As I wrote back in December, I've been considering breaking this blog into a series of sites, and I've actually decided to go ahead and starting doing that. I've already moved my VoIP-related writing over to "Disruptive Telephony". Next comes the social media writing. However, it all just is a heck of a lot of work that I have to try to fit in between everything else.

And if I would just suck it up and use the basic templates that TypePad, Wordpress, etc., use, it would probably be a whole lot easier... but of course, I can't. They don't work for me. So instead I have to do this three-column layout deal which is great and cool... but means extra work since I have to hack TypePad's Advanced templates. (With again MANY thanks to TypepadHacks.org!) So it's a longer slower process that winds up being something I try to fit into the wee hours of the night. Hopefully I'm getting closer, though... we'll see soon.

Tags: blogging, dan york, livejournal

Haven't looked at User Friendly in an extremely long time, but wound up there today and was amused to see that Illiad is starting a new storyline where his Internet "graybeard" Sid answers questions that really wind up relating to social media. Today's was also amusing (to me, anyway).

Tags: blogging, user friendly

Continuing a theme I've harped on numerous times over the past year or two in FIR reports and posts here, I sent a message to the New England Podcasting mailing list today talking again about the incredible importance of making it easy for other people to promote your brand in social media in a graphical form.  You can read the message but the point can be summarized in this:

If you want people in the social media world to help promote your brand, make it easy for them to get a logo or other image associated with your brand.

Ideally make it a nice little graphic people can right-click and grab (either as an image or link) directly from your home page, as both Mitel (my employer) and also Skype have done.  Or make a seperate page as Shel and Neville did over at FIR with a link to that page from the sidebar of the home page.  Whatever you do, just make it easy and people will help you promote your brand.

Now, of course, total control freaks will argue - correctly - that people can also abuse your brand if you make the logo available.  Definitely!  For instance, I've seen the Skype logo morphed into so many different forms... behind jail bars... with a big red circle/bar (to indicate "No Skype here")... Jan over in Malaysia is always inserting into various images, not always of the charitable type.  But there's two arguments there: 1) in the end, the abusers are using your brand image (and they probably would anyway) and inadvertantly helping promote your brand logo; and 2) unless you are doing really hideous things as a company, there are probably far more who will use your image positively.

I'd also add that if you are such a control freak, you certainly aren't going to do well in "social media" and you may as well just prepare right now to be outdone by more social-media-savvy competitors.  Run away now while you still can (and perhaps consider a different career move... any illusions of control in PR/marketing are swiftly being destroyed in the world of user-generated content... at best you can hope to control some aspects like the images used (maybe) and some of the message - but that involves engaging in the conversation).

Anyway, have you looked at your company/entity/podcast website lately?  Is there a graphic readily available that people can use?

Tags: blogging, branding, images, podcasting, social media

Almost immediately upon playing with TypePad for "Disruptive Telephony", I found that I wasn't happy with any of the layouts that were offered. I like the look of this weblog here at LJ, where the entries are on the left side with no sidebar there. There is just something very clean to me about the layout. Visitors go immediately into the text you are writing without having to pass by a sidebar full of photos, links, buttons, etc. To me it is very functional and I like it that way.

Now, TypePad offers a default layout like this one here... one main column of entries and one sidebar. But I wanted more. I wanted two sidebars: one with all the usual stuff (photos, links, buttons, etc.) and one with RSS feeds from my other blogs. But the only default option was to have a standard 3-column layout: left sidebar, main text, right sidebar.

Enter the TypePad Hacks website with this tutorial on creating a three-column layout exactly the way I wanted to. Now, as I note in the comments, it didn't work exactly right on the first shot... but with some tweaking of margins all is working well now. I'm quite pleased with the result.

Tags: blogging, design, typepad, typepad hacks

I am thinking about making some changes here and perhaps splitting my writing across multiple blogs.

