Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with content

Help a British Ex-Pat Access Overseas Content (BBC, iTV, premier league football, etc...)

ghostpony — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:10:32 -0800

My father is a British ex-pat who is craving some good old fashion football/cricket/BBC. Please share some advice about best way to access this content while in the states. My father is a British ex-pat who has lived in the states for some 20 odd years. After many years of paying through the nose for pay per view football matches and the occasional cricket test match he gave up.

Can you give us some advice about the best way to access this content? He is interested in watching Premier League matches, cricket, rugby, and most everything the BBC puts out. He is particularly interested in live-streaming matches, but would take what he can get.

Also news to me Hulu has a UK only site that features content from Channel 4, ITV, and other UK only channels, and so access to that would be welcome.

Do you have any advice? Where do we start?

Capture web content yet retain formatting?

DerekTheGeek — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:31:01 -0800

Can anyone suggest a tool that does a better job of selecting only the web content you want to archive yet keeps the formatting when copied? I find that I frequently need to capture content from all over the web for my own knowledge database. This includes portions of articles, comments, blog posts, etc … For better or for worse I have settled on Microsoft Outlook as the repository for my knowledge base. I have compared lots of different tools and OneNote 2007 is for the moment the best option that fits my needs. That being said I am having trouble finding a tool that will allow me to capture only that data (text and images) I need from a web page.

For the time being I have been using the “Aardvark” plug-in for Firefox that allows me to selectively remove or isolate sections of a web pages document object model. Once I have isolated the content I want to capture I then copy and paste into OneNote.

The problem I find is that the content I copy often times does not retain its formatting (font, alignment, etc ..) when pasted into OneNote. I want to avoid having to take screen shots for various reasons (search ability, archive size, etc ..).

Any suggestions on a better method or tool? Thanks.

Innovative Book Designs

0bvious — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:37:46 -0800

Innovative Books: I am looking to compile a list of the most innovative uses of the book format. Books that break the mould in their layout and design, perhaps books that use online systems to extend their content value or push their form into new places. I am most interested in narrative and theory, but any book that is interesting (artist books etc.) would be really appreciated. I have a few examples, in order of publication, to set the ball rolling:

Compendium for literates : a system of writing by Karl Gerstner - A book about book form in an innovative form. Beautiful and still fresh

Dictionary of the Khazars: a lexicon novel in 100,000 words by Pavic - a 'dictionary novel' "written in two versions, male and female, which are identical save for seventeen crucial lines"

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Philips - an artist who has used one particular edition of one particular book as a space for his work for many years

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larson - extended use of footnote, side-note and illustration to give the narrative dimension

I would love any ideas you have!

Can I outsmart the cache.

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:43:31 -0800

How do I make something disappear online? (I know, I know) I wrote a controversial article on my own site. The subject is topical and my position is strongly stated so the article received a lot of traffic. My website and my (unusual) name were linked by several larger sites. My article has now been online for a couple of weeks and received a lot of flak. I didn't expect all this attention. I think writing the article in the first place was probably a bad idea. I already took the article down but it's still findable in caches. What's the best way to make it all go away?

Resources for starting a for-profit website

lgyre — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:54:42 -0800

I'm a freelancer who mostly lives by writing web content on a wide variety of topics for very low pay. By doing this for some time, I've learned quite a bit about SEO, social marketing, and so on. I also know a bit about web design and the technical skills required. So, I'm thinking it would be really nice to go into business for myself instead of making a small percentage of the revenue that my content generates...but the one aspect of this that I really don't know anything about is the business aspect. For example, figuring out how likely it is that this plan could be feasible at all, and what my overall strategy should be. The particular reason I'm asking this question here is that there is actually so very much information on this topic out there, and most of that information is trying to sell me something. I don't mind buying a book or something, but I'd love some resource recommendations from disinterested third parties, especially if you've ever done something like this.

Does too much constant incoming content = dangerous, or damaging somehow?

