Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and blogs

In search of cultural grammarians!

ElectricBlue — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:39:29 -0800

What are some interesting blogs that touch on both the language and culture of a country? Hello! I'm looking for blogs that combine both cultural studies and linguistic insights. The two examples I have in mind are Sinosplice and No-sword.

What I like about these blogs is that they aren't purely linguablogs or travel blogs. When they bring up a cultural idea, they tend to apply linguistic analysis to it. This has the benefit of both helping language studies and giving the language's mother-culture a chance to shine.

I'd love to check out other blogs of this sort, especially some based in Europe. If you could hook me up with a German language-cum-travel blog in particular, I'd be stoked. It's best if the blogs are in English. If you have any picks in either Japanese or German, I could probably wing it enough to enjoy reading.

(I prefer reading blogs written in a casual tone, though more "academic" blogs are welcome as well!)

How do I create an online poll which users can permanently add to?

kmccormi — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:41:10 -0800

How can I create an online HTML form poll, preferably for free, wherein the list of multiple choices can grow when users decide to add to the list of choices? Many poll creators allow for the creation of multiple choice polls that give the viewer the option of selecting "other" with a text field for comments. However, usually this entry does not then become visible to viewers who visit thereafter.

I want my list of choices to be able to grow. If a user sees an existing choice that he likes, he can add his vote to that one, but if he doesn't see an existing choice I would like him to be able to add that choice permanently to the list. Any user who visits afterward will see his choice in the list and be able to vote for it.

I also would love for this poll to be clean, ad-free, and preferably embeddable into a blog or personal site. Does anything like this exist? Thanks.

Offline Blog Reader?

tesseract420 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:04:46 -0800

Offline blog reader? I've backed up my blog into an XML file. I'd like to read it offline. Open Office has XML support but this is not an efficient solution. There are online solutions--importing the xml file into a new blog, for example--but I'd just like to read while offline from the xml file. Is there a program that will permit this?

Making preparations now to make it easier later

flatluigi — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:20:29 -0800

What free blogging service will let me eventually and easily move over to a domain of my own in the future? What I mean is this: Right now I want to get into blogging, but I don't have the cash to get a domain in the near future. Eventually, I'd want to move my blog from flatluigi.blogger.com to flatluigi.com/blog/ or blog.flatluigi.com (or whatever it ends up being).

Any blog platform recommendations, keeping this in mind?

Help me learn about other peoples' lives through blogs.

kingjoeshmoe — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:18:39 -0800

I'm looking for blogs talking about the daily life of someone with a job (or other life experience) that I don't have (and that is interesting). I want stories the layperson can relate to, not minutiae for the people already in the field. Any suggestions? I really love blogs that give me an insider's look into the daily life of someone who does something I don't know anything about. So, for example, I was hooked on this blog by a medical student (before he stopped posting), that had stories about dealing with the dead bodies, exams of fake patients for tests, etc. I also was addicted to many of the customer service ranting sites for a while (before the stories all started to blend together), and of the lawyer blogs (like this one) that would talk about interesting stories involving clients.

I'm looking for the same kind of blogs, but for different jobs/lifestyles. So maybe a chef talking about running a restaurant (I'm addicted to Top Chef), a therapist on counseling, or a fashion designer on the working up, pitching, and ultimately selling their designs.

What I *don't* want is a blog for the medical community that deals with interesting (to them) news on the latest research, or opinions on the best kind of medicine. Or a fashion designer talking about whose clothes are interesting this year, or who wore what dress where. Basically, I want stories. Any ideas?

How can I set up my own 'lifestream' site that I control?

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:20:38 -0800

I'd like to set up a 'lifestream' on my website, logging all my online activities automatically and in real-time, similar to Friendfeed but that doesn't require me to be part of someone's idea of the perfect social network. Is this possible and if so, how? For example, every time I comment on someone's blog, upload to Flickr, favorite a MeFi post, etc., I'd like a post to be automatically generated on my site, with a time-stamp. Ideally, the content of the post would also be mirrored on my site, so at a glance a visitor could see everything I've done on the web recently.

