SplaTT's Blog

grrr....

A quick search (which i should have done the day i first got the error) led me to the following solution which worked :)

It looks like something was modified at the server hosting end which screwed a few things up. I have been thinking about moving the blog over to a wordpress install like my other sites/blogs but the concept of moving five years worth of content to another platform freaks me out a little bit :(

Widgetbox

Widgetbox has number of widgets that you can use, and usually modify to suit your needs, and you can also create some great widgets from your blog (called blidgets) which you can then embed in close to 20 different sites/formats and even create a Facebook or Beebo app out of it...nice...

Below are some widgets for my main three sites at the moment.

Oh yeah...the Flickr mapwidget i found is really cool and exactly what i was looking for.

:)

SplaTT's Blog is 5

Way back on the 23rd of March 2003, when i did my first post on SplaTT's Blog, i certainly wasn't sure if i would still be blogging here five years later...and i nearly wasn't due to a nearly catastrophic database error just over five months ago.

But here i am looking back at not only an amazing five years but also at a pretty hectic 12 months as well...here are some highlights from my posts during the last year:

• April 16th 2007 - Google buys Doubleclick and Microsoft Silverlight is released.
• April 23rd 2007 - Two of my photos get used in Wikipedia :)
• April 30th 2007 - The 1000th Blog Post at SplaTT's Blog is made :)
• May 31st 2007 - Singo sells out
• June 27th 2007 - ReMIX 07 rocked!
• August 9th 2007 - Nine loses electronic program guide case :)
• August 30th 2007 - I try to peddle my bike half way up a mountain in The Half Donna - attempt 1
• Septmeber 19th 2007 - I launch the Upper Yarra Valley dot com dot au web site
• October 3rd 2007 - I remember the 20th anninversary of the Foreign Language gig in 1987
• October 4th 2007 - The database running SplaTT's Blog goes down :(
• February 26th 2008 - I got my blog back after nearly five months of down time :)
• Febraury 27th 2008 - I explain whats happened since October 2007, including the re-launch of ExpeditionOz
• March 1st 2008 - I succesfully test broadband Internet connectivity at the country property :)
• March 5th 2008 - RIP Gary Gygax :(
• March 14th 2008 - The 14th Annual AIMIA Awards winners are announced

It's certainly been an interesting year and i'm sure it will get more interesting as 2008 rolls on.

So...to the important stuff...here are some top line stats from over the past five years...

WOW...in the last five years my pesonal blog has served over 10,000,000 pages and this year, 2008, will be the year that i welcome the 1,000,000th unique visitor to SplaTT's Blog :)

To quote last years birthday post..."Anyway...enough self indulgence...thanks to everyone for staying subscribed and listening to my random ramblings :)"...so stick around as i reckon there are a few more years of random rambling left in me yet ;)

ExpeditionOz

I get the feeling i have done this before...but here goes...to explain what ExpeditionOz is all about, here is part of first blog post of the re-birthed site on the 13th of December 2007.

"Welcome to www.ExpeditionOz.com - where the journey is more important than the destination…usually.

V2 of this site (i tried this about 4 years ago) will initially collect my personal stories and photos from my various travels, or expeditions as I like to think of them, as well as providing a place to find links and information to some of the interesting places, people and equipment that seem to emanate from the outdoor travel, adventure sport and expedition community, particularly from Australia.

If you hang around long enough, and if i don’t get side tracked (like i did before) or dissappear for months-on-end in the big blue room (the great outdoors), i’ll also get around to setting up a few more things on the site that you might find useful."

Though i have gotten side tracked for small periods of time, i have managed to keep the blog posts rolling and also got a few "other things" set-up on the site since the re-launch, such as the ExpeditionOz Photo Library and the ExpeditionOz Video Library :)

While I'm definately interested in playing about with the video stuff (using my cool and tiny Oregon Scientific Action Cam initially), i will also (more than likely) start doing some podcasts as well (using my also very cool Zoom H4 Handy Recorder)...at least until i decide to go out and buy a funcky hi-def wide screen video camera ;)

Comments back up again

Comments Down

Stats Growth

It also means that my total bandwidth usage for this year has also overtaken my total bandwith usage for the whole of 2005 :(

Hmmm...it will be interesting (to me at least) to see how long it takes before i overtake last years stats figures.

Spider Jerusalem Award at Valleywag

NOTE: For those of you that don't know who Spider Jerusalem is...shame on you ;)

SplaTT's Blog is 4

It all started when SplaTT (that would be me...otherwise know as Mick Stanic) made this post way back on the 23rd of March 2004. Since then i have gone through periods of posting probably too much stuff to not posting enough. I've also opened a few other blogs along the way as well but this one is the only one that seems to have survived the test of time and my (and your) patience.

While my posting may occasionally be sporadic as i devote time to other projects, SplaTT's blog has proven itself to be great tool in not only allowing me to put out both useful and interesting thoughts i have as well as to rave and rant about the odd subject or two. Its acted as an introduction tool that has helped to met and become friends with some of the most amazing people i know in countries all over the world. Its been quoted and screenshots of it have appeared in newspaper and magazine articles aong the way which has just helped it to become a better tool for both not only my past but also my future endeavours....plus...i just like having it here as no matter what else goes on in my life i know that it will be here for me and will always let me rant on, even though i don't always post what i have written :)

So...here are some stats from over the past four years...

That just blows me away...like i would have ever believed when i started this blog that close to 600,000 people would have visited my blog (ok..thats based on a total of unique visitors each month of which of course many of those monthly uniques would also be visiting my blog every month so its not really a true indication of total unique visitors for the four year period...but let me just enjoy my figures for a bit OK???) close to 1.8 million times and viewed a total of nearly 6.6 million pages (the actual hits statistic is much larger of course)...WOW....you just gotta love this whole blog thing as a medium to communciate..i know that after four years i still do.

