Micro Persuasion

links for 2007-02-01

• E-paper: from virtual to reality - Editors Weblog
  "UK-based Plastic Logic is specialized in e-paper introduction."
  (tags: Newspapers epaper)
• Yahoo! Widgets - The Ever-Changing Widget Landscape
  A great overview of widgets and how we got to where we are.
  (tags: Widgets Yahoo Apple Google Microsoft gadgets)
• 10 Most Misspelled/Misused Words in Blogs
  "The following list of words that are either misspelled or misused by bloggers are important because a spell checker will not correct them for you."
  (tags: Blogs Writing oops)
• We're looking for sponsors | Clicky Blog
  Help support a great free service.
  (tags: Blogs Analytics Advertising clicky)

Mossberg Hints My Yahoo Will Host Web Widgets

Tucked away in Walter Mossberg's glowing review of web widgets and Netvibes was a little line that - to me at least - indicates that My Yahoo will soon house these. In the piece Mossberg says: "And Yahoo is in the process of revamping My Yahoo to update its look and features. The details of the new design aren't public yet."

Hmmm. Given Yahoo's investment in desktop widgets (and their overall interest in the space) one wonders if they will create a web-based platform where these can all now live. Seems like a no brainer since they like to match or exceed Google and Windows Live. (Microsoft is an Edelman client and we work on Live outside the US)

WSJ Gets Print Edition Feeds

Amen. The Wall Street Journal has added a bunch more RSS feeds. This includes feeds for each section of the print edition of the paper. This is a great start, although I would like to see a gigantaur feed for the entire paper, similar to what the Economist has. Again, I don't get why every newspaper and magazine hasn't started to offer this. Props to the Journal.

Tagging Gains US Fans

AP reports that Americans love tagging. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 28 percent of Internet users have tagged content, and 7 percent have done so on a typical day. Get the full report here.

How to Break LinkedIn Connections

It's a little known fact, but did you realize you can easily break LinkedIn connections? Boy I wish I knew that a long time ago. LinkedIn is a fabulous business social networking tool, especially for people in a line of work like mine who are interested in talking partnerships. However, if you add contacts just for the sake of doing so, its value diminishes.

I have been reading Jason Calacanis' and Guy Kawasaki's posts on how to use the service but haven't invested the time to use it since I had a lot of dead wood in there. (I made the mistake two years ago of letting lots of people into my network who I don't know.) Now that I can eliminate people I don't know well, I am looking forward to exploring.

Oh and if I know you (as in we've traded more than a few emails) and we're not connected, please go ahead and invite me to connect.

Tags: LinkedIn

links for 2007-01-31

• Daft Musings
  Great writing by Carolyn Bickford
  (tags: Blogs newvoices Friends)
• Tribune Partners with Topix, vMix for Web 2.0 Features · MarketingVOX
  Tribune Interactive is partnering with Topix.net to host free online classifieds, and also with vMix, a one-year-old video sharing startup, to add social media to its newspapers' websites.
  (tags: Newspapers Media topix classifieds Web2.0)
• Apple To Pay Bloggers Court Costs
  The courts have said Apple must reimburse the legal fees of the bloggers they took to court.
  (tags: Blogs law)
• Mainstream Media Usage of Web 2.0 Services is Increasing
  Richard says" It appears that we are nearing a tipping point for the mass adoption of prominent web 2.0 services, like digg and del.icio.us."
  (tags: Web2.0 Media)
• Nerd World - TIME
  New blog from Lev Grossman at Time.
  (tags: Time Blogs newvoices Journalism Technology)
• The Ag - News Summary - News in Brief - TIME
  " Adigested version of the best stories from hundreds of the world's great newspapers and blogs."
  (tags: Time Blogs aggregation Journalism)

China 2.0

达贝妮-阿北-keso-平客, originally uploaded by blogger·china.

If there's ever an image that sums up the Web 2.0 revolution, it's this one. What a shot! I love how it's from China too.

