Incestuous Tech Conference Syndrome (ITCS)

When I was a wee lassie at the University of Buffalo, an undergrad in an advanced English program featuring some of the most respected literary figures of our time as professors, I learned a couple of things. 1) it pays to have someone type your paper for you when you own a crappy IBM selectric typewriter and your entire grade depends on that one paper. 2) Great writers don't study writing. They study everything else.

The best of my teachers and mentors told me: wrap yourself in textures of what there is, not in the exercise of writing. Writing is not for studying. Philosophy, religion, politics, ethics, world history those are subjects to study. Read everything about them, because writing is merely the act of understanding them out loud.

That got me thinking about our collective Technology, Web 2.0, blogging and social media conference fetish. What we really learning in attending this never-ending run of conferences -- more about technology, more about blogging, about journalism, about social software and social networks, more about the Internet, more about online communities.

We're drilling down, sure, but are we drilling up? Or at least sideways?

I don't think so.

What I liked about SXSW was that it was more than tech, more than blogging. It was music and film; it was about artists performing and sharing. And even that fell short of what we should be doing more of.

We need to get out of our own way, our own heads, and our own networks to be truly social.

Can we send bloggers to conferences and gatherings outside of tech, off the web, and see what that does to our writing? To the blogosphere? Can we encourage some tech and web2.0 sponsored conferences that have nothing at all to do with what we're doing? Is the best way to break into new formats and platforms, to inspire innovation, to discover what seems completely unrelated?

I think it could help move us beyond this annoyingly noisy barrage of blogspeak, at least a little bit, at least until some of us remember how to write, or at least offer new contexts for our content. I know I'm game.

Tags: blogging, technology, web2.0, conferences, sxsw, social media, Internet, writing = Powered by Qumana

burningman too?

ferget the web2.0 conferences--dragoncon and burningman are coming. weesh! Bruce Eisner says he'll be posting if he can. Two guesses from which event. ;-)

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dragoncon coming to the ATL

Chriminy, there's going to be a parade too!

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Meebonogami

Geo-Tag-Based TV!

wee!



Go, Denise. ;-)

Double Go, Stavros.

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With the web becoming riverized, i guess pagecount doesn't matter anyway

Our favorite inventor and bloggerfather Ev Williams has an excellent post about traffic, page views, how the old web metrix don't work re: the  new web flow of conversation, etc. Because we now connect and communicate BEYOND the textual hyperlink, page views aren't what they used to be. Poor site design that boost page views by site elements loading individually, those visiting through widgets and RSS feeds--and I'll add the incredible number of referrers coming through misleading or irrelevant search engine results--these are just some of the reasons why a page view isn't a page view isn't a page view.

Ev says...

But Ajax is only part of the reason pageviews are obsolete. Another one is RSS. About half the readers of this blog do so via RSS. I can know how many subscribers I have to my feed, thanks to Feedburner. And I can know how many times my feed is downloaded, if I wanted to dig into my server logs. But I don't get to count pageviews for every view in Google Reader or Bloglines or LiveJournal or anywhere else I'm syndicated.

Another reason: Widgets. The web is becoming increasingly widgetized—little bits of functionality from one site are displayed on many others. The purveyors of a widget can track how many times their javascript of flash file is loaded elsewhere—but what does that mean? If you get a widget loaded in a sidebar of a blog without anyone paying attention to it, that's not worth anything. But if you're YouTube, and someone's watching a whole video and perhaps even an ad you're getting paid for, that's something else entirely. But is it a pageview?

Go read it all.

Tags: ev williams, page views, metrix, blogging, tech, web2.0, myspace, widgets, ajax, traffic = Powered by Qumana

Did I say that I think the YellowGatr should put some ads on its site?

I mean, rivers are expensive if not expansive. Personally, I recommend my friends from Qumana for a river of customizable blog ads.


Without a paddle.

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Okay Cool--I think I'll Subscribe to THIS version of the big dogs' feeds

I LOVE YELLOW!!!! And, How Handy! I can look Yellow Gatr: Big Dogs anywhere I am, sort of like being mobile except right now I happen to not be mobile, but you never know, and on one page I see what the leading forefathers of tech are saying, 24x7. In YELLOW! With one click, their intellect is streaming right into my browser.

Awesome! I don't have to go to their sites at all. It's like a river of content (ROC) coming right at me. Hey, that's the airport identifier for Rochester, New York, the city of my birth! Synchronicity!

The web is ever expanding. More people, more access, more content, more rivers, more bridges. More Money! We can all benefit from this aggregation of feeds -- making these can't-live-without-em sites more accessible is the job of technologists who want to empower users.

The more accessible the content, the better the Web, right? Wow! Hot Damn!

Tags: river of news, aggregation, debranding, RSS, dave winer, shelley powers = Powered by Qumana

the school bird flu

School started for us Cobb County residents on August 14th, approximately 10 days back. Two days ago--a mere week after stepping through the hallowed doors of her elementary school -- Jenna caught some variation of the bird+flu+sinusitis+tonsillitis+plague+bronchitis+mad+cow+disease. In other words, it's a motherfucker. And that's no pun, as I now seem to have been contaminated with the H3193 virus, which I hear can last up to seven years, three months.

Home schoolers, have I told you enough on this blog how much I heart you? How brave and smart I think you are? How I yearn for your guts, your courage, and your tenacity? How if only I didn't have to spin yarns for clients by day and night, and if I had more than one child who desperately demands socialization--I too would home school, not because of my philosophy or religion, but for the reason that makes the most sense to me: GERMS.

I have entered that germ-yard that is my child's school on five occasions in the last two weeks: sneak a peek, meet and greet, drop off bean bag chair for class, pick up sick kid, walk sick kid back to class after doctor.

Each time, I have been completely coated with my own child's saliva from continual hacking and respirations of nebulizer treatments past. I thought I could absorb no more crud, and yet, I found myself bathing in the germs of dozens of sweet mutants exhaling fire from their lungs. Today, Jenna announced that every kid in her class was sick. I know, I said. Because I have what all of you have. Oh. My. God. I. Feel. Like. Crap.

I think that all of the families in a given grade either need to decide to home school, or move in together full time--one big commune, so we swap everything we have DNA-wise, resulting in some sort of survival of the fittest or best insured evolution--so that there are no strange germs at school, nothing new to get sick with, but instead one giant cesspool that we all call home.

Who's in? You? You? Come on, and bring the lozenges.

