Time away

Last night hubby and I flew into Houston and picked up a new-to-him pickup truck he bought on eBay. After gathering the vehicle we drove through southeast Texas, for a couple of days in New Orleans.

Arriving after dark I snapped this picture out of our window at the Sheraton. Our window looks down on the waterfront and casino. Life is good. Tomorrow we wander The French Quarter, a very good thing.

Posted by prolurkr at 11:23 PM | TrackBack

Have you ever wondered what 30 inches of snow on the ground looks like?

A friend of mine from North Vernon Indiana sent me these pictures he took during the first two days of the snow storm, thanks Trevor.

I'm very glad I'm heading somewhere warm and will be missing the great flood that is sure to come this weekend when temperatures hit 60 F.

Amazing how deep a car can be buried in the snow.
Some sights are interesting and unusual in the snow. And some are just beautiful.
Snow is made for kids. Especially when they are warmly dressed and at least part of their head is visual above the drifts.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:33 AM | TrackBack

Siriporn Panyametheekul

I have received word that Siriporn Panyametheekul and her family are safe in Bangkok Thailand. Siriporn was a visiting scholar with us at Indiana University in 2001, where her smile and grace charmed all of us. She is now a professor of Linguistics at Chulalongkorn University.

She is the co-author of:

Panyametheekul, Siriporn & Herring, Susan C. (Nov., 2003). Gender and Turn Allocation in a Thai Chat Room. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 9(1). Retrieved Dec. 28, 2004 from http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol9/issue1/panya_herring.html

Posted by prolurkr at 11:06 PM | TrackBack

The power of the sea

On December 24, 2004, Anya relayed that an earthquake, which at its epicentre measured 8.1 on the Richter Scale, had hit at the Macquarie Rise in the Pacific Ocean. Check here for the news story.

On December 26, 2004 the Indian Ocean earthquake hit. This quake topped 9 on the Richter Scale, and was significant enough to effect the earth's rotation, started the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia causing a massive lose of life. Currently the death tolls exceeds 60,000 and with accompanying disease, that follows in the wake of massive lost of life, are expected to top 100,000. On January 21, 2005, when this entry was readded to the blog, the deathtoll is in excess of 170,000 from the event alone.

Donations can be made to:

UNICEF

Red Cross Red Crescent

For other charities that are gathering funds check this Google search.

I have to admit that as much as I enjoy the HICSS conference and love Hawaii, it is does give one pause that we will be on an island in the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Tsunami Museum is across the island in Hilo. Hilo was the site of landfall for a significant tsunami in 1960. Read about it here. The death toll from the 1960 wave in no way compares to the current tragedy. Though the marks left on Hilo, by that 1960 wave, are signs I will remember forever. Watching the films of the destruction and knowing I have walked, carefree, in those same places gives me cold chills.

For more information on tsunami's see:

The great Hilo tsunami of 1960

Indian Ocean Tsunami Points out Need to Prepare Disaster in Pacific States

Talking About Disasters: Tsunami

Posted by prolurkr at 10:47 PM | TrackBack

Reading while on the road

I will be on the road for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully I can get pictures up as I go along, though that will - of course - be dependent on internet access.

I am taking two books with me to keep me occupied during travel times. First I have the Biz Stone book I discussed earlier here. The second volume, and no doubt the first one I will finish reading, is:

Serfaty, Viviane (2004). The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online Diaries and Blogs. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

I am really working hard to keep my hands off this book so I can get my packing and chores done before I leave.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:18 PM | TrackBack

10 tech terms for 2004

ITNews has given us a fun list of The language of e-business: 10 tech terms from 2004, found via How To Blog For Fun & Profit! and their post 10 tech terms from 2004.

The list is interesting in that most of the terms are social idioms rather then new terms for technical applications. Example:

Gatesed - If you encounter one of the unfortunate side-effects of using Microsoft technology, you've been "Gatesed." In typical IT usage, "If it Gatesed (BSOD), you were SOL."

