billso.com

I’m testing a few new features here on billso.com, as I recover from a brief service outage earlier this week.

I’ve added ShareThis to almost every page and post on this site. It’s a drop down menu that lets users share the related article or page to one of three dozen social media services. Email sharing is supported, as well as popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

OpenID logins are supported as always, but some of these users may need to login before they write and submit their comments. If you encounter problems with this feature, let me know.

My talk on blogging your career is scheduled for 1:15 PM today in Hawaii Convention Center room 304B.

I have posted some Google Docs slides for my talk this afternoon at PodCamp Hawaii. I’ve also posted a PDF version of the slides.

Related articles and pages on billso.com

• About billso
• My books
• My graduate classes at Hawaii Pacific University
• 9 October 2008: I’m speaking at WordCamp Hawaii
• 1 August 2008: Last night’s Manoa Geeks meeting
• 31 January 2007: Competitive advantage and key success factors

There’s a new version of the WP-OpenID plugin available. Version 3.0 includes some new features, but it is not compatible with WordPress plugins that intercept HTTP POST requests, including the following list. If you rely upon these plugins, then don’t try to install OpenID support.

• Bad Behavior
• Defensio

This new OpenID plugin also requires some changes for sites that use the JanRain ID Selector. I posted some code on 30 April 2008 in a billso.com article called Updating WP-OpenID to support ID Selector.

The code updated the OpenID plugin to accommodate this ID Selector feature, which displays an attractive dropbox of OpenID providers in the main WordPress login box. This code won’t change the comment form at all.

Here’s the updated code, which is almost identical to my earlier work. Version 3 of the OpenID plugin shifted the login_form function to a new file, so upgrading the OpenID plugin will overwrite any previous changes that we made.

The code below should be placed inside function openid_wp_login_form() in the wp-login.php script, and should be uploaded to the OpenID plugin directory. The keyword “hex” should be replaced with the long hexadecimal string embedded in the ID Selector script that you must generate at idselector.com

I’ve been spending much less time on billso.com and more time wrestling with WebCT during the last 6 weeks, as I’m teaching two additional classes this fall.

Up until August 2008, I was posting at least one article a day on billso.com.

I don’t think I have blogger burnout, but it has been a challenge to juggle all of my current projects.

At this point, I’m barely checking into my Friendfeed and Twitter pages.

My teaching schedule will calm down after December, so I will be spending more time on billso.com by then.

I am officially on the speaking schedule for WordCamp Hawaii on Saturday, 24 October 2008.

See Wordcamp Speaker: Bill Sodeman for the announcement of my talk entitled How to Blog Your Career Without Breaking Your Budgets.

I’ll talk about how I’ve used WordPress to help me document and record my teaching, writing and social media activities.

It will be a 30-minute talk, with a few demonstrations, an nice set of slides and plenty of time to talk story with attendees.

Budgets?

Yes, I did mean to use the word “budgets”. People have a financial budget, and they also have a time budget or schedule, too.

It makes sense for faculty members should keep track of their activities, but that can be a challenge. Faculty tend to work on their own, without much or any administrative support. It’s a lot like being an entrepreneur, without the thrills of elevator pitches and business plans.

I have a renewable contract at HPU, which means that every 5 years I must ask the university to renew my contract. We don’t have tenure at Hawaii Pacific University, but in early 2011, I can request a promotion to full professor.

Both the reappointment and promotion processes require me to produce a large, well-organized binder with statements of my activities, and plenty of supporting evidence.

I’ll also discuss how entrepreneurs, students, and other people can use the techniques I’ve developed in WordPress to help their own careers and professional goals.

Many thanks to Roxanne Darling and Judi Clark for all their work on WordCamp Hawaii.