So you want to start blogging, but you're shy...

Have You Reached CSS Zen Yet?

I was dipping my toe into CSS in a small way by the late 1990s, but the CSS movement has really caught fire lately, making it more of a religion. And I'm all for that.

But for beginning bloggers who may not know it, Typepad RULES in its aids to help you learn CSS a little bit at a time, just enough to be dangerous. I highly recommend its Custom CSS feature, where you can do as much or as little CSS as you like.

A good place to start is just to change the font of a pre-set template banner. Go on, you can do it! The Typepad custom templates are butt-ugly compared to the pre-sets. But quite often, the pre-set templates look slick, but have one or two features that are just jarringly awful. But all you have to do is look at that template's CSS, grab the teeny bit of offending typeface CSS code, and paste it into the Custom CSS field corrected with something better. Less than an inch of code. Nothing wonky about it at all.

While I haven't done a thing with the design of this site in quite some time (maybe I will mess with it again soon), the main thing I do with Typepad Custom CSS on other sites I build is put in custom banner images and make them 900 pixels wide, or more, if I'm in the mood. 900 is better than the overly-narrow Typepad templates, but it can be a little tricky to do. Let it be a challenge to you!

I figure in the land of CSS Zen below (and the CSS Garden of Zen site is pretty cool too, to see examples of what can be done), I'm at Steps 6,7, & 8. I never really got on the whole validating kick, although I can do it. But I am doing lots of basking and scoffing these days.

Link: AUblog: Have You Reached CSS Zen Yet?.

Have You Reached CSS Zen Yet?

The evolution of a modern web designer. The 12 steps:

1. Realize that CSS/XHTML design - separating content from presentation - is the wave of the future.
   (BTW, this should have happened to you years ago)
2. Start learning CSS.
3. Start despising Internet Explorer and by proxy, Microsoft (even more than you already do).
4. Spend countless hours learning CSS hacks and obscure bugs to make all the browsers play nice.
5. Waste many hours of your life yelling at your screen.
6. Build your very first validating CSS/XHTML website without a table in sight.
7. Bask in your own glory and sense of accomplishment.
8. Scoff at the work of others, develop an odd sense of grandeur and superiority over others.
9. [Insert a montage here of you progressing in your work]
10. Come to a very important realization that no one cares.
    (No one except other coders/purists/CSS-nazis)
11. (Optional) Realize there are people better than you at coding CSS and start outsourcing it.
12. Zen.

 

Rank Revolts, or Are blog-natives getting restless?

Link: Naked Conversations: Revolting Rankings.

I just started reading Naked Conversations (the book) on the recommendation of a friend, and on its companion blog (?), found this interesting thread about bloggers who become obsessed with ratings and rankings, stats and traffic, to the exclusion of all else.

It strikes me as odd, putting the cart before the horse, in a community, an ecosystem, that professes to be more interested in what one has to say than who one is.

Has there been a shift? Has the blogosphere lost its sense of direction and gone the way of endless "tail-wagging-dog" pursuit of traffic and links, what used to be called (it's politically incorrect, of course) being a "blog slut" or a "blog whore?"

I sometimes see it as an obnoxious extension of high school, where far too many sheep are willing to ape and cluster around the "cool kids" and forget who they are in the process. In the blogosphere, it's the so-called "A-listers" (of course, each major community has its own A-listers, and crossing from business blogs to political blogs to tech blogs, you'll find the different A-listers don't even know other A-lists exist).

I'm like, dude, that is SO 2002! OK, so it's not, but 2002 was when I sort of fell into my own blog ratings obsession loop, back on Radio Userland. I was bored with it by 2003 and ready to write for myself instead of endlessly prostrating myself before a clique of A-listers.

I mean, I'm somebody who likes poetry, and literary non-fiction, and reading Harpers. Why wouldn't I be more interested in creating or linking to content that has a more timeless value, rather than content that only exists to ping Technorati at frequent intervals?

The whole frequent posting in a desperate quest to be able to say, along with Sally Field at the Oscars, "You link to me! You really link to me!" reminds me more of a famous psychological experiment with rats.

The rats have three control groups (if I remember correctly), one where pressing a bar delivers a bit of food, another where pressing a bar doesn't deliver food, and one where pressing the bar sometimes delivers food and sometimes doesn't. It's sort of like a Skinner box "reward and punishment" thing. What it found was that the rats who got or didn't get food behaved in fairly predictable ways, either using or ignoring the bar as suited them.

The rats who got what was called "inconsistent reinforcement" to the bar-pressing behavior drove themselves bonkers, however, pressing the bar madly, frantically, over and over, trying to get food out of it, way more food than the rat really needed to satisfy hunger.

Kinda makes you realize what sort of energy gambling casinos, and especially one-armed bandits, are harnessing.

So go on, y'all, pinging away, pressing your food bar. You can let it drive you crazy if you want. Me, I'm more interested in thinking and writing and linking about things that have more than a momentary value.

Link: Naked Conversations: Revolting Rankings.

Revolting Rankings

In his recent post, Revolting Peasant Metaphor, Sterling Camden at Chip's Quips hits a significant nail on the head of an issue I've written about a few times--over-ranking blog rankings.  Beside that, I like his ambiguous use of the word "revolting."

Is he making it a verb or an adjective?

If 50 million bloggers all want to be top-rated, then the blogosphere becomes nothing more than a humongous shouting match.  That seems to me, would be a pretty revolting development because it takes attention to the kind of rankings that are used by TV networks, and loses the power of the backyard fence conversation. In the former case, a bunch of slick people in nice suits uses every trick they can cook up to capture your eyeballs.  In the latter, two folks build trust, credibility and an enduring relationship through simple, candid conversations.