Posted by prolurkr at 06:59 AM | TrackBack

Christmas Snow 2004 - post 2

I have been thinking about my favorite Robert Frost poem, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening since we received all of this snow. This morning as I drive to town, for the first time in almost a week, I couldn't help but be reminded of the words as I looked at the frost on the bare tree limbs. The blues were so brilliant it was just amazing. Consider this the morning after the rider stopped along their road.
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:57 PM | TrackBack

Who Let the Blogs Out? Biz Stone's description of blogs

I am reading Biz Stone's (2004) new book. Click on the title in the reference list to go to the book's page at Amazon.

I particularly like Stone's description of what a blog is.

So What is a Blog?

Is blogging self expression, personal publishing, a diary, amateur journalism, the biggest disruptive technology since email, an online community, alternative media, curriculum for students, a customer relations strategy, knowledge management, navel gazing, a solution to boredom, a dream job, a style of writing, email to everyone, a fad, the answer to illiteracy, an online persona, social networking, resume fodder, phonecam pictures, or something you hide from your mother? It's all of these and more.

A blog is a collection of digital content that, when examined over a period of time, exposes the intellectual soul of its author or authors. Blogging is the act of creating, composing, and publishing this content; and a blogger is the person behind the curtain. Part social software and part web building, blogging is peer-to-peer publishing -- the future of our connected lives (pp. 33-34).

Part of this description is fairly utopian and as such more then I am personally willing to commit to. I tend to be rather jaded about the transformativity of each new technology...some will transform, and some are extension of what was happening previously and will be further extended before transformation takes place. Setting that issue aside, I do like where Stone is going with this description, as he grabs the concept that a blog is tool not an outcome unto itself. In his description a blog is very much whatever the user wants it to be...that makes sense to me much more than the idea that all true blogs are political or technical filter blogs.

Reference List

Stone, Biz (2004). Who Let the Blogs Out? : A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs New York: St. Martin's Press.

The following comment as attached to the original post on December 26, 2004 03:37 PM:

Posted by prolurkr at 02:49 PM | TrackBack

Recursive Trackback

Since I have change to WB Editor for my desktop blogging client, I now have much better capacity to use trackback. As such I have been thinking about the use of trackback within a blog, as well as between blogs.

In this context Trackback refers to the formal blog feature that allows for a symbolic connection between the original post and a post that references it. In figure 1 you see a notation at the bottom of the post that shows 5 trackbacks, illustration drawn from Movable Type. This means that there have been five references to this posts from other blog posts.

Figure 1

Most often trackback is used between blogs to create connections, and conversations, that would be invisible, or at least difficult to connect, without this symbolic link. However trackback can also be used recursively within a blog to tie posts together into a thread. This allows for a finer grained connection then is available through categorization or keywording.

While I can see useful points in using recursive trackback I am wondering how the audience would perceive this usage. It is unclear to me how often the average reader clicks through the trackback indicator to view the posts that have referenced the original posting. Would they see, assuming they do click through, that the internal trackbacks create a thread or internal conversation? Or would it appear as self congratulatory naval-gazing? Are trackbacks mostly used by the writers of the posts to connect two or more websites, and therefore of little utility to those that read the blog without commenting externally?

Some bloggers use "See other related posts:" list to create the thread. By doing so they are making the listing transparent to the audience then is usually done with trackback, though this listing does use more real estate within the post then a simple trackback indicator.

Further information on Trackback is available at:

A Beginner's Guide to TrackBack

How TrackBack Works

What Is Trackback?

Posted by prolurkr at 11:48 AM | TrackBack

Anita Borg Scholarship Announcement

The Google 2005 Anita Borg Scholarships

Dr. Anita Borg (1949 - 2003) devoted her adult life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. Her capacity to mix technical expertise and fearless vision inspired, motivated and moved countless women to embrace the technological revolution as active participants and leaders.