Ash3000 — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:35:22 -0800

Can you think of any recent writing, or art, about it being somehow intellectually damaging, or spiritually dangerous, or in any other way harmful to constantly be plugged into content, particularly via an ipod or some other mp3 player? Have you ever gotten into a state where you have your ipod available whenever you are, say, exercising, or going for a walk, or on a subway - really, any kind of stasis made use of such a background-filler, listening to podcasts, audiobooks, music, etc.? And then you inevitably have headphones on when you're on the computer, whether it's to block out distractions, or for its own sake? And if headphones aren't the carrying agent, there's some other way you always have *something* in front of you, some fount of content, be it the computer in front of you or the book in your knapsack? (Though, if I'm being honest with myself, for me it's more often electronically-based than not.)

I've been thinking about this lately, how I will sometimes live like this for a bit, but eventually feel a kind of nausea growing in me and have to take the headphones off, have to remove the informational source...and yet I'll sheepishly admit that sometimes I delay even this.

And it's got me to wondering - surely people have written about this in some way, about it somehow being a danger to constantly be receiving content, rather than in just taking part in neutral, unmediated experience, or creating content yourself? Surely there must be some neuroscience-based case that this is unhealthy, or some sociological polemic someone wrote against this phenomenon, or some case that it's spiritually draining? And yet the closest thing I can think of to this offhand is a passage in A.J. Jacobs' book The Know-It-All, an account of a year spent reading the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety that I read a while back, where a Buddhist friend warns that the author that his undertaking might truly warp his mind. (This isn't, as far as I remember, ever explicated, so I have no idea if he's citing some piece of Buddhist thinking on memorization, or monkey mind, or something else entirely.)

This need not even be a modern question; someone 20 years ago who finished a book and immediately put pick up another without a moment's reflection might be guilty of the same, not to mention getting ready in the morning with the public/talk-radio on, etc. But it seems more probable in an age where you can have many GB of information loaded up on your ipod or whatever other device at all times, and somehow I feel like I want to read more about this issue - I just don't know where to look.

Online Photography Display System

netbros — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:06:41 -0800

I'm planning to post photographs to my own website as a travelogue. I'm looking for an eye-catching interface that is easy to use and maintain. What would you recommend? I'm not interested in one of the photo sharing sites like Flickr. This will be on my own site. I've seen many of the Flash interfaces and photo-a-day blog types. Some seem to work fairly well, but others just aren't very viewer-friendly. Free obviously is best, but I don't mind spending something to get a nice, pleasant looking product. I am somewhat computer savvy, so I can probably deal with setup and configuration. In your experience, or from what you have observed, what is best? Thanks for your help.

Do it yourself RSS?

[ixia] — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:33:59 -0800

How can I aggregate content from government and NGO websites which update regularly yet don't offer RSS feeds? I don't intend to publish the content anywhere else. I just need to watch a lot of different websites for updates and new publications, and I don't have the time to load all of them every day.

Surely, someone in the big, wide internet must have solved this problem long ago?

Is CMS even what I need?

carbide — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:29:07 -0800

I'm redesigning the company website. It's fairly simple - no blog, no e-commerce, no client log-in - but I'm not a web designer or developer, and I won't be here to maintain it forever. Please help me figure out how to plan for its future. The site is maybe 100-150 pages and is largely as a portfolio site. Say, eight categories, thirteen sub-pages in each category, one of which is a catch-all for archived projects, so the other twelve may be moved/changed. There's also pages like a list of staff, company profile, etc.

I'm comfortable with HTML, learning CSS, basic in Dreamweaver, and can read but not write JavaScript. No other secret programming or CMS experience. I'm also an intern in the interniest sense, and the only reason I'm not fleeing from this is that the old site was last updated in 2004 and is most likely actively losing the company work, and it's seriously unlikely that the directors will act on this at all, and my colleagues are thinking of it as print design. There is NO money for the project at all, for software or labour - for emphasis, I know I shouldn't be the one doing this.

Whoever is updating this will be fine with, say, adding a staff member to a static page, or adding a one-liner about awards to a project page. The bit that worries me is in adding new projects, or even more, adding a new category.

Is this a CMS issue? Is there a way to set this up to at least allow for all pages in a category to have the same addition to their sidebar if a new project is added?

I am happy to learn a moderate amount (and use lynda.com already) but don't want to take on something so much beyond my level that it will be doomed to failure when I hit an error message I don't understand - I can build and understand technical things visually or with my hands, am confident with information architecture and fine with design visually, have read a good bit on accessibility, but I hit a wall of frustration with maths or code problems.

