Sunday, October 21, 2007
Google Analytics
So, then, I'm thinking of switching my blog over to Word Press. While there are certain features of this here Blogger Google blog I like (the easy ability to upload photos and change the template), I don't like that I can't get statistics on the readership. Word Press has the reader stats built into the blogger dashboard. There is a way to get the stats on this Blogger blog, but to do so I'd have to sign up for Google Analytics. It's a free service for blogs that get less than 5 million page views per month and I know I fall well within that category, so that isn't the problem. The problem is that, according to the Terms of Service, Google can change the terms of service at any time, which means it can start charging for the service, but the kicker is that Google doesn't have to notify anyone of the change in the Terms of Service. The onus for doing this is placed with the user, not the company. I don't know about you, but rushing off to check the latest Terms of Service for Google Analytics hardly tops my list of things to do while on the internet. You know, whenever credit card companies or banks change their terms of service, they are legally bound to contact their customers and allow them to opt out. Why is Google not taking the lead on this in the online realm? Why is it not notifying users when its Terms of Service change? Google sure as heck asks for our email addresses often enough. It know where to find us.
Labels: blog, blogger, google, google analytics, terms of service, word press
Monday, September 10, 2007
The View from Room 636
Lucky you! I'm going to subject you to photos from our trip to Atlanta. We stayed at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Room 636. I'm going to see how Blogger sticks these photos in. They look a bit wonky while I'm in the screen to write this post.
The first photo is a shot of the back side of the Omni Hotel looking straight up. I love taking photos from this sharp angle. It makes the building loom. The second is a distance shot of the hotel and CNN Center taken from the Centennial Olympic Park (more about the park in a later post). The CNN Center and Omni Hotel are connected, which may not be readily apparent from the photos. The third shot is of the view out of our room, which was on the sixth floor of the hotel. Quite a bustling intersection down below. Very touristy area.
You're not going to see this in any of my pictures, but there were cops everywhere. Cops on motorcycles. Cops on bicycles. Cops in cars. Probably because there were so many tourists and this is CNN's headquarters.
Labels: atlanta, blogger, cnn, cops, hotel, olympic park, photos, tourists
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Get Ready for Pictures
I don't want to get your hopes up, but I got a digital camera and scanner today. What this means is that soon I'll be able to post pictures to my blog. Whoopee! Now, I mustn't get too excited. There's still that learning curve to deal with. Gotta figure out how to operate both and then find a way to store the photos online so they'll upload to Blogger. When the first photo appears, you'll know that I've succeeded in the tasks that lay before me. Wish me luck.
Labels: blog, blogger, camera, pictures, scanner
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Blogs I Like
I read a number of blogs, some enormously popular (like Boing Boing & Seth Godin's), but also several that have a small readership. While the popular blogs are all fine and good, I prefer those with a smaller readership because of the personal interaction I can have with the writers. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Poppy Seed Heart - This is written by a lady named Joanne, who lives in Seattle and has a bun in the oven. (She calls her bun "bun".) She is following the course of her pregnancy through her blog, which is simply fascinating. She also talks about her doggies and her significant other. Joanne has a very approachable writing style that keeps me engaged. She also has some great links on her sidebars (gotta love free knitting patterns!) I'm envious of her ability to put photos on her blog, something I haven't quite gotten around to yet. Probably because I don't have a digital camera or a scanner. (Those might help, don't you think?) Cute blog name, too.
Copyrightings - This is a blog by a student named Kevin. He is interested in intellectual property rights and in finding a balance between the rights of copyright holders and the public's right to fair use. He highlights some fascinating stuff in this volatile field.
Check out these blogs, if you've got a little time on your hands. And, don't be afraid to leave a comment.
