Most relevant news, techniques and tools for authors looking to promote their books inexpensively off and online. We refer to and utilize many of the Guerrilla Marketing techniques and have created some of our own geared specifically to book promotion and marketing. Our website is the ground where we put into practice our marketing efforts. Membership is FREE.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Social Media Briefing While I am in DC

Social Media Briefing While I am in DC

I am in DC for the Media Relations Summit 07.  I'll be speaking there on Monday at 2pm in a session on online news along with Jamie O'Donnell (Greg is in Toronto at SES Canada) and Lee Odden.  I will also be hosting a breakfast round table discussion on Social Media on Tuesday morning.

The conference is over late Tuesday.

I have been asked to do a two hour session on the use of social media in a PR campaign on Wednesday morning and I have agreed to stay an extra day in DC. This is not related to the conference at all - it was organized by Mark Anderson and Associates.

If you are in the DC area and you would like to attend this session there are 5 spots still available. There is no charge to attend.  It is from 10 am to 12:15pm.

Email me if you would like an invite.  sally at press-feed dot com.



Are We Yahoos and Thieves?
Via the Globe and Mail: ‘Amateur' charge infuriates blogosphere. Excerpt: Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter. Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favour of the amateurism of blogs, MySpace and...

Via the Globe and Mail: ‘Amateur' charge infuriates blogosphere. Excerpt:

Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter.

Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favour of the amateurism of blogs, MySpace and other popularity-driven sites.

"Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys ... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity," Keen writes in a book published Tuesday.

His views have infuriated bloggers and others, especially in Silicon Valley, who argue he is an elitist intellectual, a conservative pining for a return to old ways, and a writer who cannot keep his facts straight.

The villains in Keen's narrative are a "pajama army" of mostly anonymous writers who spread gossip and scandal, "intellectual kleptomaniacs," who search Google to copy others' work and the "digital thieves" of media content in the post-Napster era.

For a technology industry used to basking in the glow of self-promotion, Keen's work is shocking for its unforgiving view of Silicon Valley's utopian aspirations.

The book "is designed as a grenade," Keen, a native of north London who now lives in California, said at a recent debate with bloggers and journalists in Berkeley. "It is not designed to be particularly fair or balanced."

The title of his polemic, "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture," attacks what he calls the "cut and paste" ethic of Web users, who he says are robbing professionals of their livelihoods.

The Web allows anyone to post their most intimate thoughts, views or even outright lies, without any editing, under the assumption that the crowd will correct any mistakes. Keen calls for efforts to balance out the Web's powers of instant publishing against society's need for accountability.

Here is Keen's own blog. I'll post a link to it in the Web Writers and Editors list.



Poynter Online's EyeTrack07 Attacks the Myth of Short Attention Spans
I haven't had time to read it yet. But here's the story from Poynter Online - EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans. Excerpt: You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly. And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is...

I haven't had time to read it yet. But here's the story from Poynter Online - EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans. Excerpt:

You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C.

Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.

And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.

At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news.

That was the predominant behavior of roughly 600 test subjects -- 70 percent of whom said they read the news in print or online four times a week. Their eye movements were tracked in 15-minute reading sessions of broadsheet, tabloid and online publications. Evidence from these sessions revealed how long readers spend with the stories they pick, as well as a host of other details about reading patterns.

This should be a very interesting report.



Blogger Survey On Sourcing and Using News Content
SNCR and Marketwire reach out to bloggers

This week Marketwire and the Society for New Communication Research (SNCR) launched a survey to find how bloggers prefer to source and use news content.  As a Senior Fellow of SNCR I am conducting and tabulating the survey.  We will present the findings later in the year at the SNCR Symposium.

When Marketwire first broached the subject of getting feedback from bloggers on what they really need and want  in terms of news content I was keen to get involved. And it has developed into a differnt kind of survey - although we have the usual formal survey questions, it has started a conversation with many of the bloggers about news content in mainstream media and in the blogosphere.  I am learning a lot.

What we need now is for many more bloggers to get involved and take the survey.

And if you have other ideas and comments jump right in and let me know.



Include Video In Your Content Strategy
User generated video getting good views from niche audiences

It's time to start brushing up on flash, screencasting, video production, and video networks, syas Brian Solis.

Online video is the next frontier for the communications industry adding a new layer of engagement to any existing PR, marketing and web initiative.

During the week of February 3, YouTube's traffic surged above the combined traffic to all of the television network websites, reported LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise in February..

This is a landmark event in the changing face of web traffic and entertainment consumption, now that entertainment seekers are now more likely to go to YouTube than any other television network or gaming website.

you tube vs network websites

Although you never had to learn how to make a VNR, you might have to learn how to make these online videos.

Being able to produce a good viral piece with a video camera or a using a program like Camtasia could put you ahead of the pack. If you are not going to learn to do it, find a social media agency that can produce these ideas for your clients or your company.

If you're in the LA area, or you're attending the PR Convergence conference in LA next week, come to the Social Media Club meeting. There is no charge and we'll be talking about these ideas.

It's 6 pm - 8 pm Wednesday May 16th at the Universal Hilton.



The Corporate Blogging Book
Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

The Webby Nominees and Winners
Time flies...and here are this year's Webby Nominees and Winners. Check the nominees and winners in the categories that matter most to you, and tell us all what you think....

Time flies...and here are this year's Webby Nominees and Winners.

Check the nominees and winners in the categories that matter most to you, and tell us all what you think.



Its Name is Zookoda
Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

Previewing EyeTrack 07
At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt: A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first...

At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt:

A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first with the distinct focus of comparing print and online news reading.

We've almost finished analyzing the data. Key findings will be released at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in Washington, D.C., on March 28. The full debut of the findings will take place April 10 to 12 at a Poynter conference in St. Petersburg, Fla.

To give you a little background, this was a test of 600 regular readers of news. That's a large number in the research world, and it was necessary in order to get what we needed. We wanted to look through readers' eyes as they read live publications to see what attracted and held their attention. A second part of the study involved six versions of a prototype and an exit interview, which gave us insight into comprehension, and retention of information.

Using eye-tracking equipment we noted the number of times readers viewed more than 350 specific elements, such as headlines, photos, cutlines, stories, graphics, blogs, listings and ads.

