Video is more linkable, but audio is more portable.  "What kind of story to have to tell ... or show."  --Scoble.  This determines the format.  Funny think, I love doing podcasts (even though my podcasting rig is kinda hosed at the moment) I don't listen to them!  Strange, huh?

No matter what you talk about ... you have to make it interesting.

There is a paucity of standard tags and ways of letting people know what the podcast and videos are actually about.

How do we podcast?  Ah that's where the fun begins.  I really like the microphone and my laptop model.  I had the the iRiver and external microphone thing going, but it seems to be failing me.  Regardless, it is really easy.  Andru did a little sample using his Mac, Garageband, and Hipcast.  On the PC I suggest Audacity (free) or Propaganda (pay, but worth it ... even though I won a free license).  The question of Skype recording came up, oddly enough none of the speakers do this, but Scott and I do.  He uses Pamela, I use HotRecorder.

How often?  Something predictable.  Be consistent (oops, that is my problem.  I tend to forget for a couple weeks).

Video, where do you put it?  Services, your service  YouTube ... you post, they own.  This is an important question for all these topics, doesn't matter if it's a blog post, podcast , or video.

Wow.  I think the non-geeks in the audience brains' have exploded all over the room.  Oh well.

Tags: podcasting, video blogging

Buzz Bruggeman, Kevin O'Keefe, and Phil Mann are talking about the law and blogging.  What are your copyright rights (you have them automatically, btw ... you write it, it's yours), when you get the letter from a lawyer (talking to a lawyer might be a good idea).  We had a copyright problem on Business Blog Consulting ... how did we handling it?  A little FeedBurner tweaking and e-mailing the blog owner, but to no avail.  Is it worth sending a legal letter to Turkey?  Probably not.

Buzz, Phil, and Kevin are sharp dudes on this.  The only problem is that this really important session is coming at the end of the day.  I think there is a lot brain-deadness going on here.  I think including myself.  What's next today?  We have a speaker and VIP dinner tonight.  When we get back to the hotel, it's going to be the day wrap up post.

First thought ... maybe doing small breakout sessions for hands on stuff inter mixed with these theory sessions.

Maybe I'll suggest that to Steve.

Tags: blogging, blogging and law, law blogs

Today might very well be called the Dave Taylor does blogging show.  That's okay though, I like Dave, I don't always agree with him, but I like him.  I thought that this session would be hard to write a post about.  I mean how many was can I tell you about how to write for your blog.    But a little discussion got going about ghostwriting and editing of blogs.  Dave thinks it's all okay.  Others in the audience are pretty against the whole thing.  I was against the whole thing, but I see Dave's point.  If you have a business blog and you don't write well, how does that look?  What if you just had someone proof a post to make sure it sounds good?  Yeah I think that might be okay.  This is a post that I hope to get a lot of comments on.

I need to cogitate on this some, because I have a new perspective that I need to work through.

Tags: blog editing, blog ghostwriting

Steve gave a nice intro into the whole "why a blog" question.  Bottom line, blogs aren't CMS light.  Blogs are like the early desktop apps compared to the proprietary  systems on mainframes.  Blogs will come to supercede the big, expensive CMS systems.  Bet on it.

So, why a blog?  Three good reasons:

• Practicality
  • Easy
  • Fast
  • Simpler to create than a "traditional" website (and it is since I've created tons of them)
• Flexibility
  • It is so much easier to change a blog around than a website.
• Visibility
  • Search engines love blogs because all the posts are pages, all the pages are linked, and this creates a resource of content and links to other websites (psst, if you haven't figured it out, you need to link to people when you blog)

Sure, Steve's talk was a "preaching to the choir" for me, but he did a great job of it.

Tags: blog advantage

Umm, tough one to blog here.  Dave and Steve are showing how to set up a blog with Typepad.  Personally, and this isn't just because this is a Blogware-powered blog or that Blogware sponsors my blog, I don't like Typepad.  Never have.  I don't like the page rebuild thing making template changes.  I don't like the process you need to go through to make changes.  So sue me.  Blogware, even with its pros and cons, I think is better.

So ... some of the considerations they are talking about that are generally important are:

• choosing the name of your blog
• choosing the URL of the blog

For both of these, think keywords.  Think search engines.  For the URL I highly recommend using your domain (like blog.larixconsulting.com or blog.qumana.com) for your blog.  Blogware makes this supremely easy, and much easier that Typepad.  I've done it on both, and Blogware wins hands down.