Serendipity brought me to these blogs. Do you see that little "Next Blog" button at the top of this page? That is a random blog selector (a.k.a. "serendipity"). If you click it, Blogger will take you to another blog. Be forewarned, not every blog has this button at the top and some of the random blogs that pop up are sales blogs, so you might come to a dead end. Clicking the button will give you a view of the multicultural aspect of blogging, with blogs written in languages other than English regularly making an appearance. If you're adventurous and click "Next Blog," you may just find sites that connect with you.
Poppy Seed Heart - This is written by a lady named Joanne, who lives in Seattle and has a bun in the oven. (She calls her bun "bun".) She is following the course of her pregnancy through her blog, which is simply fascinating. She also talks about her doggies and her significant other. Joanne has a very approachable writing style that keeps me engaged. She also has some great links on her sidebars (gotta love free knitting patterns!) I'm envious of her ability to put photos on her blog, something I haven't quite gotten around to yet. Probably because I don't have a digital camera or a scanner. (Those might help, don't you think?) Cute blog name, too.
Copyrightings - This is a blog by a student named Kevin. He is interested in intellectual property rights and in finding a balance between the rights of copyright holders and the public's right to fair use. He highlights some fascinating stuff in this volatile field.
Check out these blogs, if you've got a little time on your hands. And, don't be afraid to leave a comment.
Serendipity brought me to these blogs. Do you see that little "Next Blog" button at the top of this page? That is a random blog selector (a.k.a. "serendipity"). If you click it, Blogger will take you to another blog. Be forewarned, not every blog has this button at the top and some of the random blogs that pop up are sales blogs, so you might come to a dead end. Clicking the button will give you a view of the multicultural aspect of blogging, with blogs written in languages other than English regularly making an appearance. If you're adventurous and click "Next Blog," you may just find sites that connect with you.
Labels: baby, blogger, blogging, boing boing, copyrightings, intellectual property, knitting, poppy seed heart, serendipity, seth godin
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Comments, please!
I discovered last night that I had a few more blog readers than I thought. Incredibly cool! I really appreciate all of you readers out there & am glad you make the time to drop by. I also found out that some of my readers want to leave comments, but don't seem to be able to. I've checked all my comment posting settings, which I've tried to keep as open as possible, and found that they are set to accept comments from everyone, whether you have a Blogger or Google account or not. I'd like to check this to be sure it's working, so for those of you reading, can you send a brief comment (one word will do) to see if it posts? If you don't have a Blogger or Google account, try to send a message via the Anonymous setting. If it doesn't post & you know one of my email addresses, drop me a line and let me know. Thanks much! :)
Oops! I forgot. I have a link to my blog email account along the lefthand column of the blog. Just scroll down 'til you see the word "Email" in gray. When you roll over it with the arrow, it'll turn green. Just click the link & send an email if your comment doesn't go through. Ta-ta!
Oops! I forgot. I have a link to my blog email account along the lefthand column of the blog. Just scroll down 'til you see the word "Email" in gray. When you roll over it with the arrow, it'll turn green. Just click the link & send an email if your comment doesn't go through. Ta-ta!
Labels: blog, blogger, comments, google, readers
Friday, November 17, 2006
Open to Misinterpretation
This is old news, I know, but it bears repeating because apparently I've been misinterpreted. A study done by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, as reported in Wired News, shows that about half of the time we misinterpret the meaning of email because we have no social cues to show us the emotional tone of the content. In other words, if you're joking about something, people will assume you are serious half the time. The study also showed that we assume ninety percent of the time that we are correct in our interpretation.
I found a great blog post on this at The Mad Dog Weekly.
Recently, I sent an email to another blogger - someone I don't know, but who blogs about writing and has some interesting posts. I wished her a happy NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and she responded by asking more about me. I gave her a brief description and ended by telling her not to let me distract her from novel writing. I said that if she wanted to respond, she could set a word count and when she reached it, she could respond - using the response as a carrot, if you will. She has not responded. All I can think is that she misinterpreted my ending as pomposity or arrogance, which was not my intent. I've tried NaNoWriMo and I'll use any excuse not to write. If someone new emailed me, I'd be all over myself wanting to respond and ignoring the novel. Unless, of course, I set myself a word count to reach and then used the promised time to respond as the carrot. My tone was meant to be light-hearted, a jest more about myself than about the recipient.
