Blogging Gyan:Ultimate Blogging tutor

Gmail Allowing Remote Log-off and Last account activity details

2008-07-10T20:41:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of Web-based e-mail is the ability to log on from just about anywhere - at home, at work, a friend's house, a mobile device or even a public library or cybercafe.
But what if you forget to log off? Someone else who encounters an active session not only can read your personal correspondences, but they also can use that account to grab your passwords from many online services that offer to send reminders via e-mail.
Google Inc.'s Gmail service is trying to address that by letting you know if you're still logged on elsewhere and giving you a chance to disconnect remotely.
At the bottom of a Gmail inbox is a small notice of other active sessions. The new feature, being rolled out to users in waves, also offers some information on the time and location of recent Gmail activities.

The notification is bound to be useful, though it's by no means foolproof. You have to be logged on somewhere to learn of other active sessions, and you have to look carefully for that notice. And if you have chosen to save your password on the other computer, someone else can simply log back on unless you change it.
But the feature does offer an extra level of comfort.
"Usually I remember to sign out, but every once in a while I wonder if I really did," Gmail engineer Erwin D'Souza wrote on a company blog. "Now I no longer have to wonder."
Other major Web e-mail providers - Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL - also allow simultaneous sessions, but they do not provide similar notice or ability to remotely log off. However, AOL does have a setting forcing automatic logoff after as little as 30 minutes of inactivity. Microsoft said Hotmail will ask for a password if the session remains idle for too long.

Clicking the Details link next to the Last account activity line at the bottom of your Google Mail account pages shows information about recent activity on your account.

Recent activity includes any time that your Google Mail account was accessed using a regular web browser, through a POP client, from a mobile device, etc. We'll list the IP address from which the account was accessed, as well as the time and date.

How to use this data

If you're concerned about unauthorised access to your Google Mail account, you'll be able to use this data to find out if and when unauthorised agents accessed your mail. Does the Access Type column show any unusual access? If you don't use POP to collect your mail, but your Recent activity table is showing some POP access, it may be a sign that your account has been compromised.

The IP address column is also useful. If you always or most often sign in to your account using a single computer, your IP address should be the same, or start with the same two sets of numbers (i.e. 192.168.xx.xx). If you're seeing an IP address that differs greatly from your usual IP address, it could either mean that you've recently accessed your account from a different location, or that someone has accessed your account. Your current IP address is displayed below the Recent activity table.

Concurrent sessions

If your Google Mail account is currently being accessed from another location, we'll list the other session(s) in the Concurrent session information table. This could mean that you simply have another browser window open with your Google Mail account loaded, or that your home computer is logged in to your account while you're accessing your mail from work. If you're concerned about any concurrent access, you can sign out all sessions other than your current session by clicking Sign out all other sessions .

If you think your account has been compromised

You'll need to change your password and your security question. The first step is to read our suggestions on choosing a good password to make sure that your new password is secure. Then, follow the instructions in How do I change my password? to update your password.

Second, read about choosing a good security question and answer before updating your settings. We also suggest reading some tips on keeping your account safe .

Finally, because you still have access to your account, please note that the Google Mail Team is unable to provide additional assistance.

What’s actually a blog?

2008-06-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

The general formula of a blog involves three key components – an extract, embedded links and personal commentary. The common denominator is the embedded links. Many of today's blogs, especially the personal journal or diary types, do not contain embedded links.
ON THE surface, it might seem obvious what a blog is but these days that term is bandied about so much that almost anything published online is referred to as a blog. But it wasn’t always the case. There used to be a precise definition of what a blog is or should be.
The word “blog” itself is actually a shortened version of the word “weblog”, which itself is not a very intuitive term. By looking at its component parts, one would be forgiven for mistaking a weblog for an online diary.

But blogs weren’t originally meant to detail activities of a person’s daily life or musings. They were originally used by geeks to share with other geeks the various interesting articles, postings and tools that they found on the web.

The general formula used involved three key components: i) an extract ii) embedded links iii) personal commentary.

So, if a blogger were to come across an interesting article about some new gadget for example, he would then take an extract from the article, embed a link to a keyword in the extract and then add in his two cents’ worth. Voila, you have a blog posting!

Of course that formula is not set in stone and even the early bloggers would occasionally deviate from it. But they generally had at least two of the three components.

The common denominator it would seem is the embedded link. And that’s a crucial point that distinguishes the original form of blogging with what blogs have grown to become today. Many of today’s blogs – especially the personal journal or diary types – do not contain embedded links.

FROM : THESTARONLINE

To see an example of “classical blogging” at work, visit blogs by Jeff Ooi, Rocky’s Bru and Tony Pua. Whether by design or just by natural inclination, these bloggers typically have at least two of the three components found in the classical blogging formula. Embedded links are always there.

Contrast that to the diary type bloggers such as Kenny Sia and Nicole Tan. You’ll find that their blogs contain a lot of pictures, lots of personal comments, observations and stories but no extracts or embedded links.

What that tells you is that the ethos of classical blogging is very different from that of online diary blogging.

The former is designed for the reader to come in, read what the blogger has to say about a particular topic and then move on to the original source of the story (which can be found by clicking on the embedded links). Such blogs are not meant to be sticky but to inform you about something the blogger discovered and wants to share.

The latter is designed for you to come in and hang around for a while. To read the witty or irreverent stories and to enjoy the pretty or funny pictures that accompanies them. In other words, they are meant to be sticky, not to send you away to some other site.

The online diary type of blogs, in contrast, are standalone and rarely refer to or derive their content from external sources.

Earlier this week, I moderated a forum on blogging where the panellists included Jeff and Rocky. At one point both of them remarked that although they are part of the alternative media movement, they still appreciated mainstream media because without mainstream media, they’d lose an important source of stories to link to and to comment on.

Interestingly, The Star’s Group-Chief-Editor, Wong Chun Wai, who was also a panellist also regularly, makes use of embedded links in his blog.

Although many of his postings consist of breaking news rather than commentary on a published topic, the fact that he includes embedded links makes him more of a classical blogger, in the mould of Jeff and Rocky

Many socio-political bloggers tend to adopt the embedded link approach to blogging. One very popular online presence who generally does not embed any links is Raja Petra Kamaruddin, who is often mistakenly referred to as a blogger.

He’s definitely an online pundit or commentator. Even the term online columnist would be a fairly accurate description. But in very few respects is his a blogger, be it in the embedded link or the online diary sense of the term.

In fact, his website, Malaysia Today, is very much an online news portal that aggregates content (often without permission) from all over the place. I have been amused in the past to suddenly find myself being a “Guest Columnist” on Malaysia Today without my knowledge!

In a sense, the ethos of blogging is there in that it’s about sharing information that Raja Petra (or his team) find interesting. But the form that they use – cutting and pasting whole articles rather than referring people to those articles through embedded links – is not that of blogging.

Some would say a rose by any other name smells just as sweet. And perhaps they are right in a sense. But if we are to use the terms “blog” and “anything published online” interchangeably, why even have the word “blog” in the first place? Surely, a phrase must have some specific characteristics in order for it to have any meaning.

Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List on Blogger

2008-06-09T02:14:00.000-07:00

Adding a new page element to their inventory, Blogger has released Blog List function, which provides the bloggers the power to

Link to blogs, web pages, and feeds from your blog’s sidebar, with an optional favicon
For pages with RSS and Atom feeds, Blog List can show last updated time, post title, and a snippet of the latest post
Sort links alphabetically or by last update time
Show all links, or hide some behind a “show all” link
Import subscriptions from Google Reader
Blog List links are visible to search engine crawlers, so your blog’s PageRank and reputation flow to those you link to

You can read here the full post for the Blog List function as it appeared on Blogger Buzz.

Today we’re releasing a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

Use a Blog List to put a blogroll in your sidebar, or make a few to categorize the blogs you read. The Blog List works well for any page that has an RSS or Atom feed, so you can get creative: link to news sites, podcasts, Twitter streams, search results, or anything else with a feed.

Blogger Buzz: Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List

Blogging in Sanskrit binds Indian students overseas

2008-03-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

Guess what's keeping together our high-tech gizmo Indian students at various US universities, pursuing higher studies? It's an online Sanskrit magazine.
Indian students, alumni and faculty from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Maryland (UMD), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Caltech, Purdue and so on are bringing out an online Sanskrit magazine under the banner of Campus Samskritam Network (CSN). Hosted on the www.speaksanskrit.org website, the webzine is called 'Vishvavani' (the voice or the language of the world).
Last week the third issue of Vishvavani was released, featuring a wide range of topics. It had an article on ancient Indian mathematics by Prabha Mandyam, (Ph.D. student at Caltech), another on Swami Vivekananda by Harichandan Mantripragada (Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University) and a travelogue by Dr. Jyotsna Kalavar (associate professor at Penn State University).
The webzine is enriched by a 'subhashitam' (wise saying) and even a Sanskrit crossword puzzle. Sowmya Joisa and Avinash Varna, editors of the magazine, say that even though it is not the first online Sanskrit magazine it is currently the only active one available online.
The group has been inspired by the first online Sanskrit magazine 'Apoorvavani', which is not active any more, and by a monthly print magazine 'Sambhashana sandesha' - both brought out by Samskrita Bharati. In addition to a document format uploaded on the web, the contents of the magazine are also published on a blog to make it easier for readers to comment on and give feedback, according to a statement.
In the past two years, blogging in Sanskrit has emerged as a popular online activity contributing to and providing growing evidence of the popularity of the language. While some like 'kalidasa', maintained by Ajit Krishnan, a software engineer at Microsoft Seattle, cover a wide variety of topics, others like 'learnsanskrit' maintained by Himanshu Pota from Australia, focus on specific topics such as teaching Sanskrit, Sanskrit songs, grammar, words, wise sayings and so on.
"Even though the Sanskrit blogging community is not as big as for other languages, we try to be in touch with each other, encourage each other and hope to grow as a group," says Ajit Krishnan, whose blog has seen more than 200 posts and 3,000 hits so far. Ajit also hopes that in future his blog will attract more youth and plans to add more multi-media resources, movie reviews, and feature other contemporary topics.
The common link for many bloggers and students at CSN appears to be Samskrita-Bharati (SB), a non-profit organization spearheading the speak-Sanskrit movement in India, the US and elsewhere.
Even though the web-based Sanskrit activities in the US have increased a lot in the past two or three years, SB USA itself has been active for almost 10 years. The organization is all set to hold its fifth annual meeting for volunteers in Maryland during the March 22-23 weekend, where over 30 volunteers from about 15 cities across the US are expected to participate.
The meeting will be attended by Sri Krishna Shastry, one of the founders of SB, who will also be giving a talk at the University of Pennsylvania on March 26. He will subsequently attend some Sanskrit-related events in New Jersey and New York.
For those unfamiliar with the rising Speak Sanskrit movement, it may sound a bit quaint. However, ask a Sanskrit aficionado, and the future of spoken Sanskrit appears extremely promising.
When asked why blog in Sanskrit when it is not his mother tongue, Ajit replied, once again in Sanskrit - "It is fast becoming my mother tongue".
Indo-Asian News Service

Blogging May Have Psychological Benefits

2008-03-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

The Discovery Channel is reporting that a study published in CyberPsychology and Behavior found that there may be some psychological benefits to blogging and/or using online communities like MySpace. The study followed about sixty people who were updating their MySpace blogs regularly. After two months of blogging these people felt more confident and more involved.
Researchers James Baker and Susan Moore have written two papers investigating the psychological benefits of blogging and regularly updating personal Web pages with information that invites others to comment.

The first, published in the latest issue of the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior, compares the mental health of people intending to blog with that of people not planning to blog.
Moore says the researchers messaged 600 MySpace users personally and directed them to an online survey. A total of 134 completed the questionnaire; 84 intended to blog and 50 didn't.
"We found potential bloggers were less satisfied with their friendships and they felt less socially integrated, they didn't feel as much part of a community as the people who weren't interested in blogging ... they were also more likely to use venting or expressing your emotions as a way of coping," Moore said.
"It was as if they were saying 'I'm going to do this blogging and it's going to help me'."
And it seemed to do the trick, as the researchers' second study shows.
This study, which is yet to be published, was conducted two months later. The researchers sent out questionnaires to the same group of MySpace users; this time 59 responded. Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.
The study found that the bloggers (technically MySpace users in this study) reported feeling "less anxious, depressed and stressed" after two months of blogging. To be fair the people going into the two month study were optimistic that blogging would help them in the first place. It is also interesting to know that there is a journal called CyberPsychology and Behavior.

5 Teaching Techniques that will Improve your Blogging

2008-03-09T15:29:00.001-07:00

In this post Leslie Madsen-Brooks explores 5 teaching techniques that bloggers might like to explore to connect with their readers
The best teachers–from first-grade teachers to university instructors–employ some simple techniques that bloggers can use to their advantage.
Here are five of my favorites:
1. Find unexpected common ground.
A couple years ago, I was standing in front of a classroom of 100 college students immersed in small-group discussions. Try as I might, I had a hard time getting them to reconvene. So I pulled out a trick I had seen elementary school teachers use. I took a deep breath and said, "One, two, three–eyes on me!" About a dozen students responded with "One, two–eyes on you!" — an effect that astonished us all and allowed us to share a laugh. Many of my students had been conditioned years ago to respond to that simple rhyme, and they were surprised to see the technique had made its way around the state and the country, that it wasn't unique to their own first- or second-grade experiences.

