Blogs and Feeds

HSMAI Explores Unclogging the Blog

Here is the podcast from the blog panel, the 6th HSMAI Travel Internet Marketing Strategy Conference held at the Hilton New York on Wednesday, April 19, 2006.

Entitled “Unclog the Blog: How to use them to help your business” the panel featured three panelists representing the key groups in the travel Internet blogging community. Moderated by Shirley Talbert of Historic Hotels of America, the panel included: Amanda Watlington, Ph.D, of Searching for Profit and author of Business Blogs: A Practical Guide; Robin Ingle - VP International Development, Trip Advisor; and Ryan Bifulco, President, Travel Spike.

The discussion was lively so take moment and listen to this panel. It is about 50 minutes long.




MP3 File

Big East/Patriot League Rowing Championships

The championship portion of the collegiate rowing season has begun. This past weekend, I had the pleasure of officiating at the Big East and Patriot League Championships. These two leagues combine their championship on a single day on Lake Quinsigamond. It is always a challenge just to keep in mind which league is the next race. Is it going to be filled with Big East crews or Patriot League crews? The heatsheet has the answer. Combining the two league championships makes great use of the venue and the infrastructure. Yes! I do view officials as part of the infrastructure. In the best of circumstances, we are invisible.

I spent my morning slowly warming at the finish tower as the sun came across the race course. The finish tower at Lake Q has been revamped and is hardly recognizable. The winter ice demolished the old one. The steps are now in human proportions -- they used to be sized for a giant, not a mere mortal like myself. And, thoughtfully when the rebuilt the finish stand, they have used composite boards for the steps. If you have never sat on a finish line, you have no idea how cool it is not to have to worry about splinters.

In the afternoon, I worked the control commission. This is a part of the officials' role in ensuring the safety of the equipment. At Lake Q it is part safety and part dockmaster. It was overall a very nice day. The weather was a cool but gloriously pretty day.

Sometimes when I am really tired, I question why I still officiate. It is not as if I haven't paid my dues or paid off my debt of gratitude to all those adults who worked the sports I played in my youth. You'd think 15 years as a rowing official, almost an equal number spent chasing basketball and volleyball would be enough. The stats on officiating say that most officials last less than ten years so it can't be that I haven't done my turn in the barrel.

This weekend I had an experience that reminded me why I keep coming back for more. I got a chance to see a friend, a young coach -- Marnie Stahl. I've known her since she was a high school freshman at Saint Ursula's Academy in Toledo, Ohio, home town of some remarkable individuals. I worked with her dad who was a tech whiz. Her mom is a math teacher and one of the smartest women I know. When she first came into crew, I officiated at her first regattas, watched her as she became of proficient sculler (taught by my husband how to row a single), then on to college where her coach was someone I knew from officiating and from doing events at the college. Now she is an assistant coach at a powerhouse program -- that walked away with a lot of hardware. Just seeing her confidently doing what coaches do and knowing that she is now working with the next generation of athletes, reminded my of why we officiate -- it is about the athletes and the sport -- helping another generation gain the same joy from sport that it has brought to us.

Survival Suit Racing

Rowing referees do some very strange things, but this is one of the funniest caught on film -- thanks to Jim Flanders and his camera phone. The refs. were told to lay out their suits ready for action and then the ref. who donned their suit first won a prize. A bit of fun with a serious side. Many of us rely on these suits to keep us warm and cozy when the weather is ugly and the racing must go on. Spring in the Northeast can be just winter under a different name.

SnagIt My Favorite Screen Capture Utility

With the conference season in full swing -- SES New York this past week, Webmaster World and AdTech not far behind, I'm in slide development mode. I try not to re-roll presentations, even when I am asked to speak on the same topic in multiple venues. Screen captures bring a presentation to life for me --since the old adage about a picture being with 10,000 words is in fact true. Thanks to a recommendation from a friend, I have used SnagIt for several years.

SnagIt, now in version 8!, is easy to learn, gives great results and has an image editor that I find that I use for almost all of my image editing needs. It is the best $39.95 that I've spent on software. If you have not tried it, give it a test drive and see if you agree with me. Do let me know if you agree.

OPML Workstation -- Web-Based OPML Editor

Want to get my attention fast, make a tool so easy that an account can be set up and the data grabbed during the chit chat of a meet-up. The OPML Workstation fits this category.

On Wednesday, I went to a Geek Dinner meet-up at the RSSLabs in Cambridge. During the meet-up, Betsy Devine set up an account and used OPML Workstation to make an OPML file out of the attendee list. This was really exciting since OPML is really powerful tool for organizing information. I'm really looking forward to using the OPML Workstation to build OPML files for my own use.

Give it a go if you have not worked with OPML before.

Rowing Has No Off Season

Used to be I packed my rowing referee gear up at the end of the head racing season in late October and spent the next several months busy refereeing basketball during the off season for crew. Today, that has changed. First, my "wheels" gave out -- b-ball slang for my knees no longer tolerating the demands of chasing basketball. I never was a very fast, just steady and fast thinking, but if you aren't there when the action happens, you just can't call it.

Yes! No one needs to remind me that age had something to do with it.

So, now with no basketball to fill the off-season, I expected to become a spectator rather than a sports official. Who was I kidding? Today the rowing off-season is almost as busy as the season. First, there was the convention in December in Baltimore. For me that included two and a half days of marathon meetings, for I am member of the referee commission that was holding one of its three per year meetings during the convention. We don't meet often, but we make a meal of it when we do.

