Yesterday's On the Media program had a fascinating segment about the Associated Press cracking down on bloggers who post excerpts and link to their content. Here is a summary of the story. You can read the transcript or listen to the mp3:

Unfair Use?

July 18, 2008

When the Associated Press busted a little-known website for posting excerpts from AP stories, the blogosphere responded with indignation. After all, appropriating content with a link back to its source is common practice. Media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan looks at the ongoing battle between blogs and the mainstream media.

Source: On The Media: Transcript of "Unfair Use?" (July 18, 2008)

So what gives? And should YOU be worried about blogging for your business? First of all, I don't think you should be giving up blogging just yet. You just need to be conscious of the best ways to go about it.

In regards to the Associated Press, perhaps your best bet is to link to the article in question in a smaller, local paper's website. These local newspapers are AP's customers and will appreciate the traffic your post will bring them.

The most important thing is to follow the basic blogging best practices as elucidated in the OTM story by their guest Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, and a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia:

You pick up enough text to get to the gist of the story to which you’re referring. You pick up the controversial part of a statement that you want to criticize. You make sure to embed it within a larger conversation of commentary. And all of that is classic fair use.

So most bloggers in most situations are actually, whether they know it or not, behaving according to the core principles of fair use. And that’s because fair use really does ultimately depend on common sense industry standards.

So, some quick tips:

1. Don't copy & paste and entire story - Not only is this considered copyright infringement, but it makes for a really dumb blog post. You are supposed to be adding something to the conversation, or just pointing out something to your readers. There is no benefit to reposting content available elsewhere.
2. Always include the relevant links back to source articles - so you needn't worry about #1, above.
3. Include appropriate credits when applicable - the source, author, etc, can all give context to your citation.
4. Have something meaningful to say that relates the content to yourself or your business - your readers are reading YOU for a reason. They will get more value if you can make it relevant to them.

So, keep blogging!

A post on the "Simple Dollar" Blog outlined 10 ways to create value from your web surfing. Professionals can use many of these ideas to build their reputation online and obtain more links and traffic to their websites. I think the point that Trent makes about sharing only useful and relevant comments is important. Not only will you be wasting the blog owner's time, and other visitors' time reading a useless comment, but it dilutes your online reputation, which is more important than you might initially think. I also suggest that you use your real name, whenever possible, when interacting online, since it shows integrity. My own additional tip is to have an easy way to gather and share items you find (whether through blogging or a bookmarking service, etc), since you do need to be able to efficiently gather and share your finds, or you will not bother to do it.

Source: The Simple Dollar » How to Get Personal and Professional Value from Idle Web Surfing

 I just read this little article about some new studies about choice (emphasis is mine):

New research shows that such daily decisions eat up limited mental resources, ultimately rendering our self-control into mush. Which means making too many decisions might be why many people can't stick to a diet, finish a big project or even complete simple daily tasks.

"It's a strange paradox because human beings are drawn to choice," said study co-author Kathleen Vohs, a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. "We love having more choices, but at the same time the human psyche is easily overcome by them."

So, how does this relate to your business website? If you don't yet have a business website, or if you are dissatisfied with your current site, quite possibly the reason you haven't made any progress on this important project yet has to do with the number of choices you face: 

• HOW to get your site up (DIY, Sitebuilder software, professional developer...)
• WHAT your site should look like and contain
• HOW it should be organized
• HOW to promote it effectivly

Each of these choices requires huge amounts of mental energy, research, comparison of this option vs. that option. These are not simple choices and frequently include a feeling of permanance - once you make a decision, it is expensive and difficult to change it - if possible at all.

No wonder you haven't tackled this yet!

If inertia is gripping your business website project and keeping it from getting off the ground, I hope you will consider contacting me. I want to help you understand the various options in simple terms, without any research on your part, and guide you through a step-by-step process that will take your big website project and reduce it to very do-able easy actions. 

The article's conclusion:

Choice strategies

Vohs said deferring decisions you don't really care about to someone or something else is a good idea to reserve brain power to stick to your guns on things you do care about.

