Not About Blogs
Back on Lab with Leo
I’ll be critiquing Web sites again on The Lab with Leo this month, so you have a chance to submit your Web site for a quick review on television. It’s a chance to get a little free advice from me, and to get your Web site seen by all the viewers of Leo’s show—nothing wrong with that!
This video tells you how to get in on the action!
Get Reviewed in the Web Workshop on Lab with Leo
I've appeared on the G4 Tech TV show The Lab with Leo several times this summer and fall, and now I'm a fairly regular guest in the Web Workshop segment. It has really been fun to do the show, it's such a different energy than Hop Studios and it's fun to go and get the makeup on and talk with all the great tech guests that come to the show. I've got one more appearance this year, and I thought I'd let you all know that you, too, could be the subject of a quick review of your Web site on the show. It's a chance to get a little free advice from me, and to get your Web site seen by all the viewers of Leo's show -- nothing wrong with that!
This video tells you how to get in on the action, but you have to hurry! We need site submissions by Dec. 9!
Some Fundamental Friday Video
This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.
Airplane Seats
I think airline executives should be forced to sit in well-used airplane seats bolted a set distance from their desks.
Also, I apologize profusely to the poor man sitting next to me on the flight to Vancouver Friday. Neither I nor the guy on his other side were able to sit still for more than 13 seconds at a time.
Change Your Desktop Background, Change Your Energy
It’s Tuesday. The adrenaline rush that was Monday’s panicked sprint into the week is over, the first night of sleep deprivation is hitting hard, and I’m staring at the computer with the vain hope it will do my work for me. (No luck so far, and I spent how much on this thing?!)
I need a pick-me-up, something more than the several cups of caffeine I’ve already consumed. Something legal. Something fun. Something… it must be time to change my destop background image.
Happily for me, joey interactive has done the research for cool desktop backgrounds for me. This list of sites of ”Desktop Backgrounds for Designers” will keep me visually appeased for some time to come.
Now, has anyone found that plugin or patch that makes my computer design Web sites while I knit?
Know Anything about an XO Outage?
Is anyone experiencing a service outage with XO Hosting? I can’t get to their site, and naturally the site I manage that’s hosted there is down, as well. I’m just trying to verify that it’s not a local issue.
Thanks!
My First Podcast
Roland Tanglao (of Bryght fame) has organized a weekly podcast and asked me to be part of it. We did our first session or Roland’s Rabble last Friday and talked about Flock, BitTorrent for Dummies, and the backlash against Web 2.0 that’s going around. It’s definitely techie talk, so beware!
Michael Tippett of Now Public and Will Pate of Raincity Studios were also part of the podcast.
Happy Halloween!
How evil are you?
What Do You Blog About on the Friday of a Long Weekend?
Dilbert and knitting, of course!
In case you missed last Sunday’s Dilbert comic, you should check it out. Adams reveals the TRUTH about “getting fired for blogging.” Plus, you know, it’s funny.
And if that isn’t enough for you, you should also check the Yarn Harlot blog, written by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, knitter and author. It’s a personal blog, covering everything from the death of the family hamster (73 comments) to the fun of travelling with people frightened of knitting needles (293 comments) to—naturally—knitting disasters (119 comments). Pearl-McPhee’s hilarious self-deprecating style has earned her loyal blog readers, and loyal book buyers. In case you think I’m getting carried away by own enthusiasm for knitting, no, in fact, there is a sound “buzz marketing with blogs” reason to take a look at Yarn Harlot. Pearl-McPhee has parlayed POWER OF THE BLOGOSPHERE into SUCCESS IN THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE (read all-caps text out loud very seriously). Her books, At Knit’s End and Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter, sell outstandingly, and knitters all over the U.S. and Canada turn out in droves when she does book talks. It’s all about the writing, baby. Oh, and the knitting. Check out this story about Pearl-McPhee’s blog in USAToday: ”Knit-wits weave their way into the web.” And, apparently, I said this when talking about the Yarn Harlot blog with Paul Chaney earlier this week.
Final Friday fun: Are you looking for something to blog about today? Well, good news. It’s Blogacatmus, according to Accordion Guy. Check it out and then get blogging.
I leave you to a pleasant Columbus Day weekend (U.S.) and a happy Thanksgiving (Canada).
