blogging – Joss Winn

Problems with RSS feed

Joss Winn / February 8, 2013 / Web

David Kernohan complained recently that I don’t blog any more. Well, it’s true that I don’t blog *here* as much as I used to because over the last year or so I’ve been running several projects and, when I have time, often blog on the respective project sites.

However, I am still blogging here, but there’s been a problem with the Feedburner RSS feed. It seems that it’s been timing out and hasn’t picked up any posts since April 2012. I’ve been trying to fix it this morning but feedburner is pretty strict in how long it will wait to fetch a feed before it times out. I’m going to have to overhaul the blogs server to really fix it. In the meantime, why not subscribe to the actual blog feed, where you’ll see that I’ve written a number of posts since last April and am currently exploring the role of the university in the history of hacking.

Thanks for reading!

On blogging…

Joss Winn / May 6, 2010May 6, 2010 / Fun, Web

I was just asked by our Press Office to provide them with a short comment on blogs and blogging. Here’s what I sent them. How did I do? What would you have said in 150 words?

Blogging takes various forms but broadly speaking it is a form of web-based self-publishing. Prior to the web, it was difficult and costly for people to publish and distribute their thoughts and their work widely. With the advent of the web, it became easier, but still required some technical knowledge to author and publish a web site.

Blogging represents a maturing form of web authoring, where the software makes it easier for anyone capable of using a word processor to author, publish and distribute their thoughts and work to others.

But it’s not simply about web publishing. Blogging is a powerful network – the ‘blogosphere’ – where a multitude of blogs (and therefore people) are connected through a web of mutual references, discussions, links and ideas. The web liberated the global exchange of knowledge. Blogging is liberating the conversation around that knowledge and providing a space for the creation of new forms of knowledge, too.