Blog this, clip that: internet research tech tip

Abstract: A simple and efficient system for managing information found on the internet a piece of  Javascript called "Blog This" hidden in a bookmark (but no coding experience required). I will provide the script and you will just need to paste it into a browser bookmark.

This technique, often referred to as "blog this" or BT, enables you to record and annotate a search result with two clicks, storing it in a place that is automatically indexed, easy to find, and sorted by date. This is accomplished via Google's free Blogger service and the Chrome browser for Mac and Windows. I made a short video that shows the technique in action. Further down the article I have documented the steps in more details. Here's the video:

To collect internet research results like this you first create a personal blog to store your research findings, then you "clip" the URLs and annotate the content that you want to record. You can make your findings accessible to you alone, or to a select group of people of your choosing.

Of course, you can also make the blog visible to everyone on the internet if your intent is to share your findings with the world. However, going public with your research curation can have copyright implications, which I will address later in the article.

Before providing the steps to set up systems like these, I should note that I did not invent the "blog this" capability - referred to hereinafter as BT for brevity - nor did I write the script that BT uses. As far as I know, the BT story goes back to 2006. That is when Google made available a Chrome extension called Blog This! to assist users of Blogger.

I installed this extension in 2006, about a year after I started my first blog (scobbs.blogspot.com). Unfortunately, about 10 years later, some sort of Google/Chrome disconnect occurred that left Blog This! out in the cold, as you can see in this screenshot from one of several threads in the Google Chrome Help Forum.

But don't worry - I will describe a workaround that uses the core BT capability. The point is, when the BT extension was installed it displayed a button in the browser's URL bar. If you clicked this button after selecting a piece of text on a web page, it would create a new entry in your Blogger blog, made up of two things:

• A blog title: made from the title of the page you were on when you clicked the BT button
• Some blog content: consisting of the text you had highlighted and a link to the page it came from.

At some point, the functionality of this BT button was made available as a piece of Javascript that could be stored in, and activated by, a Chrome bookmark. To be honest, I don't know the origin of this approach. Maybe it was Google or some code-savvy blogger. However, I do know this script works. Readers who are code-phobic can look away at this point - as I said earlier, you don't need to be a coder to set up this system - but I don't want to keep code-curious readers in suspense, so here is a basic version of the code:

javascript:popw='';Q='';x=document;y=window;if(x.selection) {Q=x.selection.createRange().text;} else if (y.getSelection) {Q=y.getSelection();} else if (x.getSelection) {Q=x.getSelection();}popw = y.open('http://www.blogger.com/blog_this.pyra?t=' + escape(Q) + '&u=' + escape(location.href) + '&n=' + escape(document.title),'bloggerForm','scrollbars=no,width=475,height=300,top=175,left=75,status=yes,resizable=yes');if (!document.all) T = setTimeout('popw.focus()',50);void(0)

The key to this "clip-n-post" capability is a special page that Google created at blogger.com. The URL is: https://www.blogger.com/blog_this.pyra. Anyone can visit this page, and when they do, Google checks to see if they are signed into a Google account. If they are, it checks to see if that account is currently signed into a blog on Blogger. If it is, a new blog post is presented, as seen here:

If you go to https://www.blogger.com/blog_this.pyra and you are not currently signed into a Blogger blog, you will be invited to sign in.

Don't worry if this sounds a bit technical - the steps below should be easy to follow and you now have the background needed to build a search curation blogging system.

Four step guide to a "blog that" book mark
The process of making a bookmark to implement this system has four main steps, or five if you don't yet have a Gmail account. The official Google page for Create a Gmail Account has a pretty good description of the process. Once you have a Gmail account you will also have a Google identity.

1. Create a blog on Blogger: Assuming you are logged into Chrome with your Google identity, you can proceed to create a blog with Blogger. This process is described here by Google. The result will be a blog that is under your control, with a name of your choosing at a URL like this: some-name.blogspot.com or researchtoolz.blogspot.com.

