Talking about blogging

Welcome to Caribbean Cornucopia

Dowsing — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:12:40 +0000

Natalie Williams, a well-known journalist from Trinidad but now living in the UK, has just launched her new blog with her thoughts about the terrible earthquake in Haiti. I know that she is determined to develop Caribbean Cornucopia into a very valuable source of news, views and ideas about life in the region. Good luck. It is a region that despite the intensive coverage of Haiti at the moment is too often neglected by mainstream media.

It is of course difficult to provide an overview of a vast region where most people live on islands with their own governments, customs and habits. Broadcast and print media tends to be very local. Maybe it is best done from outside the region.

Natalie’s other audience is the millions of Carribeans who live in the UK and other countries.

Satisfying outcome of blog talk

Dowsing — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:53:46 +0000

On Wednesday evening I gave the talk for which this blog was set up. I was a bit apprehensive about what I should be saying but it quickly turned into a conversation and some of the things in my notes remained unsaid (I will be posting some of those shortly).

It all went to prove the point the success of a talk depends more on the audience than the speaker — and the audience on Wednesday was great. It lasted longer than expected as the questions kept on coming and I fumbled to demonstrate things badly on a borrowed laptop.

And this morning a tangible result: a link from This and That, but mostly this, which was started by someone at Wednesday’s meeting of Suffolk Mac Users. That is really satisfying.

Adding video to a WordPress blog

Dowsing — Mon, 28 May 2007 08:16:41 +0000

The real purpose of this post is to demonstrate how easy it is to embed a video on the page. The simple way is to upload the video to YouTube and then bring that into the blog (WordPress in this case).

This video about the latest development in Google searching. You might have noticed an ‘i’ in front of the Google logo. They have brought together web pages, images, video and maps in the standard search. I warn you it is long, so you will have to be really interested in search to watch it all through.

Embedding a video from YouTube takes less than a minute. The instructions are at WordPress FAQs. While I will only mention multimedia in passing on Wednesday, it is very easily added to a blog. There is really nothing technical about it.

40 blogs launched every minute

Dowsing — Sun, 27 May 2007 11:38:32 +0000

There are 70 million blogs. Or there were when Dave Sifry posted his April State of the Live Web report at Technorati. With 120,000 new ones being created each day, there should be 3,600,000 more by now.

Among them is Talking about Blogging. With one incoming link, it is starting to climb up the blog rankings maintained by Technorati which provides the best way of searching blogs.

English is the second most common language for blogs. Japanese holds the number one spot.

Staying up-to-date with newsreaders

Dowsing — Sat, 26 May 2007 10:18:30 +0000

The previous post was about RSS feeds. One of the great things you can do with them is bring together all the latest information from a range of websites and blogs, of your choice. To do this you need to use a newsreader. There is a very easy to use newsreader at Google (a Google account is needed) which is a good place to start with your own news selection.

As a demonstration I have set up a newsreader account at www.newsgator.com. The user name is ‘Suffolk’ and the password ‘smug07′ . There are two folders — Mac and Photography. Select folder and feeds from all the sites subscribed to are displayed, either with the latest first or in blocks from each feed. Use Display Options to change this.)

By clicking the + sign on the folder all the feesd are shown and can be displayed individually.

Please explore and feel free to add your own feeds. Mostly sites which have feeds will have the little orange symbol . Mostly, you just have to go to ‘add feeds’ in Newsgator paste in the site URL and the feel url will be “discovered”.

On bigger sites, like the BBC, you may have to follow a link to find the RSS details for the feed you need eg Suffolk news.

Enjoy.

Blog syndication really is very simple

Dowsing — Sat, 26 May 2007 06:57:14 +0000

One of the things that helps blog get attention on the net is something called RSS. That stands for Really Simple Syndication which is a way of letting the world know what you are saying.

I won’t be going into detail on Wednesday evening but will put up here some notes on how to set up a news reader so that you can subscribe to RSS feeds which are built into every blog. It really is a great way to staying touch with any subject of interest.

This video on the Wallstrip video blog explains it pretty well. You would expect that of Dick Costolo boss of Feerburner. Wallstrip has just been bought by the CBS TV network in the US.

Why should we blog?

Dowsing — Wed, 23 May 2007 08:18:41 +0000

An interesting — to me, at least — debate has errupted in the blogosphere about why, or if, all journalists should have blogs. Much the same can be argued about people doing any job.

I have joined in the discussion today at Wordblog, saying the motivation and acquiring the ability to do it well are important. I include a link to the BBC’s guidelines for employees who blog: they are a model of reasonable rules that should apply in every business.

The discussion was sparked by Scott Karp who also gives some tips for people starting to blog (you need to scroll down to get to them). The first three are relevant to all starting bloggers and include the choice of blogging software. Scott recommends WordPress as the best hosted platform. SuffolkMac is on WordPress, so I naturally agree and will be demonstrating it at the meeting next week.

What is the difference between a blog and a website?

Dowsing — Tue, 22 May 2007 12:17:08 +0000

Mike has posted a good question as a comment on my previous — and up to now only —post on this blog. He asks “What if the difference between a blog and a website?”

That made me think. Googling the question came up with 8,300 answers, most of them different, probably. Some say it is the software, others that it is what you do. So here goes.

A weblog — blog for short — is what it says, a log, as in logbook, kept on the web. It is a series of entries like a diary but with the latest entry at the beginning rather than at the end as it would be in a paper diary.

The other big difference is that while a diary is generally secret thoughts shielded from others, a blog is intended to be read and commented on by others. The others may be friends and family or a much wider audience.

Some, as Mike has found out, are discovering that a blog is helping their businesses. Blogs, because of the software, are Google friendly — search engine optimised in the jargon — in a way which is difficult to achieve if you run-up a website in Front Page.

And yes, you can use blog software to create what looks very much like a conventional website. A photographer can have pages with details of the business, galleries and whatever else is wanted.

One of the great things about a blog is that you can have a conversation with visitors who post comments. So any more questions before next Wednesday will be very welcome. If I don’t answer them in the blog I will try to at the meeting. The time and place are here.

On preparing a talk on blogging

Dowsing — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:21:05 +0000

A few months ago I read about the Suffolk Mac Users’ Group in the MacUser magazine and decided to go along. I have found the meetings useful and enjoyable, meeting a great mix of people from those who tell us about the intricacies of colour management to those who are discovering the pleasure of using a Mac to keep in touch with family and friends.

Now it is pay-back time and I have been asked to talk about blogging at the May meeting. And it is the mix of people who come along to meetings in Ipswich that is making it difficult to decide what to say.

So, for the moment, I am planning to start with basics: what is a , why you might want one and how to set it up. But it would be great to hear from anyone who is planning to come along to the meeting about what they want to know. Blogging after all is about having a conversations, and there is no reason why we should not start as we mean to go on.

I certainly intend to avoid the one-to-many model of a talk and am hoping for lots of questions and discussion. But it would be great to have an idea in advance of what interests people so please post any suggestions/questions as comments here.