Voice recording on a Treo

As I was driving around town this morning, I was fumbling trying to send myself reminder emails on my Palm Treo of things that were coming into my head. I know, trying to type on a Treo while driving, dumb; I thought the same thing. That's when it occurred to me; why don't you use the voice recorder instead as you keep telling others to do. Duh.

So I pressed the button on the side and started talking. Man, it's easier than sending email to yourself. I encourage you to stop sending email to yourself while driving. It can save a life.

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I’m not a pro blogger, yet

I knew I was not a "real" pro blogger, but I thought I would at least see how I rated according to the REAL ProBlogger. Here is how I scored;

Serious Amateur
You managed to score 16 points out of 40.
You might not be a full time blogger yet but you've got some promising Signs! Keep at it!

Want to know where you stand as a pro blogger? Try it here.

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Problogger group writing project - my favorites

After reading all the blogs, commenting on most, I think I have found what I would consider my favorite posts on the topic posed on Problogger.net. Here they are in no particular order.

Discovering More Time by Steve
Brand Your Blog From Day 1 by Eric
But Don’t Look Back in Anger by Jan
Kill Fifty Birds with One Stone by Curt
12 Things I would do if I had to start my Blog again by JohnTP

Here is the link to the entire list of participators.

I really enjoyed this little exercise, and learned a lot. Unitl next time.

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Great little hack for tracking time

I've been a long time reader of lifehacker.com. I download the occasional "daily download", use the todo.txt file, and have implemented several other tricks. But this one, the worklog.txt file, created and maintained by a simple script file and opened with CTL+ALT+L (for Windows OS), made this little hack my all time favorite. Why? The simplicity. I am at my PC a good amount of the day, and I am doing various tasks for various clients. This is going to be a great way for me to quickly start and stop tasks. Thanks Gina.

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The vision for this blog… would I do it again?

Over at ProBlogger, Darren has started a great thread asking the question, would you run your blog the same way? It is an interesting question. I've enjoyed reading how many other well known bloggers answered the question. Now Darren has put the question out to all his readers. So, I thought I would take a stab at it.

When I first started blogging, back in 2002, I remember the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were still fresh on every ones mind, including mine. I'm a former United States Marine. I'd been out of the service for quite some time when the attacks happened but my sense of duty was running high. I knew I wasn't in a position to re-join my brothers, but I could be vocal about supporting them.

I was reading a copy of Java Developers Journal when I came across an article by the editor, Alan Williamson, and he mentioned a "blogging" service his company started called blog-city.com. So I did some poking around, and started my first blog. It was all about military stuff, specifically, Marines. I had a pretty good little following. It's something I discovered happens when your blog is part of a community. You tend to have a lot of readers from that community. But as time went on I expanded the blog to cover other issues, and inevitably, hosting my own blog with WordPress.

The question then, would I do it all over again, I would have to answer with a resounding yes. I've learned more over the past several years because of my association with blogs than at any other time in my life. My current blog, digitalthom.com, is going through a sort of transition. From something that was a hobby, to something that will actually make me money. I don't want to be a professional blogger like Darren, but I do think my blog can be an integral part of my business.

The things I would do differently would be to have better meta words, better content, and longer relevant posts. Something that would continue to draw people in. I've really been looking at AdSense (because there appears to be a lot of people making money), so, I'm trying to figure out the best way to implement it in my blog.

So yeah, I'd do it all over. For starters I would be a little more focused on what I know and how I can add value, but at the end of the day I'd still be doing this stuff. I'm really getting into podcasting and hope to expand my blog readership by expanding my podcasting.

Thanks Darren for giving others the opportunity to share.

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