I thought about going anonymous so I could be honest and ask the stupid small questions in non-technical terms, so please be kind because this is mortifying! And the site linked in my profile is a showcase of one-page half-assedness, not the extent of my ability, I promise.

Eye glasses online?

BoldStepDesign — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:08:14 -0800

After reading this post: (http://3mew.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/eyeglasses-stores-are-for-suckers/) I'm thinking about buying new glasses online. What are some (online) places you'd recommend @ looking for glasses? Please include any tips and advice you may have.

Tell me about writing for the commercial web!

Miko — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:04:26 -0800

What do I need to know about writing for the web? I'm talking to some people who run a wonderful, small, independent web-development and design firm. They have had great success doing websites for regional and national companies and local businesses, updating image as they go with fresh design and new messaging. They do everything from toy stores and book stores to hospitals, advocacy groups, professional service firms, etc. Their business is increasing rapidly and they will probably be asking me to do some writing for them soon, on contract. They've seen my writing, which at this point is a very occasional moonlighting activity for me, in local newspapers (features, reviews) and magazines (food writing for the city mag). So they're confident I can put words together and deliver clean copy on a deadline.

However, I feel like there are some real specifics about writing for commercial web sites that I could stand to learn, and having some guiding principles going in would be really helpful.

So I'm asking a very, very open-ended question: what would you tell someone who has written for print, on mostly arts and culture topics, and for professional reasons (grant applications and museum labels and training manuals) about writing for the web on contract for a client who is trying to convey a specific image and message?

What jargon will I hear? What basic questions would I, as a content writer, need to ask at the beginning of a project?

What web resources would you direct a content writer to?

What is the range of fees for this service? How should I start the negotiations? I honestly have no idea what to offer here - print pays by the publication, usually a flat fee in a fee structure giving a range of compensation for type of article and word count. With web projects, do writers charge by the hour? By word count? By type of feature? By package? I have absolutely no idea what to ask. Of course I'm sure the range goes from 'peanuts/free' to 'sky high for the best companies,' but this company is doing very well and growing, they intend to pay, and I am a professional writer looking at this as an income source, not a hobby. So I would love some examples of fees and fee structures that web writers use for different situations and different levels. What are the industry standards?

What other advice do you have that I don't know enough to ask yet?

Thanks a lot. Writing/developing websites could be a really wonderful skill to add to my career bag-of-tricks, so I'm eager to be successful at it.

Define Contentedness

netbros — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:19:19 -0800

What are the keys to self-satisfaction and contentedness? At this point in my life I feel reasonably content, but I'm not sure I could verbalize why. I am comfortable economically, not rich, but not living check to check either. My job is fine, not an intellectual challenge, but all I need as I near retirement. I am nearly always a happy person, yet I still occasionally get irritated by contrary individuals. I am charitable, but could always do more. How do you tell if you're content with where you are?

Looking for Tools to Develop YouTube-style application

jurczyk — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:34:33 -0800

What application/platform should I use to create a YouTube type portal (focusing on user-generated content) that allows site users to search for content (videos as well as other file types) and upload their own content? The service would provide users with a topical catalog of materials, including YouTube videos as well as FLVs, SWFs, PPTs, docs, and other file types. Users would also be able to upload their own files.

Wordpress for local TV site?

davidmsc — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:56:36 -0800

Wordpress as CMS for a local TV/news site? I'm a WP guy. Love it. Comfortable with it. But now that I'm the online producer for a local TV station, I've come face-to-face with WorldNow Producer. It's a corporate CMS: it works, but it's big, clunky, etc.

I don't have any delusions that I will be able to convert our site to a WP solution anytime soon...but would love to know if any smart MeFites can tell me if using Wordpress for a local TV site is a good idea.

It's fast, light, free, does video, etc, it's customizable, does everything a website needs. Right?

So surely there's some sort of "corporate" reason that WP isn't used. Security, maybe?

So: using Wordpress for a small-market TV station website. Mostly news, contests, community calendar, photo galleries, etc. Good idea?