What I don't understand about emails that bother us in some way is why we don't write back and ask the intent of the email, rather than stew about it. I am as guilty of stewing as anyone, so I'm going to have to figure out how to circumvent this natural reaction.
I found a great blog post on this at The Mad Dog Weekly.
Recently, I sent an email to another blogger - someone I don't know, but who blogs about writing and has some interesting posts. I wished her a happy NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and she responded by asking more about me. I gave her a brief description and ended by telling her not to let me distract her from novel writing. I said that if she wanted to respond, she could set a word count and when she reached it, she could respond - using the response as a carrot, if you will. She has not responded. All I can think is that she misinterpreted my ending as pomposity or arrogance, which was not my intent. I've tried NaNoWriMo and I'll use any excuse not to write. If someone new emailed me, I'd be all over myself wanting to respond and ignoring the novel. Unless, of course, I set myself a word count to reach and then used the promised time to respond as the carrot. My tone was meant to be light-hearted, a jest more about myself than about the recipient.
What I don't understand about emails that bother us in some way is why we don't write back and ask the intent of the email, rather than stew about it. I am as guilty of stewing as anyone, so I'm going to have to figure out how to circumvent this natural reaction.
Labels: blogger, email, journal of personality and social psychology, mad dog weekly, misinterpretation, nanowrimo, wired
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Wonky Bloggy
I don't know if you noticed, but my blog is a bit different as of yesterday. Blogger is adding new features and having everyone switch over to Blogger Beta. One of the new things I love about the program is the ability to add tags to my posts. Blogger calls them labels and they are at the bottom of each post, just above my signature line.
I talked to my brother - actually called to wish him a belated happy birthday - and asked him what he liked about the blog & what he didn't. He likes the Frankensteining the Talent Pool posts. He also likes that most of my posts are relatively short. He doesn't like my constant mention of a particular marketer, who shall remain nameless for this post in honor of my brother.
One wonky thing happened to my blog in the switch over. In my profile, I'm now 250 years old and it lists me as having been born in the year of the Rat. Not so, I'm a sheep. Am I 250 years old? Well, you'll just have to figure that out yourself.
I talked to my brother - actually called to wish him a belated happy birthday - and asked him what he liked about the blog & what he didn't. He likes the Frankensteining the Talent Pool posts. He also likes that most of my posts are relatively short. He doesn't like my constant mention of a particular marketer, who shall remain nameless for this post in honor of my brother.
One wonky thing happened to my blog in the switch over. In my profile, I'm now 250 years old and it lists me as having been born in the year of the Rat. Not so, I'm a sheep. Am I 250 years old? Well, you'll just have to figure that out yourself.
Labels: birthday, blog, blogger, brother, frankensteining the talent pool, FtTP, rat, sheep
Monday, October 16, 2006
Heaving Peevishness
Ever use an online service, have trouble with that service, write an email asking for help, and get no response?
I don't know about you, but this throws me into a state of heaving peevishness. I froth at the mouth, spit, swear, cry in frustration, and about go bald pulling tufts of hair out of my head. An aneurysm threatens to form and burst in my brain.
Why does this situation cause such a visceral reaction? Because it is a massive slap in the face - an outright refusal of assistance - the ultimate in disrespect.
