We have discovered a problem when creating new blogs. It appears the blog is created, but without any templates. Blog creation also usually brings up this error message:

CMSPostSave_blog failed:

I would recommend not creating any new blogs until we have these problems repaired. Existing blogs seem to be fine. Please let me know if you are seeing any other errors at uthink@umn.edu.

Issue 1 -- If you try to login to UThink you will get a certificate warning from your browser. Have no fear! This is nothing to worry about. For now, we are using a self-signed certificate for authentication into UThink. Most browsers prefer a certificate that is signed by a certificate authority like VeriSign or Thawte. We are working on this problem and hope to have it fixed soon. In the meantime, please do not worry about the warning. Your Internet ID credentials are still being protected. This has been fixed.

Issue 2 -- For some reason, we have lost the password protection on blogs using the .htaccess and .htpasswd methods. The files are still there for those of you using them, they just aren't working. We are working to restore this functionality. This has been fixed.

Issue 3 -- XML-RPC capabilities are out of whack, probably because of the certificate issues. We will test again once we have a better certificate in place. This has been fixed.

There are some other minor issues we are working through, but the two above are the big ones. Thanks for your patience, and please let me know if you see anything else!

Hello everyone! This is very important news so please make sure you understand this. And please pass this on to other UThink users:

UThink will be down Thursday night (Thanksgiving) beginning at 8:00 PM until probably late Friday morning.

UThink will be moving to a new, and much faster, server Thursday night. Again, I'd like to emphasize that this move will make UThink a lot faster and I, for one, am very excited about this. Hopefully all of you will notice the change.

In addition, this server move will also fix the problem with Firefox 2.0 uploads. And speaking of uploads, due to the server speed we have noticed that on campus it literally takes seconds to upload files as large as 30 MB. This may allow us to increase the file upload limits currently in place, but we'll have to see how the system handles all the traffic it normally gets. In our tests uploading has been fast, and the server has been fast, but nothing can truly simulate real-life use of a system. Of course, we'll be monitoring the system shortly after the upgrade for any problems. If you see any problems or encounter any difficulties please email uthink@umn.edu.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! Hopefully you'll find a new and improved UThink when you get back.

For now, please use Internet Explorer to upload large files such as podcasts or videos. Stay tuned for more information. We are sorry for any inconvenience.

A captcha (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart") is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The term was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, and Nicholas J. Hopper of Carnegie Mellon University, and John Langford of IBM. ...

In other words, a Captcha enabled system usually makes you type in characters in an image before it allows you to interact with the system. A Captcha might look like this:

So, what we've done with UThink is put these types of images into the comments forms. If you are being bothered by spam you can choose to enable this plugin and hopefully kiss spam goodbye.

How do you enable this plugin? Good question. Unfortunately, Captchas by themselves usually aren't that accessible for people with vision problems. So, we couldn't just automatically install it on everyone's blogs. Sorry. There are two ways you can enable this plugin.

The easiest way is to create a new blog. One thing we did do is put the proper code into all new blogs (as of today at 1:00 pm) so that if you do choose to enable the Captcha plugin it is as easy as clicking a box to turn it on. If you have a blog older than today, things are a little more tricky.

Please note: If you have created your blog after October 10, 2006 at 1:00 PM, skip down to step 2! You already have the code in place in step 1!

1. First of all, you have to take this piece of code:

   <script type="text/javascript" src="<$MTCaptchaJsURL$>"></script>

   And put it into three templates: the Individual Entry Archive, the Comment Preview Template, and the Comment Listing Template. To get to these templates login to UThink, click on your blog, click on Templates in the left hand navigation menu, and then click on the "Archive" tab to get to the Individual Entry Archive, and the "System" tab to get to the Comment Preview and Comment Listing templates. From there, you need to put the code inside the Comments form on each of these templates. Look for code like this:

   ...
   <textarea id="comment-text" name="text" rows="10" cols="30"></textarea>
   </p>
   <div>
   <script type="text/javascript" src="<$MTCaptchaJsURL$>"></script>
   <div id="comments-open-footer" class="comments-open-footer">
   <input type="submit" name="preview" id="comment-preview" accesskey="v" value=" Preview " />
   <input type="submit" name="post" id="comment-post" accesskey="s" value=" Post " />
   ...
   

   See the bolded text? That is where you need to put code above on each of these three templates. With me so far? Good. Let's do the last two steps now.



2. The next step is to turn the Captcha Plugin "on." To do this click on Settings in the left hand nav menu of your blog administration, then click on the "Plugins" tab. From there, look for the Captcha plugin and the "Show Settings" link on the right hand side...