I suggest you don't get too hung up on the URL at this point. The name of the blog is separate from the URL and can be different from the URL. Many of more obvious URLs on blogspot.com have been take - that's why I used 'z' instead of 's' in researchtoolz. (If your goal is to create a public blog, as discussed at the end of this article, then you can get a custom domain name - for example, gdprnews.com is actually gdprnews.blogspot.com.)

2. Tune blog privacy permissions and other settings: Either during the creation of your blog or at any time thereafter you can adjust the settings to ensure the level of privacy your blog enjoys. Under Settings > Basic you will find two Privacy items.

To keep this blog to yourself, choose No for both items. You can always change your choices later. Further down the same page of settings is a section headed Permissions. Read through the choices for Readers and decide how you want to proceed. For a private-to-you blog, select the Private. In fact, you can invite other people to be authors, or allow some people to read without author-access.

Some other settings you might want to adjust are Posts, comments and sharing, where you can remove or restrict the comment feature that is on by default for a new Blogger blog. For a private blog I suggest you set Comment Location =  Hide; Who can comment = Only members; Comment Moderation = Always. These can be adjusted later if you decide to share your blog.

3. Prepping a 'Blog That' book mark: We are now going to create a dummy bookmark labeled 'Blog That' into which we will will then paste the code that makes this whole technique tick.

Go to your Chrome browser on you Windows or Mac computer and make sure that the Bookmarks Bar is displayed. Here's what that looks like on my Mac, where a "Blog That" bookmark has already been created:

If you do not see the Bookmarks Bar, then you need to tell Chrome to show it. Use the Chrome menu, then the Bookmarks option and select Show Bookmarks Bar.

Now use Chrome to display any web page and click the Bookmark icon (the star on the right of the URL field seen in the next screenshot).

A small dialog box called "Bookmark added" should appear. For example, here I am at one of my websites - www.4amusia.com.

You can see that Chrome has already created a Name for the bookmark based on the title of the web page [Amusia], and a Folder has been selected [Bookmarks Bar] in which to store the bookmark. At this point you need to do two things:

a/ make sure that Bookmarks Bar is selected as the folder.
b/ change the name of the bookmark to Blog That, or something similar.

When you have done those two things, click Done. You should see your new bookmark in the Bookmarks Bar, but don't panic if you can't see it. For folks who have already have a bunch of bookmarks in the bar, the new bookmark may not appear on screen. That's because it was added somewhere down the list of bookmarks. Just use the Chrome menu, Bookmarks option to display the list of bookmarks in the Bookmarks Bar and drag it to a location near the top of the list, which will display it towards the left of the bar.

4.Activate the 'Blog That' toolbar: All that remains is to copy and paste the Javascript into the bookmark you just made. To do this:

a/ use your mouse to select the code shown in Courier font earlier in the article,
b/ right click on the selected text and choose Copy, then
c/ right click on the 'Blog That' bookmark in the bookmark bar and choose Edit;
d/ select all of the text in the URL field then right-click it and choose Paste.

You have now replaced the URL with the script. The Edit bookmark dialog will look like this:

Be sure to click Save to save the change. You are now ready to collect search results!

To test the system, go to web page, select a small piece of text, then click on the Blog That bookmark you just edited. A dialog box should appear like this (if it does not, check to see if you have pops blocked and allow them for blogger.com). Note that if you are clipping to multiple blogs you can check the currently active blog in the upper right and change it if needed.

At this point you can add anything you like to the blog post. You might want to write a note to remind yourself why you clipped this item. If I am posting to one of my blogs that is visible to the public I will add quote marks around the quoted text to make it clear it is not me who wrote those words.

When you click Publish Post, you will see confirmation of the post as seen on the right. You can then close the pop-up box.

I have found this system to be of great value over the years. For example, I have a tendency to open a lot of tabs in my browser, full of things I plan to read later. Every so often I got through my tabs and clip them to a blog set up for that purpose.