I Need Help!
I saw this amazing iPod case on the Blogaholics blog when I was catching up on my feeds today and realized that I simply must have it! The problem is, it only seems to be available on a site that is all in some language I can’t read. I don’t think I’m quite up to figuring out how to purchase something from a site I can’t read at all, so I need help!
Has anyone seen this case for sale somewhere else (preferably in English)? Or, is there someone who reads whatever language is on the SolidAlliance.com site who could walk me through the ordering process? Thanks!
UPDATE: Several people have recommended Google’s Translate function, which does work until you actually get into the shopping cart. So that one is a no go, at least as far as I can tell.
While My [Ukelele] Gently Weeps
I’ve had such a busy week that a fun Friday post seems like a requirement!
Today, for your listening pleasure, I offer Jason Shimabukuro playing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” On a ukelele. Really well.
Enjoy!
Source: Found this on MetaFilter.
Be Wary of Wireless
Like to blog on the road? Be careful of those unsecured wireless networks!
St. Petersburg Times article: ”Wi-Fi cloaks a new breed of intruder”
Smith, who police said admitted to using Dinon’s Wi-Fi, has been charged with unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony. A pretrial hearing is set for July 11.
At the end of the article there are some tips on securing your wireless network from being used by others, for good or evil.
The Next Wikis
I’ve been having a lot of fun, using in, and thinking about wikis. I have some ideas about the next generation of wikis and ...
{What’s a wiki?}
Oh, sorry. It’s a Web site that is read/write, not read only. In other words, you, the reader, can edit, add, delete, move, annotate, deface, restore, modify and correct any part of it that I allow to be edited.
{That sounds hideous!}
Well, you’d think so. But that’s because you’re not thinking about affordances. Affordance is the idea that people tend to do with an object, the thing that the object makes easiest to do. In other words, if I hand someone a gun, they’re more likely to shoot it then they are to use it as a hammer. Hand someone a baseball bat, they’re going to swing it, not whittle it. And evidence shows that if you give people a well-designed wiki, they have a tendency to improve it, not scrawl all over it.
{But that’s so not the way the real world works.}
Actually, I think it is. Think of self-organizing lending libraries in a small town, or guest books in a hostel, or bathrooms walls in funny bars where they let you draw on the stalls. Sure, sometimes there’s a little bit of crudity in there—but people also do really creative, interesting things.
In a more general sense, look at community gardens, or open mike nights. Yeah, sometimes someone does something destructive, but if the thing is design to maximize positive effects and minimize bad behavior, some very positive results occur.
{I think I understand. Go on.}
Well, I’ve been contributing to Wikipedia and to OJR and I started thinking about where Wikis are going to go.
{And?}
Well, I think wikis now are essentially interactive RTF files. And there are lots of other types of files that ought to be wiki’d.
{Such as?}
Well, for one thing, I really want to see a wiki spreadsheet. Imagine being able to have a wiki page with columns and rows where you could modify values and formulas interactively. Think what this could do for committee budget calculations. Think of how this could be a great news tool. OR think of how this would be a great way to keep track of money on a group vacation—everyone enters their expenses, taking turns tweaking the sums and the formatting and presto, you’ve got a handy way for everyone to see what they owe.
{And?}
Garageband / midi files ought to be wikiable. Imagine an evolving musical document that you could listen, perhaps on your iPod, even “subscribe” to so you always have the latest version. It could evolve over time, like a whale song. The vocalist could change, and you could add in some blues guitar, or modify the tempo a bit. Audio is an order of operation more difficult to handle than text, but it could happen.
{Seems like anarchy.}
Or even worse, socialism! But it’s not. It would be unwieldy for groups of thousands to all try to modify an audio file at once, but not all wikis have to be massive. A wiki for university class of musicians might produce some amazing fabrications over the course of a semester.
{What about images?}
Images are tricky. They’re more atomic—you can’t remix the red or the shadows of a picture and still have it work. But think of Flickr. It seems to me it’s as close to an image wiki as anyone’s come yet. When you start thinking of Flickr as a self-organized image wiki where contributors are adding metadata, sorting by every conceivable scheme, and then creating interesting uses for that rich data, it’s very wiki-like, without being an actual way to edit each other’s photos. And there’s even some of that—someone posts a photo, someone else grabs it and photoshops it. I have seen groups where someone starts with an image, someone else changes it and reposts it, and so on, and so on. Put a proper wiki interface on that and there’d be some interesting, perhaps Fark-like applications.
