For the last two days I’ve felt horrible. Horrible actually doesn’t really describe how I feel. I spent most of yesterday in bed. All in all I think I had consumed roughly 30 over the counter pain pills, a few sleeping pills, and still wished someone could take me out of my misery. Luckily I managed to force myself to get roughly 16 hours of sleep so all is well today I hope. If I still have a liver. I think it was a migraine hitting me in 2 different directions.

Yet here I was this morning doing my job. How do you usually cope with being sick and keeping up with your blog? I notice my quality of writing goes down significantly when I don’t feel well. Normally I would have some sort of featured posts cooked up in the oven and I just just flip the switch and magically my blog would just manage to keep up with the high octane pace in which I normally cover the news. But with the holidays I pretty much used up all my reserves and then some. I feel so robbed.

I have no genius ideas to blog about. I have no huge news to report. All I have is a pain medicated hangover, the desire to lay in bed and watch movies. Yet I have 500 unanswered emails, a list as high as Mount Rushmore, and a plate full of travel plans. See the big problem I guess is no centralized way to organize my blogging life. If I was organized it would be easy to manage. But I’m just not organized enough. I envision a world where I could have my emails in the same place as my feeds. I could have prioritized ranking on both. Think Digg For The Inbox. Magically I could also share my Inbox with others when it was a collaborative project. So the 901am bloggers could view all our email and feeds in the same place. And we could add in blog comments too. So you would have Email, Feeds, and Comments so you could track all conversations coming in all mediums.

If I had this in place I wouldn’t have to write this post. I could ping Thord, or Muhammad and life would be easier. Instead I’m staring at my screen wondering how could I make life easier.

So, if you could design a blogging tool of the future what would it do?

Originally posted on January 2, 2007 @ 4:47 am

Here are 6 ways you can improve your blog, courtesy of Lifehack:

1. Display your contact information prominently.
2. Make sure commenting is enabled and working.
3. Write in a manner that is clear and easy to read for your audience
4. Use tags to categorize your content.
5. Link to the outside sources you are writing about.
6. Keep your content creative, entertaining, and vibrant.

In its current state, 901am is following numbers 2, 3, 5, and 6.

While contact information is not displayed prominently, you can click the author names to go to their respective websites and contact them through there. Conversely, you can contact Dave by clicking contact at the top of the site. You can also use the following:

http://901am.com/author/authorname

to access all the articles written by that author. For example, to access all the articles written by me, simply navigate to:

http://901am.com/author/msaleem

As far as number 4 is concerned, while content is not categorized by tags, 901am has 4 categories, editorials, features, newswire, and an ongoing New Media 100. Articles in these categories are accessible from the navigation bar at the top of the site, or the list in the right margin.

Learn more.

Originally posted on January 2, 2007 @ 1:55 pm

There was a time when you would wake up, make yourself a cup of coffee (or tea) and read the newspaper while you had breakfast, before driving off to work.

With the rise of the mobile internet and alternative ways to retrieve content, those days are no more. You can check the news on your laptop, sync it to your ipod to read it on the go, and receive breaking news alerts on your cell phone. In essence, you can stay up to date, without ever having to open a newspaper.

Papers that have failed or are struggling to make the leap to online version are increasingly finding themselves in hot water.

The Star Tribune, a newspaper that found itself in reduced circumstances and sold at a reduced price to a private equity group.

The New York Times has more.

Originally posted on January 2, 2007 @ 1:28 pm

Yesterday I did a post while attempting to overcome my migraine. In my laziness I used a copyrighted image in fair use. Since this site doesn’t make money and is a personal investment of much of my time and passion.

Operating a website of a high octane nature can at times be testing. You get people that don’t understand trying to provide a free service can be difficult. Makes me appreciate folks all the more the same. Got me thinking about New media. Is new media just free media? Or can we really make a whole hearted profit at this? I never intended to rob this flickr user of his caputzah. I just haven’t found a clean way to credit flickr users most of the time. That’s why I tend to use Flickr images with broad encompassing Creative Commons Licenses or Stock Images. It’s less headache. Literally.

My apologies if I offended anyone or came across brash, or harsh.

Originally posted on January 3, 2007 @ 7:56 am

I spent this morning listening to a great podcast. I’ve been trying to listen to one a day for the next 365 days. It’s a bit more entertaining than watching the same old crap on TV. And at the same time it’s really educational. I recommend anyone who’s in New Media as a publisher or an advertiser check out the following podcast.

I really think one of the things I’ve been trying to focus on is substantial ways to make New media pay for itself without feeling cluttered, or boxed in by a sponsor or an advertiser.

Monetization in New media podcast from New comm road.

Originally posted on January 2, 2007 @ 5:33 am