If you want to be an A-Lister, there's lots you can do.  First, enrich me by buying the book.  It's filled with rank-boosting tactics: Post often.  Be controversial.  Link to Scoble, Arrington and someone at BoingBoing.  Join every conversation at the top of the Technorati daily list. and at TechMeme.

[...]

This sounds pretty phenomenal until you realize all the people, all the people, all over the world who DON'T read either blog.  In fact, every day [Scoble] and Arrington probably reach increasingly smaller percentages of the total blogosphere.

[...]

Case in point: why should political bloggers involved with Netroots organizing and citizen journalism give a crap about linking to two tech guys that have NOTHING to do with other A-lists?

I know there's some cross-over between these two spheres of the blogosphere, but I'm somewhat of the belief that the true grassroots of the blogosphere is in local (say, Bluestem Prairie, on Minnesota's First Congressional District) to global (like Riverbend, with compelling blogging from Baghdad) blogs about WAY more than the tech/biz/marketing community, and WAY WAY more than cat blogs or teenagers on MySpace.

But here Shel Israel says, "Why isn't EVERYONE reading Scoble? like the very idea begs the question. (I suspect he's saying it tongue-in-cheek, however)

The comments thread attached to Israel's post raises a number of good issues as well, so if you're really thinking about these ideas, go check it out.

In his recent post, Revolting Peasant Metaphor, Sterling Camden at Chip's Quips hits a significant nail on the head of an issue I've written about a few times--over-ranking blog rankings.  Beside that, I like his ambiguous use of the word "revolting."

Is he making it a verb or an adjective?

If 50 million bloggers all want to be top-rated, then the blogosphere becomes nothing more than a humongous shouting match.  That seems to me, would be a pretty revolting development because it takes attention to the kind of rankings that are used by TV networks, and loses the power of the backyard fence conversation. In the former case, a bunch of slick people in nice suits uses every trick they can cook up to capture your eyeballs.  In the latter, two folks build trust, credibility and an enduring relationship through simple, candid conversations.

If you want to be an A-Lister, there's lots you can do.  First, enrich me by buying the book.  It's filled with rank-boosting tactics: Post often.  Be controversial.  Link to Scoble, Arrington and someone at BoingBoing.  Join every conversation at the top of the Technorati daily list. and at TechMeme.

[...]

This sounds pretty phenomenal until you realize all the people, all the people, all over the world who DON'T read either blog.  In fact, every day [Scoble] and Arrington probably reach increasingly smaller percentages of the total blogosphere.

[...]

Case in point: why should political bloggers involved with Netroots organizing and citizen journalism give a crap about linking to two tech guys that have NOTHING to do with other A-lists?

I know there's some cross-over between these two spheres of the blogosphere, but I'm somewhat of the belief that the true grassroots of the blogosphere is in local (say, Bluestem Prairie, on Minnesota's First Congressional District) to global (like Riverbend, with compelling blogging from Baghdad) blogs about WAY more than the tech/biz/marketing community, and WAY WAY more than cat blogs or teenagers on MySpace.

But here Shel Israel says, "Why isn't EVERYONE reading Scoble? like the very idea begs the question. (I suspect he's saying it tongue-in-cheek, however)

The comments thread attached to Israel's post raises a number of good issues as well, so if you're really thinking about these ideas, go check it out.

How to Avoid Blogging Snake Oil

I got to writing a comment over at Dan Greenfield's blog late last night, and something up and bit me while writing it, so I've decided to repost the lengthy comment here, with a bit from Dan's original post as a set up from the dialogue I was entering.

BTW, Dan is a PR professional who is also Vice President for Corporate Communications at Earthlink. I met him for the first time about a month ago at a meeting of the Atlanta Media Bloggers.

Link: Bernaisesource :: How to Avoid Blogging Snake Oil.

How to Avoid Blogging Snake Oil

Does your corporateblog keep you up at night?  Are you anxious about starting one?  Do you feel “inadequate” because you don’t know what RSS and tagging are?

Well look no further because I have the cure for you.  Accept no substitutes. Guaranteed to work or your money back.

I think many who blog or want to blog have, at times, felt much of the former and wished even more for the latter – a miraculous remedy with secret ingredients to cure our social media needs.

Well I am here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, as if you didn’t already know; there is no such thing as the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, and any blogging cure-all is bound to be just a case of blogging snake oil.

Blogging is hard work – from trying to figure out whether to write, then what to write and then how often to write -- despite what so-called experts may say.  Embracing transparency, candor and personal expression on a regular basis is stress producing even in a corporate culture that supports it.  And hiring someone to write your blog for you will never generate the passion you need to succeed.

So what do you really need to know to be a successful blogger? How much technical expertise do you need to have?  How technical should your blog be? What does it take to be an expert?  How can you tell a pretender from the real thing?

For some answers, I sought out some seasoned bloggers to get their perspective on what it takes to be an expert.

[...]

Here is what I wrote for a reply (among others who also replied).  Note: I am not one of the experts Dan was soliciting. [grin]   

Hi Dan!

I'm seeing some kind of movements and counter-movements in cybercultures and communities, sort of like pendulum swings online, and the sort of distinctive signature styles when different cultures seem to dominate the spaces (I've been studying cybercultures since 1993, dunno if that makes me an expert, but that's what I've been working at).

It reminds me most of what I used to see growing up in Alaska, a state with a boom-bust-boom-bust economy, driven by oil. (I've written about this a bit in my dissertation, here: http://www.nutball.com/dissertation/mains/Narra1.html)

So online, even without oil, some of the boom-bust character swings affect people's personalities online, how they act in different contexts.

