Category Archives: Weblogs

Reading List August 30, 2005

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  • Identifont (bookofjoe) – Joe’s found a site, called identifont, that enables you to identify a font’s name by answering a series of questions.
  • Hired Because of His Blog (Rexblog) – At least one person has been hired because of his blog which, as Rex points out, makes a nice contrast to all the "fired because of his blog" stories.
  • Multipurpose Tools (EdCone) – Ed writes about an article in the NY Times that tells of the romance-killing effect on some men of viewing their wives giving birth.  He also links to an article in Slate that provides an overview of the very negative reaction of some female bloggers to the Times article.  To say I have a strong opinion here is an understatement, and will be the subject of a separate post.
  • Customer Relationship Mismanagement – (Doc Searls Weblog) – Oh my wife will love this post about how "f’d up" the Quickbooks customer service system is…she’s been-there, done-that.
  • Fletcher Grants Amnesty to 9 Charged in Probe (Lexington Herald-Leader via The Lex Files) – Read this article for more evidence of why no American can be too cynical about our politicians.

Reading List August 29, 2005

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  • The Betting Site for Big Thinkers (Freakonomics) – A couple of surprises here: one that a noted economist enjoys gambling and two that there are some very nerdy gambling opportunities at places like LongBets.com.
  • Dell Calling (BuzzMachine) – Jeff Jarvis finally got a call from a Dell PR person and she just continued spouting the company line.  Jeff’s given up on them.
  • Eye to Eye: A Talk With the CBS Blogger (BuzzMachine) – Jarvis meets with the new official CBS blogger and finds him nice enough that he offers some friendly words of advice.
  • You ARE a Marketer. Deal with It (Creating Passionate Users via BuzzMachine) – Hugh MacLeod explains why we’re all marketers, whether we like it or not.
  • Ups and Downs (Hogg’s Blog) – Jinni Hoggard has been fighting cancer for a long time and the experience has been a roller coaster for her entire family.  Her husband, David, has been writing about it on his blog and yesterday he wrote a post about the roller coaster ride they had in just one week.  It’s a must read.

WebJillion Cool Winston-Salem Based Blog

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Thanks to Joe for letting me know about Adam’s blog, WebJillion.  Joe and Adam work together at the Winston-Salem Journal and were the people responsible for getting their RSS feeds set up, among other online initiatives.

I’m particularly interested in WebJillion’s free IYHY mobile web application.  Here’s how it’s described:

It is an absolutely free web application that strips all the crap from a web page and gives you the good stuff when you’re
on the go — the content.

If
you sign-up for free with IYHY it will keep a running, editable list of
your "mobile bookmarks" on your account homepage. That way they’re
easily accessible when you’re on your mobile device. If you don’t
sign-up, that’s cool too, you can still use it for individual sites.

Nice!

***Update*** I just spent a little more time on WebJillion and there’s an even more interesting application called Temptation Blocker.  What an idea!

Reading List August 26, 2005

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  • How Blogs Pertain to You (iMedia Connecton via Micro Persuasion) – Had to mention this one since I’m quoted in it.  The article asks how small fry (i.e. me) get treated by companies when we complain, versus how blog heavyweights (Jeff Jarvis) get treated by companies  when they complain.  Good stuff!
  • As Blogging Grows Companies Eye Legal Pitfalls (Yahoo! News) – Corporate types wonder what their liabilities are when it comes to blogging.
  • Blog Tools Tackle Content Management (InfoWorld via Yahoo! News) – Blog tools are essentially stripped down content management systems, and some people are beginning to use them that way.
  • simplehuman Uses Typepad to Build Press Room (via MicroPersuasion) – A company called simplehuman used Typepad (same service I use for this blog) to build a press room.  My lesson learned: I need to either improve my templates myself or get a real designer to do it.

My Ego Might Just ‘Splode

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About seven months ago I wrote a post called "My Hometown Newspaper" that got a little attention here in Winston-Salem and in neighboring Greensboro.  The post was basically about how, because of staff blogs at the Greensboro News & Record it felt more like my "hometown paper" than the Winston-Salem Journal, despite the fact that the Journal was delivered to my house every day.