   

   Click on "Show Settings" and then click the checkbox next to "Enable Captcha." Then click "Save Changes." Be prepared to wait for a bit. The configuration file for the Captcha plugin is a text file, and it is huge. So, to make a simple change like this takes a bit of time.



3. Now "Rebuild" your entire blog. Click "Rebuild Site" in the left hand navigation menu and "Rebuild All Files."

And now you are finished. Go to one of your previous entries and click on the Comments link. You should now see a Captcha image! If you don't see a Captcha image ... well, something didn't go quite right. Feel free to email me at snackeru@umn.edu. I'll probably just ask you to give me access to your blog. I'd be happy to help you out!

Finally, just as a reminder, UThink blogs are set to moderate comments by default. This means if you create a new blog, by default your blog won't publish a comment unless you give it the OK. A lot of users prefer to turn this feature off and allow comments from anyone at anytime, but I suspect most people leave comment moderation in place. If that is the case, you can still hook up this Captcha functionality, but it will only reinforce a pretty good spam blocking tool already in place. (To turn off comment moderation, see this post)

That's it for now. As always, let me know if you have any questions!

However, with all the new users and blogs I have some advice and tidbits you might find useful:

• Don't use the "Extended Entry" -- I have found through statistical and anecdotal evidence that people rarely click on the extended entry link to read the rest of long entries. So, unless you are writing something so compelling that people won't be able to help themselves, keep the entire content of your post in the Entry Body. You have a better chance of it being read that way.


• Google loves UThink: You may have already noticed this, but if you start blogging on UThink, a couple of weeks later your UThink blog will be very high on the Google search results screen when searching for your name (or maybe even a topic you've written about). Of course, this assumes that you have a unique name, but some people are rather stunned with this phenomenon. I don't have a definitive answer for why this happens, but it is probably because of the ".lib" in the domain name. Google is probably giving a higher page rank to UThink blogs because they come from a library. Anyway, this is both a benefit and a problem obviously, but on the bright side if you want to make a name for yourself, UThink may be a good place to do it.


• Put a search engine on your blog -- Because Google does such a good job of indexing UThink blogs, it makes sense to use Google as a search engine for your blog content. If you are interested in having a search box on your blog that searches through all your old posts, follow these instructions:
  
  https://wiki.umn.edu/twiki/bin/view/UThink/SearchToolForBlogs
  


• Save your posts periodically! -- If you are using UThink/Movable Type as a word processor of sorts to type out long, intelligent, compelling, and wonderful works of genius do yourself a favor and save your posts periodically! Movable Type has been known to lose these posts when a button is hit inadvertently, or if you accidently hit the back or foward button on your browser. When you are typing out a new entry, scroll down the page and find the "Post Status" section. It is set to "Published" by default, but you can also set it to "Unpublished" and, again, save your posts every once in a while as you are typing them. You can also use a word processor to type out a post and then copy and paste it into Movable Type. Whatever you choose to do, just do something so that you don't lose that wonderful post you are writing. For those of you that this has happened to, you know what I am talking about. Painful.

Stay tuned for more tips and tricks as the semester goes on. Also, for those of you concerned with the never ending battle against spam, we are plainning on installing the CAPTCHA Plugin. I'll keep you posted on that front. Talk to you all later!

Recently, we had someone do just that regarding podcasting. Kurtis Scaletta of the Digital Media Center wrote a wonderful "how to" concerning podcasting on UThink. If you are interested, point your browser in this direction:

https://wiki.umn.edu/twiki/bin/view/UThink/UThinkPodCast

This fantastic write up covers making UThink work for podcasts (which is pretty easy), and how to specifically get your podcast ready for iTunes. Again, take a look at it and if you have anything to add by all means please do! Thanks Kurtis!

• Secondly, a whole bunch of new templates/styles have been added to the Stylecatcher to help you change the look of your blog into, hopefully, something more appealing. There are now about 75 different templates to choose from.

If you've never used the Stylechanger, and you would like to move off the default blue template, just follow these instructions:

1. Log in to UThink.
2. Enter the blog you'd like to change the template for.
3. Click on "Templates" in the left hand menu for your blog.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page until you find the section header "Plugin Actions."
5. Click on "Select a Design using StyleCatcher."
   
   

From there you can select from many different styles to use for your blog:

And many more. Also, is anyone interested in helping create a set of U of M templates to put in the Stylecatcher? I would love some help! If you are interested please let me know at uthink@umn.edu.

• Finallly, over the summer many of you have requested plugins or other add-on functionality to UThink. I'm sorry that I don't have better news for you, but as of today very few of these requests have been completed. Development time is at a premium concerning UThink and the project competes with a lot of other library projects that also require programming skill and time. Please be assured that I am keeping track of all the requests, and I'm prioritizing these requests for the next development phase for UThink. I just wanted to apologize that things can sometimes take so long.