You see, ever since I started blogging back at Advogato in May 2000 and then moved here to LiveJournal in 2004, I have always written entries because it was interesting for me to do so.  I wrote because at the end of the day, I am a writer.  Writing, like any art or skill, takes practice... and this blog has been my very public place in which to practice the art of writing.  Back in June 2005, I mentioned a quote on a cup from Starbucks that said in part:

"A writer is someone who has written today."

There you have it.  In a nutshell the answer to "why do I blog".  I am a compulsive diarist and a lover of language.[1]  More than that, I enjoy writing, I enjoy teaching... telling stories... demystifying things... helping people.  All of my various career positions and even most all of my outside activities have been about "helping people communicate better", whether its through technology like email or the Web or now VoIP... and they pretty much all involved an education (and to a degree PR) component. [2]

This blog is a personal blog and is a quite accurate reflection of the many facets of who I am.  Sometimes I am hyper-focused on one subject and may blog about that extensively and almost exclusively.  Other times my writing is less-focused and may cover a wide range of subjects.  Sometimes I may write a lot in a few days... and then I may not post for a week or more.  My writing here reflects the fact that I have a lot of different interests... so I'll write about VoIP, security, etc., and about PR, marketing, social media, etc.... but I'll also write about curling... and Vermont... and hiking... and artwork... and sci-fi... and privacy issues... and (very occasionally) politics... and typography... and wordworking... and whatever else comes to mind.  I write about travels... and links others have sent me that are really apropos of nothing else.

This blog reflects who I am (at least, the parts of me that I share publicly).

But a funny thing has happened along the way of this 6+year journey in what we now call "social media"...

( Read more... )

Tags: administrivia, blogging, livejournal

For better or worse, Technorati rankings are one of the very few tools we have to assess the relative "authority" of a blog. This becomes incredibly important when one is trying to understand the urgency (or not) in responding to something posted on a blog critical of you, your company, client, product, etc. Is this person a lone blogger whose entry might be found via Google or tag searches, but otherwise isn't heavily read? Or is this blog an extremely widely-read and heavily-linked-to blog? The difference can really drive how urgently - or not - a response may need to be created. A negative mention of a product on some individual's personal blog might not merit the same level of response as, say, a negative posting on Engadget. The level of "authority" is certainly something to consider and whenever I speak about social media to companies or conferences, I always mention Technorati rankings as one of the few tools we have out there to help with this. (Another being BlogPulse Profiles, but that one does not yet seem as comprehensive, although it has some interesting components.)

However, even though I'm a big fan of what all the folks at Technorati are doing, I'm having a real hard time lately being able to take the rankings seriously, especially given that the stats for my own blog are rather wrong. As you will note in the graphic, it shows "Updated" for my blog as 209 days ago. Huh?[1]

( Read more... )

Tags: blogging, pr, technorati

Wow!  Okay, so Semagic impresses me yet again with something else it can do. Designed originally for LiveJournal, it now has branched out to support the MetaWeblog and Atom API's used by other blogging platforms. Having now used it for most of 3 years, I have to say that it does so much to help me blog quickly. It's one of the "secrets" that enables me to blog in the midst of the crazy schedule I have. The ability to create macros... and writing offline so you aren't dependent on some website... all make it a fantastic tool.

But I have to say that this "Post to Multiple Journals" item on the file menu is just too cool. Here I am easily posting to post my LiveJournal account as well as a my WordPress.com account. Very nice!

Tags: blogging, semagic

Alec Saunders up in Ottawa writes about a fascinating story where a Canadian Member of Parliament was kicked out of the Conservative Party - apparently due to negative things he said in his blog. In looking at the M.P.'s website[1], it looks like he's actually doing some quite interesting things with blogging, video, etc. His weblog, The Turner Report, makes for interesting reading as well. He's been posting recent news articles about his situation, and I liked this one from the the Halifax Chronicle Herald that included this toward the end:

Political blogging can’t be put back in the bottle. People will look at Turner’s site, see things they like (such as the consultation) and ask: Why doesn’t my MP do this? Not everyone will want Turner’s style or degree of spoon-stirring. But you can be sure that if they’re asked to get involved, people will expect some backbone from their MP in lobbying for their views. As Turner says, “The leadership wants all MPs to have one response, but that’s not what voters want.”

