65 posts filed under this category, page 1 of 3.
I am featured in today's bLaugh comic (pictured above) playing soccer for France's national team, or at least wearing their latest kit. I'm kicking a 70's style Adidas Telstar ball. I have not been in a caricature since high school (prom or sober grad party, I forget which one). Chris told me I beat out Joe Lieberman for today's spot….
The latest popular blogger to step out on their own is Amanda Congdon of popular video blog Rocketboom. According to a video post on her personal blog Amanda was kicked out by majority shareholder Andrew Baron. My guess as to what happened? Rocketboom was looking to expand into a video blog network and restructuring the company and ownership in preparation for the new move. Amanda has one of the most popular faces in video blogging so expect her to have a new job or startup soon. Andrew Baron is director and producer of Rocketboom. A statement on Rocketboom says…
Reports are coming in from the Vloggercon conference about Robert Scoble's latest career move. According to Beet.TV and a few other verbal sources who were at the conference Scoble will publicly announce he is leaving Microsoft within the next few days and joining Silicon Valley startup PodTech.net as a videoblogger. Scoble has been at Microsoft for about three years and plans to move back to the Bay Area. Robert Scoble was employed as a videoblogger at Microsoft's Channel 9 developer center, interviewing teams across Microsoft on their latest releases and features. Later in his Microsoft career Scoble's popular blog became…
Your gadgets are blogging. Every time you take a picture, listen to a song, or play a video game you might also be blogging. Our shoes log and share our every step, our scales analyze our weight and body fat, and our cars let the world know it's been too long since your last oil change. The creation and exposure of data from our daily lives is creating new data available for search and subscription. It's time to rethink what we call a blog. The availability of this new data will cause us to rethink what we want to…
Two years ago Dave Winer created feeds.scripting.com to help people share lists of feeds and discover other members of the community with similar interests. Winer just relaunched the site at a new URL, share.opml.org, to connect a new community and raise awareness of the OPML file format. The new site was based on Manila and the new site is built on top of WordPress. The Share Your OPML site collects lists of feed subscription URLs from its members and presents lists of most popular feeds, individual feed subscribers, and a peek into the lists of other members with similar reading…
MC Hammer is now a blogger and podcaster. He signs off each post with "–Hammertime." Video on demand will allow you to see my art, my life and work on demand and without the infection of those who have hidden agendas. This is the revolution and it is on demand. There is no stopping this movement and you can't contain it. The music was built from the vibrations and the call of the people.We will dance. Hammer talks about his huge dance pants and plans to launch instructional dance videos. The videos and blog posts had me laughing in…
The United States Patent and Trademark Office rejected a trademark application last September for the term "podcast." Attached to the rejection letter is a complete printout of the podcasting entry on Wikipedia, citing the previous history of the term and its use describing a characteristic or feature of a product. A few searches in the trademark database found entries for "podcast ready" audio players and a rejected application for vidcast, both citing blog entries. The accuracy of the podcast entry on Wikipedia has been under dispute and depending when the trademark office took a look at the entry the examining…
Popular blogger Jason Kottke recently posted an entry criticizing blog search companies for the incompleteness of their results compared to his internal search tool powered by Movable Type. I happen to know both Movable Type and blog search pretty well, so I decided to dig into the data and see where search engines might have missed the mark in the interest of improving quality. I found that Jason's criticisms where a bit unfounded yet still may alter the perceptions of many people who are heavily influenced by what they read on his blog. Jason found more results searching his installation…
As more and more companies create business models around "consumer generated media" individual publishers are beginning to wonder when they might see a slice of the revenue. I believe there are opportunities for bloggers to be paid for their content without compromising editorial integrity and also rewarding the tool builders. Profiting from consumer generated media is not a new thing. Shopping sites such as Amazon.com or PriceGrabber have been doing it for years, asking an author to turn over the rights to their content in exchange for the author's work being featured alongside a product. At PriceGrabber we paid anywhere…
I was walking home tonight when I came across a very different form of lamppost advertising. Someone had posted two of their latest blog posts at a busy street corner in San Francisco. The top post introduces weblogs and the topics they cover, encouraging people to read more weblogs for the latest news about their community and the topics they care about. The bottom post talks about comments by radio host Rush Limbaugh against homosexuals. Someone came by and added their own Xanga blog URL to the post about Limbaugh, possibly as a way to supplement the existing 88…
The latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available. Om and I sat down at his apartment last week to talk about blogs, RSS, and advertising. Om asked most of the questions, focusing the discussion about how to make the right choices in blogging software and services to become a better blogger. Full show notes are available on the Om and Niall PodSessions site. This week's podcast is 21 minutes in length and a 9.7 MB download. After the podcast I gave Om's RSS a makeover including switching his feed to FeedBurner, adding more branding by utilizing more…
Too many corporate marketers see a blog as a marketing brochure to spread the same marketing content in multiple formats. Below are three different areas often overlooked by companies considering blogging as a communications strategy. Recruitment Corporate blogs can be a recruiting tool for both active and passive candidates. Job candidates like to know who they will be working with, on what types of projects, and if the company takes good care of its employees. All of this information is best discovered and trusted from individuals within the company. In a larger company the blogs of individuals can be used…
