Netizen

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Feedburner Jump: 6 To 31
Facebook's Ad Space Is Different
Netizen Is No Spam Blog
Best Way To Increase Traffic To Your Blog
The Android Architecture
Android Netbook
Donut Android: Android 2.0
Android
Google: Tweet Me Baby One More Time
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It
Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures
Distributed Search
Wolfram Apha Is Cool
The Plateau Will Last Less Than Nine Months
Google Falling Behind Twitter?
Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android
Hitting Number 4 For Google Search Results on Cupcake Android
Donut Android: Windows 95, Android 2009?
Cupcake Android Delay Reason: Donut Android
Eminem: The Relapse: Twitter
Bad Time To Start A Company?
The Big Money Is Not In Blogging
Cisco's Big Dreams: A Clash Of Titans?
Google Analytics Says I Am Paul Krugman Friend, Cupcake Android Expert
What Does Your Resume Look Like Today?
What Just Happened?
Content Is Queen, Marketing Is Princess
Google Is Working On Search
What If The Plateau Lasts Nine Months?
Mideast Peace: Tech Industry Style
Job Hunting And 2.0
Brands Will Still Matter
Facebook Faceoff Firefox
Ggoats
Stand Up Comedy: Thinking On Your Feet: 2.0
Is Reading Socializing?
New York City: Transformed Forever?
Reimagining The Office
Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
Define Social Media
Peter Thiel: Primitive Mind In The Tech Sector
May 5 NY Tech MeetUp
The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream
David Gelernter: Manifesto
Blogging: Monkey Business?
Content Is Queen
Cyber Security: Growing Challenges
Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter
Stephen Hawking Has Taken Sick
NewsDesk: China, Twitter, Hawking, Obama
Blogging = Learning + Teaching + Churning + Entertaining
The United States Of Entrepreneurs
Spamming Om Malik
Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Blogging Several Times A Day
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
That Plateau Feeling
Blogging Tips
0 Tweets, 30,000 Followers: Could That Be Oprah?
That StartUp Mentality (2)
That StartUp Mentality
A Blogger Is Also An Editor
Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Twitter Is Not Micro
Cupcake: Android 1.5
Skype: Hub
The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Search Come Full Circle: That Human Element
Sites That Pay You To Blog
Five Years Of Gmail: What Would Gsus Do?
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Cisco Unified Computing System: To Tidy Up Data Centers
NYTM 03/09/09: Fashion Institute of Technology
Jeff Jarvis: Bold Restructuring
Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
NYTM Mailing List Continued Controversy
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
NY Tech MeetUp Mailing List Web 5.0 Controversy
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb
Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition
NY Tech MeetUp: 02/03/09
Conceptually Diligent: Web 5.0 Is Repackaging Hello
Onto Digital Publishing
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
Plenty Of Fish: Online Dating King
Defining Web 4.0
I Get Twitter
Indra Nooyi: Power Woman
Yahoo: The Original Dot Com
Craig Silverstein
Apple's Mobile Space: Sizzling

Vint Cerf, Abdul Kalam, Larry Ellison
Mind Blowing
Diller Country, Month 2
Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived
Silicon City
Nic Is Back
Open Coffee MeetUp: New Location
The Unfacebook
Money For Yahoo And Money For Google
Dell Memo
Entrepreneurs: Spikes
Bear Stearns: An Investment Bank
Web 5.0: Face Time
Search: Much Is Lacking
Enter The Titans: AMD Smacked By Intel
A Web 3.0 Manifesto
Nic Butterworth's Open Coffee MeetUp
Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0
Dell, HP, Apple
Michael Dell
Larry Ellison
Google Books: Primitive
PC
Carly Fiorina: The Academy Awards Of Business: Photos
Carly Fiorina: "The Academy Awards Of Business"
Early Stage Venture Capital
Google Audio, Google Office
The Next Search Engine
Google Video
Google: Free, Wireless Internet Access, Pay Per View Video
Yahoo Phone, Google Office, Google Finance
Are You A Fonero?
Kosmix: Desi Pride
Email, Search, News
Memo To Bill Gates
xMax
Free Wireless Broadband, Reenergized Microsoft
Google's To Do List Keeps Growing
China, India And The World
In Defense Of Google Digitizing Books
Google's Corporate Transparency
Google And Languages
Vonage And WiMax
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds
Wi-Mesh
Superfast Cable Broadband And The Rest Of The Daily Soup
Into the Nitty Gritty Of WiMax
The WiMax Appeal
Google Again
The $100 Computer
Google Video Has Hit The Docks
Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano
Google And Browsers And More
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity
Google: Poised To Be The Number One Software Company In The World

Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?