Tags: bird flu, back to school, bronchitis, sinusitis, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, malariaitis = Powered by Qumana

make-a me smile

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christopher clockerb locke @ krugle

get trippy w/ RB and see his hair, growing out nicely and making him look all of 16 again. ;-)

Before the appetizers arrived, Laura and I got talking about the early web when there was basically only one browser. Sure there were Cello and Lynx, but everybody was using Mosaic, which was developed at NCSA in… “Damn, now where was it? Someplace in Illinois, I think…” As I’m hopelessly searching my fast-failing memory, the guy next to us at the bar says: Urbana-Champaign. Correct! And just like that, he’s a third party to our rambling historical review. As my erstwhile co-conspirator Doc Searls might have said: dinners are conversations.

Tags: fall out boy, christopher locke, rageboy, doc searls, david weinberger, krugle, Urbana-Champaign = Powered by Qumana

Blacks are Twice as Racist as Whites in South Africa, OR What a Dumb Fucking Poll

From Mike Y Blog? Golby, new South African nationwide research, conducted by Plus 94 Research, a marketing research company and affiliate of the Gallup group, claims that black South Africans are twice as racist as (not to be confused with "sick to death of"?) whites when "seeking out services in public places." Precisely:

"Some 44% of respondents claimed to have experienced an attitude from Africans they believed bordered on racial discrimination, against 27% who had received similar treatment by whites when seeking out services in public places."

Yeah, well, there you have it. I knew there was something about them I didn't like. They're a bunch of bloody racists. Plus 94 Research tells me so and the Sunday Times, our largest-circulation paper, spells it out. The poll results headlined this past Sunday's edition, which was avidly snapped up by countless millions who've always suspected our black brothers and sisters of having it in for us.

It goes to show. The Nats weren't so bad after all, eh?

Pity about the Indians, Muslims, coloureds and the hoi-poloi. The poll tells us they really get stick from our indigenous rednecks.

"This is something that people need to know because it’s a reality for many people when dealing with a security guard or a bank.”

Well Heck Yeah!

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lunchtime nap, co-worlds, and Legends

Sometimes my work takes the form of sliding back onto the pillow and letting my thoughts go crisscross up and down until I fall asleep. AKA: I take a nap. Today's noontime exercise in zzzzs produced a certain dream about a certain service that was essentially, in non-dream terms, a virtual world called LegendsDM (trademarked? try dreammarked).

In Legends, cool old bands from different time periods, as well as the products/commercials from certain eras--the designs just looked like different time periods--were streaming and alive. The dream feeling was one of being bombarded, but not in an unpleasant way, with a blast from the past.

Imagine the excitement (confusion?) for those product placement people in old media scrambling to get old Coca-Cola bottles or old beer -- Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one -- commercials running in Legends in context with the bands from the same time period performing, all with links out to today's versions.

In the jumpy-dream way I experienced Legends, I noticed different compartments/portals/areas--what are these worlds inside of other worlds called--co-worlds?--where it felt like the Brady Bunch era, and another where a band was playing looking like Duran Duran, but that must be because I read an article recently saying Duran Duran was going to play live inside Second Life.

Maybe some remnant of that article, combined with jenna's 50's sock hop dance from Friday, are what streamed all of these nostalgic co-worlds into my head, under the brand name of Legends, while I slept instead of doing what I was supposed to do, or maybe visiting Legends is exactly what I was supposed be doing.

Tags: co-worlds, coworld, legends, music, virtual world, games, web2.0, tech = Powered by Qumana

so who said "small is the new big?" (and better yet: why?)

We all know that Jeff Jarvis says that he said "small is the new big" a day before Seth Godin said it (6/6/2005) and then made it a book with weird cupie-doll figures on it. Seth says, hey it was a coincidence--better yet, synchronicity. Wanna buy a book?

BUT WAIT! The phrase dates back even earlier. Would not real journalists check such things? Pshaw! It's the dawn of new media. New is the new old!

Says wikipedia, the phrase dates back at least to 2001 when Big is the New Small supplanted Small is the new Big in playing off the costliness of small electronics in the 90s.

We all know you can't trust Wikipedia though. I mean. Especially. Where. Important. Matters. Are. Concerned.

But what of this small is really big notion? Are there other instances of not just coining a phrase, but putting the content of it into context?

Oh my! Wouldn't you know it? In a strike of synchronicity, the Boston Globe used "Small is the New Big" in March of 2005 -- more than a YEAR before the Jarvis-Godin epiphany! in an article about Sarah Susanka, who, in 1998 developed the Not So Big House concept, which tackles the how-tos of putting spacious-feeling abodes into small spaces.

I wonder who reads the Boston Globe. Not suggesting anything. I'm just thinking out loud. Maybe suggesting. After all, this is new media. Suggesting is the new fact checking.

Alex Beam's rant about all of this x is the new y shite, entitled Nonsense is the New Sense, is good. Oh yes it is, and at first I wondered if Jarvis or Godin had read it.... but then I remembered, who needs old articles when you've got new media?

;-)

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where the boys are...

mobile edition.

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Golf Origins

this one's for gary turner.

No Problem!

My n key is fixed! What you have to do, for the record, is turn the laptop on it's head--or it's back--in other words pretend the screen is the keyboard, and THEN you can use gravity to pull the little keyholder prongs out, and THEN you get it all aligned, and THEN you push until you either break the keyboard or the key snaps sort of into place. And THEN you type again. RB IMing from Krugle central gave me the tip to clean under the key. I figured out how to break it all on my own.

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busiess opp

keyboard assistat wated - every time i eed to type a "N" i IM, you will type it for me. 24x7 coectivity a must. fluet i web 2.0 ad cosoats.

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oh o!

The key came off (okay i pulled it off tryig to clea out crumbs) of my "N" (pressig the loose rubber stopper there) of my acer laptop. I cat get it back o!! What do i do? It has this little lippy thig that seems to have correstpodig doohickys o the uderbelly of the plastic key, but they dot lock i.

aaah!

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Robert Scoble Going In for Skin Thickening Treatments...

Scoble Plays the Nigeria Card

Scoble Says "Ad Hominem Card" Instead of "Reverse-Race Card" on Nigerian President's Son

Scoble Perseverates Over Argumentum Ad Hominem Infinitum

Scoble Incites Dozens to Defend Microsoft's Stupid Live Spaces

Oh, Ken says it better--I'm done writing headlines for this.

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in the news on business blogging...

Atlanta biz bloggers score one for the home team in Business Weeks' small business column, where Toby Bloomberg and yours truly, along with Teresa Valdez Klein of Blog Business Summit, share our thinking on about internal blogs.

"TALKING SPACE." However, because blogs are bottom-up in nature, they sometimes require a change in thinking about employee communications, says Jeneane Sessum, a social media consultant based in Atlanta. The traditional top-down communication approach, where the CEO or HR manager pushes policies and procedures out to employees, can be subverted by an internal blog, which is communal by nature.