Similarly, I'm always delighted when I find a blogger who establishes novel common ground among his or her diverse readers. Sometimes that connection is ridiculously simple and tied to Internet pop culture, such as a recent post on the fabulous professorial blog Edge of the American West called I CAN HAZ SPLENDID WAR?. I didn't care much about the sinking of the Maine in 1898, but the post title's reference to LOLcats made me read on, and I was tricked–tricked, I tell you!–into placing history into a contemporary perspective and vice versa.
2. Offer points for participation.
At my university, faculty can't grade students on attendance. One way, therefore, to get students to come to class is to offer incentives for participation (or, some would say, punitive consequences for non-participation). Each student's final grade in any of my classes, therefore, depends a good deal on how much–and well–he or she contributes to class discussion. Students appreciate it when faculty weave student contributions into the fabric of a lecture or class discussion.
Bloggers do much the same thing when they pull a reader contribution from the comments and make it the inspiration–or even reason–for a new post. It's a way of driving a conversation into different direction but it also rewards readers who leave quality comments.
3. Know every student's name by the second day of class.
In a large lecture class, this tactic may be beyond the capability of most faculty. But when I have classes of 25-50 students, I try to learn their names as quickly as possible, usually by letting them introduce themselves while I madly take notes on their appearance and their quirks so that I can remember them in the next class period. (A colleague of mine uses Facebook to study her students' photos.)
If someone stops by your blog and comments meaningfully or comments several times in a short span of time, drop her a line to thank her for her participation and to welcome her to the community. Take notes on what your commenters say so you can refer back to them when the opportunity arises. Even better, go leave comments on your reader's blog. In the corner of the blogosphere I frequent, there are 100 or so blogs where the commenters all seem to know one another's stories. It's a powerful community that came about through reciprocal links and comments.
4. Give meaningful, fun homework assignments.
At my university, we're on a 10-week quarter system. Science students begin taking "midterms" during week 2-3 of the quarter. Accordingly, science majors enrolled in my courses are tempted to stop doing the reading assignments at this time. To encourage them to read, I make sure to provide interesting homework and in-class assignments that require students to read all the course texts and come prepared to talk about them. Students are rewarded for doing the reading when they come to class and receive the respect of their peers for contributing meaningfully to our conversations.
Blog contests and challenges provide similar stimulus for reader involvement. Right now I'm very much enjoying how Dave Navarro is blogging his way through Christine O'Kelly's e-book on freelance writing. He hasn't explicitly given homework to his readers, but I'm inspired to follow along just the same, especially since I purchased O'Kelly's book.
More explicitly in this vein, Darren offered his readers a 31-day course in building a better blog, complete with such homework as link up to a competitor and do a search engine optimization audit on your blog.
5. Be interdisciplinary.
While teaching, it's easy to get stuck in the rut of your discipline. For example, just about everyone in your department might use the same textbook for a particular course, so all students get stuck learning the same material from the same source in the same way. But if you're in chemistry and your students are looking a bit bored, you can liven up your discussion of sugar versus saccharin by tossing in some history of how sugar was rationed in the U.S. during WWII in part so that candy bars and other sugary treats could be sent to U.S. soldiers, whom, it was believed, needed sugar for energy. Saccharin, in the form of saccharin pills, therefore became a necessary sugar substitute–and a chic accessory on middle-class dining tables. Paint a humorous picture for your students of 1950s housewives using teeny tiny prongs to pick up saccharin tablets from bejeweled, turtle-shaped saccharin containers, and your students have a new context for their learning.
Similarly, if you blog in, say, the internet marketing niche, it's easy to simply re-blog the same techniques everyone else is using and to promote the same affiliate programs. Why not branch out into another discipline or field–online or off–in order to bring new perspective to your readers? What, for example, are librarians doing to help clients better find the information they need? What can you learn about keyword searches and keyword research from their techniques?
©problogger

Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Blogs Usability

2008-03-08T07:01:00.001-08:00

Think of it like this: the art of making it as easy as possible for your blog's visitors to do exactly what you want them to do.
That simple, super-effective tip on putting your feed icon high up in your sidebar is usability at work. So is putting social media buttons at the bottom of your posts. So is putting popular posts in your sidebar. In fact, some of the coolest, simplest things you can do to get more subscribers, links and loyal readers come from usability.
Setting aside an hour or two to re-arrange your layout with usability in mind will pay long-term dividends for your blog's growth. Here are my top 5 tips to help you get started.

#1 — Be predictable:
When we want to know what a site is about, the first thing we look for is an 'About' page.
When we want to contact the owner of a site, the first thing we look for is a 'Contact' page.
When we want to leave a comment, we usually look to the bottom of a post.
When we want to subscribe to a blog, we look for the subscribe button at the top of its sidebar.
These things are so common that they've become standards — things we expect. When we can't find the standard, we look for the next most similar thing.
By adhering to these predictable standards you're actually making it as easy as possible for your blog's visitors to do exactly what you want them to do. Sometimes being predictable is not a bad thing!

#2 — Be obvious:
Look down at your keyboard and you'll probably be able to spot at least one key that you've never noticed before, either because you have no need for it or you don't know what it does. It could be the most useful key ever, but our hesitation when confronted with the unknown has probably stopped you ever pressing it before. What if it deletes everything you just wrote?
We don't like not knowing what the result of our actions will be, and so it goes with your blog. Non-obvious links and buttons will very rarely be clicked. In my experiments with private advertising, there can be as much as an 800% difference in click-through rates between ambiguous banners and ones which make it obvious where the reader will be taken when they click on it. Scour your blog and ask this question of every element: would a new visitor know what this does, or where it leads?

#3 — Subtract the unimportant:
By hiding important elements (your most popular posts, your feed icon, your comment button) amongst a dozen other unimportant things (widgets and recent comments) you're making it harder for readers to do what is truly important to you.

#4 — Limit options:
A category list with 10 categories is a lot more usable than a list with 50 categories. Too many options creates overload which leads to deferral: a visitor will not engage with that element at all. Your list of 5 most popular posts will get clicked more than your list of 20, and so on. Simplified options make it easier for the visitor to decide where they want to place their attention. Too much choice will actually hurt your blog's usability.

#5 — Do the little things:
A usable blog, aside from the above, is also made-up of many little touches that make your visitor's browsing experience easier.
Does your header image link back to your main page?
Does your blog have an about page?
Does your blog have a contact page?
Do your headlines match with your content?
Is it clear where your links will lead?
Do you use frequent paragraphs in your posts?
Do you have comment links at the bottom of your post?
Do you use sub-headings?
Are your posts less than 2/3 screen length wide?
Are you making your best posts easily accessible?
Are your links easy to pick out?

Points to review:
Predictability is a good thing for usability.
Be creative with your posts, but obvious in your layout elements.
Subtract obstacles to your most wanted actions.
Simplify options to make your elements easier to use.
Pay attention to little touches that your visitors will find useful.
©Problogger

Do You Have a Blog Content Strategy?

