Over the past week or so, I’ve been experimenting with the daily blog posting function provided by del.icio.us. It seems to work pretty well, automatically creating a new post on this blog containing the links I’ve tagged that day. If you have a del.icio.us account and want to try using it, go to your Settings page, then select "daily blog posting" to create a new posting job. You’ll be faced with providing the following parameters for the job:

job_name: This can be any name you want.

out_name: The name you use to log in to your blog.

out_pass: The password you use to log in to your blog.

out_url: Described as "full URL of the XML-RPC interface for your blog" which, for this Wordpress blog, is http://www.afewgoodpens.com/blog/xmlrpc.php. I’m not sure what is is for the other supported blog software, but it’s likely that someone else has tried if for yours — so check the platform’s forums or other help pages. I found the correct URL for Wordpress, for example, on the Wordpress Codex. If you try to execute the URL, and get a message along the lines of "XML-RPC server accepts POST requests only" — you’ve probably got the right one to use.

out_time: This is the time of day that you want posts to appear, in Greenwich Mean Time. For help with Greenwich Mean Time, go here. So far, it seems typical that the blog posts appear within 20-30 minutes of the specified hour (and, no, refreshing the page repeatedly won’t make them appear any faster).

out_blog_id: I’m not sure what this one’s actually for, but I entered "1" and it worked. I’m assuming that if you have more than one blog that you access with the same profile and password, this number might vary.

out_cat_id: The category you want the blog posting assigned to. Note that this is a category number, not the category itself. In Wordpress, that translates to the id number associated with the category, which you can find by selecting Manage / Categories. In my case, the id number is 27, which is associated with the posting category "Internet Clippings."

That’s it! Easy!

Here’s a sample of one of my daily blog postings.

You’ll see that the entry was correctly categorized as Internet Clippings, and that the tags I assigned to the bookmark appear as del.icio.us tags at the end of each one. Clicking the tags takes you to all the bookmarks for the same tag associated with your del.icio.us profile. I might have preferred it to take you to everyone’s posts with that tag, since there are other ways to incorporate links to del.icio.us tags on a blog. Maybe an option to do that would be nice.

Any notes that you typed when you tagged the link also appear. There’s an unfortunate limitation of 255 characters for the notes, so what I try to do is clip a key sentence or two from the article that I think gets to its essential point. I’d like to include a comment or two of my own with each one, but I can barely take a breath that uses less than 255 characters, so I’ll have to wait until the next version of del.icio.us — which I think increases this limit to 1000 characters per bookmark — to do that. With 1000 characters, bookmarking and daily blog posting would become an excellent shortcut way to read and comment on articles and web pages, and simultaneously set them up to automatically post to your blog.

This is a very busy time of year for me, so tools like this that actually do save time but help me keep things like this blog moving are extremely useful. Too many time-saving technologies take on a life of their own, sucking up energy while giving only the appearance of activity and progress while you sit back and wonder why you don’t seem to be getting anything done. An effective technological tool is one that results in actual time compression, collapsing the time required to perform a series of tasks while achieving the same, or acceptably similar, results.

This week is turning into a very busy one for me, and even though I haven’t had time to respond properly, I did want to acknowledge a few folks that have left comments on my site or sent me e-mails. Most of my evenings this week will go toward working on a research proposal for my Exploring Place: History class, for which I’ve decided to study the history of and community that has developed around Oakland Cemetery, which is near my home. I spent most of Sunday afternoon on a guided tour of the cemetery, then went back as evening set in to take some (like, 150) pictures. I hope to wade through the pictures also over the next few days and get them out on Flickr. Anyway, I didn’t want anyone to feel like I was ignoring them or disregarding the time they spent contacting me, so here are my shout-outs and link-backs:

Chef Tom: Thanks for the Le-Le-Lemon Cheesecake recipe. I picked up the ingredients tonight and will be making it tomorrow night, to serve at a dessert-party for my best friend’s 50th birthday on Friday. I think it’s going to be excellent!

Karen: Thanks for the e-mail; I’m glad you joined BlogCatalog and I look forward to neighorhooding with you. I also wanted to mentioned that I read your article Peter the Great…Right Brained Learner? — and I think it’s great.

Morgan: Thanks for you interest in my writing and my studies; as well as for your e-mail reply and kind offer to help. I’m sure I’ll take you up on it, and please do keep an eye on my site and comment any time.

Cooper: Thanks for the provocation… heh heh heh … and your comments on War as a Spectator Sport (Part One). There will be a Part Two, down the road a short spell (next week, probably) and we can continue the conversation.

Jon: Thanks for your comments on War as a Spectator Sport also. It’s interesting how differently we see the photographs, and I’m sure I’ll write about that in the second part of the article. Subjectively, of course. Great site you have, and I really like your writing. Between the waking and the dream was pure pleasure to read. Oh, and thanks for the book recommendations; I will look for “The Psychology of Music” but may pass on Bloom since I’ve read parts of it and may not care to invest any more time in it … ya know what I mean? 

Kukuh: I got your e-mail and the draft article and took a quick look at it. Fascinating stuff; will be glad to help if our schedules mesh okay. I’ve sent you a message on BlogCatalog.

Bye for now!