Defog1

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One big drawback? Does not work on a Mac. Weep, weep, weep.

Twitter Can Momentarily Make The Earth Move

If you have read my previous piece Twitter Me This: Will You Go Truffle Hunting in the Forest Today? you will know that I quite like the site. It can help a little with Google because all tweets, unless private, appear on searches and people can link to your site from your Twitter account. Above all it can be fun and lead to interesting finds. I know that at first glance it can seem like you made a wrong turning and landed on planet Bebo.

You can read over at O'Reilly how Twitter was almost used in the absence of microphones at a Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Today I discovered that Twitter can make the earth move. Just go to TwittEarth and experience it for yourself. While there it is easy to forget that your tweets are appearing in the normal timeline. I predict that those in love may find this useful to say good night when apart. You need have a Twitter account to use TwittEarth.

The Devil Is In The Detail With Joel Comm's Adsense Secrets

I'm shocked. I bought Joel Comm's Adsense Secrets which is an innocent looking ebook just yesterday. It cost $9.95 and seemed like a bargain. I happened to be looking at a film on YouTube when I noticed another short film. I then discovered that I may have signed up to pay around $29 a month because i did not read all the long copy. I hate long copy and skipped through it. You can watch the YouTube Adsense Secrets film at http://tinyurl.com/4kj92a. Lesson learned.

Tips on Choosing a Blog Name, Domain Name & Company Name

I've been helping small companies to decide on blog names, domain names and company names and I am putting together a report on this. Really the three are best decided upon and researched at the same time. A big influence can be the question of trademarking. It is best to avoid violating the trademark of another company and it may be useful to think about trademarking a name.

You can sign up for my report by click on Naming a Business, Blog, Domain, Company page.

Uploading Videos Whilst Avoiding the Curse of Duplicate Content

In December I read about Traffic Geyser and was completely hooked. Traffic Geyser is a site which encourages and assists video producers by automating the uploading videos and podcasts to many sites. Already aware that a lot of sites do not allow promotional films I set about making more of a 'Tips' style film for O.C. Screeding which would include some references to the company. Since most sites have a limit of 100mb I knew that it had to be short and also thought that people might be more inclined to watch a 1.5 minute film than a three of five minute one.

I worked late into the night editing this film and was possibly not paying enough attention to how I was sitting as I began to suffer from RSI in my right hand. This was very painful and curtailed my blogging for the past few weeks. The film got finished and you can view the results of my editing at O.C. Screeding/Film.

During my enforced absence I began to wonder about the wisdom of uploading the same film to lots of sites with the same title and description. I could see that this might result in duplicate content, a subject I have discussed before at Defogging the Connection Between Social Media and Blogging. So I decided to upload the video to lots of sites and to vary the descriptions. I soon realised that a lot of sites, although keen to have my content, were not as keen to give a link back to the O.C. Screeding site. Because of the nature of the company i.e. they provide floor screeding in the London, M25 and South East of the UK I reflected that my mission to put this film up on as many sites as possible world wide might not be the best use of my time.

They have had good results in terms of referrals from entering their details on directories that connect to the construction industry in their geographical area and perhaps getting them to focus on doing more of that might be a better use of resources. If I had made a funny viral film, that would get watched around the world, I might have made a different decision. I was not so inspired and the film is functional rather than funny. It is a useful addition to their website and will definitely be a great help to those who are new to floor screeding.

The sites that I found allowing a link back to content owners websites are YouTube, Video.Google.com, and Video.Yahoo.com. Uploading videos is time consuming and getting Traffic Geyser to do the legwork could be use useful and I recommend that you leave off the description from the automated process and return to all the sites after the upload and write a fresh one for each site.

Defogging the Connection Between Social Media and Blogging

In the past week I have pondered long and hard, read and listened to quite a bit on how best to tie a blog in with social media such as MySpace and facebook. It is an excellent thing to do except I keep hearing about the 'no follow rule' and want to investigate that first. I can find  plenty of past debate on the subject and when I hit upon Goggle's Own Blog, which you too can read, I realise that the rule is very much a fait accompli and the control is with the blogging and social networking platforms. So back to social media.