From early 1994 to about 1996, the Web was a place for true believers, Kool-Aid drinkers, folks migrating over from Usenet and listservs, MOOs, IRC, wonky folks, techie folks, but folks accustomed to communities and dialogues, often combative dialogues. These were people who were likely to have been veterans of some famous flame wars in this community or that community. They looked upon people with AOL.com email addresses with suspicion [grin].

Many in those days were working very hard to try to make web-based communications less one-way, less monologic. They wanted interactive "sites," places to anchor real communities.

While I was focusing an ethnography on one such community, there was a shift online, as the boom picked up speed with an influx of cash. New stereotypical online characters entered the mix, some as out of place as the AOL.com email addresses were when they first ventured into real and intense online forums.

Sort of like when a rich Texan shows up in some small town and walks around in a big hat and tries to buy up everything without really knowing what he's buying. Or like when the Pipeline folks showed up in Alaska and started shipping their own labor into the state (huh, many of them Texans).

Things get nutty in Alaska in boomtime. Not many zoning laws, so strip malls go up every which way, in a frenzy (I know one town was about a mile wide and 10 miles long). People put septic tanks too close to lakes. The locals shake their heads and wonder why no one seems to have any sense. Friends get rich overnight and start doing lots of cocaine. I think people's characters get revealed as much in times of plenty as in times of hardship. It's like a little test the universe gives us.

Things got a bit nutty online too. Folks who'd never been in real online communities showed up. Many came from the world of old media, where a lot of money lived in big piles. They thought about the media landscape in terms of one-way communication instead of interactive community dialogues.

Oh, and sort of like when the white Europeans showed up in North America and claimed to have "discovered" this big empty continent and neglected to notice that the Native Americans were already there? These late 1990s arrivals just sort of showed up in cyberspace, started bulldozing and putting up their strip malls every which way, with no regard at all for what was there before them (that would require something like dialogue to be taking place, a rather alien concept for many, still).

But that big old party went bust, and about the only good thing about it was that those fair-weather folks took a powder pretty quick. Who was left? People who had a REASON to be there, because it was where their friends were, the communities that shaped and gave identity to important aspects of their lives. Long before there were dating sites, people were meeting partners, making friends, having parties, all through communities online.

Some of us may have felt that we got our old Internet back once those carpet-baggers bugged out.

And in real vital online communities, there were even folks in the late 1990s building home-grown content management systems, precursors to blogs, to serve up fan fiction, fan artwork, all manner of things to support forums and other groups.

Blogs were born from communities and bulletin boards, just as much as they were from web pages. Real communities and bulletin boards, chat rooms, graphical VR spaces, where the communities existed first, and the sites that were part of them came second (even Slashdot and Kuro5hin).

And then blogs began to multiply, and new communities formed up around many of them. LiveJournal was as hot for teens as MySpace is now. Dialogue and interaction were the rule, not "blogging success."

You can guess where I'm going here. I'm starting to feel a shift in the Force (go tell Obi Wan Kenobi!). I feel another boom coming on, mostly by the shift in the personalities of the spaces, and what their goals and intentions are. I hear an awful lot more talk about how to bottle and sell "blogging success" as well as products and company PR, than I do about real communities, interaction, and dialogue.

I'm hearing more talk about blog metrics and measures than ANY compelling topics of conversation on this blog or that blog.

I'm seeing all kinds of blogs springing up, presuming to play English teacher of sorts for bloggers (hey, that was my job! I taught English for 15 years), speaking not in a dialogue as part of a community, but rather, offering 10 reasons for this, five tips for that, making pronouncements, prescriptions, all with a one-way voice-of-authority tone, like "HERE IS WHAT YOU SHALL DO FOR SUCCESS," like someone died and made that person god, when old-timers around here know they're just making this stuff up as they go along.

I've taught both regular English and technical and businesss writing, and it appears to me that bloggers need a whole lot more than formulaic prescriptions from the land of tech/business writing and SEO nonsense to "game" the system. (I think I'm inadvertently echoing Plato, who often whined about the very famous and rich speech and writing teachers of his time, the Sophists)

For every new blog that's launched, there doesn't have to be a reason or a community first, any more than Thoreau knew what he was starting when he just up and went out to Walden and started writing. Sometimes you know the reason, and sometimes the reason finds you.

What I worry about are gamer blogs, playing word combinations and titles like they were shaking the dice in Boggle, always with one eye on their Technorati rank and the blessing of an A-lister.

It seems like there is going to be an avalanche of "fake" bloggers unleashed onto the Nets, all writing some variant of bland, characterless imitations of these "how-to-blog" preachers, whilst earnestly striving to boost their ranks, sell widgets, perhaps become ethically compromised.

What is it I'm thinking of, Amway? A pyramid scheme? Everybody must get blog, but really only the ones who got in early get any real benefit? Why does it feel like the carpet-baggers have returned?

And why does it feel like they've just "discovered" North America again, and whoops, there's still no prior inhabitants to dispossess?

I think bloggers need more of what they learned in freshman comp, instead of business and technical writing, to have a successful blog. They need to write in a real voice for real audiences. Calculated rhetoric sounds calculated, just like most of the stuff in Old Media.

I do hope many many people find their voices and soar online in communities and dialogue, where the real energy is.

Wouldn't it be great if it turns out that English teachers are important after all, even if most of them are paid less annually than the cars most of their students drive at college?

My fear is that people who maybe would really connect with some wonderful communities online will get so lost in the surfaces of these endless sales pitches and proscriptive, prescriptive voices of authority in this little boomlet that they'll just look at the new strip malls and shake their heads, do their best Holden Caulfield, and say, "This is phony. It is not for me."

just my long-winded two cents,

Chris

How to sell your soul and sell out your blog for 10 pieces... of paper?

Link: BloggerJobs :: Blogsvertise is looking for bloggers to post their ads.

