Archives Society of Alberta launches its blog

The Archives Society of Alberta has launched its blog through the free WordPress.com community at http://www.archivesalberta.wordpress.com/

The RSS feed URL is http://archivesalberta.wordpress.com/feed/

Library and Archives Canada launches blog as pilot project

Not only has the Library and Archives Canada launched a "corporate" Web site (en francais http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/fra/Pages/default.aspx), which seems to be an unnecessary expense and annoying instance of redundancy, they've also set up a blog as a pilot project with the prosaic name of the Library and Archives Canada Blog: A Pilot Project (the URL is actually a better title, The Discover Blog). The first post is dated November 24, 02011.

The RSS feed for the blog is http://thediscoverblog.com/feed/

The Signal: Digital Preservation Blog from Library of Congress

The United States Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) launched a blog dedicated to digital Preservation called The Signal: Digital Preservation on May 31, 02011.

The RSS feed URL for the blog is http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/feed/

AuthentiCity, the City of Vancouver Archives Blog

While they've had a Twitter presence for a while now, I'm very pleased to learn that the City of Vancouver Archives recently launched a blog they call AuthentiCity. It's running on the popular WordPress platform.

Six Apart's Vox blog publishing service closing September 30, 02010

While the comment spammers who invaded the Vox blog publishing system will be disappointed and possibly helped initiate the process, Six Apart has notified its Vox blog users that the service is shutting down effective September 30, 02010. You can either migrate to Six Apart's subscription-based TypePad service or use an import tool at WordPress.com or Posterous to move your blog. I was able to migrate my one Vox blog, The Fictional World of Archives, Art Galleries and Museums, so that it too is now part of Google's Blogspot service.

Ten Thousand Year Blog now available through syndication at Newstex

My Ten Thousand Year Blog was approved for syndication through Newstex. The company has begun marketing it. Details on the blog are available at

http://www.newstex.com/publisher-search/Blogs/Samples/The-Ten-Thousand-Year-Blog

Archival Missives blog from the Ontario Jewish Archives

The Ontario Jewish Archives has launched its blog Archival Missives, also on the Blogspot platform.

Added the new Tweet button from Twitter

I read about the new Tweet button from Twitter on TechCrunch that was launched on August 12, 02010 and decided to give it a go as a gadget to replace the TweetMeme button. Tweet away!

Anthologize that WordPress blog, just not your WordPress.com one

Form follows feed promises Anthologize, a new open source blog publishing tool that according to its About page

is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI.

Please note that Anthologize cannot be installed on blogs hosted at WordPress.com.

Anthologize is a project of One Week | One Tool a project of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Standards blog

Quoting from the announcement on IMAGELIB (02010 07 15):

The ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Standards Task Force is working on Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. We have started a blog as a forum for discussion about visual literacy, and as a communication tool to provide information about the standards development process and progress. Please visit the blog here: http://acrlvislitstandards.wordpress.com/.

We would like to encourage broad community engagement in the Visual Literacy Standards development process, and invite you to participate in the blog discussions. Please feel welcome to comment on the blog, and invite others to do so as well. We appreciate all input.

According to a post on the blog on 02010 07 15, "We are defining visual literacy in the context of an interdisciplinary, information-literacy-based, higher education environment."

Royal British Columbia Museum official blog soft launch

In case you had not yet heard, the blogosphere is abuzz about the Royal BC Museum Blog hosted by Google's Blogger service. The first post by Tim Willis was on March 10, 02010 and the most recent by archivist Ann ten Cate, all about a bathroom fetish, was on May 12, 02010. The RBCM is also on Facebook and YouTube.

Smithsonian Institution Collections Blog

The Smithsonian Institution has a Collections Blog using Google Blogger/Blogspot. The first post was on December 23, 02009, which was also the first and only post of 02009, and by April 5, 02010 there were a total of 48 posts for 02010. Not a high volume, but very enlightening and entertaining.

Blogger Template Designer on Blogger in Draft

Google's Blogger service has been added a number of improvements, including the Blogger Template Designer, available on the Blogger in Draft service, that I'm likely going to switch all my blogs from WordPress to Blogger. One of my main reasons for doing so is that Blogger now permits the monetizing of any Blogger site through services such as Google AdSense and Amazon Associates. The ability to create one's own templates for a unique look is also a huge plus for the designer in me.

Twitter is over capacity?

Got this error screen upon checking my Twitter account:



A whale is a great metaphor for a sinking service.