I know Friendfeed and other 'life-streaming' sites have similar functionality, but they all seem to be locked-in walled-garden social networks, online communities I don't want to be a part of, run by people I don't know working at companies I frankly don't trust. I want my lifestream to be one-way and output-only, and while for simplicity's sake I want to continue to use other sites like Facebook, Flickr, Youtube for entering my content, I'd like to be able to mirror that content on my own site. Is there such a system out there, web-based or even a local application, that would fit my needs?

Anonymous only because I'm not sure if I'm being very naive!

I wish I didn't know about your blog

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:31:10 -0800

One of my coworkers has a personal blog which periodically has some Very Ugly entries about other coworkers. I mean, seriously, vulgar and uncalled-for entries. I hesitate to go to the blogger directly for fear of arousing their direct anger. I'd want to know if I was one of the targets (I'm not, so far, but several of my ((respected)) coworkers are). I've been keeping mum so far but feeling weird about it.

Personality-Based Design/Arts/Fashion Blogging - new trend?

divabat — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:02:05 -0800

Is there a specific term/genre that defines bloggers such as Gala Darling, Nubby Twiglet, Queen Gilda, Doe Deere, This is Star, and Agent Lover? Has anyone tracked this? I've noticed a few of those sort of blogs recently, sharing similar things in terms of aesthetics and content:

* Young female, using a glamorous pen name
* A mix between personal life, recommendations of products/people, and how-tos based on everyday life (such as How To Be Fabulous)
* Plenty on design, fashion, style, culture, trends
* Blogger likely to be an artist or other creative person
* Promotes the blogger itself as a brand
* "Things I Love Tuesday" (possibly started by one of those bloggers)
* Similar layouts

A few of these blogs cross-link to each other, but other than that I don't see anything that suggests they're part of a collective or tight group of friends. Rather, it seems to be a growing sub-trend of blogging, and I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this and/or done some research on these blogs.

They're like camgirls in the sense that there's quite a bit of voyeurism into their personal lives, but it's not constant. They're seen as icons and inspiration, and have enough followers to even sell products with their branding (AFAIK Gala Darling lives on Adsense income). When I was a teen, random-content-heavy personal sites, often with vector illustrations, were the Big Thing; this seems like an outgrowth of that.

Is there a name for this? Does anyone else fit this aesthetic?

Is there a blog host that won't bogart my Amazon links?

RogerB — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:21:24 -0800

Book-blog hosting: Is there a free and easy blog host that allows me to use my own Amazon affiliate links? I am thinking of starting a personal book and movie blog. It should make it easy to add books (ideally with a cover image and an Amazon link) to my posts – I'm quite enamored of Vox's super-easy interface for this, but they use their own Amazon affiliate links and forbid you to substitute your own. It seems like all the big free blog hosts do this, in fact (or at least Blogger, Wordpress, and Vox), unless I'm missing something.

I would really rather not have to host my own blog, or use a paid blog host like Typepad, just to avoid giving away the three to five bucks a year my blog will probably make off Amazon referrals. Is there a free blog host or social networking site, or whatever else, out there that will do this?

Any tools for posting to multiple blogs?

randomthoughts — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:40:23 -0800

Are there any tools for posting to multiple WordPress blogs without having to go to each site's control panel? Currently running several WordPress blogs on various hosts and am looking for an easy blogging tool that would allow me to post to these blogs without having to go to each admin page to do so.

Any suggestions?

Multiple blogs

phaedon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:42:21 -0800

I'm looking for a CMS/blog that allows for multiple "installations" to be maintained through one control panel and also allows me to add custom fields. I want to adapt a CMS/blog to keep track of separate project logs that can be maintained by one user in an office environment. I don't want to do separate installs because that means the person has to keep logging in to different control panels. I should also mention that I can't use Movable Type because I am using MAMP to run these logs locally on Mac OS X and I haven't figured out how to install MT (because of Perl). Hence something with a PHP backend.

How can we encourage local bloggers?

stokast — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:15:24 -0800

We live in a small town with vibrant arts and music scene. How do we get locals who are passionate about their particular scenes (fine art/punk rock/hiking/environmental activism/whatever) to blog about them on a regular basis? I am the editor of an alternative newsweekly in a small city in Canada. For a long time we've wanted to make blog hosting available (especially to people in underrepresented scenes), but because we're small we don't have money to pay to pay them. Even though we're a widely-read, successful paper, we're in a small town and can't get the advertising revenue to be as big as we'd like -- which means we can't cover everything we like. So, really, we want to inspire bloggers/podcasters to be covering what we can't. How can we do it?

