A View from the Isle

As many of you know I’m in the midst of writing my first book (zapped off three more chapters yesterday!) which is entitled “Six Easy Blogging Projects” and one of the last chapters in the book is creating a “Lifestreaming blog”. When I was putting the book’s outline together I had no idea that I was actually on to something that would become quite timely by the time the book hits the shelves.

My long-time blogging friend Steve Rubel has announced that he is giving up on blogging and moving towards lifestreaming–Micro Persuasion: So Long Blogging, Hello Lifestreaming!–which you can find on his Posterous-powered lifestream–The Steve Rubel Lifestream – Daily links, insights, photos, videos and more on emerging technology.–where Steve is dropping bits and pieces from the things he finds online.

Now equally good friends Louis Gray and Jeremiah Owyang feel that blogging isn’t dead and there is still a place for long-form writing–Blogging Is Still the Foundation In A World of Streams – louisgray.com & Is Blogging Evolving Into Life Streams? « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing–and I happen to agree with Jeremiah and Louis, mostly.

I’ve been using Twitter to capture my musings more and more of late and blogging less and less. Okay, recently I’ve been blogging more but that’s beside the point. What I’ve found recently is that while Twitter, and I have yet to try Posterous but clearly I need to soon, is great for short bits, 140 characters is rather limiting.

So I see my blog as the place where I can detail my thoughts in a little more depth. Like Louis and Jeremiah, I also see my blog as the cornerstone or anchor to my online presence. Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed are great, but none of them allow me the control over my online presence like my own blog does.

I think Louis’ graphic illustrates how blogs are the cornerstone, anchor, hub…whatever very well.

As I’ve been prepping for this book and the classes I’ve been teaching I’ve been experimenting with different workflows. Next on the list is Posterous. What of FriendFeed? Considering I haven’t wandered over there in a significant fashion in months, I’m not sure where to place it. FriendFeed became a serious chaff generator. Far more hay than needles.

Granted, I’m sure that I could find a better way to manage it, but that is something for another day.

Are there two camps forming? Is there a “I blog” vs “I lifestream” separation going on? I certainly hope not. We need both kinds of information flows to keep things going. Steve won’t have much to share with Google Reader if we don’t write posts. Scoble won’t have fodder to comment on in FriendFeed if we don’t help to generate it.

Yes, the quick update and summation of a link, thought, etc is great sometimes, but we still need posts of more depth to flesh out and expand on ideas.

Well at least I think so.

Are you blogging more? Are you lifestreaming? There are a slew of questions growing from this centering around how we consume news and information now, but let’s just leave it at this for now.

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In the WordPress world many of us, especially those like me who teach people how to use it, are often explaining WordPress.com vs WordPress.org to people. The answer, simply, is WP.com is a hosted service where you can have a WordPress-powered blog/site and WP.org is where you download the WordPress software to install on your own servers.

Seems simple to us, but we’ve also been doing this since before WP.com existed so we can make the distinction easily.

As for features, WP.com doesn’t give you all the features of installing WP yourself, but you don’t have to worry about installs, updates, or servers. Now the question often asked is whether we want or need both services…

Well, it is not like all those thousands of *.WordPress.com sites are going to be happily redirected to new domains. I can only think that rebranding the software would be the (inelegant, or even downright ugly) solution What do you think? Am I blowing this up to be a bigger problem than it is? Is there a better solution? Please share your thoughts in the comments …
link: Is WordPress.com Bad for WordPress? | The Blog Herald

Yes, I think we do. WP.com serves a niche for people who just want a free blog or people who want to have a professional blog, are willing to pay for add-ons like CSS editing and domain mapping, but not have to mess with servers etc.

The issue isn’t whether the two can co-exist, because MoveableType and Typepad do just fine, it’s how will Automattic brand the two options.

I think all WP.com really needs is a new name and branding. That’s it. Both niches are valid and required, the only problem is the confusion surrounding the name WordPress.

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Sometimes I wonder if the river of information we swam in during 2004, which became something more like a fire hose in the past couple years, has now become one of those super storms that people tell their grandchildren about (I remember the summer of 2009, when data moved faster than computers could store it in a cache…). Reflecting on how quickly something “made” the news back in 2004 (when both Steve Rubel & I started blogging), it might take a day before something reached critical mass. Today Twitter provides a multiplicative effect that truly makes my head spin. The difference now is that whereas in 2004 you had to write a post to build on the buzz, today you just retweet the original post (as I did with Louis’ post I’m citing here). This I think has made us pretty lazy really. Are we not writing? Are we not reading enough?

