Of Blogs and Microblogging

The eagle-eyed among you (everyone, surely), will have noticed the sudden excrudescence of a widget to the right. Since this represents the rude irruption of that upstart Twitter among the peaceful glades of Blogger, I feel some explanation is in order.

I've only been using Twitter for about a month, but I've found a what seems to me a fairly natural use for it alongside Open... and my Open Enterprise blog: posting stuff that doesn't really merit a full-on blog post, but is worthy of a quick mention.

So the idea of including a few tweets on this blog is to offer a few quick links or ideas that might be of interest to readers of this blog, without them needing to subscribe to Twitter or even leave this page.

It's meant to add, not take away, and nothing else will be changing in terms of what I blog about (except that I probably won't be posting anything really short, since that is likely to end up on Twitter.)

I intend running this page in its present form for a while to see how people like it. Please feel free to let me know whether you love or loathe it. I may also tweak some of its parameters - number of tweets etc. - so thoughts on that, too, would be welcome.

The Convention on Modern Liberty - in Pictures

Those nice people from the Convention on Modern Liberty have pointed out that they have a selection of tasteful gifs for use on Web sites.

Open Data Database

Well, not quite, but a handy page of links to info about the Open Data Commons licence. (Via Simon Phipps.)

How Orange Can Become the Apple of Our Eye

Orange has repackaged some of its services for telecommuting workers into a portfolio called "Open Office."

And yet it doesn't think this might be confused with a certain office suite of a similar name:

A spokesman for Orange UK said that the telecommunications company's use of the name "Open Office" should not create any confusion because it did not refer to a software package, and the term was not yet a registered trademark in the U.K.

Well, maybe not, but how about this: as a gesture of goodwill, why doesn't Orange start offering links to (the other) OpenOffice.org on its site? It will cost it nothing, avoid confusion, and earn it plenty of brownie points with the free software world. Heck, it could even hook up its Open Office with users' PCs running copies of OpenOffice.org. What's not to like?

The State of the Citizen Media Nation

The undisputed doyen of citizen media - aka open journalism - is Dan Gillmor. He's just published a splendid review of the field that is positively stuffed to the gunwales with links to the main sites and stories in this field. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is now the single best place to start for those wishing to understand open journalism.

Snap Snipped

In my never-ending quest to keep you lot happy, I've modified the Snap options on this page. First, in the top right-hand corner you should find the option to switch Snap on in the first place. If you don't want it, don't click on it.

Second, I've opted not to trigger Snap with mouse over links, but only over the Snap bubble that follows them for external sites. Finally, if you want to get rid of Snap having tried it out, click on the bubble, then choose the Options menu from the Snap bubble to cancel Snap for this site.

Hope this helps.

Snap Decision

As you have probably noticed, there are no images on this page. This is largely to speed the loading: with pix, it would take much longer, and generally slow down the experience of reading the blog.

Clearly, though, much of the Web is graphical in nature, and many Web pages are visually attractive. So it's a pity not to be able to show this as an enticement to explore the links in these posts further.

But I think I've found the solution. I've decided to install Snap Preview Anywhere on these pages. When you move the mouse pointer over an external link, you should see a small floating image of the page linked to (you need Javascript enabled for this to work). To follow the link, either click on it as usual, or click on the image of the page it leads to. More details here.

I hope you find this useful - I know I do on other sites that have installed it. If you don't, you can turn it off by clicking on Options in the floating window, and disabling it.

Update: Following suggestions in a comment (for which thanks), I've now activated Snap Preview for internal links. And you'll notice a small search box in the pop-up window: this leads to Snap's search engine, which also uses its preview technology to good effect. Feedback on these moves is always welcome.