) which is currently being updated (since about last June) and is replaced for now by his blog WWdN: In Exile - Wil Wheaton's not-so-temporary blog. Per the wikipedia article on his blog: "Rather than just a fan forum, it was a place where people could gather to talk about various subjects including movies, music, books, religion, politics, gaming, geocaching, and miscellaneous topics; the original emphasis was on topics of interest to Wil Wheaton and not the man himself." He has entries on his blog dating back to July 2001.

Wil also has written 3 books, and most of the entries are extended versions of his online blog entries. (Take note, bloggers, this is not a bad idea if you have a following).

Also from wikipedia: "In late September of 2006, Wheaton began hosting a Revision3 syndicated video podcast called InDigital along with Jessica Corbin and veteran host Hahn Choi. " Of note: Wil found an error on the wikipedia entry for himself and asked on slashdot for someone to correct it.

Wil also twitters regularly and has just recently twittered on the Comic-Con he attended. Interestingly, he is having a problem at the moment trying to remove people he no longer wishes to follow and is talking about it on twitter. Update: as of about 4 hours ago, he twittered that the problem was a bug in twitter and was fixed by Biz Stone.

Wil also uses flickr and has some very interesting photos. And something I found interesting too that Wil has been doing on buzznet is "What is Wil looking At?" which is sort of a cross between flickring and twittering (flittring?). It looks like he is taking pictures with his phone of whatever he is doing and uploading them. It's a neat idea and I'm sure at some point, people will be doing that just like they twitter now.

And of course, he checks technorati for links to his blog and has a profile technorati for wilw. Here are some other things of his (from his blog):

• My Netscape Submissions (he's a navigator at Netscape News)
• My delicious bookmarks
• Geek in Review
• blogging.la

And there are quite a few interesting videos of him talking about technology on YouTube. Here is one where Wil talks about Podcasting (answering fan's question at reading of his book, Just a Geek)

And there is a lot more that he is or has been involved with. The wikipedia article and his blog has more information.

To be honest, although I knew who he was, I'm old enough that I watched the original Star Trek more than I watched The Next Generation. But I think he seems like an interesting person and certainly one who is Web 2.0.

~Susan Mellott

Google Analytics Update and WordPress Beef

Well, the latest on my problem accessing blogger.com, google analytics, etc is now fixed. I'm not sure what the problem was, but I closed Firefox and reopened it and everything was OK. I had tried closing all but 1 tab and that didn't do it. I thought I might have to reboot my PC but fortunately not.

As you may know, I'm trying to decide between Google Blogger and WordPress for my blog. Currently I am updating both and trying to decide which one I want to ultimately go to. So far, in many ways I have been leaning towards WordPress. Part of this is because I like the idea of hosting it myself and I am hoping that when I do, some of the problems will be solved with the additional plug-ins available.

But it is driving me crazy trying to add buttons and whatnot to my WordPress.com blog. I am trying to add a "Digg It" button for Digg. But it seems to be impossible. I have looked and looked and can't find a reasonable solution. And there are many other ones that won't work on WordPress, usually because WordPress doesn't allow Javascript.

And it would not be so bad if it wasn't almost every single thing I try to do. I do it in Blogger and it is easy. I try in WordPress and it is somewhere between difficult and impossible.

I am still hopeful that if I host my WordPress blog, it will solve alot of these problems. I really hope so because for some reason, I still like WordPress.

~Susan Mellott

Twitter joins the Presidential Debates!

On July 23rd immediately following the Youtube/CNN debate John Edwards will answer questions from Twitter users in a live webcast on JohnEdwards.com. He wants twitter-ers to @johnedwards some questions in advance. Pretty cool.

This information came from the Official Twitter Blog.