An employee [[should be "internal blog can"]] blog will serve more as a "...centralized talking space for company news and views, customer wins, etc.," Sessum explains. "Blogs put the nexus of control, at least from a communication standpoint, in the hands of employees, thereby empowering them. At the same time, because internal blogs remain within the firewall, they are a good venue for honest communication and collaboration in a relatively safe environment for businesses that are just getting used to the idea of blogging and may view it as sort of renegade."

Since I only half know what I'm talking about at any one time, I point you to Toby, my Atlanta blog buddy.

Bloomberg adds a word of caution: "Although it's not a top-down strategy, unless management and the company culture support this type of informal communication it is set to fail before the first word is posted. It's critical that the company provide training and encouragement, especially in the beginning stages."

"The lines of communication between departments can be difficult to maneuver. Blogs can be a means to easily share information that might not be perceived as relevant to one department, but critical to another. An added benefit is that informal team-building occurs naturally. There is ongoing personal communication, so people begin to know and understand folks from areas of the company they might not have had a lot of contact with."

Tags: BusinessWeek Online, Business Blogging, Blogs, Corporate Blogging, Tech, Web2.0, Toby Bloomberg, Teresa Valdez Klein = Powered by Qumana

I'm Sorry Sir, Sammy Davis, Jr. is the Only Black Man We Own.

I knew a man Bojangles
Always danced with worn out shoes
The silver hair, a ragged shirt
And bare ragged paints
The old soft shoe
He jumps so high
He jumps so high and
Then he lightly touches down

i met him in a New orleans cafè
He was down and out.


My first take on myheritige.com (family 2.0 site) was: Hey, this is fun. You can see I played in the posts below -- the celebrity matches of me and scoble.

George was working on his computer, four feet away, and he had just lost an email he was writing that was FULL of important information--ARRGH I know that frustration, and before sleep, I showed George my celebrity matchup collage. We laughed--he said, I think it works by focusing in on certain parts of the face and then matching a part to each celebrity. I think that's about right. I said, now let me see how it does with you, and uploaded a photo of George.

I met him in a cell in New Orleans, I was
so down and out.
He looked at me to be the eyes of age,
as he spoke right out.
He talked of life, he talked of life. He laughed, clicked heels instead.

You have GOT to be kidding me. First, even though I selected MALE, it couldn't deliver more than 6 men, and the only black man they could come up with was Sammy Davis Junior? I tried it two more times to be sure.

Mister Bojangles
Mister Bojangles
Mister Bojangles,
dance!

Never mind that I don't see a black face on the myheritage.com site. I understand from a business perspective. LOTS of white people I know are obsessd about genealogy, searching for that missing relative who will link them with a king, a queen, or a celebrity. But imagine what a tool billed as "The most powerful genealogy search engine on the planet" could do if it were to tackle the REAL genealogy challenges of the black Americans whose relatives missed the Ellis Island Experience. Or at least recognize variations in skin tone as part of its matching algorithms.

From the Faces of the world's 4,000 most famous men and women, this is it?

He danced for those at minstrel shows and county fairs
throughout the South.
He spoke with tears of fifteen years how his dog and he
traveled about.
His dog up and died, dog up and died, after twentyyears he still grieved.

Maybe that'll be what Family 3.0 is about. In the mean time, don't be too concerned. The technology isn't completely lame on the layers of humanness around ethnicity: George Sessum, meet your long lost cousin, Joi Ito. Your two photos actually share a resemblance. Maybe there's a connection.

I'm adding on to this post, because I'm sleepy and I shouldn't be writing at 6 in the morning without sleep, because as I think in a broader context, I'm wondering is it the skin COLOR thing that's bothering me, which actually it isn't, because of course we're all mixed (sorry my white supremicist brothers), or is the stupidest part that Sammy Davis, Jr. is the closest match they can deliver, probably BECAUSE of his skin color, even though the two look NOTHING alike, not even in the pix. I mean a couple of the other photos look more like George...... Oh hell. They do NOT. None of them work. No, I'm standing by my ire. 4,000 of the world's most famous people, and you give me Sammy? Naw. Nope. Not okay.




He said, I dance now at every chance in honky tonks
for drinks and tips.
But most of the time I spend behind these county bars.
He said, I drink a bit.
He shook his head and as he shook his head I heard someone ask, please

Mister Bojangles
Mister Bojangles
Mister Bojangles,
dance!


Tags: my heritage, race, ethnicity, america, slavery, genealogy, joi ito, george sessum, kissing cousins, web2.0, tech, photo recognition = .

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If you've ever met doc, you know this:

He's a very special man.

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I remember when tech was young, me and susie had so much fun...

AS IF!!!!!!!!!!!!! (but nice to dream)

a case for kiko cash

i'd bid up kiko on ebay, buy it for twice the $50K, and consider the $100K a PR / crisis management expense, well spent to squelch fears that web 2.0 is having, errr, issues. Use the product as an internal tool, stick it into your widget set, whatever. It's a nice little feature-tool. good logo. nice branding. sweet domain. You've spent money on worse things.

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nighttimelullabye

the place where I come from is a small town

they think so small

they use small words

-but not me

I'm smarter than that

I worked it out

I've been stretching my mouth

to let those big words come right out



--peter gabriel, big time

my head gets wound all inward when i hear the talking blogheads tell me what blogging is and what it isn't. the noobs don't get me wrong, i'm glad they're here, but damn if we shouldn't get some Freshman Friday deal and throw some whip cream pies in their face just payment for warming up the joint while they were on conference calls in jobs with benefits and shit.

one guy tells me the a-list is thisnthat and its so funny because who cares if they link or don't link, goddam look at your referrer list now a days it's all google anyhow and people are coming from lamebrain aggregators that don't give a shit about sending traffic to your blog, and now winer wrote an app for scoble so he can read techcrunch while at the techcrunch party instead of like 'beingthere' and that strips out everything but pure content, 24x7 all the content you can eat all the time. wtf? we built an all you can eat buffet and what does it matter if they din't bother putting any of those overdone spaghetti noodles with the meatsauce you a slop on top?

i am not content with content. i want context. when i split off from my bad decision content factor relationship, i thought--start the context factor, because content without context is like a Trojan without a receptacle on the end. it's just messy and uncomfortable--no place to go with what you got. i'm just thinking out loud here.

anyway, the a-list thing, you guys we gotta drop that crap. it's not a list. it's not a-list. it's HIM and HIM and HIM. And sometimes HER. Call them on it. Don't give them the power ranking. Say this: Dave don't be a jerk--Amyloo is great but she's not the only woman you know. Say Jay, link to someone who DOESN'T link to you once in a while. Say Doc, i'm gonna send you an email of the best blogposts by noobs each week. Doc's the good guy. We're all busy. Let's be each others interns. Stretch yourself.

or if you don't want to stretch, then by all means sit on the couch, pour a cool glass of ice water or what have you, light up a cigarette for me because i can't, smoke it baby smoke it, and eat me some of those milk chocolate Lindt candy balls, and write. just write. don't write ABOUT anybody who blogs. do two posts right now that don't link. kay. think don't link.

then you can go back to your blogging as usual.

i might do nothing but comment for a week. i think shelley did that one time when she quit. she just commented. that's smart. it's like going a-callin'.

so nuf about me. just catching up and going to sleep.

