First, I had to choose a WordPress “widget” to use. There are at least 20 in the WordPress website, and who knows how many more elsewhere on the Web. I settled on Twitter Widget Pro by Aaron D. Campbell, but after installing it I got a fatal error message, so I went to the author’s blog and read the comments about this app. Aaron is good at replying, and sure enough, several other people had the same problem. The solution was to use PHP 5.2+, but according to the readout on my site’s control panel, I was using the latest and greatest… So, it was off to the Knowledgebase on my webhost’s support site. Ah ha! Even though the latest version was shown to be available, the default was to use PHP 4.x! So, I had to rummage around and find the place to make it default to version 5. That done, the widget worked like a charm (aside from being a little slow updating).

So, now that I know what I’m doing, it’s time to add this widget to another blog I’m working on, one for a new ePublishing venture. Oops, sorry, we’re not ready to launch that site yet, so I can’t give you a link, but rest assured that when it is time, I’ll post about it here, and on Twitter and other places as well.

But that leads me to another topic. Since I started a new Twitter account for the new venture, now I’m in the market for a Twitter client that will not only allow all three of us involved to post to its account, but will also let me easily manage multiple accounts I’m using. It could get messy, especially since I’m involved in yet another ePublishing venture and will want an account for that one, too. I found something that looks promising, CoTweet, but it is still in private beta so it could be a while before I can try it. Since the new Twitter accounts aren’t active yet, though, I can afford to wait.

Twitter and WordPress are not the only online communications tools out there, of course. You may have noticed another addition to this site, a collection of icons at the end of each blog posting. This widget was (thank goodness!) very straightfoward to install. It’s called Sociable. The configuration page for that widget offers a plethora of linked icons for an enormous array of social networks, including of course Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as well as email and your printer. As dynamic as social networking tools are, though, new ones are always popping up. No problem! Sociable allows you to create your own icons and link them to sites you choose. It doesn’t get much more flexible than that.

At the same time all this is going on, I’ve been working with a new volunteer at the International Spaceflight Museum who is taking over our exhibit sponsorship auctions on eBay. Our original “auctioneer”, Opal Lei (Second Life name), bowed out after working very hard to not only set up the auctions, but also scripted signs in Second Life that display the sponsor’s name and automatically reset when the sponsorship expires. She also wrote up very clear instructions for her successor, making it not just easier, but possible, for someone to follow her footsteps without going completely crazy trying to figure it all out. She even did an inventory of all our exhibits, which she put in a wiki! Those early auctions kept the museum solvent for months, but since they ended we’ve struggled to pay the bills. So finding a replacement auctioneer has been a true blessing. I just hope we can get his first round of auctions rolling in time to avoid losing the islands, since the rent is due next week. If you’re interested in helping, either by sponsoring an exhibit or simply donating, please visit our website for more info on how to do that. We have a PayPal donor button as well as info on the auctions and even a Google spreadsheet that shows our current (sorry) state of financial affairs.

While mentioning the ISM and communications, I would be remiss to not also mention a new book by a friend of mine, Kimberly Rufer-Bach, The Second Life Grid: The Official Guide to Communication, Collaboration, and Community Engagement. She interviewed me for a case study on how the ISM uses a wide variety of Web tools to manage our world-wide distributed nonprofit organization, and according to another friend, Dave Taylor, the ISM was featured very prominently in the book, perhaps getting the most space of any of the case studies she includes. I’ll find out for sure next week when my copy arrives.

Got all that? Good. I’ll stop writing now and get back to work. Thank you for your attention.

Right now we have the router (with the USB modem sticking out the side of it) sitting on the dashboard of our RV:

Connected to the modem is the coax cable from the antenna, which is presently propped up at the middle of the windshield on top of the dashboard. Our friend, Mark, first told us about using a Wilson antenna to boost his cellphone reception and got us thinking about better ways to manage our connectivity. He says he never has used an external mount for his antenna. Sitting it in the windshield or on a table has worked for him even in fringe areas. While internet data at broadband speeds may require it to be placed higher, partiularly in hilly areas, right now having it on the dashboard seems to work for us here, too. The iPhone was having trouble getting a good EDGE network signal, but with the antenna it’s doing just fine on WiFi. Oh, by the way, if I understand it correctly even though the iPhones aren’t connected to the router, just having the antenna and router running and rebroadcasting the signal gives us the benefit of stronger cellphone reception.

To avoid having to lay the antenna down while we’re driving, we will attach it to the windshield center post with velcro loops. We do want to have it available over the road instead of stowing it away. In a few days I’ll be able to report on how well it works in a totally mobile setting as we drive to Amarillo and on toward Tuscon.

If all goes as well as it has been so far, I will be able to restart my history ebooks website, and perhaps change the distribution method from CD-ROMs to online downloads. I have an antique history book, the Standard History of Essex County, Massachusetts, that I’d scanned several years ago and converted to PDF files, then indexed every proper name and loaded them into a database for easy lookup. At one time, when I had the website on a Lasso™-based server, we were able to make the database available online, but I’ll have to learn more about MySQL (or some similar opensource database system) and PHP to do that again.

Having fulltime high-quality internet access is going to open up a lot of possibilities. The only potential problem I can foresee is that we are likely to need more than 5GB of throughput per month if we use this system as much as I expect we might. It’s possible to run over that allowance very easily the way we use the ‘net, with two computers and two iPhones. Every megabyte over 5 gig will cost us US$0.25, which can add up very quickly. Whenever it’s available and not too frustrating, we’ll use the WiFi provided by RV parks, roadside rest areas and internet cafés, and at least until we get an online account with Verizon that will let me keep track of our usage, we will play it safe.

Oh, I didn’t mention the problem I had with Verizon’s website, did I? When I tried to sign up for their online account, it turned out that to enable it I have to enter a code they text to the “cellphone” the account number is connected to. Except that we don’t have a cellphone, we have a wireless modem. Doh! The site says that if they aren’t able to text the code, they’ll mail it to our billing address. Lovely. That means we won’t get it till our mail is forwarded to us in Tucson, at least two weeks from now. Sigh! Maybe if I call Verizon, or the 3GStore.com who sold us the gear, it will be possible to get around that. Verizon ought to have a better arrangement for modem customers since they have been doing this for several years already. It being a weekend as I write this, the call will have to wait until tomorrow, and hope the 3G Store doesn’t observe MLK day.

More details will be forthcoming here as we acquire more experience with this stuff, or watch my Twitter feed (“follow katlemieux”) for minute-by-minute comments as things happen.