"If you're on a diet, follow a dietary plan to limit your choices. If you don't care what you do with your significant other this weekend, politely defer that decision to them," Vohs said. "Putting the burden on someone else seems might seem mean, but if a goal is really important to you, it's a fantastic idea."

Now, doesn't that sound like a good idea?

Source: Daily Decisions Make Mush of Your Mind | LiveScience

Still questing for the best in desktop blogging tools...

ScribeFire installs into the Firefox browser, which is interesting because you can click between tabs in the upper area, while editing your posts below:

But this means you are dealing with a squished web browsing experience as well as a squished editing experience. Opening a new Firefox window for ScribeFire would take care of this, I imagine.

Account Setup

Setup using the account wizard's "Custom Blog" options was pretty straightforward. I didn't encounter any errors.

Post Editor

The WYSIWYG editor includes the expected basic options (no tables, etc, though for blogging that isn't necessarily a bad thing), with the ability to switch over to HTML view or "Live Preview" as well. (It doesn’t preserve your location in the document when switching to HTML view and has no syntax formatting/highlighting, however.)

Due to the limited WYSIWYG options, the code stays pretty clean. I noticed that if you copy and paste HTML into a post (from a webpage, for instance) it preserves the HTML associated with it (h1 tags, etc.) There doesn't seem to be CSS integration, so you can’t easily assign your own classes (without editing the HTML), though you can set formatting changes to be saved in CSS rather than HTML (in the Settings).

It had problems with code - if I pasted HTML code into the WYSIWYG editor, it correctly encoded it and showed the code, but after publishing, it had converted it so that the HTML output was displayed instead. This is actually a HUGE shortcoming which will make this software useless to techie-bloggers.

Images

You can easily copy & paste images directly into the posts, however I found that upon publishing, the images were not automatically uploaded and resulted in missing chunks (represented by little grey boxes):


So, you can upload an image via FTP or the API while adding it to your post. No fancy formatting or cropping options (or alt tags/captions either).

Spell Checking

Inline spell check is provided by Firefox:

Posting

Clicking the "Publish to " button results in some nice easy to understand options:

("View this Blog" opens your blog homepage in the web browser area above.)

But the problem I noticed was that if you "Keep Content" and make changes and then "Publish" - it creates another post rather than overwriting the existing post, which is really annoying. However, if you DO NOT choose the "Keep Content", and instead just click on your new post in the "Posts" list in the right sidebar, you will have the ability to "Publish as Edit" or "Delete Post".

Working Offline

Though you can easily access and edit existing posts by choosing them from the "Posts" tab:


I couldn't locate any offline saved post files which might be accessible while not connected to the internet.

Blog Options

I was able to check off my Categories (called "tags" in the software, which seems to have eliminated the actual "Tags" (aka keywords) which were nowhere to be found.)

Interesting Features

There is a button to "Save as Note", but I was unable to figure out what that might be, other than kind of like a draft of the post accesible from the "Notes" tab of the right sidebar.

Final Opinion

For Firefox lovers, FireScribe is a nice and generally bug-free tool. For those looking for a more robust blogging tool which can also be used offline, it might be less ideal.

How to Get It

Name: ScribeFire
Platform: Any with Firefox installed
Version Reviewed: v. 1.4.2
Price: FREE
Website: http://www.scribefire.com and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730

A very cool online Flash "game" created by American Public Media, Consumer Consequences, takes you through the various areas of life which affect the environment: your home; the energy you use in your home; the waste you generate at home; transportation; food; and shopping and at the end you can see how your lifestyle affects the earth, in terms of the number of "Earth's" that would be required to allow all 6.6 billion people to live just like you do. Very interesting. Here is my final score:

So, here is another desktop blogging tool I am testing. Let’s see how it stacks up.