2008-03-08T02:27:00.001-08:00

A content strategy is a plan for how you will create content for your blog. Having a content strategy and following it will accelerate your blog's growth. In this article, I'm going to explain how to develop and use a blog content strategy so you can get the best results. This is something that I have done with demonstrable success, so you can, too.
Over the past few years, as blogs have become more popular, a few best practices have evolved, and we see them repeated endlessly in all the metablogs out there: be passionate, create compelling content, and know your audience. But somewhere between reading that, nodding our heads sagely, and hitting publish, we lost our way.
Now, I can't help you with passion. Either you have it or you don't, and if you don't, you are simply doing the wrong thing. Seriously, do yourself and everyone a favor and just quit blogging. But as far as the other two go, well, that's where a blog content strategy comes in. A blog content strategy helps you channel your passion so that you get the results you want without first burning up all the fuel in your fire. Following a blog content strategy helps you accomplish what other bloggers have trouble with, like coming up with topics to blog about, and getting more traffic, comments, and subscribers.
A blog content strategy is not complicated. It only has two parts:
Knowing the purpose of the blog, and making sure everything about the blog fulfills that purpose
Knowing the needs of your audience, and creating content that meets those needs while fulfilling the blog's purpose

Know the purpose of your blog:
If I asked you right now point blank: what is the purpose of your blog, could you answer me right away? Most can't. Your blog needs to have a purpose. It needs to have "true north" on its compass. The purpose of your blog is what you want to accomplish with it from the perspective of meeting your needs. I can use my own blog as an example: the purpose of Remarkablogger is to acquire new clients for my blog consulting and coaching business. Now, if you're thinking that sounds a little selfish, hold on, because we haven't discussed the second part of a blog content strategy, yet. One way to get to the purpose of your blog if you're not sure is to ask yourself why you started the blog in the first place.
One problem with strategies and plans is that people keep them only in their heads. You think you understand it and know it, but it's probably all foggy and vague. That's why when asked point blank, you stammer. The solution is to write it down. The act of writing forces us to be clear in our own thinking because we have to make it clear for others. This is invaluable. Write it down and keep rewriting it until it's clear.
Make sure the blog fulfills its purpose
This is part design strategy as well as content strategy (nothing is ever in its own little box in blogging!). Just like when you wrote papers in school and your professor said that everything in the paper should support the thesis statement, otherwise get rid of it, so it is with your blog. Whatever doesn't serve the purpose goes buh-bye. Again, using my own blog as an example, I clearly and unmistakably display that I offer services and am for hire. My content is often about the work I do for clients that has brought them success.

Know the needs of your audience:
The biggest mistake you're probably making is that you think your audience is like you. If you are running a hobby blog or an internet marketing blog, they may be. But if you are running a business, they are not. This creates a huge blind spot for us. Here's the secret: you define your audience by the content you create. This means you will get exactly the people you want. If you're running a business (freelancing or small company or whatever) then you want qualified potential customers and existing customers reading your blog. By writing material that only appeals to that group and no other, you are guaranteed to get them. It may take a while, but eventually it will happen (especially through search).
Put yourself in the mind of a person who is looking for you, but doesn't know it, yet. ;) What is your dream? What is your biggest fear? What words are you going to type into that little box on Google? Write posts that create beautiful visions of those dreams. Write posts that speak to their fears, and that present you as the solution. Stuff that you like or that you find interesting, your audience may not identify with at all. If this means you have to change what you're blogging about, and you're afraid you're going to lose part of your audience, well, you're right. You will. But they were the wrong audience anyway, so it is no loss. They will be replaced by more qualified people.
Just as you wrote down the purpose of your blog, write down the hopes, fears, and needs of the audience you want to have. Refer to this list when writing posts (especially if you feel blocked: just pick something and start freewriting).

Meet audience needs while fulfilling your blog's purpose:
By meeting the real needs of your audience with your blog's purpose in mind, you will fulfill your blog's purpose. So, even though it seemed selfish earlier when I said to determine purpose from your perspective, you now can see how it works out in the end. By meshing your audience's needs with your purpose, you have a blog that can grow and, if you're in business, help you make more money, too. Speaking for myself, ever since I started pursuing this content strategy, I have had non-stop freelance blog consulting work. Having a content strategy and following it is a win-win situation for both the blogger and the audience. It needs to be for any real success to happen.

Review:
Successful and outstanding blogs need a content strategy that consists of two parts: knowing your purpose and knowing your audience. Make sure everything on your blog fulfills the purpose. Put yourself in the place of your audience and write content that meets their needs while helping you fulfill the purpose of the blog.
About the author:
Michael Martine is an official SOB and has been blogging since the year 2000. He is a blog consultant and coach. He blogs at Remarkablogger and Gateway Blogging.
Thanks, Michael!

GrandCentral: receive calls and post voicemail with your blog

2008-02-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

With GrandCentral, a free service from Google, you can receive phone calls and post voicemails right on your blog. Though GrandCentral is currently in a private beta test, bloggers can skip the wait and get a free account immediately.

Blogger Buzz: GrandCentral: receive calls and post voicemail with your blog
WebCall Button
When you add GrandCentral’s WebCall button to your blog, your readers can easily call your phone or leave voicemails without ever seeing your telephone number.

You can screen calls, either accepting them or sending them to voicemail, and you can even block unwanted callers altogether. Learn how to add a WebCall button to your blog, and try it out for yourself below:

Voicemail Inbox

Your voicemail is all kept in a visual online inbox that is easy to manage. Store as many as you like for as long as you like, or post them to your blog so anyone can hear them.

Blogging and Your Career

2008-01-23T01:45:00.000-08:00

Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career

You have to get noticed to get promoted.
You have to get noticed to get hired.
It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

Note number 7, "Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people."

Blogger now supports Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian

2008-01-23T01:42:00.000-08:00

Blogger announced that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian!

Blogger in Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian

Supporting these languages is a huge milestone for BLogger because — unlike the other 37 languages Blogger is translated into — Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew are written from right to left. As you can see from the above screenshot, we had to flip the whole interface around.

Besides localizing the Blogger interface into these three languages, we have right-to-left templates and have added new toolbar buttons for bi-directional text editing in the post editor.

The effort was worth it, however, and we’re tremendously happy to be a part of the growing Arabic-, Hebrew-, and Persian-language blogging communities.

Changing your language preferences and settings
To see the Blogger interface in one of these languages, just use the menu on your Dashboard. You can also choose your language on Blogger’s homepage and via the “Language” link in the footer of most pages.

From then on, all new blogs you create will default to using your new language choice.

If you need to change the language of an existing blog, just go to Settings > Formatting and select a new language there. Your blog language affects date formatting and other blog text, and, with today’s release of Blogger, your blog’s comments form as well.

Right-to-left templates
For Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew blogs, we will also rearrange your template to read more logically from right to left. So, a blog that once looked like this:

will now look like this:

Please note that your template won’t change if you’ve customized it with Edit HTML; we wouldn’t dare muck with your data! Also, if you’re still using a Classic template you will have to upgrade to Layouts in order to take advantage of bidirectional language templates. Learn how.

Bidirectional text editing
We’ve also added right-to-left and left-to-right buttons to Blogger’s post editor. They’ll appear if your Dashboard language or your blog’s language setting is for a right-to-left language.
Clicking on these buttons will set the paragraph you are currently editing to either right-to-left or left-to-right mode. This way you can write truly bidirectional posts.

