2009 Lotus Blogger of the Year & other awards.
Voting has started for the 2nd annual Planet Lotus Blogger of the Year award. The voting is the same as last year, simply log into PL and vote. You can change your votes as often as you wish. Voting will end at 5pm EST on the Friday before Lotusphere.
Discuss here -> FAQ: 2009 Blogger Awards in the Planet Lotus Forum
UPDATE: Dropping the Project of the Year all together....
OpenNTF.org: Best Open Source Contribution 2010 Lotus Awards
Your blog post comments are being stolen!
Really?
As many of you have seen, a couple days ago I implemented a way to post inline replies or lets call them what they are, comments; on the front page of Planet Lotus. The comments appear right under the blog post itself and any registered member of the forum can make them. This is a half ass effort of mimicking the functionality of Facebook and not an attempt to steal the conversation way from blog posts. Half assed in that a pure ripoff would be ideal; it's the single best thing, in my opinion, about Facebook, and why I loath twitter.
So, is it stealing the conversation away from the blog post? It certainly could be seen as that, but couldn't you also group the posts that get sent to http://twitter.com/planetlotus or the Planet Lotus Facebook group in the same way? Go take a look, people have made comments to those posts, but i don't think those comments are the same as the comments made on the blog post itself. I think the commenter fully understands that it's not a message to the poster but rather to those deciding weather to read the post. The same could be said for Twitter. The comments or replies made to a post are about the topic in general, the poster, etc. This is the same way I hope the replies on PL are used. A way to comment on the post as it relates to being listed on PL.
If PL has jumped the shark, maybe this is a way to go back in time, to that dreaded day; and tell Fonzie to stay home. You could use this as a way to make a comment without it showing up on the actual persons' blog post, just a message to other potential readers pondering the click. Think about it, take a hyperbolic title, you could call someone out on it. How about the 18th post saying 8.5.1 is available for download?
In the end, the user will decide. Just like in many other areas of the site, it could die a slow death. It looks like this is the case since I'm the only one using it 
.
Planet Lotus server update
Some good news, however I'll wait a good month to rule out any DoS suspicions; hopefully it's just the paranoia.
Thank you for contacting Server Support. I understand your server is down after doing a reboot. After reviewing your server it appears that the servers fan went bad. We have replaced the fan and the server is running as normal.
As a result of this, the process of making things more efficient and up-time will continue to be front and center. Much of this is in the way of growing pains; for example the table that tracks hits was 3.3 million rows; this needs to be addressed over time; I have ideas; all of them will take time to implement. In the short term the de-emphasis of certain hit counters will appear, like job postings, how many hits a job posting receives just isn't that important. This theme will continue; but never leave the front page posts 
Google Sidewiki
Google Sidewiki seems like a nice way to post graffiti like comments on Planet Lotus throughout the day. I've gone ahead and posted a note to get things started. If you're new to sidewiki here is the first article I found on it while looking up the date it was launched; Sept 23rd.
http://www.google.com/sidewiki/
Not sure how I stumbled across this tonight but its odd. All week I've been wanting to do something similar to PL after figuring out how to use Twitter OAuth for TwunLog.com, it would be nice to have an ajax like way to post small comments about posts on the PL main page.
So I'm curious, is anyone else using sidewiki?
Something I take very seriously.
I try to get to all Planet Lotus requests as soon as possible however a request like this moves right up the queue... in this case, processed right away.
New on PlanetLotus: Blogs!
Location, Location, Location.
Blogs have arrived on Planet Lotus. The blogs are based on Wordpress MU (multi user) and to start things off I've added 100+ blog themes to choose from.
Start yours here: planetlotus.org/blogs/
The FAQ and rules:
- Be Good.
- New blogs will not show on the front of Planet Lotus. You will need to submit your blog in order to have it appear.
- Beta? - Yes, until the wrinkles are wordpress'd out.