Account Setup

To use with BlogEngine.Net, you need to choose "MetaWeblog API" and I had a bit of trouble because it asks you to point to a file called XML-RPC:

Setting up Post2Blog for use with BlogEngine.net

And worse, suggests that it will be in a php file. So, if you put in a link to "metaweblog.axd" as is suggested by the BlogEngine.Net documentation, you will most likely get an error (at least I did). Here is how to get around that - put in "rsd.axd" instead. This should allow you to finish the New Account Wizard. Of course, then you will possibly get another error when you actually try to connect to your blog (to "Update Blogs and Categories", for instance) so this is where you Edit your profile and change it to "metaweblog.axd." At least these gymnastics worked for me.

Post Editor

The main workspace is a full-featured WYSIWYG editor, with the ability to switch over to HTML view as well. (Unfortunately it doesn’t jump to the current area in the HTML file when you switch over.) It includes all the goodies you’d expect and works well. Keep in mind, though, that as with most WYSIWYGs, the generated HTML can get unwieldy with extra tags and things like unexpected font tags, etc. There isn’t any CSS integration, so you can’t easily assign your own classes. Also, there isn’t any syntax highlighting or formatting in the HTML view.

Images

A very convenient feature (especially for people grabbing screenshots or pieces of larger images) is the ability to just copy & paste images into a post. When you click in your post and Paste, you get the image properties dialog box:

Image Properties Dialog

Which allows you some nifty options like automatically converting the image to a web-friendly type, assigning a caption, creating a linked thumbnail, and adding a (sort of ugly) drop-shadow. Some caveats - in order to have the caption show the way it does, tables are drawn around images along with some extra font tags, etc.:

Spell Checking

Inline automatic spell-checking (like in MS Word) is a great feature for those who like it (and can easily be turned off for those who don’t), and you can also set an option to run the spell checker before you publish your post.

Posting

I encountered some problems while posting, which might be due to some of the more crazy HTML, or maybe the problem with categories, or who knows what... It deleted the post title, which I had to restore in BlogEngine.Net. 

Working Offline

There is a nice interface to view & select the current posts:

But when opening posts, it seems that the images were all broken - they were pointing to local temp files rather than the published online images, which I think would be more correct, especially once a post has been published. There is an option under the Tools menue to "Download all images as local images", but clicking that didn't seem to do anything to fix the issue. 

Blog Options

Post2Blog didn’t read my Categories correctly - it shows the descriptions rather than the category names (which also means that any categories which don’t have a descriptions are totally missing). I’m not sure if this is an error with the program, or with the implementation of MetaWeblog that BlogEngine.Net uses...

I didn't see anywhere that Tags (aka keywords) could be assigned to a post.

Interesting Features

"Portable Version" allows you to create a version with all your settings that can be run from USB flash drives etc.

Firefox & Internet Explorer Add-ins for fast blogging from webpages.

"Quick  Snippets" allow you to define chunks of text/HTML which can be quickly inserted, and you can setup abbreviated text which when typed will be automatically replaced with the defined text/HTML. This is a good way to add support for additional HTML tags, or speed up the inserting of common stuff (for instance, a link to your company website whenever you mention your company).

Integration with popular online services includes special support for Flickr photos, Amazon, Adsense,Chitika eMinimall, and Tagging Services (Technorati, Del.icio.us, Buzzwords, 43 Things, etc)

Colored Syntax highlighting for various programming & markup languages. Just select some text and choose Insert > Highlighted Code... You can choose the language and font:

Keep in mind that the code isn't perfect - see my syntax highlighted HTML, above (also, I added the tabs & line breaks - it doesn't preserve them when you paste the code in)

Insert > Current Music exists, but when I attempted to use it, it insisted on opening iTunes, even though I already had Windows Media Player running, so I guess it only works with iTunes. 

Final Opinion

Generally there is a lot to reccommend this software, but it's implementation in relation to BlogEngine.Net isn't that great. There are some very basic things that hinder using it, specifically, how it handles images and categories and its lack of support for Tags/Keywords. Since this used to be a fully-supported paid product and is now in the unsupported freeware category, I have some concerns that it won't soon be updated or enhanced.

How to Get It

Name: Post2Blog [Bytescout]
Platform: Windows
Version Reviewed: v. 3.01
Price: FREE
Website: http://post2blog.com

w.bloggar is a desktop blogging tool. Since I am looking for ways to make blogging easier and more fun, this is a test post & review.