Happy rtl-blogging

Yahoo Adds Its Muscle to OpenID Single Sign-On Standard

2008-01-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

"I liken OpenID to RSS -- if you ask a casual user of the Internet what RSS is, they will probably shrug their shoulders," Scott Kveton, chairman of the OpenID Foundation board, told LinuxInsider. "However, RSS is used in many, many popular applications. I think OpenID will take the same path and we'll start to see applications that take advantage of what it means to be an OpenID."

Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) , with its 248 million active registered users worldwide, has announced that all of them will be able to use their Yahoo IDs as an OpenID to let them eliminate separate IDs and logins at Web sites that support the open, decentralized digital identity framework.
"What Yahoo has announced today is the ability for people with accounts on Yahoo and Flickr to use those accounts via OpenID to login to nearly 10,000 different services around the Web," David Recordon, open platforms tech lead of Six Apart and vice chair of the OpenID Foundation, told LinuxInsider.
"This is beneficial as it means that a Yahoo user going to comment on a blog, join a community, or sign up for a new service does not have to create a new username and password, but rather can use their OpenID from Yahoo," he explained.
Yahoo's initial OpenID service will be available in public beta on Jan. 30, and it will enable a seamless and transparent Web experience by letting users use their custom OpenID identifier on my.yahoo.com or to simply type in "www.yahoo.com" or "www.flickr.com" on any site that supports OpenID 2.0. Alternatively, Web sites that accept OpenID 2.0 will be able to add a simple "Sign-in with Your Yahoo ID" button to their login pages that will make it even easier for their users.

Huge Coup for OpenID
"I see Yahoo as being an extremely important catalyst in mainstream adoption of OpenID," Recordon noted. "In a single announcement, they've added nearly a quarter-billion new OpenIDs to the entire ecosystem. In just two weeks, this has already been a great year for OpenID with Yahoo joining AOL, Apple, Google, Microsoft, VeriSign and others in their support of OpenID."
The Yahoo announcement effectively triples the number of people who are able to use OpenID, and the OpenID movement is clearly hopeful that Yahoo's support will help spur adoption.

One-Way Back Scratching
Yahoo's support, however, only goes one direction. "If Yahoo decides to accept OpenID on their own properties, it would allow the other 150-plus million people with OpenIDs to login and use Yahoo services without having to directly create a new Yahoo identity if they didn't want to," Recordon explained.

So who are those 150 million OpenID users?
"Most of today's users are definitely tech-savvy," Scott Kveton, chairman of the OpenID Foundation board, told LinuxInsider. "I liken OpenID to RSS -- if you ask a casual user of the Internet what RSS is, they will probably shrug their shoulders.
"However, RSS is used in many, many popular applications," he added. "I think OpenID will take the same path and we'll start to see applications that take advantage of what it means to be an OpenID; I've proved I own this specific, unique end-point for myself on the Internet. What I land there -- services or otherwise -- will be what really propel OpenID's growth and adoption."
Yahoo's implementation is based on the OpenID 2.0 specification. Yahoo worked closely with the OpenID Foundation and community to finalize the specification in December 2007. The specification includes new features that improve security and usability of OpenID, making it the most user-friendly single sign-on and online user-authentication standard, Yahoo said. Yahoo's users who log in with their Yahoo ID on OpenID sites will have the added protection of Yahoo's sign-in seal wherever they go on the Web. No e-mail or IM addresses are revealed or disclosed as part of the login process, Yahoo noted, which further helps protect users from phishing or other attacks.

All Eggs in One Basket?
Critics of OpenID contend that users are essentially putting all of their access details in a single basket -- if the basket were ever compromised, so to speak, nefarious individuals could gain access to everything inside the basket.
"The balance between convenience and security is always going to be an issue," Stephen O'Grady, RedMonk industry analyst, told LinuxInsider. "OpenID certainly has its issues, but then so too does the challenge of remembering multiple passwords for different sites and accounts. While in theory it would be more secure to use different, unique, strong passwords for different venues, in practice most people use one simple one throughout."
If users use a single, robust authentication system , it's not only convenient, it may also be stronger than many weak login methods, he noted.

Nokia N95 Can Post to Your Wordpress Blog Directly

2008-01-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

Wordpress is easily one of the most popular blog platforms available on the planet today. The trouble is that people usually have to find their way back to the laptop in order to post up new content to either of those blogs. If you owned a Nokia N95, the process could be a heck of lot easier.
Telewaving has developed an application called Wavelog that effectively lets you post directly to your Wordpress blog from a Nokia N95 smartphone. Called Wavelog, this application doesn't restrict to you to text-only entries either, allowing you to upload everything from audio to pictures and even video, assuming that you have some sort of network connection.
A trial version of Wavelog can be downloaded from Telewaving, but this version only allows for text. If you want full functionality, you'll need the $10 license.

Increasing Blog Earning in 2008

2008-01-16T22:51:00.000-08:00

If you're not making money off your blog, 2008 might be the year.
As more people see potential in earning money off the Internet, there is a quickly expanding array of advertising services and tools for bloggers that go well beyond the standard pay-per-click text ads or display ads.
Many of the most widely used programs are adding features to allow users to customize the appearance and placement of ads on their sites. Some also are introducing newer money-making mediums such as audio and video ads. "There's going to be a lot of new business models in 2008 that are geared toward more monetization," says Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of strategic services for Nielsen Online, the Web analysis unit of the Nielsen Co.
Blog publishers could certainly use the help in making money. The vast majority of publishers make less than $10 or $20 a month through advertising, according to Internet-advertising experts. How much money is made through advertising on a site depends much on how much traffic a site gets, the trustworthiness of the content and how relevant the ads are to the visitors.

Audio and Video
Starting Feb. 1, San Diego-based V2P Communications is offering five-to-eight-second audio ads, called NetAudioAds, that will automatically play when a visitor lands on a blog or Web site. Publishers sign up for the free service and V2P then lines up advertisers, who bid on rates they will pay to have their ads played on a given blog. Bids generally start around $14 per 1,000 plays. Blog publishers get a 25% cut of the ad revenue.

Blog Remix on Adobe AIR: Yahoo’s Music Revolution?

2008-01-16T22:48:00.000-08:00

While rumbles of major changes at Yahoo music have found their way to the over the past few weeks, we’re all still in the dark in regards to Yahoo’s actual plans for its music service. Last we checked, the Yahoo Media division was undergoing some painful modifications, including the departure of Vince Broady and an overall weight loss plan. Regardless of the departmental shifting and cutbacks that Yahoo has seen these past few months, the company has been rolling out a good amount of experimental applications, seeing which ones stick to the wall.So while we’re all holding our breath waiting for the new and shiny Yahoo Music to pop out of the box, I’m guessing that Yahoo’s most recently launched application is just another experimental application and not the means of a revolutionary way in which we consumers interact with our music, via Yahoo.

