Nature Network turned three last month. During our early years, we’ve enjoyed thousands of illuminating, entertaining and sometimes controversial posts from our diverse pool of bloggers. Now, exciting new changes are afoot.
From tomorrow, Nature Network’s blogs will have a high-profile new home on the Nature.com Blogs site, where they’ll feature alongside Nature Publishing Group’s highly regarded blogs, such as The Great Beyond, Nautilus and The Sceptical Chymist. In other words, all the blogs hosted by Nature will be brought together in one scintillating web site.
Links to new blog posts, recent comments and popular posts will still appear on Nature Network’s blogs page as ever, but the real meat – the words, pictures, videos, maps, thoughts and theories of our bloggers – will now appear at blogs.nature.com.
At the same time, our bloggers will be getting some new tools to play with. Currently, they’re using fairly limited software built in-house several years ago. With the new move, we’ll be introducing a more versatile blogging platform called Movable Type 4. This will, for example, allow bloggers more freedom to use multimedia content and schedule posts – down the line, it will allow us to introduce blogs with multiple authors. (Bloggers – you’ll be receiving full instructions on using the new site by email.)
During the transition, we anticipate a period of downtime on Nature Network of several hours tomorrow afternoon starting at approximately 12 noon (GMT) and lasting for up to six hours.
Once the new set-up is in place, we’d appreciate any feedback. Whether you’re a Nature Network blogger, commenter or reader, you can join in discussion on a new forum, created to aggregate suggestions about the blogs.
Finally, if this has inspired you to start a blog, send your request/sample of writing to network@nature.com.
(small cheer)
Ooh, publically announcing a date, eh? Dangerous.
Oh, Bob, please.
‘Publically’?
hrm. hrm. yikes! i guess i have to decide which name i want to give my NN blog, eh? oh, choices, choices … it’s the finality of the name that bothers me. shall i tell you what i’ve got so far? or maybe i can just hodgepodge a jumble of word from each proposed name into a new combination?
richard: publically (snort) is better than pubically, right?
uh, oh. will i get yelled at by NN lawyers for using the word “pubic” in “public”? if so, can i justify it by demonstrating my horrible typing skills?
I like public allies, there’s no point in having private ones.
Pubic allies are pretty good, too.
Will we be able to have blogrolls? I like blogrolls. So does my dog, but she likes lots of things.
My dog likes bogrolls, but I think that’s something different.
Or maybe not?
[/continuing the tradition of Missing Consonants]
I say blogroll, you say bogroll: let’s call the whole thing off
This is so exciting, how am I going to sleep tonight? (I don’t sleep much anyway so never mind this diurnal disruption). I am both honoured and embarrassed that you mention Nautilus in this post because after 3 years of nobly posting at least one post per day (not weekends), I have fallen back in the past couple of weeks owing to my foolishness in taking a week off work…..So, from tomorrow I will pull my socks up and return to daily frequency. I hope this rash statement is one I can live up to.
Roll on tomorrow!
PS to Grrl – as we already have Gobbledeygood and Gallimumphery (which I have probably spelt wrong) I suggest something really sane and boring, like “Blog about science” or “Bird life”.
Er, that was supposed to be ironic but I guess it didn’t really work – I hope you don’t really call it Bird Life or Blog about Science (or Gobbledeygook).
Grrl, please share! I like thinking about fun blog names!
Looking forward to the changes, even though I don’t have a blog here 🙂
Maxine – Daily posts? Yikes! You are obviously made of sterner stuff than me… 🙂
Tell you what: If you can manage to post daily, I will undertake to post at least weekly. Honest…
Plus, I will try to measure up to the technological bravura of the new platform with multimedia type stuff.
See you all on the other side!
For a bird-centred blog, how about:
We need at least one blog with a Monty Python reference in the title, surely? Or still referencing the same sketch, how about:
(Variations: Later, latest…)
’Avian a laugh?
okay, here are the three final names (i am sure that number will increase to a dozen or so after you help me, which means i will likely have to resort to the dartboard and excessive amounts of beer method of name choice);
Sunt Lacrimae Rerum
Back to the Keyboard
The Invisible Scientist
maybe this will help: the current theme of the blog will be to write a “translation” of papers published in NATURE about evolution, ethology, or ecology, especially in birds (“birds” includes dinosaurs). the focus and direction of the blog will evolve over time, of course, but that’s the starting point. i hasten to add that i am not very funny in print (alas!), although i have been told i am rather amusing in real life.
Evolution re-up
Biology for the birds
Science’s flight
Grrl – How about “Evolving Ethos”?
Or, perhaps, “Sharp Focus”?
Ok, here’s a few random suggestions:
Beak Speak
Found in Translation
Winging it
Talk is cheep
Feel free to ignore!
Maniraptora.
Oooh, Talk is Cheep is just begging for a sister blog: Talk is Deer
Bird with Bite
[Works on about 17 levels…;-)]
Or… Shallow Thoughts and Seriousness?