Or is it as Steve suggests, blogging is “slow”:

Meanwhile, Steve Rubel, author of MicroPersuasion, who has been blogging on that site since early 2004, said that to him, blogging seemed “slow”, when contrasted with the lightning fast communications seen from tools like FriendFeed and Twitter. He made the analogy that when you take the time to compose a blog post and you launch it over the wall, that readers have to look it over and make a choice as to whether they will respond, or if they will simply hit ‘J’ in their RSS reader and move along. In contrast, he said sending a note to Twitter was like introducing ants in someone’s house, making them immediately take action.

link: Today’s Real-Time Web Makes Blogging and RSS Seem “Too Slow” – louisgray.com

Looking at a screenshot from the hot Twitter client Mixero you can see in a glance the amount of information present. News, friends, replies (I hid DMs, sorry guys), all in one place I can skim, click, skim, RT in seconds:

I would wager that this isn’t always a good thing. I would wager that what we need is the web-equivalent of the “slow food” movement. Something where we take a few minutes to read a post, consider a post, then write our own opinions of the post in something greater than 140 characters.

I know that I’m fighting an uphill battle here. I know that even my own info gathering trends fly in the face of the “slow post” movement, however what if we paused and wrote more?

Naw, that won’t work, we might get more original ideas and lord knows that we don’t need anymore of those in this world !

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It’s been a long time since I was a “professional blogger”, I might have been one of the early pioneers, but I stepped back from it as the rest of my life got busier. So I was pretty intrigued when I got an email from Future Shop.

Future Shop was starting up blogs to go with their existing community forums and they were recruiting about six Canadian tech bloggers to write the blogs for them.

I was very interested in the opportunity. Why not, I do love writing about tech and helping people, Future Shop recognizes the value bloggers bring so this isn’t a volunteer thing, and, yeah, I thought it would be pretty damn cool to be one of the select few to be doing it.

All humility aside, I think it is a great honour to be considered and chosen. This isn’t something I’m taking lightly or as just a neat thing to do now and then. Not to mention, I’m in some pretty amazing company:

• Mathew Kumar
• Paul Hunter
• Buzz Bishop
• Brad Grier
• Klaus Boedker

Not too shabby. Pretty awesome group to be lumped in with, in my opinion at least. The Future Shop Tech blog officially launched today and I wrote the standard “Hi, I’m Tris, I’ll be your blogger this evening…” intro post last night to be ready for today.

I’ll be publishing 3-5 times a week on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. My posts will be what you’re probably already used to: tech reviews, tips, advice, and photography. I also want to make two things very clear from the outset: yes I’m getting paid, no Future Shop is not muzzling any of us. We have some editorial guidelines, but none of those include “you can only say nice things about our key suppliers…”.

You should know by now that even if I’m given something, I don’t just give it a glowing review. I like to be balanced and fair. Nothing is ever perfect. Even my MacBook Pro is awesome as I think it is could be better (the keyboard is good, but not great I think).

I welcome feedback, story ideas, and all the rest.

So, let’s see what fun we can have now…

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Getting new, fresh ideas for posts can be really hard. Honestly, now that I’m not pro-blogging anymore I just don’t seem to have the post output I used to have. There are hundreds of posts on how to get ideas for posts, but this post from the Reachd blog caught my eye:

Here are the steps that I would follow if I were to use keyword research to generate blogging ideas

1. Go to Google Keyword Tool

2. Enter a broad keyword in the box on that page

3. Sort the keywords by “Average search volume” by clicking on that particular column

4. Look for topics or searches with no less than 100 / month. It is difficult to decide what a perfect minimum number is because it varies by industry.

After I’ve got my topic or keyword phrase I would write a quick blog post about it.

[From Use Keyword Research to Get Blogging Ideas « Reachd Blog]

Hmm. Okay so you pick something like “blog”, see what’s popular, and then use that to inspire a post. Here are the results for “blog”:

From the looks of this chart then lots of people search for blog free (free blog then should work) and how to blog. Hey, great topics for a post. Choosing a free blog platform is something I’ve often talked with people about (I always recommend WordPress.com of course).

How to blog is something I’m writing a book about (I do talk about other stuff, don’t worry) so I know that’s pretty interesting to most folks. The question is then: are you getting ideas for things that people are interested in or are you pandering to SEO and Google?