New Technorati "WTF" Feature Clones Digg

Technorati has launched a new feature called Technorati WTF. No, it doesn't stand for "what the..." It's short for "Where's the Fire?"

Basically, Where's the Fire appears to be a digg clone. It allows users to share what's hot. Then visitors can come a long and vote for the most interesting items.

Here are some screenshots from Technorati WTF. I am not sure I really get it. Why not index digg instead of trying to re-create it? (Disclosure: Technorati and Edelman have a partnership that is wrapping up, but I spotted this with my own two eyes and didn't get advance notice)

LATER:: As of 11 pm eastern the site is down.

EVEN LATER:: According to a comment on TechCrunch, T'Rati announced this on Twitter yesterday and Dorion Caroll blogged it.

Tips for Growing Your Blog

Earlier today I moderated a panel at the Always On Media conference on how to be a better blogger. Participants included Peter Rojas, Jeff Jarvis and Elizabeth Spiers. For a round up of our talk, see Jeff Burkett's blog and ZDNet.

The Lonely, The Proud, the Bloggers

Got a blog? Then you're probably lonely. This according to new research out of the University of Calgary.

Professor Michael Keren, author of Blogosphere: The New Political Arena, says we're a lonely bunch. "Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills," he told Canoe.

Personally, I don't buy it. The bloggers I read go to a lot of conferences and they sure send a lot of email. What's your view? Are you lonesome tonight?

links for 2007-01-30

• The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
  (tags: Search)
• HeyLetsGo Boston - What's Happening, Who's Going.
  Social network for local events in Boston, New York and San Francisco.
  (tags: SocialNetworking community Events)
• Supermogul.com
  A new blog for execs from Elizabeth Spiers and Dead Horse Media.
  (tags: deadhorsemedia Blogs elizabethspiers)
• Fashionista.com
  A new blog on fashion, also from Elizabeth Spiers and Dead Horse Media.
  (tags: Blogs elizabethspiers deadhorsemedia)
• OrganizingLA Blog
  A blog on organization.
  (tags: Blogs newvoices)
• Heather Hopkins - Hitwise UK: eBay, Bebo, Games and Weather Top UK Search Terms in 2006
  (tags: Search UK 2006)
• Macworld: Creative Notes: Password protected podcasts with .Mac
  Great technique for creating private podcasts. I am sure you can emulate this on Windows just as easily.
  (tags: Podcasting Lifehacks)

Blog Platforms Should Embrace OpenID to Address Theft

Stephen Davies, my counterpart in London, has had his custom blog design ripped off not once, but twice. Both times the theft appeared to originate in Asia. Others have had the same issue. And one blogger had success using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to get justice.

Blog designs, like any code, are really easy to steal. Just look at the source code and you have what you're looking for. Further, if you publish the full text of your blog in your feed, it's conceivable that someone can steal all your goods. Now might be a good time to do something about this before it really becomes rampant.

It seems to me like we can solve this problem with Open ID. The major blog publishing platforms should encourage their members to also sign up for OpenID (more information is on Wikipedia). Then they can have a mechanism in place that plants a special watermark on your blog once you've confirmed your ID. Basically, every time your blog is loaded it sends data to Open ID that then generate a special coded watermark on your blog confirming you're you. If it doesn't see the code then your content won't load. LiveJournal, Vox, Technorati and others do so but not in this manner.

Now I am not a web developer so perhaps this is naive of me. Maybe people can see the data flowing back and forth and still hack this. Thoughts?