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some of that old time religion - this post got lots of play for being playful

How to Get Fired Because of Your Blog

...With apologies to blogger.

Do you blog at work? Do you surf porn blogs like there's no tomorrow while you're supposed to be problem solving? Do you think management is so stupid that they'd never think to search you up on Google and find out you've been posting photos from the ladies bathroom since you bought your cool new camera phone three months ago? Well, you're probably right. But that doesn't mean one of your pesky co-workers won't blow you in.

These days, many companies are laying off employees by the hundreds, even thousands. You don't have any job security, even if you think you do, so what difference does it make if you blog at work? The fact is, you'll probably be let go next week anyway, so don't give away your intellectual property (your blog and what you know about blogging) with the illusion that anyone at your company will care. Once you've given them a ten-word definition of blogging, that's all they'll need to sound smart at lunch, on the golf course, and at that next emerging technology conference.

If you think your blogging will make you a star at work, start looking at your company's severance policy today!

How to Get More Hits than Your Company's Website

At the same time, your blog can be a powerful tool for making you more powerful than the company that currently pays your salary (the one that provides you with two days funeral leave if your spouse kicks the bucket). It's very common for bloggers who are intelligent, who write every day, and especially who take pictures of the loading dock at Microsoft, to become far more popular and better liked than the companies they work for. Research from Perseus shows that 97% of bloggers land better jobs once they've been shit canned for blogging at work.

You see, there is a God!

In fact, getting fired because of your blog is one of the smartest marketing moves you can make. Straight to the top of Daypop, Technorati--hey, Andrew Sullivan will probably shoot you a link. That's right. You can be out from under your boss's thumb and working for the coolest new startup, or even the Dean campaign, tomorrow. If you play your cards right.

Layoff or Shitcanned: Two Paths to Blog Freedom

The truth is, your position will probably be eliminated on Wednesday of this week. (They like to let you go right before a holiday weekend, to give you some extra family time, let you stuff yourself with turkey and numb your brain with tryptophan, decreasing the likelihood you'll come back Monday and blow away the Human Resource Manager after you pack your little poetry magnets from the last COMDEX show in your take-home box.) It doesn't matter if you're careful with your posts or not. Corporations have the most uncanny ability to overlook talent, brains, and tenacity in favor of ass kissing and the status quo.

With this in mind, you have two options for shedding your current employer: Layoff (involuntary separation), or Getting Fired (terminated, separated with cause).

Both of these approaches have their good points. For instance, getting laid off usually means you get a severance check, which means you'll have a couple week's salary to spend on your first COBRA health insurance premium. On the other hand, blogging something worthy of getting fired for means you'll be famous on the Web, and may land that book deal you've been hoping for. Or at least a spot on Instapundit's blogroll.

Blogging: Just Do It!

Knowing that you won't have a job much longer anyway, we here at allied recommend that you blog everything. Absolutely everything. Blog about your lame-brained boss. Blog about your loser clients. Blog about the accounting department do-nothings who have fine tuned the art of looking busy while instant messaging their pals in prison but can't cut you an expense check until February of 04.

Blog about your mother, your brother, your fat aunt Sally. Blog about your priest and that little problem he has keeping his hands on the prayer book. Blog prose, blog poetry, blog photos, blog jokes. BLOG TIL YOU DROP.

Because if you think you're career is safe the other way, you're just fooling yourself.

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in praise of bloghims

In Praise of Blog Brothers and Incomplete Ideas

I like it when I get time to write. Write what I want. Here. Not what I get paid to write. Out there.

I remember when we used to finish one another's ideas. Here. A few years back. My favorite thing was to bake words with my blog brothers. That was then, before blogging required that every post be a well-formulated thesis--an entity in and of itself--flawless and final in it's daily decree for the masses to imbibe and link to. That was before pundits mattered.

Then, we jammed some. I might throw out an idea. Half baked. Not baked. Raw. Uncooked. Kind of embarrassing, but all our asses were hanging out anyway. Who cares. And someone would grab it. Gary often. And he'd throw in a handfull of chocolate chips, or he'd mean to anyway, but usually it was coffee beans. Gary was never good at telling those things apart. And then Mike would go off on the thing. And I mean off. Just off and run with it. Jesus. For the love. He would ramble and gamble and put in "print" things that'd make us say, mostly, "Oooooo. Eeeeeks." And how the hell are we supposed to download that, freak? Then Frank, you know, he'd toy with Mike, usually with a joyful zest, but Frank, man, you don't know, he can go off, you just don't see it much, well more now than then. Frank, he'd take it and recap the ingredients so far and then flip the thing right over. Just turn it over. Til you said, OH, I thought it was a pancake, but it's a bison burger! HA! where's my syrup? So Tom would come along, and by crap if he didn't take the damn burger and mold it into the finest fucking filet you've ever seen--and we're going, "Shit, we made this pancake-burger and look at Tom's filet with all that red juice, see he did it again." At which point Marek would walk in and just sit down on that piece of meat. I mean just sit the hell down on it as if he were planting his behind in a leather-backed office chair. As if that's what you do every single day with a fine piece of filet--you just sit your ass on it. And if we were all truly blessed that day, Rageboy would rouse himself long enough to come fuck up the whole works by using the creation as high-gloss latex paint, not as food at all, and we'd go--HA! It's all colors now! And then we'd start all over looking at the entire room, not just the frying pan.

My blog brothers. We made lots of things together out of posts back then.

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in 2002 when world come undone, blog kept me aliving

from sept of 02....

Blog Therapy

cold stone sleep feathers dust damp night
lantern stove light wood appear among
man woman betrayal dance leaving coming
going esteem shame blame run faster guilt
trance eyes closed thoughts come stories
undone swirling starts....
trigger.
stop!
blog.
this is how we heal
this is how we heal
this is how we heal
this is how we heal
this is where we heal.

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wow, i remember when i went part-time at ketchum...

THIS seemed so big at the time. Little did I know that eventually part time would give way to no time, then on my own time, then solo business building, a mistaken partnership, and back out on my own. And all of that AFTER the dot-com bust, following the boom when I worked 12 hour days like I'm doing now.

It seems like I was 22 when I wrote this. It was just four years ago. Time. Keeps. On. Ticking...

Here's how it felt then...