The new application I speak of is called Blog Remix. It revolves around the concept of the creation of your very own mixtape. That’s something more web-based services are beginning to tackle as more music becomes available for integrated use with a variety of applications and tools. But what Blog Remix does in addition to provide access to music for mixtape creation is it adds music blog content as well. What you’ve got now is an audio and visual mixtape of sorts, that looks to bring you more contextual information about the music you love. This personalized approach to multimedia music as an industry working on the web is quite similar to idiomag, but you do all the work with Yahoo’s Blog Remix.

Additionally, it runs on Adobe AIR Runtime, which means it’s a downloadable application (yes, another downloadable app from Yahoo). If you don’t have AIR there are two downloads you’ll need: AIR and Blog Remix itself. Once you get past the daunting task of installing applications onto your desktop, you can begin to play around with Blog Remix.

Yahoo has taken the liberty of lining up some popular music blogs for you to start with. And in the same fashion as the MxPlay widget, Blog Remix will pull the music from the music blogs and enable you to add it to your playlist. If you’re a music buff, then you’ll know what some of the most popular music blogs are. Well, you won’t find all of them listed on Yahoo’s Blog Remix. That’s because Yahoo determines the best blogs based on the way in which they share content. The better a blog shares content, the easier it is for Blog Remix to gather it up and present it to you in a personalized mixtape package. And fortunately, your saved remixes can be exported to iTunes, or republished as an RSS or Atom feed.

But let’s talk about this application’s presence on your desktop, using AIR. I don’t entirely see the necessity of limiting users to this particular desktop model. Most applications that run on AIR also have sister websites for users to access through their browsers. Then, at the very least, users can access the majority of their account regardless of what computer they’re on. Yahoo tends to limit users to their desktops with a good portion of the services they roll out, including widgets, and this particular Blog Remix application is no different.
And as we’ve seen with MxPlay, there is the ability to make this concept work within the realms of a browser-based tool, which can then be added to Yahoo Widgets, even, as there is now the ability to make a widget compatible on Yahoo’s desktop widget client (that way a new tool could be distributed through an existing channel that Yahoo’s been looking to improve anyway). For Yahoo, this is an interesting start, and there are many directions in which this could go, but I imagine a less isolated approach would fare better for the company. Credits: Mashable

Find lost friends using the Internet

2008-01-11T03:04:00.000-08:00

It isn't uncommon to fall out of contact with friends. Over the years, you've probably lost contact with a few friends. This year, resolve to locate friends from your past.
Start by searching Google. Enter your friend's name surrounded by quotes. Try nicknames and variations on the name, also.

For common names, narrow the search by adding a location, profession or interests.

Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) may also help. You'll be automatically notified via e-mail when new pages meeting your search terms are found. Enter your friend's name, along with variations, and how often you'd like updates.

Your friend may also be looking for you. So search Google for your name.

Start a blog

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Google | Universal Resource Locator | Kim Komando | Classmates.com | Infospace.com | Intelius | Livejournal.com | Wordpress
People often search for themselves on the Internet. Take advantage of this by starting a blog. Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com and WordPress.com are free blogging services. You'll be up and going in minutes.

Use your friend's full name and any nicknames in postings. You might also list the last-known location and interests. Include a way to contact you. Just be careful not to give out too much contact information Your e-mail address is enough. Online hustlers use detailed contact information to lure the unsuspecting into various scams.

Search social-networking sites

Social-networking sites are incredibly popular. Maybe your friend uses one. But searching Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn individually is time consuming.

Wink.com searches popular social-networking sites, along with blogs and other sites. Simply enter your friend's name. Narrow search results by adding a location and interests.

You can click through to profile pages on the networking sites. You'll get a better idea if a listing is your friend.

Consider registering for a free profile on Wink. People can use it to locate you. Enter your name and information about yourself. If you wish, link to your profiles on other sites.

PeekYou.com is another site similar to Wink.

Search the deep Web

Pipl.com claims to search the deep Web. These are pages omitted from most search results. You can search Pipl by name and location only.

Pipl searches public records, publications, store profiles and more. The results could point you in the right direction. You may find a store profile that lists a city. Use this information to narrow your search.

As with many people search sites, some results link to paid sites.

Try school sites

Your school's alumni site may help you find college friends. Many have directories. Some even have networking sites.

These sites will be limited to school alumni. You must verify that you're an alumnus of the school. Additionally, you may need to join the alumni association. Make sure the association has your current information.

Reunion.com and Classmates.com can help you find high school or college class mates. To contact someone via the site, you must join.

People search sites

There are plenty of other people search services. At Zabasearch.com, you can search by name and location. You'll get a list of matching addresses and phone numbers. There may also be a birth year.

Clicking a name leads you to Intelius.com, a paid background check site.

Zabasearch also lets you leave messages readable by the public. Your friend may find your message on the site. You should watch for replies.

You also can sign up for Zaba Alerts. You'll be notified if someone searches for your name. You'll also learn when new information is posted. Enter your name and the name of the person you're trying to find.

Google and Facebook join data portability group

2008-01-11T03:02:00.000-08:00

Google and Facebook have joined the DataPortability Workgroup, an organisation dedicated to creating ways to share user-generated content on social networking sites.
The move by the two firms, which together store a huge amount of social content, comes less than a week after a blogosphere brouhaha erupted when well-known tech blogger Robert Scoble had his Facebook account closed for using a Plaxo tool to copy his contacts. Plaxo has also announced plans to join the group, acording to Chris Saad, co-founder and CEO of Faraday Media and an organiser of the data portability group.

"Their joint support of the DataPortability initiative presents a new opportunity for the next generation of software - particularly in the fields of social software, user rights and interoperability," said Saad. "This means users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems."

The group's philosophy is that user photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by and shared between their chosen tools and vendors, he added.

"The technologies already exist; we simply need a complete reference design to pull the pieces together," Saad noted. "Our mission: To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end data portability."

Marshall Kirkpatrick, a blogger at ReadWriteWeb, , said that the announcement by Google and Facebook could mean the end of user lock-in - but could also create new privacy challenges.

"The non-participation of Google and Facebook, two companies that hold more user data than almost any other consumer service on the market, was the biggest stumbling block to the viability of the project," he wrote. "These are two of the most important companies in recent history -- what's being decided now is whether they will be walled-garden data-horders or truly open platforms tied into a larger ecosystem of innovation with respect for user rights and sensible policies about data."

Brad Fitzpatrick, inventor of LiveJournal and a leader of the Google-led OpenSocial project, will represent Google in the DataPortability organization. Facebook's Benjamin Ling (formerly at Google) will represent Facebook, and Joseph Smarr is Plaxo's representative.

"If these industry titans can put aside their rivalry and work together - magic could happen," Fitzpatrick noted. "Hopefully they can work appropriately with the other members of the working group, bleeding-edge consultants and representatives of smaller and in many cases more user-centric companies. The participation of representatives from Google and Facebook in this initiative could prove key in the continued development of what's possible, instead of the early suffocation of what could have been."

Google and Facebook will join Yahoo, Dow Jones, eHub, Zoomr and the BBC as members of the group.

