Fred On Something'sComments

Building Blogging Relationships - Be a Good Host

Another way to Build Blogging Relationships is to be a good host on your blog.

V and I went out to a friend’s home recently for a meal and had one of the best nights we’ve had in a long time simply because of the efforts of our hosts. They went to a lot of trouble to make sure that our night was just perfect on so many levels. Our wine glasses were never empty, they had a wood fire burning, they took genuine interest in us and asked a lot of stimulating questions, they offered us the best seats in their living room, they served some wonderful food and basically spoilt us rotten all night. As I look back on the night I realize that because of all of the little things that they did, V and I went home feeling very special and wanting to return the favor and have these friends over to our home as soon as we could.

A post like the ones I like to read Darren

How could we not agree with such a writing? It’s impossible…

So, I would like to suggest a book to David: “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser. For Zinsser, a good writing is a “human” one. One that you know it was written by someone human This is applicable for any type of writing: corporate, personal, memo note, technical, anniversary card, etc.

However, when I read this book some months ago, I tought that all bloggers ought to read it. Everything is in the writing style

I think I blogged something on this book… wait I’ll check it… Yes I wrote something about the general idea of the book, but I tought that I had wrote some quotes, unfortunately, I didn’t. So, you can have an idea of the book by reading this post.

Be A More Productive Blogger

People often ask me how I’m able to keep my sites moving forward and updated with (hopefully) good content as often as I do. I’ve actually talked about this several times over at my “flagship” site, Asterisk and I’m thinking about a book/site dedicated to the idea of successful content creation.

[…]

First of all, felicitation for this great post. Everything is here and it was a real pleasure to read.

You asked for new tips and tricks? There are some things I blogged about some months ago that I hope could be interesting.

——-

My first trick is to use a Personal Wiki. I use it as my digital idea journal. There is the post that explain what a personal wiki is, which one I use and how I use it:

——-

The second trick I use is a “Comments Blog”. This is a place where I put all the comments I do one other blogs (like this one). This is a way to check back at the discussion I had; to find new ideas.

Follow the link read more about the concept.

——-

What do I use as my paper idea journal?
——-

I hope these tips and tricks will help you being a more productive blogger.

Salutations,

Blogging about Products

[…]

In a sense what Trevor has accidentally found with his post is the power of the long tail and his suggestion isn’t too far from the truth of what a lot of successful bloggers are doing with their posting about products. Take a look at Gizmodo and Engadget as to big examples - both are posting specifically about consumer electronic products - each post on a different one.

[…]

Is this because bloggers and blog-readers are gadget geeks? Personally I like to be aware of the last electronic gadget, they are so fascinating.

However, I think that this phenomenon is due to the current state of search engine algorithms. I’m not sure that the result would be the same in a semantic web infrastructure.

In answer to:

Thanks for your comments, Fred, and especially for the follow-up on Andrew Coyne. He has indeed suspended his blog’s comments function. Evidently he found his readers’ behaviour as tiresome as I did.

I can’t resist commenting, however, on something else Coyne has just published:

“A Liberal less than a week, la Stronach already has the ly - er, lingo down pat. Ms Stronach pronounces herself hurt by the reaction to her last-minute conversion to the Liberal cabinet/cause, and touches all the right bases: new low, return to civility, why the focus on her private life, etc. As her old friend and mentor Brian told her, ya dance with the one that bought ya.”

The Brian in question is the former Tory prime minister, Brian Mulroney, who achieved for his party both its greatest majority and its near-total destruction. And what I hope he told Belinda Stronach was: “Ya dance with the one that bRought ya.” Quite a Freudian slip!

Canadian politic is becoming a national sport. All the things that happened 25 years ago come back in unexpected places like the commission gommery…

The most beautiful paradox in the Canadian history is that the vote for the separation of the Quebec the 20 may 1980 give the repatriation of the Canadian constitution some years later. Is that not so beautiful?

Now, the program that helped the vote of the “Non”, is separating the Canada one more time.

Canadian politic is a pearl of our beautiful country

The Lessons of Multiple Blogging

Blessed as I am with the attention span of a gerbil, I tend to pursue new interests all too often.

Blogging has turned out to be the ideal answer to this trait—or the ultimate means of self-destruction, depending on your point of view. Since launching this blog in the summer of 2003, I’ve created at least a couple of dozen others. Some have been short-lived; others have persisted and flourished. All have taught me something about the nature of this medium.

[…]

Sometimes, things are incomprehensible… However, I think that the fact that Mr. Coyne is a columnist in some of the most popular journals in Canada have something to do with his traffic. However, I think he agree with you: http://andrewcoyne.com/2005/05/i-alienate-my-readers-again.php

Blogs would be a great educational tool. The problems is that it take time and patience, things that most students spend elsewhere, or simply do not have.

You said it: it’s a perfect tool for self-education. I’m like you, I first started to blog to learn something. I started my blog 8 months ago to practice my English writing. At first, it was not as enjoyable as I thought but I finally found a great pleasure to build it, write it and converse with my readers. I had a goal: I used Blogs to reach it. 8 months later, I found that my English has really increased despite the fact that all my social interactions here are in French.

By the way, I just subscribed to the feed of your English usage blog, it’s a great idea you had

Does blog design matter?