But...as much as i love the blog thing, other things have been and will continue to take a large slice out of time, so my blogging will more than likely be a little sporadic for a while...though that may change at any time...but i will definately try and post before this time next year ;)

Anyway...enough self indulgence...thanks to everyone for staying subscribed and listening to my random ramblings :)

Blogging in the Enterprise

It was probably one of the first public forums the covered blogging in Australia, and Billy D. Aldea-Martinez from MetrixMedia was there to film it. So out of the blue, last night i got an email from him telling me that the videos are now up on YouTube - part 1, part 2 and part 3.

I also just saw Frank's post about it being a "blast from the past" and it certainly does feel like it was ages ago that we did this. I made a few good friends out of people that attended this event and hopefully we helped to bring a little bit of blogging knowledge to the 70 or so people that listened to us ramble on for over an hour :)

B5 Media get funding

Here a link to the official press release.

Well done...that just made my day...and it couldn't have happened to a better bunch of people...

Infocenter...full of RSS goodness

"...we need to build the ultimate mash-up, a truly Live application that leverages aspects of both the Windows OS and the web, with an engine powered by RSS. Through RSS, we can empower our clients to consume not just the feeds that we provide – but also the ability to mix in those of third party vendors as well as their own internal corporate blogs and best practices."

It sounds like a big bundle of RSS goodness :)

It's downloading at the moment so I will get to have a play with it in the morning but I am certainly looking forward to seeing what he has put together.

Blogs, Wikis & RSS

This has also got to be the biggest and most well thought out conference on blogging and its effects ever put on in Australia...

"If you are working in media, public relations, marketing, publishing & journalism, internal communications, client relationship management or corporate communications, it is imperative that you gain an understanding of the impact blogs, wikis, RSS and other forms of social media will have on the way you communicate with your stakeholders."

Speakers and topics include;

• Information sharing and its impact: Trevor Cook, Director, Jackson Wells Morris
• The role of media in a connected society: Hugh Martin, Editor, NEWS.com.au, News Interactive
• Engaging with your consumers using blogs and podcasts: Keren Flavell, co-founder OMG,tv and Lecturer, AFTRS
• Determining the benefits of incorporating online collaboration tools into your communications mix: Mick Stanic, General Manager, Dreampool Digital
• Connect, Communicate, Collaborate: Garry Putland, General Manager, Education.au Ltd
• Strategic blogging and podcasting for collaboration and community: James Farmer, Community Editor, The Age, Founder of edublogs.org, Co-Founder of Blogtalk Downunder and publisher og BlogSavvy
• Designing your blogging strategy using the latest tools available: Frank Arrigo, Group Geneal Manager, Technical Communities, Microsoft Australia
• Implementing your online collaboration startegy: Michael Axelsen, Director of Inforamtion Systems, BDO Kendalls
• Using new online tools to enhance marketing and PR initiatives: Derek Lark, Executive Director, Industry Capability Network Ltd (ICN)
• How the Bibby blog has been effectively used as a marketin and client communications tool: Ashley Sharma, Sales and Marketing Director, Bibby Financial Services Australia
• Assessing the legal liability of using online collaboration tools: Patrick Fair, Partner, baker and McKenzie
• Helping organisations to develop and embrace new communications strategies: Steven Noble, Associate Director, Hill & Knowlton
• Assessing the risks and common fears of using new collaboration tools: Des Walsh, Business Coach and Blogging Evangelist, Thinking Home Business
• Incorporating RSS into your blogging and content management strategy: Ricki Mulia, Head of Communications and Network Products, Yahoo!7
• How Fairfax Digital have incorporated blogging and other online collaboration tools to exist in the same space as traditional media: David Anderson, Product Director, News and Content, Fairfax Digital
• Knowledge and information management in online collaboration tools: Des Paroz, eBusiness Director, Acer Computer Australia

With such a long and interesting list of speakers (i got tired just typing them all in) you just know you will get your moneys worth out of this conference.

If you are coming along, don't forget to say hello :)

A look at the future

More detailed info on Dreampool Digital soon :)

Windows Live Writer

The power of blogs and Comcast

June 20th - Video of sleeping Comcast technician uploaded to YouTube and original blog post

June 21st - Boing Boing post

June 23rd - Comcast fix problem

June 26th - Sleeping technician fired by Comcast

Need we say more???

Microsoft Warhol...a YouTube killer???

LiveSide also picked up on this product which looks like it will be called "Windows Live Video" a while ago. It looks like Microsoft is stepping up to the consumer content plate ina big way with Spaces, Warhol, Vista's Movie Maker, Monaco (an audio creation app) and Vista's Photo Gallery / Max (photo sharing).

I wonder whats next???

Public Impact: 360 degree PR in 3.6 hours

If you are a PR professional and want to attend, its on in Melbourne between 9am and 12.20pm on Friday the 9th of June at The Windsor Hotel, 103 Spring St, Melbourne. It's also on in Sydney (June 7), Canberra (July 24), Brisbane (July 26), Adelaide (August 15) and Perth (August 18)...except you will only get me on a panel in Melbourne...though you will get to see and hear Trevor Cook if you go to the Sydney seminar :)

Australian blog, Australian moblog, Australian podcast and Google ranking

That got me thinking...I blog on and off about blogs, podcasts and moblogs and I am constantly asked to speak at conferences in Australia about these and other emerging technologies (as you would if you were known as a emerging technology evangelist), so i just ran a search on Google on the words Australian blog, Australian podcast and Australian moblog to see where i rank...the results for those searchs on the 26th of May 2006 are below...

Australian blog - 5th spot (image) global & 3rd spot (image) in Australia.

Australian podcast - 7th spot (image) global & 4th spot (image) in Australia.

Australian moblog - 5th spot (image) global & 3rd spot (image) in Australia.