-------------------------

Taking a Chance on Me

I've been working full time for 20 years now. And for me--well you all know me well enough to know that full time is full time plus pulling all the stops out, doing whatever it takes for a cause or colleage--which means that full time is more like 50-60 hours a week. Sometimes more. Not all my dutiful nature, mind you. I got a lot out of my work--I always have since writing has always been involved. So I loved work as much as work loved me. The star performer, the one the client always wants to work with. Meantime, have a baby why don't you, and raise her at home while you work full-plus time, trading care for her off in random intervals with your husband, who is also trying to further his career and take care of business, and suddenly project after project after project, goal after goal after goal, time ticks by. And where did you go? We go?

So I made a decision yesterday, and my employer was kind enough to accommodate me. I'm going part-time. Starting with 30 hours a week, which will give me the freedom to work just the hours Jenna's in school when Pre-K starts August 12th. Doesn't sound like much of a cutback, but when you realize I was working 50 just to be able to bill 40, it could mean a lot. What that means I think, first, is nights and weekends without work. Wow.

Wow. I can't remember the last time I didn't work a weekend to try to keep up, bill the hours. Be the star. The one they think kindly of. That's the wonderful world of consulting. Billability, the double-edged sword. It's sweet when times are good--look how valuable I am = see how much I bill. But in tough times, both economically and personally, the struggle to fulfill your commitment to the organization (when you're an overly consciensous worker like me) can wear you down, wear you out. burn you out.

I'm worn out. And I'm doing my best to change one part of the equation that's burned out my passion. By going part time I think I can give the BEST of me to work and the BEST of me to myself and my family. It's a start anyway. One change at a time, so to speak.

Next week, for the first time in my grown up years, I am a part-timer.

yikes.

wow.

That's all for now.

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burn baby burn

from march 2002, and sometimes it still feels this good hot kind of way.

---------------------------

Doc defines marketing in terms of the elements today in one of the most simplistic and inspiring uses of logic I've seen. He says:

"Somewhere back when Cluetrain was forming out of primordial conversations, I told Chris Locke my Theory of Marketing, the logic of which was slyly intended to scare potentially boring clients away from my consulting business. It went like this:

Markets are Conversations; and
Conversation is fire. Therefore,
Marketing is arson."

I suppose that's why I came away from my reading of Gonzo Marketing with this impression:

It's okay.
incite.
spark to flame.
ignite.

Why does fire seem such an appropriate metaphor for what we are doing right now, right here, on the net? The reasons are plentiful:

Conversations are as primeval as fire, one of the earliest discoveries of mankind.

Aren't we sending smoke signals to anyone who will listen?

Fire levels and clears, readying the land for fresh growth.

Fire evokes fear; those who handle it wrong will get burned.

What we are doing is hot, dangerous, exciting, thrilling, and romantic.

Fire is destructive, but what succumbs to its force is often rickety and unstable.

Enter the arsonist, who creeps through the night, explosive power under wraps, until, POW! The only way to wake up whitey....

The only way to lay business as usual to waste, clear the land, sweep away the debris.

We're burning and building right now.
Burning, building, and blogging.
Can't you hear the sirens?

Spark to flame, ignite.

Tags: social software, web2.0, tech, marketing, cluetrain, gonzo marketing, locke, doc, and weinberger = Powered by Qumana

sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

discuss.

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Reading BMO is Easy

"I’m approaching fifty and my ass has never seen the light of day." --BMO

better still:

"It's turtles all the way down."

you could write a book off that guy BMO.

And don't forget to read about his very good day too.

Tags: BMO, BMO, BMO, BMO = Powered by Qumana

Just got david weinberger's new kid's book on LuLu

I can't WAIT to read My 100 Million Dollar Secret with Jenna!!!!

(thanks Mr. In the Know Stowe for the tip!)

Tags: david weinberger, novel, children, my 100 million dollar secret = Powered by Qumana

when success at blogging means you have no time to blog...

you really have to sit down and think about stuff. or recline. either way. just don't fall asleep. because that won't solve anything. unless it's the middle of the night. in which case it's helpful.

Tags: deep thoughts = Powered by Qumana

Number 5....

Chalk.

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Booking Band for International Hotels and Resorts - Music by Montage

An interruption in our regular programming....

Music by Montage is a working band bringing first-class musical entertainment to upscale venues in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Working with artist management and booking agencies as well as Food and Beverage (F&B) Directors at major hotels and resorts -- including Gary's Motown Club in Nagoya, Japan; Club Narcissus in Bangkok, Thailand; The Grand Hyatt's JJ's Club in Hong Kong, and Club Quattro in Osaka, Japan -- Montage works with the finest hotel nightclub operations throughout the world.

Clients rave about the professionalism of the band's members, who are among the highest quality entertainers in the business. They are regularly booked for three to six month engagements at five-star resorts and hotels.

Now, I don't have a lot of expertise in artist management and production, but I have a husband of 20 years with a professional, road-ready, working band, passports in hand, and some great musicians (in Montage and in other acts George works with). I also have a network of blogger colleagues and friends globally. A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN. If any of you are connected to the F&B folks at major hotels and resorts, or if you have friends who book acts for international corporate and hotel/resort engagements, you KNOW where to find us and where to send them for videos, songlist, bios, and more.

AND: I'm now taking bids from my web design friends on making the rather amateurish Montage website I tried my best with into something a little more presentable. Of course, links/credit/love given on our sites plus a taste of $ is the preferred currency. I know there are typos. George is proofing it tomorrow.

THANK YOU GLOBAL FRIENDS.

Now, Back to your regularly scheduled programming....

Tags: music, working band, hotels, resorts, international, booking agency, F&B, Hospitality, Resorts, Asia, China, Korea, Africa, Dubai, Europe, Entertainment = Powered by Qumana

knock me over with a feather

Bloogle goes beta 2.0. keeeewwwl....

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Paul Kedrosky On MS Jive Writer

 Paul Kedrosky says Live Writer feels like a blog tool designed by non-bloggers for non-bloggers. Here are some problems he encountered:

1. On setup it refused to auto-recognize my blog at its actual address. And the typically over-controlling Microsoft software wouldn't give me a manual config mode screen to set the blog up directly, simply blowing up with an error instead. I had to trick it into giving me a manual config screen by giving it the incorrect URL for my blog. Go figure.


2. The "Web" layout in the app is nonsensical. Because I have a three column CSS layout Microsoft Live Writer faithfully mimics that on screen. Except there is a problem: On the blog those two other (outer) columns have content. On the editor screen they're empty, like giant white margins that should be able to get rid of, but can't. Go back to normal view, however, and it screws up the HTML formatting, like block quotes. Great.


3. It doesn't auto-load your most recently posted stories. Instead, it forces you to go find some stories and load them in yourself. That's dumb.

