Put Your RSS Feed Above The Fold

There is an old media phrase "above the fold", basically meaning any material that is printed at the top of the paper. This is the most read and usually the most important news in the paper. Your website/weblog has a fold too. It's the bottom of a visitors screen, or somewhere near there. Your most important links and content should be above the bottom of the screen.

It may be just me but one of the first things I look for when I am visiting a site is the RSS link. If I think a site is one I want to continue reading after I leave I add them to a my RSS reader. But I hate having to hunt for it. Everyone who writes a blog wants return visitors. The most common way to do this is provide an RSS feed. But more importantly is that you make it as prominent as possible. Most readers look for an icon like this.

RSS feeds are important and I'm not going to get into the mechanics of RSS because it's been written about thousands of time. But help your readers out. Encourage them to subscribe.

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Is Apple afraid the iPhone is an iPod killer?

I'm sure it's no secret the reason Apple decided to only provide an iPhone with 4 or 8 gigabytes of storage space is so they wouldn't kill their wildly popular iPod line.

Ok, that is probably not true. However, I have the same problem that a lot of new iPhone users will have. My phone, a T-Mobile MDA, which is capable of playing music and video, has such a small amount of storage space that I have an iPod just for music and video. How crazy is that? With the low cost of memory and the nano sized technology available today, you would think offering 30 gigabytes of storage in the iPhone would make sense. After I've saved some music, videos, pictures, I have nothing left and with the absence of removable storage I'm sunk.

It's a very well thought out plan. No matter how cool the iPhone is, and I'm sure it's cool, just ask Robert Scoble who was Twittering about it at 2AM, you're still going to need two devices to have all you want. I think Apple really dropped the ball. Instead of adding a new device that would rule all it added a device that needs help.

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Giving Props To My Peeps

Janet Meiners just posted about giving sincere thanks to those who have helped you along the way. There are a few people I wanted to thank that have really helped me over the past few weeks.

Janet Meiners. She spent some time with me the other day helping me see some opportunities for moving my new business forward. Janet is an Internet Marketing coach and is very easy to talk with. While she really doesn't work with people like me, she didn't hesitate to at least give me her point of view. Thanks Janet. [website]

Ash Buckles. Thanks Ash. I sincerely mean that. Ash doesn't mess around. He knows what he wants. He works real hard. I watch what he does and how he applies himself. [website]

Jason Alba. Thanks Jason. You really need to get to know Jason. Jason helped me this week with setting some priorities for my new business. One of the things I appreciate about Jason is his simple no nonsense attitude. Always do the right thing. [website]

Chris Brogan. Thanks Chris. I'm not real sure yet why I feel such a connection with Chris, but I do. He also doesn't know me from Adam, although we have posted comments on each others blogs and we are Friends on Twitter. Chris gets it. Chris is the kind of guy that is always thinking about the next thing. He's like 5 moves ahead. I've told Chris before, he has my dream job. You may be wondering how Chris helped me. Well, Chris is always motivating; always asking questions; always moving forward. [website]

Jason Calacanis. Thanks Jason. I have been following Jason on Twitter for a while. Jason doesn't know me from Adam and thats too bad. I know he can't possible befriend everyone. I did managed to catch a segment on a satellite channel where Jason was giving his response to a couple guys trying to make a go of a new Internet Business. The one liner I took away from his segment was "If the CEO showed up late to an investor meeting, I'd fire the CEO". Something like that. It was great. I'm the kind of person that insists on being 15 minutes early. I'd rather wait to get started than show up late and have to make up an excuse. It shows a lot about a persons integrity and passion. [website]

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Isn’t social networking just contact hording?

There is a lot of hype today about Social Networking. Wikipedia defines a Social Network as

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.

Huh? That sounds like psycho babel. Here is an image of a social network



So basically, the idea is to create an extended network of like minded people for the betterment of the network.

But as I look at the hundreds of "Social Networks" today, all I see are people trying to accumulate the most number of links, emails, track backs, nodes, what ever. I see little networking and trying to build something. I only see contact hording.

For good or for bad, Facebook is a great example of a "Social Network". It encourages its members to create groups, join groups, upload videos and pictures, tell everyone what books you're reading and what music you're listening too. MySpace also encourages its members to link together, post about each others MySpace site, change the look and feel, share music you like, pictures, and now video.

But with all this sharing, we still don't feel each other. Now I'm not trying to get all sappy on you, but its true. If you never actually talk to or see a person live its hard to establish a lasting relationship. That's why mail order brides have never really caught on.