Now you know why i get invited to speak and present at conferences, why i get interviewed by a lot of journalists (two or three articles coming out next month on a variety of topics), why people pay me to consult on emerging technology and why my next little bunch of projects is bound to stir up some interest...when i get around to annoucing them that is ;)

While i'm doing a bit of shameless self-promotion...heres one other thing...with my diverse background in the new media sector, my knoweldge of emerging technologies, my industry contacts both in Australia and overseas and my profile from conferences, stories in the media, and my blog, it probably all adds up to being a good reason for voting for me in the upcoming AIMIA National Executive elections which are on soon ;)

Mark blogs about exploiting citizen journalists

Great post Mark...interesting reading.

Seven rules for corporate blogging

I'm constantly amazed at how many people there are, this guy included, who just do not get the whole Cluetrain and corporate blogging thing no matter how hard they try.

"Rules" like some of the ones he outlines are the very reason why traditional advertising / marketing / PR / media / etc. (which only just work at the moment) have already started their slide into impotency and irrelevancy for many of todays people, users, customers, consumers...whatever you want to call them.

Its also part of the reason why "Generation C" has arrived and are a powerful group...its why they are switching off from mainstream / cookie cutter content and are busy running around creating their own content like blogs, podcasts, vlogs, etc...

Philistinism is a dying "ism" NIcholas...embrace the new world...or move over.

< /RANT >

How influential is your blog??

It works out your blog influence number by the following equation: [(blog+posts+web links) + (bloglines subs * 2)] * 1+(Pagerank/10). So what does it say about splatt.com.au as at Tuesday the 21st of March??

My influence
[2048]

(via Coolz0r)

Ad agency kills website and goes blog

This is an interesting move by an ad agency...get rid of your site, with all of the associated ad agency "crap/stuff" that you have to display, and launch a blog...it will be interesting to see how this works for them and how their clients will take it. While putting out press releases about new client wins and large projects is one thing, blogging (and using no other medium) from the inside opens up some interesting doors.

Best of luck guys...i'll certainly be watching with interest and hopefully so will some of the people in ad land.

Designer blogs

Then look no further than the Designers Who Blog site.

How much is your blog worth?

Its based on a post that was done by Tristan Louis shortly after AOL bought Weblogs Inc.

Only $42,340.50???? hmmm...

Ten simple rules for dating a blogger

• Heed the blogger's eyes and ears.
• Don't ignore the blogger's buds.
• Observe the dance steps, and keep one eye on the hat rack.
• Respect the rebellious spirit.
• Don't be naive about deception and trickery.
• Be prepared to address addictions and temptations.
• Respect and understand the need for "bio breaks."
• Don't be pushy or sneaky.
• Don't be jealous.
• Be a good listener.

You gotta fight...for your right...to blog...

Read EFF's Legal Guide for Bloggers

Sacked for blogging

Publicity has been good for both of us this year...and with both of us in the paper in the same week, i mentioned to Cam that we better be careful as we are turning into media celebs...I love Cameron's comeback..."you get in for being a guru, I get in for being fired"

We all still love ya Cam :)

Razor's response on business blogging article

These little bloggers went to market

I was interviewed the other week by Erin Biba for an article on blogging in business for the Sydney Morning Herald which came out today. Erin heavily mentions Robert Scoble and also spoke to Trevor Cook and Richard Giles.

I get a lot of quotes in this article...here are a few of the good ones:

The online world has become a breeding ground of text-based conversation. Conversation is a key term when determining why the blog has attracted companies and consumers alike. It also differentiates the corporate blog from traditional marketing. "People no longer want to just be told things," Stanic says.

"In that 18-to-34 market, brand affinity might be a closer concept (than brand loyalty)," Stanic says. The company blog helps create the belief that "I see that I am aligned with this particular brand in the way they think and the way they talk."

Gen Y is also made up of early adopters - people who choose products long before the rest of the world is on to them. "They have quite a bit of spending power and they're not thinking about the consequences [of their purchases]," Stanic says. "It's about me, me, me, me, me. I couldn't care less when an advertiser wants to talk to me. I'm working on my schedule, not anyone else's."

Blogging, podcasting and a number of the other "cluetrain" type communications mediums are starting to pick up a bit of coverage in Australia, which is great to see. After a while you get sick of of the fact that all the good stuff your involved in is only happening and being noticed in the USA. This has been a problem for a while in Australia, and I have come close a few times in the last 12 months to making a decision to move to the US. Maybe i'll stick out a bit longer and see how it goes :)

The Blogtalk Downunder posting king

His posts are sort of like Weblog's Inc Blogging Demo, only on a smaller scale. Go Michael :)

Blogtalk Downunder photos on Flickr

If you are at the event and are taking photos with the intention of posting them to Flickr, make sure you use the blogtalkdownunder tag when you post them up onto your site.

Blogtalk Downunder is nearly upon us

There are some interesting speakers presenting papers such as; Rebecca blood, Mark Bernstein, Thomas N. Burg, Trevor Cook, James Farmer, Adrian Miles and a heap of others...oh yeah...i'm also on the closing panel :)

It should be an interesting two days and as is always the case at conferences these days, i'm sure that the best conversations will happen in the hallways. See you there...

David Duchovny audioblogs...

Nice....and to top it off...the movie looks pretty good as well...but then anything with Robin Wiliams in it is always going to be good in my opinion...check out the trailer and see for yourself.

State of the Blogosphere 2...part 3...

This update has some good info on comparisons of traditional media sites vs blogs, the A-list and the power of the long tail.

Too much for me to decode for you here...so head on over to his site and check it out...more to come...

State of the Blogosphere...part 2

And the highlight???

• Technorati was tracking on average around 400,000 posts each day in October of 2004 and is tracking an average of around 500,000 posts each day in early March 2005.
• Thats 5.8 blog posts each second.

State of the Blogosphere according to Technorati...March 2005...part 1

And the stats are once again amazing...

• The blogosphere is doubling in size once every 5 months. So...in the last 20 months it has increased in size by over 16 times.
• 30,000 - 40,000 new weblogs created each day.

