Blogging Roller

I made this proposal -- a new Atom server implementation for Roller and Rome -- on the Roller mailing list and nobody objected, but I didn't get a lot of feedback.

Noniko, who blogs on JRoller and Netbeans.jp, has created a a Japanese translation of the Roller user interface and now she is working on Japanese translations of the Roller user guide, quick start guide. and installation guides. She has posted some notes on her work.

James Robertson comments on recent CMO Magazine articles on RSS and blogs.

Struts Live author and JRoller blogger Johathan Lehr: "Struts 2.0, code-named Shale will be based on the JSF spec." The proof is on the Wiki, the developer mailing list, and in a <a href= "http://svn.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/struts/trunk/contrib/struts-shale/README.html">detailed proposal checked into CVS. Update: Further discussion at Raible's place.

Tim Bray wonders why somebody would assert that blogs and wikis are converging because "in their essential nature, it seems like they couldn’t be more different."

Danny Ayers responds that "it’s not that they’re 'converging' it’s that they’re fundamentally the same kind of system."

My opinion? Blogs and wikis are similar in that they both aim to make it easy to "write the web" and as web systems, they both can benefit from many of the same technologies/features such as syndication, referers, trackbacks, WYSIWYG editors, etc. At the same time, they are different in essential nature, as Tim points out, but they differ in complementary ways -- and that's why they go so well together.

Blogs and wikis are merging. The evidence to support this assertion is the growing popularity of blikis or wikiblogs which include both blog and wiki capabilities. Some of these are wikis with blog features grafted on, some of them are blogs with wiki integration features, and some that are (or appear to be) designed from the ground up to be combined systems. Danny points out Bill Sietz's Wikilog and Martin Fowler's Bliki, but there are many more examples of combined wiki and blog systems.

For examples of wikis with blogging capabilities see TikiWiki, Meatball:WikiLog, and JSPWiki.

For examples of blogs that support wiki integration features see Movable Type (plugins WeblogWithWiki and MT-Twiki) , Wordpress (plugin WordPressWiki), Roller, and Blojsom.

For examples of combined systems look at Atlassian's Confluence, SnipSnap and SocialText.

BTW, I've written about this before.

A couple of business/corporate blogging links for you today:

• Leading financial analysts' report on blogs and RSS a must read
• General Motors is blogging
• IT Kitchen: Blogs in the Workplace
• Blog Business Summit to be held in Seattle, Jan 24-25, 2005
• Enterprise RSS: All about RSS in the enterprise
• Can Blogging Help Market Your Product?

The people of America have failed us today: "As Larry says, "It's over. Let it go." Jon is saying, "Don't complain - organize!" Although the previous post about the wacky voting system is interesting, it's unlikely that any sort of recount or technicality will change the fact that today, the people of the United States of America have voted for George Bush. It was close, but the Americans have chosen Bush. It's a sad day, but in a democracy, you get the politicians you deserve/vote for. This was their chance to change their leader and they have failed. For awhile, many of us thought that they had been conned into voting for Bush - that they didn't know he wanted to be a War President. Many people didn't equate the US policies with the people of America. We thought they had made a mistake. Now US policies = US Citizens. You Americans have my sympathies, but it's still your fault.

Now that Roller 1.0 is almost complete, I've been thinking about what comes next. One of the most obvious next steps is weblog entry metadata and a better weblog entry plugin facility to support that metadata. I wrote this up as a short proposal. It needs work and your feedback is welcome (here or on the Roller dev list).