The data totals more than 102,000 "eye-stopping events." That's research speak, but it means we've watched every eye movement of 600 readers over the course of about 9,000 minutes of reading 30 days' worth of news publication.

We conducted the study in four U.S. markets, working with the St. Petersburg Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune in Minnesota, the Philadelphia Daily News in Pennsylvania and the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colo. Each subject read the actual publication for 15 minutes, then read a prototype for another five minutes.

You may reserve a copy of the EyeTrack07 report and find more details about the upcoming conference at eyetrack.poynter.org. Go there to get a glimpse of the project in a video as well, while we continue to crunch the data.



Blogging is Publishing
I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

Teaching Writing and Editing for the Web
Merry Bruns posted some interesting thoughts on the OWL list yesterday, and she's kindly given permission for me to reprint them here: As I post my class announcements to this list, you probably know that I've given web writing and editing classes for almost a decade now, in the U.S. and London. I also consult with clients who need help with anything you can think of that's content-related. My work,...

Merry Bruns posted some interesting thoughts on the OWL list yesterday, and she's kindly given permission for me to reprint them here:

As I post my class announcements to this list, you probably know that I've given web writing and editing classes for almost a decade now, in the U.S. and London. I also consult with clients who need help with anything you can think of that's content-related. My work, and my teaching, dovetail nicely.

Back when I joined OWL, in 1998, I assumed I'd be a web writer or editor, but quickly saw (at least here in Washington DC) that staff really need to do it themselves, and desperately need training in doing it.

I think the reason I've stayed in business so long is because I fill a need:

People want to learn to do it themselves.

So how did this start?

I began as the ubiquitous "Web Producer" in 1996, as I'd been working with the Internet since 1993 as an online journalist. I worked for several large web companies in the Washington DC area in the hoo-hah days, then went out on my own as an independent producer.

In 1997 I was asked to give a short web writing class at a conference for publishers, here in Washington DC. It was great fun - a two-hour class on the basics of what we now call formatting text for scanning, mainly, but I got several on-site training requests out of it.

In 1999, I was asked to come on board at Georgetown University, to teach Web Writing & editing classes at their (now defunct) Networked Media Center (part of their Culture, Communication & Technology program). I taught through the year, did summer schools classes for the MA program, but then a new director axed the department. We went over to Professional Education for several more years, and then they axed all web-related courses.

By then I was also teaching classes at the National Press Club in DC (where I'm a member), and where I am today. I give in-house staff training to every type of business you can think of, including government. I still consult for clients on content-related jobs, and do a great deal of flying around giving talks and classes at conferences.
____________

I believe that those of us who love web writing, and understand the web editing experience, might think about giving training where we live. We're the ones with experience, and we can take advantage of our longevity in the field to train those who need help.

It helps to have organizations with content-rich sites where you live, and it helps to be known in your field as an online writing/editing specialist. But even those of us who live in smaller cities might find that if they can craft a good class, and enjoy teaching, that it might work. It certainly won't hurt to try.



Good Manners? On the Web?
Via the New York Times: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Excerpt: Is it too late to bring civility to the Web? The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse. Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a...

Via the New York Times: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Excerpt:

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com).

Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself. “If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.

Yes, it's extremely nasty out there. I've been lucky, in my own blogging, to escape the kind of behaviour described in the Times article. But I don't know how effective a "code of conduct" would be. What's your opinion—especially if you live outside North America?



Commenting on a Commenter's Site
If you visit the Comments list, you'll see that someone going by "Juno 888" recently commented on Rottweilers, a post I made in the early days of this site. (All the other responses date back to 2003, so this really is ancient history. My post even includes a broken link to a 1996 article.) Juno 888 may well be right that my comments were pure drivel. Publish twenty books and...

If you visit the Comments list, you'll see that someone going by "Juno 888" recently commented on Rottweilers, a post I made in the early days of this site. (All the other responses date back to 2003, so this really is ancient history. My post even includes a broken link to a 1996 article.)

Juno 888 may well be right that my comments were pure drivel. Publish twenty books and a thousand articles (plus numberless blog posts), and your drivel content is likely to be fairly high.

But since the commenter had also listed their own URL, I visited it and found it technically interesting. I sent a fairly detailed critique in an email, but my message bounced; Juno888's address "has been disabled or discontinued."

What a shame. Maybe the site isn't even Juno888's. Some folks are eager to share their opinions, but not their names.

But I hate to waste web analysis, so here's what I suggested about the site:

Hi, Juno--

We'll have to agree to disagree about my analysis of The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, but since you provided your URL, it seems only fair that I offer some comments on it...after all, web text and design are one of my specialties. Moreover, I teach communications and marketing to tourism students, so a site like yours is professionally interesting as well.

Overall look of the 1Explore site is super--good mix of blues, attractive but not obtrusive graphics. I like the wavy curves in the banner. The two-column layout works pretty well.

Big recommendation for the home page: Shorten the sentences, shorten the paragraphs (6-7 lines max), and break up the text still more with two or three subheads. A stronger contrast between light-blue background and dark-blue text would also help. (See how the right-column text stands out so well against a white background?)

This is your site's first impression, and it should be an inviting one, attracting readers to find one welcome surprise after another before moving on to the various packages and the other pages. (I realize some people strongly prefer a sans serif font for webtext, and I use sans serif myself on some of my sites, but for relatively long text, serif fonts are more readable.)

As for the other pages--please ditch the "website under construction" graphic. That may be the first such piece of dancing boloney I've seen since the 1990s, and it was hokey even back then. If the site's under construction, it shouldn't be out on the web in the first place--all you're doing is wasting visitors' time and annoying them.

Webwriting really relies on the "you" attitude--putting the reader right in the center of the story. Your home page starts with "We," which tells us we're not the real object of your interest. Consider:

You're going to enjoy the best accommodation in paradise!

It would also help if the home page gave clear instructions on what to do to get into such accommodation.

Put yourself in your visitors' shoes, imagine what they're looking for, and offer it to them. They'll understand that you really want to help them, and they'll respond accordingly.

Hope this helps--best of luck with the enterprise!

