Successful Blog

Technorati–Shopping Is NOT Strategy

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Joining the Mainstream Are We?

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I’m starting to feel like I’m on Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. As Sting would say Be still my beating heart. Another day, another 50 cents, and Peter Hirschberg is announcing another Technorati new deal. This time Technorati teams with Associated Press to connect you and me and 40 million bloggers to over 450 AP member websites. The new service began this morning. How will this help my life, my business, my brand? I just don’t see it.

Excuse me. Excuse me, please. Is this door number 3? Darn, I lose again. Yoohoo! I’m the little guy who uses your service. [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 5-24-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

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

Berners-Lee: Neutrality Preserves Net Openness

The computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web strongly condemned moves by U.S. broadband providers to control their subscribers’ content, saying it threatens the Internet’s greatest strength: openness.

Tim Berners-Lee on Tuesday said some Internet regulation is needed but should be minimal. He said efforts to control content have far-reaching impacts on other areas for users, such as decisions on voting and development of democracy.

“I hope that the U.S. will come to the right decision, and there is a very strong groundswell of opinion for net neutrality,” Berners-Lee said. He spoke at the 15th International World Wide Web conference, an all-week meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, exploring new Internet technology.

Dangerous dolts threaten our internet

When I started reading this story about an effort to use radio bandwidth to provide ubiquitous, cheap or free (ad-supported), broadband internet access across the country, I started to get happy. But then I saw the dolts who were proposing this and the dangerous things they doing and I want to make sure they don’t get anywhere near our internet.

SIVACRACY.NET

The American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries have joined the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, which includes “groups from across the political spectrum that have banded together to save the First Amendment of the Internet: network neutrality.” The coalition has gathered more than 500,000 signatures in support of policies that would block network operators from charging companies for faster delivery of their content to consumers or favoring certain content over other content.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

By Popular Demand Open Comment Night Starts EARLY

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It’s Like Open Mike Only Different

Here’s how it works.

The rules are simple — be nice.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. . . . Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.

See this post if you want some ideas of things to talk about.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Open Comments Night 2 Mike is On

Tuesday after 7 Chicago Time

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Tuesday Open Comment Night

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YES, the mike will be open again tonight. So start collecting your thoughts. Remember, you get to bring what you want to talk about.

The rules are simple — be nice.

We got things going really fast last week. If you missed it, stop by this week, and check it out.

Some things we might talk about could include whether:

  • anyone will ever pay for content on the Internet.
  • Technorati will quit rolling out new features and get control of its old ones.
  • the telcos will win on net neutrality
  • anyone has a cool idea for what we should do on the blog this weekend.

AND THE EVER POPULAR, WHERE IS EVERYBODY?

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here.
Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Open Comments Night 2 Mike is On

Open Source Education — GELC

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Open Source

We know open source is only as good as the folks who contribute. It can be as successful and adaptable as Linux. It can be helpful as all of the WordPress plugins.

Open source can also get mired in policy and minutiae — you can trust the definition at that link; it’s by the experts on the subject. Such issues have to be what shut down Zeal.com. I had to take the insane Zealot test four times a day for days, until I passed it. The questions were about such tiny details my mind couldn’t absorb them. (See Dear Wikipedia and try being an editor for the DMOZ.)

Enter the GELC

Enter the GELC, something really exciting. The Global Education and Learning Community. Some really smart, talented, experienced people are working together on it. It has the goal of an open source learning curriculum. It could be as powerful as Linux. I sure hope it is. Right now, Dr. Barbara (“Bobbi”) Kurshan, Executive Director of GELC is trying to prioritize some ideas via her blog. [The formatting is mine.]

Several ideas include

  • a repository to build and distribute open source textbooks – which are probably the first curricula ever developed for teaching and learning
  • a place for assessing the progress of a learner
  • a virtual design center for creating a curriculum from open education resources
  • a repository of courses
  • and a community for discussion about open source curriculum.

. . . all of these ideas will become part of GELC. But, which one is unique? Which one will make GELC the “thought leader” in the open source curriculum arena?

What would you answer? One comment said, . . . drop this area. It’s a big turnoff currently. Is that what you think?

–ME ‘Liz” Strauss

Related in some way
Dear Wikipedia . . .
Out WikiPedia, Hello Encyclopedia of Stupid

Trendspotting: How to Crawl into People’s Heads

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Your job — should you decide to keep working here — is to figure out what our customers want NEXT.

Trendspotters

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I belong to a networking group which requires endorsements. As I was editing my profile last night, I came across this endorsement from a client.

” . . . Liz can spot an emerging trend before it is even on the horizon. — Blake Education, Australiaâ€?

It’s true I often can. My friend, Chartreuse BETA, is phenomenal at trendspotting, as is our friend, Copyblogger. Scot Karp is excellent at seeing what trends are about to happen. Sometimes it depresses him. Don’t leave out Tom Peters. . . . How exactly do we do that?

What does it take to spot a trend before it takes root and actually happens? What does a person need to watch for? Seeing trends seems to be a factor of intelligence, learning style, and world view. Allowing that you have the prerequisite intelligence — we’re talking business acumen, common sense, and people smarts, not rocket science — the rest is a matter of doing the work and being open to what’s happening. This is lesson 1 on being a trendspotter. [Read more…]