April 02, 2004
Do you know what is the world's biggest receptacle for clutter?
your INBOX
But I guess you knew that by now.
More importantly what should and could you be doing about it - how many people had this as a new years resolution, "I must sort out my inbox"???
Help is at hand in 2 ways...
The latest David Allen Productivity Principles newsletter contains a Coach's Corner on Keeping Your Inbox Real by Julie Daniel. In this note, Daniel talks about the six types of email she sees sitting in people's inboxes. The list is in reverse order of value.
1. Read and no need for followup and no value as reference
2. Read and being kept for "reference"
3. Read and left as a reminder to do something, but not sure what
4. Read and left as a reminder to do something specific, there just hasn't been time to get to it
5. Read and processed, but awaiting a followup from someone else
6. Unread mail
The argument at Getting Things Done, and in many other personal
effectiveness approaches, is that the only thing that belongs in your
inbox is unread mail. All the other mail needs to
be deleted or properly filed away. The catch is that you must have a
process for dealing with numbers 2-5. Where do you file reference
material? Where do you put mail that needs to be responded to but you
don't have the time? When do you make the time to do that?
For those who lead a life less organised (read - more interesting) then a new tool called Lookout could solve your problems without even having to change your current inbox habits. Lookout is a tool that sits in Outlook and is able to reference all your emails, tasks, calendar items, notes, rss feeds, etc... basically if it sits in Outlook Lookout will be able to find it. Oh it's also rather much better at finding anything on your hard drive than the inbuilt file finding application.
No excuse now for not cutting through all your inbox clutter
Blogging who, what, where, and why - part II
Your appetite has been whetted and you want to get blogging so what do you do?
Depending on your levels of technical ability, likely blog production capacity, and of course your budget, there are a number of alternative ways you can start to blog, viz.
1. The easiest way to start a blog is with one of the free services online. You can be up and running in just minutes with Blogger [http://www.blogger.com], the best known of the free services, but more and more sites like moTime [http://www.motime.com] and tBlog [http://www.tblog.com] are expanding the options and tool sets available. Remember, if you want your Weblog to be interactive, make sure you choose a tool that has a built-in commenting feature so you can invite others to discuss your posts.
2. If you want a bit more power, and you have some server space and tech support onsite, you might want to consider Moveable Type [http://www.moveabletype.org] or its sister offering, Type Pad [http://www.typepad.com/] (free for non-commercial use). The advantage is that you have more ability to troubleshoot if your hardware goes down. (If your free site goes down, so do you.) Moveable Type has a number of plug-ins and extra features that make it the choice of many professional bloggers.
If you want the power to build hundreds of sites for students for example with full-featured commenting and content management, you might consider Manila [http://manila.userland.com] from Userland. The annual license to run Manila on your server is $299, and depending on how much server space you have, you can create and maintain thousands of multimedia Weblogs for a school or community. In addition, there are new open source Weblog solutions coming online on a regular basis.
3. Desktop blog programs are installed on a user's computer, and posts are then uploaded to a host server. Radio Userland is a desktop program for $35.95, which includes hosting and upgrades for a year. Start up process for desktop blogs is almost as simple as hosted services like Blogger.
However you start, start small and experiment. And become a blogger so that you can get firsthand experience in the power of the tools. Also, take the time to read and study good Weblogs, for these blogs can do much to inform your learning.
A guiding hand… is at hand!
For those who choose to go down the route of using Moveable Type (MT) there is a fantastic resource site at www.elise.com
it covers every aspect of setting up and using MT and more importantly
it's written for the technically illiterate and even has lots of helpful
pictures - it has been a saviour in the learning process.
And if you want to know anything remotely more technical, then these links will help:
Trackbacks courtesy of Lee LeFever at Common Craft - Lee has specifically gone out to produce a great document that explains in simple terms everything to do with Trackbacks that you were afraid to ask, for example:
"TrackBack could be compared to carbon copying someone on an email. Suppose you write an email to your manager and talk specifically about a person on your project team. In this case, you’d like the person mentioned in the email to be aware that you mentioned them, so you add their email address to the “CC:” line of the email. This let’s them know- “I’m talking about you, and I want you to know.”