Jon Ray posed the question "What is a Social Networking and Media Campaign?” in his blog last Monday. He explained how advertising and marketing has changed and that it is no longer a one way conversation and companies now have to listen to their customers who expect to be heard. It is about starting conversations. He explains how you manage social networking and exhorts us to contact him on Facebook, YouTube, Kyte, Seesmic, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, his Wordpress blog, invite him to your event through Upcoming, e.mail him or just call him on the phone. So that gives quite a list to start with and for the terrific detail I will refer you back to Who is Jon Ray?

Later in the week I listened to a podcast where Perry Marshall talked to Joan Stewart of PublicityHound.net as she gave her analysis of the  successful marketing campaign that Amazon ran for the Kindle. Joan explained why it had been successful and gave pointers on how small companies could learn from them in terms of having a plan. Joan's view is that an influential blog can give you more exposure than if CNN and The New York Times ran a story on you. On social media she advises deciding who you want to reach and finding where they are on the social networks. Then join the conversation and start to build relationships but avoid being overtly promotional. Some of her favourites are MySpace, facebook and Linkedin.

By chance a query about domains and servers led me to Ask Dave Taylor where the question had been raised "Is syndicating my blog postings a recommended tactic?" The short answer is sadly "NO". In essence:

=> Google and other search engines may penalise you for having duplicate content.

=> Could end up competing against your own content on other sites for higher search engine ranking.

=>If you use article syndication submit articles that you have never published on your own site.

=> In your RSS feed give the original title and an overview of a few freshly written sentences and not the content of the posting.

I recommend that you read the full article at Ask Dave Taylor.

So working slowly and diligently with a plan, while forgoing the temptation of cut and paste, is the way forward.

You Heard Right! MyChingo Was Bought by DefogMyBlog This Week

Yes indeed on Tuesday evening this week DefogMyBlog bought a license for MyChingo for one year. Not the whole company then? No Michael Bailey, the owner, resolutely refuses to part with it and he is in the process of renaming it, Mobatalk. He knows its potential but he need not worry about receiving a large bid as $45 is my upper limit for take overs this side of Christmas.

I had seen it on other sites and thought it would be fun to try it and forgot about it. Then I discovered that one of the people I follow on Twitter owns it so I was prompted to download it again. I matched the colour to the shade of blue on my site and customized it with the words "Speak Freely" on the front. I'm not sure what words these replaced but the upshot was that I did not realise that I should press on those words and struggled to get going. I loaded up Audacity sound software and proved that my Logitech microphone was working really well. I was really disappointed and sent an email to Michael and he quickly pointed out the error of my ways and then very kindly popped by and left a message. Terrific customer care I think.

In my mind MyChingo is one of those trinkets like Twitter and Spinvox both of which I've written about previously. They simplify life. Now someone can just send a voice and text message from my site and it will arrive as voice and text in an email in my account. I have mine set on private and so you cannot listen to my messages apart from the few I have made public. Tech Critques use MyChingo to get listener comments about their podcasts and Journey Inside My Mind use it in a similar way to connect with their listeners. As they are using the public setting, visitors to the sites can listen to the messages as well as leave their own comments.

By the way I am not an affiliate for Spinvox, Twitter or MyChingo. I just happen to like them.

If you would like to follow this blog then click the subscribe button. Yes that is the big orange button at the top. I would love to hear you speak so maybe you could try MyChingo on the right. Follow my example and buy MyChingo for a year and I can pop by and speak to you too.

Could You Use a Blogging Platform for Your Business Website?

If you read my piece Defog My Blog? you will see that I think a blog can be adapted as a website and is great for helping to get a business off the ground quickly.I use TypePad for this blog and I have not got an old style website at all. Everything to do with DefogMyBlog will be on this site and I am so keen on Typepad and MovableType that I am an affiliate. Both companies belong to the Six Apart group. The founders called their company Six Apart because they were born six days apart.