Tags: OpenID, Identity, theft, design

links for 2007-01-29

• Useful Keyboard Shortcuts in OS X
  (tags: Apple keyboardshortcuts OSX)
• Boing Boing: Sweden to be first country with official embassy in Second Life
  (tags: secondlife sweden Europe)
• Vancouver 2010 - RSS Feeds
  RSS feeds for the next Winter Olympic Games.
  (tags: olympics RSS)
• Widgipedia
  Giant directory of widgets.
  (tags: widgets directory)
• Public statistics | Clicky Blog
  You can now take your Clicky stats public.
  (tags: Analytics Blogs Clicky)
• The Jeff Pulver Blog: Jeff Pulver meets Steve Rubel:
  I finally got to meet the great Jeff Pulver in my office last week. Two guys from Lawn Guyland.
  (tags: jeffpulver Friends video network2 Edelman)
• The Pixar Story: Dick Shoup, Alex Schure, George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and Disney
  The early beginnings of Pixar started at NYIT - in my backyard.
  (tags: Pixar history NewYork Disney movies culture)
• The Office Life .com >> The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary >> A
  From "Above-board" to "Zerotasking."
  (tags: Writing jargon fun)
• digital axle
  An interactive marketing blog.
  (tags: newvoices Marketing Blogs)

Wikipedia Added to Google OneBox

Google has quietly added a new OneBox feature that highlights articles from Wikipedia. All you need to do to is tack on the word "info" or "information" at the end of your query and Google will put a large Wikipedia link at the top of the results page. Your search keywords and the Wikipedia article title need to match up exactly, otherwise the Onebox links don't show up.

As Wikipedia's power and brand rise, Google is going to dig deeper into the citizen-edited encyclopedia. Google loves frequently updated information so the fit is perfect. This will occur even as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales readies a Google competitor. While this OneBox is not a search engine for Wikipedia, it sure comes close. There's nothing to stop Google from going further and building a Wikipedia search engine and I suspect they will.

Google Onebox spotlights special results such as news, stock quotes, weather, music and maps when certain trigger keywords are used. Blogs were added last week.

Tags: wikipedia, google, onebox

links for 2007-01-28

• Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Top 10 Hacks on Flickr
  (tags: Lifehacks Hacks Flickr Photography)
• My Life As An RSS Junkie | Medialoper
  This is the tale of an RSS addict.
  (tags: RSS)
• Open Culture: Digital MBA: America's Best Business Schools on Your iPod
  A brief tour of what America's top b-schools are up to these days with podcasting.
  (tags: Podcasting Education)
• CodeX Apps - [Personal Edition] - Overview
  "CodeX Apps creates a virtual work place for you and organizes all stuff under "pages", namely "topics", so that you can get your works done just in one place, fast."
  (tags: Productivity Web2.0 Windows OSX)

links for 2007-01-27

• » Hold the presses: Bill Gates is now a Hooters VIP | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com
  Please click on this post so Mary Jo Foley gets paid! Just kidding. She clarifies how she chooses what to write about, given ZDNet's traffic-based pay scheme.
  (tags: zdnet blogs Journalism $)
• Yahoo begins MyBlogLog integration
  "Flickr features are now integrated with MyBlogLog profiles"
  (tags: mybloglog Blogs yahoo flickr)
• Podcasting News » Apple Expects To Sell Two Million Apple TVs In 2007
  "Apple now expects to sell over a million Apple TV devices leading up to the 2007 holiday season, and at least that many again during the Thanksgiving - Christmas period."
  (tags: AppleTV Apple TV)
• Podcasting News » Internet Video Audience Reaches Critical Mass
  "The audience for Internet video has reached a critical mass, offering advertisers and television programmers lucrative opportunities, according to Nielsen Analytics."
  (tags: TV Video Advertising Stats)

Communities Should Allow People to Delete Their Comments

Everyone sticks their foot in it from time to time. If you do this on your own blog, you can edit the post and take it back. You could delete the post too, but it's not looked on very positively. Still, if you leave a comment on some other site, you very often need to live with it. So you better think twice before lambasting your friend for slamming Jethro Tull on his blog.

There's really no reason why community sites shouldn't offer this option. It's good for everyone involved. Three sites, at least that I know of, allow you to edit or even delete your comments. They're the social saints.

