Microformats and University Web Sites

I have been thinking lately about how the whole Web 2.0 movement will affect University web sites. A lot of attention has been paid to Web 2.0 in terms of marketing to the “millennials” and public relations, for example see Karine’s excellent series about RSS at collegewebeditor.com. I am more interested in what Web 2.0 can do for me, however— I have a mountain of information I am responsible for, and constantly on the lookout for any tool that can help me manage it more efficiently. The most intriguing new technology to me right now is microformats. And my interest seems timely, because today alone there were at least 3 articles about microformats in my feedreader. I have to admit that I was skeptical about microformats when I first heard about them a year ago. I didn’t quite see their relevance to me, I think in part because they were really focusing on social software at the time. The emphasis was on XFN and VoteLinks, which were probably highly relevant to most of the blogging crowd in the audience at SXSW, but not to me. I am an antisocial blogger, without even a blogroll to use XFN on. But after spending some time reading through microformats.org, I realize there are several microformats out there that have the potential to benefit an institution, if, and this is a big if, the tools get built to take advantage of them. I’m going to go over a few of them and how I see them working for us university web folks. If you have more ideas or brainstorms, by all means comment and share.

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Flock + Textpattern

This is a test of publishing to Textpattern from Flock.

Two sure signs you’re a total geek

1. You think the lyrics are “with the Burgess Shale it’s a lonely view”
2. You develop arguments as to why the song would be better if this were really the case

XML-RPC comes to Textpattern

There is now finally a supported way to use XML-RPC with Textpattern. I am trying it out now— we’ll see how it goes. Edit: seems to be working well in Ecto, using the MetaWeblog API. I had some issues with my time zone, so be sure to configure yours correctly in your client.

Collecting ammunition…

We got the green light to launch our new University web site mid-August. Some people aren’t going to like it, because they are not our target audience, and I’m done trying to please everybody. So, these words from Gerry McGovern may come in handy:

Great web management starts off with allowing the most important customers complete their most important tasks as quickly and simply as possible. Poor web management plays politics by giving a little of the homepage to every department. Poor web management tries to answer every question

Celebrating the Skunk

Now with multimedia! Here are some Quicktime videos of the critters we caught this weekend. First up, the skunk in the trap, getting a bit edgy as we get closer to it to let it out. We released it by sneaking up on the trap behind a blue tarpand putting the tarp over the trap— skunks don’t spray in a confined space. We then opened the trap and set up a track plate in front of the exit, which is the black box you see in the video below. The track plate contains a black substance that the animal walks through, and then some sticky paper that they walk over, leaving tracks that can be saved. Tracks are one of the main ways to survey mammals, so these tracks can serve as a control for spotted skunks. Awww, isn’t he cute? Finally, we got some awseome footage as we released the ringtail (again through a track plate), and it pretty much tramples the student with the camera. If you keep watching, you will see it cross the river. Pretty kick ass, I must say. I have been trying to see these animals for several years, to see both of them on the same day and get such great footage is really amazing.