David will be releasing more stats tomorrow...

Great chat at the Breakfast Bytes blogging panel

We covered as much as we could in the 75 or so minutes we had and hopefully everybody who attended got something useful out of it. For a recap of the event, watch for a screening of the event on a Foxtel show called "Business Technology Review" in the next few weeks.

We had some good questions from the audience and i think we all responded pretty well, with each of us covering areas that we knew about. We all also had some great conversations with people before (and yes...i was running late) and after the event and hopefully I should be catching up with a few people i spoke to in the near future.

What was the highlight of the event i hear you ask? Well...that would have to be the outcome that Hill & Knowlton now have a Breakfast Bytes' Blog...damn that was quick... :)

A big thanx to Rob Irwin and the team at H&K for organising what is being called Australias first event of its type that focussed on blogging. And a big thanx to me fellow panellists, Frank, Mark and Andrew...it was a pleasure guys. We must do it again some time...

LINKS for visitors from the session

I'm on the Breakfast Bytes' Blogging Panel

*********************************

Breakfast Bytes' Blogging Panel
Sydney - Thursday 10 March

"Weblogs" -- websites that can be updated as quickly as talk-back radio -- have become a worldwide phenomenon.

Blogging is the focus of Hill & Knowlton's next Breakfast Bytes seminar, which will be in panel format.

Join some of Australia's leading bloggers and communication experts for a frank and engaging discussion of blogging, marketing and public relations:

• Mark Jones, Deputy Managing Director, IDG Communications, who pioneered the use of blogs in IT journalism
• Frank Arrigo, Group Manager, Microsoft Australia, and a prominent corporate blogger
• Andrew Kirk, Associate Director, Hill & Knowlton, and an ex-Channel 10 and radio reporter
• Mick Stanic, proprietor of Principius, the mind behind Splatt, and a 'podcasting' pioneer

Where:
Level 1, 338 Pitt Street
Sydney, NSW, Australia

When:
7.15-9am, Thursday 10 March
Breakfast will be served from 7.15am
The panel will begin 7.45am sharp

Spaces are limited - please register

Register:
To register for this free event, please visit the Breakfast Bytes registration page.

Further Information:
Hill & Knowlton
p: 02 9268 0242
e: breakfastbytes@hillandknowlton.com

Hmmm...don't follow nofollow...

1. nofollow does not prevent comment spam
2. nofollow is semantically incorrect
3. nofollow harms the connections between web sites
4. nofollow is not useful for humans, just for search engines using PageRank or similar a technique
5. nofollow could be used to shut web sites out
6. nofollow discriminates legitimate users as spammers
7. nofollow heists commentators' earned attention
8. nofollow will not stop comment spam
9. nofollow could be used to further discriminate weblogs
10. nofollow prevents the Web from being a web
11. nofollow eliminates the dissemination of free speech
12. nofollow was developed in privacy with only search engines companies taking part in the discussion

While i applaud the core idea of "nofollow" and the fact that it got traditional enemies to work together...i have been having the same thoughts about the value of the tag as the makers (and contributors) of the nonofollow website. It intrinsically doesn't follow the very nature of what the web and search engines are meant to be about...and a very big part of blogging is the comment system...this to me appears to be a way of partially crippling it...i'm not saying i have a better solution, and i'll take what people give me...but...

Saying all of that is great..and I been using the nofollow tag were appropriate...i just think its use needs to be made on a case by case basis and that is just way to hard at the moment unless you do it by hand...and stuff that...

And don't get me wrong...comment spammers should be taken out the back of the blogosphere and SHOT...but i don't think that this is the greatest and final solution to the problem...oh well...let the comment spam fly ;)

Note: if i find out that the nonofollow site is run buy a bunch of comment spammers...there will be hell to pay...

Go and vote for the best Business Blog's around.

Being one of the judges who had to shortlist (and topup) a few of the categories was an interesting process...i got to spend a fair chunk of yesterday checking out that the nominated blogs met certain criteria and if a certain category was a bit light on nominations, i then had to go out and find a few blogs to fill it up.

I got to discover so many cool blogs i never knew about, both in the list that was already nominated and while i was searching for blogs to fill the short categories.

Best of luck to all the nominees...and if anyone is doing something similar in the future, feel free to knock on my door for help as it was a great way to fill the day...

Let the voting begin... ;)

The Blog Business Summit is nearly underway

I suppose i will have just have to take part in the backchannel on the official BBS05 IRC channel...(details courtesy of Robert Scoble)

IRC Server: irc.freenode.net

Channel: #bbs05

Direct link: irc://irc.freenode.net/bbs05

The sessions look like they will be really interesting...but i guess i just won't know as its hard to tell from the backchannel..its like hearing half of a conversation...Oh well...see you on IRC folks...

My other blog...the work related one...

It will cover technologies, services, articles, companies, blogosphere postings and my own thoughts on "technology and how it is changing our conversation's and enabling us to work/live better"...

If your into that sort of thing, make sure you check it out... ;)

Rob goes blog crazy..

He has been posting like mad over at roblog about a Ford Bronco for sale for $500, Outlook Live, William Shatner, buttons he made for the Business Blogging Awards, a cool Aussie blog he found, the G'day World podcast, "the dude", anti-spyware, star wars fans, Otto Ristorante, nanobots, Iraqi exiles, skunks in his houes....thisman is posting about everything....

He has even started up a blog about the Railway Industry and Forestry industries in Nth America which is the business he is in (after leaving the geekhood), another blog about a novel he is writing called Dead Earth, a spot on MSN Spaces and a site on Flickr for all his photos...

Like i said..he has gone blog crazy...or he really misses the tech lifestyle... :)

See ya soon buddy....

rel="nofollow"

Google blog

msnsearch's Weblog

Yahoo Blog

All of the major blog software companies have released today (or are releasing shortly) plug-ins or upgrades to allow your blog software of choice to utiise this grea new feature as well.

