UUpdates small screen rendering

If you have checked out UUpdates in the past on a mobile phone like the iPhone, then you might want to check it out again. I won't go into the technical details (unless asked), but suffice it to say it should look much better now that I have been able to look at it myself.

I recently got a G1 Google phone and I have to say I am very impressed with the idea of cloud computing. Within minutes of signing in on the phone I had access to all my Google apps (like Gmail) and associated contacts. I imported the phone numbers that previously only existed on my phone's SIM card and now I have them in an easily editable format online. With other mobile devices the Palm Handheld there was always the big worry of making sure it got synched so you wouldn't lose your data. I trust the data integrity on Google's servers more than I do a portable handeld device.

Anyway, if there are any comments on the updated layout. For example if it broke something, or doesn't look better please let me know.

For the children of Knoxville

I saw the following suggestion in FaceBook. I thought it was worthwhile to pass along.

Please send paper cranes to the children of TVUUC

It is a very tangible way to show the children how many people are thinking and praying for them.

The address is

Tennesee Valley UU Church
c/o Brian Griffin, DLRE
2931 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, TN 37919

I got the idea from a Fred Small song "Cranes Over Hiroshima" which was inspired from this story:

http://www.sadako.org/sadakostory.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Sadako-thousand-paper-cranes-Eleanor/dp/0698118022

My families thoughts and prayers are with all those involved in these tragic events.

UU Blog Awards - Winners

The winners of the Fourth Annual UU Blog Awards have been posted. Congratulations to all our winners and nominees, and thanks to all who have participated in the process.

UU Blog Awards - Nominations Closed

Thanks to everyone who took the time to show their appreciation for our UU bloggers by nominating their work for consideration in the awards. A special thanks from me for those who helped pre-sort posting by identifying posts you thought were good candidates for specific topics, and to all those who used the select features instead of writing in blog names.

Please take some time to review the nominations for the 2008 UU Blog Awards and let me know if anything looks strange, out of place etc. What sort of feedback am I looking for? Well, lets start with a great comment that came in.

Noticed that two cross-posted posts are listed separately. (CC's and Ministrare's.) Could they be listed together, since the content is the same? I think they have a good chance of winning, and it'd be a shame to split the votes between them.

Makes sense to me considering it looks like it was co-authored. I'll plan on combining those.

It would have helped me to read a reminder to click on the "nominate" button at the bottom of the page-----before I got there!

The page has been updated, thanks for the suggestion. I also noticed PeaceBang commenting that process seemed complicated. Any comments on making things easier would be appreciated.

I find it depressing that you have to check for irregular voting patterns. I know that's the way it works, but it's too bad.

Well, if it's any consolation I have never found anything noteworthy in those reviews. The comment is their primarily to discourage any activity along the lines of ballot stuffing.

Sad to see the Best Commenter go, but I understand why you took it down.

Well, there wasn't much feedback in support of the category. If others felt it was a good category I would certainly bring it back next year. I am sure if there are any particular commenter that you wanted to nominate they may appreciate you giving them a nod on your blog. One of the big benefits of the process is highlighting all the great contributions throughout the year - win or lose.

Thanks for doing this every year!

I think it's a worthwhile effort, glad it's appreciated.

So, are any blogs nominated in the wrong category? (Seminarian, minister, etc.) Any New blogs that are really old blogs?

Also, anyone nominated that would prefer to withdraw various nominations so that votes are not split please post here.

Fourth Annual UU Blog Award Categories

Primarily based on discussion from last years process I am planning on dropping two of the categories. The Group blog category and the best commenter. I would love to hear other opinions on this and am certainly willing to be swayed. I am not sure the potential pool for the group blog has grown, and perhaps it has even shrunk with Coffee Hour remaining defunct. Fuuse deserves much credit for their online community, but it seems like more of a community site than a blog. Of all the categories it seems the hardest for people to nominate in. So I think the category is simply confusing. As to the commenter, I do understand the original intent, but it extremely difficult to get nominations in that category. Good commenting seems to be an ongoing thing, and very difficult to pull shining examples. This is not set in stone, please comment with opinions. I am easily swayed.

Aside from that I will just be planning on having the same categories as last year.


Current schedule:

• Nominations Jan 21st through 27th.
• Nominations finalized, and time for people to read the nominations
• Voting February 11th through the 15th
• Winners finalized and posted

Blog Awards

Well, it's getting to be about that time, perhaps a little past even, for the UU Blog Awards. I am working through things and setting up the pages for this years process. So, might be a good time to start thinking about those favorite posts you've read and perhaps for bloggers to remind others of their favorites with some year in review round ups.

I am hoping to finish things up shortly, but this year I just won't have the same time and energy to put into it so updates and such will be a little slower. The voting is all automated, so that will simply display as it did last year.

Speaking of being short on time... the Blog Awards prize image has been used for at least 2 years running. No one seemed to notice. So I have been wondering if it would make sense to either simply remove the year in the image, but that's really something else I don;t have time for. If some kind soul would like to take on the task of either designing a new image, updating the date, or removing the date from the current prize (I have no preference) I would much appreciate if someone could do that and shoot me copies of the files.

Oh, and feel free to comment with any other suggestions/comments for this year.