Cheers,
Crawford



Rousing the OWLs
Since the 1990s I've belonged to the Online Writers' List, which at one time was an exuberant bedlam of folks figuring out how to write for this medium. In recent years, alas, it's become very quiet. Then some feckless spammer recently started using it, a couple of list members complained, and it occurred to me that a lot of webwriters aren't even aware of it. So I suggested to the...

Since the 1990s I've belonged to the Online Writers' List, which at one time was an exuberant bedlam of folks figuring out how to write for this medium.

In recent years, alas, it's become very quiet. Then some feckless spammer recently started using it, a couple of list members complained, and it occurred to me that a lot of webwriters aren't even aware of it.

So I suggested to the list that we post news about ourselves and see what issues we're dealing with these days, and some intriguing replies came in. Perhaps it's time we recruited some new participants and started sharing ideas again.

Along the same lines of getting people in touch with one another, if you're a webwriter or editor and you're not on the list here (right column, near the bottom), send me your URL. And if you know of any good resources for online writers, send them along too.



Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium
Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt: Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little...

Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt:

Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little brat of online encyclopedias.

Sanger is staging an electronic coup d'état with a new wiki called Citizendium, to be launched early in the new year. But there's a twist: the site will start out as a mirror image of the English version of Wikipedia through a process called "forking."

By making a replica of Wikipedia, Sanger hopes to attract a bevy of experts to the project, who will then refine the wobbly content pulled from Wikipedia's infinite pages to create a resource that is authoritative and reliable. ("We descend upon their content, red pens in hand and start our own new community," he recently wrote.)

"On the day of launch, we have over 1,000 people ready to get to work, and a large portion of them are professors, graduate students, research scientists, legal scholars, technical thinkers and assorted other intellectuals."

Question is, how far will his highfalutin model go in the unruly hurly-burly of cyberspace, where the wisdom of the crowds rules the day?

I've put a link to Citizendium in the Webwriting Resources list, and the article itself has a link as well.


Process on Optimizing your Site through Keywords

Process on Optimizing your Site through Keywords
There are a lot of things to analyze on your site before you start optimizing your site. Such things are your site overview, nature of business, home page, site dimension and number of pages, product... [Author: Kristine Joy Francisco - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

Optimizing WordPress blogs
When using WordPress Blogs, you need to use the proper elements. Headings are always at the top. Paragraphs need to have the right structure. Make sure your lists are actual List and not some gibbe... [Author: Jonathan Leger - Site Promotion - June 25, 2007]

Search engine optimisation
For many businesses optimization of their web site and good search engine rankings can make or break a business. This is the modern world of search engine marketing, where professional and expert com... [Author: Dylan Brent - Site Promotion - June 25, 2007]

Having Trouble With Advertising
Here is the problem: You have created a website, bought an auto responder, wrote a powerful sales letter, set up your payment processor, and created a "thank you" page...Now you just gotta get target... [Author: Ryan Dodson - Site Promotion - June 26, 2007]

Monday, June 25, 2007

Good Manners? On the Web?

Good Manners? On the Web?
Via the New York Times: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Excerpt: Is it too late to bring civility to the Web? The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse. Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a...

Via the New York Times: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Excerpt:

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com).

Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself. “If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.

Yes, it's extremely nasty out there. I've been lucky, in my own blogging, to escape the kind of behaviour described in the Times article. But I don't know how effective a "code of conduct" would be. What's your opinion—especially if you live outside North America?



Previewing EyeTrack 07
At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt: A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first...

At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt:

A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first with the distinct focus of comparing print and online news reading.

We've almost finished analyzing the data. Key findings will be released at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in Washington, D.C., on March 28. The full debut of the findings will take place April 10 to 12 at a Poynter conference in St. Petersburg, Fla.

To give you a little background, this was a test of 600 regular readers of news. That's a large number in the research world, and it was necessary in order to get what we needed. We wanted to look through readers' eyes as they read live publications to see what attracted and held their attention. A second part of the study involved six versions of a prototype and an exit interview, which gave us insight into comprehension, and retention of information.

Using eye-tracking equipment we noted the number of times readers viewed more than 350 specific elements, such as headlines, photos, cutlines, stories, graphics, blogs, listings and ads.

The data totals more than 102,000 "eye-stopping events." That's research speak, but it means we've watched every eye movement of 600 readers over the course of about 9,000 minutes of reading 30 days' worth of news publication.

We conducted the study in four U.S. markets, working with the St. Petersburg Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune in Minnesota, the Philadelphia Daily News in Pennsylvania and the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colo. Each subject read the actual publication for 15 minutes, then read a prototype for another five minutes.

You may reserve a copy of the EyeTrack07 report and find more details about the upcoming conference at eyetrack.poynter.org. Go there to get a glimpse of the project in a video as well, while we continue to crunch the data.



A new French-language resource
I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.) This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at...

I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.)

This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at least in part), please get in touch. It's time to do a serious overhaul of the links and resources available here. Non-English sites especially welcome!



Ideagoras
The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt: In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits. In...

The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt:

In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits.

In the process, Mr. Lafley and his managers like Mr. Huston transformed a lumbering consumer products company into a limber innovation machine. In fact, five years after the company's stock collapsed in 2000, P&G has doubled its share price and now boasts a portfolio of 22 billion-dollar brands.

Today P&G is a leader among thousands of companies that participate in what we call "ideagoras" where millions of ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds change hands in something akin to an eBay for innovation.

Companies that move now can leverage a global pool of talent, ideas, and innovations that vastly exceeds what they could ever hope to marshal internally.

P&G figures that for every top-notch scientist inside its labs, there's another 200 outside who are just as good. That's a total of 1.8 million people whose talents it could potentially tap into.

The article is interesting not just for its content (which may be good stuff or routine corporate hyperventilation) but for the Globe's own awkward use of the online medium.

The paragraphing of the online article was identical to that of the print version I read over breakfast. I broke up one over-long paragraph to make it more readable.

The resources mentioned like InnoCentive and NineSigma are given without links to their sites. (Don't get me going about companies still using StudlyCaps.)

The story does offer a link to the Wikinomics home page, and to an earlier article in the series. But like so much material that the print media dump online, this is really just shovelware. Its value online would be far greater if only it had been turned into real hypertext.

That said, I'm posting a link to Wikinomics in Webwriting Resources, and I'd welcome your comments about that site.



