Monthly Archives: March 2011

MCEngine: New WordPress plugin

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A few years ago I wrote a little plugin called Feedback by Paragraph (feedbackBP). It added a little link at the end of each paragraph in a post which, when clicked, popped up a comment box so you could comment on parts of a post not just the end. Why?

This plugin was written to help me feedback comments on blog posts to my journalism students who use wordpress as a base for their online publications.

It was based on an idea I saw at http://newsmixer.us which allows users to comment or ask questions on a particular paragraph. The creators of newsmixer are looking to turn the thing in to an API with a wordpress plugin which would be cool but seems a little way off.

The closest plugin I could find is one called marginalia (http://marginalia.cc/) which looks very nice but doesn’t seem to play well with WordPress 2.8. So I’ve written Feedback by Paragraph to fill the gap.

One of the great things about developing a plugin is that you get the occasional reference in your logs as people install them. I’ve seen a number of interesting sites as a result. But the best feedback comes from comments and from trackbacks for the occasional mention the plugin gets.

I had a bit of free time and thought it was time to dust of feedbackBP and see if I could tweak it. One thing lead to another and the result…MCEngine.

It’s a bit of leap forward (in functionality if not in my coding skills) but the beta is now available if you want to give it a go.

Let me know what you think.

What is a digital native?

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Yesterday I chaired a session on Digital Natives as part of the BBC’s Developing Talent conference hosted by UCLan.  We pulled in two of our second years, Joe Stashko and Daniel Bentley, who we think are digital natives(even if they don’t!) to talk to the audience about how they do what they do and my colleague Paul Egglestone gave his perspective from a community and digital immigrant perspective.

They did a great job and some interesting points came out of the too-and-fro. As ‘chair’ I made some notes that may or may not define a digital native based on the panelists views and the audience questions.

A digital native:

  • Buys in to the implied funding model. You pay to use this service with your information. Right or wrong.
  • Understands and is part of the social graph
  • Over-shares but doesn’t over promote (themselves)
  • Will over-share your content – whether you want them to or not!
  • Will give stuff away for free as long as you come and get it
  • Doesn’t read terms and conditions but then who does!
  • Won’t sign up for a BBC ID (as it doesn’t play well with Facebook)
  • Thinks about community, not readers
  • Makes connections
  • Is ‘almost’ as popular as the local newspaper
  • Like fragments rather than the whole
  • Aggregates and curates(rather than edits)
  • Knows where to get good fish and chips
  • Is young but embraces technology again when they get over 40.
  • May grow-up in to an uber geek.
  • Attracts funding for new ideas
  • Tries to connect those around them
  • Isn’t always that interested in quality – whatever that is.
  • Is less bothered about how you use their data than you are. Or, at least, doesn’t think about it.
  • They have no fear. They don’t worry about what the do being public

What do you think?