Sorry Maurice..

See…with a blog name change and mentioning ‘COM917J2′ now and again…well it pays off.

We demand free coffee tomorrow.

Please deliver.

Guide to successfull blogging

I came across the following the article on msn which describes the seven deadly sins to blogging.

It claims they are;

1. Not blogging
2. Blog only when you have something to say
3. Having a meaningless post title
4. Not leaving comments for your friends
5. Don’t delete your comments
6. Don’t strive for perfection
7. Shameless self promotion

This may prove useful in doing our blog assignments. See the full article HERE.

The future of the Blog

Blogging has undoubtedly grown in size and in technology from its humble beginnings as a simple online text only diary. Blogs can now contain images, sound clips and video. However the future for blogging is somewhat uncertain.

Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter says that blogging is as significant a step as the introduction of the printing press in dispersing information.

Source (http://www.news.com/The-future-of-blogging/2030-1069_3-5654288.html)

However bloggers do not seem to have the same legal rights as a journalist would. It seems from reading materials about the future of blogging, that the legal implications involved with blogging may have an impact on what the future holds for the blog.

People who decide to video blog on youtube have been hit recently with youtube cracking down on so called copyright infringement.

There is no doubt that the future of blogging will become more networked, with people linking other peoples articles into their blogs. Social networking and blogging in the future will be inseperable.

It may also be the case that blogging will be large businesses main way of advertising. Companies such as Coca-Cola already have a blog at

http://www.coca-colaconversations.com

The advantages in the future to businesses such as Coca-Cola include putting a human face on the corporation.

With the introduction of viral videos to blogs the Coca-Cola brand can get exposure to customers around the world quite cheaply. For example the following Coca-Cola viral video has been online for a week and has already had well over 392,655 hits from youtube users all over the world.

Benefits of blogging- primal scream or validation

Whoo, getting abit philosophical now.

Am currently in too minds over the benefits of Blogging

1. Primal Scream: Do we get a psychological benifit of getting our frustrations out in the open, even though there could be potentially no one listening.

or

2. Validation: Am I actually screaming validate me! With putting personal opinions into a public arena, am I looking for someone to agree with my post and thus prove that my opinion is valid and there is a point to my existance.

Or perhaps I’ve drank too much coffee.

Build a description of the key products and technology

Build a description of the key products and technology.

Below is a chart from http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm

Functionality	Blogger	TypePad Basic	TypePad Plus	TypePad Pro	Blogware	WordPress	Movable Type	Expression Engine
Comments	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Categories	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Subcategories	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Trackbacks	Yes (Backlinks)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pings	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
RSS	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Atom	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Search	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Blogroll/Lists	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Number of blogs	Unlimited	1	3	Unlimited	1	1 (more with WordPress MU)	Determined by license	Unlimited
News Aggregation	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes
Extras	Blogger	TypePad Basic	TypePad Plus	TypePad Pro	Blogware	WordPress	Movable Type	Expression Engine
Moblogging	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Photo Galleries	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Non-blog pages	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Maintenance	Blogger	TypePad Basic	TypePad Plus	TypePad Pro	Blogware	WordPress	Movable Type	Expression Engine
API	Blogger	Blogger, MetaWeblog, MT, Atom	Blogger, MetaWeblog, MT, Atom	Blogger, MetaWeblog, MT, Atom	MetaWeblog	Blogger, MetaWeblog, MT	Blogger, MetaWeblog, MT, Atom	MetaWeblog, Blogger, MT
Logs	None	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Data Storage	Database	Database	Database	Database	Database	Database	Database/No database	Database
Spam Fighting Tools	Blogger	TypePad Basic	TypePad Plus	TypePad Pro	Blogware	WordPress	Movable Type	Expression Engine
Blacklist	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Visitor registration/login	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Captchas	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Moderation	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
URL NOFOLLOW	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IP/User/URL banning	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Comment Notification	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Design	Blogger	TypePad Basic	TypePad Plus	TypePad Pro	Blogware	WordPress	Movable Type	Expression Engine
Skins	33	25	25	26	23	2	7	27
Admin panel design configuration	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Admin panel layout configuration	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Publishing Interface	Blogger	TypePad Basic	TypePad Plus	TypePad Pro	Blogware	WordPress	Movable Type	Expression Engine
User Levels	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multiple authors	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Image uploading	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Image thumbnailing	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Post scheduling	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Save without posting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Bookmarklets	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Edit Templates Online	Yes	No	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit Templates Offline	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
File uploading	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Password Protection	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Localization	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Work offline	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No

A summary/ interpretation of this is available on this site: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050714gardner/

This is an unbiased review of the sites and software available for administering a blog. They are broken down as follows with some personal interpretation:

Blogger:-Free and easiest to use (a beginners blog)