Mark Twain, Father of the Internet
The Tyee has published my article Mark Twain, Father of the Internet. Excerpt: Mark Twain died in 1910, a lifetime before the founding of ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet and the web. So that you could read this on The Tyee, hundreds of brilliant scientists and engineers worked for years to get the clanking, room-sized computers of the 1960s to communicate with one another. You've probably never heard of...

The Tyee has published my article Mark Twain, Father of the Internet. Excerpt:

Mark Twain died in 1910, a lifetime before the founding of ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet and the web. So that you could read this on The Tyee, hundreds of brilliant scientists and engineers worked for years to get the clanking, room-sized computers of the 1960s to communicate with one another. You've probably never heard of them: Vinton Cerf, J.C.R. Licklider, Robert Taylor, and Paul Baran, to name just a few. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, was a latecomer.

Yet I contend that Mark Twain (one of the great science-fiction writers of all time) first conceived the Internet. Like the wizards of the 1960s and '70s, his contribution has been forgotten. But like Arthur C. Clarke, who conceived the earth satellite and could have patented it, Twain understood the idea of the Internet before the scientists did. If anything, he leaped beyond the text-based Internet to the just-dawning world of video chat and vlogging (video blogging).



Global Voices
A few weeks ago I discovered: Global Voices Online, and since the site has just had a makeover, this is a good time to introduce it here. The value of the site lies in pulling together blogs and bloggers from all over the world. Ordinarily we're not going to seek out a blog in Nepal or West Africa, but GVO provides a kind of planned serendipity: it makes it easy...

A few weeks ago I discovered: Global Voices Online, and since the site has just had a makeover, this is a good time to introduce it here.

The value of the site lies in pulling together blogs and bloggers from all over the world. Ordinarily we're not going to seek out a blog in Nepal or West Africa, but GVO provides a kind of planned serendipity: it makes it easy to discover sites we might never find otherwise.



Are We Yahoos and Thieves?
Via the Globe and Mail: ‘Amateur' charge infuriates blogosphere. Excerpt: Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter. Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favour of the amateurism of blogs, MySpace and...

Via the Globe and Mail: ‘Amateur' charge infuriates blogosphere. Excerpt:

Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter.

Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favour of the amateurism of blogs, MySpace and other popularity-driven sites.

"Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys ... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity," Keen writes in a book published Tuesday.

His views have infuriated bloggers and others, especially in Silicon Valley, who argue he is an elitist intellectual, a conservative pining for a return to old ways, and a writer who cannot keep his facts straight.

The villains in Keen's narrative are a "pajama army" of mostly anonymous writers who spread gossip and scandal, "intellectual kleptomaniacs," who search Google to copy others' work and the "digital thieves" of media content in the post-Napster era.

For a technology industry used to basking in the glow of self-promotion, Keen's work is shocking for its unforgiving view of Silicon Valley's utopian aspirations.

The book "is designed as a grenade," Keen, a native of north London who now lives in California, said at a recent debate with bloggers and journalists in Berkeley. "It is not designed to be particularly fair or balanced."

The title of his polemic, "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture," attacks what he calls the "cut and paste" ethic of Web users, who he says are robbing professionals of their livelihoods.

The Web allows anyone to post their most intimate thoughts, views or even outright lies, without any editing, under the assumption that the crowd will correct any mistakes. Keen calls for efforts to balance out the Web's powers of instant publishing against society's need for accountability.

Here is Keen's own blog. I'll post a link to it in the Web Writers and Editors list.



Bienvenu, Sébastien Bailly!
I've created a link in Web Writers and Editors to Sébastien Bailly, who blogs in French. His site also has a link to the Medieval Tech Support video that was pulled from YouTube....

I've created a link in Web Writers and Editors to Sébastien Bailly, who blogs in French. His site also has a link to the Medieval Tech Support video that was pulled from YouTube.



WordPress 2.1 is Ready
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it. Download WordPress 2.1.

Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.

Download WordPress 2.1.



Podcast Recommendation
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy! Internet Business Mastery

I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!

Internet Business Mastery



Commenting on a Commenter's Site
If you visit the Comments list, you'll see that someone going by "Juno 888" recently commented on Rottweilers, a post I made in the early days of this site. (All the other responses date back to 2003, so this really is ancient history. My post even includes a broken link to a 1996 article.) Juno 888 may well be right that my comments were pure drivel. Publish twenty books and...

If you visit the Comments list, you'll see that someone going by "Juno 888" recently commented on Rottweilers, a post I made in the early days of this site. (All the other responses date back to 2003, so this really is ancient history. My post even includes a broken link to a 1996 article.)

Juno 888 may well be right that my comments were pure drivel. Publish twenty books and a thousand articles (plus numberless blog posts), and your drivel content is likely to be fairly high.

But since the commenter had also listed their own URL, I visited it and found it technically interesting. I sent a fairly detailed critique in an email, but my message bounced; Juno888's address "has been disabled or discontinued."

What a shame. Maybe the site isn't even Juno888's. Some folks are eager to share their opinions, but not their names.

But I hate to waste web analysis, so here's what I suggested about the site:

Hi, Juno--

We'll have to agree to disagree about my analysis of The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, but since you provided your URL, it seems only fair that I offer some comments on it...after all, web text and design are one of my specialties. Moreover, I teach communications and marketing to tourism students, so a site like yours is professionally interesting as well.

Overall look of the 1Explore site is super--good mix of blues, attractive but not obtrusive graphics. I like the wavy curves in the banner. The two-column layout works pretty well.

Big recommendation for the home page: Shorten the sentences, shorten the paragraphs (6-7 lines max), and break up the text still more with two or three subheads. A stronger contrast between light-blue background and dark-blue text would also help. (See how the right-column text stands out so well against a white background?)

This is your site's first impression, and it should be an inviting one, attracting readers to find one welcome surprise after another before moving on to the various packages and the other pages. (I realize some people strongly prefer a sans serif font for webtext, and I use sans serif myself on some of my sites, but for relatively long text, serif fonts are more readable.)

As for the other pages--please ditch the "website under construction" graphic. That may be the first such piece of dancing boloney I've seen since the 1990s, and it was hokey even back then. If the site's under construction, it shouldn't be out on the web in the first place--all you're doing is wasting visitors' time and annoying them.