Some folks are taking their Social Networking to the next step which is having local meet-ups, and getting to know each other for real. Chris Brogan does this. Jim Long does this. I'm sure there are many many more that do this too. We have even tried it in Salt Lake City, Utah, with some success, and are trying harder to make it happen more often. With the creation of PodCamps, FooCamps, BarCamps, XCamp and YCamp, people are actually building off-line relationships that strengthen their online relationships.

I encourage you to take your relationships off-line when possible. Start your own PodCamp, BarCamp or SocialCamp. Do it. You'll be surprised. If you can't start one, then go to one. Go to many. Heck make a career out of building and strengthening the Social Networks which already exist. Chris does this.

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Delta Flight 6499 From Hell

If I were on this flight, the FBI would have had to come and get me off. This is so unacceptable. Especially the part about Food. I hope Delta loses Millions in lawsuits and that everyone, from the flight crew to the terminal personnel lose their jobs.

Watch the video.

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del.icio.us hosting account suspended?

I was trying to save a link to my del.icio.us account and I kept getting this error message each time, several times. Even as I write this I still get the error message. That has to suck for them, and for me.



So that lead me to wonder if Web2.0 and New Media companies have fail over, disaster recovery or load balance plans in place? I have committed all my links to del.icio.us, and if for some reason they were to go down I would be really pissed that I lost all my bookmarks. This is a wakeup call to make back ups of data you have stored on web servers. Looks like another piece of data to keep on my S3 account.

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If you ask me for my birth date I’ll lie

I was signing up for a free service yesterday on the web, not even sure what it was, and the required fields they wanted were my birth date, gender, and phone. So, as usual, I made up a birth date, the same made up birth date I always give. I always put that I'm female, even though I'm not, and I give them some phone number in Sand Diego that I used to have in the mid 1980's. Those poor people may have been getting calls because of me for years now.

But seriously, what value does a website get out of that. How many people do they actually think will give them their *real* birth date? Gender, well maybe. Phone, probably not. And what do they do with it? People are getting more savvy with their online identity. Unless you win the Ethiopian National Lottery of $250,000,000 , in which case people still fall for the "it will only cost you $2000 to get it" scam. Good thing the Powerball Lottery only costs us $1 to play :) Please don't give these sites your information. And if you absolutely need to create an account, make it up. That's what I say. How will they ever know?

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My blog is 4 years old this month

Well, it's half way through June 2007 and I realized that I've been blogging for over 4 years (not including the BBS posts I wrote in the late eighties early nineties). I actually started blogging in February 2003 on blog-city.com. I've tried to get the blog posts from back then but I wasn't able too. The best I have starts around 2004 somewhere. Anyway, I guess it's been some time, but nothing has been as consistent as this blog. I've branched out to others (here, here, and here) as I'm trying to figure out whats fun and whats business.

Now that I'm getting into other media types like podcasting and videocasting, blogging for me has become than just writing, it's performing.

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The New Media elite? Hardley.

I stumbled upon this blog off Valleywag.com today purporting to have a list of the who's who in New Media. I had to laugh my a$$ off reading the names. Here are some of my favorites:

• Michael Buhr, Sr. Director of Corporate Strategy, eBay (who is this guy and what does eBay have to day with New Media?)


• Â Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon (two questions, what does Amazon actually make, that is New Media?)


• Mark Weinberg, Director of Engineering, Zune, Microsoft (how does the Director of Engineering for the Zune qualify as a who's who in New Media?)

See, to me, people that are influencing New Media are people like Jim Long, Chris Brogan and CC Chapman. Even Cameron Reilly at The Podcast Network has a bigger influence on New Media than the people on the list seem to have. Are we just bandwagoning the term New Media?

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Photobucket has some cool technology

Matthew Reinbold gave me a pretty interesting demo of Photobucket at the Utah Tech Spotlight today. The site uses technology from Adobe, and aside from the normal sharing of photos, you can also upload video, and create mixes of photos, videos and music providing a basic movie making tool. It's pretty neat. I created a video with some stills and a video and stitched them together into one file. I also uploaded a small video and edited out a portion that was crappy. It all worked pretty good.

After spending a few hours messing around with it, the interface is pretty good (although filled with ads), the tools are fairly fast, not as fast I had hoped but it was ok. I was generally pleased with the way it worked and I was able to create my videos and was provided a link to embed in my blog.

What I don't like is the layout. The links to the various areas (i.e. photos, videos) are not where I would have expected them to be. They are at the bottom of the screen. I'm sure these are things that will be worked out in the future and doesn't make it any less of a product.

I have a Pro account with Flickr, and Photobucket offers a Pro account as well, but both cost the same. There are limitations on space with Photobucket but not with Flickr. I assume the limitation is because you can create videos that probably don't compressed like pictures. I could be wrong.

Anyway, check it out, its free, and there seems to be some interesting technology there. Thanks Matt.

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Utah Tech Spotlight featuring HireVue

We didn't have as many people at this months Spotlight but personally I thought it was a great presentation. Ryan Money, founder of HireVue was on hand to talk about his company, their technology and other little business tid bits.

[Sorry the video that was here is really crappy so I removed it]

Pictures here.

As usual, Twelve Horses sponsored the event at the Bohemian. If you've never been there I highly recommend you go there at once. And if you're not sure what Twelve Horses is check them out too.

If you want an opportunity to up close and personal technology companies right here in Salt Lake City, Utah, this is the event for you. As Steve mention at todays even, we've heard from several well known companies like Mozy, Control4 and MediaPort. Check out the website and then come to the next event. See you there.

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Safari for Windows, please no

Is there really room for another web browser on the Windows platform? I guess, maybe, but should it be Safari? Safari on the Mac is the default like Internet Explorer is on a Windows machine. But with options like Opera and FireFox, and there are so many more based on the Mozilla engine, that I was a little taken back when I saw that a version of Safari was available for Windows.

My first question is how many Windows user have used Safari on the Mac let alone even heard of Safari. Probably not many and I'm sure that was the idea, we don't have a user base with a negative view of this browser because it has only been available on the Mac, so lets throw it out there on Windows and see how many people will use it.

I have an iMac and I don't use Safari. I can't stand it. I use FireFox and occasionally have to use Internet Explorer (in Windows) for sites that are insane enough to only work with Internet Explorer. But Safari? What value or advantage does that bring to the Windows experience? None I say. The application will assuredly get thousands of downloads as lookylous try it out but in the end it will take a lot more than that to oust FireFox or Internet Explorer from their perch.

Safari on Windows may be faster, maybe, but will it become the defacto standard just on that feature alone? Give me my FireFox plugins please.

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June CodeAway in Salt Lake City

I was finally able to attend my first CodeAway. It was very interesting. By time things got cookin there were about 10 people including a really cute munchkin. Ash and I talked about the new rev of BridesClub.com; Matt and I (and another guy whose name I can't remember, sorry) talked about NASCAR, and racing in general, and of course it's all lost in translation. Mike was pretty quiet. Laura talked about her latest DVD from Starling Fitness (I blogged about her here) and she was assembling mailers. Marleigh was there and I learned that she is so smart and will rule the world one day. And finally, still, no one knows what I do. I really need to frackin work on that. But that's another blog post.

When I first arrived I discovered that Mike and Laura have a cat, and bless his heart, I'm just allergic an no amount of medicine can fix it. I'm not sure why, I guess I need to get that problem resolved. Sorry Laura, I hope you weren't offended in anyway, but I really appreciate you not kicking me out.

There was lots of food, drink and good times. So, next month, I'll try and have a laptop and actually work on a coding project, or something similar to a coding project.

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Shaking my fists at the Hosting Gods

Bear with me while I try and explain why I think the Hosting Gods are against me. For starters the best hosting company I ever had went out of business. Not sure why, there were many reasons I was told. I noticed the service level went way down, couldn't get through to customer service and so on. But this isn't how it always was. The company used to be very responsive. I knew most of the guys there by their first names and I think they knew me pretty well too.

So off I went to find a good web host. One that would give me similar service and features. I found several on my own and had several referred to me. So I picked one, mostly based on price (because they all had similar features), and started the process. I guess I was spoiled because I paid each month for my service, not a whole year up front. I did this for a reason, because I wanted to leave with no strings if needed.

So here is where I start shaking my fists at the Hosting Gods. You cannot tell me that charging for a whole years worth of hosting with no set up fee, nets you more money than letting me pay every month and charging me a setup fee. Oh wait, that's where you make your money, actually, more money, by charging a setup fee. So let's get the facts straight:

1. You charge less per month if you pay for a whole year in advance. OK, discounts are great.

2. You don't charge a setup fee if I choose the lesser priced year in advance.

3. In most cases I can't even pay month to month; you want me to pay quarterly, half yearly or the whole year, the first two with setup fees and no discounted monthly rate.

4. You only have one rate plan; one year in advance.

Yes, I'm ranting. I don't buy the it's easier it all upfront excuse. How hard is it to charge per month? It's not. See, if I pay per month and your service goes down hill, or your product starts crapping out, I can change providers. But when you shackle me to your service for a whole year, I lose options. That's not good business, and I feel sorry for those who are so proud to be a customer of a Hosting company who holds their customers hostage.

If you run a good Hosting company, will let me pay per month and not charge me a pocket lining setup fee, I'd love to hear from you. Prove me wrong. Prove I can have great hosting with good features and good service for a reasonable price.

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