KNotations

We're great fans of the Creative Commons system for denoting open content licensing. In educational settings especially, the simplicity of CC licensing can cut through a lot of silly obstacles to sharing.

We've now made it very easy to add Creative Commons licensing to knotes weblog content. There are new links in the Manage sidebar for managing a CC license (you need manage role on a weblog to see that sidebar).

If no license has yet been chosen, you see a link to "Add Creative Commons License". Clicking that takes you into a form delivered by the developer API at Creative Commons, which guides you through the choice. Click 'proceed' when done there to have the CC API contact knotes with the information about your license. The license you have chosen will then be rendered into all knotes views, both as machine-readable RDF and human-readable badge and link to the deed (see the screenshot for an example)

Embedding the RDF - "properly" adding the license to your content - is vital to having the legal import of your choice of deed made "ert". For instance, google will note the embedded RDF and thus will include hits to your content when people search specifically for creative-commons deeded content in google's advanced search.

If you have already applied a CC license, the "Add Creative Commons License" link in the Manage sidebar is replaced by links to change or retract the license.

We hope this helps users to express their intentions to share content. Please let us know of any other features that would help in smoothing the sharing of content, especially in institutional settings.

Do you know other sites that suport trackback ?? It's important to test the way other website could suport trackbacks ! I understand that this is an important feature, so maybe it's not so comumn to a website to have this killer function If anyone knows anything about it !

Testing trackback can be a pain if you do not already have access to another blog publishing system with trackback enabled. There is a publicly available test service, though - if only I could recall the URL. Steve has the URL, but it's the middle of the night and he's off ill anyway. I just googled for it and got too much noise in the results - aha! Just tried del.icio.us/tag/trackback and one such service was near the top. In the web2.0 world we have to start thinking different :o). I've collected that link into my own tag del.icio.us/Mike_Malloch/webtech/trackback as well, and will try to collect other useful resources there in the near future. The form is at No-Host Trackback.

I'll also trackback to this entry from some other sites (I am admin in a lot of them so can get away with that kind of abuse). And here are a couple examples of KNotes entries that have been linked to from outside KNotes ( scroll to the bottom of the entry to see trackbacks or click the 'just trackbacks' link. At some point I'll think to add an internal anchor in the main templates' markup to allow urls like url-of-main-blogview#trackbacks, but not yet :O)

• The Seven Challenges of e-Learning design (Part 2) ( just trackbacks )
• Portfolios, social software and non formal learning ( just trackbacks )

A few how-tos:

1 - How the properties of a weblog itself are used [ these are the fields when you create a new weblog ]

• id - as usual; this is what appears in the URLs
• title - used as the title of the blog and as part of page title for posts and other views
• description - displayed in banner and as DC description in RSS and page metadata
• main text ('about') (rich-text field) - displayed as the 'About this weblog' sidebar if it has any content (else description is used)
  • - you can place arbitrary html here, so it's also a quick & flexible way to customise the sidebar
  • - eg in the about sidebar of my other blog, I've placed some colophon an profile stuff like js that builds summaries of recent del.icio.us and flickr stuff of mine
  • http://www.knownet.com/writing/weblogs/Mike_Malloch

• when logged in with manager role for a blog, you get a 'Manage this Weblog' sidebar at the top right of all views
• this includes links to manage the 'top' and 'sidebar' links -- basically these open subfolders of the weblog
• you can add whatever you like to those folders; the contents are rendered as links

3 - how to post an entry

A - through the web (TTW):

• if you have manager role, you get a 'Manage this Weblog' sidebar at the top right of all views
• if you have weblog contributor role, you get a 'Contribute to this Weblog' sidebar at the top right of all views
• - there is a link there to add a post
• - the fields in the edit form are as follows:
  • title : the post's title
  • lead-in: a brief description used, if present, for listings, RSS etc
  • body: the main content as it will appear in aggregate views ( currenty entries etc )
  • extended: extra content which will show only in one-entry (permalink) views
  • category: a widget for selecting categories from 3 scopes ( site/blog/personal ), or for adding new personal categories
  • ON FIRST EDIT: details for an initial link for the item. This will be a trackback-triggering link. This is automatically filled in when you use one of the bookmarklets or other tools for directly 'blogging' content

B - through an API client (the recommended way for power users)

• in the manage or contribute sidebar, there is a link to set up external weblog editing
• - get yourself a client ( I use 'ecto' for os-x http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/ - there are plenty of others for various OS's )
• - follow the instructions in the set up external weblog editing page fo the blog you want to set up
• - clients vary in how you add a new 'account' ( or similar concept )
• NB - workflow is not yet paid any attention to, but if your client allows workflow management KNotes sets workflow state accordingly

Note that there are bookmarklets for 'blogging this page' in both TTW or API-based

• A bookmarklet is a javascript 'bookmark' that you can add to your bookmarks bar in a browser and invoke on any webpage as an action on it.
• For instance, KNotes has a 'knote-it bookmarklet' link in the contribute/manage sidebar. Add this to your browser bookmarks/favourites and invoke it anywhere to open a new weblog entry edit form pre-populated to link to the page you are viewing at the time (selected text will be used as initial content of the blog entry body). We will shortly add a pop-up-blocker friendly bookmarklet.
• Almost all the API clients also have bookmarklets for quickly 'blogging' web content. For instance ecto has an 'ectoise' bookmarklet. See the documentation for your API client to seee how to install bookmarklets and customise their behaviour.

4 - how to edit entries

A - through the web:

• you will get a toolbar just beneath any entry you are allowed to edit, the pencil icon is for editing
• if clicked from an aggregate view, this opens a mini 'window' within the page ( saving round-trip time )
• if from a one-entry (permalink) view it should open a normal plone edit form

B - through an API client

• usually just find the entry in your client's display and double-click

5 - how to add an attachment to an entry

A - through the web:

• if you are allowed to attach files to an entry, you will see a little MSWord-like icon in the toolbar just beneath the item
• this creates a new KNExFile object within the blog-entry

• almost all clients let you add attachments ithin the body of an entry as you edit its text
• -- that means that the attachments and entry are created in what seems One Step
• -- much more convenient

6 - how to add a trackback-generating link to an entry

A - through the web:

• Note that one trackback-triggering link can be created at the same time as you submit a new blog or discussion entry - fields for this appear near the bottom of the blog entry edit form on first edit
• For adding further trackbacking links: if you are allowed to add trackback-triggering links to an entry, you will see a little Link-like icon in the toolbar just beneath the item
• this creates a new KNLink object within the blog-entry
• you can untick a checkbox in the edit form for the KNLink if you do not want a trackback ping fired off
• ( there is also a blog-level pref for this; eg important for private blogs )

B - through an API client - the easy way!

• almost all clients let you links within the body of an entry as you edit its text
• -- any links within the body are parsed out and turned into KNLink objects
• -- much more convenient
• -- exceptions: if the link already exists it stays there but is not duplicated on subsequent edits; if it has rel="tag" attribute it is ignored (eg technorati tags)

7 - how to set up shared blogging and other permissions

• - if you can manage, you see a link in manage sidebar for 'Set up sharing permissions'
• - this is complicated and fully featured but lmost self-explanatory
• - quite powerful
• - we'll write help for that asap
• - if you have moderator or higher (eg manager) role you see a link in manage sidebar for 'Delegate Moderators/Managers'
• - this lets you assign moderator roles to specific members or groups ( but no more powerful than your own roles )

... there are many other bits of how-to that need to be written ( KNotes is very full-featured :o)

... I'll try to get back to you with bits of documentation as soon as we get a chance to start writing them

cheers

Mike