Webwriting really relies on the "you" attitude--putting the reader right in the center of the story. Your home page starts with "We," which tells us we're not the real object of your interest. Consider:

You're going to enjoy the best accommodation in paradise!

It would also help if the home page gave clear instructions on what to do to get into such accommodation.

Put yourself in your visitors' shoes, imagine what they're looking for, and offer it to them. They'll understand that you really want to help them, and they'll respond accordingly.

Hope this helps--best of luck with the enterprise!

Cheers,
Crawford



Can We Still Talk Online?
Dave Beers, my editor at The Tyee, has a thoughtful article today about the famous interactivity of websites: Can We Still Talk Online?. It won't be a surprise to webwriters that responses to their work are often ignorant, abusive, and even threatening. Dave uses The Tyee's experience, and that of other online magazines, to invite still more interaction on the subject. Maybe this is a good time to dig out...

Dave Beers, my editor at The Tyee, has a thoughtful article today about the famous interactivity of websites: Can We Still Talk Online?.

It won't be a surprise to webwriters that responses to their work are often ignorant, abusive, and even threatening. Dave uses The Tyee's experience, and that of other online magazines, to invite still more interaction on the subject.

Maybe this is a good time to dig out a piece I did on the subject about ten years ago: "Time for Flame Wars to Flame Out" was first published in the Vancouver weekly Georgia Straight in the summer of 1997.

An email correspondent once described my views on education as a “Socialist brainwashed, Communist-cliche’d, agit-prop spew of black lies, red herrings, straw men, Marxist-Stalinist Totalitarian, 1984, Brave New World, One World Dictatorship, mooching, felonious, treasonous, cowardly, dangerous, insensitive, [and] anti-human.”

After that he got positively hostile.

Some online veterans would shrug this off as just more proof that any idiot can get on the Net, and most already have. But as many can confirm, this kind of verbal abuse is all too common in cyberspace. The Usenet discussion groups in particular are full of sarcasm, insults, degrading language, and outright obscenity. In the mailing lists, where you have to subscribe to get access to discussions on specialized topics, even college teachers and dog lovers can blow their cool.

Why should this be? Are we just awful people? I don’t think so. But I do think the technology of the Internet has encouraged users with a particular mind-set, and they in turn have largely created an online culture that promotes abuse.

Addicted to Jolts
To do anything on a computer, you have to obey some arbitrary rules and go through certain ritual actions: click the mouse, hit return, type a precise string of keystrokes. This favors a certain kind of obsessive, ritualistic personality. The reward, for such a personality, is to go through the keyboard rituals to get a “jolt” —a psychological reward— just as a laboratory rat will push a button to get a food pellet.


The jolt may be the opening of a window on the computer monitor, or seeing your own name in someone else’s message, or reading an angry, hostile message that rejects every value you hold dear. In any case, it’s an emotional payoff for going through the ritual, and it clearly appeals to a lot of people. Like any other such reward, computer jolts can become dangerously addictive.

Most, however, prefer to limit their jolts to eavesdropping on others’ quarrels. These are the lurkers, the passive Internet users who like to watch other people get into punch-ups. When lurkers do begin posting messages, they often start with a plea for mercy; they know what they’re getting into.

More aggressive types don’t care. Once addicted, they soon need ever-stronger jolts. So they just wade in with all guns blazing, and they thrive on flame wars of mutual recrimination and insult. Flamers may look like mortal enemies, but they’re really like junkies who also deal drugs—they provide jolts for each other.

Smile When You Write That, Stranger
Still another problem is “register.” This means adapting your comments to the person and the circumstances. If a kindergarten teacher talks to you the same way she talks to your child, you’ll be resentful. If you talk too familiarly to your boss, you may soon be looking for another job. Using the wrong register is the basis of most sitcoms, but it’s not often funny online. That’s why many of us use emoticons to try to convey the register we’re trying for.

When you’re sitting at your computer, you’re totally private. But the messages you read and receive are totally public. This really complicates the register you should adopt. You feel private, as if you were sharing pillow talk with your spouse, but the whole world is watching. Your intimate message brays out over the world’s greatest public-address system, and soon you’re getting equally intimate messages that thousands of others can also read.

When I first began to study the flame problem in the early 1990s, I consoled myself that selfish, insensitive, addictively aggressive slobs would not last long. Like barbarous pioneers, they would give way to the schoolmarms and genteel pillars of society. The people who would really flourish in this new medium, I told myself, would be those who could see beyond the computer monitor to the real live person at the other end, and write their messages accordingly.

I was wrong. The slobs have poisoned most of the waterholes, creating no-go zones all over cyberspace. Worse yet, when some folks do try to set up a civilized online community, the slobs barge in and track mud on the floor. Uninterested in grown-up discussion and debate, they try to bring everyone down to their level. Giving insults, taking insults—it’s all jolts to them.

For those of us who really do want to bring civilization to the online wilderness, the options are few. Arguing with the slobs only gives them more jolts. Ignoring them sometimes goads them into even worse flames.
Better to set out clear house rules for acceptable behaviour, and then to turf out anyone who behaves badly—just as we would if someone crashed a party and started insulting our guests.



Marketing Online Writing
I've been happily writing for The Tyee for several years. It's a lively online magazine with a focus on British Columbia but with plenty of attention to the rest of the world. The Tyee is now trying a little viral marketing to attract more readers: Tyee: Join Us! I'd be interested to hear your reactions to this approach. The Tyee has also published a survey of Independent Media: Vibrant and...

I've been happily writing for The Tyee for several years. It's a lively online magazine with a focus on British Columbia but with plenty of attention to the rest of the world. The Tyee is now trying a little viral marketing to attract more readers: Tyee: Join Us! I'd be interested to hear your reactions to this approach.

The Tyee has also published a survey of Independent Media: Vibrant and Growing.

By the way, I've just published a piece on avian flu in The Tyee.

I'd love to hear about other good online magazines, especially in Europe, Asia, and Latin America—in any language.



The Future of Text Online
At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?. The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover....

At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?.

The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover.