[…]
In a medium where many argue ‘content is king’ I would argue that its queen is design. This is not just the case in blogging but in many aspects of business. I live in a suburb where there is a local strip of shops. There is a huge variety of stores, cafes, restaurants and offices there but most of them are fairly run down with quite a few old ma and pa stores that probably haven’t changed much in the past 15 - 20 years. But things are changing - the suburb is becoming more popular and gradually new shops and cafes are creeping into the strip of shops.
[…]

Some blogs are pure peace of art. However, does it make it fun to read? I don’t think so. But, a blog well designed (not necessarily graphically) is essential because it could, unconsciously, tell the readers how he is committed to the task. So, if a blog is up-side-down, I’ll check at it 2 secs and go away nonobservant the content… because I’ll not take the time to read it.

In answer to;

I knew that you would handle the problem and it’s what you done, thank.

However, this is a beautiful example of the security threats that could rise when more than one systems are using together (and that are not necessarily build to interact together). It’s the responsibility of everybody to be aware of the risks, specially the one of users.

If we have one thing to remember of this story, I think it would be this.

Careful with that e-mail feed, Eugene

Do you use Gmail? Have you set up the ability to read your Gmail via an Atom feed?

Have you made the mistake of doing that in a Web-based RSS aggregator that lets you search other people’s feeds?
[…]

I confirm that it’s always working. It seem that my subscription have been changed over the night for the “bloglines news” but I’m always able to see the username/password of such feed url.

In answer to:

FYI, NewsGator Online has explicit support for feeds that require authentication, and you do NOT need to put the credentials in the URL as described here. In fact, you should definitely NOT put credentials into a URL, for the reasons you describe here and others. Just wanted to correct the point about NewsGator, though…since we have explicit support for authenticated feeds.

Thank alot for this comment. My point is not really to target any service. The point is to try say to users: wait, do not do everything without asking question… it’s sure that this new technology is really cool but depending how you use it, you could have some security/privacy problems.

In answer to:

I’m a big fan of mindmaps and moleskins - I find mindmaps much more flexible and dynamic for notetaking, planning or just general doodling. I find it easier to go back to a mind map and add in or update than I cna on linear form notes. BTW the blog is geat only found it the other day

Yup, I completely agree with you. But I think that they have two different functions. I mean, mind maps a great for what you said. However, when you write an article, write and rewrite it, your brain will work differently and you’ll deepen the knowledge you have of your subject and root it into your mind. So, I think that the two methods are complementary. Mind maps are soo great for the investigation phase of your thinking

Thank a lot for your kind words. I’m always happy to see that this blog is not just useful to me but also others.

What is your blog reading policy?

YAFLE picked up on something from Common Craft with What’s Your RSS Reading Strategy?. He uses Bloglines and scans about once a day. I’ve been meaning to respond since he posted, but have just written something similar on a local mailing list, so I have a starting point.

I use an aggregator (NewsGator). There is no sense in visiting each website individually to figure out whether they have posted something new, particularly with the number I am reading. This means that if a blog doesn’t have a web feed, it is highly unlikely that I will read it. In fact, there are no blogs today that I read on their website directly.

[…]

Personally I’m using a stand alone software called Omea Reader. I prefer it because I can read my blog while I’m offline. The think I would like is a plugin to synchronize a blogline or newsgator account with it: it would be the best of the two worlds. I posted how I use this feed reader some weeks ago:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0140770/2005/03/05.html#a101

Bloggers vs. Journalists 1-0

Like Americans, even in Italian bloggers are -sometimes- better than journalists.
What happened here two days ago is something incredible:

“In March, U.S. troops in Iraq shot to death Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence agent that rescued the kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena. U.S. commission on the incident produced a report which public version was censored for more than one third. Now Italian press is reporting that all confidential information in the report is available to the public, just by copying “hidden” text from the PDF and pasting it in a word processor (Italian). The uncensored report can now be directly downloaded (evil .DOC format, sorry)”

Wonderful

It’s awesome to see how technology is misunderstood. It’s widespread, daily used and not understood. People, specifically in censitive fields, will need to get courses to get somewhat up-to-date with technologies usage.

In answer to:

Great! I have never thought about it before.
Yes, we can use a bookmark, anyway reading for pleasure is not alway easy if you have to work and/or study, and short chapters could psicologically help us to plan our reading time.
BTW, one thing I always loved are the chapter titles; not all books have a title for each chapter, but I think they are a delicious anticipation of what you’re going to read, like watching at the menu card at the restaurant. It’s like blog’s post, isn’t it?
The question is: why so many writers use long chapters? It could be a style choice, of course. Sometimes, the author could desire to give a specific rhythm to the story; it’s like movies: the director could choice to show the facts in a few minutes, or - au contraire - to give the spectator the time to reflect while they happen.
I do think there’s a rhythm in any story, and this rhythm should be given by the author. A pause in reading, sometimes, could be like a second of silence in a musical composition: it’s void, but important.
At the other hand, I think very often (not always) there’s no logical reason to trunk a story in a point or the other. Sometimes it really seems casual. What do you think about?
Another reason for chapters’ length could be a technical one: expecially when you are not famous, the editors use to ask one or two chapters to evaluate your work. Then, if you want to show your talent, you can’t give him just ten pages, even beautiful.

I love chapter titles too. I think in next years (10 or 20) the way to edit books will change according to blogs. We need the time to explore the concept and the way we’ll edit blogs; what’s the best way to do it. When blogs will get mature, I think that editors will incorporate some ideas in traditional books editing like chapter titles

Many authors say: think simple. Create short sentences with short and meaningful words. I thing that this “minimalist” vision could be applicable in a more global view: the chapters.