-Need to know HTML and Cascading Style sheets (slight drawback)

-Can FTP blog from personal website-Innovative Audioblogger system, enables user to use telephone to create blog entries

-Advertises “blogging within 10 minute set-up”, element of truth

Typepad-Pay per use system, three tiers

-Popular with journalists

-Highly customizable at ‘Pro Level’

-Typelist system allows easier URL interaction within blog posts for use in creating tags, links and other categories

Blogware-Great selection of customizable tools

-Difficult to use for advanced customization

-Option for a few non-blog pages, using FTP

WordPress-Can cope with large volumes of traffic

-Easily enables multiple administrators with varying levels of access

-Still used by professional bloggers

-Opportunity to review comments before they are ‘live’

-Attractive interface

-Vast availability of plug-ins, and therefore large number of customization options eg in terms of Youtube video uploads and picture galleries options made by friends of the site.

-Knowledge/Experience of uploading files to server preferrable

Movable Type-Used by many for non-blog sites, robust system

-Expert bloggers choice, not easiest to use but opportunity for customization greatest in list

-Rebuild slow and necessary after adding categories or new templates

-Comparatively expensive

Expression Engine-More of a content management system, rather than blog software

-Addition of picture galleries (resize,crop,rotate etc) and mailing lists on top of other regular features

-Expensive compared to other software systems

-Search engine friendly

-Templates highly editable

-Steep learning curve

-Useful for those managing many different sites, blogs or personal sites for multiple users with different user rights

Social Networking sites Myspace, Bebo and Facebook offer version(s) of blogging. These are largely text-based and take a back seat to the applications which proliferate with the aim to interact (or annoy as the case may be) people on your friend’s list. They offer blogs as an option, not as a necessity. They encourage interaction between the user and the applications available rather than being for blogging as such. Posts on Bebo are very limited and it allows (to date) only three blogs to appear on the application at any one time. Myspace has a slightly more developed blogging system, allowing user to subscribe to this blog. These are then catalogued for viewing at any time by the user. Facebook has a very limited type of blogging, allowing the user merely to make short comments about what they are doing or thinking at a particular time. Facebook wants the user to constatnly be doing something, interacting with the system and others. The activities of those in friend’s lists are there for you to see and can be dizzying! In a sense this is not really blogging as there is no option to view the history of these inputs, certainly not chronologically. A blogger should not consider any of these sites if determined to set-up a blog. This idea was bandied about within the group ourselves but it was decided that the systems used by these social networking sites could not accommodate multiple posts, comments and generally the interface was poor. WordPress seems to be ideal for us due to the level of administrating rights that is available and some of us had experience at using it already.

The Risks and Negative Issues in the use of blogging

A Blog is a website where entries on an individuals weblog are presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs can contain a persons views or commentary on a news item, technology, business or can be simply a personal log or diary of the person writing. There are many risks and negative issues associated with blogging.

Legal Issues

Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights

As many blogs are developed from comments in other blogs or derived from an article, there are undoubtedly going to be copyright or intellectual property issues associated with blogging. According to MarketingSherpa.com, Blog Copyright Theft is on the rise. The President of MarketingSherpa Anne Holland in an article called “Blog Copyright Theft on the Rise” makes the point that after doing a search for MarketingSherpa, many blogs contained cut and pastes of some of the articles they had written. Although some of these articles were cut and pasted by fans of MarketingSherpa, they were also cut and pasted by people who were trying to generate traffic for their Google Ad-Sense revenue.

Read the full article here

The Content of Blogs

Blogs, especially where businesses and public figures are concerned, can sometimes contain sensitive information. A public figure may be defamed when a blogger writes sensitive information about them that turns out to be untrue. For example, a parliamentary candidate for office may have their name dragged through the mud on purpose by an opposition campaign to stop them getting elected. Business may have some trade secrets that they do not want revealed. In fact one of the biggest risks in blogging is writing about a business you work for in a negative way. In fact many people have lost their jobs over articles they have written in their blogs.

The first cases in Britain of someone being fired by a company was when Joe Gordon a Waterstones employee in Edinburgh, allegedly wrote items in his blog that brought the Waterstones company into disrepute. His blog lost him his job in January 2005.

The first ever case of someone being fired because of their blog brought about a new phrase to be dooced.

