CC Creative Combinations

GG -> B | Reason Nb 2: The blank web-post syndrome

2010-10-20T04:00:00.000+02:00

If an author had a creative blockage it was often referred to as blank page syndrome. The blank web-post syndrome is a bit different. Because the author knows, the text will be published, writing the post on the website's text editor causes people to stiffen up. Suddenly their writing is more formal and boring, or most likely they never finish it because they think it is not ready.

In order to maintain a conversational style it might be useful to have real discussions over a list and publish those. And mailing lists or Internet forums are great at that. Most people learn it the hard way, that maybe it is better to think twice before posting.

Of course, you could also use your personal email to do publish on blogger, but then you need to create a Google Account for your blogger writings... and you can't share that.

Google Groups are a great way to unblock the web-post syndrome and unlock some great posts. That the blog only knows one author, the Google Group might actually be an advantage. The author is kind of anonymous. Superficially anyway.

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GoogleGroups -> Blogger | Reason Nb 1: Author Syndication

2010-10-20T00:01:00.001+02:00

You could use Google Groups for people to participate in blog posting. An aggregated and syndicated blog for which you don't need to have a Google account, nor a Blogger identity / profile. And yes, that does make sense. Blogger.com does not allow for people to participate if you don't have a Google Account. Google Groups does (albight with limitations). So by using Google Groups or any other mailing list, you can publish to Blogger without a Google ID.

Disadvantage - the author of the blog post is always the same one, ie the dummy Google account you need to create to make that trick work - unless you know a better workaround. More on how to do that later...

Using blogger as a publish format for your Google Groups (or Yahoo Groups)

2010-10-19T19:44:00.001+02:00

A blog to publish your mailing list - why?
At first I'll post some purposes and use cases as answers "RE: "to
this mail. Though I guess, the classic thread method might not be the
best way to publish the mailing list to the blog...
So here we go

The CreativeCombinations Google Group

2010-10-19T16:16:00.000+02:00

What's the purpose of using blogger.com to post messages from a mailing list? To discuss and test those purposes we invite you to join the CreativeCombinations Google Group. And incidentally the discussion is then posted message by message to Blogger, IE this blog called creativecombinations.blogspot.com.

At the moment anyone can subscribe (either by visiting the Google Group first, or by simply using the box to the right of this blog. To avoid spammers and "how are you" posts, the messages by new members are moderated. Let the games begin :-)

Next combinations

2008-03-20T13:32:00.001+01:00

We will have some fun. I would like to create the blog of my blogs

RSS to email - no probs, the fun is to use it as RSS-to-Email/Mailinglist-to blog
RSS to blog - I'll check, else see above
The other way too, sending blog posts and comments to a mailing list without creating a round-robin...

Including microblogging à la Twitter and Jaiku to this mix will be fun too.

Then we have some interesting blog extensions, such as enhancing the blog with forum features and rating of comments. Don't know if those web 2.0 services will work with blogger.

Other ideas?

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Is a Google Apps account a Google account?

2008-03-20T12:49:00.001+01:00

I tried to become a member of my Google Groups account with my user ID of a Google Apps domain. And I can't login.
whatever@googleappsdomain.com isn't recognised as a proper Google account. I remember having stumbled upon such a login problem wiGoogle before...

I tried googling (!) the problem, but couldn't find anything, is it just me?

Bug or feature?

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Opt-out is important for mailing-list-to-blog posting

2008-03-20T12:14:00.001+01:00

... because you can invite the default unique email address of your blogger blog using Yahoo Groups, because it is opt-out, no confirmation needed. You just delete the confirmation email blog post immediately. Otherwise this address is really public, available and usable to every blog reader.

Google Groups asks for confirmation and the blogger email address can only receive email. Therefore if you wanted to use Google Groups to post article on a blog, you need to create a generic email address (ie donotpublishthisemailaddress@gmail.com) with automatic forwarding to the blog-email-address.

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Opt-in / opt-out: a big difference between Yahoo Groups and Google Groups

2008-03-20T11:39:00.001+01:00

Doesn't look big, but the impact is quite significant. Google Groups asks invited members-to-be to confirm the subscription, Yahoo doesn't, they use the opt-out principle.

The opt-out method of Yahoo is interesting for real-world groups, where the group admins use the mailinglist to manage "passive" recipients of email. I know a number of small local initiatives or political groups which work that way. If you want to migrate your personal email list from the email application / client to a mailing list to benefit from more interactivity, economies of scale and more control for the recipients, you probably should be choosing Yahoo Groups. If you chose Google Groups instead, you migration wouldn't be complete until all members have confirmed.

Regarding Google, I wish that the mailing list functionalities could be extended to Google Apps as well. You can group users to email them with a unique group address, but it would be great to have an optional opt-in and opt-out functionality...

