Blogs and Feeds

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.

Google's Blogger Hosts 8 Million Blogs

Market Watch reports that Google now hosts more than 8 million blogs on Blogger, according to data from Perseus Development Corp. Live Journal is the second heavyweight with 6.6 million accounts.

According to Jeffrey Henning, chief operating officer of Perseus, some 31.6 million Web logs have been created on hosting services, a number he expects to grow to 53.4 million by the end of the year. The survey on which these figures are based was a review of 10,000 blogs.

I want to know: who is writing all of these blogs? Is there still two-thirds of the population that stil does not know what a blog is? Blogging has grown so fast that as soon as a set of stats come out, they are out of date. Thanks to Dave Winer's Scripting News for pointing out this new stat.

WordPress Redux

In WordPress a Spammer -- Tell Me It Isn't So, I joined the coversation over WordPress' poorly implemented fund-raising effort that resulted in the creation of search engine spam. Only hours later did I read Matt's response to the flap.

What a clear example of the power of blogs to engage with consumers and critics! Although on vacation, Matt produced a lengthy response to the flood of criticism flowing over this clumsy fund-raising attempt. It is a reasoned response. It was a mistake. Efforts have been made to fix the mess and restore credibility and confidence. As a reader, it is clear that WordPress is listening. How refreshing to read:

"I strongly believe that WordPress can and will be independent in a way that doesn’t involve begging for money, annoying users, or selling out."

Instead of wishing it wasn't so, I personally am moved to wishing Matt and the folks at WordPress well.

WordPress a Spammer -- Tell Me It Isn't So

E-week reports that bloggers and search-engine marketers are accusing the open-source WordPress project of spamming the major search engines. Although WordPress has been recently active in the blogging industry's effort to combat comment spam, WordPress has fallen prey to spammers. Thousands of articles about popular search terms such as "asbestos," "mortgages" and "debt consolidation" appear on sections of the WordPress.org site while being hidden from visitors to the site's home page. The inclusion of these so-called stories, although an odd thing for a software provider, would not necessarily be spam. But hiding them from view, now that falls within the spam criteria of search engines.

The intent of the articles is to gain traffic for Google AdSense advertisements carried on the content pages for a third party. The use of specious content combined with ads is a tactic often used by spammers. This ilooks like a two-cushion shot -- WordPress is a vehicle for a spammer and has tarnished itself.

Egregious though this is, it points out the problem with popular open source tools. They sag under the weight of their own success. The costs of sustaining the infrastructure needed to manage their popularlity forces them to look for funding. A spammer's dollars spend just as well as a donation from a user. If WordPress is to survive without a diet of "canned meat" (Spam). a more stable, better source of funding will need to be found.

AOL Launches Red Blogs

AOL has joined the fray and launched its own blogging platform -- Red Blogs. This platform is aimed squarely at teenagers. It will allow them to create private, semi-private, or public blogs. Younger teens, aged 13-15, will need parental approval and cannot present their blogs for public viewing.

Blogs are big with teens, so AOL is clearly throwing a soft homerun pitch in creating a platform for this market. It will also create a platform with great "legs." Teens who blog will grow into adults who blog.

Recently in a discussion with other women bloggers, we admitted that we had kept diaries in our teen years. No pink fake leather with a tiny lock for the teens of today. Instead of a lock that their siblings and prying parents can pick with a paper clip, they get to keep their thoughts on a server protected by a password. My lament is:"Born too soon once again."

I will be interested to see not only how AOL develops this platform, but also whether the discipline of writing a blog improves the writing of teens. Watch as I hop up on one of my favorite soap boxes -- good writing only comes with practice. The more you write the more your brain and fingers connect, so writing a diary on line will force some type of connection between thought and words for teen bloggers. Are we someday going to become a more literate society -- too much to ask for, perhaps?

Podcasting Hardware and Video Instructions

Podcasting has recently caught my fancy. The audio-blogs on this blog are just toe-tips into the podcasting pool. What's keeping me from doing more podcasting and really giving it a whirl.

There are a couple of barriers here that I have not yet leapt over. The first is that I don't own an iPod.  I'm a luddite, who doesn't like to listen to music piped into my ears in place of all those other sounds that intrigue me -- some would say, like the sound of my own voice.

But, confession time -- I'm a radio listener. How very retro. It comes from years of living where the radio was great listening -- New York in the '60 with all of the great dj's and then as an adult in the range of the "Great Voice of the Great Lakes," WJR.

Maybe that is why I am so interested in podcasting. Well, my hunt for an equipment list of what it takes to do a reasonable job at this has been answered. A podcasting kit with instructions and even a video for those of us who aren't very mechanical. I love instructions. Yes! I do all those hopeless things like read them first, too many times hearing "measure twice, cut once."

Now, all I've got to do is make the decision to really jump in the podcasting pool. Now, that's another problem.