Ok...while it still won't stop me from screening all of the comments that i get to this blog, and the other blogs i run, but its a great step in the right direction...well done guys and gals...nice to see that we can all work together when it matters :)

Oh yeah...and now we all know why Dave was so happy :)

Creative Zen Micro...built for listening to podcasts...

Sean specifically writes about the Creative Zen Micro and the one bit that stands out...."This is where the Zen Micro shines. It has an intelligent bookmarking feature which makes it easy to jump to where you left off in your podcast"...cool...this is something Cameron and i have been talking about for long time...the ability to pause a podcast, bookmark your spot, and return to it later...well done Creative...and thnx Sean for pointing it out.

RSS2.0 feed now contains full entries

"iPod shuffle no good for podcasting" reports internetnew.com

Here are some more thoughts from Doc as well as some of his readers...

Now i know that the podcast listening market is nothing compared to the wider "music-only" listening audience, but the compnay that "gets podcasting" and releases hardware that makes podcassts easier to listen to (and bookmark) and software that makes it easier to record podcasts, will get a huge boost from the blogosphere...and that has to be worth something...doesn't it???

The 2005 Australian Blog Awards are open for voting

Go and register to vote and put your hand up for G'day World in the Best Overall Australian Blog category and if your feeling even more generous, you can vote for my G'day World co-host, Cameron Reilly, in the Best VIC Blog category and for this blog in the Best NSW Blog category...though that is probably pushing the boundries a bit i know... ;)

While you are it, you may as well vote for two of my other favourite Australian based blogs as well...The Blog Herald in the Best WA Blog category and Gadget Lounge in the Best Australian Tech Blog category...

Oh yeah...don't forget that you have till January 24 to put your nominations in for the 2005 Business Blogging Awards and don't forget to go and vote for G'day World over at Podcast Alley....tis the season to be voting folks :)

Just call me "Judge Splatt"...

This is a great idea that the Inside blogging duo, Jeremy Wright and Darren Barefoot, came up with and are promoting at the moment. Go and nominate your favourite blogs in the relevant categories and lets get this party started...

Comedy blog...

They had a second room start at the Kurrajong Hotel in Erskinville which finished up tonight (they are looking for a replacement room) and they are starting up a third comedy room in early February. Way to go guys...

The other day i helped Kent install Movable Type onto the web server they use, and as a result...what will no doubt very quickly become the best comedy blog in not only Sydney but Australia launched today...

From Kents email announcing the blog
"if you're sad and down, because you're not getting enough info, listings, lies, libel, downloads or gossip on what's happening in the loose, loose world of sydney comedy, then maybe you should check out the new mic in hand blog."

Over the next few weeks I will be helping the guys setup a podasting trial on their site as well...so if you live in Sydney, or just appreciate good comedy, go and support Kent and Sam and visit the site, subscribe to the feed and more importantly,...go and check out one of their shows...

Another short and sweet post...

The Joy of Tech are having a little dig (in their classic way) at us podcasters....

Check it out...it is quite funny...but it looks like all those cartoons that came out about blogging a year and half ago...

Jeremy got fired for blogging....when will this madness stop???

No major details as of yet, but it sounds a bit strange to me, as i have never really noticed anything in Jeremy's blog that would be considered bad form by his employeer...

Keep you head up Jeremy and take it as a sign that the InsideBlogging idea is one that is needed as companies everywhere need to be eduacted about the power of the blog and especially about the "voice" as it was so well put in the cluetrain manifesto.

Chris Pirillo starts a podcast

Welcome to the podcasting family Chris...i'm already looking forward to the many great podcasts you will no doubt put out.

Triple J starts a trial podcast service

Its about time that someone in the Australian media "got it". It doesn't look like they will be putting a lot of stuff into the RSS feed (and it will all be old content), but go and subscribe to it and show them that we support the idea of traditional radio stations getting into the whole podcasting space. If they don't get the support the need, you may be stuck with only having the "G'day World" podcast to listen to... ;)

I've been nominated in the 2005 Australian Blog Awards ;)

It appears that not only has G'day World been nominated in the "Best Overall Australian Blog" category at the 2005 Australian Blog Awards, but Cameron's blog has been put up in the "Best Victorian Blog" and this blog (SplaTT's blog) has been nominated in the "Best NSW Blog" category. For those not in Australia, Victoria and NSW (New South Wales) are both states in Australia.

So go on over to Kek's blog, register to vote and give us a boost...

The 2005 Business Blogging Awards

From the site...
"As business blogging has taken off in 2004, and looks to explode in 2005, we figured it was time to inaugurate some fun awards to reward all those hard-working business bloggers. After all, we can’t have the online diarists have all the fun, can we?"

Do something really useful on the first day of the new year and head on over to the site and nominate your favourite blogs...and i can't forget to send out a best of wishes for 2k5 to the team at insideblogging...well done guys...

Podcast Producer wanted

Doppler 2.0 RC1 is out.....go and check it out...

Problogger site

Well worth adding to your aggregator...oh yeah...its an Australian blog as well :)

insideblogging launch a new site...nice...

Guess i have to start really thinking about my web presence now that i have gone out solo as well...

I'm live on Blogosphere Radio...

The interview i did with Mack over at Blogosphere Radio last week has gone live. Go and check it out and hear me talk about blogging, podcasting (G'day World) and more importantly, the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference.

Its great to be included in such amazing company as Darren Barefoot, Jeremy Wright, Eric Olsen, Jon Gales, Natalie Glance and Eric Rice and to be a part of the great podcasts that Blogosphere Radio is putting out. Well done guys...

I have also just posted some more info on the conference to the website which you can find at www.bloggingconference.com.

blogger catchups...

