AOL Journals: Magic Smoke

Wednesday, December 14, 2005
3:19:00 PM EST
Hearing Over the Rhine, Drunkard's Prayer Hi folks...just wanted to clarify things about two features in beta right now: Blog About This Entry and Buddy List Rostering, which will both be going live with the R3 release, hopefully next week:

* Blog About This Entry is even more useful than I originally thought, but only if you're using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (this includes the browser that you use with your AOL software). I did not realize this because I was using the Firefox browser when I tested Blog About This Entry.

So, say I'm looking at the beta version of Product Manager Susan's entry about privacy settings and online presence (again, you can get to the Journals beta simply by adding "beta." to the beginning of any Journal's address),  http://beta.journals.aol.com/blogsinsider/intheknow/entries/804. I have something I want to say about her entry, so I want to do my own blog post talking about it and linking to it.

If I just click the "Blog about this entry" link in the footer of her entry, it will pop open a window for a new blog entry; the subject will be prepopulated, and there will be a hyperlink to Susan's entry -- you can change both of these, as well as add your own words, just like a regular entry.  Then, choose which blog of yours you want to publish to (via the pulldown menu at the bottom), and then you're all set:

Pretty simple, but it gets better.

If you're using Internet Explorer, you can "quote" from the Journal entry, just like you can quote text when you're replying to an e-mail.

What you do is use your mouse to highlight the portion of the entry you want to quote --it can include both words and pictures:

Then, with the part you want to quote still highlighted, scroll down to entry's footer and click "Blog about this entry." This will pop up the window to create a new blog entry, but it will also include the words and/or pictures you highlighted.

You can then add your own commentary; click save, and it will publish to your blog.

A few notes on this:

* When you use "Blog About This Entry", you should make it clear to people when you're quoting someone else's blog content. You can do this in a variety of ways: quotation marks, a different font, dashed lines, etc. -- anything that shows what part you're quoting, and what part is your original stuff.

* When you "quote" photos, you're pointing to the original photo, not a copy. This is known as "hotlinking", and is sometimes frowned upon, especially if the photo's owner has bandwidth restrictions. (If the owner finds out and doesn't like it, a typical form of punishment is to replace the image with a new photo that has the same name, so the new photo shows up on your page. The new photo will usually carry a message from the photo owner that says something like "Stop Hotlinking to This Image" and the new graphic could be anything from humorous to obscene.)  So you should be sensitive and think before you include other people's photos.

* Buddy List Blog Rostering & Recent Buddies: Blogger Astaryth (Adventures of an Eclectic Mind | Blogspot version) had a question about this upcoming feature, which will give you the option of using the people on your Buddy List as the roster for people who can read your private Journal.

Specifically, she wanted to know if the people in your "Recent Buddies" group would be allowed to see your Private Journal, since your Recent Buddies group is composed of anyone who you send IMs to or read e-mails from.

The answer is no -- the Recent Buddies group is specifically excluded from the people who can read your Buddy List; if you use Buddy List Rostering, people will have to be elsewhere in your Buddy List in order to read your Private Journal.

I could have sworn I saw this answer online somewhere, but I seem to have misplaced the link.

(By the way, if you want to turn off your Recent Buddies group in your Buddy List, just go to your IM Settings -- Keyword: Filtering and Viewing Settings will jump you to the right tab -- and uncheck the box next to "Add people I send IMs to or read e-mails from to my Recent Buddies Group." I had to do this once, back before they upped the limit of people on your Buddy List.)

Thanks -- Joe

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This entry has 3 comments: (Add your own)

• #3 Comment from bgilmore725 
  12/15/05 2:53 PM | Permalink

  I tried the Blog About This Entry feature while reading your entry, Joe, and then I followed the directions and copied from that section. It worked... thanks for the tip.
• #2 Comment from astaryth 
  12/14/05 9:56 PM | Permalink

  Hey, I'm linked in Joe's Journal... Does that make me famous? <g>
  
  Thank you for the answer to the question Joe. I hadn't seen it addressed, and although I don't have any private journals with readers, I have friends who do.
  
  http://journals.aol.com/astaryth/AdventuresofanEclecticMind
  http://adventuresofaneclecticmind.blogspot.com/
• #1 Comment from deslily 
  12/14/05 6:47 PM | Permalink

  Ooooooooooooooooooo.... that hotlinking to others photo's sounds like LOTS of upcomming problems.  It's one thing if its a "graphic" a totally other thing if it's personal photographs or artwork... I wouldn't appreciate seeing my personal photos or art work on someone else's journal.  I think aol should rethink that one!
  
  http://journals.aol.com/deslily/HereThereandEverywhere/
  
  http://herethereandeverywhere2ndedition.blogspot.com/