Successful Blog

  • Home
  • About GeniusShared
  • Author Guidelines
  • Meet the GeniusShared Team
  • Liz’s Book
  • Newsletter

Archives for July 2006

6+1: How-to Blogging — Stomp Out Swiss Cheese Knowledge

July 3, 2006 by Liz 12 Comments

What Have You Taught Me Lately?

Power Writing Series Logo

Bloggers are always teaching or learning something. Blogs are filled with ways to promote a blog, to build a brand, to install a new plugin. When we get a new program, instructions come with it. Sometimes we follow them. Sometimes they work. Sometimes big parts of them seem to be missing.

How-to blogging teaches something.

A how-to post could be as simple as how to a make a sandwich or as complicated as how to turn your computer into a host server for WordPress.

People read how-to articles because they want to be learning.

Therefore: Nothing is worse than a how-to post that skipped a step.

I hate information that has holes in it. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Blog Basics, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, audience, blog-promotion, blog-writing, Personal Branding, readers, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

July 3rd, the Liz-t

July 3, 2006 by Liz 34 Comments

On This Day

324 – Constantine defeated Licinius at the Battle of Adrianople

1511 – Giorgio Vasari, Italian painter and architect was born (d. 1574)

1567 – Samuel de Champlain, French explorer was born (d. 1635)

1608 – Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain

1767 – Norway’s oldest newspaper still in print, Adresseavisen, is founded (first edition published this date).

1848 – Slaves are freed in the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands)

1878 – George M. Cohan, American composer, was born

1883 – Franz Kafka, Czech writer was born. (d. 1924)

1886 – The New York Tribune becomes the first newspaper to use a linotype machine, eliminating typesetting by hand

1928 – First color television broadcast in London.

1938 – World record for a steam railway locomotive is set in England, by the Mallard, which reaches a speed of 203 km/h (126 mph).

1947 – Dave Barry, American writer was born.

1951 – Richard Hadlee, New Zealand cricketer

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits segregation in public places.

1969 – Kevin Hearn, Canadian keyboardist (Barenaked Ladies) was born.

The youngest child of Geno and Daisy was born.

Do you have more to add to the list?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Thanks to wi- wi- wi-ki-pedia for help in putting this list together.
Yes, I purposely left Tom Cruise out.

Filed Under: Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog Tagged With: blogging-life, Liz-Strauss.-birthday, SOB Business, ZZZ-FUN

Net Neutrality 7-3-2006

July 3, 2006 by Liz 2 Comments

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Getting serious about Net Neutrality

[Quoting David Sims] . . . “The Senate bill’s main focus is creating a national video franchise system that would allow phone and cable companies to bypass the sometimes lengthy negotiations with local authorities over offering pay-television service,” [cable industry observer Amy] Schatz writes. “But the bill also contains a wide variety of other requirements, from antipiracy technologies for television broadcasts to changes in a federal fund that subsidizes phone services in rural areas.”

Is this going to be another case where the public starts complaining only when they’ve discovered what they’ve lost?

IT’S ONLY THREE PARAGRAPHS. Read it. Then go to the source.

Net Neutrality: It’s Pretty Simple, Really.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Filed Under: Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends Tagged With: Amy-Schatz, David-Sims, Net-Neutrality

Great FUN: IM the Encarta Robot on MSN Chat!

July 2, 2006 by Liz 22 Comments

For Research, Homework, Fun

Keith Dsouza could carry on an intelligent conversation with anyone. So when MSN made a robot toanswer questions based on the information in Encarta. Keith was the perfect guy to challenge the robot to a conversational test run.

He did it to make sure that children everywhere would get the right answers on their homework.

Great Find: Talking to a robot on MSN Chat

Permalink: http://techie-buzz.com/technology-buzz/talking-to-a-robot-on-msn-chat.html

Audience/Topic: Anyone with MSN Chat and questions to research or kids with homework

Content: It’s easy to tell that Keith had fun doing the research and writing this article. He also spent the time to see exactly how and how well a the robot interface works. You can follow his questions and see word for word what the exchange was. The value the robot offers for kids who want to learn more about their favorite subject is right in Keith’s post. I can only imagine what my son might have done with this had it been around when he was young.

At the end of the conversation, Keith explains the easy as 1,2,3 how-to that is working with MSN Instant Messenger encarta@conversagent.com. MSN has found a great way to take on the ubiquitous Gmail with this one.

Keith has a future in reporting for kids. He kept me spellbound. He also might have a budding friendship with the Encarta robot.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related Articles
Link Leak Virus for Spending Time with Kids
Fun Find: Color Box Game
65th Crayon Finds that Google Doesn’t Use Search

Filed Under: Productivity, Successful Blog, Tools Tagged With: Encarta, Keith-Dsouza, kids, MSN-Encarta-Robot, Productivity, research, ZZZ-FUN

Net Neutrality 7-2-2006

July 2, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

What If End-Users Owned Their Access Pipe?