Print Editors and the Web
Jade Walker recently posted some interesting thoughts in the Online Writing List, and she's kindly allowed me to quote them here: I recently attended a conference for copy editors in Miami and whenever conversation turned to the Web, the editors in attendance often fell into two categories: 1) They hate the Web because they believe its mere existence is going to result in profit/job losses. 2) They fear the Web...

Jade Walker recently posted some interesting thoughts in the Online Writing List, and she's kindly allowed me to quote them here:

I recently attended a conference for copy editors in Miami and whenever conversation turned to the Web, the editors in attendance often fell into two categories:

1) They hate the Web because they believe its mere existence is going to result in profit/job losses.
2) They fear the Web because they don't understand where copy editors fit in.

I have no doubt there are other editorial folks at newspapers and magazines across the country that feel the same way. This is so easy to fix! All it takes is a little time and training. Those of us who've been working in new media for many years need to show the print folks what the Web has to offer, particularly the advantages of publishing news in different formats, reading/writing blogs, using RSS feeds, etc.

I also believe newspapers and magazines should make a concerted effort to update their online portals. So many sites are clunky, hard to navigate or simply replicate the print product via online templates. What can these companies do to fix this problem?

• Look at the competition and see what works and what doesn't.
• Experiment with design but avoid repeating others' mistakes.
• Hire copy editors, or assign current editors, to give blog entries and articles a once-over before posting on the Web.
• Allow comments, albeit moderated ones, on stories.
• Create a forum just to find sources for stories.
• Include e-mail addresses for reporters on each entry/article, or a link to a profile page.
• Provide "e-mail this entry" links as well as permanent links for readers/bloggers who wish to discuss stories and share them with friends/family.
• Offer one-click options to the recommendation sites (digg, technorati, netscape, etc.), or follow USA Today's lead and allow readers to rate the stories themselves based on usefulness or entertainment value.

Jade ended her post with "Any thoughts?" And I echo her question.

I'll add one thought from my own online-writing experience: The editor of The Tyee finds comments a chronic headache. Too many are illiterate, incoherent, abusive, and plain libellous. He requires registration before people can post comments, and this has helped a lot. I find the comments on my own Tyee articles generally pretty civil. But some topics can bring out the barking loonies.



Protected: Christmas Keywords Extracted from My Own Sites
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Starting a Blog
After a reader of my flu blog asked for advice, I decided to answer in some detail: Should you start a flu blog? has some general suggestions that any webwriter might find helpful. Tell me what you think....

After a reader of my flu blog asked for advice, I decided to answer in some detail: Should you start a flu blog? has some general suggestions that any webwriter might find helpful. Tell me what you think.


Blogging a massacre

Blogging a massacre
This has been a very bad day in the United States. The massacre at Virginia Tech has shocked the world, but it has also taught us something important: In a major disaster, the victims themselves will tell us about it. The Virginia Tech website provided basic information within minutes. Even more to the point, news of the killings was carried by email and text messaging and blogs like Planet Blacksburg....

This has been a very bad day in the United States.

The massacre at Virginia Tech has shocked the world, but it has also taught us something important: In a major disaster, the victims themselves will tell us about it.

The Virginia Tech website provided basic information within minutes. Even more to the point, news of the killings was carried by email and text messaging and blogs like Planet Blacksburg.

The mass media like CNN were using cell-phone video from students on campus. Other students have bitterly complained about the slowness of authorities to alert them, whether by email, text messaging, voicemail, or the campus public-address system.

The countries with the most advanced communications systems will be the first to tell the world about catastrophes like this one. But even Third World countries have cell phones and some kind of internet access. Increasingly, we will see car bombings in Baghdad and riots in Mogadishu, disease outbreaks in Jakarta and AIDS deaths in Zimbabwe, reported by those who are there.



Blogging is Publishing
I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

The Webby Nominees and Winners
Time flies...and here are this year's Webby Nominees and Winners. Check the nominees and winners in the categories that matter most to you, and tell us all what you think....

Time flies...and here are this year's Webby Nominees and Winners.

Check the nominees and winners in the categories that matter most to you, and tell us all what you think.



A Small Commercial Spot
You may have noticed a new link at the top of the right-hand column. It's a modest effort to promote The Tyee, a very good online journal published here in Vancouver. Full disclosure: I've been writing for The Tyee since 2003, and I take some pride in being a contributor. You may not agree with its point of view on all topics (I certainly don't), but you'll find it offers...

You may have noticed a new link at the top of the right-hand column. It's a modest effort to promote The Tyee, a very good online journal published here in Vancouver.

Full disclosure: I've been writing for The Tyee since 2003, and I take some pride in being a contributor. You may not agree with its point of view on all topics (I certainly don't), but you'll find it offers some of the very best online writing anywhere.

If you can add to its readership by becoming a free weekly subscriber to its newsletter, I'd take it as your vote of support for what I'm doing here.



Rousing the OWLs
Since the 1990s I've belonged to the Online Writers' List, which at one time was an exuberant bedlam of folks figuring out how to write for this medium. In recent years, alas, it's become very quiet. Then some feckless spammer recently started using it, a couple of list members complained, and it occurred to me that a lot of webwriters aren't even aware of it. So I suggested to the...

Since the 1990s I've belonged to the Online Writers' List, which at one time was an exuberant bedlam of folks figuring out how to write for this medium.

In recent years, alas, it's become very quiet. Then some feckless spammer recently started using it, a couple of list members complained, and it occurred to me that a lot of webwriters aren't even aware of it.

So I suggested to the list that we post news about ourselves and see what issues we're dealing with these days, and some intriguing replies came in. Perhaps it's time we recruited some new participants and started sharing ideas again.

Along the same lines of getting people in touch with one another, if you're a webwriter or editor and you're not on the list here (right column, near the bottom), send me your URL. And if you know of any good resources for online writers, send them along too.



BEA Book Expo America: Good for Independent Publishers?


Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium
Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt: Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little...

Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt:

Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little brat of online encyclopedias.

Sanger is staging an electronic coup d'état with a new wiki called Citizendium, to be launched early in the new year. But there's a twist: the site will start out as a mirror image of the English version of Wikipedia through a process called "forking."

By making a replica of Wikipedia, Sanger hopes to attract a bevy of experts to the project, who will then refine the wobbly content pulled from Wikipedia's infinite pages to create a resource that is authoritative and reliable. ("We descend upon their content, red pens in hand and start our own new community," he recently wrote.)