Thanks everyone. As always, let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!

There have been a lot of great blogs to come and go through UThink in the 2.5 years the service has been active. Here is a list of just a few of the blogs that had an impact on the system:

• Oil is for Sissies -- since September 2004 this blog has tried to convince all of us of the benefits of living a car free life. One of the more popular blogs, Oil is for Sissies has more comments than any other blog on the system.
• Coffee Grounds -- a political blog with a New Zealand perspective. The blog's author is also a long distance runner with some obvious skills in that department.
• Mr. Cheer or Die's Viking Underground -- a now defunct blog (come back Mr. COD!) this Viking blog was not only the most popular blog on UThink, it was also the most popular Viking blog in the country.
• Schwitzer health news blog -- Written by Gary Schwitzer, a U of M Journalism professor, this blog provides important criticism of health related journalism in the media today.
• DuVernois Blog -- a link blog written by a Physics and Astronomy professor, this blog has more entries than any other on the UThink system, as well as some fascinating links to read!
• Live Alive -- Another biking related blog, Live Alive's author wrote in his blog everyday for over two years, almost without fail. An amazing accomplishment and some very thought provoking posts.
• if I were ... -- if you want news on the Twin Cities music scene, this is a good blog to check out. This author is pretty "in tune." Get it? "In tune?" I slay myself sometimes!
• Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast -- written by a PhD candidate in the Department of Family Social Science, this blog has probably my favorite name for a blog on the UThink system. Read the blog to find out where it comes from!
• School of Public Health Lectures -- more and more blogs on UThink are beginning to podcast, and this blog is one of the blogs leading the way. Remember, with UThink you get unlimited space and 30 MB 65 MB per uploaded file.
• U of M Moment -- the first podcast on the UThink system, the U of M Moment highlights radio spots about the U of M daily broadcast on MPR.
• FamiLee Life -- written by Richard Lee, a professor in the Psychology Department, FamiLee Life as some great posts on adoption, academic life, and race and culture.
• Generation Bob -- a humorous blog with a truly unique perspective on the world. Read it for a good laugh.
• Rachel's Spot -- the queen of vlogging on the UThink system is Rachel's Spot. Rachel's Spot focuses on women in hip hop, and her videos are very, very cool. Rachel also recently wrote a great post on why she loves to blog. Check it out!

These are just some of the thousands of blogs on UThink that have helped the Libraries retain the history and cultural memory of the Unviersity of Minnesota. I literally could go on and on. Of course, compared to services like MySpace, LiveJournal, or Blogger, UThink is relatively small, but I hope that it is a worthwhile community for those of you that have decided to join and give it a try. We are constantly looking for ways to improve the service (and find the time to actually make those improvements a reality) and I am very interested in any suggestions you might have. Just drop me a line at uthink@umn.edu.

I will now leave you, again, with what is still my favorite post of all time on the UThink system:

Nibbled to death by small geese

I can't wait for the next 40,000 entries! Thanks everyone!

In the meatime I have added three more FAQs into the Technical FAQ Wiki:

• How do I put a search engine onto my blog?
• Why is the content of my blog all centered? How do I fix it?
• I am getting an error that says, "Can't use string ("MT::App") as a HASH ref while 'strict refs' in use ..." How do I fix this?

Hopefully these will help some people out. I am also working on a write-up to better explain the process of uploading an image or multimedia file. That will be available soon.

As always, if you have anything to add to the questions and answers currently on the Technical FAQ Wiki, please by all means modify away! The Wiki is open to everyone with a U of M Internet ID and Password to modify and add to. In fact, if anyone out there currently podcasting with UThink I would love it if you would write a tutorial on how exactly you are podcasting with UThink. Do you have any tips for people considering taking the plunge into podcasting? Give the Wiki a try and enlighten us all!

If you have a blog that does not moderate comments (new UThink blogs are set up to moderate comments by default) I recommend that you make use of the MT-CloseComments plugin. The link above has some more detailed instructions, but essentially to make it work for you all you need to do is add a line like this to your "Main Index" template:

<MTCloseComments inactive="3">

What this line will do is automatically close comments for entries that have both fallen off your blog home page, and that have been inactive for 3 days. By inactive I mean entries that have not been commented on for three days. Or you could try something like this:

<MTCloseComments old="30" inactive="30">

What this line does is automatically shuts off comments on entries that are 30 days old or older, and that have been inactive for 30 days. This might come in handy when you've got a popular post that still seems to get comments and you want to give people time to say all they want to say.

Again, all you have to do is add this to the "Main Index" template (anywhere in the template) for your blog, then save and rebuild your blog. The plugin will go through all your existing entries and shut off comments on ones where the criteria you specify is met.