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to furthering Anita's vision by encouraging women to pursue careers in computing and technology, we're pleased to announce four $10,000 scholarships for female students in the computer sciences during the 2005-2006 academic year. Two scholarships will be awarded to undergraduates, and two to graduate degree (master's or Ph.D. level) candidates. These scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic background, their responses to short essay questions and letters of recommendation.

Completed applications must be received no later than Friday, January 14, 2005. Finalists will be notified on Monday, March 14, 2005 and recipients will be announced on Monday, April 18, 2005.

Eligibility Requirements

Undergraduate Scholarship ($10,000)

Candidates must:

Posted by prolurkr at 10:15 AM | TrackBack

Christmas Snow 2004 - post 1

We estimate that the recent winter storm dumped in excess of 2 feet of snow on our little country home. As of later yesterday morning we had 9 inches which is more than we received all last winter. While some spots in Indiana do get significant snow, specifically up around the Great Lakes, down in Southern Indiana where I am we rarely get much accumulation. Neither my husband or I remember a storm like this in our lifetimes, where over 2 feet fell from basically a single storm. When I was in first grade we had a huge snow storm that forced us home from school. As I remember the snow was about chest high. Though I don't actually remember if that was from a single storm. I snapped these pictures early this morning as a neighbor opened up our road on a front-loader. Our road is one of the busiest in the county but this morning, as we are under a snow emergency, all is quiet. Click on the pictures to see the larger uncropped version, where it is very clear how deep the snow is. The first picture is of the west side of our yard. I snapped it on the 13th when we had our first dusting of snow. Check here to compare. I also have a picture of the same area from last winter here after a 5.5 inch snowfall.
	I grabbed this shot of our side yard after the front-loader went past. The evergreens are loaded with snow almost to the breaking point.
Late in the afternoon I grabbed this shot of the backyard with it's drifts. The dog was not happy that she could not run around outside today. The drifts were just to deep.

Posted by prolurkr at 07:18 PM | TrackBack

A list of blog awards

There are a many blog awards, most privilaging male bloggers but I have tried to make sure to find some that are female oriented. So here is a list in no particular order:

• 2004 Weblog Award Winners
• The Third Annual Warblogger Awards For 2004
• The 1st Annual St. Blog's Awards
• 2004 Food Blog Awards This is the call for nominiees as the final awards have not been given yet.
• 2004 Koufax Blogging Award Nominations Open
• First annual UU [Unitarian Universalist] blogging awards Another call for nominees.
• 2004 Political Dot-Comedy Awards
• Asia Blog Awards 2004: Introduction and Rules Call for nominees. This list is interesting for it's list of requirements.
• MarketingSherpa Readers' Choice Best Blog Awards 2004: 7 Winners Named
• Philippine Blog Awards 2004
• Best of Blog (BoB) Awards 2004
• Best of Blog Awards 2004
• 2004 Australian Blog Awards - The winners are...
• Best Blogs Politics & Elections
• 2004 Best Weblog Awards: Tech Blogs
• First Annual TechWeb Network Best Independent Tech Blog Readers Choice Awards
• Announcing The First European Weblog Awards Another call for nominees.
• 2004 Edublog Awards

Posted by prolurkr at 03:32 PM | TrackBack

New Harry Potter book available for pre-order

Amazon is now accepting pre-orders for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) of J. K. Rowling's series. Check it out here.

Posted by prolurkr at 02:38 PM | TrackBack

A Year of Professional-Lurker

On December 23, 2003 I began keeping this blog, so today is the last day of my first free-standing blog's year, I had a short lived and badly kept LiveJournal blog prior to starting prolurker. As such it seemed like a good time to do a bit of reflection in preparation for the new year that begins tomorrow. I should note that I actually registered the URL and signed up with my ISP, 2Xtreme Media, in October 2003 but didn't get around to installing the software until December.

In looking at the history of the blog I have some general observations. First I had not planned for this to be a very personal blog. My idea was that the space would be used, that I didn't codify until March 12, 2004, was as follows:.