Egad! Should we start watching for these sell-out bloggers to appear on a spammer-scale? Will machines generate these blogs, these three-links-per fake-promo-link-farm posts, and then massively spam the comments field too?

I mean, direct mail folks (and by extension, spammers) operate under a low low LOW percentage response rate, five percent or something, but they look at that five percent (or whatever the number is) as rock solid, an entitlement that justifies a calculus of MILLIONS, gazillions perhaps, of no-friction messages sent out, just to get that rock solid single digit return on an investment of next-to-nothing.

I believe they think it is a valid method of creating value out of thin air. And by their calculations, it may be, but actually, it destroys far greater values to create that single digit value, in the same way fouling your own well does. They say dogs at least know enough not to defecate where they live, but it is a lesson many humans apparently never learned.

Suppose vast numbers of bloggers accept that blog version of an envelope-stuffing "job" below. Would that be enough of a disruption of the noise-to-signal ratio to disrupt the ecosystem of the blogsophere itself?

Comment spam and trackback spam are disruptive, but marginal (at least now they are, because of CAPCHA, but they were once out-of-control enough to radically turn an interactive space into one-way monologues). Google and Technorati already have a hard time parsing link-farms out of their records. What if it became impossible because humans were conned into becoming willing link-farm agents?

The Turing Test generally holds when it comes to distinguishing humans from machines... but what happens when humans are hired as willingly volunteers to become the machines, because machine-generated spam blogs can technically still be detected (AI not really being good enough yet to simulate uniquely human-style randomness)?

Link: BloggerJobs :: Blogsvertise is looking for bloggers to post their ads.

Blogsvertise is looking for bloggers to post their ads:

Blogsvertise.com is looking for bloggers who are interested in getting paid to post a variety of assigned topic entries in their already-existing blogs.

Bloggers will be asked to post short entries on a variety of topics, including three links to an advertiser's website in each entry. You decide what to write; it is not necessary to endorse the advertiser's product or service.

Each completed task will pay $10 via Paypal after the entry has been online for 30 days.

This is a great way for bloggers to earn a small income in addition to or instead of featuring pay-per-click advertisements.

URL: http://www.blogsvertise.com
Email for more information: jess@blogsvertise.com

I include the addresses above, hoping someone with the capability to spam this person will have at it, as karma for the blogosphere pollution this ridiculous link-whoring will generate.

The blogosphere exists because some bloggers chose to make a stand on integrity, to be REAL in a world increasingly of media marketing-created surfaces, the NON-reality-based universe.

Now those media-marketing types want to remake the blogosphere in their image, to make the world safe for NOTHING BUT mindless promotions of every sort.

I have nothing against honestly using advertising on a blog, nothing at all. I do, however, have a problem with the influx of the direct mail/spamming forces who want to apply math on an absurd scale, in order to create highly questionable returns, and in the end, to ultimately destroy the system by overwhelming the search engines necessary to creating the blogosphere's value.

I remember a time before there were search engines on the web. In 1993 and 1994. Spiders, we called them then, when they first started appearing, Web Crawler and Lycos.

BEFORE search engines. Can you wrap your mind around that concept? It's sort of like imagining the world without nearly-universal electrical service (during this massive heat wave, it brings the point home) . I overheard a news report the other referring to the very IDEA of living without electricity as "primitive."

You know, I about gagged at such utter stupidity. Had this news anchor ever read Victorian literature? Would people in the modern age call Victorians, with their drawing rooms and excruciatingly correct manners and social customs "primitive"?!

Ah, nobody reads much anymore, and they wear their ignorance out in the open without even the good sense to be embarrassed by it. I was on a Jane Austen kick again last night, so I'm filled with outrage.

There can be civilized worlds without electricity, and yes, Virginia, the Web once did exist in its present form without search engines (I'm really not counting Gopher, Archie, and Veronica, because those were tools for the Internet proper, the blinking cursor Internet, which is not to put down their rimportant ole in the development of the Net).

My caution here is that if the "Well" of the Internet becomes so fouled by these entities or agents as to render search engines inoperative, if their scale overwhelms even Google's massive server farms (server farms, good, link farms, bad), we may find ourselves in the same sort of anarchy online as the world would go into without electricity.

But the Blogosphere COULD survive.

What we'd have to do (and maybe this is obvious to old-timers from the 1990s, but I want to make it explicit to newer arrivals) is simply recreate the original purpose of the Blogroll, as a TRUE ROADMAP to what would become an utterly roadless world, a chaotic sea of information and expression.

That, btw, is what made one of the first million-of-hits web sites a success, in 1994. John December's Internet Web Text was a guide for a world without search engines. Because of the carefully-selected value of his travel-agent's guide to the Web, the space became intelligible to people as a landscape, in a way that the blinking cursor and Gopher never could create for most of us.

If glorified link-farm spam comes close to killing the blogosphere, this is something we will have to do as well, to rebuild all the roadmaps for a world without search.

The "old" Wonkette on where blogs are going

David Pogue is apparently still on vacation and recycling the transcript of an old interview on his NYTimes blog, but I found some bits in there that were worth looking at, not as Thus Sprake Zarathustra, but just as something to mull over.

I never was as big of a Wonkette fan as so many people were, and that's an interesting subject for discussion all by itself. First, I sort of thought she laid an egg at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, as one of the first group of bloggers given press credentials there. I thought a bit too much raw ambition showed through, and I wasn't impressed.

But mainly, I never jumped on the Wonkette bandwagon because I just didn't think she was that funny. I dunno. Maybe some folks are starved for humor in the Beltway or something. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor, tending toward the body-function/bathroom variety, perhaps, but too much of Wonkette back in the day seemed like ad hominem cheap shots that weren't all that clever. I always figured whoever hired her away probably could have done better.

