How to prodce a strategic plan? Roger Darlington explains. His site if offline now, but Google has a cached version.

And I only have two links left, so I just drop ‘em here so my linklist is clean again :)

• Looking for a newspaper in another country? Try newspaperindex.com, a very useful resource if you are looking for local news.
• Have you ever wondered why your life isn’t as exciting as you see in movies? Just visit Trailers for Everyday Life.

,,Elke dag belt ze een samenvatting van tien minuten door van haar dagelijkse werkzaamheden. En ik maak daar een mooi verhaal van,’’

Rita Verdonk’s weblog wordt geghostwrite door Nick Rockx, volgens het AD

• Omdat eigengeilerij uit is?
• Omdat de lijst met weblogs niet van mij is?
• Omdat ik helemaal niet zit te wachten op veel bezoek?
• Omdat ik m’n zooi toch ergens kwijt moet en dit misschien maar een rommelzolder is?
• Omdat ik geen ambitie heb om een populair weblog te hebben?

Take your pick :)

I work for CivicSpace and helped create Spread Firefox. The choice to use CivicSpace for SFX was an important one and the right one because the tool fit the need.

In my discussions with Matt, we are working to come up with ways for open-source CMS’ like Drupal and WordPress to coexist and better comingle. It would be excellent, for example, if it were easier to port themes back and forth between the two so that you could run your own personal WordPress blog (as I do) but run your community with CivicSpace or Drupal and have the external (and internal) appearance be consistent for both admins and external visitors.

So Matt and I have been talking about how we can bring our user interfaces closer together so that the experience of moving between either tool is less jarring and more consistent. One real-world thing that’s happening as a result of our collaboration is that Drupal will be moving back to a separate admin UI, to be more consistent with WordPress. This will ultimately, or hopefully, lead to a more seamless upgrade path between WordPress and Drupal — so that you can start out with a personal blog and then scale up to a community when necessary, without having to unlearn or relearn a whole new UI. This improves the whole ecosystem of personal and community publishing.

Though the details are still hazy and is mostly talk at the moment, we are making progress. And since it’s my job to create a very positive user experience in Drupal (and by extension, CivicSpace), working with Matt completely makes sense. With the WP Foundation getting started up, I think that bringing our collective effort together will lead to a lot of really great things for the open source and blogging communities.

Sargasso is an informative site with a lot of commenters who nog only babble away, but also post valuable links and addons to our articles. Removing any links from the comments is a blow for the interconnected web. But there is another option, one that would be much more fun and that would leave the open structure intact. But it would require some manual labour from the search industry.

I think it would be much more efficient if spamsites were removed from the index directly. Set up a few hidden weblogs on several systems, watch what spam appears on those sites and remove the sites they link to completely.

You’d probably have to change sites every few weeks, but after a while, spammers will notice that plugging around their urls on weblogs will only result in removal. And therefor would become counterproductive.

Links in this article:

Google Blog: Preventing comment spam
Ben Hammersly: Let no fellow nofollow, lest we all lie fallow
Simon Collison: Spammers get spannered by Google

+Eric Meyer: More Spam to Follow

I’m just a bit afraid that in a while the WordPress community will be populated with ‘Kubricks’, but then again, I might release this retro theme ;-)

So moderate your comments you’d probably say? Well yes and no. Of course one doesn’t want to publish negative crap on one’s own website, but those ‘guests’ think that you are actually limiting their freedom of speech by moderating or deleting their vicious comments. And calling some friends to post some additional comments -sometimes a lot of comments- has been done as well. Those people might not realize that starting their own weblog might be the best shot they have at freedom of speech the way they like it.

I think that it is all about respect for the author and his writings, and not wether you agree or not. Disagreement may lead to some nice discussions that might very well be very entertaining and educational. Purely negative comments definately will not.

Deleting comments is a risk, also because some may interpret is as censorship. You need a site disclamer that they agree to as soon as they press that publish button. I read a nice one @ Seriocomic.

Personal relationships and privacy

Ex-friends, lovers and estranged family members who have been cut out of the writer’s life should refrain from reading their journal. If the relationship has ended, there is no reason you should get daily updates on the person’s life. If you simply can’t help yourself, do it quietly, and never repeat what you read or use it to hurt the writer.

Do not assume that you know everything there is to know about a writer simply because you read their weblog on a regular basis. Any judgements you make will be based on the information they have provided you about themselves, which is probably vague, incomplete or embellished. Whatever opinion you form on them as people, or their life as a whole, is probably best kept to yourself.