{Ooh, this is getting interesting! What about video?}
Before we get to video, let’s go in a different direction. What about calendars? Evite and Yahoo Calendars are far too structured. Apple has a few calendars listed, and seems to be picking up more and more on the benefits of letting users build the things they want themselves (podcasting and iTunes lists, for example)
Upcoming.org has many of the right ideas—anyone can list an event, classify it, etc. But it doesn’t go far enough—there’s no way to modify the front page of the site, to add tags or categories through the data, to create new lists, and to tie more information into the system—photos and audio and…
Online calendaring hasn’t yet been wikified. But when it does happen, it’ll be amazing.
{What about video?}
Yes, yes, I hear you. Video is tricky because of several current limitations: size of files, processing power needed and bandwidth. But the bigger problem, I think, is that successful video projects often call for a singular vision, from a single person. It takes an awful lot of work to keep continuity in a video project, far more than it takes to do it in print. This applies to video-like file formats: flash files, Powerpoint presentations, etc.
But there are uses for video wikis. The spoof site Crying While Eating, for example, could have been done in a wiki format. You could have a video wiki of comedians, or a video wiki of recipes, showing how different people make their best dishes.
Our Media is going that way—but like Upcoming.org, it doesn’t have the flexibility in bunching and sorting the material yet.
{That’s too bad.}
Frankly, it’s amazing that so many wiki-like applications are happening so quickly. I think no one would dispute that humans like to create things, that they like to share things, that they value knowledge and like to feel like they’re participating in something greater than themselves. Sure there are exceptions, but wikis are no passing fad, they’re a tool that’s going to be a growing part of the online landscape.
{Any other wiki thoughts?}
Yeah, I couldn’t figure out where to work this in above, but the next time I teach, I’m going to have a class wiki and put all my teaching notes there. I mean, if that doesn’t appeal to students, I don’t know what would. Imagine a class situation where the class as a group helped to make the perfect set of notes. It’d be great.
{Have you ever been around students?}
Yes, I know, it’s a little optimistic. But if they don’t take advantage of it, I can’t help that.
Fortune Cookie
From my fortune cookie last night: “Your business will assume vast proportions.” I’m not sure if I dread or welcome this.
Saturday Meme - What Is Your World View?
Apparently I’m a postmodernist.
You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.
| Postmodernist | 100% | ||
| Materialist | 88% | ||
| Cultural Creative | 63% | ||
| Romanticist | 56% | ||
| Existentialist | 44% | ||
| Modernist | 38% | ||
| Fundamentalist | 13% | ||
| Idealist | 13% |
What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com
About
This blog is the companion Web site for "Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies," a book for business professionals looking for advice and solutions for business blogging by Susannah Gardner. In stores now!
>> Buy the book now! <<
BOOK BITS
* Interested in signed or bulk copies? Contact me and we'll arrange something.
www.flickr.com
|
Syndicate
Categories
Archives
- January 2008
- December 2007
- October 2007
- August 2007
- April 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- Complete Archives
- Category Archives
Recent entries
- Back on Lab with Leo
- Get Reviewed in the Web Workshop on Lab with Leo
- Always Nice to Be Noticed
- Exciting stuff: Blogging for Dummies and SXSW panel
- An Event and Awards to Make Note Of
- So long, farewell, and thanks!
- My “Blogging Software is Revolutionary” Rant
- Mobile Edge Comes Through
- Twitter, twitter
- Has GoDaddy Started Hiding Whois Contact Information?
Recent comments
- By Wonder Abby on Taking Magic Cleaners to the Blogging Masses
- By Anthem on Liability Insurance for Blogging?
- By CindyM on Exciting stuff: Blogging for Dummies and SXSW panel
- By David Bloom on Laptop Bag Search
- By Felix German on Liability Insurance for Blogging?
Bloggerwear
Blogroll
Copyright 2005 Susannah Gardner
FOR DUMMIES and DUMMIES.COM and related trademarks trade dress are registered trademarks of Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Used under License.