Tags: Microsoft Live Writer, LiveWriter, Jive Writer, Paul Kedrosky, Blog Editors, DISCLAIMER - I USE QUMANA. = Powered by Qumana

school starts tomorrow

as you can see, i haven't exactly turned my clock around yet. it's 1:39 and i'm wide awake. shit. i hate 6 a.m. waking. I have been on my 11-11+ schedule all summer and that's how i work best. Just let me sleep in. Then the game's on.

So this next week or two will be a challenge. I haven't needed to nap all summer. Now I remember how i got through last school year with the late evening work projects: i napped in the late a.m.

poop. no time to nap now. jenna couldn't sleep. she was too excited. 3rd grade here she comes. lookout, she turns 9 in sept.

well, let's make tonight count. it's the last day of summer in the south--or at least summer with the kids calling you every 2 minutes.

carpool dropoff in 6 hrs.

Tags: back to school, carpool, claypool, sleep deprivation, industrial revolution schedule = Powered by Qumana

fun virtual layers that don't exist (yet) i don't think.

secondwife.com - swap your realworld wife for an online mate -- see who's better at getting the kids to school.

usedcarlot or sellmyride - let people test drive virtual versions of your car for sale, complete with your specific dents, dings, and awesome stereo system.

me-commerce or mecommerce.com - virtualworldizes oldworld e-commerce by creating touch/move/create-and-customize amazon.com type shopping layers -- complete with live in-store demos n stuff.

k, more?

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Tony P TV

"I want D-List celebrities."

Yesss!!

Tags: shakespierce, tv, video, phone-in = Powered by Qumana

They call it 'writer' for short - windows live writer

<rant>

why does this read like ze frank talking about knowledge, but with the exact opposite level of coolness? Why do I feel like I'm being talked to as a three year old who can now press the 'enter' key on her own? Why do I think this is stupid?

Why are they saying "Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium" and linking to something dave winer wrote SIX YEARS AGO? Blogging's BEEN a two-way communication medium from the get-go--fuck that, it's a MULTI-WAY MULTI-DIMENSIONAL communication medium. or it's not a communication medium at all, maybe it's the message, mofos. maybe blogging is 8 parts context, 2 parts content.

The last likeable thing about Microsoft was Scoble, and don't make me wander too far into that territory cause there are some weeds to be found.

Microsoft, what side of the bed did you wake up on today--stupid?

"Whether you are blogging about a vacation or a political conflict, maps are a great help in engaging the imagination of your readers."

Microsoft, who wrote that shit?

From what I've read here, I'm not moved to try "Writer" (hey kids, "Writer knows the styles of your blog...Writer also includes other views..." No motherfuckers, I AM THE WRITER. WE ARE THE WRITERS. You are Microsoft. Go make love to the enterprise. Leave the intuitive blog related tools to the folks who care about this space and go fix Vista--an OS I hope to never have to experience. And quit talking to me like I'm three.

Or maybe I'll try it tomorrow.

</rant>

Tags: Windows Live Writer, Blogging, Tech, web2.0, advertising, Qumana, Qumana, Qumana = Powered by Qumana

myspace question what's keeping me wanting

why can't i pay levi seacer right now to download Happy Love and take it with me in my car on a cd of favorite myspace music i like or on my mp3 player, because i have to leave the house right now, and the Internet should make it possible for me to NOT have to leave the song I'm listening to behind--and make sure Levi makes some bread too. Why does it have to be so much work. It shouldn't be. Distribution is flawed. Recommendation is flawed.

There is an entire Big Bang Idea waiting in human-assisted music recommendation and distribution. whatever. Tag it, flag it, pay for it, DO IT SOMEBODY.

I wanted to take Happy Love with me today. You might want to too. But we can't. And he doesn't need to let me take it for free. And I shouldn't have to go hunting around for it. Not w/ all the hooptie-doo of web 2.0 or do i have to wait for 3.0? goodness. pisses me off. i love myspace because of that. we're almost there. then it will populate 100000000 times over.

Tags: myspace, myspace music, human-assisted distribution, levi seacer = Powered by Qumana

social network myspace--notes

myspace is lame, no it's not. rupert's in control, no he's not.

listen i stand by myspace. i like that it doesn't work so well. yet. I like that everytime i'm there i can think of 22 ways to make it better. I can think of 22 more on how to make $--business models blooming. why not let users feed what music is cool out from myspace via rss, why not mashup cdbaby or itunes-likeness, let me pay $2 a song to the artists I like, not who's popular--who's popular TO ME--and i'm the source to my friends. why isn't every one of us a distribution network for music. why don't we even get 25 cents a match--humans as intermediaries powered by tech, not technology as intermediary. a top-ten-sources way to distribute music...love me, love my music because i don't have much in common with 18 year old college freshmen but i have a lot in common with tom and frank and stowe and shelley and e. and mike and gary and chris and lisa and jory and denise and 1000 other friends and i want to see their music distribution feeds off myspace, new music not the same old lame old, and i want to pay the artists and i want denise to get a quarter for making the match.

or what happened to chat on myspace and what if you could invite friends to a shared collaborative space. what if myspace powered collaboration in the communities and groups there--what if advertisers sponsored it with new google-powered search and adwords.

myspace isn't all kids. myspace is my space too--and other social spaces will be my space, but you have to understand, i like myspace because i like who is already there.

add a qumana-driven tagging utility--break me free of pre-configured tags on myspace.

what if i could host events ON MYSPACE not just announce events. getting invited to an event on myspace makes me think: oh goody, something to do online and then i find out it's in LA. i can't get to LA today. Now I DO want to know what's up in the ATL. that's good. let me pick--show me events for Online, Atlanta, Southeast. and so on. Hold some stinking online events--or bridge me to a world where I can.

i like myspace because i don't like finished spaces. I like spaces that still need work. I want to know there's still work to do. in a finished space, the world is populated and everything works, and so what. then you die.

in spaces where everyone has to lean forward to make it to the top of the hill, THAT's where community is. Community is what forms where everything isn't fixed and working and fleshed out. Community is possibility.

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Investing in Women notes

malik, arrington, ali, calcanis,  media moguls 2.0 building empires out of html and css and everywhere-allthetime onlineness. his opinion his opinion their opinion his news his network. new media women keep writing keep writing keep writing--challenge: more Planet Powers, more BlogHers. Invest $ in women to say-->build it out. build it. Go ahead.

It's a no brainer. it's a PR coup waiting. what's taking so long?

Tags: Planet Powers, BlogHer, Media 2.0, Web2.0, Writing, Opinion, Journalism, Investment, Venture Capital, Funding = Powered by Qumana

Film at 11

"How can government, police, and media not do the work of terror. That is a story."

--Tom Matrullo

update - liquids on a plane already!

Tags: liquids on a plane, snakes on a plane, LoaP, SoaP = Powered by Qumana

MySpace Music

...currently enjoying the music of myspace friend, guitarist/bassist Levi Seacer, Jr. Levi's out of prince's band and others:

"Levi Seacer Jr. started playing guitar at the ripe age of six in a small church in Richmond, California at the request of his grandmother who wanted more than the typical organ and piano sound associated with gospel music. Seacer says "I knew the first time I played the guitar that music would be a big part of my life" Little did he know that he would travel around the world to share his musical talents with many of the great artists of our time. One of these artists, in particular, was Prince. He saw the talent in Seacer while Levi was touring with Shelia E., a Prince protege. When the Revolution was disbanded, Prince asked Shelia and Levi to join his new band. Later named The New Power Generation. During Levi's seven year stay, Prince noticed many other talents in Seacer and quickly utilized them. Levi's first post as Band Leader and Musical Director led him to become Staff Producer for Paisley Park Records and finally President of NPG Records. During his term as President, Seacer and the NPG staff marketed, manufactured, and distributed "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" which has become one of Prince's biggest selling records to date. Also, 1-800-New-Funk, an album featuring various NPG artists had great international success. Independently, Levi has also worked as a producer, songwriter, session musician and music supervisor for such great artists as, The Sounds of Blackness, The Time, Shelia E., Johnny Lang, Tevin Campbell, George Clinton, Barry White, Carmen Electra, The Pointer Sisters, Gerald Alston, Monie, Mavis Staples, Nona Gaye, Elisa Fiorillo, Ingrid Chavez, Martika and many others. Levi is currently starting up his own Entertainment Media Company "Diamond Bridge" With his partner and wife Jonna Jackson Seacer. The first artist Christopher Lawrence is a very talented songwriter and musician out of Minnesota, check him out on myspace/christopherlawrenceband. Levi has received two grammy nominations for his contributions to Prince and the three time grammy award winning Sounds of Blackness. Levi was also voted as one of the 1000 greatest guitarists in the world."

Tags: myspace music, levi seacer jr., guitar, new funk, prince, R&B = Powered by Qumana

inspiration for a rainy saturday

enjoy yourself!

"don't be afraid you won't have teeth when you reach 92." ;-)

hat tip - sheila, lil mike

Tags: Louis Prima, Sheila Lennon, Lil Mike, American Spirits = Powered by Qumana

i can't tell you how bad i want to smoke 2 yrs latr

i just can't tell you how badly i want to smoke. i want to smoke ooooooo mmmmmm so badly. i want to smoke like i never smoked. i want to light up and draw one, slow, long drag up into my eye lids, back into my temples. i want to feel warm in my heart, i want to pull it deep inside, i want to sigh the biggest sigh i ever sighed, the head rush of the century, i want to tip tip tip the stem and watch the ashes fall, embers, lit tip steaming, swirling. Night air. Crisp thinking. I want to SMOKE SMOKE SMOKE. i want the weather to cool down, pre-cold september days, welcoming the sunshine, lean back in the lawn chair or float in the pool alone so as not to offend a soul and smoke smoke smoke. i want a book and a cigarette. i want my health and my smokes. i want escape and to not let my kid down. i want my clarity back and i want my lungs too. you mean to tell me we can't figure out how to make that happen yet? Science--Pshaw!!

Tags: craving = Powered by Qumana

General Anesthesia Pre-Boarding

I'm thinking that the safest and most bearable way to fly without electronics or liquids of any kind is to put passengers under general anesthesia prior to boarding, wheel them on, and bring them to consciousness at landing. No more seats--we fly on gurneys. Surgeon-like Sky Marshals can remain wake in case the pilots get out of hand. The night before travel, no food or water after midnight. Everyone's safe, boredom is no problem.

Or they could do it Phil's way and let us walk on.

Tags: air travel, planes, terrorism, flying, liquids = Powered by Qumana

Quote of the Week

"I had a Karate instructor tell me once that the Japanese word for three is the same as the word they use for 10,000. I can see that Dave Sifry and I shared the same karate instructor."
--Shelley Powers

Tags: math n stuff = Powered by Qumana

Oh, Okay, I'll link to one of his rediculous "Poor-Oppressed-Whiteboy" posts...

...because it's clear Dave is menstruating again.

Tags:  PMS, sexist, PTSD, projection, psychology, Emotions Anonymous, Alanon, local library = Powered by Qumana

carnivorous carnival - fogo de chao anniversary dinner

So tonight we ate at Fogo de Chao in Buckhead for our anniversary dinner. Never. In. My. Life. Have. I. Seen. So. Much. MEAT! Oh man, what a mouthwatering-delicacy kind of place. What an award winning all-the-meat-you-can-eat kind of place. Awesome salad bar too, complete with those soft balls of mozzarella that you just HAVE TO HAVE when you see them because they're too expensive to buy at the store, plus fresh asparagus, artichokes, roasted peppers, marinated mushrooms, black beans, rice--GET OUT OF HERE THIS IS TOO GOOD!

Then, after you finish loving the salad bar, the gauchos walk around with all kinds of meat on skewers and come up to your table and slice you some (i.e., as much as you want). Top sirloin, bottom sirloin, fillet, beef ribs, pork ribs, lamb, chicken, holy carnivorous carnival batman.

Great service, great food, great place.

Thank you, George, for a wonderful evening. Let's go back so you can slam down some more lamb. (Shhh don't tell jenna we had fun without her!)

Tags: fogo de chao, anniversar, MEAT, Brazil, atlanta, restaurants, buckhead = Powered by Qumana

On Our 20th Wedding Anniversary

On August 9th, 1986 I said, "I do." I didn't have a clue what those words would mean going forward--"I do" is something you say retroactively because you have loved someone hard enough and long enough to say it.

My "I do" seems like 5 minutes ago and 150 years ago all at once. I am married to a man I have known for 22 years--exactly half of my lifetime, all of my adult life.

I love you, George. I loved you when I was a kid and I love you now. Holy cow. 20 years. Holy cow. It's fun to look in your eyes and see them smiling, see our eyes saying back and forth to each other:  Wow, what? Tee hee. Man.

People tell you when you're 24 and getting married that it won't be easy, that love doesn't solve problems, that you can't live on love. They aren't lying when they say these things. But they also aren't saying to you that love is so many things in one instant:

Love isn't easy and it's breathlessly simple. it doesn't solve problems and it erases everything but itself. you can't live on love and love is living.

Love feels like 5 minutes and 500 years. It's childlike and ancient. It is slicing pain and a way to wholeness. It's layer upon layer upon layer of knowing. Knowing feels like death and is the context for living.

How can something be so everything at once?

I love you, George. Happy 20. ;-)

Tags: love, marriage, baby carriage, 20 = Powered by Qumana

Who's the User Now, eh?

Whatdaya know? Viacom's generating content for our blogs.

That little butterfly feeling you just had? That was the woosh of the pendulum swinging the other way.

