Category: Blog

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Do you dream of blogging?

Many people dream of making money by blogging. I do not fool myself into thinking Reality Me will ever be a for profit endeavor. I simply enjoy blogging and use it as a creative outlet during breaks from my programming.

Do you enjoy blogging so much that you actually dream of blogging? Last night, in my sleep, I composed a most wonderful, Pulitzer worthy blog post. I awoke around 4am with the post vaguely in my memory. (almost stayed up to program) The next time I awoke, at 6am, it was gone. I do keep a notepad by my bed but the habit of waking and writing my thoughts down is long gone. Now, if I had a laptop by the bed, that post would have been published!

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What is a podcast?

For the longest time I have wanted to get into podcasting. I have good excuses like my computer equipment is pathetically out of date, my hard drives are too small (size does matter!) and filling up, and time is a commodity (video and audio take time!). But really, the geek in me has held me back the most. I understand the definition of podcasting:

A podcast is a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. [Wikipedia]

That was not satisfying enough for me. I did not want to "podcast" until I could be certain that I was using the word correctly! Did quality of video matter? Length? What if my RSS stream occasionally had text only posts? Does Seesmic count? What about Youtube? Or Utterz?

Tonight I posed the question on Seesmic and had the pleasure of having the CTO and creator of http://podcast.com/ give the definitively best answer to the question. I really appreciated Kosso‘s answer! It nailed it for me.

(Someone should put that video in Wikipedia under podcast)

Update: David Jacobs of The Connected World gave a great answer from a coffee shop! Watch David Jacobs reply on Seesmic!

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The Public Relations Long Tail

What?!! Reporters, bloggers, and spammers get lumped together at the end?

Email spamming reporters and bloggers: Why is this here as a tool? Because people are still doing it in spite of the high risk and low reward! They can’t give up the 1% return. See Eric Eggertson on the topic. [Source, Now is Gone, The Public Relations Long Tail]

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Thinking about hosting your own blog?

I am a huge advocate of getting your blog away from 3rd party solutions like blogger.com. If you have blogspot in your blog’s address then you need to consider getting some hosting and using a solution like WordPress.org (note: wordpress.com is a 3rd party solution just like blogger.com and while I advocate every wordpress user having an account at wordpress.com for statistics and askimet key, you really need to use the open source software found at http://wordpress.org) WordPress is not the only content management system out there which is great for blogging. You have a ton of choices! If you have trouble setting up a WordPress blog, just contact me and I will help.

One negative in hosting your own blog is that you have to pay a host for server space. That is akin to renting a building to run your business. In the Internet business, like so many businesses, you get what you pay for. Free hosting will likely have problems but it is available. I have personally found 1&1 hosting to be very reliable with great customer service despite its low cost. I highly recommend 1&1!

The postive of paying for hosting is that you get full control over your content. If Blogger’s robots determined that your blog suddenly appeared like a spam blog, they could take you offline instantly and lock you out of your account. You could find yourself unable to access your posts and drafts. If Blogger suddenly went out of business or just quit, you’d be out of luck. Does this happen? Ask anyone that hosted their photos at Yahoo. Yahoo bought Flickr and did away with their photo hosting. Anyone that failed to move their photos by the deadline lost their pictures. All links to those pictures are now 404 pages. We personally came within minutes of failing to get our pictures moved. By paying for hosting, you get backups of your data, control of your site, and the ability to handle exceptions (like 404s) in a way that can benefit your audience rather than drive them away. Plus with your own domain name, you can virally market your blog by using the address in your emails. You can’t send an email from blogmaster@someblogname.blogspot.com but you can send an email from blogmaster@myowndomain.com and everyone who gets that email has the chance to say, "I wonder what myowndomain.com is?" Each email sent becomes a subtle advertisement for your site.

Banner1&1 has a great deal right now! Since Uncle Danny is testing the limits of my webspace and monthly transfer volume, I thought I should review the limits on my account. When I did, I discovered that 1&1 is offering their Business shared hosting at only $5.82 per month! (normally $9.99) This is for the first year only with a 1 year commitment. It’s worth it! Their standard packages are still month-to-month (no contracts; no commitments) if I am not mistaken. They are $3.99, $4.99, $9.99, and $19.99 for shared hosting with increasing benefit respective to price.

Full disclosure: The 1&1 links in this post are associated with an affiliate id. If you purchase hosting from them by using one of those links I do get a payment but the affiliate link does not influence my decision to recommend 1&1. I genuinely like their service! This is also not pay-to-post. I just did this of my own inspiration.

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My Wife’s Got Style!

Yesterday Cathy appeared on WBIR’s Style. She was interviewed a month ago or so. They edited their story very well! I really enjoyed watching Cathy, Dr. Helen, and Katie Allison Granju talk about blogging. Read WBIR’s style story on Local women share their lives one post at a time and watch the video interview. The interview includes Katie Allison Granju, Dr. Helen, and Cathy. I really thought Cathy looked great! She saw it a little differently.

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Need input from SEO/copyright experts

Hello world of Search Engine Optimization! The content thieves are frustrating. But does having someone reprint the first few sentences of a post and link back to you really hurt? What does it do for pagerank? Isn’t it simply a qualified link back to Reality Me? For example, hawaii-vacations.expert-travel-help.info has reprinted Darren’s prize list. Should I really care? Is it worth the fight?

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Quote of the Day

This made me laugh hysterically.

“We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” Robert Wilensky

Thanks to JBB of Lumbering Through Life! As an aside, I disagree with stance that Twitter’s 140 character limit is in place as an etiquette and means of keeping thoughts concise. The 140 character limit is to enable Twitter to send message by SMS and keep the message within a single text message. I believe different people are finding different uses for Twitter. I have chosen not to follow a couple of people because of their topic choices and style. I think Twitter’s will fall into 3 groups: self-promoters and linkers (using Twitter to post URLs to blogs and websites), news/media alerts, and voyeurs/exhibitionists/chatters. The first group, the linkers, will use Twitter to promote traffic to their own sites or sites interest them. The news/media alerts will be a group sharing relevant information that is happening now. The chatters will use Twitter as a replacement or complement to IRC and the instant messengers. Not everyone will enjoy the style of all three groups.

Update: My wife agrees with jbb.

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Twitter is killing my blog!

If you ask me about blogging, I will tell you to pay for your own hosting, buy a domain name, and use WordPress (.org)! My primary reason for this advice is so that you have maximum control and ownership of the content you produce. When you host with Blogger, or even at WordPress.com, you relinquish control of your content to a third party. They might close your account for a violation of terms of service and then you have lost your content or access to your drafts. They might close shop and you also lose your years of hard work.

Getting the balance of posts right for your readers is tough. Post too frequently and your readers will skim or skip (or worse, unsubscribe!) and miss your best posts. Post infrequently and your readers will go away. When Twitter first hit the scene, I didn’t get it. Frankly, I still take issue with Twitter because we are relying on a third party to manage our content but Twitter is addictive! I find myself making those short updates to Twitter while reserving my blog for longer commentary. I used to make one sentence posts to my blog and liter it with frequent updates. Twitter has changed the way I blog. And people have noticed!

Blog early and often! [Jack Lail]

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That unpostable post

Every now and then then muse hits me and I wax eloquently, laughing aloud as Pulitzer prose and allegory flow forth from my fingertips. I declare, "this is the post that will bring me fame!" Then I read it. Blink. And think, "I can’t publish that!" And that is why I have 145 drafts that will never see the light of day!