Comment Guidelines

I did, long ago, post Comment Guidelines for this blog, but somewhere along the line the link got removed from my sidebar, so I'll do a repeat/update and make sure the link gets in there.

Basically, if you have a comment that is related to the post and substantial, I'll leave it up. What I mean by that is that I don't want my blog cluttered up with irrelevant comments or thinly veiled spam telling me what a great job I'm doing and please look at this site. So, that means that I will delete comments when I can't figure out why you would have posted that comment to that post, if you are just saying, "Nice job," and, of course, obvious spam.

I do appreciate people telling me I've done a nice job, but everyone in the world (or the tiny number who read this, anyway) doesn't need to see a string of "Nice job", "I agree", etc. We all hate it when people do it in email and in discussion forums, so don't do it here either. If you want to tell me how much you appreciated the post, either tell me why it means so much to you in a comment, or feel free to "Like" it when it gets shuttled into Facebook. Or drop me a line via any of the communication methods on my Contact page. (This is beginning to sound like instructions in an online course discussion forum, "Please make your posts on topic and substantial. 'I agree' is not considered a substantial post.")

And, as I said before:

By the way, to all comment spammers, according to Blogger, none of your comment spam links increase your Page Rank, because all links in comments are tagged with the "nofollow" tag. So links in my blog won't help you increase traffic to your site via Google. Especially since I'm going to delete those comments as soon as I find them.

Oh, yes. I will try to make more posts this coming academic year, so that my loyal readers will actually have something to comment on. Thank you all for staying with me during this dry spell.

Email this blog or Overcoming technological inertia

The time comes when, despite technological inertia, it is time to change services. I have been using RSSfwd for email delivery of new blog posts. (Why would you want this when RSS exists? See below!*) RSSfwd redid their service a few months ago, and everyone had to resubscribe. I never did post that entry, because the service was kind of screwy for a while. I'm still not happy with it--my last "update" was a list of the 25 most recent posts, which I received 3 times in one day. Mashable.com also reports that RSSfwd may be stopping service altogether, though I still see nothing on the RSSfwd site about this.

I've now set up Feedburner (owned by Google) email delivery, with the link available in the right hand column. Please feel free to resubscribe via that link.

Changes and failures of services are something that we need to take into account when we use other people's services in any context. It seems to happen a little more often online, but that might just be that we hear about them all, immediately! (I end up hearing about nearly every Twitter outage, and I don't use Twitter.) For services that I use personally, Jott and Library Elf have both recently changed service models. I didn't use Jott enough to make it worth paying for, and I probably won't end up paying for Library Elf, either (but I haven't decided yet.)

Change is inevitable, and I feel it is better to try things out and have them change or fail, than to ignore the possibility of a useful service by refusing to try something that might change later. Such as ThinkFree Office for the Mac, which may change my mind about paying for personal office software.



*Now, why would you want to subscribe to a blog by email? Why not use a RSS reader? Well, if you don't already use an RSS reader, why would you want to start? Some people don't want to use yet another service, but they view their email regularly. I personally use either email deliver or RSS in my email client for things that I want to see regularly, or that I want to be sure I see the updates for. My RSS reader gets ignored when I'm busy. I even have a few feeds set up as "live Bookmarks" in my various Firefox browsers, for things that are really local computer dependent. (The ACRL blog is something that I only look at at work, at my desk, and if I miss a few posts, I can just scroll back on the site when I have the time. I only look at lolcats at home, so a local computer dependent feed works very well and stops me from wasting time at work!)

Basically, for me, different updating options work for different sites and feeds. I'm making the technology work for me, rather than changing my needs and habits to fit the technology.

Notices and Updates

Sorry, I haven't been posting much, folks. Here are a few notices and updates:

Campus is closing at 12:30 today, including the library. The library is closed this weekend, but will be open Monday - Wednesday next week. (Library Hours)

There's a MySCSU database update scheduled for Dec 23, 10 am - 5 pm. It will affect the MySCSU portal (email, calendar, etc.), but not Vista. IT suggests using the alternative interface for web email access: https://mail.southernct.edu/.

I'll be on vacation from Jan 5-19. I'll be keeping an occasional eye on my email (mostly to keep the spam from building up), but if you need help, you'll be better off contacting the Reference Desk directly: (203) 392-5732 or eref@southernct.edu.

Warm holiday wishes to everyone!

Getting the blog by email -- RSSFwd updates

For those who subscribe to this blog by email through the RSSfwd service, there are some changes to that service. RSSfwd is doing a major overhaul, and is currently asking subscribers to make a new account on their new system. You can do that directly on their new site, http://beta.rssfwd.com. Login (and create a new account), then go to My Subscriptions and Schedule an Import of your old feeds. They will send you an email when your feeds are imported. You may get double emails until they turn the old service off.

They are supposed to be changing over this week, so at some point you will stop getting emails from me if you don't sign up again. Right now the blog link to sign up isn't working, so I've removed it until it starts working again. You might be able to sign up by adding the blog URL (http://frequanq.blogspot.com/) on the RSSfwd site.

Happy Reading! (However you do it!)