Now how's that for a cheap shot? I am (remain) a big fan of David Pogue, and there are still some interesting observations below.

Link: Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog.

Wonkette’s Ingredients for a Successful Blog

July 27

A couple of weeks ago, CBS News Sunday Morning broadcast my introduction to blogging. As so often happens, my reporting for this segment involved some really interesting interviews, of which we could use only a few minutes’ worth in the final episode.

I thought I’d treat you, therefore, to a heartier excerpt from one of the most interesting interviews. Ana Marie Cox wrote the gossipy, funny, blog Wonkette.com for its first two years before taking on a column in Time magazine and a couple of book deals. Time announced today that she would be the Washington editor of Time.com. On the Web, she can be polarizing and controversial. In person, she’s funny and media-savvy; it was clear that she’s no stranger to TV interviews. In any case, what she wasn’t was boring. Here’s the transcript.

[...]

DP: And then, after two years of this, Time Magazine called with a contract.

AMC: Yes! I still can’t quite believe any of that actually happened. I’m still waiting for someone to come out from behind the curtain and be like, “Ha-ha!”

DP: But isn’t that the definition of a successful blogger, though, to get plucked from the blogosphere and given a column?

AMC: I think that’s what most bloggers would consider successful. I don’t think that. I think that blogging as a medium is just that. It’s a medium. And it has a very low bar to entry. But the reason why anyone does it, I think, has to do with, like, having an opinion you believe is worth other people hearing, and having something to say beyond to the three or four people you talk to every day. And I think that’s why people get into journalism.

And so it sort of would be a little odd if, given a chance to talk to a couple million people, rather than a couple hundred thousand people, you said no.

[...]

DP: So what are the ingredients then for a successful  blog, apart from being entertaining or snarky?

AMC: I think it’s changing. Six months, a year ago, I would have talked about what I think made Wonkette successful and makes Gawker successful, to a certain extent, and other blogs: A strong, defined personality with a sense of humor about themselves. An ability to filter news quickly and to recognize, you know, what is interesting to other people as well as interesting to themselves, and finding the balance between those things.

What I think is changing is that people have now become addicted to the rapid update. You know, the not just 12 times a day; 18 times a day, 24 times a day. And it’s almost physically impossible for one person to do that.

And so I think that we’re probably going to see that the individual, strong-personality blog is not going to be at the forefront, because group blogs are going to be able to do what people expect of blogs better.

[Not only would I STRONGLY disagree with this assessment (I think it reflects her going over to the dark side, overly influenced by mass media assumptions), but there are some folks talking about POSTING LESS rather than more as a more effective blogging tactic (see Eric Kintz on MarketingProfs, for his post on Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore). I think "feeding the beast" is not only a recipe for jumping on George Jetson's treadmill, it removes reflection and thoughtfulness from the equation.

I mean, in a world of information glut, endlessly pinging Google and Technorati may be one way to get noticed (as tabloids have also discovered near supermarket lines), but what about VALUE? What about contributing to the greater wisdom of the world? What about creating something that might one day stand the test of time, as some of George Orwell's essays did, written from here and there as a correspondent, for this reason or that reason? Many of the reasons Orwell wrote are long past, yet we still value and read his words.

Why not aspire to something more thoughtful, rather than trying to desperately OUT-PING a gazillion bloggers? It stands to reason that actually standing out for something OTHER than your pings might actually be an effective way to break out in the filters and feed readers. You know, just as Glenn Greenwald did or someone like that. There are quite a few people who aren't pinging themselves to death with little one-liners that will be as forgotten as quickly as most of the stuff Wonkette wrote.

The fact that Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis are leaning toward a hyperactive flurry of postings, as if the only way a blog can succeed in winning the lottery is by buying (pinging) dozens of tickets (posts) belies the fact that WHAT is said actually matters very little.

And to tell you the truth, I did not get into blogging as a rejection of mass media assumptions because I thought WHAT was said is immaterial. WORDS MATTER. Choose them with thought, imho.]

DP: Who are the readers of the blogs? Is it just the BlackBerry crowd? The white-collar coasts?

AMC: I think it’s people with time on their hands. People who work at white-collar jobs, have high-bandwidth Internet connections, and aren’t expected to produce, you know, widgets on an hourly basis. I think those are the blogveyers.

[...]

DP: I doubt it. So, blogs are read by this upper–

AMC: Well, they’re read by the opinion-elites, if you want to put it that way. Which means that they get written about disproportionately to how much they affect the world.

But because they get written about, they do wind up affecting the world. So–

DP: It’s self-fulfilling.

AMC: Yeah.

DP: And so what about this thing that blogs are killing newspapers?

AMC: You know, I suspect that The New York Times will never cease to exist. That dinosaur can’t be killed. That really would take a meteor, and I don’t think blogs are a meteor. They’re kind of like a tiny asteroid shower.

But The New York Times is going to have to change. I mean, all major media outlets are going to have to change to meet the demands of people who might, you know, have grown used to some of the things they get from blogs.

DP: So: 75,000 new blogs being created a day?

AMC: Yeah, I think that that may be true, but I can personally attest that I probably started, like, five blogs as a joke, as a whim. You know, like, a blog about purses. Or a blog about lipstick. ‘Cause it’s so easy. Like, why not go in and start a blog, and then it’ll die and never be heard from again? So I think that might be a large percentage of the 75,000 blogs being created.

DP: And how many of these people are just blogging for an audience of nobody?

AMC: I mean, they’ve replaced the family newsletter. You know, desktop publishing did a similar thing for print publications. But are we going to count every person that used Adobe PageMaker to print out their family newsletter as a new publication? No.

[...]