"On the day of launch, we have over 1,000 people ready to get to work, and a large portion of them are professors, graduate students, research scientists, legal scholars, technical thinkers and assorted other intellectuals."

Question is, how far will his highfalutin model go in the unruly hurly-burly of cyberspace, where the wisdom of the crowds rules the day?

I've put a link to Citizendium in the Webwriting Resources list, and the article itself has a link as well.



The Corporate Blogging Book
Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

The Future of Text Online
At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?. The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover....

At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?.

The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover.


Talking to Other Dummies Authors

Talking to Other Dummies Authors

I’m in San Francisco for the first ever Dummies Authors Conference. There are about 50 Dummies authors here, and the day is packed with discussions about marketing books, the uses of agents, and general Dummies best practices. It’s going to be an interesting day! You can check out the agenda here.

There’s been a bunch of press already, but the most exciting news of the day is that the conference is up for being featured on the Evening News with Katie Couric. In fact, you can actually vote to send Steve Hartman to the conference tomorrow by going to http://www.cbsnews.com and clicking on Assignment America. We’re up against some guy who can talk really fast and a California prison program to send female juvenile delinquents to finish school ("Can etiquette, fashion and dance really set a girl straight?"). Wouldn’t you rather get the inside scoop on the For Dummies books? Of course you would. Go vote.

And, if I haven’t convinced you already, check out the other press coverage today:

Here’s a nice quote from the SFGate.com article:

The “dummies” label could be the weirdest aspect of the whole franchise, as the authors are not really supposed to assume their readers are dumb, just uninformed. The publisher, in an official statement on the matter, calls it a “term of endearment.”



Publicity for Your Book


An Event and Awards to Make Note Of

Chris Abraham of ”Because the Medium is the Message” messaged me this week to let me know about the Blogger’s Choice Awards and Postiecon, two thing I thought you should also know about.

imageThe Blogger’s Choice Awards, Chris says, are “like a Webbys for blogs.” Nominate yourself or a blog like you, and voting will determine the winner. There are way more categories than I can duplicate here, so this is just a quick taste: Best Geek Blog, Best Podcast, Best Pop Culture Blog and Worst Blog of All Time. Why not head over and nominate yourself?

imagePostieCon is in Orlando, Florida, at the beginning of June. According to the copy on the site:

We are here to educate bloggers on how to build traffic and readership, and use your notoriety and unique brand to create value and monetize your voice. It’s not all about money and fame, our conference is designed to help you become a better blogger.

The schedule and speaker list already look good, and have a strong focus on blogging for money or business. A quick sampling of sessions include: Connecting with Advertisers, Turning Visits into Cash, and Vlogging Rockstar Style. Plus, there will be refreshments!



My “Blogging Software is Revolutionary” Rant

On Saturday I gave a presentation at Northern Voice (a Vancouver-based blogging conference) about blogging software and how it can and should be used for building Web sites are more than just a blog, or perhaps look nothing like a blog.

The session was podcasted here, and I’ve pasted in my talk outline below. The site we built during the session is here: http://bloggingworkshop.com/. Enjoy!

Not Just for Blogs

I think blogging is revolutionary. I think this because it is capable of building community and relationships, of informing, of entertaining… but when it comes right down to it, the thing that I think is so mind-blowing about blogging is the software. That, and the price of that software.

I started making Web sites in 1994. At that point, and for a long, long time, the vast majority of Web sites were built by making HTML files, potentially hundreds and hundreds of HTML files.� My first job was with the L.A. Times Web site, and when we wanted to change the design in any way - from the wording of something in the navigation to the color of the links - you did it on a file by file basis. Every single page had to be opened, changed, saved, and then put onto the Web server again. Needless to say we didn’t do a lot of little changes.

As the Web evolved, so did the software solutions. If you were a big Web site company with a lot of money, you hired people to build you something better: a database-driven Web site. With a databased site you could build pages as they were needed. At the L.A. Times that meant that when someone clicked on a link for a news story, the database found that story, pulled it out, and plunked it into a template. The ground-breaking thing for the worker bees was that there weren’t individual files sitting around anymore: if you wanted to make a change to the site design you made it to the template and the next time someone looked at a story, boom, they got the new template. It made things easier for the developers and that in turn made things easier for the site’s visitors, because the developers could then spend time on other stuff, like content. It made other good stuff possible, too, like search, like archives, like content sorting by category.

That was what you did if you were a big company. If you were a little buy, or an individual, and you didn’t have the big bucks to spend, you still had masses of HTML files sitting around, and things like search were really out of your reach.

Then along comes blogging software.

What is blogging software? Well, at heart, it’s a database. You put the content in, it goes into a database. When it gets displayed, that content is dropped into a template. Sound familiar? This is why so many blog sites look the same from page to page - the home page looks just like a permalink page, except for the content of the actual blog posts. The templates are the same.

And most blogging software came with bells and whistles: search, archives, RSS feeds… it was all built in. You didn’t need any special expertise to set it up, and with a lot of blogging software you could get started in minutes. Best of all was the price. What the big companies spent hundreds of thousands on, you could get for free with Blogger. Even the blog software that did cost money was relatively inexpensive. For $200 or so, you had everything you needed.

As long as what you needed was a blog, you were set.

Well, my big message today is that if you invest some time and learning, you can make a blog software work for more than a blog. You can build any Web site using blog software, and if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.

Let’s look at some examples of what I mean. (A little caveat, I’m going to show you mostly business Web sites because those are the kinds of Web sites I’m hired to create, but the principles are the same whether you have a “brand” or not.)

Thomas Paul Fine Art
http://www.tpaulfineart.com
Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon
http://www.rejuvenile.com
Truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com
Mani’s Bakery
http://www.manisbakery.com

Blog software can really revolutionize the maintenance issues for a web site, and make it easier to redesign (a reality we can’t ignore) as well, but that doesn’t mean every web site needs to run off of blog software. Small web sites with mostly unique page layout won’t be able to make easy use of blog software.

But any site that needs to be easy to update (perhaps by multiple people), has some standardization of presentation, and can work with a template approach.