If you want to go for search engine optimization, I recommend “Tits, Boobies, and Other Birds”. =P
Not Just a Load of Old Finches
COMPETITION ALERT: We’ll award a prize to the last person to post a comment on the “old” blogs before we shut down today. Can you can come up with anything to match the 50,000th comment uttered by Richard Grant?
This is like when someone tells you to “say something” and you suddenly have nothing to say anymore…
(…shut it down NOW! =) )
ha ha. You could start by guessing the exact time we will shut down…It is unlikely to be precisely at noon.
@Grrl: Parrot Fashion
Grrl: How about “Flight of the Navigatrix” ?
Ha, ha, love Eva’s suggestion for a title! Definitely a search engine winner.
Nailed to the Perch
Owl Be Back
Covert Operations
Random Vents
wow, love the suggestions. maybe i should use each name for a week, or on a rotating basis?
Squawk Box
Ooh, almost noon GMT. I’m so excited…
Raptors Revenge? 🙂
OK, actually I’m a rather sad individual.
Are we there yet?
Funnily enough, I just got a e-newsletter from Twitter/Biz Stone, which among other things said they are planning their first conference for developers who make Twitter apps. They are calling it a “cheep”.
If I win, I donate my doubtless excessively generous prize to all those NPG programmers who have been up every night for months to integrate the two platforms (MT and nature.com). Let’s call it “The Night Owl” prize.
Hmmm, “Night Owl” .. title for a blog?
Isn’t this going to be won but someone in IT typing “test”? No, that’d be the first comment after relaunch.
‘Has it changed over yet?’
‘No. It’ still the Test Card’.
“Well, let’s see if there’s any footie on the other side.’
Time for an IT related joke, I guess…
Q: “How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?”
A: “None – it is a hardware problem…”
Sorry – couldn’t resist…
Hope it shuts down soon – I want to go for my lunch.
To quote a famous author…
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so…” 🙂
Hey, I set up a perfectly god joke (possibly), and then the NN techs decide to keep the site up! I want my money back!
Or has there been a further delay, and they’re too embarrassed to admit it?
No, I just don’t want to be the one to make the last comment 🙂 Noon was an approximation – the IT guys have to get everything set up and then switch us off.
From my experience of software development, there will be a number of “undocumented features” in the anticipated second generation solution…. 🙁
Good luck, team!
hah hah!
dn’t forget, it’s noon … somewhere in the world …
Our email system is currently running about an hour behind reality, if that helps.
No, Richard – Reality is trying to keep an hour’s distance between it and your email system.
so .. based on when “noon” officially occurs, which country are we in? taking guesses/bets now ..
IT staff is usually in a different time zone compared to the world around them, so it will be noon in about an hour (2 hours past the real noon) which probably puts us in Greenland somewhere, timezone-wise?
That could be a good plan, Bob. It’s pretty unreal around here.
I’d say somewhere mid-Atlantic, Grrl.
ooh. Competitive thread crossing.
Mid Atlantic? Quite appropriate really…
I must practice the accent though…
no John, I meant further west than Wales.
You mean – there is land beyond the Western Sea ??!!!
Yeah. It’s called Skegness.
Cue Henry…
There was a brownout there. I thought Skegness might have won. Perhaps Scunthorpe?
There’s no need for language Richard…
There’s every need for language. Otherwise we couldn’t communicate.
Nope, the only thing Scunthorpe ever won was an S for the start of its name.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Scunthorpe R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Richard – My cat would differ with you on that point…
I have only one thing to say to your cat…
He heard that… Better watch yourself….
Hastur Hastur Hastur
Actually, talking of cats and other unspeakable horrors, https://www.hasturcattery.info/.
John – how many tentacles does your cat have?
The Beast is an Australian cat. I wonder if he was raised at Hastur Cattery. It could explain a lot.
Not as many as this.
Henry Gee, yesterday
Not sure about tentacles – but when I’m trying to get him out of the door he seems to have n+1 limbs – where “n” is the number you can detach from your flesh/clothing at any one time…
Damn, I want one.
I’ve just realized that this is a plot to get 60,000 comments before the switch-off. Which all all know can’t happen today; it’s not Thursday.
Fie! And indeed, SCUNTHORPE!
Damn, I want one.
a limb?
Scunthorpe – proof that coastal erosion isn’t all bad.
If I wasn’t trapped under a heavy cat I’d have gone to lunch ages ago….
We’ve been suckered, then. And MT4 is still a myth.
he’s still letting you type though?
Perhaps the Oven-Dried Tomato & Mixed Herb Flan in the canteen was just too tempting for the IT staff.
What? You’ve seen their canteen has a twitter, yeah?
Mind games… That’s what it is, mind games… 🙂
They want this thread to hit 100 comments…
Unfortunately, Scunthorpe is on a ridge. God did try an earthquake a couple of years ago, but it just shook a few plates.
