sluggobear

OK, let's be honest. Reading LiveJournal posts on your iPhone (and many phones) is cruddy. There are a few ways to tackle this, but they have shortcomings:

• Reading in iPhone's Safari - Text is not very readable. Lots of stuff in the margins that you don't really need to see. Scrolling is awkward.
• Using LiveJournal's mobile view - You only see the subject line; no photos or text, so you have to click each entry.
• Friend list RSS feed - To my knowledge, no RSS reader apps for iPhone support viewing your friends' private/protected entries.
• LJ's iPhone app - Doesn't let you view friend posts at all. (Yet?)

A wise LiveJournal user has devised a way to read your friends list on iPhone (and probably on many other cell phones too!) You can get the step-by-step instructions here. I've been using it, and it works great!

It requires creating a custom LiveJournal layout for yourself... it's a manual process but not difficult.

I ran into a little quirk the first time I did this (an error message like access denied or something didn't exist? I don't remember now.) Not to worry. If you encounter the error, keep trudging along and it'll still work. Just go back and view/edit the layers or whatever, and the new one you just created will be available to edit.

The result looks like the screenshot below... a layout that scrolls perfectly in Safari, and is easy-to-read. You see embedded photos too.

Maybe someday there will be an iPhone app that will perform this task even better, but for now, it works very well!

And that's one to grown on!

The situation: You can't always keep-up with reading entries for everyone on your LJ friend list. Or you want to make sure you always see entries for certain people who are very close to you. Or you want a minimal reading list to use occasionally on your mobile device. Or you want to stop reading someone's LJ for awhile without "de-friending" them.

LiveJournal has some handy features that can help you solve these dilemmas and more: the groups feature, and the notification feature.

You may already know that custom groups can be used to ensure only certain people see an LJ post. Those same groups can also be used to customize your reading experience. In this case, you're using the group as a filter.

When you use your LJ Friends Page, a little box appears at the top like this:



You can select the drop-down box to choose which group you want to see.

Setting-up your own groups is easy. Just use the Custom groups page. Once you've created the groups, they'll appear in your drop-down box. Now you can select the group of friends you want to read any time you want. Maybe you'll have a group called "Family," one called "Best Friends," or one called "Locals." You can even make the groups private, so no one will know who's on your lists.

If you want to get really fancy, you can create an instant filtered reading list comprised of any combination of your groups. Generate a custom read list instantly here.

If you have a mobile device, you can catch-up on your reading with LiveJournal's mobile site (livejournal.com/mobile). Create a group titled "Mobile View" and populate it with friends whose LJ you want to read on-the-go. (It's much easier to do this on your desktop or laptop first. Make sure you spell "Mobile View" exactly as shown, but without the quotes.) When you logon to LiveJournal's mobile site and click the "Read friends page," you'll see just the headlines of posts from people on that list.

If you want to make absolutely sure you see every LJ post from a particular user, use the notification feature. To do this, visit a person's LJ profile page, then click the thumb-tack icon (also known as "Track this.") Place a checkmark in the box next to the options you want... in this case you probably want to select "screenname posts a new entry." Choose how you want to be notified (e-mail, TXT or IM... or any combination thereof). You can even set-up these notifications for people who aren't on your friends list. And you can manage these settings at any time here.

Hopefully some of these tips will save you some time. Good luck!

For more information, see LiveJournal FAQ articles What are custom groups? and How do I subscribe to events on LiveJournal and receive notifications?

Please help me welcome the handsome sdtattguy to LiveJournal, and to San Diego!

This topic fascinates me, so allow me to explore it a little bit.

It kinda makes me laugh when people panic or speculate about what the awful, corrupt Russians might do with our LJ entries. It's actually funny to me that some are worried that the Russians are going to "spy" on their data.

Oy.

LJ entries are not secure, and they never were. Anything you post on LJ (or any other non-encrypted site) is going to travel via multiple Internet pipes, between your computer, an ISP, and get relayed beyond through several other layers that are (surprise!) run by corporations.  Your LJ post will exist on multiple servers where it will be backed-up and published.  Next, search engines will index and cache it. Think you can delete a post and it'll go away? Think again. It still lives in backup tapes and caches.  Once it's out there, it's out there.

Even if your post is Friends-only, it's probably not being encrypted during transmission.  And it's still accessible by employees of LiveJournal (or SixApart or SUP or whoever.)  And we've probably all been betrayed by so-called LJ friends who leak the posts that you've marked as Friends-only.

