be the change you want to see in the world

Last year someone remarked that tag clouds are the new mullet. That may be true. Representation of taxonomy via tag cloud may not be the best way to do things most of the time. However, I still see a use for them in the proper circumstance, such as my delicious tags on the lower right side of this page.

So, I’m keeping my mullet for now, until someone shows me a better way to pack that many links into that small a space and convey some information about weight at the same time.

Netscape and AOL have launched a service that looks a whole lot like Digg. Practically indistinguishable, actually. In case you’ve never been to digg.com, people sponsor news stories and other users “digg” them (vote for them) if they think they are important. The most important story on the new netscape site today, according to the readers there, is one entitle AOL Copies Digg.

L(A)OL!

This is a bit of holy grail for Drupal admins. One of the greatest failings of Drupal prior to version 4.7 has been the inability to really control whether a block shows up based on a user’s role. Even in 4.7 Drupal still requires you to insert a PHP snippet, which might not be very easy for some people.

Then comes Derek Wright’s new blocks module for Drupal 4.6.x. Plenty of people have poured hundreds of hours into their 4.6 sites and have no desire to upgrade. This new blocks module will provide some much-needed flexibility for those Drupal admins who want some blocks to appear based on the user role.

I’ve installed this on a 4.6.6 site and it works as advertised. In the block configuration screen a new set opf check boxes appears, one for each role, which allows you to select which roles will see the block. It’s that simple.

Be careful installing this. You can apply the patch if you are comfortable doing that. Or, the patched blocks.module is available directly from the thread as well. Either way you need to make an alteration to your database. Read the thread carefully and then proceed.

Only do this on a test site first. Do NOT apply this to a live site without testing it in case you have problems. You have been enlightened AND warned.

Go for it: http://drupal.org/node/49154

Over at Drupal.org a very helpful community member has put together a list of available video materials aimed at helping Drupal admins and beginners get their sites set up and configured properly.

As a beginner, I find screencasts and videocasts very useful to learn more about installation and features. In addition, video demonstrations show you exactly how certain modules work without having to install them. As a consequence, I have started to collect links to various video resources. It seems would help the marketing efforts to make it easy for people new to Drupal to find a great variety of Drupal screencasts and videos in general.

Drupal.org user Mango then goes on to list a couple dozen reources and is promising to link more. There is a talk of a central page. This thread is already really helpful, and looks to be producing something even more helpful, not unlike the Lullabot Drupal podcasts or Nick Lewis’ blog. There are a lot of good resources spread around, not just on drupal.org, but on other sites as well.

Anyone who has built sites with Drupal knows that the fix they need is often buried in a pile of technical language or appended to the end of a long thread. The handbook is getting better, but it still points to threads that are very difficult to read and understand.

Somebody should build a really good, simple website focussed on gathering all the drupal help together, indexing useful resources like video and podcasts, linking to the to top Drupal developers blogs, and providing a user contribution area where people can contribute the fixes - and just the fixes for the Drupal issues and problems they have encountered. Drupal.org is really a bit complex and broad for this kind of thing. Maybe somebody should build something like a drupalguide.org.

Ok, I will.

Here’s David Card paraphrasing Bill Gates on the newish marketing phenomenon called the “long tail“:

Deutsch asks a good question: in this world of fragmented media, aren’t we losing a great advertising platform – the big hit show that reaches a mass audience simultaneously?

Gates: No. This new environment is better. Now marketers can buy an audience – instead of a show – across media. In the current model, there is a lot of manual labor and inefficiency in using shows as a proxy for audiences.

Deutsch: But how can you plug into a wide audience?

Gates: That’s really a question about how many shows/hits make up the head of the “long tail.� Technology allows the long tail to exist. That doesn’t mean everything in the tail will be popular. The top hits at the head of the tail will still be a huge part of what people watch.

The “head of the tail” is an interesting place to be. An interesting concept. It makes me think of things like “wagging the dog”, or the Ouroborus symbol of the serpent with its own tail in its mouth.

I don’t think Bill wants to let go. He’s not even a head of the tail guy, really. He just wants to be the Head Guy. Like all media giants, he certainly wants to find a way to subvert and own a phenomenon that should remain “fragmented” and therefore more democratic. Adsense for everyone forever? Maybe not. Not if Bill gets his way.

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