My gut feeling is that it’s a little of both, but tipping a hair too far to the SEO side for a personal blog, however if you’re writing a business blog or are trying to increase your traffic it could be gold.

For example if I were still writing on my men’s grooming blog (it might still come back) and wanted to talk about beards:

So, do you think I’m being too hard on Reachd?

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Are you not familiar with “The Queen of the Engines” (fine that’s a reference to The Difference Engine)? Ada Lovelace wasn’t just the first programmer, pushing Charles Babbage’s Difference and Analytical to beyond what Charles himself envisioned, I’d venture that Ada was the world’s first geek girl.

Here’s a women who bucked the Victorian trends of the day and did some kick ass stuff with “computers”, and we should all be grateful to her. Thus today, Ada Lovelace Day, a day to blog about women in tech you admire.

Honestly I had a really hard time picking someone to blog about, because I know a raft of amazing women in tech. So with no slight to any of my friends, I have chosen two women. I’ve chosen a woman of right now and a woman-to-be who I know will do some rockin’ tech things.

I’ve picked Justine (iJustine) Ezarik (now) and my daughter Aislinn (future).

Most of us have heard of Justine, and I think all too many people write her off or dismiss her off hand. You see a cute blond talking about tech and being a goof on camera and think, yeah whatever. Oh you are so wrong.

I first heard Justine speak at the first BlogWorldExpo with Leo Laporte, and in the misguided interest of getting the post out fast, I didn’t stay for her whole talk. What I did hear blew me away. She started her first website at twelve because a boy dissed her and she wanted revenge (the true mark of a geek, vengeance). She is smart, savvy and together.

Later I had the pleasure of being on a panel with her at Affiliate Summit West talking about social media and affiliate marketing. Again, amazed. Talking with her is fun, because she is smart, easy going, and really loves to geek out with the best of us.

Now, my second person, my daughter Aislinn.

Of course I’m a proud Dad. She wanted her own blog at 9 (yes, she has one but it’s private). She took up digital photography last year and is just gifted. She rocks Club Penguin and Webkinz online. She intuitively understands how the world of social media has changed the world. She just groks it. I know that she might not always be into tech, but any girl who could out tech support her teacher in Grade 1 and was asked to be on TV with Leo Laporte at 10 has it seriously going on.

I am so proud of her, l love her, and miss her dearly.

Who are your choices?

And not to slight the feelings of my son, he’s my choice for Charles Babbage Day is there is one.

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I decided to do it on the M2O blog instead, so saunter over there.

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Yes, my second slide really was titled “I hate blogs.” The reason is that saying that a site is a blog, or built on WordPress people get the wrong impression.

Free software can’t be all the good. Or why should I pay you do to it…

Let’s face it, you’re still building a site and once you get over the mechanics, there is some technique involved.

Regardless here are my slides from my talk. You might also like the post from WordCamp (similar topic)

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Welcome to Third Tuesday Live blog from Vancouver…

Flickr set from the evening:

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Going to do this post in segments…first my slides:

This is the “magic” code that fixes the problem with having a pre-set “Home” button:

<?phpwp_list_pages('exclude=2,10&title_li=&depth=1'); ?>

What this does is block the pages with IDs 2 and 10 from being listed. You’ll have to find out the page ID from your Edit Pages section in the admin panels. I mouse over the title and look at the URL in the status bar. Please, please bring back the ID number in the columns!

I’ll post links shortly, but the best place to find things on Extending WP on WordPress.org so honestly look there and the most popular themes and plugins are your best bests.

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Next week is WordCamp Whistler and in addition to exercising my shoulder do I can take pictures, I’m also prepping to give a short talk on using WP to build “regular” websites.

When Duane and Rebecca opened the speaker submission form, I zapped in with one of my favourite topics: using WP to build a website (yeah with a blog too). Morten had a similar idea, and while a panel was the first option, now each of us will have 30 mins of fame:

In my original pitch I asked for a one hour session. But unbeknownst to me Tris Hussey, another WordPress as CMS expert, had pitched almost the exact same topic to the event. Rather than pick sides and give one of us the full hour, it was decided that we would each get a 30 minute session so we both get our foot in and the attendees can get two different perspectives. Which is a great idea: This is by no means an exact science and while I’m sure Tris and my approaches compliment each other they will be vastly different. And that “double perspective” will give the listeners a far broader understanding of the subject matter than if one of us were to do the session by ourselves. [From WordCamp Whistler - WordPress as CMS presentation by Morten Rand-Hendriksen | Design is Philosophy - The Pink & Yellow Media Blog]

Before you groan and think that we’re going to be repeating each other (actually it would be me repeating him since he’s first on the docket), don’t worry we’re coming at the topic from two totally different directions.

