October 2, 2005 – 10:07 pm
Scene Sucks
Fucking hilarious. Listen for the band names. What’s with the girl’s shirts? This thing is twisted. Cracked me up. I think I might do this on its own blog. This is fun.
September 27, 2005 – 7:30 am
Laura Being Dumb is… well, it’s kind of sad, actually, in that self-deluding American Idol tryout sort of way. I think it’s very revealing of the kind of illusions most of the people live by in this country. I mean, what the hell were these people thinking? That they were anything but embarrassing? Can you [...]
September 25, 2005 – 4:07 pm
Oil may be past its peak, but wood will ever be a renewable and environmentally responsible source of heat for non-metropolitan areas. Newer stoves burn more efficiently by using a catalytic converter to lower the temperature of wood smoke to the point where it becomes combustible, burning twice as it’s recirculated in the stove. As [...]
September 24, 2005 – 8:22 am
Opus! It’s been years! How are ya, good buddy? Man, did this bring a smile to my face!
September 23, 2005 – 6:38 am
Take blogging, mix with flickr-ish type features, and you get Six Apart’s new offering, Project Comet. What explains it best isn’t their main Comet page, but this blog post from Mena, of Six Apart, recalling how her own mother demonstrated the product, because it drove home that mothers and families have unique blogging needs. Like, [...]
September 21, 2005 – 9:28 pm
From the Naked Conversations Blog:
Some things should remain private, but that does not prevent you from getting closer and more personal with your readers than the marketing and legal departments traditionally have. The idea is to show the world that you are a real person, with real fallibilities and passion about the topics you [...]
September 17, 2005 – 9:23 am
I subscribe to Jon Udell’s feed from his blog, and he recently interviewed Bill Gates. While there was much in it that was interesting, one thing Gates said in particular caught my eye:
Ultimately the whole problem of notification, of what is it should I be paying attention to next? Is it the e-mail that came [...]
September 12, 2005 – 8:41 pm
I always thought that if reincarnation were real, one the best ways by far to come back would be as a housecat and take a turn living the easy life. Somebody must’ve been really good in a past life to come back as my cat. About twelve years ago, soon after I first got together [...]
September 11, 2005 – 5:56 pm
It’s been an intense few weeks. Bo and I have been emailing back-and-forth many times a day as I finesse the design according to his needs. But now, all is ready. Last night Last week I cutover the new site and replaced the old one.
Ladies and gentlemen: I present Eat More Kale, Vermont’s One-At-A-Time [...]
September 5, 2005 – 11:18 am
In Self Publish or Perish, Tom Evslin discusses how he plans to write a novel by first blogging it, then releasing it as an ebook, and lastly publishing it as a traditional book. Science fiction author Cory Doctorow simultaneously releases his novels in print and online under the Creative Commons license. Charles Stross, also a [...]
September 3, 2005 – 10:46 pm
This was happening before Katrina, so stand down already.
September 3, 2005 – 9:45 am
And no, it’s not OpenOffice (although OO is cool). It’s Writely, an ajaxed web-based word processor, created by people who appear to have learned all the right lessons. Big fat clue number one: A comment box right on the homepage! It has this caption: “If this isn’t what you’re looking for, can you please take [...]
August 22, 2005 – 1:00 pm
It seems anymore when you see blogs vs. whatever, blogs win. I subscribe to the MarketingSherpa newsletter and in it are discussed 5 strategies to deal with the dwindling importance of the until-now legendary press release. I encourage you to read the other four, but here is the first one, blogs:
August 20, 2005 – 10:09 am
In my recent consulting & blog design projects, I have noticed that while people are beginning to wake up to the power of blogs, they don’t necessarily want their blog to be the main focus of the site. For us blog consultants and designers, this feels like a cold slap in the face. But many [...]
August 19, 2005 – 9:59 pm
Organic growers use Web journals to document farm experiences is an article from Thisweek Online, a site unknown to me until today. I have said earlier that farmers are one group of folks who should be blogging.