I started keeping this blog as a way to work through ideas and as a place to write. My primary focus in my entries is on my research and finishing my work toward a Ph.D. in Information Science. This is not purely a k-log since the blogger is also a living person. Rather it is a mixed genre with features of a k-log, a filter, and a diary. I expect to post an average of twice a week, daily would become mundane for both of us as my life is basically pretty average.

In essence that is still my view of what I want my blog to be a mixed genre space where I can try out ideas and write.

Several points have played out that are somewhat different then I had not expected:

• I am posting more then I had expected, with an average of 0.9 posts per day. That is substantially different then my expectation of posting twice per week, or 0.28 posts per day.
• The blog feels more personal then I had intended. I think this may well flow out of, at least partially out of, the volume of posting.
• Travel posts generate more traffic then any other post, even after I blocked folks from linking to them directly. This amazes me since I am one of those people who head for the door when someone else pulls out their travel slides. I originally started posting travel pictures, on the site, so that family and friends could see them without me having to repeatedly narrate the shots. Go figure.
• I garner very few comments to posts. This has been discussed in previous posts including December 12, 2004.
• Most comments are garnered by trackback, formal or informal, to posts where others comment on my blog.
• The Edulog Best Research Based Blog Nomination increased traffic to the blog in far greater numbers then the total vote for all categories at the awards. Thanks Lilia
• Post preparation takes far longer then I ever guessed. Primarily this is because I believe in using the medium to maximum effect and therefore link heavily within my posts, even personal posts. It takes time to find appropriate links and to add them to the posts.
• The blog layout has evolved over time. I started out with three categories to use for posts, now I have five - two of which are from the original grouping.
• When I began this blog I read very few blogs outside my research sets.
  Yes, I can hear the "I knew it"s from the group of folks that have been fairly vocal about qualitative research methods, particularly ethnographic methods, being the only way to do blog research. May I remind the court that our dataset is now well over 2000 blogs.

  But I digress. You can read more about this argument in this blog and at Geek-Guides.

  I read a group of roughly five blogs on at least a weekly basis back then. Now that most blogs are available in RSS feed, I read roughly 30 blogs as they post new information and several of those are aggregators.

• Reading more blogs has lead me to be more involved in trackback communication with other blogs - my commenting on their posts - then I had ever expected. This process has increased filter posts as well.

One of the primary reasons I began the blog was to give myself a space to write and a goal to work toward, 2 posts per week. I did this because at that point writing was torture for me. I would slide into a complete procrastination mode, leaving any and all writing to the very last second possible before a deadline. Now after a year of writing here, that has changed somewhat because of blogging. I do think it also has changed after spending a year presenting at conferences and seeing that my work was very well received across the disciplines.

The Future of Professional-Lurker

I expect a big change to be coming to prolurker shortly. Actually it's a two part change. First I will be upgrading software to expand functionality and make access by those nasty spammers more difficult. I will also be having the look of the site redesigned after the first of the year. The site currently runs on design defaults which worked in the early days, now that I get some serious traffic I want a better looking site. Wish I had time to do it myself but I simply do not. So if you do site design or know someone that does please let me know.

Finally I expect the topic range to center on the research and writing of my qualifying paper. That should be true until spring. Though if I have learned only one thing this year of blogging it would be that anything can happen.

Posted by prolurkr at 12:28 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Another end of the year blogosphere list

The Blog Herald has named their The Top 10 interesting people in the Blogosphere in 2004. It's an interesting list in that the trends remain the same, visibility is limited to filter blogs and primarily male bloggers. Here are some quick observations (using grounded theory methods):

• All of the blogs are solo authored
• All of the bloggers listed are filter bloggers (most posts on their current main pages are very link heavy)
• All are written by Americans or writers working from an American cultural context
• Eight are political blogs (definition of 'political' is a applied broadly here)
• Two are by blogging technical/software corporate types
• Nine are male
• The only female is introduced at eighth place with the following:
  If the award was for the most interest female blogger on the net, Cox would top the list.

