The always innovative George Mason University Center for History and New Media has released a new plug-in:  Anthologize.   Which is a platform/plug-in that allows the use of a WordPress 3.0 site as a book publishing tool.  The plug-in is still in a 0.4, alpha stage release, but I figured “what the heck” it is worth a try.  After installing and activating the plug-in you start by creating a Project – this is the book.  The Project has parts – sort of like chapters.  And in each part the interface makes it easy to filter your listing of posts by tag or category to quickly narrow down your listing of posts (if you’ve been organized in your tagging and categorization!).  You can even import content from external sources via an RSS import.  After you have everything organized the export functions creates a nicely formatted PDF or other format – it even includes a table of contents. 

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How do you take time in your busy day to just think and plan?  Especially with the constant stream of operational demands – the weeds – knocking on your door and appearing at the email in-box.  A recent article in CIO Magazine suggest tactics such as staying focused, setting aside scheduled non-operational time during the day, delegating to staff and outsourcing commodity work.  I find blogging is a really helpful exercise, allowing me to pull together ideas I’ve gathered from various sources and think through how they relate to my own experiences.  Conferences and workshops are always a great way to get out of the day-to-day and gain some perspective – particularly if you are also contributing through a presentation to your colleagues.   It is all too easy to allow time to get eaten up through many small needs and distractions.  We all owe it to ourselves to make a conscious decision to create time for planning, general information gathering, and strategic thinking. 

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So I got my new laptop running Windows 7.  My first impressions of Windows 7?  Look, talking about, gushing about, or getting strident about an operating system is kind of passé.  Although change is good, and I always find it eye-opening to have a chance to re-learn everyday habits a new way.  One of those habits for me is blogging.  And the Windows Live Writer program is pretty good.

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I am still slowly working through the videos I shot during the WordCamp NYC 2009 event.  This was the very first presentation I attended that day entitled “Building Community with BuddyPress” by Lisa Sabin Wilson.  It is a great presentation and she nicely runs through all the major features of this powerful set of WordPress plug-ins.

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A recent study by the UK-based National Literacy Trust finds blogging, Facebook, texting and other such writing results in a “strong correlation” with better overall reading and writing.  Their study looked at kids aged 9 – 16.  Big surprise?  Success here leads to greater interest in traditional forms of writing, and the use of more informal writing styles online doesn’t seem to have a negative impact.

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Message traffic on our company Yammer network is following the classic 80-20 principle, although in our case it is closer to 85-15.  Some stats: Read the rest of this entry »