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Blogger posting using Google Groups

2008-03-20T11:03:00.001+01:00

The body format of the message works better than with Yahoo Groups. The signature is text only, the email addresses are plain, not "hidden" behind a link. Doesn't make much difference for spambots collecting email addresses I know. Therefore as with Yahoo Groups it is very important to restrict posting to group members.

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If this works...

2008-03-20T10:47:00.001+01:00

it was Google's fault and mine :-)

When I clicked on the link of the email invitation to confirm my Google Groups membership, the sign-in was with my normal Google user ID, not the generic blogger-email one. I don't remember if the sign-in was automatic, remembereing my last login or if it was me, signing in as a non-thinking robot using my normal ID. Therefore I confirmed the invitation with the wrong ID, which, logically is the same as not confirming it...

Anyway here we are posting is possible.

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What is wrong Google Groups?

2008-03-20T10:04:00.001+01:00

-Update-
'twas me, confirming with the wrong user ID, but well it was also Google Groups, not producing an error message, when I confirmed something that I shouldn't be able to confirm :-) See more recent post. However, Andy and I had those probs a couple of weeks ago, and I had the graphical anti-spam problem yesterday.

-Original text-
Google Groups is irritating. I sent a mail to my newly created Google Group more than 30 minutes ago. The web interface shows the message, but it has not been sent to the members, ie my generic blogger-gmail-account. And therefore it has not been published.

And it is not the first time. A few weeks ago, Andy and I tried Google Groups. One of the attractive features is the possibility to use Google Groups as the central file system for the group members. But when Andy uploaded a file, it took quite a bit of time for me to even see it. My uploaded files were invisible to him even after a few hours. Similarly the messages seemed to show up with delays and where being sent to our respective email accounts with delays as well.

Andy is quite a heavy mailing list user and admin and those quirks make it pretty much impossible for him to use Ggroups, he called it "broken".

Also, creating a group wasn't possible for at least a day, because the graphic anti-spam confirmation did not work.

Why? It seems to be such a standard technology and forwarding an email is done millions of times for Gmail accounts.

Issues and Problems

2008-03-20T06:39:00.000+01:00

Of course there are some "buts". So here are the ones that I have come across so far:

Issues

People using a mailinglist to publish on a blog need to be aware that whatever they write will be published. (you can of course run an "internal" / privat / intranet blog as well)
Email is send and forget. Blogposts can be edited,but you need to have access rights to edit the blog. So editing is likely to be the job of the admin.
Mailing lists tend to have signatures including links to edit the mailing list settings or to unsubscribe. Those signatures reveal the name of the list. They also might include links to the service provider such as Yahoo Groups.
Lack of an email tagging / classification standard.
Copyright? Terms and Conditions? A internet minefield...

Problems

Formatting - Blogger doesn't like the Yahoo Groups formatting of the body. Seems to be a CSS incompability between the two which is cutting of the text on the right.
The author name is the one linked to the email address. The blog therefore posts always the same author regardless of the writer of the email. That is in my opinion a problem and not simply an issue, because normal readers do not know who posted what. The nice thing about blogging is the personalisation of publishing.

This has been written sending it to the generic email address rather than the mailing list to avoid problem number one :-(

[creativecombinations] It works and here is how!

2008-03-20T05:58:00.001+01:00

1. Enable email posting in blogger

2. Create a generic email account (Gmail is neat)

3. Create a mailing list, I used Yahoo Groups (Google Groups is more alpha than beta)

4. Don't forget to disable posting for non-subscribers, otherwise your blog becomes a free public posting board. Â Your choice.

5. If you haven't created the mailing list using that generic email address, now is the moment to "invite" it.

6. Go to your generic email account and enable forwarding. Â As address use the emailaddress blogger created for you.*

As you see, this post has been published using Yahoo Groups

*If you enable forward before creating the mailing list and invite the generic address to participate, the Group invitat ion will get published :-)

Posted through Grouply, the better way to access your Yahoo Groups like this one. Check out Grouply here.

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[creativecombinations] Mailinglist to blog

2008-03-19T16:42:00.000+01:00

Does it make sense to publish the mailing list conversation on a blog? I am sure for some it might do. Blogger offers an email address for your blog. That is quite convenient for people using email for everything. There are email clients on mobile phones, email is often linked to contact management and calendaring. Publishing to a blog is another feature.

Now you could "publish" the email address of your blog, send it to your friends or to your co-workers. And so everybody knowing that address can publish on that blog by sending an email.

Is there an advantage linking a mailinglist to that address?

Well for one, the people who can publish can be managed using the mailing list administration.
People already using groups might like that as a functionality and then you don't need to explain how the blog works...
Blog readers might comment, thereby answering to mailing list posts...

Other ideas?

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Form somewhere else

2008-03-19T15:06:00.001+01:00

Ist it possible to add email addresses to a mailing list (Yahoo Groups or Google Groups) without a confirmation?

This post is sent with email

2008-03-19T15:00:00.001+01:00

The intention is to be able to post from a mailing list...