Navigation on the right is better ... so two column right is better than two column left.  Wow this is actually cool.  I've always gone for three columns (nav, content, nav) ... now maybe I'll go for content, nav, nav.  Awesome tip Dave!

Tags: Blogware, setting up your first blog

Back during the days of the dot-com bubble, the quality and quantity of swag available at conferences was nothing short of amazing; I'd often have to buy a cheap duffel bag in order to haul the promotional booty, which I then gave as gifts to my co-workers. Here at the Ajax Experience, I'm feeling deja vu -- while the "exhibit hall" outside the sessions is occupied by only a handful of vendors, the swag and prizes available from both them and the conference organizers is impressive.

One big surprise is AOL's table. Ever since The September That Never Ended, AOL has had a pretty bad rep among the developer set. In the meantime, other "portal" players -- Google, MSN and Yahoo! as well as portal-like entities such as Amazon and eBay -- have been boosting both traffic and developer love by becoming programmable by providing APIs, through which specialized sites and mash-ups can be built. What, you might ask, is AOL doing here?

It turns out that they're here to woo the developer community and promote their developer site, dev.aol.com and their APIs and encouraging developers to use AOL services for their mash-ups. They've been surprising a lot of developers (myself included) by opening their pitch with "Did you know that MapQuest is an AOL property?"

They realize that they're late to the party, so they've gone to some trouble to make sure that their swag is good. They've created a series of "mash-up" t-shirts, like the "Geek" one I'm showing in the photo below:

There are 6 shirts in the set. They're called "mash-up" shirts because you and your friends can wear different ones and rearrange yourselves -- that's the "mash-up" -- to form cute nerdy catchphrases. They've been very popular; people have been lining up for them here. Here's the set:

Some of these shirts may seem weird out of context: "Garden" will make people think you're into horticulture, and wearing the "unwalled"  may convince people that you're either homeless or have poor impulse control.

Also on their table: USB cable extension cords, developer-friendly stickers (I found the Unix-hacker-friendly chmod 777 aol sticker amusing), quick reference sheets and a postcard announcing a contest for the best mash-up using AOL APIs. They've also included an AOL-branded sprial-bound notebook in the knapsack given to every attendee (I'll cover the knapsack's contents in a later entry).

AOL's going to have a long, tough climb towards respectability, but they seem to be working hard at it.

Dave Taylor's keynote has just wrapped up.  Now, I could try to make this into some controversial, but I really can't.  Dave, love him or hate him, he makes you think.

Dave focused his keynote on his concept of "findability".  Findability is, in a nutshell, is making sure people find you and not your competitor when searching.

Because this is the Blog Business Summit Dave highlights how well blogs do as authoritative sources on topics.  Now, authority is an interesting concept here.  Dave, Jim Turner and I were talking about authority when Dave finished and I came up with the term of computational authority.  Computational authority is when Google ranks your content about any topic highly because according to Google your site has "authority".

Dave could be stepping into dangerous ground when he said ... a blog is just a tool.  I'd call him out on this, but I agree with him.  A blog is just a publishing tool.  The act of blogging is the act of writing.

While he said that there are things that you should do (like comments, replying to comments, etc) but you don't have to to be considered a blog.  Okay we can let the flaming begin.

Dave did touch on the whole pay-per-post debate.  That's going to be a fun debate for later.

Tags: Dave Taylor, BBS06, BBS, computational authority

The sponsored blog.  While you might think these are a controversial no-no, in reality they are a great way to get your business blog going with less pain and effort.  Steve and Teresa went through two case studies, InFlightHQ (which was started right after BBS05 I (January) and the new blog Big Business Jet (which I am contributing to as well).

A sponsored blog is a great choice for a company that might not have the technical resources to blog or have an existing in-house blogger or if are in an industry where blogging directly might not be a good idea (pharma maybe).

Steve and Teresa had a pretty short session, it is 8 AM after all, and went through the benefits like increased Google Pagerank, search engine listings, and maybe best of all, getting your company associated with expert opinion on your industry.

Personally I'm a big fan of the sponsored blog.  It can be mocked up for a client relatively quickly, set up quickly from the prototype. Hiring a few bloggers and techies to do this will cost you some up front money, but it will pay off.

Tags: BBS06, sponsored blogs

It's the beginning here ... the workshop sessions have started.  Steve and Teresa decided to do an extra early session at 8 AM ... they are starting off and I'm taking notes.

Full post in a moment.

Tags: BBS06, BBS