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Drupal, Drupal, how does your garden (and userbase) grow?

Drupal is an amazing CMS, but many agree it’s hard to use and point to WP as a model for what is easy to use.  Well, Drupal (via Acquia) has launched Drupal Gardens and it promises to be an awesome project to bring some non-tech users into the world of Drupal.  Yes, the grass is greener in our garden –  Dries thinks it is.  Check out this video and you’ll see why this promises to be a game-changer for Drupal.

Getting the drop.

I just found a fantastic service that touches on the promises of the cloud. I’m tired of the Gdrive rumors – this is ready to go out of the box.  I love box.net and have posted about it before, but dropbox is waaay better. Check it out.  Not only can you store your files on the web, but you sync files between computers and even recover previous versions of files!

Add user blog submenu in Drupal

I’ve been playing with seriously researching this for a bit and I found a solution to my problem. I am setting up a Drupal site for our library and wanted to have submenus for each individual blog under the blog primary menu. I may just be daft for not being able to find this on Drupal.org, but instead stumbled upon a solution on my own. So, here it is in case anyone needs this info, or as is more likely – I forget how the heck I did it in the first place.

Determine the user node number:

1. In the administrator account navigate to Administer / User management / Users
2. Click on user you wish to add to blog submenu.
3. Note user number in address bar (ex: user/6)

Add the menu:

1. In an administrator account, navigate to Administer / Site building / Menus / Primary links
2. Click Add Item
3. In the Path block, type blog/{the user number} (ie: blog/6)
4. Add menu link title and description.
5. Under Parent Item, select Blog and use a weight of 0 for alphabetical listing (the preference of librarians).
6. Click <Save>

LCG

OSS Freedom!

I came to a sudden realization recently and it can be expressed easily:

I started using OSS because it was free, using OSS has made me free.

(I’m finally getting what RMS means by free software!)

I just gave a round table presentation at the OLA (Oklahoma Library Association) conference titled OSS onramp, and I am relieved to have it over and quite excited with the feedback from it. The round table featured my fellow students from last semester who had used OSS in their projects. What I found quite touching was that my postings to the discussion boards about OSS, had a strong influence on their decisions to use OSS and they were all “converts” and as nearly zealous as I.

My semester project that I presented on was ossonramp.org. One of my goals in this project was to use only open source software in the creation of the site even to the extent of making sure that my hosting service was using OSS. I loaded my laptop with Ubuntu , used GIMP for image editing, InkScape (quite nice considering it is still at version .4x) for vector graphics, FireFox (of course), OpenOffice, and Drupal.

I am amazed at the quality of OSS and quite relieved to find all the tools I need without the costly hassles of EULA and all the restrictions that go with proprietary software.

LCG.

Manifesto 2.0

I’ve mentioned before that this blog is part of my graduate coursework for Design and Implementation of Web-Based Information Services. This class focuses on Web 2.0 and by extension library 2.0 and all the other 2.0s out there. The real change from web 1.0 to web 2.0 is the move from static, authoritative content to dynamic, collaborative content with no clear authority. One example of web 2.0 is Wikipedia which is a collaboratively edited encyclopaedia with no clear authority control, but which produces surprisingly authoritative content. Foksonomies are another interesting web 2.0 phenomenon. I see this same phenomenon in OSS development where the community drives a project. That is, the community of programmers and users influence the direction of the project and if a project goes in a direction that some don’t like, it branches. This is the exact opposite of the proprietary model where software is created and controlled by a company – an authority and can live or die under that authority.

Web 2.0 is not magical, it is not utopian, it is really just an evolution in the way we connect and communicate. We are empowered by tiny things like posting a comment on a blog or forum and we feel heard when we post a review of a product. Web 2.0 gives us a sense of participation. It may give us a forum to share our particular knowledge or a blog to express our opinions. It also allows for something else: organic authority – a kind of wisdom of the masses. So what does this mean for things like political movements or citizen action? One possibility is that we are heading or evolving toward a time of a leaderless society – that communities may organically move together without a clear authority or leader.

This really seems impossible to me, but I think the paradigm of a generation raised on the Internet may be different than mine. At the ALA (American Library Association) Conference this year, I heard the term “information agnostic” to describe teens and tweens who did not see any particular information as more authoritative than another. For example, something in an email was just as valid as something seen on the news. At first, I was horrified by this idea, but with more thought, it seems to be reflective of a move away from authority. Add to this the 2004 Pew study that found that a high percentage of these young people preferred to get their news from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show on Comedy Central and you find yourself scratching your head more. But, is the parody program actually a good source of information? A more recent Pew study prompted this headline on Think Progress: SURVEY: Daily Show/Colbert Viewers Most Knowledgeable, Fox News Viewers Rank Lowest. Perhaps this reflex of a younger generation reflects the ability to adapt and change quickly based on the flow of information, or a natural skepticism about what they are being told by any authority.

This really brings me to the title of this piece and an excerpt from a discussion in the Guardian with Naomi Klein about the nebulous nature of what she hesitates to label as the anti-corporate movement.

The movement, with its hubs and spokes and hotlinks, its emphasis on information rather than ideology, reflects the tool it uses – it is the “internet come to life”. This is why it doesn’t work well on television, unlike the anti-Vietnam protests of the 60s with their leaders, their slogans, their single-issue politics.

When people say that the movement lacks vision, believes Klein, what they really mean is that it is different from anything that’s gone before, that it is a completely new kind of movement – just as the internet is a completely new kind of medium. “What critics are really saying is that the movement lacks an overarching revolutionary philosophy…” But the movement should not, says Klein, be in a hurry to define itself. “Before they sign on to anyone’s 10-point plan, they deserve the chance to see if, out of the movement’s chaotic, decentralized, multi-headed webs, something new, something entirely its own, can emerge.”

Manifesto 2.0?

LCG

BBW in SL

Banned Books Week is coming up: Sept. 29th through October 6th and this year you can celebrate your right to read at your local library AND on SL (and teen SL). Here’s a bit from the ALA OIF announcement made yesterday.

Second Life/Teen Second Life:
To tie in with this year’s theme of “Aye, mateys…celebrate your freedom t’ read!,” ALA has created a “Pirate Paradise” in Second Life (SL), a 3D virtual world complete with pirate ship and a wharf with interactive displays on banned books. ALA Banned Books Week graphics will be used to create virtual posters, displays and T-shirts that can be worn by Second Life avatars. The Topeka and Shawnee County (Kan.) Public Library has loaned a virtual display on banned books they created for their National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Big Read initiative. All ALA Second Life activities will take place on ALA Arts InfoIsland.

I will have to get my avatar on and fly on over to InfoIsland to check this out. Of course, if you read my earlier post, I may have to avoid walls.  Also, by the time I get my pirate gear in order, BBW will likely be over.

LCG