As an exercise in one of my level one courses I get my students to write a blog on some research topic of their choosing. I then get them to assess each others’ blog and award each other marks for content. This blog on Spam in the Internet was the winning entry this year. The others were: The history of the Internet hamad.blog Global warming Tackling Spam in the Internet

As a first part in a series of experiments on [light-weight markup languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language) (e.g. for blogs, wilkis, presentations etc) I have installed the [PyBlosxom](http://pyblosxom.sourceforge.net/) blogging tool. It tool a few minutes more than the 10 minutes claimed in the [user guide](http://pyblosxom.sourceforge.net/1.3.1/manual/x78.html). But it’s working now. For future reference the URL (or should that be [URI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier)) is [http://tinyurl.com/2gyqvx](http://tinyurl.com/2gyqvx). An advantage of PyBlosxom (and [Perl Blosxom ](http://www.blosxom.com/) that inspired it) is that the blog entries are just text files which can be edited in any text editor and kept under version control.

In which [Dave Raggett](http://www.w3.org/people/raggett) presents the state-of-the-art in Web Forms: that is HTML Forms versus the richer XML standard XForms. Most folks these days have to resort to clever, complex, JavaScript to achieve sophisticated UI effects in the current crop of HTML standards (with all the issues around cross-browser compatibilty that that implies). Dave is proposing a *transitional approach* based on HTML plus portable JavaScript that can provide XForms-like behaviour (declarative validation, rich data types, forms logic) in the current crop of browsers.

This week I’ve been [dipping into and watching](http://crispyj2.blogspot.com/2007/04/educational-videos-from-google.html) a lot of Google TechTalks with the [engEdu tag](http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=engedu) on Google video. I guess like visiting the library shelves and *browsing* (something I really ought to make time for!) as opposed to just hitting the catalogue for a specific title, this tends to throw up interesting things that you wouldn’t otherwise come across. One such was a TechTalk by [Mark Birbeck](http://internet-apps.blogspot.com) of [formsPlayer.

It’s my wife Renate’s birthday today. Happy birthday darling!

Just discovered [iStalkr.com](http://www.istalkr.com/): a *Lifecasting* site which allows you to add RSS feeds from all your stuff and creates a *time line* of your activities. I [signed up today](http://www.istalkr.com/users/cpjobling) and have added streams from my: - [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us/cpjobling) bookmarks - [twitter.com](http://twitter.com/cpjobling) twitterings - Starred [google reader items](http://http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/12981735514196780717/state/com.google/starred) - [Flickr photos](http://www.flickr.com/photos/51214457@N00/) - And this blog… So now, theoretically, I should be able to start to automatically build a complete record of my “*for public consumption*” activities just by *doing stuff*.

Here’s a [nice example](http://www.almaer.com/blog/archives/001455.html) of what can be done with Java applets! After downloading the (full!) JRuby implementation as an applet Dion shows that a little JavaScript can make it possible to execute a Ruby program in the browser. In the example, JRuby scripts are evaluated “onclick” and from a text input window. I wonder if anyone has done this with Groovy too? Powered by [ScribeFire](http://scribefire.com/).

I’ve just been watching a [video](http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6852287090518403675&q=engEDU+connexions), presented by Richard G. Baraniuk of Rice University, (part of the Google TechTalks series) on [Connexions ](http://cnx.otg) a non-profit start-up launched at Rice University in 1999 that aims to reinvent how we write, edit, publish, and use textbooks. Very inspirational and certainly worth a deeper look. Powered by [ScribeFire](http://scribefire.com/).

Google runs a regular programme of educational presentations by eminent software developers about interesting web and code development technologies, tools and techniques. The great thing is that the presentations are videoed and put on-line on Google video. It also seems to go out and about in recording events at local user groups and records those as well. I discovered this great resource a couple of days ago and have been taking advantage of the Easter break to soak some of this good stuff during the Easter break.

Just updated my template to rounders 2. Gotta keep things fresh right?

Under the heading of *it might be useful* I [signed up](http://twitter.com/cpjobling) with Twitter. There don’t seem to be any tools (extensions, google gadgets, etc) that make it easy to use from Firefox as it seems that SMS and Instant Messaging would seem to be the preferred interface. And I guess for the purpose (quick notes to say what you’re doing) that makes sense. I’ll have to install an AIM client now though!

After a recommendation in this week’s Technology Guardian I discovered [LibraryThing](http://www.librarything.com) another beta/web2.0/link/social/tagging web site. This time for books. I’ve started putting [my book collection](http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=cpjobling) into it. Apart from the benefits of having a complete library catalogue on-line, the social networking aspects could be interesting. It can also be used in marking books for a class reading list. See [EG-146 Reading List](http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?tag=eg-146) as an example. powered by [performancing firefox](http://performancing.com/firefox)