Tags: Generate This! = Powered by Qumana

What?

Sometimes when I have way too much to do and I get all spaced out and confused, I hurt myself. Not purposely--I just become accident prone. As is such with my broken toe that is STILL mangled and killing me. And as is such today with my ear, because of a story I will share with you.

After the shower I clean out my ears gently with Q-Tips, just to get the water out, and because my hair is longish I wrap it in a towel, right, you with me? So there I am with the Towel Wrapped Hair and the Q-Tip in my left ear when all of a sudden the Towel Wrap unfurls itself and falls off to the left, knocking my arm that's holding the Q-Tip INTO my ear and jabbing the Q-Tip into my ear drum with such a force and shock of pain that my knees buckled. HELP ME MOTHER OF MERCY! OWWWWWWCH!!

I mean that Q-Tip was down my ear canal before the pain receptors in my lame brain understood the severity of the situation and yanked it out, leaving me helplessly wounded. I was blinded from the towel flopping into my face, half bent over from the nausea, and deaf from the stabbing pain across the left side of my head. I couldn't even tell George what happened for a minute or two because anything beyond a whisper reinvigorated the stabbing pain in my ear.

Tonight, the pain has settled down to a throb.

The moral of the story: Don't Wash.

Tags: ears, q-tips, towels, stupidity = Powered by Qumana

Sheila is ALWAYS Good

And she's got the goods on her blog today. Thanks to Sheila, George and I are watching the woodstock Hendrix video now -- awesome.

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The Other Most Thought Provoking Post of the Year...

"...If I crap in one hand and defecate in the other, I have done the same thing." -- The Head Lemur

And that shit's just in the comments! Wait til you read the POST!


Tags: The Head Lemur, Business Blogging, Blogging for Dollars, Pay for Posts, Blogging Methodology, $$$ = Powered by Qumana

The New New Internet

Same as the Old Old Internet from the looks of things.

Tags: Homogeny, Business, Web2.0, Business, BlogHer = Powered by Qumana

The most thought provoking post of the year...

Stowe on Context:

But today context holds its sway, and I am looking down, below the basket on the blimp, and I see the boiling ocean of despair, hate, and war, below; down where I do not want to go, where I do not want to look. And I wonder, does context hold us up, or will context pull us down? Can we skate free above this bubbling turmoil, can we show a way free of hate and conflict: or am I simply delusional in the face of entrenched and unassailable hatred and rancor? Is the Web an escapist enclave or the hope for humanity.

Tags: Stowe Boyd, Tech, Web2.0, Dafur, Iraq, Internet, Content, Iran, Lebanon, Context, Bubble, San Francisco, Israel, War, Innovation, dissonance, music, art, business, bloodshed = Powered by Qumana

Punking Qumana

You know I use Qumana. You know I like Qumana. You know the folks at Qumana have been good to me. I tell them all kinds of things about how I use Qumana, and they listen to what I have to say. They don't take all my blabbering to heart. But I tell them what I think could be better, and when I have a point, they say, Oh Okay, and then it happens.

And it's  not just me. They're relentless in following conversations from other Q users on how they write and publish online. I love the changes in 3.0 -- like how now we can play with fonts and font sizes, how BubbleShare works with Qumana, and have I said that Q has the best as-you-type spell checker in the biz?

By now everyone(?) knows that Qumana can post to all of your blogs, across various blogging platforms -- like Blogger and Wordpress and TypePad -- from a single, Qumana window. No more jumping from platform to platform to blog THEIR way--you do it YOUR way in Qumana -- Q does the work of posting it to the right blog in the proper blogging tool.

Like anything I use a lot, I find other things to do with the tool beyond the straight 'user experience' -- and yeah, i punk Qumana from time to time.

Fantastic HTML Editor for Gated Social Spaces - MySpace, BlogHer (drupal), and More

You may or may not know this, but if you send email or bulletins in MySpace, or if you blog there, you have to enter your writing using HTML. Ever notice those MySpace profiles that are ONE BIG PARAGRAPH and look like Hemingway puked vodka on the screen? Yep--those are the folks that don't know a paragraph tag could save us all a lot of trouble. Same folks that haven't learned the 'a href' secret of making a hypertext link. And I'm with them. WHY in 2006 should we have to enter our words into someone eles's service using HTML? Hey, give us a break. Typing in straight HTML is a drag. It zaps the flow.

I enter copy on my MySpace page using Qumana's "Source View." Let's say I'm writing an email in MySpace. I write my stuff in the WYSIWYG window of Qumana, format it there, and when I get it how I want, I click the source view tab and copy and paste it into the MySpace email. The formatting is perfect every time. I do the same thing with my BlogHer posts. For whatever reason, we have to enter HTML manually in our posts--I use Qumana to do it, same way I do for MySpace. Now, Qumana is compatible with Drupal, but something about the team blogging aspect of BlogHer has me confused on getting it post automatically to my BlogHer blog. It's nearly as easy to write and format in Qumana and copy the Source View into drupal anyway.

Tagging's SO EASY

I never tagged before I started using Qumana. I still don't quite understand it beyond technorati, never took time to learn about delicious--don't even know where the dots go in delicious--BUT when I first started using Qumana I noticed this TAG button. I pushed it. It said, enter tags separated by commas, so I started doing what they said. Bam --sticks tags RIGHT IN THERE, and you can enter multi-word tags, which I couldn't figure out how to do before. Something about a plus sign.

Then I got thinking, why should MySpace blogging lock users into a specific set of 15 or so tags? (That's what "categories" are in MySpace: they're tags on technorati.) SO maybe you want to tag something with "Dog Collar" over in MySpace, and you can't do that with the pre-fab tags/categories they give you -- tags like "romance and relationships" aaaah! To get around the pre-fab tags, all you do is open Qumana, click TAGS, enter your tags, click the Source View tab, and copy and paste the HTML for your tags into your MySpace blog.

NOW you have the best of both worlds--the gated community tags of MySpace AND your freeform personal tags from Qumana. Niceeee.

Ads with Posts Wherever You Go

Ads in MySpace? You can't do that! Yah well, it's my blog, and I don't know all the ins and outs, but I can put keyword ads in MySpace using Qumana in about 1.5 seconds. Just type your post in Qumana, insert a Q-Ad by clicking the Insert Ad button, the insert your tags, and finally copy the text in Qumana's Source View into your MySpace blog. Bingo--Your post is formatted, tagged, and even has an ad, all using one copy-and-paste from Qumana. NICE options to have.


So that's some of what I wanted to tell folks who have asked, what do you do with Qumana? I do some of what I'm supposed to do, and some of what I'm not.  ;-)

Tags: qumana, blogging, web2.0, tech, MySpace, BlogHer, Tags, Folksonomies, Techorati, Dog Collar = Powered by Qumana