Tuesday I caught up with Richard Giles from Perth. Richard is the guy who runs Gadget Lounge and also was responsible for starting one of the first blogs from inside Sun. Top guy...He also was the driving force behind the Perth Blog Nite that was held at the end of October, so he gave may a few pointers on what we should watch out for while getting the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference together...thnx Richard. And all you gadget lovers out in the blogosphere should go and visit and subscribe to Gadget Lounge...its a great Australian site based along a similar structure to engadget and gizmodo.

On Wednesday I caught up and had lunch with Microsoft Australia blogger and all around good guy, Frank Arrigo...If your a Microsoft developer in Australia (and even if your not) and you don't read Franks blog you should be ashamed of your self...go and visit it now...well..after you read the rest of this post maybe...

Today I had a coffee and a chat with Mark Jones who runs the filtered blog and works over at IDG Communications...publishers in Australia of Computer World, PC World, LinuxWorld, CIO, GamePro and a heap of other IT based magazines. It sounds like IDG are going to be doing some really cool stuff over the next couple of months so watch that space...

Thanks for getting together guys and having a chat...as I have said before, the networking power that blogs have is amazing...if for no other reason then that alone, if you don’t have a blog you should go out and start one now...go on...stop wasting valuable blogging time...its never to late to start and you will be surprised what you get back by putting in a little bit of effort....consider that SplaTT's tip of the day...and its free.... ;)

Ballmer on blogging

This is just one of them...Steve Ballmer commenting on the net and blogs on the day of the MSN Spaces launch. Quick snippet below...

"Blogging is huge," he said (Ballmer). "It brings together the three biggest Internet trends: communicating, sharing and socializing. It started with e-mail and instant messaging and music sharing, and it's getting bigger each day."

Give that man a cookie... ;)

So what's next for Jeremy???

Jeremy and Darren are starting a blogging consultancy company called "InsideBlogging" that will be offering a variety of services to companies interested in looking at how blogs can change their business...great idea guys...

The other thing Jeremy is doing, is that he is looking at writing a book about blogging in the corporate sphere...does this man ever stop??? ;)

Robert Scoble is writing a book...cool...

"The Red Couch" (working title) will be co-written by Shel Israel and will be about "corporate blogging and how it will make your business more successful". Of course you can't write a book if your Robert Scoble, without involving a physical blog in the process now can you...time to tune into his latest blog, "The Red Couch" site over at MSN Spaces.

Its good to see that we may soon have a couple of books coming out that can be used to help educate people in the corporate market about blogging...i hear a little rumour that another prominent blogger is looking at doing a book as well...more on that soon...

Good luck Robert..i can't wait to read about the books progress and to see the book hit the shelves...

Blogging is worth $3,350 US dollars for a 3 month period according to eBay...

10 days after Jeremy Wright posted himself onto eBay offering his services for three months as a blogger, the auction has finished and the highest bidder was "inkspresscom" with a bid of $3,350 US dollars.

Well done Jeremy and what a bargain...whatever way you do the division, its works out to be an absolute bargain...

For a while I was coming pretty close to forecasting the amount it would end up at...my guess at the little competition running over at Ensight.org was $2,700....not a bad guess...but not good enough...

What will be the reaction to the final price??? The next couple of days the blogosphere is bound to be full of noise about Jeremy's little auction...once again...well done Jeremy...well done...

Blogosphere Radio special show on the eBay blogger auctions

Mack asked two other bloggers, Wayne Hurlbert, Michael Specht and yours truly if we wouldn't mind giving him some soundbites on our thoughts of the whole auction thing for him to use in the special report. Being a big fan of not only Jeremy and Darren but also of Blogosphere Radio, of course i said yes.

Go and visit Blogosphere Radio and check out the recording...or even better...subscribe to the subscription feeds they have put together.

MSN Spaces blogs open up outside of Japan

So i went and checked the site i created a few weeks ago (in Japanese), called SplaTTSpace, about half an hour ago and it was still in Japanese...i just checked it a few minutes ago..and its in English..woo hoo...

Along with MSN Spaces, they have also announced the official MSN Messenger 7 beta and some cool integration with Hotmail...well done guys...well done...

More info available on the Microsoft press release

Jeremy and the blogging cause...

He runs a successful blog which he sells for an tidy sum (for a blog)...he gets an idea to start a blogging magazine...he starts a site which lists jobs for bloggers...he auctions of his blogging skills on eBay...he says nice things about my blog posts (had to slip that one in :) ...and now he has posted his three reasons for why companies should buy/hire bloggers...

He has done more to help spread the word of blogging out into the public, especially the corporate market, than a lot of the "A-List" has done recently. I wonder what he will come up with next????

The bloggers are taking over eBay..well...it sounds good when i say it like that...

So is this going to be a fad??? Will anyone else do the same thing??? Of course they will...

Darren Barefoot of Capulet Communications and one of the organisers behind northernvoice.ca (Canadaian blogging conference) has followed suit and put his services up for auction at eBay as well....the starting price is US$500 for a similar three month period...

I wonder if eBay will find a new market for itself and become some sort of futures market where it becomes responsible for setting the price of blogging based on auction value??? :)

Whatever happens with these auctions, it will be interesting to see what the perceived dollar value of blogging is as well as the amount of press they will get...wich can only be a good thing for the corporate blogging "cause" at this stage in its life...

What's Jeremy worth??

Buy a blogger at auction

This may not be as strange as it first sounds. The ability to buy a blogger who will not only blog for your company / product but who will also help them understand how the blogging space can benfit them. Another great idea from Jeremy...

Half a million hits to this blog this year...

The stats above are for this site between January 1 and November 19 2004.

The blog has served nearly 4 Gig of data, of which just over 3 Gig has been served sinced July. That bandwidth has been pulled down by 26,043 hosts from 129 countries with the most popular ones being the USA followed by Australia, Canada, Great Britain (UK), Switzerland and China. The least most visits out of the 129 has come from the Faroe Islands.