I created a sample product blog to demonstrate how a corporation might engage a potential market in advance of a product launch. I chose iRobot Corporation and their latest product, Scooba the floor washing robot. I created a blog named Scooba Clean to show what a product blog might look like in the six months before the product is released. Corporate marketing teams are often a bit afraid to enter the world of corporate blogging. They read reports of mobs of bloggers attacking CBS or Kryptonite and fear for the lives of their brands in the wild frontier that…
A lot of people think of podcasts as uninteresting audio recordings of someone talking to themselves. Not true! I want to share with you some of my favorite podcasts I subscribe to and listen to at least semi-regularly. I manage my subscriptions and downloads through iTunes. Podcasts is time shifted audio making existing programs available when I want and where I want and enabling new content niches where radio might never go. On the Media, a New York public radio program about the media industry including newspapers, radio, television, and online media such as websites and blogs. On the Media…
Speaker of the House Denny Hastert is now blogging. Hastert is the #3 politician in Washington D.C., second only to Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential line of succession. He hopes to provide "some inside access to the Republican playbook." The internet is changing the way we share information. My office has been talking a lot about some of the conversations going on in blogosphere. So I thought, hey, I should start one and give you unfiltered updates on Capitol Hill. The journal has no comments, not even a list to a congressional e-mail address. The journal does not…
A recent survey by Advertising Age found about 35 million workers in the United States visit blogs and spend an average of 40 minutes a day reading blogs. 25% of blog visits could be considered job-related. Work time spent reading and posting to blogs will consume 2.2% of all labor force hours this year according to Advertising Age. You need an Advertising Age account to view the article. Try BugMeNot for nag-free access. Tags: advertising, adage…
The opening of Engadget Labs has been delayed as the new offices are still being constructed. I previously reported the new office space would open October 15 but Peter Rojas and Ryan Block told me this week the contractors are still working on the new space. Engadget continues to operate out of their own apartments. Tags: engadget…
Michael Graves of VeriSign announced the acquisition of Weblogs.com this evening. SiliconBeat reports Dave Winer sold the service for $2 million. VeriSign plans to maintain the ping beacon in its current form with additional revenue models and ping extensions beyond the current implementation. VeriSign hints at upsell opportunities for ping submission and retrieval and views the weblogs.com ping beacon as a "competing service." They plan to overhaul the Weblogs.com infrastructure to achieve higher levels of performance and stability. VeriSign also mentions a future statistics service available at Weblogs.com that will display statistics such as total pings received, processed feeds, and…
Jason Calacanis just announced the acquisition of Weblogs Inc. by America OnLine. Weblogs Inc. is a blog network of 90 weblogs employing over 130 bloggers in the consumer, technology, wireless, video games, media & entertainment, business, life sciences, and events. Weblogs Inc. received venture capital funding from Mark Cuban. I have heard terms of the deal are cash and stock with about a $25 million base and $15 million worth of incentives. If true, Weblogs Inc. received a similar valuation to Flickr. Update: Wired News reports the deal was $25 million in cash with no mention of incentives. Some questions…
The popular gadget blog Engadget is moving into new offices in New York and will be launching a testing lab for in-depth product reviews. The Engadget team announced the new venture at their San Francisco Engadget Reader Meetup. Engadget Labs will perform benchmarks and in-depth reviews of products. It sounds like a nice departure from the typical pay-per-article model of weblog networks. Editors Peter Rojas and Ryan Block will work out of their new office in New York with possibly a few other members of the Weblogs Inc. network. The new office space will include a special podcasting room…
The latest issue of Time magazine introduces readers to blogs and blog search engines. The layout of the online version is a bit confusing but perhaps the print version is better arranged. Time describes Technorati as "long the best blog-search option on the Web." Thanks! Tags: technorati, timemagazine…
Earlier this week DaimlerChrysler introduced The Firehouse, a blog authored by company executives and created as a continuing conversation with professional journalists between periods of typical briefings such as auto shows. DaimlerChrysler has a tradition of turning an old Detroit firehouse, Chrysler Firehouse, into a press-only gathering spot every year during the North American International Auto Show. DaimlerChrysler is expanding this communication event through weblogs and other tools to answer questions year-round in a semi-public forum. I contacted Jason Vines, DaimlerChrysler's Vice President of Communications, and was told that The Firehouse is a place for reporters to relax and mingle,…
Many people have cold feet when they think about starting a blog. Do I really have anything important to say? Will anyone read what I write? Choose a topic you are passionate about and share it with the world. My favorite coffee spot in San Francisco is Blue Bottle Coffee Company, an artisan small-batch roaster located a few blocks from my house. The company's San Francisco location serves their own coffee from a small storefront in an alley. The staff even writes their own blog about new equipment, bean comparisons, and other topics that show the passion in their work….
Marble Sportswear of Beverly Hills, California recently applied for a trademark and service mark for the word "blog." Is there a new line of blog-specific clothing on the way or are they just squatting? Small Business Blog is also an applied service mark the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council and their "virtual destination where small business owners and entrepreneurs can communicate about issues impacting their enterprises and the economy." Both trademarks seem pointless but maybe pushing the government papers really does pay off. Tags: trademark…
Tom Foremski wrote this morning about a presentation that included some possible future products from Technorati. I won't comment on future products, but it's interesting to take a look at some of the underlying issues some bloggers are worried about. Commercial Use Can another company make money off of your content? I currently receive a lot of referral traffic from a variety of search services such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Each search company sells advertisements alongside an excerpt of my content. I have no problem with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN making money off of my content because they also…