Linking and Permalinking

I'm helping some of my SME contacts work through some of the blogging processes. That was part of the reason for this blog, so long post about to begin about linking.

This example will be a "live" link to Juergen's blog to show how the post would look. I hope he doesn't mind if we send a little traffic his way.

There are two parts to the process. (1) Creating a hyperlink and (2) Knowing the address to hyperlink.

Here is how the sequence would work. I'm going to use one of Juergen's blog entries as an example.

On January 24th Juergen posted some thoughts to his blog. The post was at 9:02pm. Suppose that entry was a longer article. How do we find the "address" of that article?

[A] If you look at the timestamp, you'll notice it is blue, and in reality it is a hypelink. Just point to it with your mouse. Depending on your browser, the http string probably shows at the bottom of your screen. In this case, the "address" is
"http://juergenboenisch.blogspot.com/2006/01/
    i-had-interesting-discussion-about-how.html"    (single line)

In blog parlence this is called the permalink address. It is the address in Blogger's database, and will always be available. Hence "perma"-link.

[B] Now rather than retyping all that, "Right Click" on the timestamp. The options dialog/tool that pops up allows you to "Copy Link Location"
which puts the whole thing on the clipboard. (I'll assume you've used cut and paste before.) I would copy it into notepad as temporary storage, or Word, or Wordpad, because it is likely you will be arranging and copying something else before you need the address.

[C] Open a second browser window and log into Blogger.

[D] You want to create a new post, let's say in Human Side of Lean. You might cut and paste text from your longer post, or type your own summary/opinion.

[E] Crucial step. Highlight (left click and drag) the word or phrase you want to serve as the link. Now look up on the tool bar of the edit for posting dialog. There is a little globe with a infinity sign on top (it is actually two links of a chain but my resolution isn't too good). Click on the globe (with text highlighted in the body) and it brings up a dialog asking for the URL.

[F] Paste that address, the permalink, there. (Remember the dialog starts with http, and so does your address. Make sure you don't have http://http://xxxxx.) Hit OK. This wraps the html anchor code around the link.

[G] Post it. Your done !

More Metrics

I had a phone call to discuss the new blog for LEAN Tool & Die Making. Many of the members are "new" to blogging, so this discussion covered a lot of how-to-do things.

One of the discussions/demos involved the statistice provided by Site Meter.

It occured to me that there is another free service provided in the blogosphere. N.Z. Bear has an application called the TTLB Ecosystem. This application looks at traffic (via Site Meter) and links within registered (in the Ecosystem) sites.

The SME blogs will probably be less than "Insignificant Microbes" for awhile, but this will provide another measuring stick for connections.

Horse Of A Different Color

I have started to pull together a blog for another SME group. There isn't any content yet, so I won't post the address until later. I think I found a template that I like, but the color scheme is a bit odd, mostly rose and pink variants on the links.

Most of my HTML knowledge is a little old. So are my books (dated 1996). I probably need to get a newer reference. The colors weren't set in the "body" tag, or at least I couldn't find a "link=" or "vlink=" tag. On the other hand they had "a" , "a:visited" , and "a:hover" color definitions. That looks like the ones.

But what to set the colors to? What are the hexidecimal definitions? Nothing in my old reference book, and the web address they showed didn't seem to work anymore.

Google and the web to the rescue. Found a site by VisiBone that displays the color and the hex code for that color. Just what I needed to change the template colors.

Of course, my color sense is like my taste in food, pretty poor. At least if anyone complains I know how to change them to something else.

UPDATE: The team liked the idea so the LEAN Tool & Die Making blog is up.

Connected World

In yet another example of our connected world, I've been adding items to the Human Side of Lean Blog. In the process, learning new things. That, of course, is what I wanted to document here.

My latest adventure has been to add images to the post. This was particularly important because I wanted to add a Mind Manager map. I thought I had to have the image on a separate server, like my web site host. Or, sign up for one of those on line photo share sites.

Nope. You can upload as part of the post. Blogger stores it.

The trick it seems is that the HTML code is placed at the top of the post. The code and "span" handles the alignment, i.e. Left-Center-Right. Then what you do is cut and past into the section you want the picture to appear in. Like so:

The connection part is not just playing with another blog. In the process I realized I have three or four web pages on the Piquero site that needed updating. Particularly the ones that have sample maps.

And, I updated my home page to point out this blog is up and active.

LEAN Enterprises

Just got off a weekly phone call that is run by an SME Tech Group. The discussion centers around the people aspects of LEAN implementation. I discovered that they have established a blog for discussion. The conference calls and the blog are called "The Human Side of LEAN."

Information about the conference calls, held each week, can be found on the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Site.

Hit The Refresh

I've noted that my browser effects my ability to "see" changes. It is probably some default setting I need to fix. The browser wants to save time (my slow analog line) so it retrieves pages from the cache. In order to "see" my new posts, I usually have to hit the refresh buttom to get the latest blog entry.

We used to classify this as an operator defect, not a defect with the browser.

Consulting Tools

I had a bit of luck during the holidays. A book I’d wanted was checked back in, just before New Years.

Elaine Biech has written a number of books on marketing and consulting. This one, “The Business of Consulting,” was written in 1999. [ISBN 0-7879-4021-6] What I didn’t realize is that all the tables and checklists were on a diskette.

I got the wild idea of turning a few of the checklists into MindManager maps. This should be easier since most of the text is already typed into the Word documents on the diskette.

The conversion isn’t direct. Just importing the document into the map will give marginal results. The fun is looking at the chart and deciding how I can effectively use it as a MindMap.

My first run at it is a type of SWOT analysis for consultants/entrepreneurs. By changing the columns to branches, the checklist becomes interactive. As you decide whether a trait is adequate or needs improvement, you move the trait to the appropriate branch. Here’s the first pass at ordering my traits as a consultant.

The images are "jpg" versions of the map. As a map they can be edited and enhanced with text notes and links.

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