Again, new blogs are automatically set to moderate comments, so for many of you this won't be necessary (if you'd like to shut off moderation check this out), but if you've opened up comments and you are getting some spam this may come in handy. Until next time!

https://wiki.umn.edu/twiki/bin/view/UThink/WebHome

I am using the wonderful U of M Wiki tool which provides free Wikis to faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota. Want one of your own? All you need to do is ask. Wikis are an excellent way to provide a collaborative web based environment where everyone can contribute equally to the content of the site. For more information on wikis, please visit the Wikipedia description for "Wiki" (I know, how appropriate heh?).

Anyway, the UThink Technical FAQ Wiki only contains about 11 questions so far, but they are very common questions so hopefully they'll help you out. Of course, if you have any other questions, or better yet if you have the answers to what you would think is a common question, or if you just have an interesing tidbit of knowledge about UThink, please feel free to add to the Wiki.

That's it. As always, let me know what UThink!

There is an answer to our problem, however. Google actually does a very good job of indexing UThink content (a phenomenal job, truth be told) and it is possible to use Google to put a search box back on your blog. In fact, we can even use the U of M Google Search Appliance as our search engine, and you can even limit your search to the contents of your blog only. How do you do it?!?!? Well, just read on!

1. Login to UThink and enter the blog you want to add a search box to.
2. Click on "Templates" in the left hand menu and then click on the "Main Index" template.
3. Look for the line that starts "<div id="beta">". It may be a little difficult to find, but it should be towards the middle of the template. When you find that line, add these lines right underneath it:

   <div id="beta-inner" class="pkg">
   <div class="module-search module">
   <h2 class="module-header">Search</h2>
   <div class="module-content">
   <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/u/umn">
   <input id="search" name="q" size="20" /><br />
   <input type="hidden" name="domains" value="<$MTBlogURL$>" />
   <input type="hidden" name="sitesearch" value="<$MTBlogURL$>" />
   <input type="submit" value="Search" />
   </div>
   </div>

Save the template and rebuild it. Then try a search. It should be able to find entries that have been indexed by the U of M Google Search Appliance. Of course, it will not be able to find entries that you have just written, but that should be OK since those entries are probably still on your blog home page.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. If this works well I may just put this in the default templates for all new blogs. Happy searching!

(PS -- These instructions apply to blogs created with MT 3.2 templates (all new blogs). If you have a blog older than November 2005, I can provide you with alternate instructions. Just let me know!)

• How do I get hit statistics for my blog?
• How do I use a departmental Internet ID to create a UThink blog?
• How do I add a list of links or a "blogroll" to my blog home page?
• How do I increase or decrease the number of entries that appear on my home page?
• How do I customize the look of my blog? How do I change its appearance?
• How do I delete an existing blog?
• How do I add students to my class blog? How do I add a new Internet ID to my blog?
• How do I password protect my blog?
• Is XML-RPC available on UThink? If so, what are the connection parameters?
• What is an RSS feed and how might I use one?

These are just a few of the questions I would like to tackle. Are there any that I am missing? If you can think of any, please put them in the comments!

Also, I am thinking that an FAQ of this sort may be perfect in Wiki format. That way it would give all of us a chance to spread our wisdom. I may contact the UMWiki people and discuss the possibilities.

• Also, if you'd like to learn a little more about the project, there is a Breeze presentation concerning UThink that is available online for you to view. The Breeze file also includes presentations concerning other Web 2.0 technologies and how you could try to use them in a classroom setting. As always, let me know if you have any questions!

To keep up with rapid changes in Internet technology, the University of Minnesota is offering students, faculty and staff a combination of three popular online services: blogs (written material), podcasts (spoken audio) and amateur digital movies.

"I wanted to see whether we could build a university community out of blogging software," said Shane Nackerud, Web services coordinator for the University of Minnesota Libraries. He supervises the free "UThink" project. "I get calls about it from other universities, because it's a young technology that not many other schools are using."

Read more if you are interested!

http://www.startribune.com/535/story/329769.html

We will investigate how and why students use blogs, as well as comparing the characteristics of blogs kept on private/anonymous blogging tools like LiveJournal with blogs kept on public blogging tools like UThink. If you participate, you will contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the characteristics and benefits of blogs.

If you are an undergraduate please consider taking this 25 question survey by visiting the following URL:

And if you are an instructor of undergraduates, please encourage your students to take the survey. Participants have a chance to win a $25 LiveJournal gift certificate (good for merchandise, upgrades, or a one-year paid subscription), a $25 gift card to the University of Minnesota Bookstores, or a $25 iTunes gift card.

UPDATE!: Enough responses have been received. The survey is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated!