Business Blog—What's the point?

If you are planning to start a business blog, experts suggest that to have a prayer of succeeding, you'd better be doing it for the right reasons.

In a nutshell...it's about the customer, stupid! If you think a business blog is just to a place to wax poetic, or you think people would hang on your every word, think again. In fact, read ientry, Inc. CEO " Rick Ord's ,” thoughts, and then really think again!

Reach Out and Touch...

The Internet is in perpetual motion and evolution. Ten years ago, it struck people as miraculous that you could have instant interaction with individuals all over the globe. Soon that interaction will be able to cross the line from virtual to literal. " Word is out ,” that developers in Singapore are working on a technology that will allow a user to "touch" another physically. The potential for that kind of interaction boggles the senses. —They are currently testing it on chickens.

The GRATE Wall of China

As always, the Chinese government is none too thrilled about letting its citizens have a voice on the world stage. "Pro-Democracy bloggers" in China have been blocked according to recent articles in the world press.

The Chinese government's efforts may be a finger in the dike of the World Wide Web. Sooner or later, resourceful people find a way to overcome such obstacles.

Blogging for Business? Help is Available

I don't pretend to be a hardcore blogger, but I do know it has great potential as business tool. If you want to explore some of blogging's business potential, I recommend Sally Falkow’s blog, "Website Content Strategy."
She offers insights about the role of blogging in businesses and corporations, how to approach on-line branding, when and how to maximize electronic media news releases, and those are just some of her blog topics. She also provides extensive links to other marketing and communications blogs and sites. She even provides an array of syndication options that includes RSS, Atom, OPML, Klip, and Smart Tags. Frankly syndication is a little deeper than a neophyte blogger is apt to go, but I know I now have a great resource to draw from whenever I’m ready to get more involved.

Warning Will Robinson!!

As college and corporate communities plunge deeper and deeper into the immediacy and convenience of Instant Messaging, they are exposing themselves to greater and greater potential for infection from worms and other viruses.

Sites' Site Shift

Now that Kevin Sites has stepped from his individual site to one with (presumably) deeper pockets at Yahoo, will he be able to maintain his independence in the hotzone?

Tap, Tap, Tappity Tap -- Gotcha!

Algorithms allow computers to act like accoustic sniffer dogs to breach security and transcribe documents based on how it sounded to type them. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050915/sc_nm/keyboards_security_dc

Was Marshall McLuhan Right?

"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." In his now famous remark, McLuhan set a lot of people postulating. Had he lived to see the evolution of the Internet, I suspect his opinion would not have changed. Blogs, too, can be examined in the harsh light on McLuhan's conjecture.

Cerf's Up!

Amazing to be working in a medium that is so powerful, yet still so young. Where many of the early inovators are still launching new ventures and forging new relationships. This from the Times of London about a new alignment between Vinton Cerf (an Arpanet originator) and Google. Kind of like watching history in action. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1772775,00.html

Brief Sidebar on Dogs

Since ours seems a Dog-friendly group, I thought I'd include Duncan. We call him a "Virginia Golden Chowlie" that we rescued in April. He's such a doll that the in-laws fell in love with him and ran out that week and adopted his brother, Harley.

There was some discussion of changing Harley's name to "Hines" so we could have "Duncan Hines" but my sister-in-law put her foot down.

Dark Side of Blogging

Since so many of my coursemates have already gotten rolling, I'd like to skip the preliminaries and jump to my initial thoughts as a first-time blogger. In a nutshell --Cool medium, but I think it's in trouble.

In browsing other people's blogs, I was dismayed at the amount of "junk mail" that ended up, clearly unsolicited in the comment folders. Can we speculate that people dumping junk mail and trash into blog comment boxes could spell the medium's slow decline? What a waste. It reminds me of the early days of chat rooms. They started out fine, but in a short time, it got ugly. No matter what topic I visited from Hawaiian music to drum corps to who knows what else, all the chats, unless monitored, ended up in random, rancid flamefests that made using them all but pointless. by the late 90s I gave up on them.

Now comment boxes are filling with acres of electronic junkmail. Very unfortunate.