Domain vs. Subdomain

Domain vs. Subdomain
When you get ready to set up a professional blog, one of the first decisions you will need to make is if you want to use a domain, subdomain, or a free option, such as blogger.com. I recommend treating a blog just like any other website, especially when it comes to the hosting. Some hosting companies allow you to [...]

Welcome to the White House—and the 21st Century (updated)
Back in 2002, giving a workshop in Sao Paulo, I showed my students the current White House website. It was pretty dull, but it did offer a page in Spanish. Politically smart, I guess, except that the links on the Spanish page were still in English. Politics on the web was still pretty primitive.Last year I wrote an article about the gorgeous Barack Obama campaign website. Clearly, the upstart understood...

Back in 2002, giving a workshop in Sao Paulo, I showed my students the current White House website. It was pretty dull, but it did offer a page in Spanish. Politically smart, I guess, except that the links on the Spanish page were still in English. Politics on the web was still pretty primitive.

Last year I wrote an article about the gorgeous Barack Obama campaign website. Clearly, the upstart understood the web far better than any other politician on the planet. 

Now, on the day of his inauguration, we have an invitation: Welcome to the White House.

Webwriters, take notes. Barack Obama has raised the standard. 

I've discussed the site in more detail on The Hook, the politics blog of The Tyee.

Update: Jimmy Orr at the Christian Science Monitor has a good article on the site, written from his perspective as W's original website guy.

Great Options: How to create a no-brainer
I just read something in Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely that blows me away. The Economist offered 3 options on their website for subscriptions: Economist.com subscription - $59 for online access Print subscription - $125 for printed issues Print &...

Advertising Your Website
Yup, I admit it, I am a bit biased, but I think that one of the very best ways you can advertise your website is through the V7N. First, without a doubt, your site needs to be in as many high quality directories as possible. The V7N Directory is the one directory that I personally recommend the [...]

A Blog Is Not an Option Anymore
Terri Z Interviews The Blog Squad in a teleseminar Thursday February 5, at 1 p.m. ET. Boost Your Business with a Blog: It's Not an Option AnymoreIf you want to learn how to build a professional blog that turns readers...

George Orwell Blogs
What a resource! The Orwell Diaries are the online journals of one of the 20th century's greatest writers, published 70 years to the day after he wrote them. I've put a link to them in the Webwriting Resources list.

What a resource! The Orwell Diaries are the online journals of one of the 20th century's greatest writers, published 70 years to the day after he wrote them. I've put a link to them in the Webwriting Resources list.

I (still) Love Kindle...one year later
Are you using a Kindle for reading books yet? The 2nd generation just came out and it's getting rave reviews.I use my Kindle all the time now. It took me a couple of months to get used to it, and...

The Layoffs Will Be Blogged
Via The New York Times, a article by Claire Cain Miller: The Layoffs Will Be Blogged. Excerpt:Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., said that he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company - even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs. Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip...

Via The New York Times, a article by Claire Cain Miller: The Layoffs Will Be Blogged. Excerpt:

Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., said that he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company - even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs. 

Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog owned by Gawker Media, had already published the news, and it was being picked up by traditional media reporters, Mr. Musk said. 

“We had to say something to prevent articles being written that were not accurate.” 

Blogging about staff cuts is particularly prevalent in Silicon Valley, where tech gossip sites pounce on every rumor and Web-savvy employees broadcast their every thought on personal blogs and Twitter feeds. 

Start-up companies in particular seem to the feel pressure to break bad news on their own blogs so that they can better control the message. 

Unlike more traditional firms, many of today’s Web companies were built on the mission of creating transparency for users. Executives have lived that mission, blogging about company successes. Now that bad times are coming, some of them feel the need to make that public, too. A blog post also comes across as more heartfelt than a press release with canned quotations.

Offline Marketing Techniques
  Offline marketing is very similar to online marketing, either way, word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertising there is, but a huge part of that involves getting to know the people around you. Online, that might mean joining and actively participating in groups and forums. Offline that could be taking a sincere [...]

100 free open-courseware classes for web workers
Thanks to Kelly Sonora for sending me the link to 100 Free and Useful Open Courseware Classes for Web Workers. They're on a site with the unfortunate name of "Learn-gasm," but the courses themselves look really good. Most are MIT courses, but I'm proud to say that some are from Capilano University, where I taught—when it was just a college—for 40 years.And as long as we're talking about open courseware,...

Thanks to Kelly Sonora for sending me the link to 100 Free and Useful Open Courseware Classes for Web Workers. They're on a site with the unfortunate name of "Learn-gasm," but the courses themselves look really good. 

Most are MIT courses, but I'm proud to say that some are from Capilano University, where I taught—when it was just a college—for 40 years.

And as long as we're talking about open courseware, I might as well mention my own course, Write a Novel.