What weblogs will make me smart and interesting and beautiful?

logic vs love — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:42:46 -0800

What are the best weblogs? My google reader is overwhelmed with celebrity gossip weblogs, and I'd like to replace those with something slightly more edifying. I'm looking for blogs on a specific subject, not just personal weblogs like Dooce or something. I have a wide variety of interests, so pretty much any topic is welcome. (Things I love: art, fashion, interior design, crafts, cooking. Things I would love to learn more about: finance/economics, politics, web/graphic design, SCIENCE!, &c.)

I've browsed though past questions and pulled some recommendations from there, but I need more!

What are some good websites for intelligent discussion and analysis of the NFL?

ibmcginty — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:41:18 -0800

What are some good websites for intelligent discussion and analysis of the NFL? ESPN excels at covering the celebrity gossip aspects of sports. Ron Jaworski's NFL Matchup is terrific, but it's only a half hour, and they hide it at like 8am on Sunday. So who's out there writing that type of nuts-and-bolts stuff, about, say, how the Patriots managed to run for so many yards against the Jaguars? Stuff along the lines of Football Outsiders? Anything out there that does what Fire Joe Morgan does, but for football?

And then what happened???

thehmsbeagle — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:31:03 -0800

Google Reader truncates posts for some feeds. Presumably this is me being dim. Google Reader is the only blog feed thing I can even remotely understand, but I'm having an issue with it.

Some feeds will show up perfectly, the whole post is right there in the reader. Great! (Example: Danger Room.)

Some feeds will show up as just the post headline, and I have to visit the actual blog to read the post. (Example: Late Show Writers On Strike.)

Some feeds, Google Reader will truncate: it'll show the headline and the first few paragraphs, but then it'll trail off in mid-sentence. (Example: Wee Wonderfuls.)

Is there a way to fix this? I'd like the Reader to show the whole posts of feeds I subscribe to.

I don't think I have any options set differently for the truncated feeds, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Also: at first I thought that the ones that truncated oddly were all from a specific blogging service, but they're not.

Any ideas?

Book Blogs?

SansPoint — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:03:30 -0800

What are some good blogs on literature? I've recently turned my own blog into a blog on books and literature, but I'd like to find others. Sadly, google-fu has failed me. I found Bookslut and Bookninja, but everything else is either focused explicitly on the publishing industry, for posting fiction, for promoting new book releases, or just plain crap. What I'm looking for, optimally, is a blog with critical essays, book reviews, and maybe the occasional fiction or poetry piece. Does this exist?

Networking and business card etiquette

scrumtralescent — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:40:50 -0800

I have a new community blog that is a place for people in my industry to talk shop. I want to get the word out and have a very inviting stack of business cards that I have collected over the years at industry conferences. Is it appropriate to email any of these contacts and ask them to write/contribute or just tell them about the blog? I think this blog will be a valuable tool for people in my industry, so on one hand I feel they might genuinely like to hear about the blog. On the other hand, the email would be unsolicited. OK, they did give me their business card, but at the time I was representing my employer, not my blog.

That raises another question, can I contact people I met at a conference about my blog if I was sent to the conference by my employer? My blog does not compete with my employer, but that seems like it might be in bad taste (or dangerous!).

I've collected a lot of business cards over the years, but never really used any, so please teach me the ways of business card and networking etiquette.

Does anyone know what blog script/cms sites like thelastboss.com & wwtdd.com & filmdrunk.com use?

cheero — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 13:30:31 -0800

Does anyone know what blog script/cms sites like thelastboss.com & wwtdd.com & filmdrunk.com use?

What to do with review copies of books?

climalene — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:04:47 -0800

What are the ethics and conventions surrounding review copies of books? I have a cooking blog. A friend of a friend works for a PR firm that specializes in cookbooks. She asked if she could put me on the company's mailing list for press releases and review copies. I eagerly agreed, and yesterday I got my first cookbook in the mail. Today I got an email from the publicist in charge of the book telling me how great it is and asking whether I planned to review it.