I had an attack of heaving peevishness this past weekend. The culprit? Haloscan, my commenting and trackback service for the blog. For some odd reason, the comment and trackback links were not appearing with my blog entries. I went to Haloscan for answers. Before asking for help, Haloscan requires users to look through its Forum. I obliged and found that other users had the same problem, but no real solution was given. I wanted to post to the Forum so that Haloscan could see how wide-spread the problem was. I was already logged in to my Haloscan account, which should automatically give me access to comment on the Forum. The Forum, however, insisted that I was a guest and asked me to sign in. I tried signing in and got the following message:
Sorry, the password was wrong. All passwords are case sensitive
Understand that I entered the very same user name and password that had already logged me into Haloscan. Entering and re-entering this data got me the same response. Now I had two problems, so I decided to contact Haloscan via their email address, which is practically impossible to find on their website. Somehow I stumbled upon it, but it comes with a warning. No one is allowed to use it for commenting issues, which was exactly the trouble I was having. WHAT!?! You have a contact email address, but people aren't allowed to use it to get help? What kind of customer service is this? Instead, we are redirected to the Forum, where we are supposed to sift through about 473 posts and comments in order to find a solution.
Being persnickety, I used the email address anyway. I haven't gotten a response. More heaving peevishness.
Haloscan isn't the only culprit in the no response game. I've had the same trouble with Technorati and PubSub. (I wrote about PubSub in my Newbies post.)
Seth Godin is forever pushing companies to become remarkable. Well, not a single one of these online companies will be remarkable until they take customer service (including responding to individual emails) seriously. I don't care if they have a staff of two. I don't care how hard it is for them to get their work done. I don't care if the service is free to users and they think that non-paying users are less important than paying customers. Without making customer service an essential piece of their business model, they will never be great businesses. (Frankly, I'm not asking them to do anything I wouldn't do myself at my job.)
An online business that gets it right is Blogger. Every question I've ever had about the interface is built so intuitively into their Help pages that I have never had a need to contact Blogger. Then, to be sure each Help page is truly helpful, Blogger asks at the end of each topic if it was helpful to you. Bliss!
If you're trying to become a remarkable online business, here's my advice to you:
1. As you're designing your website, think about how you're going to handle customer service. Make it a priority.
2. Make it easy to contact you. Make your contact link or button obvious and put it on every page in the same location.
3. Respond to email queries. If you can't cope with bad feedback constructively, learn how to do it. It's inevitable. Deal with it gracefully, and your ticked off customer will start praising you.
4. If you have Help pages on your website, make them easy to use. Don't shunt us off to Forums, hunting and pecking for answers. Put your FAQs on a FAQs page and make the page easy to find.
5. Don't expect everyone to be web savvy. People don't always think to look at Help pages or FAQs, so don't get bent out of shape if they contact you via email when the answer is already on your website. When heaving peevishness hits, people are even less willing to hunt for answers. They want something done NOW and email is the quickest way they can think of to ask their question.
'nuf said.
I don't know about you, but this throws me into a state of heaving peevishness. I froth at the mouth, spit, swear, cry in frustration, and about go bald pulling tufts of hair out of my head. An aneurysm threatens to form and burst in my brain.
Why does this situation cause such a visceral reaction? Because it is a massive slap in the face - an outright refusal of assistance - the ultimate in disrespect.
I had an attack of heaving peevishness this past weekend. The culprit? Haloscan, my commenting and trackback service for the blog. For some odd reason, the comment and trackback links were not appearing with my blog entries. I went to Haloscan for answers. Before asking for help, Haloscan requires users to look through its Forum. I obliged and found that other users had the same problem, but no real solution was given. I wanted to post to the Forum so that Haloscan could see how wide-spread the problem was. I was already logged in to my Haloscan account, which should automatically give me access to comment on the Forum. The Forum, however, insisted that I was a guest and asked me to sign in. I tried signing in and got the following message:
Sorry, the password was wrong. All passwords are case sensitive
Understand that I entered the very same user name and password that had already logged me into Haloscan. Entering and re-entering this data got me the same response. Now I had two problems, so I decided to contact Haloscan via their email address, which is practically impossible to find on their website. Somehow I stumbled upon it, but it comes with a warning. No one is allowed to use it for commenting issues, which was exactly the trouble I was having. WHAT!?! You have a contact email address, but people aren't allowed to use it to get help? What kind of customer service is this? Instead, we are redirected to the Forum, where we are supposed to sift through about 473 posts and comments in order to find a solution.