Will I cross the line in the blogging world?

bash — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:46:50 -0800

Where do you draw the line with information on a blog? I started a blog about my father's death, and I'm not sure what to post and what not to. When my dad died, I spent about two weeks writing pretty regularly and have a wealth of material, but my dad wasn't exactly a saint, hell, he wasn't even that nice of a guy, so my feelings about his death are complicated. I have pretty uncomfortable memories resulting from his secrets and lies that extend beyond his actual death. My mom won't know about it, my grandma won't see it, but some people I know will certainly read it. What are the repercussions of not sticking to the traditional, "OH this person was such a great person and what a loss" eulogizing? I'm new to blogging. Never done it before.

Fetch and Display remote content?

steppe — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:24:53 -0800

What options do I have to fetch content from other websites for display on my own? I am setting up a Wordpress blog, and likely a somewhat static html site, and possibly also Textpattern site (all hosted at Webfaction), etc. I am interested in fetching the content of up to 15 other websites, mostly in another language, for display (and proper crediting of course) on my blogs.

The idea is for some automatic process to fetch and display a number of different articles from Kazak language sources, then I add some commentary/translation of my own, for readers who might be interested in that region/culture, so that they don't have to go to all 15+ sites themselves.

Show me the money!

sabotagerabbit — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:01:40 -0800

I've been asked to write the web content for a site for my previous place of employment, and I need help figuring out fees. I'm not a professional writer, but I think they're willing to pay me like one because they don't have to fill me in on the organization, etc., and they trust my work (I've written another site for them, but it was part of a larger project, so I can't use that as a guide).
I'm looking for some idea of what to charge per hour, or whether I charge per page or per word or what. I will be required to do some research for the project, but they will provide most of the background (or it's very easily accessible). They are a mid-sized non-profit.
I'd really appreciate any help! Let me know if any further information would help to answer my question...
Thanks!

What is an editorial plan?

divabat — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:35:38 -0800

What's an editorial plan? Do topic-focused weblogs (like the Gawker Media ones) have one? How do they work out what sort of content goes on their blog? I revisited my past question on magazines because I've got the beginnings of a web magazine but need some help on focusing my content. The comments there mention editorial plans, but I can't seem to find concrete examples of such.

I have a stronger idea of whom my webzine is targeted towards, and some ideas of what content I want in there. However, my idea can easily devolve into tangents, and I'm looking for ways to better structure the content of my webzine. (What categories? What can go in and what can't? Who contributes? What are the guiding principles?)

I tend to work best by example, so any examples or suggestions for this would be greatly appreciated. I'm also working on the more business-y side of things, but I feel I need to get this aspect down pat before I work on the rest. Or should I just start up the site, do a few entries, and run with it?

How to best provide online usage statistics to content subscribers? Should I?

chillmost — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:38:43 -0800

Tools for a scientific publisher to provide usage statistics for its subscribers? Is this a good idea? I am the webmaster for a small scientific publisher. Our content is presented online in a way that is similar to most other publishers. The abstracts are free to all, but the articles are restricted to subscribers by the use of IP addresses in htaccess files. Most of our subscribers are university libraries and research institutes.

Lately we have been getting many requests for usage statistics from our subscribers. I have a way of doing this using summary.net, a web log analysis program, but it is time consuming and not an elegant or simple solution requiring me to change the software's settings for each subscriber, render the log files, output an excel file, reformat excel file and then change the software's settings back for my needs. If we decided to offer this service, using this method would take up too much of my time.

Is there some sort of software that I can host on our server that the user can use to show them download statistics for certain files in certain directories based on a list of IP addresses or ranges that they enter?

I thought that a program like awstats might be able to get me in this direction but I don't have root access to our managed server in order to install it properly.

I have also looked at the Project COUNTER as a possible solution for providing statistics, but it seems to be needlessly complicated for what we are trying to accomplish.

Also, is there a way for these usage statisitcs to be measured on the user's end? Possibly with a software solution on their router/proxy server/gateway that measures outgoing requests? What are some keywords or concepts I should search for so that if I receive a request for usage statistics, I can say, "We don't provide usage statistics for practical and logistical reasons but you can roll your own by......."