So, is this truly a free cookbook? Am I under any obligations? Should I reply to the email? If I review it, or even just mention it, should I explain somewhere on my site that I get free copies of cookbooks? If I provide an honest, balanced review of a mediocre book, will I stop getting review copies? And what else should I consider?

babyblog, babybook

papercake — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:29:37 -0800

How to convert a Blogger blog to a printed book? We had a baby in May and, since our families are spread out over the country, have been good about keeping a blog for them to see pics of the baby and hear about those things that only parents and their immediately family care about.

It's occurring to me now, since we basically suck at filling out the baby book we got at my wife's shower, that we should find a way to turn our blog into our baby book.

I know I can pull down the HTML and/or print out each entry. I'm wondering if there's something out there that my Google searches haven't found that will convert the blog into something more attractive to read offline.

Comments with or without a blog

dance — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:53:02 -0800

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way (and the best script?) to implement a commenting system for normal web pages? I am currently torn between setting up WordPress as a CMS which would provide that functionality or trying to find a script I can add to a page (and there are to be 40 or so separate pages each needing separate comment fields). My thoughts thus far: WP as a CMS

Never done it before
Could be difficult to modify a theme to be none 'bloglike'
Would integrate with Akismet to stop the spam

Comment script added to existing page

Might not integrate that well with look and feel of rest of page
Need only be a more professional 'Shoutbox' type script, no real need for commenters' location, email etc though I guess it cuts down on nonsense posts simply because it takes longer!

Running a private combination blog/wiki?

TrashyRambo — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 14:32:31 -0800

I want to set up a multi-user blog / wiki resource for sharing information privately. What's the best way? So - I work in a team of three. We read stuff and talk to people with the aim of informing a bunch of other people who live in a different country. Reports are currently emailed around as a Word attachment on a mailing list and then forgotten about. This feels very last century to me.

I'd like to change that by setting up a password-protected site that will let us post reports of what we've been reading, thinking and doing (like blogging) and updateable entries on particular issues (like a wiki). I'd really like them to run on the same domain name if possible. TWiki and WordPress both look pretty good - but I have no idea how to get started or how they could be combined.

Whatever the solution, it can't involve any funky web 2.0 Ajax as our work computers block it. Nor can we install any software so IE (bah!) and Outlook are our windows on the outside world. And bonus points for editing / posting from Blackberrys. Free is not necessary but cheap is.

Thanks!

Whatever happened to TrackBack?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:43:25 -0800

Whatever happened to TrackBack? It used to be all the rage, and it seems like less and less blogs are supporting/using it. How come?

What stock / tradgin Blog has a bearded man on the bull sculpture?

limitedpie — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:15:34 -0800

I lost track of a blog I really like... can anyone identify it from very sparse clues? It is a stock / trading blog. (**If you can tell me about any other stock, trading, economy, or venture capital blogs that you like that would be very appreciated too!) The blog is about stocks, trading, and the economy. It is written by a guy who (I think) has a beard. His picture appears in the upper right corner of the blog. In this photo he is standing in front of, or perhaps sitting on, the famous large bull sculpture that is near Wall Street. He writes often about Jim Rogers, and recently wrote about Jim Rogers moving to China with his family (and selling his nyc brownstone.) Any idea what this blog is or how I can find it again? And as I said above, any other good stock / commodities / trading / vc / econ blogs out there? Thanks!

Blogger to Wordpress for a Fee?

0bvious — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 21:26:51 -0800

Moving from Blogger to Wordpress: Can I pay someone to have it done? I know pretty much how to go about the move, but my time and inclination are low at the moment. If I could pay a small fee and have it done for me (with the results outlined below) I'd be a very happy man...

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I have an extensive blogger blog with a several hundred post history. I want to move it over to wordpress, on the same server, whilst maintaining the same URL structure for its entire history (so all past links still reach their destination - I guess this is a htaccess issue).

Each of my past posts was also tagged using Del.icio.us. As a bonus I'd love this history of tags to be pulled into the new Wordpress blog (i.e. update all the posts with their appropriate delicious tags) so future tagging could be done from within the new blog.

Layout and design can stay pretty much the same as it is now, although a bunch of plugins ready and waiting would be a nice final bonus.

Any services that will do this move? Any enterprising Wordpress know-it-alls fancy doing this for a small fee?

Cheers