Of course, you might be wondering why I don't just bookmark things to which I want to return. And that works for some people. But what if you are in someone else's office, or at a party, and you want to get to "that page I was telling you about"? I can go to my clipping blog and either scroll down or use Search to find the item - on my phone or their computer (the clipping blog is not private). By adding my own notes to clippings I can store more data more quickly than using bookmarks (unless of course you are better at bookmarking than me).

Just FYI, I have curated over 5,000 web pages with BT. For me, managing that many bookmarks with Chrome itself would be quite challenging.

While I use BT to collect and organize Internet research results for myself, I have also used it to create topic-specific public websites. These can be a cool way to share your research and connect with other people. An example is the About Amusia site that I built last year at https://4amusia.blogspotcom.

I was motivated to create the site after I found out that I have congenital amusia (sometimes referred to as being tone deaf). Before I went on a research binge to find out everything I could on this subject I made a simple private blog to stash the results with BT. After I had annotated some of my search results, I dressed up the site with a Blogger template and an image and made it public. I went one step further by getting my own domain name for the blog - 4amusia.com - and then made the blog public as www.4amusia.com.

Whether that particular use of BT appeals to you or not, I hope you found this article helpful. If so, please share.

Happy researching!

Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up? The power of your story, in a time of change

This month I took part in a slightly unusual interview. The interviewer was from a publication called Authority and the interview was carried out entirely via email, but that's not the unusual bit. The title of this interview was: 5 Things You Need To Know To Optimize Your Company’s Approach to Data Privacy and Cybersecurity. Again, nothing unusual there—I have spent several decades studying how companies approach data privacy and cybersecurity. But consider the very first question of the interview: Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

Six year-old me, with my father,
an engineer, in Canada, 1959

That may not be an unusual question if you were being profiled by a lifestyle magazine, but as a prelude to professional opinions on cybersecurity? To me, that was unusual.

However, as I thought about my response—words that would truthfully answer the question while remaining relevant to the context—I not only enjoyed the process, I realized that this was a question I'd been discussing with myself for decades. 

Furthermore, across those decades, the answer has changed, many times. Indeed, the answer to "how I grew up" was often a story of both origins and change, a way to make sense of how my life started out and then turned out. And of course I have told that story many times, in job applications and interviews, at business dinners and networking events, and on the Internet via websites and social media profiles. 

I don't know how you feel about making sense of your life, but I have found that having a coherent personal narrative of my life has helped me to cope with some of the tough times that I've had to live through, mercifully few though those have been. (I am well aware that I have enjoyed exceptional good fortune in life and, as a white male, a massive amount of privilege; however, I have had to face grief and loss, prejudice and enmity, and I know from personal experience what it is like to be unemployed and homeless.) 

Your story of change

Speaking of tougher times, 2020 seems to be determined to bring more of these to more people in more places than any other year since the 1940s. During the ongoing Covid-19 upheaval I have found myself advising several people whose lives and careers are now—for a variety of reasons—in a period of involuntary transition.

However, because I am not a professional career counsellor or life coach, I felt obliged to bolster my own advice with that of experts. Fortunately, I found this very relevant perspective:

When you’re in the midst of a major career change, telling stories about your professional self can inspire others’ belief in your character and in your capacity to take a leap and land on your feet. 

This appears in an article titled What’s Your Story? by Herminia Ibarra and Kent Lineback that was originally published in the Harvard Business Review magazine. While the article was written over 15 years ago, it remains 100% relevant to 2020. Both authors are considered experts in their field with books to prove it. 

According to Lineback's profile on Amazon: "he helps companies and executives tell their stories, so others can learn from their experiences." Ibarra is an organisational behaviour professor at London Business School and offers lots of organizational and personal development resources on her website; she is also active on Twitter as @HerminiaIbarra. 

The authors begin their discussion of "Why You Need a Story" with this observation:

"All of us tell stories about ourselves. Stories define us. To know someone well is to know her story..."

However, and to the point of this blog post, they continue: 

"Seldom is a good story so needed, though, as when a major change of professional direction is under way...In a time of such unsettling transition, telling a compelling story to coworkers, bosses, friends, or family—or strangers in a conference room—inspires belief in our motives, character, and capacity to reach the goals we’ve set."