The most popular host is somewhere inside the Savvis network structure. I have had 69 different hosts from Microsoft visit the site and 1 from Apple (hmmm...i wonder who reads more blogs). NASA has had more visits than any other of the 96 Government hosts.

The six most viewed categories of this blog (in order) have been: Australian Blogging Conference, Geek Toys, Microsoft, Advertising / Marketing, Blogging and XBOX.

91 different versions of browsers have viewed this site from 24 different OS versions. 20 different search engine robots/spiders have crawled the site (search engines traffic of nearly 117,000 hits is not included in the viewing stats i mention above).

The most popular referer to my blog has been Robert Scoble (who else), followed by Technorati, The Green Button and an article on moblogging from the Sydney Morning Herald.

The top six search terms have been web messenger, nokia 6620, msn web messenger, splatt, car pc and november 9th. The strangest term has to be "695660;302562"...go on...search for it on the beta MSN search site or Google...it appears in a few people's stats as well...

This has been a huge jump over last year for all of the stats, and its been a fascinating year where i have had many conversations and made many friends with a lot of great people because of my blog. I wouldn't be wrong in saying that blogging has played a big part in my life in 2004 and made it a very interesting year...hopefully it will continue to do the same in the future...happy reading folks.

Jobs for the family...

Its a concept that i see the value in and appreciate, as Jeremy and I started up a conversation after i posted my thoughts on hiring bloggers...way to go Jeremy and you have to thank Jason over at recruitung.com for offering up the perfect site for it to live at...way to go guys....

MSN Spaces...the other Google killer????

Will the quiet continue??? I get the impression that with the beta release of MSN Messenger 7 coming up soon, the launch of Hotmail Wave 10 on the 17th of November, the sneak peak at the MSN Toolbar Suite and the odd Wallop account being handed out (yes...i have one thanx to Robert Scoble), we should be hearing some official news about MSN Spaces sooner rather than later. The term "Spaces" is also starting to appear in the MSN support pages on various sites around the world...check out this cached copy from the MSN Search beta

Well...to prepare for it, i had a bit of a play with MSN Spaces and have set up a site called "SplaTT's Space". It would have been so much easier if it was in English or if i could read japanese though ;)

Check out the Google and MSN Search results to see just how little this service has been spoken about. One of the interesting thing that comes out of some of the sites you visit is that most of them are saying that you will be post a blog post from with MSN Messenger 7....hmm....

GrogBlogging '04

Its being organised by ausculture and Darpism.com and apparently they have quite a few people showing up, including one of Australia's more frequent political bloggers, Tim Blair.

While it does sound like the bloggers attending will be mostly made up of political and social commentary type bloggers, well...a quick Google on grogblogging certainly gives you that impression, it may be an interesting experience and there has to be a couple of techy bloggers showing up as well...

hmmm....

Hiring bloggers as staff

Jeremy Wright's Bloggercon Wiki

IT Conversations will also be posting up audio sessions from the event that were streamed and recorded over the next couple of weeks (thnx Doug..another great stream)...worthwhile listening to the audio when it goes up.

It was an interesting style of event to listen to and i'll be fascinated to talk to Trevor Cook when he gets back to Australia to see if their is anything worthwhile that i can incorporate into the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference structure.

Live audio stream from BloggerCon

BloggerCon III is exactly what it sounds like...its a one day convention on blogging organised by Dave Winer which is being held at Stanford Law School. This years schedule looks pretty interesting...Adam Curry, Robert Scoble, Doc Searls and Larry Lessig are just a few of the speakers. The action starts at 8.15am PST on the 6th of November...or 3.15am in Sydney on the mornig of the 7th... :(

It looks like the sole Australian on the scene will be Trevor Cook, and we will be catching up on his return to see what we can learn from BloggerCon that we might want to include in Australia's very own blogging conference, the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference (yeah..i know...original name) to be held in (probably) February of 2005.

Anyway...this will be the first chance i will have to listen to a live broadcast of a conference via my new Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005 machine. No more hunching over the laptop or wearing headphones to get good quality audio....i'll be listening in through my 5.1 surround system....now thats an interesting idea....imagine a conference being broadcast in surround sound...nah...it would be too freaky... :)

Corporate Blogging primer

Its a good site for introducing people to the whole blogging for the benefit of your work concept. They have links to corporate blogging testimonials, the what, why and hows of corporate blogging, clippings on corporate blogging...and the PDF primer i mentioned. All in all its a pretty useful resource.

Podcasting story on Australian radio

Here is the transcript of the story and a link to the audio file in Windows Media and Real Media formats.

Now they have noticed podcasting, the big question is will the make any shows available via podcasting???

The bloggers vote for the US election..on Technorati...

The VoteLinks idea they have come up with is another great use of teh technology available to us.

Podcast article in the New York Times

The article talks about Adam Curry, Dawn and Drew, Carl Franklin's .NET Rocks and two radio stations in the US (KOMO in Seattle and WGBH in Boston) that are providing "podcasts" of some of their radio shows.

The idea of radio stations posting RSS feeds of shows is pretty cool...i wonder how long before an Australian radio station does something like this...perfect for Triple J i would think.

Have you employed a blogger??? Why not???

That got me thinking about bloggers, blogging and the associated technologies that have sprung up around them, and below is the outcome of a quite Saturday afternoon with just my TabletPC, me and few beers...

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Q: "Have you employeed a blogger?"

A: Yep

Q: "Does it have an impact on your hiring decision if one of the people you are interviewing maintains a blog and everyone else you interviewed doesn't?"

A: Yep

Q: "Why does it make a difference?"

A: Well...running the interactive / digital arm of one Australia's largest advertising / communications agencies, Singleton Ogilvy & Mather, its pretty important to me to know that the people i am hiring have a passion and a strong belief in the space we work in.

Q: "How does passion help someone do there job better?"

