Zcom_simple

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

583206

Mitchell Szczepanczyk's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/mitchellszczepanczyk
Bio: Mitchell Szczepanczyk is a software developer, media producer, political activist, aspiring polyglot, degree-holding linguist, and game show aficionado. A son of Polish immigrants and a native of M... (More)

All Szczepanczyk Blogs

Good news and bad news in the U.S. media policy struggles

By Mitchell Szczepanczyk at Dec 11, 2006


Change Text Size a- | A+

The good news, as the Save The Internet coalition reports:

The gavel has fallen on the 109th Congress marking the demise of entrenched corporate efforts to legislate away our Internet freedoms — and a stunning victory for real people who want to retain control of the Internet. The fate of Net Neutrality has now been passed to what appears to be a more Web-friendly Congress. ... The end of this Congress — and death of Sen. Ted Stevens' bad bill — gives us the chance to have a long overdue public conversation about what the future of the Internet should look like. This will not only include ensuring Net Neutrality, but making the Internet faster, more affordable and accessible.

The bad news is that, as far as the rest of the Telecom Act's provisions go, the Big Telecom behemoths are trying to get a goodly chunk of what they want and couldn't get in Congress at the Federal Communications Commission instead:

In 2006, the major telephone companies have been trying to ram or sneak through laws to implement their version of cable television, and doing so in such a way as to weasel their way out of public service obligations -- through state or national video franchises (as opposed to how it's done now with local and municipal franchises). In this way, they don't have to allot any channels to public access...or what's called PEG channels (public, educational, government). Big Telecom failed so far at trying to get anything passed at the Federal level, thanks to the organizing and outreach efforts of lots of people across the United States (and here in Chicago as well). But Big Telecom is trying to get a ruling in its favor rammed through in the next week (before a Democrat-party-led Congress takes power in January) at the Federal Communications Commission. An emergency appeal for responding to the FCC is being called for by the Alliance for Community Media. If you value public access television, please take a moment to visit the ACM's website to learn how you can help: www.alliancecm.org/blog.php A call or response to the FCC can make a big difference, and has in recent initiatives in the past. The deadline for response is December 13, with an FCC meeting scheduled for December 20. Quick action is needed and would be most appreciated.
Loading_border