Elections 2.0 aka Politics 2.0

As I was taking our cat, Ubi, to the vet this afternoon, I turned on the radio to NPR and there was a fascinating discussion on Talk of the Nation about the web's role in the presidential debate. It was called Digital Democracy: YouTube's Presidential Debates and you can listen to a podcast of it on that site. It is very well worth listening to. It is about what role Web2.0 tools such as YouTube, MySpace, blogs, web searches, etc. will play in politics, both in the upcoming presidential debate and in politics in general. Here is the NPR Blog of the Nation post entitled Democrawikiyoutubia 2.8 that is about this NPR broadcast.

As you may or may not know, CNN is asking people to submit YouTube videos with a question for the presidential campaign debate that will be taking place next Monday, July 23. Here is where you can submit your video. And here is a Washington Post blog post entitled CNN/YouTube Debate: The Best of The Questions So Far that has videos of some of the best questions that have been submitted so far. There are also many interested comments for this article.

Another interesting fact is that much of this information is in blog format, such as the NPR Blog of the Nation, The Washington Post's Blog and the Official Google Blog post where the YouTube Presidential Debate program was introduced. YouTube also has a You Choose '08 channel for the 2008 presidential campaign.

And after listening to this broadcast and reading the associated articles and blogs, I realized just how much Web 2.0 is permeating our culture in every way. Yes Virginia, there is Politics 2.0.

~Susie

Creating my Blog and Random Web 2.0 Musings

I have been working on learning about and creating a blog. It has been very interesting and time-consuming I might add. All the choices: what template to use, what widgets to include, which blog engine to use, what to name it, what should I say about myself... the list goes on.

I created this blog using the Google Blogger and another one in WordPress http://allthingsweb20.wordpress.com/

After trying each, I believe I prefer Google Blogger. It seems to have more features and customization capabilities. I especially like the ability to easily edit the HTML. Although I do not know HTML yet, I was able to add the code to add a button to "Add this blog to my Technorati favorites". I tried to do the same for del.icio.us but was not as sucessful with that yet.

So what is the purpose of Technorati and del.icio.us? Honestly, I am not completely sure yet. I have tagged my blogs and added buttons to my firefox to add/tag in each, but I have not quite figured out what real purpose this serves. I hope to learn more about these soon. For now, I am just going to use them and see where it leads.

I am not sure what to do about posting to each blog. I don't want to duplicate my posts, but I still want to explore both blog engines. I figure I will eventually settle on one but for now, I will add different posts to each. Hopefully I can combine them into one relatively easily at some point.

I should probably come up with a division of thought for each blog, maybe have one contain more personal observations and one that is more technically oriented. That is problematic though, since everything I write tends to be personal, even when I am trying to just explore something technical. It is, after all, my own personal journey. And isn't it ultimately the personal journey of each of us, no matter what we do or where we go with it?

And how do people keep their blogs (and online persona for that matter) so impersonal and ultimately, so unrevealing? I think it is easier to state a position than a direction, and a thought than a feeling. Even the bloggers who like to take stands and state opinions seem to do it passionately, but impersonally. Do they ever feel vulnerable? Do they agonize over what they said, not so much for the content, but for the nakedness of exposing themselves to anyone who comes along? What is the difference between a blog and a diary? How do you keep the content and hide the person? What is the difference between data and information?

It seems to me that much of the Web 2.0 paradigm involves social sharing and
networks, like Second Life, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, MySpace, Twitter, wikis and more. Much, much more. Although I don't know if it has been suggested yet, I could see having a presence in other places such as online gaming site (again, virtual worlds) like World of Warcraft. It makes sense to me to have libraries in such worlds, after all, everyone needs help and information and reference materials, everyone, everywhere needs libraries. And what are libraries if not a presence in every place and every way people gather and disseminate information?

It's way too late (or should I say way too early) and this post is all over the place. I see that I need to learn to break my blog posts into concrete, coherent pieces. But I'm going to let this one stand. So just view it as my "stayed up too late" Web 2.0 stream of consciousness.

And one last thought. I've noticed that wikipedia is really becoming a viable source of information. For a long time it did not seem to have whatever obscure thing I was looking for. Now, more and more, it is becoming a first source for information.