Is Ghostblogging CEO Blogs Bad?
Debbie Weil, who has been dishing out great advice for corporate/CEO blogs recently moderated a panel and the consensus seems to be that ghostblogging is not bad. At least, that’s the consensus of a small group of writers surveyed. This is in response to a Dilbert cartoon about the pointy-haired boss wanting to start a blog. Tris Hussey gave his perspective on ghostblogging.

Twitter Too Popular in Australia
Apparently Twitter can’t handle it’s popularity in Australia and have suspended their SMS feature there. Rumor is that 901am’s Duncan Riley did this single-handedly :)

The End of Blogs?
I don’t know what the big fuss is. So what if the blogosphere has halted at 15 million blogs? Inorganic populations have lifecycles, too. No doubt there will be mini-spurts as more serious publishers join.

How To Blog Jason Calacanis?
Let’s not pussyfoot around here… If almost anyone else had done what Jason Calacanis just did on his blog, telling you how to get his attention online, they’d be called arrogant. But I don’t think that applies here. Calacanis is the genius who built up and sold Weblogs, Inc., turning himself into more than just a celebrity in his own mind. And that means some bloggers would like to catch his attention. It’s a fact, and he knows it and so do you (if that’s what you want). So get to it, grab his attention. Just don’t expect an interview over the phone.

Originally posted on April 30, 2007 @ 10:38 am

The defense of the well regarded Statsaholic (previously Alexaholic), currently on the receiving end of law suit from Amazon for the crime of daring to use Amazon’s open API’s and render Alexa data better than Amazon was, has just hit the mother of all spanners, according to TechCrunch, Statsaholic’s owner, Ron Hornbaker, is a convicted extortionist.

But wait, it gets better, because as well as serving jail time for extortion, Hornbaker wasn’t just your garden variety, every day extortionist, he was an internet extortionist as well, frequenting AOL Chat rooms trying to extort money from wayward husbands. Yep, he’s 1996’s version of Michael Crook.

Knowing this, a lot of people have got egg on their faces, including yours truly, for going in to bat for a chap who well…just doesn’t play cricket, if you know what I mean. Time to remove my name from the online petition against the legal action as well, and apologize to Amazon. Sorry Amazon, I’ll do some digging before acting against you in the future.

Originally posted on April 22, 2007 @ 11:26 pm

Build Your Own News Site With Newsvine
If you build it, will they come? If you think so, then check out the newly relaunched Newsvine, which lets you create your own news site. We’re talking going beyond something like Pageflakes- or Netvibes-like customization because apparently your customizations are reflected on the homepage. Techcrunch explains.

Our Hive Mind
Brady Forrest reflects at O’Reilly Radar on Jordan Schwartz’s writings about bees and the hive mind and how humans exhibit similar behavior online, especially at social websites.

Twitter Beginner’s Guide
I can’t imagine that it would take much to learn how to use Twitter, but Robin Good has produced a very indepth beginner’s guide to Twitter, detailing what it is, why use it, how it’s being used, why people love it, why people hate it, and a big list of tools to extend Twitter – including many I’ve never heard of.

Of interest to those (such as me) who wish Twitter could pull in feeds from elsewhere, there’s TwitterFeed and RSS2Twitter. I was also complaining about the lack of search. Well, there’s TwitterSearch. And there’s even a way to insert ads into your tweets. That’s a bit much, but if you get the urge…

Originally posted on April 25, 2007 @ 12:25 pm

Watch Your Back Technorati?
Valleywag of all places has an interesting explanation of where Technorati is getting traffic from. Yes, from Google, but even for terms “Wikipedia”. That’s because of all those Technorati tags thousands upon thousands of bloggers add to the bottom of there posts each increase Technorati’s ranking for those keywords. It’s also why many more experienced bloggers stopped adding Technorati tags. (My own blogs never suffered as a result of doing so – that’s for different reasons.) So when you type in some terms in Google, and possibly in other search engines, Technorati ranks very high. Though as Valleywag says, probably not for long.

Power Twittering
The other day I complained that Twitter is not very robust, and that I find Jaiku better. Well 30Boxes has created a Firefox plugin called Power Twitter that lets you beef up what you can do with Twitter, including photosharing with Flickr, adding video, and a tie-in 30Boxes information for members. [via GigaOm] In related news, Valleywag has a snarky, humorous look at how non-revolutionary Twitter is, in the form of a diagram showing the history of blogging.

MySay: Audio Alternative To Twitter?
I’m not sure I agree with this, but Mashable describes MySay as a sort of Twitter for talkers. You record audio snippets and post them via phone. Friends can listen online or subscribe via phone. So it’s great for reaching a group of friends easily, if they know to subscribe to your MySay stream. As far as I can tell, however, you cannot post from a web browser, but you can embed players on a variety of web pages (social networks, blogs).

Still, this actually could be a fun, even useful tool. Remember “Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey”, a skit on Saturday Night Live a few years back (during David Spade’s time, I believe)? There are several possibilities: positive thoughts, short jokes, mini-sermons. The only drawback is that you have to call a long-distance number to record your snippets.

Originally posted on April 24, 2007 @ 7:53 pm