As far as I'm concerned, let a GAZILLION family newsletters bloom! It's still active media, and in doing so, it flies in the face of passive media and the push-button marketing brain-wash.

Active media says "Wake up, Neo!" Time to take the red pill.

Run, don't walk over to copyblogger to read "Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Blog?"

Brian Clark at copyblogger has one of the most practically-focused blog how-to pieces I've seen, and the reason it excels is that it tells you explicitly what NOT to do! I'll pull out my favorite bits here, but you really owe it to yourself to head on over there and not only read each item, but take every resource link included with each item. Way Cool!

Link: Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Blog? | Copyblogger.

Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Blog?

[...]

Some people are turning the whole “blogging advice” arena on its head, and instead of focusing on what you should do to be an effective blogger, they point out what you shouldn’t do. Perhaps this is a better way to get certain points across?

OK, I’m game. Here’s my “top five” list of big mistakes people make, and a handy prescription for how to cure what ails your sickly blog.

5.    Do you write for search engines instead of people?

Your blog is suffering from “robotitis,” an affliction characterized by boring, keyword stuffed content that serves only to fill the blank spots between AdSense ads. If you actually hope to sell something, you need emergency attention, fast.

[...]

3. Do you agonize over writing a great post, only to slap on some hastily-concocted post title that all but guarantees hardly anyone will read?

Less-than-compelling headlines kill more solid blog posts than any other blogosphere affliction. There is a cure, but you’ll need to take action fast. If not for yourself… won’t you do it for the children?

Prescription:

• How to Write Headlines That Work
• Writing Headlines That Get Results
• How to Get 53% More Readers For Every Blog Post Your Write

[This was THE biggest problem my students had at the University of Montana last fall. Their second biggest problem? Clearly introducing and citing links in their posts instead of saying something vaguely cryptic and then saying "click here." As a surfer, if you don't tell me where I'm going, that is an invitation to me NOT to take the link.]

[...]

1. Do you use user-unfriendly RSS options that you bury at the bottom of the page, and leave out an email subscription option altogether?

I can only label this as a disease of the blogging mind. You do all that hard work to get everything else just right, and yet you rely on people to remember to come back on their own? That’s just self-destructive. Paging Dr. Freud!

Prescription:

• Where’s the Money in Blogging?
• Four Simple Steps to More Blog Subscribers

For more tips on what not to do with your blog, check out Why My Blog Stinks, a blog that actually doesn’t stink at all, even though it’s one of the most egregious examples of Mistake Number 1 above.

[...]

MySpace fans, want to go International?

Link: BBC - Talk - Interact with BBC community chat and messageboards.

Here's an interesting opportunity to participate in what will certainly be an eclectic and interesting online community, with some terrific media tools and resources, and perhaps an active citizen journalism venture. I will be watching to see how the new Beeb site unfolds. I'm tempted to plunge in myself, but that I'm over-extended at the moment. Still, the temptation may later come over me.

What better community playground, if you are someone who likes pre-existing playgrounds, instead of building your own. Someone I know who has previously worked at BBC hinted to me that this thing was coming, and that it was going to be ground-breaking and nifty-neato-cool! [bold emphasis below is mine]

Link: MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | BBC unveils radical revamp of website.

BBC unveils radical revamp of website

Mark Sweney
Tuesday   April 25, 2006

The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of new media and technology, also announced proposals to put the corporation's entire programme catalogue online for the first time from tomorrow in written archive form, as an "experimental prototype", and rebrand MyBBCPlayer as BBC iPlayer.

Mr Highfield was unveiling the results of the broadcaster's Creative Future review of programming and content before an audience of BBC new media staff.

[...]

Mr Highfield was unveiling the results of the broadcaster's Creative Future review of programming and content before an audience of BBC new media staff.

[...]

Mr Highfield's presentation, Beyond Broadcast, outlined a three-pronged approach to refocus all future BBC digital output and services around three concepts - "share", "find" and "play".

He said the philosophy of "share" would be at the heart of what he dubbed bbc.co.uk 2.0.

Mr Highfield said the share concept would allow users to "create your own space and to build bbc.co.uk around you", encouraging them to launch ther own blogs and post home videos on the site.

The BBC is also running a competition to revamp the bbc.co.uk 2.0 website, asking the public to redesign the homepage to "exploit the fuctionality and usability of services such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia".

At the heart of the play concept is MyBBCPlayer, which will allow the public to download and view BBC programming online and was today rebranded as BBC iPlayer.

"BBC iPlayer is going to offer catch-up television up to seven days after transmission," said Mr Highfield. "At any time you will be able to download any programme from the eight BBC channels and watch it on your PC and, we hope, move it across to your TV set or down to your mobile phone to watch it when you want."

[...]

Here's another article, however, with a bit more of the philosophy behind it, including how the BBC is paying for it (layoffs?!), which also makes me suspect that for all its innovation, the venture does represent a considerable risk for BBC, if for some reason it doesn't take off like gangbusters.

Link: MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | BBC chief unveils plan for future and warns of losing young viewers.

BBC chief unveils plan for future and warns of losing young viewers

Thompson says a 'big shock' is on the way
Blueprint includes revamp of online presence

Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Wednesday April     26, 2006
The Guardian

The BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, yesterday warned that it would lose touch with the younger generation for ever unless it fundamentally changed to adapt to the digital world.

New audience research unveiled to staff revealed that a third of viewers felt the BBC did not make programmes for them. Meanwhile, 60% of 16- to 24-year-olds watch fewer than three hours of BBC television a week, with a quarter of them not tuning in to a single BBC programme. Mr Thompson said there was "a big shock coming", with the pace of audience and technological change "faster and more radical than anything we've seen before".

