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April 26, 2006

Blogging 101Cool tools for your bookmarks

By Chris Poterala

You're searching the blogosphere for posts about a certain subject. Someone sends you a link to great blog, but it's written in French, and the whole noun gender thing stops you cold. What to do?

If you're a Firefox user, install and start using gTranslate, a great extension for the Firefox browser:

"With gTranslate you can translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. The extension uses the Google translation services to translate the text."

Very handy.

But now it's a week later, and someone asks you to send them a link to that same great blog, but you're not at your machine at work; you're at home. You're facing the dilemma many of us face: how to manage bookmarks. Exporting and re-importing booksmarks to keep two or more machines in sync is a pain.

What to do? Start by signing up for the new Google Bookmark service.. Like the other services from Google (gmail, calendar, etc.), it's easy to use.

The service is very similar to del.icio.us, letting you assign tags to bookmarks and grouping bookmarks rather than having to explicity group items in folders. It does not yet have the social networking/sharing features of del.icio.us, but I'm sure those will soon be incorporated, allowing people to share bookmarks and to see similarly tagged bookmarks from other people. I find their bookmark service a great way to let me organize and manage my bookmarks AND be able to access them from anywhere.

"But," you say, "I don't want to have to go to Google to see my bookmarks..."

I'm right there with you. I want my bookmarks available in a drop-down menu, in my browser.

The author of the gTranslate service has another great extension available; the Google Bookmarks Button, or GBB.

Install this extension in Firefox and you will then have a very handy drop-down bookmarks menu added to your browser's toolbar, providing ready access to your Google Bookmarks.

Posted by staff at 11:58 AM
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April 20, 2006

Blogging 101Stratospheric numbers endure for the blogosphere

Technorati published its quarterly report this week on the size and state of the blogosphere. Gigantic, in a word. Really, the numbers are mind-boggling:

  • Technorati tracks 35.4 million weblogs; the number doubles every six months
  • A new weblog is created every second
  • 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting three months after starting their blogs; three months ago, only 50.5% of blogs were active
  • 3.9 million bloggers (11%) update their blogs at least weekly
  • Bloggers make 1.2 million posts a day, about 50,000 an hour, with major spikes around big news events such as the London bombings and the U.S. State of the Union address
  • About 9% of blogs are spam; about 60% of pings are spam pings

Those last numbers seem a bit low to me. Maybe the spam blogs make a bigger impact because they're so annoying. Do a Technorati search on "General Motors" to see how the Allergy News blog is covering GM's earnings statement.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 10:54 AM
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April 11, 2006

Shameless Self-Promotion5 Business Blogs

Webby vote logor

We learned today that the GM FastLane blog is a nominee for a Webby award in the business blog category and for the People's Voice Award. There are only five nominees in each category. The other business blog nominees, and their own descriptions of their missions, are:

  • 5 Blogs Before Lunch: “5 Meetings Before Lunch is a marketing consultancy working with leaders of companies and marketing departments who want to advance great ideas and catalyze change in their marketing efforts.”
  • Gartner Inc.: “Gartner Blogs are frequently updated journals including opinions, news, ideas, commentary and Internet links. Gartner Blogs should not be considered Gartner research.”
  • Inc.com: “Fresh Inc. is Inc.com's Weblog. Monday through Friday Inc. writers, columnists, editors, and occasional guest contributors share their thoughts on current events, business issues and news, useful resources, and whatever else might have inspired them to log on.”
  • Development Through Enterprise: “Our goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world's poorest citizens.”

MS&L BlogWorks manages the GM FastLane blog, which is where Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and other GM executives talk about GM cars and trucks. So take a minute to vote for your favorite blog in the People's Voice contest.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 05:31 PM
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April 07, 2006

Word of MouthHow can a small business benefit from WOM and blogs?