Image by

The Economist

via CrunchBase

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

You could argue FriendFeed is doing it, but maybe not. Hotmail had an Inbox. Gmail has an Inbox. Before Hotmail Outlook had an Inbox.

Twitter beat Facebook to the punch on the stream concept. Facebook has all the traffic, but Twitter has all the buzz.

The buzz moved from Microsoft to Google and Bill Gates offered to buy Google, "at any price." The buzz moved from Google to Facebook, and Google wanted to buy Facebook. Facebook wanted to buy Twitter.

"Is my credit good enough to buy you out?"

I came across UnHub when this TechCrunch article got emailed to me recently: UnHub Offers A Simple Way To Showcase The Online You. UnHub smells of possibilities, although the tough economy has many of us on the tizzy. It is a crack at the stream concept. Many took a crack at the Inbox. Many will take a crack at the Stream. Several will survive.

If you think about it, it is ridiculous that I have to go to this one place on the web to update my status. The stream should be able to zap up my status on its own from my many different online presences.

Evan Williams has talked recently of revolutionizing email. Perhaps the next level email will attempt a fusion, a fusion between the Inbox and the Stream.

The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity

David Gelernter: Manifesto
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb

Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity

Maybe Jack McCambridge - never met - is not the microfinance messiah, but a visit to his blog yesterday helped me gel a thought. I must have a soft spot for white guys who end up in India: I am half Indian. I found his blog at the blogroll of Slice Of Grice a few days back.

Reveling, In India

I think of microfinance the way I think of software/hardware/connectivity, biotech, nanotech. I fantasize of a day when the world pours a trillion dollars into microfinance instead of pouring trillions into housing bubbles in rich countries like just happened.

Top tech entrepreneurs expect to make billions. People who will help the world pour a trillion dollars into microfinance should fall into that same category. The return from microfinance is twice as that from US treasury bonds, more. But China gave an American president almost a trillion to fight a wrong war instead.

The near transparency at all levels that IT will make possible will help that goal of major league microfinance. But ultimately it is for individuals to step up to the plate.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Dell, HP, Apple
The WiMax Appeal
Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Define Social Media

Image by luc legay via Flickr

My childhood best friend - the only person I have "tagged" as such - is on Facebook, but we don't do Facebook, Twitter, Gchat, we do very little Gmail. He only comes alive on the phone: I wish we talked more often. And I'd love to get him to move to New York. He is in Georgia, the state. He is an engineer who went to engineering school in India, and came to America after winning the diversity lottery. He has a green card, a wife, a daughter. We grew up in Nepal.

The most prolific litterers of my Facebook stream are not people I know best in person. One I have met only once, or maybe twice, but I doubt he will recognize if he were to meet me again: Baratunde Thurston. I tried to get his attention a few days back. Your profile photo is scary, I said. He did not notice, he did not respond. He is one of those for whom Facebook is a broadcast medium. He updates his status every other minute. He is speaking, he is not listening.

8 - yes, that is her middle name - is also very prolific. I met her on Plenty Of Fish, we have never met. But she was not one of my Plenty Of Fish horror stories. (Plenty Of Fish: Online Dating King) She was impressed I had managed to track down her Gmail address. We exchanged a few emails, became Facebook friends. She said she was dating Craig Silverstein. Which Einstein? Is he googleable like you? I asked. I ended up exchanging one email with Craig: Craig Silverstein. Recently 8 made me do this: http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1643658620

I decided to use Twitter as a broadcast medium myself. (Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter) But on Facebook I have opted for something else. After all, this is my second Facebook account. The first one Facebook deleted afer I had acquired about 1500 Facebook "friends." I have about 50 pending friend requests. I am open to online only friendships. But some of these who send friend requests are not up for exchanging even emails.

Define Social Media

In trying to figure out social media I think a lot of us start at the wrong end. Instead of starting with people, we start with old media. And so new media looks fancy and intimidating. All new media is saying is anyone who can come online can broadcast. All new media is saying is people now have the option to talk to each other in a big way. It is weird that was never possible before. Because the concept is so very simple.

Meeting new people, finding new information, establishing new connections, enriching existing ones, social media makes all that possible. People are all the rage on the web.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Peter Thiel: Primitive Mind In The Tech Sector

Facebook Backer Wishes Women Couldn't Vote Gawker first outside investor in Facebook .... Thiel is the former CEO of PayPal who now runs the $2 billion hedge fund Clarium Capital and a venture-capital firm called the Founders Fund. His best-returning investment to date, though, has been Facebook. His $500,000 investment is now worth north of $100 million even by the most conservative valuations of the social network. .......... all those voting females have wrecked things .......... "The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron." ........... The problem with women is that they don't vote like their menfolk tell them. We would have so much more freedom, Thiel suggests, if only we'd deprived women of it. ...... rumors we'd heard about Thiel during his PayPal days, especially while he was fitfully coming out as a gay man. ......... The clubby ranks of VCs are mostly straight, white and male. They instinctively prefer entrepreneurs who remind them of themselves. At best, it's a wrongheaded sense of caution. At worst, it's prejudice with a handy alibi. ...... The effects are hard to document. VCs fund so few of the companies they talk to that it's hard to prove a case of discrimination; there are a hundred reasons why they might pass on any given startup. ....... I think it explains a lot about Thiel: His disdain for convention, his quest to overturn established rules. Like the immigrant Jews who created Hollywood a century ago, a gay investor has no way to fit into the old establishment. ....... Peter Thiel, the smartest VC in the world, is gay.

For those of us who aspire for tech entrepreneurship with a purpose, Thiel's very presence is an offense. I think Facebook should go ahead and figure out a way to return his investment money.

I had never heard of Peter Thiel before this article. Then I read the first few paragraphs and got offended. Then I read a second article on him and found out that, one, he is gay, and two, he is considered a very smart venture capitalist.

I tried to cut some slack. If you are smart, it is hard to fit in. If you are gay, it is hard to fit in.

I have personally encountered people in life who are otherwise losers but who think if only they can talk racist, somehow they will belong with people who think that, well, they are losers. Often times, the formula seems to work.

It is possible Thiel thinks his sexism will somehow give him a sense of belonging. But what exactly is he trying to belong to?

I can understand differences in opinion. I can understand not agreeing on, say, tax policy. I can understand voting for McCain. But what Thiel has expressed is rabid sexism, and racism, and there can not be room for that. The social media echo chamber needs to talk out loud on this one.

May 5 NY Tech MeetUp

May 5 New York Tech MeetUp
New Work Stages
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 7:00 PM
340 W 50th St, between 8th and 9th Avenues

A special presentation about HIS TRIP TO IRAQ by Scott Heiferman.

Apture
Zemanta
Kirtsy
ActionMethod
SesameVault
RmbrME

The first week of June is Internet Week! http://internetweekny.com/
NY Tech Meetup will be on June 2nd

NY Tech Meetup
June 02, 07:00 PM — June 02, 09:00 PM
FIT - Haft Auditorium
227 West 27th Street
btw 7th & 8th Aves New York, NY 10001

The Zemanta name stands out for me personally. And to think there was blogging before Zemanta.

The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

I have been thinking about David's manifesto, (David Gelernter: Manifesto) and some of my recent online socializing, and some of my readings. I read this article below online only a few days before I read David's manifesto. The manifesto talks of the lifestream concept. This article does not spell out the word, but I think it talks of the mindstream concept. It can be thought of as futuristic.

The Harvard Crimson :: Opinion :: My Disconnected Life .... Over the past several years, I’ve lost my cell phone more times than I care to admit. My friends consider me—endearingly, I hope—a clumsy, irresponsible fool. They shake their heads when I admit that voicemails have gone unheard .... To make matters worse, I am also notoriously bad with e-mails. Days can go by as I “forget” to check my mail; if my laptop’s charger isn’t nearby, that’s often reason enough to take a stroll instead of peruse my inbox. ...... Irresponsibility has allowed me to disconnect, and I am all the more happy for it. ...... It’s difficult to imagine life at Harvard without the Internet, cell phones, e-mail, instant messengers, and every other connectivity device. The proliferation of Blackberrys, Treos, and most recently, Moto Qs, have made our umbilical cords wireless, feeding off our addiction to mother e-mail. But life before these blessed, though burdensome, conveniences did exist. Without daily doses of Dems-talk, Throp-talk, Newstalk, and innumerable other e-lists, it feels as though we would never be informed of campus’ most important (and, alas, unimportant) debates. Procrastination would become more creative, and we would certainly be ignorant of the uncouthly candor that is brought about by impersonal conversation. ...... Without class e-mail lists, we would actually have to attend lecture to find out when our next assignment was due. Consulting teaching fellows about a troublesome paper would require face-to-face interaction in office hours, rather than the mundane chore of firing off an e-mail. Perhaps even classes would be fairer as compiling 40-page study guides that offer delinquent students the opportunity to sneak by with a B-plus would be much more challenging to coordinate. Keystroke, click, send—the Harvard soundtrack. ....... But what a liberating relief to be unreachable for a while. Friends often joke about the strange sensation that overtakes them when they suddenly drop their cell phone in the river or leave it stranded in a bar bathroom; just like that, they become a ghost for a day before reconnecting at T-Mobile. For those few pre-millennium hours, the world is a little less imposing. For a second, we are relieved of the obligation to be accounted for at every moment, to be responsive to everyone.......... It is during these hours that I realize—all too often, in my case—that it can be nice to take refuge in my own solitude. Uninterrupted by the pressure of constant phone-checking or e-mailing, we are forced to breathe and think and rest. As it stands, it seems unnatural to want to be out of the loop for a bit; people seem unnerved if I explain that I went “missing” for a while because my phone was dead. From what precisely I was missing is unclear; I was enjoying myself by myself. ......... we under-appreciate the virtue of taking time for ourselves. We no longer get away without a look of concern if we aren’t sitting in Lamont with our laptops, refreshing our inboxes, texting our friends, answering our phones, or seeming to care that—for a minute—we were walking around thinking alone. ......... It has become so expected to be in touch and online that sometimes it seems the only reasonable explanation for a prolonged disconnect is a little bit of irresponsibility. ........ I just want to be alone for a while.

http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1643658620

David Gelernter: Manifesto
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Jeff Jarvis: Bold Restructuring
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb
Silicon City
Entrepreneurs: Spikes
Web 5.0: Face Time
Search: Much Is Lacking
A Web 3.0 Manifesto
Dell, HP, Apple
The Next Search Engine
Memo To Bill Gates
Google's To Do List Keeps Growing
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

The human mind can be considered the last frontier of human knowledge. We know less about the human brain than about any other piece of real estate in the universe. And the internet might be our best "telescope" yet into that human mind. If the mind expresses itself enough, maybe we will start seeing patterns, perhaps we will understand better.

But the mind might not achieve its best performance if permanently at the beck and call of the primitive gadgets at our disposal, a cellphone's ring, or the inbox' deluge. Mindnumbing keyboarding at some point is glorified slave labor. It is perhaps a shallow friendship that gets measured by if you replied to my last email or not.

Thinking is more important than reading. Technology does not change that. The mind, so, is more important than the web. The webstream, the interweb lifestream necessarily has to be respectful of the mindstream. Some mindstreams respond best to solitude, some to music, some to silence, some to intense socializing, some to the web, some to reading, writing. To each his or her own.

Monday, April 27, 2009

David Gelernter: Manifesto

"Everything is up for grabs. Everything will change. There is a magnificent sweep of intellectual landscape right in front of us."

How is that not like saying the internet is a new country? (Where is the Internet headed?) A Web 3.0 Manifesto, The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream

David Gelernter

The Second Coming: A Manifesto

We tend not to believe in the next big war or economic swing; we certainly don't believe in the next big software revolution. ..... computing transcends computers. Information travels through a sea of anonymous, interchangeable computers like a breeze through tall grass. A dekstop computer is a scooped-out hole in the beach where information from the Cybersphere wells up like seawater. ...... The real topic in astronomy is the cosmos, not telescopes. The real topic in computing is the Cybersphere and the cyberstructures in it, not the computers we use as telescopes and tuners. ...... Browsers fasten users to remote computers, to "servers" on the internet...... Today's operating systems and browsers are obsolete because people no longer want to be connected to computers — near ones OR remote ones. (They probably never did). They want to be connected to information. In the future, people are connected to cyberbodies; cyberbodies drift in the computational cosmos — also known as the Swarm, the Cybersphere. ........ The future is dense with computers. They will hang around everywhere in lush growths like Spanish moss. They will swarm like locusts. ....... the Net will change radically before it dies .... The Web makes the desktop impotent. .... Desktop power will inevitably drag information out of remote servers onto desktops. ..... The computer mouse ... Like any device that must be moved and placed precisely, it ought to provide tactile feedback; it doesn't. .... The computer screen is the window of your vehicle, the face-shield of your diving-helmet. ...... Under the desktop metaphor, the screen IS the interface — the interface is a square foot or two of glowing colors on a glass panel. In the landscape metaphor, the screen is just a viewing pane. When you look through it, you see the actual interface lying beyond. ...... Computers are fundamentally unlike file cabinets because they can take action. ....... If you have three pet dogs, give them names. If you have 10,000 head of cattle, don't bother. Nowadays the idea of giving a name to every file on your computer is ridiculous. ........ You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously. ....... A file should be allowed to have no name, one name or many names. Many files should be allowed to share one name. A file should be allowed to be in no directory, one directory, or many directories. Many files should be allowed to share one directory. Of these eight possibilities, only three are legal and the other five are banned — for no good reason. ....... In the beginning, computers dealt mainly in numbers and words. Today they deal mainly with pictures. In a new period now emerging, they will deal mainly with tangible time — time made visible and concrete. ....... Elements stored in a mind do not have names and are not organized into folders; are retrieved not by name or folder but by contents. .... A "lifestream" organizes information not as a file cabinet does but roughly as a mind does. ....... to stop building glorified file cabinets and start building (simplified, abstract) artificial minds ...... Many websites will be organized as lifestreams. ..... The lifestream (or some other system with the same properties) will become the most important information-organizing structure in computing ...... Today's operating systems connect users to computers. In the future we will deal directly with information, in the form of cyberbodies. ...... Your computer's operating system will make as much difference to you as the voltage level of a bit in memory. ..... A lifestream is a landscape you can navigate or fly over at any level. Flying towards the start of the stream is "time travel" into the past. ..... You can walk alongside a lifestream (browsing or searching) or you can jump in and be immersed in information. ...... A well-designed store or public building allows you to size up the whole space from outside, or as soon as you walk in — you see immediately how things are laid out and roughly how large and deep the space is. Today's typical web site is a failure because it is opaque. ....... Movies, TV shows, virtual museums and all sorts of other cultural products from symphonies to baseball games will be stored in lifestreams. ...... Your car, your school, your company and yourself are all one-track vehicles moving forward through time, and they will each leave a stream-shaped cyberbody (like an aircraft's contrail) behind them as they go. These vapor-trails of crystallized experience will represent our first concrete answer to a hard question: what is a company, a university, any sort of ongoing organization or institution, if its staff and customers and owners can all change, its buildings be bulldozed, its site relocated — what's left? What is it? The answer: a lifestream in cyberspace. ........ A software or service company equals the employees plus the company lifestream. .... The company's lifestream is an electronic approximation of the company's memories, its communal mind. .... Software can solve hard problems in two ways: by algorithm or by making connections — by delivering the problem to exactly the right human problem-solver. The second technique is just as powerful as the first, but so far we have ignored it. ...... Lifestreams and microcosms are the two most important cyberbody types; they relate to each other as a single musical line relates to a single chord. The stream is a "moment in space," the microcosm a moment in time. ..... We'll know the system is working when a butterfly wanders into the in-box and (a few wingbeats later) flutters out — and in that brief interval the system has transcribed the creature's appearance and analyzed its way of moving, and the real butterfly leaves a shadow-butterfly behind. Some time soon afterward you'll be examining some tedious electronic document and a cyber-butterfly will appear at the bottom left corner of your screen (maybe a Hamearis lucina) and pause there, briefly hiding the text (and showing its neatly-folded rusty-chocolate wings like Victorian paisley, with orange eyespots) — and moments later will have crossed the screen and be gone. ....... If you have plenty of money, the best consequence (so they say) is that you no longer need to think about money. In the future we will have plenty of technology — and the best consequence will be that we will no longer have to think about technology. ..... We will return with gratitude and relief to the topics that actually count.

