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I’m commenting my own posts when I want to add new content and links to an article.

If you have an ID on Yahoo, AOL, WordPress.com, flickr or several other services, you can use OpenID right now to log in to billso.com

This blog also supports Gravatar.

To leave a comment, users may log in with an OpenID, Gravatar or an ID from billso.com. (Added 5 April 2008)

I have enabled direct commenting to many of the article pages, but I do review, edit and delete comments because of privacy and spam issues. I have far more spam robots that want to post free ads on my site than I do actual readers. I find myself agreeing with James Farmer: comments that users post into a blog require a great deal of my time and resources to manage. Comments are twee.

Readers can e-mail me their comments, too. In your email, please include the phrase “I give billso.com permission to post my comments”.

Sometimes I refer to old articles in my blog, and those will appear as direct comments.

TRACKBACKS AND PINGS

Bloggers are welcome to post their own comments in their blog, along with a link to my article. My blog will automatically find and list these links as comments, although it may take 2 days for the comments to appear with my blog post. It’s not an instantaneous process.

Yesterday, the Honolulu Advertiser published an article about digital TV conversion. On 17 February 2009, US television stations will stop broadcasting analog television signals. On that date, anyone in the US who uses an antenna to receive their television signal on their analog television will need a digital converter box to receive broadcast signals. Cable and satellite subscribers have or will get converter boxes as part of their service agreement. All televisions manufactured for sale in the US after 1 March 2007 are required to have a digital tuner, so these models don’t need a converter box. The AP has an article with additional details.

I’ve discussed the FCC’s 700 mHz auction on 18 March 2008 and 30 January 2008. When the analog television channels are abandoned, AT&T, Verizon and other companies will use those frequencies for mobile phone and data services.

The US Department of Commerce has a web site with information on the DTV conversion, as does the FCC. Government regulators and consumer activists fear that cable and satellite companies will use digital television to scare up new subscribers. Another AP article states that Hispanics are the ethnic group most likely to lose television service after the conversion, even as the Federal government gives away several million coupons for digital converter boxes. Hawaii has a diverse population, and getting the message out in multiple languages will be challenging. I expect to see more articles in the local papers, especially in early 2009, even though the Advertiser claims that only 5.5% of the state’s television viewers rely on broadcast signals.

Digital TV converter boxes won’t turn an old analog set into a higher-definition TV, of course. These boxes have a digital TV tuner that passes its output to an analog TV on channel 3 or 4, like a video game console would do.

Yahoo reports that broadcasters will be required to run public service advertising, in an effort to notify viewers well before the cutover. The coupon request page uses reCAPTCHA – the same system I use to screen out spam comments on this blog.

When I graded the Paper 2 assignments for my courses, I tried a feature in TurnItIn.com’s GradeMark system. It’s a scoring matrix that helps me calculate assignment grades.

I usually have a scoring matrix in my assignments. It’s printed at the end of the assignment document, after the questions and requirements. This is an example from the IS 6100 Paper 2 assignment for the Fall 2007 term.

In previous courses, I would append a completed matrix to the graded assignment.

When I started using GradeMark last year, I just typed scores into the TurnItIn.com general comments box. There’s no way for me to append a page to an existing document in a TurnItIn.com assignment.

The matrix lets me allocate points to each row or item in my grading scheme. The columns represent a grading scale. After I type in my remarks and fill in the general comments screen, I can check the approriate cells in the matrix to calculate a grade.

I’m a visual person, and I’ve used a similar format in printed scoring tables.

I didn’t connect the vertical scale to the letter grades.

Also, the draft and peer review items are scored in those assignments, so I did not include them in the scoring matrix shown below.

This screenshot of a TurnItIn.com scoring matrix is from my instructor account, so it might be different from the student view.

This matrix is available in the printable version of the GradeMark report, and the total grade will appear in the TurnItIn.com gradebook. See my article from 5 February 2007 for more information on viewing GradeMark reports.

During the term, the point value of each assignment increases. I’ll add more rows to the scoring matrix to distribute the points in reasonable amounts.

One issue I’ve run into is the scoring matrix editor. It tends to crash for no reason. I had to close the editing window, but at least the crash didn’t take down my web browser or the operating system. It took me 3 attempts to create the matrix shown above.

I completed some tweaks to the blog Thursday evening, and they’re worth mentioning.

It’s easy to update articles in WordPress, the server software I use for this blog. Sometimes I edit an article to include new links or updated information.

The 3 September article on ad blocking is a good example. I updated that article today, and now the article’s header looks like this:

Notice the text that says “Updated” – this indicates when I changed this article.

I’ve also made it easier to see blog articles that have comments by adding a visible hyperlink after the article’s title. Sometimes I add comments to an article instead of updating the article itself, and sometimes user have added their own comments:

This screenshot also shows the new format I’m using to display articles on the home page and in search results.
An excerpt of the articles first words will appear, followed by the relevant hyperlinked tags. Just click the article title or the (more…) link to see the entire article. This is a good way to get additional clicks from readers, and to pull them deeper into a web site.

The excerpt isn’t a summary or abstract of the article. It’s just enough text to show the reader how the article begins.

I display excerpts on the home page and in search results to keep these pages small. This helps keep the site responsive and usable for readers with mobile device or limited bandwidth. Google Analytics has shown me that most users access this site at broadband speeds, but I want to accommodate all users, as discussed here.

Of course, the RSS feeds on this site will always display the entire article, including tags. Most RSS readers will also retrieve the updated version of each article.

Just a quick reminder for my students: if you have a question about the course and you need an answer within 24 hours, send me an email message. My email address is in the Facebook badge on this page.

I check my email several times each weekday. I try to stay offline over the weekend… professors need some down time, too.

General questions abut the course are fine material for comments.

I don’t check the blog comments as often as my email.

The comments feature on this blog really isn’t a good place for students to ask me specific questions about their assignments or grades. Because this blog is publicly available, anyone can read the comments.

I can edit and remove comments when needed – such is the power of the blog administrator.

Users don’t have to register on this blog to post a comment, but they do need to leave a name and email address, to help me out. The email address doesn’t get posted in the blog.