If you are dealing with an unsettling transition right now, I strongly urge you to read What's Your Story. And if you are hesitant about the idea of "telling stories," the authors make it clear that: 

"In urging the use of effective narrative, we’re not opening the door to tall tales. By "story" we don’t mean "something made up to make a bad situation look good." We’re talking about accounts that are deeply true and so engaging that listeners feel they have a stake in our success."

Personally, I have been very fortunate to have a lot of time to think about my life this year, and I now see that in the past my career benefited greatly from discussing—with myself and others—factual accounts of my life that are both "deeply true" and "engaging." 

In a 2018 TEDx talk, Ibarra refers to her work as teaching and researching people who come to those points in life that she calls: "what got you here won't get you there moments." I think most of us have experienced moments like that, even before 2020. I hope her article, and the other resources that I have pointed to in this blog post, prove helpful to you in getting through such moments now and in the future.

My story of change

Allow me to close with my version of "a bit about how you grew up" that appeared in Authority, the online publication which uses this tag line: Top Lessons. Top Authorities. Authority is published on the Medium platform, which I have used a few times myself—like this story about lack of trust in tech companies—but Authority uses Medium at scale. I think at least a dozen other people were interviewed with the same set of questions. You can read the full interview here, but the following is the bit about how I grew up:

I have spent much of my adult life in the US but was born and raised in Coventry, England, a city synonymous with innovations in industrial technology, like the pedal chain bicycle and the turbojet engine, and manufacturers like Jaguar, Land Rover, and Triumph. My father was an engineer, as were my grandfathers. As a teenager in the 60s I aspired to be a celebrated poet and songwriter, but the oil crisis of 1973 crushed funding for the arts and I pivoted into petroleum accounting, tax auditing, and from there to computing; that’s how I became enthralled by the clash of technology and ethics that is at the heart of cybersecurity.

I hope that gives you a sense of who I am, how I got to be who I am, and some of the changes I went through to make a career of studying how humans create and confront technology risks.

Just time for a quick update

You may recognize the phrase "Just time for a quick update" from John Oliver's show "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver." Like me, John is a dual national (UK/US) who was born in the UK, in the part that is called The Midlands.

John was born in the city of Birmingham. I was born in the city of Coventry. These two cities are close together but have remained separated by about seven miles of protected green space thanks to some sensible planning here in the Midlands. (Note, it is not called the Midlands because it is in the middle of the UK, it's not, it's in the middle of England, which is one of the four "regions" that make up the United Kingdom—it's complicated.)

A year ago today, I arrived here in the Midlands from America, with my partner, Chey, to explore a possible future in which we could be closer to my mum—who turned 90 in 2019—and my brother and his wife. Mum was born and raised and still lives in the Midlands. My brother and his wife now live in Spain. 

Less than six months into this experiment, the parameters changed: Coronavirus created a whole new set of variables, including restrictions on our ability to go to Spain or back to America or pretty much anywhere. 

Obviously, no "quick update" can capture the many and varied implications of all this, but fortunately I can point you to some of the things I have been doing during this time, namely research and writing on malware, cybercrime, cybersecurity, and a worrying lack of trust in tech firms. 

I will try to share some of the details of our ongoing experiment as time permits, mainly in the hope of helping others who may been dealing with some of the same challenges we have faced, but also some of the joys we have encountered, like the view at the top of this post. That's what the way to my mum's house looks like on a sunny day in late summer, early autumn.

Brexit: 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January 2020

[UPDATE: 00.01 on 1 January, 2021 — The UK completed it's departure from the EU. A bad idea has now become a bad reality, IMHO.]

I always thought that joining the ECC/EU was good for the UK.

I always thought that leaving the ECC/EU would be bad for the UK.

I am not happy that Brexit is happening. Period. Full stop.

No, seriously, that is the whole article. Nothing more to read. Too sad and angry to write any more.