Beyond School

Bloglines’ official response from this (different) Bloglines forum:

Re: Image Wall is [...] Wall

Posted by: dloc(IP Logged)

Date: February 19, 2007 06:36AM

The Image Wall is meant to be a snapshot of what is out there. It can be used both as a tool to find new interesting feeds as well as just to watch and see what people think is cool.

However, unlike a purely Flickr wall, we are pulling images from RSS feeds all over the internet. This means that just as you will see adult images, you may also see various political, current-event, sports related, technology-oriented, or miscellaneous images on the internet.

If you find an image to be offensive, please report that image. We go through our logs daily to cull out domains that store images our users find offensive.

And my reply (am I missing something?):

Re: Image Wall is [...] Wall

[My reply]

Date: February 19, 2007 08:53PM

Educators and people at the work place won’t be able to use Bloglines because of Image Wall. And marking pictures as offensive? a) We’re all busy; b) There will always be more.

Not a good idea, this. Boycotts are being discussed.

It’s not a great feature anyway.

I really urge a cost-benefit analysis. So far, I’ve seen more people responding with “Great–I can’t use Bloglines at work or school any more” because of this, far more than people saying, “Wow. Image Wall is so great I’ll drop my service with (name you’re far more widget-friendly reader) just to sign up with BL for this great top-down widget.”

Why not let USERS choose widgets? This is what Netvibes does.

I don’t mean to be rude, but you seem to be behind the times in your approach to web 2.0.

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

I really don’t want to leave Bloglines. It’s been my morning (and afternoon, and evening) read for at least two years. It’s comfy shoes. Google Reader? Netvibes? They have a lot more, but they miss a few things. And who wants to re-make all those tutorials?

But Miguel’s call for a boycott (and Barbara’s post and Clarence’s comment on the headaches this whole thing is causing) gave me this idea:

Why don’t we use the Bloglines forums and give them a chance to change?

To concentrate things, you might just follow this link and reply there. Here’s what I wrote:

Date: February 19, 2007 06:56PM

Subject: Get Rid of Image Wall

See this link: [www.mguhlin.net]

Do a search of “image wall” and maybe “education” and you will see that the image wall is causing headaches for teachers and educators around the world.

We all have to quit Bloglines and migrate our students to another aggregator because of this bone-headed idea.

Please just get rid of Image Wall. It’s just a silly gimmick anyway.

The Bloglines Boycott it’s causing seems to be having the opposite effect.

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

Sorry about those last few posts. Impulses.

Here they are in correct order (and of course, I’m thinking of students and newbies here as the beneficiaries, not most of you out there who are actually teaching me):

1. Creating a Bloglines account, subscribing to recommended feeds, and organizing them in folders is here.

2. Skimming feeds and using “keep as new” is here.

3. Searching for posts and feeds related to your research is here.

4. Setting Bloglines as your default RSS aggregator on Firefox is here.

5. Subscribing to tagged searches on del.icio.us using Bloglines is here.

(NOTE: Bloglines went discreet with its new feature, but you can always use the same basic steps for Netvibes or Google Reader. It’s just that neither of them have “keep new”, which is what keeps me using Bloglines.)

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)