I heard from folks at both papers and a guy named Jay Rosen, an influential figure in the news business, wrote about it on his "Pressthink" blog.  The experience was more than a little surprising for me since I wrote the post in what I thought was a vacuum.  I didn’t think anyone read this blog except for me and my family, and then only after I begged them to.

Well it was an even bigger shock today when I was reading Steve Rubel’s MicroPersuasion blog and saw this paragraph on his post Listen, Learn, Lead to Succeed:

Palmer gives yet another example of two newspapers that get it. Earlier
this year, North Carolina blogger Jon Lowder made a quiet complaint
about his hometown paper, the Winston-Salem Journal, and compared it,
unfavorably, with the Greensboro News & Record – which is some 30
miles to the east. Both papers responded to Lowder’s original blog
post. In the Winston-Salem Journal’s case they also went ahead and
created an RSS feed just days after Lowder’s original post.

Gulp!

So I click through to the article he’s referencing and find myself described thusly:

What happens when smaller fries harp online? Does corporate America listen?

Most of the time, probably not, but it’s interesting to watch when a
blog post actually catches a company’s attention. That occurred earlier
this year, when a North Carolina blogger, Jon Lowder, made a quiet complaint about his hometown paper, the Winston-Salem Journal, and compared it, unfavorably, with a newspaper 30 miles to the east, the Greensboro News & Record.

Okay, so being described as a "small fry" shouldn’t boost anyone’s ego, but I’m vain enough that I’ll take whatever I can get.  After all, I’m being compared to Jeff Jarvis who is one of the biggest bloggers out there, a true "A-List" blogger, so being a small fry in his company is kind of like being the wimpiest guy at the Mr. Universe contest…right? The article goes on to say:

 

Part of the post read, "I live in Winston-Salem. I have the
Winston-Salem Journal delivered every morning. But I don’t feel like I
know anyone there… I get all the N&R blogs via RSS. I don’t get
their paper… yet. But I still feel closer to the N&R."

There are a million and one wistful comments like this on the web,
but somehow this one got traction. For one thing, it was quoted by
NYU’s Jay Rosen, the author of the PressThink blog, a widely read site.

For another, both the Winston-Salem Journal and the Greensboro News
& Record responded to Lowder’s original blog post. Indeed, the News
& Record’s top editor posted a brief reply.

More remarkable still, though, was what happened at the
Winston-Salem Journal. Not only did the paper respond to the post and
supply contact information, but it went and created an RSS feed just
days after Lowder’s original post.

Now that’s customer service.

That last part is great, because the Journal was responsive, especially a guy over there named Joe who seemed to be the driving force behind their RSS efforts. (Joe has his own personal blog at http://www.joewrite.com).  I’m thinking that Joe should get a bonus or something since he’s getting his employers some pretty positive online exposure right now.

Finally, I’m once again bowled over by the power of blogs.  Think about this: the guy who wrote the article never interviewed me. He got a substantial part of his story from something that I wrote, so he didn’t have to interview me because my thoughts were out there for the world to see.

And think about this: something written seven months ago by a guy sitting in his home office in a pair of sweats has impacted two public companies, in whatever small way, over a seven month time span.  Now multiply that by however many thousand of people who are out there writing away and you have a very interesting phenomenon. 

 

Reading List August 25, 2005

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  • Link Selling: A Case Study (John Battelle’s Searchblog) – Should websites accept advertisers who aren’t interested in clicks, just in taking advantage of the website’s PageRank?
  • Google Gets Better. What’s Up With That? (New York Times) – A review of Google’s latest product releases, Google Desktop and Google Talk.
  • Thoughts on 9/11 (Patrick Eakes) – Patrick thinks that the National Geographic Channel’s "Inside 9/11" is well done, and I agree wholeheartedly.
  • User-Generated Market Intelligence (Business 2.0) – A new service called Jigsaw will aggregate the estimates of salespeople on the revenue and number of employees of private companies.  Using the "Wisdom of Crowds" theory this just might work.
  • Hatin’ (Half-life and times via Blog on the Run) –  A tech dude has some ideas about what to do with malware creators and none of them are pretty.
  • Touched (Chewie World Order) – Chewie links to the website of someone who seems to specialize in re-touching photos.  You can visit that site here.  Just click on any of the pictures and then run your mouse over the larger picture that appears and wonder at the powers of Photoshop.  Note, though, that even these people look great even in the before pictures, but a little augmentation takes them up a notch so to speak.
  • Location, Location, Location (A VC) – Why venture capitalists like to invest in companies that are close to home.
  • PR Pros as Eyes and Ears for Customer Service (Micro Persuasion) – Public relations and customer service are beginning to morph.