My Grandmother was cremated in Sunthorpe.
sCunthorpe, I mean.
Poor woman.
She was dead first, which is a small mercy.
The final comment has been announced on Twitter. So if you see this, there’s something wrong with you. Or me. Or the universe.
Definitely you.
checks again
Ah, it’s the final comment thread.
Yeah, I just saw that. And they screwed up the HTML…
’ *MT4 will fix that!’ *
Don’t get me started on unstructured languages… 🙂
Where have I heard that before?
Weird. There’s an automatic blind on my window. Just now it (automatically) lowered itself 2 cm, and then raised itself the same amount.
It must be bored too.
Scunthorpe.
Hey Bob, that’s probably the only time this blog will get 100 comments.
I think Matt’s letting this thread run, just because we’re being rude about Scunthorpe.
What about Grimsby, eh?
No, they had 100 with Watercressgate as well.
Cromer!!!
Damn you, Henry.
Golders Green.
Oh wait, Matt’s from Immingham. A place famous for 3 people, a snooker player, a murderer, and someone who faked his own death there.
Latest update: the IT guys in New York are definitely in the office and on the case. We’re in their hands now…
We are in danger of a game of Mornington Crescent here chaps….
That’s six.
‘in danger’, John? It was deliberate.
Oh gods. New Yorkers…
Time Square/42nd Street
3rd & Market.
The danger remains, whatever the intent… 🙂
4th & 5 yards.
drop goal from outside the 22.
And it’s back to Square One…
caught off an inside edge.
The blind managed 7cm just now.
no ball.
Oh, goal kick then.
Goodge Street?
Grant squares up to O’ Hara at the Nursery end…
And scores 9.4 from the Swedish
judgechef.Why thank you.
Time for a Chocolate Moose…
Come to Sunny Cromer!
No, that’s chocolate elk over here.
Come to sunny Frankfurt too. We even had a sea fret roll in this morning (and go away again when it consulted its map and realized how far it was from the sea).
That’s something else you don’t get in Scunthorpe.
The elk, not the motorcycle. Which is far too cool.
Probably a giant elk though… Or did henry mean whelk?
the elk have more sense than to go to Scunthorpe. The whelk too, come to think of it.
But not the sea frets?
Wait, that’s Frankfurt. Sorry.
Why such a hurry should go to lunch?.
I went and came back. I was shocked – shocked I tell you – to see that NN was still working.
geez, peeps: if you all keep this up, this site will not be started up after the upgrade! perhaps the cat herders will decide NOT starting the site IS the upgrade?? eeks.
Maybe they are too polite to break into our conversation?
nobody would miss us.
We’re trying to catch up to ScienceBlogs’ numbers of comments.
Come to Chile earthquake.
Or they’re waiting for us to crash the system with these long threads.
What would Oprah do?
Hire a ghost?
what?
The Phantom of the Oprah?
sigh
bob, stop playing with those little buttons and get to work! cracks whip
Sigh Barret dead.
ahem Not in public, dear. People will talk.
Yes, go to work.
And then they’ll develop a grammar and write books and then whatever will become of civilization?
It’ll invent television. That’ll be the end of that.
Sorry, are we back on communication…?
No, we’re simply talking without communication.
It’s a short form of blogging.
“semantic farting” is the formal descriptor.
or maybe, tweeting? except, since this is actually the past tense now .. twatting?
Twitting?
Dangerous conjugation either way…
That could be understood on many levels.
Which was the idea…. 🙂
In statistics we have conjugate priors (they look like their posterior). Seems somehow appropriate.
hrm. that looks a posteriori to me ..
Harsh, Bob, harsh… 🙂
maybe they meant noon — in NYC? if so, that is less than three hours away.
They did claim it was GMT. I guess that could mean Detroit time.
it seems that by the time they shut this thing down, it’ll be beer o’clock in the EU. i guess that’s alright.
That they’ll have to keep on working, late into the night. Poor Lou.
It’s gone quiet here all of a sudden.
And we are back up, one of the processes took a bit longer than we had expected, but all of the data has been correctly ported. 03.54 am, and I’m very glad to report that you can all come along and give the new software a shakedown!
We have no doubts that there will be a few rough edges that may need polishing over the coming weeks, but now that the new platform is out there we are in a much better position to work on those things going forward, just let us know!
The place looks so different now. But looks like everything and everybody is still there.
Will people using the old blog URL be forwarded to the new location. It looks as if they currently just get lost.
Hi Martin, they will. I noticed one issue in that our redirects seem to be case sensitive, this will be easy to fix. If you have specific urls that you are having problems with please paste them into a comment for us!
Welcome back everyone! Please post any feedback in the feedback forum (which I’m just about to update) It won’t get accidentally overlooked if it’s there!
Feedback forum link
Welcome back Lou and Nature Network!
“Finally, if this has inspired you to start a blog, send your request/sample of writing to network@nature.com.”
Uh no. Don’t bother.