- Widget support - Yes
- Themes to choose from - 100+
- Example blog url... planetlotus.org/blogs/yourblog/
- Size limit - I'm not sure what it should be so the default of 10mb will stay and we'll see how that rides out. If you need more ask.
Enjoy!
Have ctrl-t open a new browser tab in the Notes Client
This sounds simple enough.
PS: Planet Lotus on Facebook has 199 fans... Are you a fan?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Planet-Lotus/99056356846?ref=mf
Planet Lotus now has a fan page on Facebook
Facebook fan pages are popping up everywhere in the Lotus community, might as well follow suit, anything to promote the fine blogging that has been going on over the years!
Let me know what you think. If you have ideas of how to enhance the page let me know, I'm always up for suggestions.
PS: A special thanks to Chris Toohey for the page suggestion.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Planet-Lotus/99056356846?ref=mf
-Yancy
2nd Annual Lotus Charity Drive
Last year I throw out a challenge to the Lotus community to make the PMC charity event our virtual community charity drive. The Lotus community responded to the tune of $6,484.72!
Thank you to everyone that participated!
http://charity.planetlotus.org
Overall this year’s events will be almost the same as last years. For one, I will be doing two unofficial events. A marathon, completed yesterday and second, a 148 mile one day bike ride. Why two unofficial events you might be asking?... guilt. My wife Johanna was so motivate during my ride last year that she has signed up for this year. Given that we have 3 small children it would be very difficult for both of us to do it. In response I’ve signed up for those other endurance events so you’d know that I would be suffering along side her . So if you would mind my wife is riding, but it’s in honor of the same boy, our oldest son Ethan.
Given the economic climate and a newer release of Notes, I have lowered the Premium Sponsorship amount. Any donation => than $88.50 (based on Notes 8.5) , can have their post on the Donor List, located at http://charity.planetlotus.org and http://planetlotus.org customized with the URL and text (up to 140 characters) of your choice.
So, if you're at all thankful for what Planet Lotus has done for your blogs readership, please consider this a way of giving back. If you've enjoyed reading what the site has to offer and how it offers it, consider this a way to give back.
Thank you in advance for your generosity and remember the economy is shrinking, but the number of lives affected by cancer is not.
UPDATE: Thank You to Kathy Brown and Roy Rumaner for staring off the 2009 campaign before it was announced!
planetlotus.org changes to the left < and changes to the right >
Twitter Integration
Posts made to twitter.com/planetlotus will no longer show up on the main PL page. Instead it will now be use to post PlanetLotus content to those following... on twitter. If you've been following planetlotus you've probably noticed "What's Hot" posts have been there for about a week now, other info on PL will be posting over time, events, downloads, etc.
ReTweets or RT: You can now retweet any blog post that shows up on the front page by clicking phone looking icon.
Time
The EST/EDT timestamp is gone. In it's place is an abbreviated twitter style 'about x hours ago' value. (mouse over the abreivated value to see more detail). This new timestamp will be propigated around the site over time.
Other Projects
Have you seen http://www.planetbook.org? It's been a fun side project to help readers find a good book. It aggregates posts from the 228 highest ranked Amazon book reviewers and posts them to the front page and twitter. I'm waiting for Thomas "Duffbert" Duff, currently ranked #22, to do a review of the review site. How awesome would that be! As of now there are 1,344 followers following http://twitter.com/planet_book not a bad start.
Broadcastr is plugging along. If you know anyone interested in intranet micro-blogging (in-house twitter), please pass along the link: Broadcastr.net.
And then there is http://planetsharepoint.org I'm sure many are aware of its existence however I hardly ever talk about it. As you can tell it's more vanilla then PL and in a way will be over time the showcase for Contributr a product'ized version of the planet concept.
What's next?
Let me know below. Community ideas only make the site better.
UPDATES: just fixed the url for.. http://www.planetbook.org Another reason why going with com is good, just because its the defacto domain.
Yancy Lent
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