Web page 'graveyard': Which ones are dead?

2008-01-11T02:59:00.000-08:00

The Internet is a graveyard – so to speak.

Littered all across the World Wide Web are thousands of abandoned and neglected Web sites, providing outdated information and taking up space – somewhere.

Take, for example, the Computer Information Centre’s “Year 2,000 Date Problem Support Centre.” This handy site provides loads of helpful information on making sure computer users’ hardware and software are compliant and will work into the next century. Browsers can even find answers to the question “Will the year 2,000 problem affect me?”

Likewise, blog fans can log on to “Bleach the Infamous Strawberry” – last updated Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2005 – to get the “latest” information on his (her?) latest school interview.

According to Bleach: “Today I got my interview and I had to wait for hours and hours and I was very stressed and my belly was aching and I was tired and then finally this teacher comes and calls my name and so I stand up and follow him and because Im so clumsy I just fall on the floor and go AAAAAh!”

Along with decaying blogs, some of the more common abandoned Web sites seem to exist in a terminal freeze on the popular social networking site Myspace, where users can visit pages such as the one belonging to Steve from Virginia Beach, Va.

Steve, who last visited in July 2005, “loves playing with the latest electronic gadgets! I am currently learning to program in Python. Into computer hacking and Linux. Like to work out and stay in shape.”

Likewise, 22 year-old (at least then) Kentucky resident Lisa hasn’t visited her still-functioning Myspace page since October 2004. According to her page, however, she loves Anthony, she’d like to meet Johnny Depp, and she’s “gettin ready for college @ EKU!!!”

These pages, while possibly a nuisance, can remain online for many years, said Cassie Charles, Northeastern State University Microcomputing Services Center student technical consultant.

“The Internet is such an open network that when people open these pages, it’s their choice with what to do with them,” said Charles. “They can keep them up for years and years if they can afford the bandwidth, and they don’t have to do anything with them. They can just open new ones.”

The pages generally don’t interfere with most Internet users, Charles said, but they can be an annoying clogger of search engines.

“If the sites are listing themselves on search engines like Google, it can slow down the process,” said Charles. “You have to wade through pages that are no longer found or not giving you any relevant information on what you are looking for. I don’t think it has any effect physically – with pages loading or anything like that.”

Though multitudes of now-defunct pages are floating around the Web at this very moment, according to Charles, they are just something people will have to live with.

“I’m sure some company could try to think of a way to remove them, but I don’t really see how they would go about doing it,” Charles said. “Unless they had some kind of ultimate rule over the Internet – which I don’t think anyone has.”

Just ask Bleach.

And just because a page says it was “last updated” just a few days or weeks ago, doesn’t mean it’s so. Some pages have been built to automatically change the update date – whether an update has actually been made or not.

The only way to tell is to return periodically and see if anything has changed. And you might have a long wait.

Of course, it’s a pretty good bet it’s defunct if it contains information about Y2K.

2007 of Google blogging

2008-01-08T01:32:00.000-08:00

It's that time again, the end of a year - time to tote up Google's blogging activity for the last 365 days. First, a few bits of data about this particular blog:

* Number of posts this year: 300
* New product announcements: 15 (not counting our April 1 release)
* News about upgrades and additions to products: 87
* Announcing products in more languages and countries: 30
* Acquisitions: 12
* Unique visitors: 6,738,830 (for 8,655,830 visits)
* Languages: 511 (preferred language configured on computers)
* Top non-Google referrers: Yahoo, Digg, Slashdot, Fark

Beyond these basics, this year saw many more posts on privacy (9), accessibility (10), and energy and the environment (11). We blogged a good deal about Google's people and culture, our various offices around the world, and the pastimes and passions of Googlers (26, including 2 recipes). We talked about healthcare issues that challenge consumers (5). There were competitions including Google Code Jam and events for developers, educators and others (29). Through YouTube, there has been much political activity (7) in the U.S. as well as in Australia.

The posts that elicited the most reaction in terms of views and linkbacks include:

- the much-discussed "Gphone" news
- our thinking about the upcoming FCC spectrum auction
- what the OpenSocial APIs could mean
- how a black screen might not save energy
- announcing the Knol test project
- building your own Google homepage

Of course, there's more than business to write about. We celebrated National Gorilla Suit Day, deconstructed the Valentine's Day doodle, and then a snake went missing.

As for the Google family of blogs, there's been lots of growth this year: 42 new ones launched, for a total to 83 active company blogs. Increasingly, Googlers want to quickly and regularly convey product news and updates to various constituents, and blogs are a great way to do that. Among the most popular of this newest crop are the Gmail blog (nearly 1.5 million unique visitors), the Orkut blogs (in English - 3.5 million uniques; and Portuguese - 8.8 million), and Google Lat Long, with 824,000 unique visitors, which covers everything geographical. In addition, readers can now turn to new product blogs including those for Google Finance, Google News, and Mobile. Reflecting keen interest in activity outside the U.S., the YouTube blog had the greatest number of comments for its June post about the fact that YouTube is available in 9 more countries, followed by the August post announcing InVideo ads.

On the ads side: there are now 6 more non-English blogs for AdSense publishers (French, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Chinese). The AdWords team opened blogs for Brasil and the Netherlands, Japan now has its own Analytics blog, and there are now German and Chinese versions of the popular Webmaster Central. (The most popular ads-related blog is the one for Analytics, with nearly half a million unique visitors, followed by closely Inside AdSense and then Inside AdWords.)

To keep current and share their work, developers got a raft of new blogs, too, including those focused on APIs for YouTube, Checkout, Gears, Mashup, and Gadgets. Needless to say, there are now also blogs for Android and OpenSocial.

Two new country blogs, for the Czech Republic and Australia, went public, to talk about all things Google in their regions. Yet more readers congregated around the new Public Policy and Google.org blogs, as well as one dedicated to online security and malware.

Despite all this activity, and the fact that a growing number of companies also host corporate blogs, the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki (a collaborative project begun by Wired Magazine and SocialText) indicates that even today, just 46 of the Fortune 500 companies (about 9%), have active public blogs produced by company employees that focus on the company and its products. Let's hope in 2008 that number goes up. We think such blogs can serve users, journalists, critics, investors, and fans more effectively and directly than more traditional approaches. Apparently, so do 41,395,926 people around the world - the number of visitors to all of our blogs this year.

Google Adds Blogs To The Matrix - Blogs Finally Legit

2008-01-03T20:20:00.000-08:00

The legitimizing moment for blogs has occurred. Google is adding blogs into their regular index as part of Google Universal Search (video link).

Starting this week or next, queries on the leading search engine will return links to blogs alongside the images, news, books, local maps and video, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, told eWEEK in a briefing at the company’s headquarters here.

I’ve posed this thought for years, and I’m glad to see it finally happen. With the growing number of blogs (content), it would be impossible for Google to ignore blogs, and they would be forced to include blog content into the mainstream flow of blood.

I argue, and now believe I have proof, that Google would not be able to distinguish the difference between a “blog” and “regular” web content, therefore, they would have to make this move eventually, and they are now.