Interesting times we live in, indeed! (And thanks, Alec, for clueing those of us south of the border into what's happening up there)

[1] "M.P."= "Member of Parliament"

Tags: blogging, canada, dooced

The links in my last post provided a nice reminder of the oft-discussed topic of the continued value of good headlines and synposes in your RSS feeds.

Take a look at Hackermedia.org. Specifically at the titles of the various podcast episodes contained in the boxes on both sides of the screen. Which ones are interesting to you? Which ones would make you want to listen to that episode?

The nice thing about aggregating all these feeds and displaying them like this is that it makes it easy to do this comparison. For instance, on the right side, look at the box at the top titled "Off The Hook" (which I assume must have podfaded). The episode titles include the date of the show. Useful to understand the chronology, but not the content. Similarly, "The Linux Link Tech Show" episode titles all have the utililtarian text "The Linux Link Tech Show Episode #". Again, useful to know the progression... but not useful to know the content.

In contrast, keep going down the right side to "Phone Losers of America" which does provide descriptive titles. Now, I've never listened to the show and know nothing about it, but "PLA Radio - Episode 7 - Screwing with Other Podcasts" does admittedly make me want to click on it to listen. If you keep going down the right side, you'll see Steve Gibson's SecurityNow! where he includes the main theme of his show - and also nicely includes his sponsor's name. And then, of course, you get to Mr. Verbosity himself... yes, indeed, my feed for Blue Box includes a longer definition of what's in the show.

That was, of course, a conscious choice on my part... I wanted to include enough in there to entice people to listen. And the fact that I am seeing referrers coming in from this site indicates to me that the descriptive titles are working.

Note also in the "Latest Additions" part of the page the nice "Synopsis" underneath the listing of our recent show. I can't take any credit in that... I started out copying what Shel and Neville did over at For Immediate Release, primarily because I saw how it worked for them in sites like Podcast Alley which also display only short summaries for podcast episodes. Compare what is displayed for our Blue Box episode to what is displayed for some of the others, which I can only assume had very minimal show notes.

Again, all good things to think about when you are writing up your show notes and having those go out in your RSS feed. (Given that for most blogging platforms the title of your post becomes the title of the item in your RSS feed.)

Tags: blogging, podcasting, pr, rss

As long time readers know, I've had a number of issues with LiveJournal and keep thinking about moving from LJ over to some other platform. As Ben Hamilton noted in his response to my last post on the issue:

It's only when the pain of continuing is greater than the pain of undertaking change that inertia loses it's grip on us.

Well said, Ben. I'd also add that inertia may lose its grip when something shows you that the pain of undertaking change may be less than you thought. While exploring Wordpress options for some internal blogging that I'm doing (more on that later), I discovered the very nice capabilities of WordPress to import entries from other sources, including that of LiveJournal! Now, the problem, of course, is that LiveJournal only lets you export entries one month at a time... but as noted, there are some tools out there to pull down all the LJ entries.

Now, the cool thing is that all this is available for users with Wordpress.com-hosted accounts, which, of course, I have. So the transition could actually be very, very easy...

What would seal the transition, though, would be a script that could pull in all the entries from my old Advogato diary. If I could do that, I'd wind up with all six years of my blogging from May 2000 on in one location... which would be VERY nice. A google search turns up this script to do so (as well as this earlier attempt by someone else). Could be very cool. I wrote the WordPress support folks to see if they had ever given any thought to adding this feature in, which would be even better. We'll see. I could be moving sooner rather than later...