Being persnickety, I used the email address anyway. I haven't gotten a response. More heaving peevishness.
Haloscan isn't the only culprit in the no response game. I've had the same trouble with Technorati and PubSub. (I wrote about PubSub in my Newbies post.)
Seth Godin is forever pushing companies to become remarkable. Well, not a single one of these online companies will be remarkable until they take customer service (including responding to individual emails) seriously. I don't care if they have a staff of two. I don't care how hard it is for them to get their work done. I don't care if the service is free to users and they think that non-paying users are less important than paying customers. Without making customer service an essential piece of their business model, they will never be great businesses. (Frankly, I'm not asking them to do anything I wouldn't do myself at my job.)
An online business that gets it right is Blogger. Every question I've ever had about the interface is built so intuitively into their Help pages that I have never had a need to contact Blogger. Then, to be sure each Help page is truly helpful, Blogger asks at the end of each topic if it was helpful to you. Bliss!
If you're trying to become a remarkable online business, here's my advice to you:
1. As you're designing your website, think about how you're going to handle customer service. Make it a priority.
2. Make it easy to contact you. Make your contact link or button obvious and put it on every page in the same location.
3. Respond to email queries. If you can't cope with bad feedback constructively, learn how to do it. It's inevitable. Deal with it gracefully, and your ticked off customer will start praising you.
4. If you have Help pages on your website, make them easy to use. Don't shunt us off to Forums, hunting and pecking for answers. Put your FAQs on a FAQs page and make the page easy to find.
5. Don't expect everyone to be web savvy. People don't always think to look at Help pages or FAQs, so don't get bent out of shape if they contact you via email when the answer is already on your website. When heaving peevishness hits, people are even less willing to hunt for answers. They want something done NOW and email is the quickest way they can think of to ask their question.
'nuf said.
Labels: advice, blog, blogger, customer service, email, peevish, problem, seth godin
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Blogging Primer
Here's a post for the newbies. When I started blogging (heck! I'm still a beginner!), I didn't have a clue about this online format. I was starting from scratch. After a little research, I know a few more things, which I'd like to pass along so it's not as difficult for you other beginners.
A blog (short for web log) is an online journal with a reader feedback mechanism. That's the comment link you'll find at the bottom of my posts. These can be disabled on blogs, so you might not see one. On Seth Godin's blog, for example, the comment feature is shut off.
To start a blog, you need some sort of blog creating program or service. I'm using Blogger, which is a free service. It was started by a couple of guys, who sold it to Google, the current owner. In order to maintain the free service, Blogger requires that its tool bar appear at the top of each blog's page. You can click on the Blogger icon to go right to its website.
Another popular blog service is TypePad. There is a fee for this service.
Two books helped me launch my blog. One was Publishing a Blog with Blogger by Elizabeth Castro. This skinny book is a Visual QuickProject Guide full of color photos and easy-to-follow instructions.
The other book I used was Blogging in a Snap by Julie C. Meloni. This has much more depth, though it's still easy to understand. Good illustrations, too. This book helps readers to alter their Blogger templates, which is a task that is not for the faint-hearted. You have to understand html (hypertext markup language) and css (cascading style sheet) code in order to fuss with the template. Html and css are computer languages that are used to build websites. If you want to see some of this code, just go to the View menu at the top of your internet browser and select Page Source. You'll get a screen of code that looks like gobbledygook to the uninitiated.
There were some other terms being thrown around while I was trying to wrap my head around blogging. RSS feed, feed aggregator, trackback, permalink, ping, & captcha. I thought that these things would all automatically come with a blog service. Not so.
The permalink comes with the blog service. Each post gets its own url address. (That's the address you see up in the address bar at the top of the screen.) If you want to see one of my post's permalink addresses, just click the # sign to the left of my name at the bottom of the post. Permalinks allow others to link directly to one post in a blog.