Unveiling the conclusions of Creative Future, a year-long project to define the BBC's on-air and online ambitions over the next five years, he said it was designed to meet the "creative challenge of an entirely new era in broadcasting".

The resulting plan, which has already proved controversial with some staff grappling with the 4,000 job cuts earmarked to raise £355m a year to help pay for it, includes a range of new ideas across all areas of the BBC.

In news, a new strategy will concentrate on breaking news via the internet and News 24, which will be "moved centre stage", with big names expected to appear on the digital channel rather than traditional bulletins.

[...]

An interesting observation by a now-ex-blogger

This one quotation from Sarah's article just jumped out at me.

Link: Why I shut down my blog. By Sarah Hepola.

One morning last month, I woke early, finished a book I'd been reading, and shut down my blog. I had kept the blog for nearly five years, using it as a repository for personal anecdotes, travelogues, and the occasional flight of fiction—all of which I hoped, eventually, might lead to a novel. And then, somewhere between the bedsheets and 6 a.m., I realized something: Blogging wasn't helping me write; it was keeping me from it.

[...]

[What she writes here below... I remember feeling EXACTLY this when forced to crank crap forgettable articles for newspapers, either the stress from constantly meeting new people and feeling shy while at the same time having to commodify them, or the personal humilation at knowing I was just dumping my interview stories into a rote formula. That was in the 1980s, though, so I went into an MFA program in creative writing instead, to learn to write for myself and my own standards again. And now, many many years later, blogs have taken me past the creativity-cramping I used to feel after some of my poems got published in good literary magazines, the fear of writing a poem that was pure crap. Blogs are works in progress, and publications. They're a dessert topping AND a floor wax. Can't beat that.]

Just prior to that, I'd been writing for an alt-weekly in Austin, Texas. What began as a great job had curdled into an anxiety nightmare. I would burn to write a certain profile and then, deadline looming, I would stare at the computer as another beautiful Saturday ticked away. I can remember crossing the street one night and thinking, absently, "If I got run over by a car, I wouldn't have to finish that story!" Don't get me wrong—I didn't want to die. I just wanted a really long extension. Thus my decision to leave the job. Thus my journey to the southern hemisphere. Thus the blog that I started, thinking no one would read it and secretly hoping they would. The blog was the perfect bluff for a self-conscious writer like me who yearned for the spotlight and then squinted in its glare. [...]

Eventually, I began enjoying my writing again. I stopped worrying about deadlines, audience, editors, letters to the editor, all the stuff that had smothered me before. I was writing so fast that I didn't have time to double-think my sentence structure or my opinions. What came out was sloppier but also funnier and more honest. I started getting e-mails from people I'd never met, and they were actually encouraging.

[...]

OK, now here's the bit that's my favorite quotation. Maybe I'll put this line up in the banner rotation on my blog. If it isn't too long.

At times, I started to feel that jokes and scenarios and turns of phrase were my capital, and that my capital was limited, and each blog entry was scattering more of it to the wind, pissing away precious dollars and cents in the form of punch lines I could never use again, not without feeling like a hack. You know: "How sad. She stole that line from her own blog."

[...]

[Isn't that cool? And it's just SO true. I've also felt that way about some rants I've written to a listserv I manage. I never know what's going to bite me in  the butt, or when the stars will line up and the universe or the tenth muse is going to speak through me, so stuff comes out that wouldn't otherwise. I have to appreciate that. But if that's the ONLY place where the universe is channeled through my writing, then I'm pissing away my best ideas too.

It did help a lot when I was writing my dissertation, to be active in private listserv discussions in the Xenaverse, the fandom community I was studying. Invaluable, actually, and I owe those people so much for being a sounding board, and for arguing with me when I got it wrong. Sometimes, now, when I read my dissertation, I wonder who wrote it, because I do feel that the tenth muse, or at least Xena and Gabrielle, were using me for a channel. Doesn't feel like I wrote it at all, and on really good days, I swear the dissertation wrote itself. I don't know too many harried and harassed grad students who can say that about the process, but it was one of the best times of my life.

There's one more bit that the writer has here that I thought was a particularly pithy observation:]

I suspect I'll come back to blogging eventually. It will be something I quit on occasion, like whiskey and melted cheese, when the negative effects outweigh the benefits. Practically every blogger I know has taken their site down at some point—for personal reasons, for business reasons, for boredom reasons. It's no different from the way we have to turn off our cell phones or stop checking e-mail so that we can actually focus on something. As much as I loved writing online, it's a relief writing offline: taking time to let a story unspool, to massage a sentence over an afternoon's walk, to stew for days—weeks, even—on a plot line. What a modern luxury. Now, if I could just turn off the TV, I think I could finally get started.

I've been there and done that, and yes, it most certainly did feel very good. I really started blogging in earnest with Radio Userland in early 2002, and the blog I was posting to at that time (nameless here forevermore) rose up respectably in the blogosphere, and in the mostly tech-blog atmosphere of that time, got linked to by the A-listers of the day, which satisfied me but wasn't the be-all and end-all of my existence, having gone through that previous newspaper experience that drove me into the Arkansas MFA program. Regardless of who linked to me, I was really still writing for myself.

So by early 2003, and for certain by the start of the Iraq War, I was immersed in war coverage at work, putting in a lot of overtime, worrying about some war-bloggers in Iraq who are my friends, and I just needed some time off. I went inward, started learning the I Ching, and filled four handwritten journals in six months. Felt real good. And then I started blogging again. That felt good too. It's called "being your own boss."

A basic question, but a good touchstone, and well-worth asking

Someone found this site and sent me an email today. I've removed all her personal information, and thought I would post my response to her question about how to start blogging. It is what this site is about, and it is good to go over the basic how-to stuff from time to time. So thank you, to this reader, for asking a good question!