“The word dooced was coined in 2002 by Heather Armstrong, a Los Angeles web designer who lost her job after writing about work colleagues in her personal blog, dooce.com. Her subsequent advice to fellow bloggers is straightforward: ‘Never write about work on the Internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact …’

The emergence of the term dooced has brought with it a range of legal and ethical considerations surrounding the activity of blogging. Increasingly, Internet lawyers are advising companies to set out clearer guidelines for blogs written by their employees, and at the beginning of 2005, a Bloggers’ Rights site was launched, which lists ‘blogophobic’ companies that have dooced their staff and urges employers to establish specific policies on blogging.” (Source:http://www.macmillandictionary.com/New-Words/050131-dooced.htm)

An Example case of someone getting dooced by their company was a woman who worked for Delta Airlines. Her company phoned her and terminated her contract because she had allegedly placed illicit photos of herself on her blog. Ellen Simonetti had started her blog “Diary of a Flight Attendant” in January 2004 when she lost her mother in September 2003 to cancer. Her blog was started because she felt it was easier to write her feelings down than to talk about them. According to Ellen her company work record had been good and she had nothing but commendations from fellow workers. She continues to write her blog.

Article on CNet about Ellie Getting Fired

Ellies Blog

Ellie on The Montel Show

A Web Guide for People on their Blogging Legal Rights

Another ‘Dooced’ Blog Court Case where a British woman was Dooced by a Parisian firm

It Seems even McDonalds believe that employees can be ‘Dooced’!

Opportunities

Having briefly explored how real money can be made from the inane rambling of Joe Public in my first attempt at a blog. I’m now about to step up a gear. Following in the steps of Belle de Jour: The Intimate Adventures of a London Call-Girl the next logical step for me to take is to set about making a Blook. This is the term given to a book published from a Blog.

As opportunities go, a blog with heavy traffic is one that publishers will not miss out on. A good Blook already comes with a loyal fan base, which has developed strong connections with the author and will willingly spread their adoration for the author to all who will listen.

Take for an example the case of Tucker Max. Having read this book I cannot imagine that publishers would have considered publishing the rantings of a misogynistic booze fuelled never-do-well without his huge following of devoted followers that he amassed through his Blog at www.tuckermax.com. This blog catered for an under represented segment of society, that of the frustrated young man seeking for likeminded role models. The Book managed to sell so well that it was in the New York Times Best Seller List for two weeks.

There is even an annual literary prize sponsored by lulu.com, this years winner was My War: Killing Time in Iraq, by Colby Buzzell a US soldier writing about his experiences in post war Iraq. So in the near future look out for my Blook Why is everyone else able to catch fish: A diary of a crap angler.

for more info on Tucker Max and the new strain of publishing check outthe new york times article

Timeline of blogs - Where did it all begin…some 20+ years ago

Click on the image for a large view

The most noticeable events of blogging can be summarised below;

• 1983 - 2001 (Before HTTP appears) - Blogging evolves out of online diaries, esentially online forums and messageboards. Click HERE to see how wikipedia defines an online diary.
• 1997 The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz.
• 1999 - Blogger.com is launched by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan
• 2002 - Blogs gain extensive converage on how they transmit, communicate and shape news stories.
• 2003- Blogger.com bought by google for an undisclosed amount of money.
• January 2005 - Bebo is born, ‘Blog early Blog often’ Click HERE
• 2005- Blog death threat sparks a debate
• July 2005 - Bebo is relaunched
• 2007- Tim O’Reilly proposes a bloggers code of conduct Click HERE

Blogging software…what are the benefits of it?

I’ve already mentioned and demonstrated some of the features of existing blogging software in my previous post so it is time to focus on the benefits of this technology.

There are two different perspectives we could consider. Firstly, there is everyday users like ourselves who setup blogs with the intention of waffling away about our daily lives. Then there are businesses who use blogs as an effective form of communication, advertising and general promotion about the company in question. If we take a look at the business benefits to be achieved from maintaining an active blog and having a considerable volume of unique users visit it, they could be summarized into ten bullet points:

1. Increase your website traffic
2. Maintain a rapport with your customers
3. Update your information more easily and quickly
4. Market your expertise
5. Increase your credibility and visibility
6. Let your visitor know you better
7. Have higher search engine ranking
8. Convey your idea across more easily
9. Easily create a group of followers
10. Reach a bigger market

http://www.internetstrategyblog.com/archives/the-10-benefits-of-blogging/2006/12/14

The benefits for everyday consumers of using blogs firstly involve the community which is created by people being able to visit your blog, read the articles you have posted, comment on posts and link back to your articles from their blog. Secondly, some people use blogs as a means to reflect on matters in their lives by writing particular articles which bare some meaning to them. This in turn can help lead them to like minded individuals which I’ve already mentioned and also blogs can often disclose information far in advance of printed media.

People running their own blog also has similar benefit to that of a business blog as many people seek to attract publicity and attention about their own lives whether it be music they have created, a unique talent or talent at journalism. The fact is that due to the large volume of blogging software alternatives, there is usually at least one that provides the features and usability to make it a beneficial experience.

Re: Blog software & their unique features

On this website (designed to be of primary use for journalists) there is a useful link which explains jargon associated with blogging. Furthermore this page gives an unbiased review of the blogging software available:

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050714gardner/