A trackback is a link to someone elses blog that references a post in your own blog. So, if I mention something in one of Seth Godin's posts, I can trackback to his, but only as long as he has the trackback feature, too. If he were to mention something about one of my posts in his blog, he can send me a ping, which, as far as I can figure is like flicking someone in the back of the head in order to get his attention. The ping lets me know he's mentioned my post. I'm still learning to use these two features, which are not a part of Blogger. To get trackbacking, I am using a free blog commenting service called Haloscan.
When I started my blog, I used Blogger's commenting service, which allows for the use of CAPTCHAs. That's an acronym, folks. It stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test. This is a test that allows computers to tell the difference between humans and other computers. It normally involves a human retyping a set of Salvidor Dali-esque letters and numbers that appear in a box. A human can usually do this (if the letters and numbers aren't too squiggly). A computer can't. This means that computer-generated spam can't get through to the comment section of a blog. When I changed my comment service to Haloscan, I lost the CAPTCHAs, but Haloscan assures me that they have good spam blockers, so they don't need CAPTCHAs.
RSS, as in RSS feed, stands for Really Simple Sydication. Having a blog is like writing a newspaper column. It can be published on the web through the use of a feed. Blogger has an internal feed, but there are external feeds as well, such as FeedBurner. These feeds help to get your blog more widely distributed.
There are millions of interesting blogs out there. Impossible to read them all or keep up with changes to even a handful of them. For this there are feed aggregators (a.k.a. news aggregators). There are all sorts of these aggregators that will look through the blogs you're interested in and send you a little synopsis with updates. I'm using Bloglines.
There were a couple of other terms that I learned in my blog research: lurker and troll. A lurker is someone who reads blog posts, but doesn't comment. Perfectly acceptable behavior that I often engage in myself. You can learn a lot by lurking around blogs. You'll especially pick up some lessons about how blogs work. The other term, troll, is not complimentary. A troll is someone who flames others with negative or inflammatory statements. A troll purposely tries to get a rise out of you. For this particular problem, most blogs give you the option of comment moderation.
Okay, this post is far too long already, but I thought it was worth it to explain this fascinating technology that is still in its evolutionary stages as far as being a creative medium. If you need help with blogging, I don't know a lot, but you can send me a comment and I'll try to point you in the right direction. Happy blogging, happy lurking.
A blog (short for web log) is an online journal with a reader feedback mechanism. That's the comment link you'll find at the bottom of my posts. These can be disabled on blogs, so you might not see one. On Seth Godin's blog, for example, the comment feature is shut off.
To start a blog, you need some sort of blog creating program or service. I'm using Blogger, which is a free service. It was started by a couple of guys, who sold it to Google, the current owner. In order to maintain the free service, Blogger requires that its tool bar appear at the top of each blog's page. You can click on the Blogger icon to go right to its website.
Another popular blog service is TypePad. There is a fee for this service.
Two books helped me launch my blog. One was Publishing a Blog with Blogger by Elizabeth Castro. This skinny book is a Visual QuickProject Guide full of color photos and easy-to-follow instructions.
The other book I used was Blogging in a Snap by Julie C. Meloni. This has much more depth, though it's still easy to understand. Good illustrations, too. This book helps readers to alter their Blogger templates, which is a task that is not for the faint-hearted. You have to understand html (hypertext markup language) and css (cascading style sheet) code in order to fuss with the template. Html and css are computer languages that are used to build websites. If you want to see some of this code, just go to the View menu at the top of your internet browser and select Page Source. You'll get a screen of code that looks like gobbledygook to the uninitiated.
There were some other terms being thrown around while I was trying to wrap my head around blogging. RSS feed, feed aggregator, trackback, permalink, ping, & captcha. I thought that these things would all automatically come with a blog service. Not so.
The permalink comes with the blog service. Each post gets its own url address. (That's the address you see up in the address bar at the top of the screen.) If you want to see one of my post's permalink addresses, just click the # sign to the left of my name at the bottom of the post. Permalinks allow others to link directly to one post in a blog.