Account Setup

This is one of the very few blogging tools which specifically has support for BlogEngine.Net blogs, which can be chosen as the blog service when setting up the account. It worked flawlessly.

Post Editor

The main workspace is a HTML editor. The toolbar has the standard HTML markers (Bold, Italic, Underline, Strike-through), though unlike a WYSIWYG editor, it doesn't show the formatting, it adds in the HTML code, which won't be a big deal to HTML proficient people, but will throw off those who aren't. Of course, you can switch over to the Preview tab at any time.
w.bloggar - Editor

w.bloggar - Preview

Images

Unlike WLW, you can't just copy & paste a picture into a post. You need to save it with a filename, and upload it (though the upload box has the option to automatically insert either an IMG tag or a download (A HREF tag) link for the file you are uploading. However, since you are working in an HTML editor, you cannot drag to resize images, and instead need to manually calculate the correct width/height ratio and input it into the IMG tag. Also, if you want a smaller image in your post which links to the full-sized version, you need to manually add the link for that.

Spell Checking

The Spell checking feature is adequate, though it picks up some HTML tags and special characters:

 

and doesn't always suggest the best default change option:

 

Posting

Post & Publish worked quickly and smoothly, though I personally would rather that w.bloggar would leave the post open (since I might want to make changes again). Instead it automatically clears it out of the workspace and opens a new blank post. You can get it back by choosing "Last Post" from the Posts drop-down:

 If you choose one of the other options (Last 5, Last 10, etc.) a box listing the posts pops up so you can select the post you want to edit:

 

Although listing the posts by ID rather than title or even date is not the most usable. (There is also an option to get a post by typing in its ID, which, for Blog systems using a GUID (such as BlogEngine.Net), isn't as useable either.

Working Offline 

w.bloggar doesn't automatically save posts on your harddrive (which can be a good thing if you don't want to clutter up your computer). If you want to keep an offline copy of your post, you can save it to a .post file, which can then be opened in w.bloggar later. Generally this functionality will meet your offline working needs. 

Blog Options

w.bloggar handles Categories beautifully, even providing a "Reload" option to refresh the categories list if you added additional categories from inside your web-based blog interface while the program is open. It supports assigning multiple Categories to posts.

Tags (in w.bloggar the field is called "Keywords") are also handled nicely. There is a textbox for them on the "More" tab of the workspace. Just type them in separated by commas.

Interesting Features

Ability to create custom tags (which is a way to add in styles (div or span with class info) or html tags that aren't included (like PRE, CODE, H4, etc), though some might argue that all the basic HTML tags should already be available in the editor.

Ability to set properties (on a per-blog basis) for the Preview tab. You can make the preview more accurately match how your posts will look on your blog by setting refrences to your CSS or by adding style information directly.

Automatically add the music you are listening to. You can choose whether to add it automatically to all posts, or manually by clicking a button.

Here is an example:

 

Final Opinion

This could be a fantastic tool if it had a proper WYSIWYG editor. Unless you are an HTML purist, it seems to me that it's easier to use the web-based BlogEngine.Net WYSIWYG posting tool. However, it would be a decent tool to use in an offline-pinch.

How to Get It

Name: w.bloggar [Marcelo Lv Cabral]
Platform: Windows
Version Reviewed: v. 4.02
Price: FREE
Website: http://wbloggar.com/

I have now installed BlogEngine.Net on HeatherFloyd.com. I hope to consolidate all my blogging to this location and figure out a way to pull relevant posts out to my various other umbraco websites. We'll see how that goes...

If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only one thing you need to do from this point on to take full advantage of the blog and that is to set up the first author profile.

Setup

Find and open the users.xml file which is located in the App_Data folder. Edit the default user and provide your own name as the username and a password of your choice. Save the users.xml file with the new username and password and you are now able to log in and start writing posts.

Write permissions

To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If you’re blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts and comments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder.

On the web

You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.

Good luck and happy writing.

The BlogEngine.NET team