Is it easy? Well, yes and no. Get the right blog software, and have the right know-how and it’s not a big deal. But if you aren’t willing to learn some code and invest some time… it’s hard. There are people you can hire to set up a site for you, that’s for sure.

Now, the components of blog software: usually you have:

  • publishing interface
  • admin and setup stuff
  • templates

I’m showing you pMachine’s Expression Engine, but many different kinds of blog software can be adapted for this kind of site. It’s important to choose blog software that gives you access to the templates! Wordpress.com isn’t going to do, and only the Typepad Pro level will work for you. If you can find software that can handle multiple blogs, so much the better. The reason I really love EE is that each “blog” can be customized, and because of all the extra components—mailing list, poll, photo gallery, forum module.

For this demo, I’ve chosen one of the templates that EE provides and I’m going to customize it. First, let’s deal with the Admin side and set up our publishing interface:

  • Edit the blog preferences
  • Set up custom fields
  • Put in a sample post
  • Set up categories

Next, let’s get rid of stuff in the template we don’t want.

And finally, let’s substitute a few things in the blog software code.

Voila!



Has GoDaddy Started Hiding Whois Contact Information?
I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.  No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising.

I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.� No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising:

[Travis-Smith-Computer:~] nep% whois spacesindoorsandout.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET
Name Server: DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
EPP Status: clientDeleteProhibited
EPP Status: clientRenewProhibited
EPP Status: clientTransferProhibited
EPP Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 30-Nov-2006
Creation Date: 28-Jan-2004
Expiration Date: 28-Jan-2007

>>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:43:00 EST <<<

Registrant:
Spaces Indoors & Out

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET

For complete domain details go to:
http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM

It’s only when I go to their Web site that I can get the contact information for Registrant, Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact.

While I’m sure they did this to “cut down on spam” or something like that, I find it an unacceptable tradeoff that makes it harder for me to administer domains.� And I think it might be a violation of their duties as a domain registrar.



Some Fundamental Friday Video

This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.



BEA Info


Reaching Employees and Customers with Blogging and Podcasting

Got an email today about an interesting sounding event:

How To Use Blogging & Podcasting To Engage Your Employees, Reach Your Customers & Build Your Brand
October 18-20, 2006 – San Francisco, CA

Hear practical lessons learned and case studies from IBM, Southwest Airlines, U.S. Army, Cisco Systems, Mayo Clinic and others.

Link to the detailed agenda:� http://www.aliconferences.com/conferences/blogging_podcasting/1006.html



Twitter, twitter

Looking for a fun widget to add to your site? I like the new site called “Twitter.”

On Twitter, you quickly share just a little one liner about what you’re currently up to.� Then it notifies your close friends about what you’re up to.� It’s a nice way to feel connected to someone without feeling like you’re intruding.

Susie has added a Twitter badge to this blog, but your twitter status also gets sent via AIM or GTalk, or can be see on twitter itself.

It’s quick to sign up and fun.� Let me know if you join!



BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers


Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips


The Hole In CDs
Written by Christian Lin I bet you did not know that we can do so many design with the hole in the CD! If you liked this post, buy me a beer

Written by Christian Lin

I bet you did not know that we can do so many design with the hole in the CD!

If you liked this post, buy me a beer



So long, farewell, and thanks!

Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.

Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.

Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!



Mobile Edge Comes Through

imageI got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for Mobile Edge, left a comment on an earlier post of mine and then followed up with an email to me.

I picked the Mobile Edge Chocolate Suede Tote because I wanted a laptop bag that looked like it belonged to a woman, and that didn’t involve black canvas or vinyl. It was a tough search, especially since my laptop—at 17”—was too large for many of the more fashionable bags. When I found a Mobile Edge bag at Fry’s, though, I discovered that I could fit my laptop into the bag, as long as I didn’t put it into the actual slot created for it. Since the bag was quite padded anyway, I’ve been merrily using it and putting file folders in the laptop slot since.

Recently, though, Lewis told me, Mobile Edge had started making an insert just for laptops like mine (huge) and he wanted to send me one. Naturally, I accepted.

Now, one of the things I really liked about the Mobile Edge tote I chose was that the interior piece that holds the laptop is just an insert; it can actually be removed completely from the bag (and get this, when you remove it, you don’t loose any interior pockets or features!). This means you could buy a couple of inserts and say, use the same bag for more than one laptop.

When my new insert arrived, I pulled out the old 15” insert, popped in the 17” and the laptop fits perfectly. I have had a chance to use the bag since putting in the new insert, and things do fit a bit better when you can put the laptop into the right place, so it actually feels like I have more space, not less.

I’m still a huge fan of this bag, which is well-made and durable, and I can now recommend it unreservedly for carriers of 17” laptops as well.

My one remaining complaint is that bag + laptop + peripherals + book + ... well, it’s all a little heavy. That’s more of a physics problem, though. I’ll let you know if Mobile Edge cracks the code on breaking that whole two bodies of mass attracting each other thing.

Thanks, Lewis!



Publicity for Books


BEA Book Expo America: Good for Independent Publishers?


Web 2.0 Empty Marketing Term?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)

From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.

What does Web 2.0 mean to you?



Getting in Newspapers . . . Easy for our clients


Sunday, June 24, 2007

Write a Book and Get Your Book Published: Subscribe to America's Most Successful Book Publicist's Newsletter Today

Write a Book and Get Your Book Published: Subscribe to America's Most Successful Book Publicist's Newsletter Today
Sign up for the free HOW TO GET YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED and PUBLICIZED newsletter from Arielle Ford. In case you don't know Arielle by name, she's publicized hundreds of authors and books. 11 of which are #1 Bestsellers. Her clients include Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, Dean Ornish, Jon Gordon, Debbie Ford, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Arielle has compiled a list of nearly every question a first-time or experienced author wants to know about publishing, publicity, building a platform and the book business. Every issue is jam-packed with answers to the questions that get your book published and you booked on radio, television, newspapers and magazines.

The Next Big Thing
Embedded software, Wireless Net, P2P, Real time movies, and Medicare are some of the often heard phrases used to describe the next big thing on the ..

Content is King on a Website
Content can make or break a website. The power of the written word has been witnessed many a time. Products have become success stories, resumes trans ..

Web 2.0 Empty Marketing Term?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)

From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.

What does Web 2.0 mean to you?