PBS tech columnist Robert Cringely has penned an intriguing (and I think important) piece called “If we build it they will come: It’s time to own our own last mile.” It’s apparently based on conversations he’s had with Bob Frankston, who years ago wrote the VisiCalc program (which Cringely describes as “the first killer app”) and who last year authored an essay entitled “Connectivity is a Utility.” Cringely describes Frankston as “one of the smartest people I speak to.” . . .

If We Build It They Will Come. It’s time to own our own last mile. by Roger X.Cringley

To Bob [Frankston, the programmer who wrote VisiCalc] the issues surrounding Net Neutrality come down to billability and infrastructure. While saying they are doing us favors, ISPs are really offering us services they can bill for. Nothing is aimed at helping us, while everything is aimed at creating a billable event. Take WiFi hotspots, for example. Why should the telephone or cable company care about who connects to my WiFi access point? They are my bits, not the ISP’s. I paid for them. If I can download gigabytes of pornography why can’t I share my hotspot with someone walking down the street wanting to check his e-mail? Frankston’s analogy for this is accusing someone of stealing your porch light by using it to read a street sign.

It isn’t about service, it is about creating billable events, that’s all. And billable events, by definition, are things we have others do because we are unable or unwilling to do for ourselves. So a Verizon or a Comcast does us a favor, they say, by licensing rights to a movie and allowing us to buy or rent it over the Internet. We could buy the rights ourselves, but who would know where to even go? And wouldn’t Verizon, as a big buyer, necessarily get a better price? When you have a preferred or exclusive provider versus a competitive marketplace, prices are always higher, not lower. In this case the ISP isn’t doing us a favor, they are forcing us to buy from them something that we might well be able to buy from someone else for a lot less. . . .

The New Paranoid style in American politics By Andrew Orlowski

The “Net Neutrality” campaign – which created little excitement except on the outer fringes of the web – suggests that the left is now just as capable of being haunted by paranoid fantasies as the right.

What the internet has achieved, with its twisty maze of echo chambers all alike, is a rapid acceleration of this paranoid discourse, which expels nuanced and complex reasoning. Let’s have a look what was being written this week, after the Senate failed to pass those “Neutrality” provisions, as these hundreds of Nation States of One broadcast their distress signals.

“This could mean the death of small internet businesses,” wrote one MySpace blogger, quoted on CNET. A Republican opponent of the “Net Neutrality” legislation was graced, on the same site, with this riposte:

“Thanks, Jim, for being a fascist and promoting fascism in our country.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Filed Under: Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog, Trends Tagged With: Bob-Frankston, CNet, MySpace, Net-Neutrality, PBS-Tech, Robert-Cringely, Roger-X.-Cringley, Verizon

6+1, 2, 3: Save Me from Beginners and Experts NOW!

July 1, 2006 by Liz 6 Comments

Folks Who Are Learning and Folks Who Know

Power Writing Series Logo

Most bloggers find their audience is a lot like you are — an audience of folks who learning and folks who know a whole lot. That can throw a new writer. It can seem a problem of huge proportions. It’s not hard to think that what you have is two different audiences in one. How do you know how much to say and how much to leave out? It’s easy to get twisted trying to write for an audience of people who are both beginning and experienced.

Get twisted, heck! Somebody save me NOW!. From where I sit, some days the beginners need to learn so much, and the experts already seem to know all of it. How do I possibly talk to both of them at once, without risking insulting or boring either one of them?

That writer’s problem can seem impossible to solve, but it’s not. In fact, it’s not even a problem at all. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Customer Think, Personal Branding, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, audience, blog-promotion, blog-writing, Customer Think, Personal Branding, readers, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • Next Page »

New from Liz Strauss & GeniusShared Press



Having a hard time finding focus?

Having a hard time finding focus?

It can be hard to find focus sometimes. A few months ago, I was talking with a colleague who was having a hard time finding focus in their work. They spoke of feeling pulled in multiple directions and of many obligations — both at work and with their family. As I listened, I could hear […]

Sometimes We Outgrow Our Stories

Sometimes We Outgrow Our Stories

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend. We were sharing stories from days gone by about each of our lives. We hopped from one story to the next — based on what each of us were sharing. It was really an incredible discussion as we were each learning from the other […]

It’s Not Your Passion, But Your Purpose

It’s Not Your Passion, But Your Purpose

Everyone feels lost sometimes. I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t been lost in their head at one time or another — even those folks overachieving all over the Internet. We all find those moments that we wonder about who we are and what we want. But the question is not whether everyone gets […]

Getting Past Fear

Getting Past Fear

I felt the more embarrassing fear of people’s judgment. When I decided it was time to write again, I avoided the computer for the longest time. On the rare occasion that I managed to sit myself down to write, I’d get caught up answering email or reading articles around the web, not doing writing I […]

  • What IS an SOB?!
  • SOB A-Z Directory
  • Letting Liz Be

© 2019 ME Strauss & GeniusShared 2005 - 2016