A trackback is a link to someone elses blog that references a post in your own blog. So, if I mention something in one of Seth Godin's posts, I can trackback to his, but only as long as he has the trackback feature, too. If he were to mention something about one of my posts in his blog, he can send me a ping, which, as far as I can figure is like flicking someone in the back of the head in order to get his attention. The ping lets me know he's mentioned my post. I'm still learning to use these two features, which are not a part of Blogger. To get trackbacking, I am using a free blog commenting service called Haloscan.
When I started my blog, I used Blogger's commenting service, which allows for the use of CAPTCHAs. That's an acronym, folks. It stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test. This is a test that allows computers to tell the difference between humans and other computers. It normally involves a human retyping a set of Salvidor Dali-esque letters and numbers that appear in a box. A human can usually do this (if the letters and numbers aren't too squiggly). A computer can't. This means that computer-generated spam can't get through to the comment section of a blog. When I changed my comment service to Haloscan, I lost the CAPTCHAs, but Haloscan assures me that they have good spam blockers, so they don't need CAPTCHAs.
RSS, as in RSS feed, stands for Really Simple Sydication. Having a blog is like writing a newspaper column. It can be published on the web through the use of a feed. Blogger has an internal feed, but there are external feeds as well, such as FeedBurner. These feeds help to get your blog more widely distributed.
There are millions of interesting blogs out there. Impossible to read them all or keep up with changes to even a handful of them. For this there are feed aggregators (a.k.a. news aggregators). There are all sorts of these aggregators that will look through the blogs you're interested in and send you a little synopsis with updates. I'm using Bloglines.
There were a couple of other terms that I learned in my blog research: lurker and troll. A lurker is someone who reads blog posts, but doesn't comment. Perfectly acceptable behavior that I often engage in myself. You can learn a lot by lurking around blogs. You'll especially pick up some lessons about how blogs work. The other term, troll, is not complimentary. A troll is someone who flames others with negative or inflammatory statements. A troll purposely tries to get a rise out of you. For this particular problem, most blogs give you the option of comment moderation.
Okay, this post is far too long already, but I thought it was worth it to explain this fascinating technology that is still in its evolutionary stages as far as being a creative medium. If you need help with blogging, I don't know a lot, but you can send me a comment and I'll try to point you in the right direction. Happy blogging, happy lurking.
Labels: blog, blogger, captchas, haloscan, newbies, seth godin
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Success!
How is it that succeeding at something so small can feel so good? Yes, it was an exuberant color issue. The tagline color was identical to the background. I'm going to keep messing with that tagline until I get something I like. From "The building blocks of Creativity" to "Better than Neezuls". Hey, it's a start.
I got permission from Seth Godin, marketing guru and Creative God, to link to his blog. Really interesting stuff there. I'm absolutely fascinated by marketers, who tend to be fanatical trend watchers, another of my interests. Really, if Mr. Godin wanted the job of President and decided to work for world peace, I think he'd have us all holding hands, wearing flower wreaths in our hair, and singing ala the old Coke commercial. He's that persuasive. Honestly.
In the process of starting my blog, I talked to my niece, who had already started her own blog on Blogger, but wasn't posting anything. She felt inspired after our conversation and made a post. You go girl!
I got permission from Seth Godin, marketing guru and Creative God, to link to his blog. Really interesting stuff there. I'm absolutely fascinated by marketers, who tend to be fanatical trend watchers, another of my interests. Really, if Mr. Godin wanted the job of President and decided to work for world peace, I think he'd have us all holding hands, wearing flower wreaths in our hair, and singing ala the old Coke commercial. He's that persuasive. Honestly.
In the process of starting my blog, I talked to my niece, who had already started her own blog on Blogger, but wasn't posting anything. She felt inspired after our conversation and made a post. You go girl!
Labels: blog, blogger, color, creativity, seth godin, tagline