Today I chanced upon a site called Technology for Business $ake and listened to some podcasts of interviews with Chris Alden, EVP and GM of Six Apart - Professional Division. It was heartening to hear that he concurred with my view and explained that blogs are being used for websites and internally within companies for customer relationship management. People are finding the technology easy to learn and companies are looking at bolting on other features such as shopping carts and gradually it will get easier to do things like print blogging posts. Over time his prediction is that there will be a shift from email as peoples start to communicate through blogs.

Click here to listen to the podcasts.

Twitter Me This: Will You Go Truffle Hunting in the Forest Today?

You don't Twitter? You think it is nonsense? At first glance it looked like nonsense to me too. I was persuaded by people like Darren Rowse and Chris Brogan to look at the value of Twitter a second time. Now I see it as akin to truffle hunting and a form of blogging. I've developed an instinct for finding treasure and maybe I can persuade you to take a pig to the forest and start foraging and my Twitter name is DefogMyBlog.

I think Twitter is a wonderful program and it can be as fun and as serious as you want and you can vary your twittering according to your mood. Twitter constantly updates and your tweets get pushed back and fresh tweets surface. By the way a tweet can only be 140 characters long. Hence it is referred to as micro-blogging. Here is a snapshot of a moment, chosen at random, from yesterday afternoon's timeline.
























Well Bob Hankin cannot decide if joining facebook is a high or low point in his life and the Canadians are poohpoohing Bernie Dodge's pain. If I go to his Twitter page and have a look I find Bernie's latest tweets.




We now get a feel for what he is about and that he is frozen with the cold. If we look to the right we can see that he has 232 followers and he follows 79 people. More importantly we see he has a website or blog and we can immediately access to find the One Trick Pony which reveals more about him.

So in my opinion this person would be interesting to follow and you do this by clicking the button under his photograph and next time you log in then his updates will also appear in your timeline. You click on the little icons for those he is following and find some more people of interest to you, find their blogs, and leave a comment if you feel inspired. Have you read my post on comments yet?

You can keep up with Twitter using your mobile phone and you can post to it via mobile too. It is possible to save yourself from all the typing by using Spinvox. See my post on it here.

If you want to reply to an individual post then simply put @their_twitter_name at the beginning of your post. To include a long url in a post it is best to go to Tiny Url first or otherwise you may use up too many of the allotted 140 characters with it.

All tweets get picked up on Google. You can have a private twittering circle if you wish.

People use Twitter in various ways. Sometimes they just say goodnight and other times they use it to flag up over time that they are writing a book or their company is having a big launch or conference. The accepted etiquette is that you are low key and not like a promoter on a radio or television advertisement. Subtle is how you need to be.

I will look at other features of Twitter at a later date. In the meantime it would be good to get your comments or queries. Are you going to the forest with a pig today?

18th December I've just read this bad news about T Mobile and Twitter Who is Jon Ray?

I'm Not Saying You Have a Face Made for Radio but I am Saying ...

GET OUT OF MY FACE

What? What? Me? Yes you. This is DefogMyBlog speaking. I follow your blog religiously, hang on your every word and you are my idol till you fill the video screen with your face and and keep it there for the duration of your broadcast.

Simply you are too in my face. Surely it is possible to sit back a bit and not fill the screen with your face? It is really uncomfortable to watch. Sit back a bit or focus the camera on the sleeping cat, the flowers in your garden, birds on a neigbours chimney pot, washing on the clothes line or you washing the dishes. The last one may require some editing since you can hardly talk to me while you rattle the crockery.

Put on the television or watch a film and study it for a while. Is the screen continuously full of one face? The television is several feet away and your film comes up about a foot away. Have a look at these short films. I made them for BarryVat in Tony Blair/Gordon Brown YouTube style. There is a serious version and a more light hearted one. In both versions you will see that he is sitting well back from the camera and it is comfortable to watch. In the less serious version note that we do not see Barry all the way through the film. There are other images on screen which in my opinion are more relaxing to watch.

Do we need to see him at all? No it could be a radio piece. However, I don't like listening to podcasts while just watching a white screen. Sometimes I will make a cup of tea while I listen but quite often I will sit at my desk and a bit of visual variety is welcome. So experiment. Try a series of random photographs. Remember the blogging mantra "Content is King".