Even if you've taken steps to call-off the search robots, your journal may still be crawled by rogue search engines (or by people who just don't like you, if you're unlucky.)  There are even some websites out there who exist solely to index blog entries.

I guess what I'm saying is this: no matter what corporation owns LiveJournal, your posts are never going to be completely 100% secure from prying eyes.

I've been doing some further reading, and found some interesting bits here and there.

From Wired.com:

• The company will build an Abuse Team that follows the American model of responding to complaints, rather than taking proactive measures.
• [CEO of SixApart] Barak Berkowitz says LiveJournal has never claimed to be secure from organized eavesdropping. Traffic on the wire is not encrypted, and the Russian government is perfectly capable of monitoring Russia's corner of the internet. "If people have some illusion that cleartext internet traffic can't be read ... (it's easier) to read that way than get it from Sup," he says.
• The stakes in the SUP deal are high for both parties... a wrong move in a region like Russia could damage [the LiveJournal] brand worldwide. The consequences of failure would be even greater for SUP, which plans its LiveJournal deal as the start of a major online media play.

From [LiveJournal creator] Brad Fitzpatrick's LiveJournal:

• "They want to throw a lot of resources at LiveJournal in terms of product development and engineers."

From ZDNet:

• LiveJournal Russia [already] represents 28 percent of the global monthly LiveJournal audience. Only about 20 percent of registered members are in the U.S.
• The new LiveJournal company, based in San Francisco, will have an advisory board consisting of industry experts and members of the LiveJournal community, including Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal and who is now at Google.
  

From LJ_2008 community:

• LiveJournal’s rules on freedom of expression remain absolutely unchanged.
• Among planned improvements in 2008: improve user-friendliness of home and portal pages, optimize navigation, create widget functionality, establish clear policy guidelines, increase service speed and performance, and increase certain limits for Basic and Plus accounts.

So maybe we'll see some improvements around here.

Do I think LJ is the best blogging site out there?  No.  I much prefer Typepad or Vox or Wordpress. But I think LiveJournal has superior features for interaction with friends.

I also have to chuckle when people call the Russian government and corporations "corrupt."  Are some of them corrupt?  Yes.  Maybe even a lot.  Just as governments and corporations can be corrupt in any country.  (America is not immune, either.  Think Enron, Halliburton, Watergate, and maybe even some rigged elections.  And don't get me started on individual politicians.)

There's even been a suggestion that this is just the next level of outsourcing and exporting business from the United States.  Listen folks.  Globalization is happening.  I reject the notion that all globalization is bad.  To even suggest defection (pun intended) from LiveJournal simply because it'll be owned by a Russian corporation is just silly.  T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telecom.  Chrysler, Shell, Best Foods, Pillsbury, Ralston Purina, Firestone... all are owned by overseas companies now.  Are you going to boycott all of them too?

Until I see abuse, I'm staying-put.

I'm not sure why there's an uproar about LiveJournal's new content flagging.

This is not censorship.  If you have an LJ account, and you specify that you're over 18, you will not see any difference whatsoever.

The same Terms of Service that applied previously are still in place, namely: if a post reflects illegal activity, hate speech or nude images of minors, LiveJournal will take appropriate action. This is NOT new.  Nothing has changed.

Some random person flagging your entries will NOT trigger them to disappear, or automatically flag your LJ account as being offensive. Multiple people must indicate a flag first, and THEN the LiveJournal folks will review the material. (Measures are also in place to monitor flagging abuse.)

From a recent LJ announcement:

"Only the content most frequently flagged will ever get reviewed. Nothing happens if the content isn't consistent with why it's being flagged. Having your content flagged won't result in your content being reviewed for anything else."

User flagging is not a new concept.  It's used on sites like Flickr and YouTube to help administrators know what they need to review.  There are hundreds of thousands of users out there, and they post content, photos and videos constantly.  It would be impossible to monitor every single post.  They are asking for users to help them know where to look first.

Refer to this post from ursuspersonatus about how to avoid having your LJ friends' posts collapsed into clickable "adult content" messages.

And that "Adult Concepts" setting is only a voluntary setting.... it's not something anyone else can "flag on you."

If you post an entry that is marked friends-only, the flag system isn't even enabled.

Is it possible for a kid just make-up a birthday?  Of course.  No system is perfect.  LJ reiterated that parents should be monitoring what their kids read. This is just an additional step that will help.