Then, there is the planning for the next season, the booking of regattas, the accounting for the previous season in the paperwork -- now online -- of the annual data call, and many tasks associated with the commission's work.

The most enjoyable was last weekend -- our regional referee meeting and clinic. We held it in Albany at the Albany Medical Center. The meeting space was wonderful. It was arranged by one of the other referees. The day itself was jam packed. We met and reviewed our region's needs, strategized how to deal with a growing sport and too few individuals willing to commit to being referees, and held a clinic.

It is a requirement for keeping a license as a referee that one attends a clinic yearly. Sometimes these are presentations; sometimes they are chalk talks. This one included lots of time spent analyzing and second guessing how to handle situations laid out on a blue felt river. Nothing beats the felt river for a teaching aid. You quickly learn just how many ways the same situation can be viewed.

It was fun, and we all played beat the snowstorm trying to get home before the blizzard hit. This week included more work on putting a team together to work on updating some of our training materials and getting my ducks in a row for the next commission meeting that will be held in March. The first races will be on the water before I know it.

Better get out my stopwatches, flags, bullhorn and check to make sure that they are all in good order, or order replacements now. When I lived in Ohio my farmer friends used to tell me that the winter was in fact quite busy even with the ground frozen and no fields to work. I know what they are saying. So much for an off-season.

PodcasterCon.org -- The Pork Roll Story Continues

One of the neatest things about podcasting and vblogging is that it brings out the quirkyest of stories -- what in less complicated times would have been folk tales. At PodcasterCon I spotted a bright yellow t-shirt admonishing one and all to "eat more pork roll."  Now, if you are from Jersey or the immediate environs "pork roll" is very special. I'm from the Taylor ham, not pork roll Jerseyans and remember eating it happily as a special breakfast treat during most of my youth.

So, given my personal history with Taylor ham a.k.a. pork roll, I asked the wearer of the shirt about the significance of "eat more pork roll." Well, boy did I learn all about pork roll. The owner of the shirt was Gene Fitzpatrick of Hometown Tales who was at the conference along with Bryan Minogue. They have made one of the funniest, yet so true to Jersey, vblogs about pork roll. It is entitled -- Pork Roll: The Meat That Divides NJ. I very much enjoyed meeting these two guys and seeing all of the video. Gene showed me some of it from his cellphone, just enough like a movie trailer, to get me really interested in seeing the whole thing.

Now, I've been thinking, next time I go to Jersey, I'll have to get myself a Taylor Ham sandwich -- it just isn't pork roll to me.

PodcasterCon.org -- A Surreal Experience

Went to PodcasterCon in Chapel Hill, NC, over the weekend. It was a surreal experience. First, the venue was Murphey Hall, perhaps the building most freighted with history for me. It is the home of the Classics Department, Greek, Latin and such. Since it took me six plus years to complete my Ph.D. at UNC in Classics, I saw a lot of Murphey Hall during those years, spent many an hour in the department library, in the grad student offices and visiting faculty in their offices. The building has a solid bank of memories. It is not the same though. The university has renovated the building beautifully since my day when it was truly a wonderful dowdy old classroom building with lots of charm and not much else.

At first it seemed so off kilter for a meeting of some 300 or so individuals chasing the newest of the new media waves to be getting together in Murphey, . . . but then as I pondered the circumstance I couldn't help but remember that Homer's poems were spoken (so to speak) after dinner entertainment. Would Homeric poems have been released as a podcast -- more strange thoughts?

Overall, PodcasterCon.org was a splendid, fun event. It was not a round-up of the usual suspects, although they would have enjoyed it. It was a nice opportunity to meet a lot of new folks, some with lots of experience in podcasting and others with lots of enthusiasm but no experience. The energy level was very high, making way for lots of learning.

An Edirol R1 -- My New Podcasting Equipment

Guess Santa really wasn't looking this year; otherwise, he wouldn't have put an Edirol R1 under my Christmas tree.

The Edirol R1 will let me record high quality audio for my podcasts. Since it records to a compact flash card, it does not pick up any noise from the device itself. This is a problem for those who record use a traditional microphone and computer set up for recording podcasts. The Edirol R1 will record both WAV and MP3 formats and has an effects processor that will let me enhance my audio. I can hardly wait.

I am surprised at how many capabilities are packed into this recorder. It runs on two AA batteries and is so light that I'll hardly notice that I am carrying it around. I'm still learning how to use it -- note nose is deep in manual every time I fire it up. And -- bonus the manual even makes sense.

Santa thanks -- I always knew you could be bribed.

What Every Geek Must Have

Many thanks to Mike Churchill of KeyRelevance for sending along news of the RsstRoom Reader a got to have bathroom gadget that prints news feeds onto toilet paper! The biometric toilet seat even figures out who you are based on your weight and prints the news you want. For more on this gadget. Oh! Think of all of the time saved, now the executive bathroom in hip companies can really become a functional reading room, not the place where old magazines go to die. Oh! Think . . . maybe we just better not go there.

This gadget, more fictional than functional, is surpassed by the thrilling $4.99 (a sure stocking stuffer this one) Purring Kitty software from Vibelet that promises to "Unlock the hidden pleasures in your mobile phone by instantly turning your cell phone into a discreet vibrating personal 'masseur' "  Since it is compatible with about 40 or so phones, surely there is someone on your holiday giftlist who would be thrilled to enjoy the Purring Kitty.

But, remember Santa knows who has been naughty or nice so be good for goodness sakes.