Peace, love and understanding - is that too naive as a motto for life?

Let us make this world a better place to live for everyone, and not just ourselves. I strongly believe in worldwide online communication as vehicle for getting to know people, and to work together.

Just wanted to mark this first day in the new year by sending a traditional new year greeting to all eventual readers, collaboration partners and just good friends.

I'll just jump into an ongoing discussion at the CPsquare mini conference where Claire B. says:
"I've just recently joined elgg- and I see that many of the others here are in it too- does this mean that everyone has lots of different blogs all not really talking to one another? What I liked about elgg was that if you added a keyword it automatically linked into everyone else who has used the same keyword, and there seems to be some other nice fuctionality (and no ads). I'm exploring it for teaching/learning options and like that it is free downloadable. Any comments from other users?"

I'm quoting here even without her permission because I find some truth in this question. I know I've met with Claire B. on several occasions online, probably even in different contexts. We were in a workshop together - but we've been out of touch and I am now going to find out who she IS, after all, apart from being a teacher - a distant online virtual colleague, and also a member of the CP community - where I know I can look her up and find her profile. Does she wish to be found? I think so. Do people have blogs here and there, without really talking together? Certainly yes.

Clai also mentions the opportunity to create restricted blog posts. You're right; you can have several layers in your vblog, some for your own eyes only, others could be written for a limited sub-community of members - such as a course or a class. Right ; we do perhaps not all wish to build an audience; depends on where we are and what we're doing, and why we're writing. Personally, I would never have imagined how many different viewpoints I would be able to view to different topics. So I also begin to like that my thought mnight be relevant for people who agree with me, or may feel provoked to initiate a conversation.

This is what my intuitive reflections are, from reading Claire's message (in the closed conference area), and now I will copy & paste so that this will also be accesible from inside.

PS I may want to go back & edit this later, when I get so see how it looks like when placed in context.

I found out that Ben W. created a "community" for elgg end users, so I joined it - and started to write in the virgin blog as member no. 1. In the description, Ben says like this:

"This community exists as a place for Elgg end-users to vent, talk about how they're using Elgg and so on. It's meant as a not-so-serious place to talk about your experiences. It's not for bug requests, feature requests or technical issues. Those all have their own communities. "

Ok, I'm planning to use elgg for a workshop session with language teachers who want to collaborate with blogs as one of their venues,and find out how to use these blog clusters also for students. Feature or not - this is about implementation in practice. I want this course group to be open and public - by default! How can I open a elgg "community" or group, so that it be not restricted to members' eyes? After all, for a web 2.0 inspired portfolio it would make sense to open up for the world.

The end user blog is NOT meant to be talking about "bug requests, feature requests or technical issues. Those all have their own communities". I'm now going to track these request-oriented places as I'm not really aware where to look for such "sub-communities" inside elgg.

I'm starting to agree with people opposing to using the term community for what I would rather consider a discussion board or community helpdesk group. My end user experience tend to be mixedup with technicalities,as they're definitely colourng my activities and ability to use this fo a purpose, when it comes to the end.

http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/

Nathalie d'Arbeloff was a guest in a Tapped In session about art blogs hosted by Bee Dieu last fall, and I fell instantly in love with her images and texts. d'Arbeloff is an artist, a writer and a fabulous blogger whose philosophical woman character, Blaugustine has some serious affairs with love, sex and Godhttp://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/blaugustine.html.

And now you can read her own reflections to a quiz about what to blog about. http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/quizforbloggers.html

As I had had unexpected problems with making messages open or private, I was not surprised to find this message:
"Regular users of Elgg will have noticed that the default access restriction on blogs, files etc has changed from 'public' to 'private'.This is to protect those who may not know the system yet from accidentally making information public that they never meant to. If you want to make blogs posts, files, profile items etc public make sure you change the access restriction setting to 'public'."

What was surprising me? Well - I've been active here for quite a while, and I'd never seen this potentially very helpful blog before, it is called hints and tips! Don't you think we should all know about this...
http://elgg.net/hintsandtips/weblog/

See below for more details...

Hm Hm, would I think of Access restrictions or permissions when I blog!!!

Check this highly interesting recording from Video.Google.com http://video.google.com/ of a presentation by John Batelle, co-founding editor of Wired and founder of The Industry Standard when he visits the Google New York office to speak about his book
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (12/7/05).

Batelle is a good narrator,that's what I can hear from listening four minutes, and his audience really enjoys his style.

Did you know that listening to Mozart's music will change your brain waves so that you can think on a higher level?I think this was what the speaker in the radio was telling me in between two piano concerts. Yes, of course we're also celebrating the musical genius. His  life story is so sad, but also beautiful;how could he produce such a rich source of ear hangers? If you like to have Mozart on your Mp3 player or PC, and do not mind getting a little intro talk in Danish, you can subsribe to a podcast series  from the Danish Broadcast Damnarks Radio with nine symphonies at http://dr.dk/mozart - The first , Symphony nr. 41  I listened to all morning  in my Walkman mp3 phone, and all night there has been concerts as well. My head is spinning from all this music. http://www.mozartproject.org/