By David Binkowski

I just finished doing a podcast on word of mouth marketing and blogs for Small Business Podcast, a web site that contains "Practical knowledge for entrepreneurs". The topic? "How can small businesses benefit from word of mouth marketing and blogs?" You'll have to tune in to hear the answer.

And you may not know this about me, but I'm actually a closet wannabee entrepreneur.

See, my degree is in Management with a specialization in Small Business Ventures & Entrepreneurship... so while I think about the big picture around my clients' brands, I secretly think about how a business owner can learn and adapt technology to benefit their small business. It was a lot of fun to do the podcast, I'll post a link once it's ready for consumption.

Posted by staff at 01:29 PM
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April 06, 2006

Labels, what do they really mean?

In a humorous and thoughtful post that begins, “Dear internet,” Powazek suggests we rid the world of the label “user-generated content.” He advocates using real words, instead of the buzzphrase du jour, to talk about what people are creating online (ie. Reviews, photos, etc). However, he does suggest an alternate term to describe the whole shebang: Authentic Media.

“Authentic media comes to you unfiltered by the global brands and conglomerates that have taken over the mainstream media. Authentic media is the raw, first-person narrative you can find on blogs and homepages. Authentic media is what happens when the mediators get out of the way and give the mic over to the people who actually have something to say.

The best part about this phrase? It paints the rest of the mediascape as inauthentic. I can live with that.”

Authentic media doesn’t work for me, either. Neither does consumer-generated media. (See here for an explanation why. ) I prefer “Unwashed Mass Media.” Or, as has been used to describe web 2.0 (can’t get away from buzzphrases) – it’s made of people!

By the way, this discussion is nothing new. Last October, Robert Scoble declared “I’m sick of hearing about ‘user created content.” So it’s an ongoing conversation with pundits continually weighing in (“amateur” anyone?)… Let’s hear your suggestions, favorite phrases, or your most-hated buzzphrases.

-Emily Betwee


Posted by staff at 01:45 PM
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April 03, 2006

Blogging 101The New NYTimes.com

The New York Times web site’s new design is much cleaner and far less a copy of the front page of their printed paper. Several commentators have called it bloglike.

The headlines are smaller, blue and underlined only in the “hover” state. (Does this mean that we can finally stop underlining links? Have usability standards at last advanced beyond Jakob Nielsen’s design for newbies with dialup connections ?).

The new nytimes.com is designed to a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, instead of 800 x 600. This is a bit daring. According to recent data from sites we manage, only 49% of Internet visitors have monitors with that resolution, with an additional 11% at 1280 x 1024. So if you’re part of the 15% of the population still stuck with 800 x 600 resolution (or if you haven’t figured out how to change your monitor resolution yet), you won’t see the full homepage.

The designers at Avenue A / Razorfish strove to get the most important elements – the top news story and photo -- within the first 800 pixels. It’s still very nice-looking.

The Times press release about the redesign highlights what is surely the most important reason for the new layout:

For advertisers, the redesign provides new opportunities to reach an even more engaged audience. The new features encourage readers to spend more time exploring and sharing the richness of NYTimes.com. Advertiser benefits include:

* Larger and more dynamic ad positions on the homepage and throughout the site
* Streaming pre-roll video ads within a new video player on the homepage, section fronts and select article pages
* Special advertising opportunities around new sections such as "My Times," "Video" and "Most Popular"

The NYTimes.com remake follows the WSJ.com redesign two weeks ago. The new wsj.com is cleaner and better organized than the old one, but I find the redesign too conservative (what a surprise). While I have great affection for the biggest (and the widest) business newspaper in the country (full disclosure: my spouse works for the WSJ), the dot portraits on the web have got to go! In 1889, when the Journal was founded, halftone reproduction hadn’t been invented and illustrations were engraved on the metal printing plates. Now WSJ artists start with photocopies of photographs and hand-stipple the dots in. The portraits are endearing on the printed page but completely anachronistic on the web.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 09:31 PM
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