About This Page

This page will be used to keep a record of experiments carried out within this blog environment.

Note that the contents of this page may change - for example detailed information about experiments may be moved to a separate page.

Current Experiments

Title

Guest Blogger.

Reasons For Experiment

To evaluate the possible benefits of guest blogger postings.

Discussion

The reasons for this experiment have been described in a blog posting. The initial guest blog posting went live on 2 April 2007. The guest posts in April and May 2007 have proved very successful. The experiment was continued during the first week of June 2007 with a week of guest posts from plenary speakers at the IWMW 2007 event. I will try to continue his experiment on a monthly basis.

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Title

Use of an email delivery service for blog postings.

Reasons For Experiment

To evaluate a number of RSS to email delivery services.

Discussion

The reasons for this experiment have been described in a blog posting. The reasons for selection of the R-Mail service has been documented.

Title

Sonific WordPress sidebar widget.

Reasons For Experiment

To explore possible benefits of this particular plugin and, more importantly, to investigate some of the more general issues related to use of plugins, including policies regarding their provision, user benefits and usability issues.

Discussion

The Sonific WordPress plugin was installed on the right hand sidebar on 22^nd January 2007 and the song updated on 29^th January 2007. The sidebar was removed on 1 March 2007.  This decision was taken as (a) it had provided an opportunity to discuss various issues about installing plugins and (b) I felt that the plugin did not add value to the blog, but simply added clutter to the sidebar.

Title

Use of the Meebo chat widget

Reasons For Experiment

To explore the potential of a real-time chat facility for this blog, as described previously.

Discussion

Some initial reflections have been published. The chat facility was removed on 19 February 2007 as I will be away for a few days. It will be reinstalled when I wish to (and am free to) engage in discussion with blog readers.

Title

Use of ClustrMaps Usage Statistics Visualiser

Reasons For Experiment

To explore tools for providing a map showing the geographical distribution of visitors to this blog, as described previously.

Discussion

This experiment is still on-going.

Title

Use of SiteMeter Usage Statistics Counter

Reasons For Experiment

To explore tools for providing usage statistics for the blog, as described previously.

Discussion

This experiment is still on-going.

Title

Blog appearance

Reasons For Experiment

To define the look-and-feel for the blog.

Discussion

Two themes have been used for the blog. Initially the Contempt theme was used. On 31^st December 2006, this was replaced by the Andreas09 theme. This was chosen in order to provide more flexibility to explore use of sidebar widgets. It should be noted that problems in the rendering of images included in blog postings have been reported. Solutions to such problems are still been investigated.

Completed Experiments

Title

‘Claim your Blog’ in Technorati.

Reasons For Experiment

To explore ways in which a new blog can be found.

Discussion

This experiment was first announced on 6^th November 2006. Follow-up reports were published on 11^th and 26^th November 2006 and 12 January 2007.

Conclusions

Technorati appears to be successful in helping a new blog to be found. Its use is recommended to others.

Title

Writing style: using the Read The Rest Of This Entry convention.

Reasons For Experiment

To experiment whether to start posts with a short introduction, with readers having to click on Read The Rest Of This Entry to read the full post.

Discussion

I used this style in several posts in November 2006. Although it has some advantages (easier to skim the blog if the posts are not of interest to some readers) it has disadvantages to others (readers of the RSS feed) .

Conclusions

I have decided to abandon use of this technique.

Future Experiments

Experiments I may carry out in the future include:

• Hardcopy output for the blog
• Reading blog on mobile devices
• Blog syndication
• Stylesheets.

Page published on 1^st February 2007.

Last updated on 27^th July 2007.