Reading List August 24, 2005

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Reading List August 22, 2005

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  • The Best Way to Save Gas (Moore’s Lore) – If localized web services got better we’d all save money.
  • Dating the Next Recession (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn thinks the next recession will begin October 17, 2005 when the new bankruptcy law goes into effect.  He makes an interesting and compelling argument.
  • Writer’s Perspective on Amazon’s Pay-to-Download Short Stories (Boing Boing) – Amazon has a new service that allows you download short stories one at a time (I-Stories?), and at least one writer thinks it’s a good thing.
  • Online Bettors Find a New Love: Real Estate (New York Times) – Online exchanges are correctly predicting many new developments (election results, American Idol winners, the capture of Saddam Hussein, etc.) and now they are telling us that real estate "bubbles" in the cities that it is tracking are NOT ready to burst.
  • The Vagina…It Writes Letters (Pandagon via Blog on the Run) – This is a hilarious play on the Vagina Monologues, which I’ve never read but am assuming weren’t that funny.  Kind of reminds me of that ‘detachable penis’ song.
  • "Peak Oil:" Welcome to the Media’s New Version of Shark Attacks (Freakonomics) – Steven Levitt pokes holes in a NYT magazine article that predicts calamitous results from the rising imbalance of oil production and consumption.
  • What Do the Kansas City Royals and My iPod Have in Common? (Freakonomics) – On randomness or the lack thereof.
  • Anatomy of a New York Times Article (Blog Maverick) – Times really are different for reporters.  Mark Cuban publishes the email chain for an interview he did with a New York Times reporter and then links to the resulting article.  Let’s just say he didn’t like the results, and he’s making the process transparent for everyone to make their own judgement.  Why do I think the reporter might not come out on top?
  • Steal this Book (Reveries) – Warren Adler, author of "War of the Roses", thinks the printed book has had a great 500-year run, but it’s about to be replaced by "screen" books.
  • Foxification of Local News (BuzzMachine) – Roger Ailes is going to do to local news what he did to national news at Fox.

Reading List August 19, 2005

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Reading List August 18, 2005

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  • Innovating Once Again (A VC) – Fred Wilson points to Tom Evslin’s efforts to self-publish his book, but in a whole new way.  Fred calls it "Books 2.0" which is a play on the "Web 2.0" that is the du jour tech movement.
  • Self Publish or Perish (Fractals of Change) – Tom Evslin explains how he’s going to self -publish (see above), and also refrences some other notable self publishers in the online world.
  • WSJ: Self-Publish or Be Damned? Not Always (Andy Kessler) – The author recounts his self-publishing education and success.
  • Advice for Authors (Seth Godin) – Seth has some insights into publishing, best of which is publishing houses do best with authors that are already successful without them.
  • Media no More (Jeff Jarvis) – This is a very good post in which Jeff explores the world of media, and takes a hard look at what is happening to media as we know it.  In a nutshell he points out that in the case of non-fiction media is becoming conversational, or better put it is becoming two-way instead of one-way.  He also looks at what is happening in the fictional world and why he seems less patient with the oldest medium, the book, yet still wants to write one.
  • Enjoy Your Laundry (The Post Money Value) – A post about a positive customer experience.  The author has been staying at a Hampton Inn (which he gave positive reviews in a post last week) but they don’t have laundry facilities.  They sent him to the Embassy Suites next door, which led to a memorably good encounter with Shiela, the person manning the desk at Embassy Suites.  Let’s just say that they’re getting some of his business in the future.
  • Luxury’s Long Tail (Fast Company) – Is it still luxury if everyone can get one?
  • Einsteinovation (Reveries.com) – Even the most esoteric scientific ideas can have an impact on the real world.
  • Building the Perfect Team (Always On) – Tips on building a team at an entrepreneurial company, written by a serial entrepreneur.