Web 5.0: Face Time
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

This manifesto is mind-blowing. Blew my mind.

I came to the David Gelernter name earlier today by way of Outlook: Cloudy: Floating up into the cybersphere.

I Get Twitter

David Gelernter is my kind of guy: he is a big picture person. Weird first time I am hearing of him.

The ClueTrain Manifesto

Blogging: Monkey Business?

"We feel so smart when we are talking to ourselves!"
- Hillary Clinton at the Kos Convention 2007

Is blogging a solitary act? Can it be a solitary act? Does it have to be a solitary act? As in, is it monk-ey business? Monks go solo. Well, not entirely true. Sangham Sharanam Gachhami is, to the community I go. But I am talking about the stereotypically stereotypical monk.

It can look like it. A guy/gal sitting in front of a computer in pajamas typing it away. It can look like it at first sight.

But think about it. The best bloggers are those who have something to say. And you can not have something to say if all you do is sit in front of a computer screen and type it away.

You must already know from before you started typing it away, through training, a prior job, career, life experiences, education. You must be willing to learn. You must be alive. You must be living. The online consumption of content, or electronic but not really online in the case of Kindle, is the bedrock of ongoing education for many of us. That counts. Consuming content counts.

Learning and teaching happens. They help.

But my question was more to the social aspects. Is blogging a solitary activity? Is it meant to be solitary? Does it end up solitary despite all our intentions to the contrary? Don't confuse me with the facts! Don't disturb me with people!

Photoblogging is social. Videoblogging better be social. I tried to do the camera thing myself a few years back, and I look dead in the water in those video clips, not my proudest moments. My best video clip of me to date is one where someone else is doing the camera work.

Text blogging itself is meant to be social. And for someone with an active blog, that blog gives you a better feel for that person than anything else they might have online, more so than their Twitter and Facebook accounts, more so than their website.

And many friendships get forged in the comments sections of blogs.

Content Is Queen
Blogging = Learning + Teaching + Churning + Entertaining
Spamming Om Malik
Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
Blogging Several Times A Day
Blogging Tips
A Blogger Is Also An Editor
Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Sites That Pay You To Blog

Friday, April 24, 2009

ROIanalytics: Internet Marketing

So much of advertising is moving online. But unless you can measure progress or lack thereof, where are the smarts in smart advertising? Businesses need to keep track of leads and opportunities generated from their Internet Marketing efforts.

Internet Marketing is more than running banner ads to build up your brand name.

Your ad online is your shop front. You should be able to engage your customers even before they have showed up at your website. For that you need sophisticated tracking, managing tools. That is where ROIanalytics Pro comes in.

ROIanalytics Pro is an industrial scale marketing tool.

Do you know what your return on investment is? Without that rigor internet marketing efforts are futile.

(This is an advertisement.)

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