I don't see how this is any different than websites which require agreement that you're over 18.

I do not believe that LJ is going to be deleting LJ accounts (or entries) due to flagging.  (Unless they are reflecting illegal activity.)

This is not censorship.

P.S. OK so the company is now going to be owned by a Russian company.  So what?  Do you want me to start listing other companies that are owned (or at least run by) non-American companies?

 

This is what iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, Amazon and all the other online music services need. A little media embed tool that lets people listen to a song right in your blog:


Sonific did a really nice job with their embedded player, shown above.  (You should be able to click the "play" button and hear the song in its entirety without installing anything.)  It uses Adobe's ubiquitous Flash Player, which is already installed on something like 95% or 97% of all personal computers out there... smart!

The possibilities are endless.  You could easily embed music to help create a mood for your blog entry, or turn people on to new music.  And if the person is interested, they can click the link to learn more, or even buy it outright.  (Try the link now... it'll give you options to get the music from iTunes or Amazon.)

Unfortunately, Sonific's catalog is so limited that I will probably not find much practical use for it.  They just don't have that many songs available.

Does anyone know of any alternate solutions out there?  All the ones I've seen force the blog reader to either 1) log-in, 2) install a plug-in, or 3) launch an external player.

The (relatively) new My iTunes feature lets you embed your own lists and stuff into your blog, but your readers all gotta launch iTunes to hear the songs.

By the way, let me know if this player has any problems... I'm curious.

(Oh yes... this is a great Barenaked Ladies tune... listen to the lyrics, it's about a botched bank robbery.)

OK, so I've just noticed that five of my LJ friends have taken "The 4-Variable Friendship Test," and the end-result is that every one of them is a "Rock."

What does this mean?

My theories:

• I am subconsciously drawn to "Rock" people.
• The quiz is weighted so that most people are simply categorized as "Rocks."
• The quiz just plain doesn't work right.
• It's just coincidence.

This got me thinking about online quizzes.  To be honest, I'm a bit averse to them.  They usually take too much time, and the results are cryptic, or meaningless ("Smooth and creamy with a few rough bits mixed in, you are a real treat!" and "Your friends smell what you're cooking, and it's fucking delicious.")

Or the summary is very generic... like getting a fortune from a psychic.  And I quote:

• "You are a great friend in many ways"
• "You'll stand by your friends to the bitter end"
• "Some people just won't like you"
• "Avoid the urge to judge"
• "You help your friends when called upon"

Other outcomes are written to sound as if they were derived through some complex formula.  (After answering 50 questions, you magically learn that you're a dedicated friend, or deep-down inside, you yearn for acceptance).  But a lot of these evaluations are just made-up.

It's quite easy to create these things.  Any 14-year-old girl can go in and create their own quiz, using any old criteria, and totally make-up the outcomes.  (Have you noticed that most of the quizzes have been created by young girls?)

Often the fortunes are based on unfounded assumptions.  Who gives a crap if you were on a deserted island, and that you'd sacrifice yourself first to a volcano god to save your friends?  This does not mean you are a loyal friend in everyday life.

What's funny to me is that often, the summaries are simple re-statement of your answers.  Like this:

Your friend is wearing something you think is ugly.  Do you:
a) Tell them it's ugly
b) Don't say anything

When you choose option "A," don't be shocked when your summary says something like "Be sensitive to your friends; sometimes they may feel like you're judging them."  Duh.

All of this may sound like a rant... but that's not my intention here.  I think I just wanted to float some thoughts out there and see what y'all have to say about it.

I'm not slamming this particular quiz.  And I recognize that some of these quizzes are just for fun.

What do y'all think?  Have you done these quizzes?  What did you think of the results?

A few folks have asked me how to post an inline video from YouTube.  And it looks like LJ has tweaked the feature a bit in the last few days.  Here's how to do it.

Find your video in YouTube.  (You can leave it playing or pause it.)

In the About This Video section, highlight the entire URL field, and copy it.  (For PC users, you can Ctrl+C, or right-mouse-click and select Copy.)  Here's a screen shot:

Now update your LJ.  Make sure you're using rich text mode.  Click the video icon, like this:

Now paste the URL in.  (PC users can hit Ctrl-V, or right-mouse-click and select Paste).  It'll look something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQWxIrSRDQQ

Click OK, and you're done.  To see if it'll work properly, click the Preview or Save Entry button.