In the weblog world, TrackBacks accomplish the same type of notification (also called a “ping”). It allows one weblogger to notify the other in an effort to say “I’m talking about you, and I want you to know.”
Referrers, pingbacks, and blogrolls courtesy of the MSDN site
Hope this goes some way towards cutting through some of the mysteries behind getting started in blogging.
April 01, 2004
If you are going to take this blogging thing seriously then
you will need to find a way of keeping yourself organised.
One thing I have found over the last few months as my interest in blogs has increased is that I am accumulating new blog sites at a horrendous rate of knots. In no time at all I have now feeds on over 100 sites that offer me something by the way of information, amusement or just downright boystoys lust.
So all this time that has been freed up by my spam filters keeping my inbox empty has now been taken up by reading over 100 sites.
That's why this article by Dave Pollard at How to save the world caught my attention.
I just can't make my mind up whether this is a bit anal or just makes perfectly good sense?
Further time saving tips can be found in the full article.
Does this help you to cut through the blogosphere clutter?
Blogging who, what, where, and why - part I
It occurred to me that as we go through this exercise a number of visitors may well be new to the world of blogging so as an added value, or as Seth Godin might call it a "Free Prize", I am going to cover off what the hell blogging is, how to get started, how to market your blog, blogs and business, and finally future trends and issues.
And in the spirit of this blog I will aim to do all this by cutting through the techy speak and use good old plain English.
So if you are sitting comfortably we shall begin.
What is a Blog?
A blog, which is short for weblog, is simply an often updated website
where the author writes in a journal style. In one sense it's a
personal online diary that is usually set out in reverse chronological
order - the newest at the top - it can allow others to post comments and
invariably points to other things on the web.
Weblogs have been around for years, but only recently have they caught
on with a full spectrum of Internet publishers. An October 2003 survey
by the Perseus Development Group [http://www.perseus.com/blogsurvey/] estimated that over 4 million Weblogs had been created by the middle of 2003, and thousands more are being created weekly.
The granddaddy of bloggers (as people who blog are called) Dave Winer who started his first blog back in February 1996 sums up what a blog is in 4 key words:
- Personal
It's done by a person, not an organisation
- Web
It doesn't get printed, it can be updated frequently
- Published
Words flow through templates
- Communities
No weblog stands alone
The full article can be found here
A more unorthodox approach to the question "what is a blog" on Robert Paterson's weblog uses the analogy of sex education and a 6 year old - yep it got my attention too - when trying to describe blogging to a corporate person:
"all they see is that I have asked them to spend even more time every day doing a form of email. They only see the act of typing and reading without the context of having a voice and finding a community. Just as a 6 year old only sees the physical act of penetration and sharing spit and misses the joy of passion and of intimacy."
Now that really does cut through.
If you need a history lesson
These might be a good starting point:
Dave Winer - The History of Weblogs
Rebecca Blood - weblogs: a history and perspective
Getting Technical
And for those newbies on blogs truly seeking a more technical spin on things then I suggest you visit Weblogs at Harvard by Dave Winer. This site will guide you through the more technical aspects of blogging but in a relatively non-techy way.
And finally
I needed some way of wrapping up this section and I liked the next article because I guess as an Englishman I can really relate to it and it is something which is engrained in our culture - and yes I know it gives us a bad reputation on occasion - the analogy between the blogging communities and that of the local pub.
Vicki Fox Smith in The Blog Herald writes "how like pubs, weblogs can become a huge part of the everyday life of both individuals and a community. Unlike the bricks, mortar, and beer on tap pubs, you get to the digital variety by simply turning on your computer and "walking" into the URL. Time and space become of secondary importance, though we often find that we want to hang out there when something big is happening in the world around us.
As readers, many of us spend a fair amount of time finding the weblogs that are a good fit for us. If we want something other than straight information or passive amusement, we want to spend out time visiting and commenting on weblogs where our ideas are welcomed and we are treated well. We want to become regulars. With a nod to Cheers, we want everyone to know our name."
I agree with Vicki's view that blogs are about communities, it brings likeminded people together, and offers a medium to exchange thoughts and views.
Blogs help in cutting through the communication clutter.