Morten is going to dig deep into WP as a CMS. We’re talking custom fields, theme hacks, all the things that would make the site uber cool and without many obvious WP touches. This is awesome stuff, and I know there are going to be a lot of people taking notes in his talk (including me, since I want to learn more about these WP hacks), so I’m not going to step on his toes.

My talk is going to be at more of an entry-level audience. I’m going to assume that you know how to install WP, upload themes, and add plugins but that’s it. Here’s what I’m going to cover. You want to build a decent site based on WP, but you’d like to know what plugins, themes, and settings will really make it hum. Simple as that.

I’ll touch on the settings that make sense on a site that you might not think of, and a few WP template tricks to make your navigation sing. The plugin list is going to be pretty standard, but you know I’ll probably have a trick or two up my sleeve.

That said, while I have a several favourite themes (some free, some not) and my key plugin list, but I’d also like to hear from you. What are your favs?

What are the pieces that make a WP install complete to you? Don’t worry if you think the plugin is “too bloggy” because you know I’ll be encouraging people to have the blog portion active too.

If you have some WP-powered websites that you think are great examples, pass those on too. I always love to see and show lots of examples to show the range of possibilities.

Now I need to set my demo site up…oh what to choose, what to choose…

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Duane updated his Twitter plugin WordTwit yesterday. It now checks your Twitter credentials to make sure they are correct. Nice touch. Playing with other stuff shortly.

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Last night we had the first of what I know will be many Best of 604 galas. It is safe to say if you are involved in social media, in town, and not sick you were there at The Cellar last night.

The winners from last night were the cream of the crop, but honestly the big winners are all of us.

Honestly.

The community came together and had a blast. The hum of conversation was constant. I think I heard “Oh! You’re… Great to finally meet you in person…” hundreds of times during the evening.

People were genuinely glad, happy, and excited to get together and meet.

Rebecca, you did something so awesome, that you deserve and award.

Next year I’m sure it will be bigger, better, and also become the official blogger Christmas party of the year.

On a more selfish note, Media2o gave away a $2500 studio package and my good friend Monica Hamburg won the prize! I hear she is going to give it to her partner Chris, but maybe we can convince Monica do to something for Connected Life in the future.

In true social media form, here is a Flickr slideshow of all the pics tagged “bestof604″ … enjoy!

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I swear that Chris Brogan has got to be one of the smartest and affable people I know. I always read his stuff, usually the moment TwitterFeed pushes it out, and even if I might not learn something (which is rare) I often stash the posts away for later reference, inspiration, or the “here, read this post of Chris’, do what he says…”

Tonight Chris delivered another post that all of us should bookmark. No, print and laminate. Maybe etch into a wall. What are these words of wisdom you ask? Chris’ tips for writing better content:

# Deconstruct what your favorite writers do, and try it your own way.
# Occasionally, try something completely different.
# Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid of not being interesting enough.
# Write as if someone believes in you, because someone does. (me!)

[From 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content | chrisbrogan.com]

I especially like the points above. Okay the “don’t do the me too” and “look forward” are excellent, but these are what those of us who have been doing this “blogging thing” for a while should really take to heart.

Today I’m going to BCIT to guest lecture at class on Social Media and Web Design. Going to be interesting. I have my deck ready. At least though I know that if people ask, “how do you write great posts/content?” I can point them to Chris.

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About an hour ago Rebecca announced that voting was now open for the Best of 604 awards — Metro Vancouver Web Awards | Best of 604.

I’m nominated in the Best Personal Blog and best Sci-Tech blog categories, of course my friends are nominated in all the categories!

I’d love it if you’d vote for me, but with all the great blogs to choose from, no matter who you pick, you’re picking one of the best around.

The real fun will be next week on the 11th when we have the Best of 604 Gala. Admission? Lending a helping hand, a cash donation to the food bank (I think Rebecca doesn’t want to have to haul food again since our generosity can be overwhelming). Beyond the fun we always have together, there will be prizes. In fact Sheila is making a custom necklace and earring set to be given as a prize or raffled off. Whoever gets that will have a one-of-a-kind piece of jewellery.

Now, go vote. You can vote only once per category. No repeat voting tomorrow or whatever. Just once. That’s it.

Now, shoo. And remember who sent you there when you vote! .

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