Here's the email I got:

I know there are a million of them...but I want to be a Blogger.

I have no idea where, how to begin.  Basic 1..2...3...is what I need to know.  How to get started , how often you blog etc. If you could lead me as ...where to go to begin??

Here is my response to this woman, whom I hope I encouraged to jump in and start blogging.

Hi there!

The best way to begin is with the first step. You already have an AOL account, so if you just want to get your feet wet for free, go into AOL and sign up for an AOL Journal. You'll be blogging in minutes!

If you want to make a more serious stab at it, say, after you try out your voice a bit and see what things your mind spins onto, what you have to say, I'd suggest an inexpensive paid account at Typepad.com. Typepad is the EASIEST of all the blog software to use, no technical experience necessary at all, and you can get up and running with basic templates they provide for less than $10 a month. This site runs on Typepad. I was a beta-tester for it before it first came out, and I also taught with it last semester at the University of Montana.

The bigger question relates to finding your voice and figuring out what you have to say. This blog kind of addresses those issues, but the truth is, blog content is wide open. Many bloggers try to post daily, but I don't. I think that is just a big monkey on my back that creates guilt and would make me hate blogging, and I LOVE blogging! Since I am the master of my blog domains, I can do whatever I want, and you should do the same with your blogs. Don't let anyone tell you "blogs can only be this" or "blogs can only do that." There are no rules, and you should feel free to make up your own cyberspace universe as you go along!

You have to trust the thoughts that come out of your own mind, and give them voice. You are somebody, and the things you have to say are important. People will find them worth hearing. Go read Walt Whitman, about how he sounds his "barbaric yawp!" (or watch Dead Poets Society). Whitman is like an early blogger, and this most famous of American poets self-published his book, Leaves of Grass, because he believed in what he had to say.

But sometimes a person needs what Richard Hugo called "a triggering town," the thing that sets you off, so instead of staring at the blank screen, you enter into a larger dialogue, an ongoing conversation. I find my best blog entries are in response to someone else, and then I just spin them out beyond the catalyst that set me off.

To this end, a lot of people keep "filter blogs."

A filter blog reads around on other blogs and news stories, provides links to things the blogger finds interesting, and uses those articles as starting points in a dialogue, responding to or commenting on them.

It's like entering into a big parlor where there are many ongoing conversations, and as you mingle through the party, you dip in and talk a bit with this person or that person, as long as you like!

To facilitate filter blogging, there is a really terrific tool to use, very efficient! I like the news feed reader at Bloglines.com. You set up a free account there, and then subscribe (for free) to the blogs or news sites that you like to read. If you don't know any good ones yet, Bloglines will give you recommendations and tips to get you started.

Then, instead of going straight to the blogs, you go to Bloglines and start scanning the headlines of the blogs you've subscribed to. Scan scan scan, then dip into something you like, scan scan scan, then dip into something you like. That's the ongoing parlor conversation.

If you find something that really puts a quarter in your Magic Fingers, then jump in and comment, and be sure to put your blog URL on your comment as well. A lot of bloggers go and visit the blogs of people who leave comments, and leave comments themselves. They also list friendly bloggers in their "Blogrolls," and that's a way of getting the word out about your blog. You can also put blogs you like on your own blogroll, by way of recommending them to others.

This weaves the beginnings of a web of your own personal sector of cyberspace, your "neighborhood." The blog software usually provides easy tools to add lists of links to your site without having to touch any code. You can also put links to books you're reading now, music you're blogging to, movies you've been watching, and recommend those too. Many people start out their blogs by writing their own movie or book reviews after they've seen or read something they like.

That's just the beginning, but once you start, you may find it's addictive. Good luck!

Chris

Oh, PS, here's some basic 1, 2, 3 you asked for.

1. Sign up for a blog account, free (AOL, or Blogger) or paid (Typepad, Radio Userland, others).


2. Look for tools in the blog software to make posting easier, like quick bookmarks for your browser toolbar, so you can post from any page you happen to be looking at. The bookmark will launch a pop-up and create all the code for you. You just add your brilliance!


3. Play with templates, no technical experience necessary. Blog software has a bunch of sharp-looking pre-made templates, so you don't have to design a thing to get up and running.


4. Open a Bloglines.com free account and start reading blogs and news sites. CREATE YOUR OWN DAILY NEWSPAPER. There are other good news feed readers out there (FeedDemon), but Bloglines is fun because it will suggest blogs to people who are just starting out.


5. Read and post comments to other blogs, and be sure to put your blog URL in with your comments!


6. Add blogs you like to your own blogroll menu list. The people you link to may come and visit your site, and perhaps give you "link love" (link to you). In order to get link love, you gotta give link love. But beware, you don't want to be a blog slut, who will do anything for link love! [grin]
   


7. Be creative and have fun!

A neat trick to make your custom templates prettier

Denny Lester at BigSkySquid put me on to this COLOURlovers site, and I just fell in love with it, definitely. While I've created many of my own templates, sometimes I get the designers' version of writer's block, where every palette I make looks like some palette I've made before. Sometimes you just need a fresh set of eyes to put some chips together in a way you haven't thought of before.

VERY cool! Here's what Denny has to say about it.

Link: bigskysquid: COLOURlovers - palettes of colour love.

COLOURlovers is a great starting point when you need to start picking colors for a project.  If you do a little design you've probably felt a little overwhelmed when things aren't gelling just right.

[...]

You can look at submitted palettes or create your own.  I find it useful just cruising through them and seeing what schemes catch my eye.  When you click on a scheme you get all the values you need to reuse it in whatever you're doing.  All you have to do is cut and paste the color's HEX # into Photoshop's color picker and away you go.

[...]