On Blogger you can delete comments left on Blogspot blogs, provided that you are logged into their system.

Flickr, Yahoo's photo sharing site, lets you both edit comments left on photos or delete them entirely. Note the small links in next to my comment in the photo below.

Facebook gives you the option to delete comments you leave on Facebook walls, but you can't edit and re-save them.

Most other community sites don't have this capability. YouTube warns of this in their help pages. Yahoo Answers goes half way. You can delete an answer to an open question, not a closed one, but you'll be penalized.

Anyone know of other sites that let people delete their comments? It seems so silly not to enable this.

CNET Requires That Journalists Respond to Blog Comments

CNET is mandating that its blogging journalists respond to all reader comments and questions, according to a report in The Guardian. Further, they are also expected to get involved in every debate that "has legs." (Hat tip to Cyberjournalist)

This model is incredibly noble and indicative of where journalism needs to evolve. However, at the same time, it presents a conundrum for public relations professionals and the journalists as well.

For every three or four stories that the PR community "generates" there's often one that the client is not happy with the turnout. Sometimes it's a misquote. Other times it's a negative tone. Now not all of these gripes are rational of course. However, often they are.

When the offending story and/or error rises to a certain level of concern, the natural next step is to contact the reporter or even his/her editor. This happens hundreds of times a day in newsrooms across the country. The editorial team then makes a decision to amend a story and/or print a correction if it's a print publication - or not. This all takes place in the backchannel, not out on the ice.

Now the game has changed, at least on CNET's web site. If there's an error in a blog a PR professional can post comments and questions. That's not new. However, what is new is that the reporters must respond. Also, why stop at blog posts? CNET allows readers to comment on news stories too. They should go all the way here.

Unfortunately, I also worry that this will be used unethically. It's possible that less than scrupulous PR people will solicit "friendlies" to post questions and concerns in an effort to stir up a debate. This is basically astroturfing.

Again, it's great that CNET will respond to its readers. However, they would be advised to make this process more transparent so we know what they will and won't respond to. Further, some clarity on how PR professionals and corporations should interact with journalists in comments would be helpful too.

Tags: CNET

links for 2007-01-26

• Download YouTube & Google Video clips via bookmarklets
  "Save video clips from YouTube, Google Video and others hazzle-free"
  (tags: googlevideo videos youtube Bookmarklets)
• LAT editor: “We are Web stupid.” - Reuters Blogs
  "The Web will now be the LAT’s primary vehicle for news"
  (tags: LATimes Newspapers Media)
• Beet.TV: Forrester Report: Consumer-Generated Video Uploads Takes Off -- Consumer Trust of Peers Trumps Media and Marketers
  "The number of viewers of clips far out outnumbers the people who upload them. But, the number of uploaders is increasing dramatically"
  (tags: Video community Stats Forrester)
• Hillary Clinton, Yahoo Answers & the Power of Social Media
  "Hillary Clinton has turned to Yahoo Answers, the social media driven Q&A experience from Yahoo, to look for some ideas on how normal Americans would improve health care in the United States."
  (tags: Politics yahooanswers)
• Super Bowl on YouTube - Mashable!
  "Right after the game, all the Super Bowl commercials will be grouped together in a YouTube gallery. Users can then watch them, choose their favorites using a drag and drop voting mechanism and share the best ads with others."
  (tags: Video Advertising Sports Football)
• Barons Before Bedtime - New York Times
  "Having your own business has become very cool; having your own business before your 20th birthday indescribably so."
  (tags: entrepreneurship millennials)
• The Daily Davos - WSJ.com
  (tags: wsj worldeconomicforum Blogs)

How to Be a Trendwatcher

Leon Ho is at it again. This time he has an outstanding primer on how to track trends. His advice: watch Alexa, use Technorati, monitor Google PageRank, read Slashdot, use memtrackers and an RSS reader.