There is a powerful connection between small-scale organic farmers, foodies, markets, and restaurants, in that they all share [...]
August 13, 2005 – 12:15 am
I’ve decided I’m going to make some WordPress themes for business blogs and basically give them away as calling cards for customized paid work. Seems like a good way to get my name out there. Here’s the Free WordPress Themes for Business Blogs.
Note: This entry has been updated with a new URL for the themes [...]
August 12, 2005 – 5:02 pm
iThis and iThat. Blah, blah, fucking blah. Will you people knock it off, already? It’s done. Finished. More finished than scooters are.
August 12, 2005 – 3:35 pm
Business blogs are not band-aids for the gaping wound that is your badly-run enterprise. If your customer service sucks, blogs will not help you. If your products are shoddy, blogging is the last thing you should ever do. If your IT people hate you because you’re clueless, please do the world a favor and touch [...]
What are your options when it comes to integrating a blog into an existing website? There are four of them. Read the article to learn the details.
This is so short, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do and quote the entire piece. My reaction? Wow. This is totally how you should do customer service. If you don’t think so, you’d better hope we invent time travel real soon so you can go back to the last century.
TRAVERSE CITY, MI [...]
In Link Buying Basics for Business Bloggers, Steven Spencer brings up the topic of paid text links. We all knew this was inevitable in blogging. Whenever I look at a Weblogs, Inc. blog, I’m disgusted by the ratio of ads to content. However, there’s no deception, here. We know those ads are bought and paid [...]
I always try to follow my own advice and lead by example. This blog and its attendant business has gone through a couple mutations since it began. I’ve written a lot recently on niche blogging and its relation to thought leadership.
But there’s something else. Something more.
Pew Internet & American Life Project May 4-June 7, 2005[PDF] survey finds that most folks simply have no idea what RSS feeds are, or what the term means. They did a survey in which internet terms were presented and then people were asked to respond whether they had a good idea what the term was, [...]
Vermont is quite the tourist destination for most of the year: The summers are gorgeous, the fall foliage is spectacular, and the winter skiing & riding are superb. Much of Vermont really does look like a picture postcard. Tourism here is big business. Big. Business. I see a lot of websites for tourist destinations, and [...]
August 1, 2005 – 12:07 pm
Users seemed not to know the difference between a blog and a “normal” website, and couldn’t tell they were on a blog. When they were informed they were indeed looking at a blog, some of the participants expressed anger that the blog didn’t identify itself as such. For those of us who practically live in the thick, steamy air of the blogosphere and are quite used to the ways of blogs, it’s easy for us to forget how strange, foreign, and intimidating all this can be to another person.
If you’re link blogging instead of creating original material, you’re not a thought leader in your space. The more into your niche you get, the more important (and easier) it is for you to write original material. Focus on your niche. Burrow into it. Be as specific as you can within it. Not just consulting, [...]
If you run a retail operation that has a storefront, there are certain items you need on your retail blog that blogs in other markets don’t need. Here’s a list of the ones I can think of for now:
If your business is specialty retail (bricks and/or clicks), blogging is one way to really set yourself apart from your competition. Because you occupy a niche, you should be seen by your customers as authorities, experts, and leaders in that niche. If you
As you’re screening news and posts in search of that perfect link for a post in your blog, does it all suddenly blur and become the same thing, none of it worth your time? Nothing to link to that seems original?
As you struggle to write original posts, do you feel as though all you can do is repeat yourself because you’ve said everything already to your target audience?
You, my friend, may be suffering from blog fatigue.
Blogs are stories. Or at least, they could be. Linkblogging (blogging by posting links to others’ work and adding a small bit of your own commentary) isn’t necessarily storytelling. Blogs in the earlier sense of “online journals” are stories. Bloggers who write about their lives and do it well are telling stories. But one of the most significant forms of blogging combined with storytelling are process blogs.