Aside from how to do it, is providing this service even a good idea? I have heard from a few publishers, that they don't provide this service because it provides justification to those making spending decisions to cancel the subscription. This reasoning is described in better detail here at the American Mathematical Society's website (.pdf). I have also heard from librarians that they hate to cancel subscriptions because they hate, HATE, having gaps in serial publications, not to mention facing the wrath from the 1 or 2 people that do rely on that publication for their work/research.

I would be interested to here about experiences and solutions from the publisher side, as well as the librarian side of things.

Textual Analysis Primer/Examples?

signal — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:12:50 -0800

Looking for a general background/framework within which to define the more technical aspects of a textual analysis project, as well as interesting examples of computer-driven textual analysis. I am participating in a research project on textual analysis of historical architectural magazine articles.
We'll be inputting the titles and maybe text of articles from architectural magazines from 1930 to 1960 into a database and looking for patterns.
I am wholly ignorant of textual- or content-analysis, and am sure there's a great deal of literature and interesting analyses that other smarter people have already thought of.
I'm naively thinking word frequency, adjacency and correlation (i.e.: what percentage of articles that mention 'le corbusier' also mention 'modernism' in as given year/magazine), to figure out links between articles. etc. This could spin of into graph-theory measurements.
Our interest is in the actual content, keywords, etc., not so much in sentence structure, grammar, parsers, etc.
I program in Python, mostly, and am in charge of the 'hard' numerical part of the project (there's 3 architectural history geeks in charge of the soft conceptual part).
Books are nice, but something online might be quicker.
As we are architects, interesting visualizations are always welcome.

Why, yes, I do have too much free time

misha — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:27:24 -0800

I want to play games on my iPhone with these qualifications: I don't want to "jailbreak" it and I want to be able to play a game without having to connect to the apple web apps page every.frickin.time. I don't want another "concentration" game. So, ideally: iphone games that I can download. I especially like Tetris-type puzzle or word games. Thanks, hivemind! Why not jailbreak it? I'm scared I will hurt my iPhone, mess up my warranty, what-have-you. I love my phone and don't want to hurt the precious.

Why downloadable? Because AT&T frequently sucks, and I can't always get a connection to the internet.

I don't care, btw, if they cost money, I just want something better than "touch the screen and match up the pictures" concentration-style crap, which is what the majority of the online games seem to be lately.

Self publish much?

lothar — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:59:00 -0800

The rights to my ~400 page pop/technical book reverted to me when the publisher went bankrupt. How can I best monetize the second edition? What publishing method (specific company suggestions welcomed) have you had success with? I'd like my investment to be minimal, ideally less than ~$1000. Are you aware of a simple, effective publish on demand solution that works with Amazon? Or should I break it into chapters, offer it online, and get money from Google AdWords or some such?

Yes, I'm certain I own all rights to my book.

Looking for a simple HTML sitemap creator

strangeleftydoublethink — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:58:20 -0800

I'm looking for an application that will scan a website (or subsection) and pull out page titles and the URLs into an HTML site map. Or a tool that would convert XML sitemaps into HTML. I'm trying to create a content audit document using the sitemap as a table of contents. Each page title in the TOC will link to a questionnaire about the content on that page.

Welcome to our website. Our hours of operation are 2:00pm to 2:05pm.

lekvar — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:35:31 -0800

In the movie Paprika by Satoshi Kon one of the tropes was a website that would show specific content at a specific time. While I'm sure this is possible, is it easily implementable? Better yet, is there an downloadable script or somesuch that I can use on my website? Can a page be time-locked?

Copyright vs. client

fijiwriter — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:55:33 -0800

How tough are copyrights on website design and content, if a client asks you to re-use content? Website X is hosted and maintained by BellSouth. My company has been contacted by X to attempt to host their site on our own servers, but BellSouth will not grant their client or us FTP access.

Company X has the idea of buying a new domain name and my company re-using content to launch Website Y. This content is currently on Website X.

However, Website X is copyrighted 2007 by a company called Media Ventures, LLC which appears to have been bought or is a subsidiary of, drum-roll, BellSouth.

Has anyone encountered anything like this? If it's content on the company that they wrote themselves, and their own photos they took, shouldn't we be able to do this?

(Side question: I took a media law class in college, before websites hit their stride - I'd love some updated media law book suggestions.)