NetDynam 2.0

without sound, this slideshow seems somehow lacking in depth.. and, well, lacking in the use of the affordances of the web wrt availablity of recorded sound as well, i have to admit.

at the same time, the slides are to some degree self-explanatory and an enjoyable way to think on the notion of ‘affordances’ and what it might mean for web design.

and then this one is packed with so much information, you need to have your finger ready on the *pause* button to take it all in adequately.

here’s a link to a site maintained by Luke Wroblewski on web design. quite a useful resource. of course, we are encouraged to “buy the book”.

[aside] instead of adding a link to my bookmarks folder, if it is on-topic as far as blog design and interface is concerned, it seems good practice to archive it here too.

Resource map by Sallie Goetsch (src), via WordPress Asylum.

Absolutely painless upgrade to WP3 here on ND2.0. The only chip in the pile was learning that our venerable–by our standards–theme is not compliant with some of WP3′s added functionalities. The only ones I’ve identified are the extra widget areas, and, the menu builder.

WP3′s new features bring some power user capabilities to the masses. Although, in noting this greater power, it is only afforded to those who can grok the basics of how WordPress works under the hood. For example, custom post types provides a way of breaking out content from the either/or of Post/Page, but, it’s most beneficial application involves situating those custom “types” within dedicated Divisions within a layout, using their loop.

Closer to our wheelhouse here is the revamped taxonomy function, that could be deployed to classify tagged texts. WP3 also integrates WordPress Multi-User; although ND2, multi-user as it is, is also minimalist in approach.

The WordPress 3.0 feature set was finalized a long time ago. The one addition I would eventually like to see is easy play list podcasting. The kludgy workarounds which use plug-ins are hit-or-miss–mostly miss.

Feature guide via Sixrevisions

Smashing Magazine’s Highlights of WP3

Taxonomies explained at 1stwebdesigner.

so, in the absence of any intervening comments, as usual, i am powering ahead

i’m posting this as a new post, instead of a comment, as it features old material relevant to the present project.

actually i went on a search for mike’s posting of the role and function matrix.

because one of the perspectives for entering the realm of affordances for users, is to look at what type of user (aka wordpress ‘role’) allows and constrains what blog activities, or, in other words, what acts are afforded these users.

it seems mike was a little ahead of us. no matter. i’m still catching up.

anyway, i think that the following post and its comments are certainly grist for this particular mill, and quite eminently quotable in parts. note mike’s disappointment with some of the affordances of the blue…thing…
see
the collaborative environment

well, i sort of bit the bullet and sent in an abstract for a paper at a local conference on multimodal discourse analysis taking place later this year. the focus of the paper is the affordances (or not) of the blogging medium, and i’ll use a couple of wordpress themes in the first instance to illustrate the potential channels made available for users – depending on knowledge experience and role ascription of course.

having done so, i now face the prospect of at least reviewing the copious literature on the topic and related areas, see for example (one of the speakers) john bateman’s extensive online bibliography, especially the link to the multimodal and computer-related list



so if any one of you is interested in contributing to the project, i’d be happy to collect comments, pointers, and so on to add to the substance of the presentation – and possibly, if i can, publish a paper on the topic. the presentation (if the abstract is accepted that is) will only be able to set out the main areas of interest of some sort of wobbly framework i have in mind, but if there is continuing interest, then a written paper in acknowledged collaboration with you, my colleagues here, might also be possible. with me, though, once the work is done, it is done. archived, and not thrown away, but enhanced and tarted up is sometimes not on the cards. however, in this case, i will need to do the work should the abstract be accepted and given continuing motivation, publishing is also a good *idea*.

here is the abstract for comments anyway:

Mediated personae: Towards a description of blog affordances.

The interweb is now populated by an intense variety of blogs allowing users an interactive facade which in the first instance mediates their communication with others and presents a persona to the wired world. The blog interface allows and constrains the type of interactive events afforded to users, and, depending on what role function each person is accorded, users may adjust the way the blog interface and their projected persona appears to the public.

In this paper I present the basis of a framework for the comparison and description of blog interfaces, and propose a means of categorising these communicative interfaces according to a number of different dimensions. For the purposes of the investigation on which the framework is based, these dimensions mainly refer to the textual and interpersonal/relational functions blogs may afford. The nature of the affordances which blogs provide is seen as a product of ways in which blog structure and management options allow or effect certain interactions for users, but moreover they can be used to channel and project certain identities for their administrators. In this sense blog structure is conceived as a matter of expression, with content the allowed or potential events that users may enact or interpret given the constraints of the medium.

The resultant set of dimensions is conceived of as a potential means for both analysing individual blogs, and providing cross-comparative material for classifying sets of blogs by function. The framework will be illustrated here by reference to a number of themes available in the WordPress blogging interface, analysing the ways in which each of their designs affords user activity.

in tandem with accounting for some of my lack of regularity in posting here recently, i now report that i’ve recently started another blog for (mainly) a gang of four fellow linguists. actually, i did not set it up, P did, but he is one of the fellow travellers anyway. i merely enthemed it and diddled with the extras, then started the conversation. it’s called inter-stratal tension, which is a sort of in-joke for systemicists.

while P is engaged in more practical and everyday pursuits involved in delivering lectures, attending to university admin matters, fielding student enquiries, dealing with blackboard and its drawbacks, etc, i and the other three indulge in some entertaining back& forth about aspects of the conception of the lexico-grammatical system as we see it.

because we are indulging, and because we know each other to be iconoclasts in some way, we have not made the blog public, i.e. we have not annouced its presence to other systemicists. thus, for example, there are only 2 recognised members who are also authors, plus 2 admins (me and P). there are no subscribers as yet, and comments are restricted to those who are registered and logged in…

the other day, however, someone who is not a user managed to post a comment which was obviously a bit of a joke. calling themselves ‘webmaster’, with a link that lead to nowhere, the comment read something like: “please send me a list of contacts as i have a question for you”. now, with no email address, nor a link leading anywhere, there was obviously no possibility of sending this person anything anyway…

i wondered how this person could have subverted the settings so that s/he could make a comment and have it approved (as it was in the comment log) without being a subscriber or without it needing to be approved by moderation. and without leaving an address – actually there was an email address under the wording, but the address seemed invalid anyway.

i checked out the IP address, even though these days one can easily make out one is neither here nor there. but for interest, and i spose, almost unsurprisingly, it was a russian server:

http://www.ip-whois-lookup.com/lookup.php?ip=188.168.84.224

anyone got any ideas on how this was done?

there is a hole in wordpress somewhere i guess, and some people know how to access it.

after all this time, i’ve just signed up to flickr. so far i am having a lot of fun. hmmm. it is simple and easy to use, and has a lot of features i want to use for organising photos.

this shot was taken as we were speeding back to catch the ferry to return to the mainland on our last day on kangaroo island. i had to hop out of the car and quickly take the shot, so i used the IXUS. it performs OK in most circumstances i think.

it’s one of my favourite shots – mainly because the composition works, and the grass looks good. also, i did not notice those two stones when i took the shot originally, but now i think they make the picture.

i used picasa to gather a few related shots into an ‘album’, and exported the album contents to the desktop so i could easily upload them. the export facility, by default, makes the images smaller, so a lot of the information is lost, but i’ll try out a non-reduced image shortly just to see whether any difference in quality is noticeable.