Remember, you are the reader. An obvious exception to this would be if someone were asking for advice or opinions. Never contact the writer for more details on events or personal information than what they have already provided on the site. Chances are if the information you seek isn’t readily available, they have found it too personal or innapropriate to share. If you are close to the person they will eventually tell you privately, so intrusive questions are not necessary, just leave it alone. If you are meant to know, you will.

If you have a real life relationship with the writer, remember that communication is very important. View weblogs as online journals, no less sacred than a diary hidden between the mattresses. First of all let them know that you read their site, especially if they did not tell you personally. If they do not want you reading it, or suddenly stop posting entries, ask them why and if necessary, stop going to the site.

It is important that as a friend, relative, co-worker or whatever you may be to the writer, that your presence at their weblog not impede their ability to express themselves. Remember this is their outlet. They may not want you to read certain things they might write about you or others you care about, in order to spare your feelings, avoid drama or maintain their privacy. You should respect this and immediately stop going to the site, and never relay any information you gather at their site to others who might use it against them.

If someone writes about you and you don’t appreciate it, approach them about it. Try to remain calm and polite. Explain that you are entitled to your privacy as well. There are many compromises that can be reached from using vague nicknames to protect your anonymity, or not mentioning you at all. If you are upset because they are writing negative things about you, be reasonable, try to see if there is a way to resolve the issues and mend your relationship with the writer. If that doesn’t seem to be possible, stop going to the website. They will eventually get bored and move on.
Feedback and initiating contact

If they have a guestbook, sign it. Compliments will always be graciously accepted and appreciated. Criticisms and reproaches are fine if you have a problem with something, but try to remain constructive and not be an asshole. No one is forcing you to give out your opinions, so if you don’t have anything remotely positive to say, it may be best to keep quiet.

When contacting a person for the first time, have a clue. If they have a detailed biography and personal information that describes their life from the day they were born, chances are they won’t appreciate you wasting their time asking them how old they are or where they live. Writers put a lot of thought and time into their sites, so take the time to read the information they provide you with before you ask for more.

Never assume a writer owes you any response. They may receive from a few to hundreds of messages per day. Some will gladly write back immediately, others will never reply. Try not to take it personally, because chances are it has more to do with their schedule than anything else. If you get upset and nasty about feeling rejected, you will probably ruin any chances you had of befriending the person.

Don’t delude yourself into thinking that you will be as important to the writer as he/she is to you. Remember, you are peering in on their life, sharing their thoughts, and though they may become quite special to you, you remain a mystery to them. If they are cold or unreceptive to your advances, keep in mind that you are a stranger to them at this point, and they may or may not want to keep it that way. It’s entirely their choice.

Don’t be a psycho stalker.

You shouldn’t contact people with messenger services unless they list their handles on their website. If you got it from someone else, forget you ever had it, they probably meant to keep it somewhat private.

A writer has the right to stop writing at any time for any reason they see fit, and at no point must they justify or explain these reasons to you or any of their readers. It’s their weblog, they can do with it as they please.
Offensive language and materials

The internet is a place that encourages free and creative expression, and as in any environment where people are given this freedom, conflict may arise. If an author uses language or materials that offend you, leave. Contacting the person or their isp, demanding they remove the content or change their ways is absurd because you are viewing their content of your own free will by visiting their site. Simply stop going there and you won’t have to see whatever it is you don’t like about the site.

An obvious exception to this would be if someone were providing illegal materials, in which case it would be appropriate to complain to their isp or contact authorities.
Copyright and courtesy

Never ask someone to make you a layout, to help with your site or show you how to do a certain script or graphic effect that they have on their site, unless they specifically offer their help. There are plenty of tutorials available to help you, just use a search engine to find what you need.

Never use anything off a person’s site, be it writing, images or html code, unless they say otherwise. People are very attached to their work and don’t usually respond well when others help themselves to it.

Copyright is protected by law and in effect the minute something is created, whether the author has a � notice or not. There are online tools where you can learn about copyright laws like What is Copyright? and Redistribution In Graphics Has To Stop.

Under no circumstances should you ever direct link anything, this includes link buttons and any other graphics the writer may offer. Direct linking is when you type something like <img src=”http://www.com/linkbutton.gif”> to display the yahoo link button, instead of actually saving it and uploading it on to your server.

It is essentially bandwidth theft, because it uses data transfer, and the owner of the server has to pay for it. Always save the image and upload it to your own server unless the author specifically states you can do otherwise.

Thank you for taking the time to review my disclaimer.