Time Magazine 50 Best Websites and 25 Best Blogs for 02009

Time magazine has issued its 50 Best Websites and 25 Best Blogs for 02009.

Source: DIG_REF@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU, 02010 03 17

This is a test of the new Twitter 10KYearBlog feed

Yup, in case you didn't notice the widget in the sidebar, The Ten Thousand Year Blog is on Twitter as http://www.twitter.com/10KYearBlog. Essentially, posts made to my WordPress.com version get posted on Twitter. Carpe tweeti!

Ten Thousand Year Blog (June 02003 to September 02008) lives again

For those of you who missed The Ten Thousand Year Blog that lived between June 02003 and September 02008 (just over five years) at http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress, I've resurrected it at http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress. This is a semi-inactive version to which I'll make changes from time to time, so for the current WordPress.com version continue to read The Ten Thousand Year Blog at http://digitalarchivist.wordpress.com. I've decided not to renew and link my domain name davidmattison.ca to the current WordPress version, but there will be a pointer to the current version on the start page of http://www.davidmattison.ca/wordpress.

My new blog, The Doomsday Blog

I've been thinking about all the hype around the end of the world that's scheduled for December 21, 2012. Now if the ancient Mayans had somehow synchronized their timekeeping efforts with the Western world's calendar and had the world ending on December 20, 2012 (get it, 20122012 as some people might express the date), I might have been a believer, but then again, maybe all the big disasters are happening on December 20 and the world officially ends on December 21, 2012.

So I've decided it's a great time for me to start a new blog, The Doomsday Blog, that gives my point of view and yours on the ways and days till the world ends through both scientific evidence and fictional creations. To help put this in perspective, I'm not insensitive to real-world disasters and have supported various Canadian Red Cross relief efforts. WordPress.com where my new blog is hosted has a widget that links to SocialVibe. I've set up a widget badge to support the American Red Cross in its disaster relief efforts. I hope you'll consider making a donation if you're in the United States.

Great new look to WordPress.com backend

So that's what happens when you don't blog for three weeks running and log in to WordPress.com and get greeted with a new backend. It's great, I like it, especially the QuickPress form. The only bad part of the QuickPress form is that it lacks my Categories. A Tags field is present, but to categorize, I have to publish the post and then go back and re-edit it. That sucks and is a time waster for sure.

VPSVille.ca explanation of the disappeared servers

Quoting the e-mail I and all affected customers received on October 13, 02008. I confirmed that my "hardware node" was gone. I'm posting this as a public service so anyone who's thinking of using VPSVille.ca is aware of this situation.

What Happened Here, Oct 8th.

We here at VPSVille have had a few days of frantic phone calls, hair-pulling, yelling, crying, screaming, sector-recovery crash courses and angry accusations. We've also looked closely at our logs and have pieced together what happened with our recent data loss incident.

Initially we thought it might be a case of gross negligence and some harsh words and harsher threats were exchanged, but we now believe it was just an honest, stupid mistake. Inexperience sunk the ship.

One of our new employee's made some crucial errors regarding security, and this was compounded by one of our techs travelling abroad and requiring some relaxation in our usually strict access policy. One firewall in front of another and both temporarily disabled = no firewall at all.

This unfortunately resulted in some malicious SOB with no real life to waltz into an almost unprotected segment of the network through a newly installed appliance with a default password and start deleting things. Several servers actually and a NAS unit assigned to back them up. One of the servers was our control node, which interfaces between the website and the other servers. Even our mail server was affected.

Some servers were running even after their files were deleted, through some strange quirk of Linux buffering that we still don't fully understand.

Its easy to blame a hacker of course, but we do feel that an unfortunate series of events combined to make their hack particularly easy. Far to easy for a network of this magnitude and importance to so many people.

This looked like a total loss, with no way to recover the data, so we sent out a somewhat panicked email to affected users that their accounts would just be canceled and refunded. Shortly afterwords our outgoing email died.

This resulted in a torrent of email, most of it surprising friendly, and much of it understandably angry and dismayed, telling us they wished to remain customers even if their data was not recovered.

Happily we were able to restore many servers with a sector recovery service. In light of this we have not arbitrarily canceled any accounts.

All affected accounts are re-enabled and have been credited. If we were able to restore your data we have sent you an email about it (hardware nodes rapier, cutlass and spear).

We sincerely express our condolences to affected customers for this unfortunate series of events, nobody should lose data at VPSVille, its an awful thing and we feel your pain.

Things do happen in life, but this won't happen again.

- Staff