The post includes a list of who they knowingly missed in the list of ten. It includes seven more blogs:

• Six are Americans or writers working from an American cultural context
• One is Australian
• One is a corporate blog produced by a blogging software company
  On the current main page:
  • Four persons have posted:
    • Two names appear to be male
    • One name appears to be female
    • One is unclear
• Four are solo bloggers
  • All solo bloggers are male
  • One blogs about Public Relations
  • Two are political blogs (again the term is broadly applied)
  • One is a picture blog with comment
• One is an aggregator
  On the current main page:
  • All are white
  • Six males are pictured with their posts
  • One female is pictured
  • One post is taken from a group blog:
    On the current main page:
    • All are male
    • Two are clearly white
    • One blogger's race is indistinct to this viewer
• One is billed as an online journalism review with a stated editor, and stories from a variety of authors. (Gender and ethnic analysis of this site goes beyond the time allowed for this down-and-dirty llisting.)

So the trends we discussed in Women and Children Last hold true even after a year of blogging advancement. The privileged bloggers are primarily male, white, and American. Their blogs are filters, and are primarily political or technical oriented.

Reference List:

Herring, Susan C., Kouper, Inna, Scheidt, Lois Ann, & Wright, Elijah (2004). Women and Children Last: The Discourse Construction of Weblogs. In Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, & Jessica Reyman (Eds.), Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Retrieved July 2, 2004 from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:19 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Winter Solstice - Northern Hemisphere

Today is the shortest day of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere.  I know it is technically considered the beginning of winter but for me it signals that we are more then half way through winter.  You see after today the days get longer, with more sunlight hours, leading up to the summer solstice, when the entire process reverses.  So for me the long dark of winter is slowly lifting as the light returns. 

Yes I know we still have months of cold yet to come.  Our solstice this year, in Indiana, is being commemorated with a severe winter storm that threatens to leave us with up to 2 feet (12 inches) of snow when it ends tomorrow.  Once the snow ends the temperatures are expected to dive with a low of -6 F on Saturday, Christmas morning.

The picture is taken from the Newgrange & Knowth Megalithic Passage Tombs site. Give them a visit to see some very cool pictures.

Posted by prolurkr at 08:40 AM | TrackBack

Comments - None, well mostly none

I have set the future comments for posts to default on "None". I have also gone back and reset previous posts - December 2003 through August 2004 so far - if they have no comments I reset them to "None". If they have comments I closed almost all of the posts to additional comments.

Current plans are to leave posts open for comments for roughly 120 days. Now that is posts that have comments enabled, which will be many fewer posts into the future.

Hopefully this will slow down the spammers. *sigh* And make blog maintenance a simpler task.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:33 PM | TrackBack

CFP: WWW2005 Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics

Posted by prolurkr at 04:33 PM | TrackBack

The Lab for Social Computing at RIT

The Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology has created a wiki with social computing resources. Including information about weblogs, wikis, Internet Relay Chat, Instant Messaging, Social Networking, and Content Sharing Sites. No page for internet chat though.

They are also hosting a directory of researchers interested in social computing topics. Add yourself if you are a researcher and are not already on the list.

Added December 20, 2004 at 4:52 EST

Almost before I had my fingers off the keyboard from adding this post the subsequent CFP, I received an email from Liz Lawley, Director of the Lab for Social Computing:

Subject: re: internet chat on wiki

Lois-

Feel free to add a section for internet chat--the current architecture is nowhere near comprehensive, and we're hoping that lots of people will participate in making this a useful site for the social computing community.

Liz

Posted by prolurkr at 04:28 PM | TrackBack

Noah and Saskia, and why this American can't watch quality television

There are times where the United States as the maintainer of distance from the rest of the world causes me more then ideological grief. Today is one of those days.

My colleague Angela (Anya) Thomas at e-selves mentioned an Australian children's television series about teens and chatrooms, in her December 18, 2004 post Noah and Saskia (Take 2), that looks like an excellent teaching tool for both how people process chatroom interactions and specifically how teens develop online relationships.

So after trying to find a purchasing r