What does the future hold for blogs and Google?

Blogs are generating content at a pace that is faster than you can possibly imagine. In the next 10-years, the massive amount of content that will come in blog form will choke the Internet. Ok, not choke it, but it’s going to account for a massive percentage of content… that Google simply cannot ignore.

I started blogging in 2001. Back when many still didn’t believe in blogs, and certainly back when nobody thought a blog could actually “do” something. I’m glad to see this moment for bloggers. The days of discounting us as non-legitimate sources of content are over.

Google Adds Blogs To The Matrix - Blogs Finally Legit

Scoble and his Facebook data (Scripting News)

2008-01-03T20:09:00.000-08:00

There's a fascinating debate today going on about Scoble and his Facebook data. Here's the story so far. Plaxo, on behalf of Scoble, ran a screen scraper on his Facebook account to download information about at least some of his Facebook friends. Facebook detected the scraper and turned off his account, with an email explaining that he had violated their terms of service. Permalink to this paragraph

The debate: Who is right -- Scoble or Facebook? Permalink to this paragraph

While there are certainly arguments that Facebook has some rightness, most of it, imho, is with Scoble. Sure, some of the data may "belong" to his friends, like their birthday and mail address. Technically of course the data doesn't belong to anyone, it's data about them, and many organizations have this data. Are bloggers really saying that organizations have more rights than people? Isn't blogging all about a level playing field? My bank knows my birthday and my email address. Why shouldn't Scoble? (Maybe he shouldn't.)
Scoble called a few minutes ago. I asked what the consensus was. He said it was about 70 percent in his favor, 30 percent in Facebook's. I think we can win over the 30 percent by saying that there should be a system whereby people can decide how much information they want to share with Scoble, or people like Scoble, or me, or people like me, or BofA or the DEA, KGB or CIA. Further, that system is not Facebook, unless they change.

Now, I think there's a pretty good chance that Facebook will change and give Scoble his data and turn his account back on. I think Facebook wants to give us access to our data, but if they just turned the feature on, there would be a shitstorm, kind of like the one that's raging right now. Except this time Facebook has defenders, which they must find refreshing, because every time there's been a shitstorm around Facebook they've always been seen as 100 percent evil by most people. (Not by me, btw.)

Maybe they're getting smart there over at Facebook. Maybe they will relent, kind of admit they were wrong, and secretly be happy that they got to open their network up some more. Permalink to this paragraph

A picture named kgb.gifHowever, if Facebook doesn't open up and allow people a system to say who can access what information, we still have to create that system somehow. Google could have done it, but they didn't. Same with Yahoo or Microsoft. These companies don't want to empower the users, but if they studied history, they'd see that the evolution of computers always comes in fits and starts. A period when the technology is new and people are snowed by the companies and let them have full control. Gradually people understand what's going on, and figure out they're being screwed but they accept it. And then explosively the whole thing disintegrates in a new layer of technology.

It's a big effin loop we're in. One of these times around one of the companies that feels (incorrectly) that they have a lock on their users, will voluntarily give it up and be a leader in Generation N+1. I've never seen it happen, but in theory I think it could.

In other words, Apple and Microsoft could have invented the web instead of TBL. DEC and Data General could have invented the personal computer instead of Apple and Microsoft (I know this is a simplification, there were lots of individuals and small companies that did it.) And IBM could have invented the minicomputer instead of DEC and Data General. And btw, the NY Times and CNN could have invented blogging, Youtube and RSS. ;->

So Facebook has the opportunity to be a crossover company, part of the next generation -- or a last gasp of the generation that's about to run out of gas. It's their choice. And it's fitting somehow that Scoble is the poster child for users in this cycle. Permalink to this paragraph

Scoble and his Facebook data (Scripting News)

Adding Batch labels now in Blogger: Label actions

2008-01-02T20:34:00.001-08:00

Want to add labels to all your old posts? There's a new labels management feature to make this easy. On the Edit Posts page, you can select batches of posts and add or remove labels to all the posts at once.

Let loose your internal librarian! Happy labeling.

Switch your FTP blog to the new Blogger

2008-01-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

Blogger lets you switch your FTP-publishing blog from the current Blogger to the new Blogger in beta. If you’re eligible to switch your account (see restrictions), you’ll see a message on your Dashboard inviting you to do so.

As with everything else on the new version of Blogger, we expect that FTP publishing will be more reliable than it is on current Blogger. Nevertheless, there many variables in external publishing that are out of our control, so we can’t guarantee that Blogger will publish flawlessly to every hosting provider.

We can say that we’ve tested the new version’s FTP publishing with the four most popular hosting providers from current Blogger, and it works fine. In particular, we’ve worked with Your-Site to ensure that the recent publishing problems between current Blogger and their service are not present with the new version of Blogger.

We do recommend that, before you switch, you create an account on the new version of Blogger by signing in with a Google Account at http://beta.blogger.com/. Try creating a test blog there and verifying that it can publish to your hosting provider. You can then switch your current Blogger blog to this Google Account. Or, just ask around on the Blogger Help Group to find out if other people have had success publishing to your particular hosting provider.

If publishing to your hosting provider does not work — especially if it did work with the current Blogger — send a message to Blogger Support. We want to fix all FTP publishing problems that we are able to.

Extra tip: ask your hosting provider if they support SFTP. If they do, you should use it instead of FTP. It’s more secure than FTP and we’ve found that it will often work when FTP does not.

Blogger: Blogger Custom Domains available now

2008-01-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

Blogger Custom Domains

The new version of Blogger now supports using a custom domain for serving your blog. If you already own a domain named, say, mysite.com and want your blog to be served at that address instead of at a blogspot.com address, we can host your blog on that domain for you — for free. Your old Blog*Spot address will forward to your new custom domain, so the switch will be seamless for your readers.

Of course, FTP publishing is still available if you'd like to do your own hosting, but using a custom domain gives you a ton of advantages:

Simpler to set up. You don’t have to muck around with FTP paths and file names.
Fast publishing. There’s no waiting for files to upload to a hosting provider.
Drag-and-drop template editing. You can use the new Blogger’s new template features.
Access control. If you'd like, only let people you choose read your blog.

Using Blogger's custom domains is a simple way to start serving your blog on your own domain without having to deal with the hassle of transferring the files to a separate web host.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger Custom Domains

Blogger: Now blog in Hindi: Learn How to blog in Hindi

2008-01-02T20:26:00.000-08:00

Now you can blog in Hindi

Enabling the transliteration option allows you to type out Hindi words using phonetically equivalent English script, and see the words getting transformed into the corresponding Devanagari script. The plus is that you now don't need to learn complicated mappings from English alphabet combinations to Hindi letters. That means you really don't need to worry about WeiRD UpPerCasEing to get the right Hindi spellings.To get started, enable Hindi transliteration here (or by going to Settings > Basic). Blogger have a help article explaining how it works, and a thread on the Blogger Help Group to talk about it.

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