Tags: blogging, livejournal, wordpress

For those not aware, PodCamp is this coming weekend down in Boston.  The schedule looks great, and the list of other possible sessions is excellent.  It should definitely be a great event for those interested in podcasting, blogging or other social media.  A lot of great people will be there and it should definitely be a great time.

Unfortunately, I won't be down there.  There's an exquisite irony, actually, in the fact that I will be in Boston next Monday through Thursday for Fall VON, where, on one of the days, I will be on a panel about VoIP bloggers.  It would therefore be logical for me to simply drive down earlier (it's about a 4-5 hour drive) and be there for the weekend.

However, as much as I dearly enjoy the global community of podcasters, I also believe very firmly that one needs to be connected into your local community as well, and there are some events this weekend to which we committed long before PodCamp was even conceived.  Perhaps more importantly, given the long hours I tend to work during the week, I try as much as humanly possible to keep the weekends for family time.  I realize that given that podcasting is a labor of passion and not payment for most all of us, it's hard to have a conference during the work week... but weekends - and particularly this weekend - do create other challenges.

Ah, well... hopefully the next PodCamp will be one I will be able to attend.  (And perhaps we'll just have to arrange for all of you to join us up in Vermont some time!)

Tags: blogging, podcamp, podcasting, social media

Embedding video in my blog is not something that I've really had a whole lot of interest in doing.  No particular reason why not... I just haven't really played with video all that much.  But in my last entry, I actually did want to.  And based on some of the stuff Lee Hopkins has been doing, I thought I might dip my proverbial oar in the video water.

However, it appears that you can only embed video in a LiveJournal entry if it comes from YouTube, Photobucket or Google Video.  If the video is on some other website, it appears you are simply out of luck.

I guess this is another item to add to my list of technical issues I have with LiveJournal (note that LJ does now have categories).  Perhaps one of these days I will actually get around to moving to another platform... it's sheer inertia and complete lack of time, more than anything else, that keeps me here at LJ right now.

Tags: blogging, livejournal, video

My fellow FIR correspondent Lee Hopkins has now started video blogging on his main blog.  In today's episode, he's added in some transitions and keeps improving the quality of his shows.  Darn good stuff, Lee!  Keep it coming.

Tags: blogging, fir, pr, vidcasting

Just finished clearing out the comment moderation queue for the "Voice of VOIPSA" and here are the results:

1 comment approved
466 comments marked as spam

Think we need to do something about that? Sheesh...

Tags: blogging

Do people not realize that in ONLY using Flash for their website they lose out on people promoting their brands? Case in point... in my last entry, I wanted to put in a little "badge" type of graphic next to my text about Windows Live Messenger. However, no useful graphic can be found on the Windows Live Messenger page... and if you go to the main "Windows Live" page, it is entirely in Flash!

Now, I know Flash can be used to make websites prettier, more interactive, etc. with the beauty being that it's all being executed down in the client browser. BUT... by making that the only way to see your content, you are severely losing out on extra promotion by bloggers - or regular journalists and websites - because bloggers can't easily use your graphics! I am more than willing to promote your brand when I write about your products, just make it easy for me to do. No blogger wants to just have pages upon page of only text. Graphics are nice to spice up the page - and they can help tell the story. Note that on that main Windows Live page, you can't even get the Microsoft logo! It, too, is in the Flash. Now, yes, I could take a snapshot of the page, bring it into an image editing program, save the relevant part to a file, upload that to a web server and then link to it in my story - but come on, who has time to do all of that?

I'm not saying you shouldn't use Flash... just don't make it the only way to get to your branded graphics. Take this example - if Microsoft had just had some Windows Live graphic on the top of the page, followed by their Flash component, that might have worked... even better if they had a footer with their logo in it. Just give me something I can use and I'll be glad to include it in my entries. (Note that Adobe, who now owns Flash, does not use it for their entire site!)

(NOTE: I was going to also write that in using only Flash you lose out on Search Engine Optimization, but it seems that Google and friends can now index Flash - see here and here.)

Tags: blogging, flash, macromedia, microsoft, web