A: If a person is willing to stick their passion and belief's they have out for all to see, in this case using blogging as a personal communication medium...hey...its a great way to show to a potential employer that you can see past the "standard" uses for the medium, which in our case is the development of campaign driven web sites, email communications and banner ads. And blogging is as good a place anywhere to start. It also goes beyond that, it shows that they see the value in opening up the communication channels and starting conversations. Its hard to open yourself up to freely talking about your passions and its even harder to do that when you are giving your readers or customers a chance to talk back and ask questions.

I know its considered very dot-comy now, but a lot more people currently in or interested in getting into the advertising / marketing / PR / communications business should read the "Cluetrain Manifesto" book because it really sum's up for me where weblogging and other technologies like moblogs, audioblogs, videoblogs and WiKi's will take us in the future.

Q: "So do many of your staff have blogs?"

A: I've now got two staff out of eighteen that blog. One of them, Larissa, has quite a popular personal blog, but her blog only played a small part in her getting the job because at that time I think not only myself, but everyone else was still playing with the idea of exactly how powerful a tool blogging could be. Lets go forward nearly two years to Jason, who I just employeed this week...well...knowing that he blogged definitely played a big part in him receiving the job offer. Not one other person who's CV we received or that we interviewed, openly spoke about blogging or showed the level of passion and understanding in the space that Jason did. And that made a huge difference.

Its hard enough trying to get clients to understand the value of these emerging mediums, but its often harder getting traditional agency staff to understand it. Now, if I end up having employees who utilise these sort of mediums in their personal lives, and I make the effort to help them understand that its OK to talk about this sort of stuff to clients and other agency staff, it makes my job in getting these tools out there a lot easier.

Q: "So do you think that educating people about this new world is hard or is it just the perception of this stuff that is the biggest problem?"

A: In my opinion it’s the perception...people can always be educated slowly. Just take a look at what started to happen to the perception of Microsoft when staff like Robert Scoble took on the blogosphere and opened up the communication channels. With over 1000 Microsoft bloggers in one place now opening the channels, the view of Microsoft as this big baddie within the developer community (and slowly the press) has started to change. Now i don't think that anyone would argue with me that one of the big things that Linux delivered on was openness, and look at the community that grew around not only doing dev work with Linux, but also the amount of press coverage that Linux has got because of that openness.

The technology is enabling the everyday employee to easily communicate their thoughts to an open and interested audience. This can be a good thing or a bad thing...of course some people and companies will try to exploit it...get over it...its happened with every form of communication media ever invented...right down to the printing press and paper. What we need to be looking at and working on, is how to get more people in the traditional media agencies to understand what the impact will be of all this stuff. We also need to realise that for all the envagelism we can do, some people just don't get it...and never will. And thats fine. Not everyone gets this stuff.

Q: "So what value have you gotten out of blogging?"

A: Blogging has opened a whole new world for me. If i look back to late 2003, i had been running the current version of my blog for about a year, and my blogging was really just for me and a few close friends. In the leadup to going to the 2004 O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference in San Diego in February 2004, i had been reading Russell Beattie's blog and one of the things i picked up from Russels blog, was about this guy called Robert Scoble who had taken a job as an Evangelist at Microsoft and who also ran a blog. So naturally, being a bit of a pro-Linux geek from years ago who had started to notice interesting things going on in Microsoft that were changing my perception, i thought i would check out Scoble's blog and see what he was talking about. The way the Scobleizer ran his blog and the stuff he blogged about hit a nerve with me. I was fascinated by his posts and the way he was trying to start "conversations" so I organised to meet up with him at etech.

I had also been a long time reader of Joi Ito's blog as well as a participant in the Joi Ito IRC channel (#joiito) on the freenode server. So when i had confirmed that i would be attending ETech, i took the opportunity to utilise these mediums to develop a friendship with a number of the #joiito community who were going to etech so that i could get the full benefit of my trip and met some great and talented people face-to-face. The Joi Ito crowd (especially Joi himself) were fantastic. Imagine rocking up to a conference in another country and suddenly meeting 15-20 people who I felt like I had known for years. Obviously the IRC chat room was a big part of this, but don't dismiss the insights that people's blogs gave me into who they were and what sort of stuff they were interested in.

I think it was the second day of etech when Robert showed up and as soon as we saw each other with out Tablet PC's, we hit it off instantly. We kept the "conversation" going during etech and also while i was in San Francisco and he was back in Redmond the following week. The outcome of all this, was that Robert helped to organise a number of meetings for me for when i was on the Microsoft Redmond campus for the third week of my trip. Robert got me into meetings with the MSN, MapPoint, XBOX, SPOT (MSN DIRECT), the Longhorn and various MS Research teams. All of this because i had found his blog a few months earlier. Oh yeah...he also organised a geek dinner where i was the special guest. The outcome of that dinner, was my registering the geekdinner.com domain and...the months of work i still need to put into the site to launch it .

It doesn't stop there. Through Roberts blog, i started reading the blog of Frank Arrigo, an Australian Microsoft employee. After "communicating" with Frank on his blog for a month or two, we finally got to meet at the Australian Mobile Developers Conference. That was the start of another great friendship. Having got to know Frank, i decided that going to the Australian Tech.Ed conference was going to be extremely worth while. Tech.Ed, and Frank, introduced me to so many people I couldn't mention them all here. Frank also introduced me to Cameron Reilly, a recent ex-Microsoft employee who had been blogging for a while. Cameron and I get on really well as we see the value of a lot of the same sort of stuff, and we meet for coffee and the most amazing conversations every time my work takes me to Melbourne. Cameron has in turn put me in touch with a friend of his who works for Hutchinson (3G telco) in Sydney.

The story goes on and on. The amount of time and money on servers and software I have spent on blogging versus the value of the blogosphere to me is a no brainer...the networking that has been the result of blogging has opened up so many conversations and importantly new friendships that will out live my time in my current role in the advertising business...the value of this stuff is long term and will play a huge impact on what I do in the future.

Here's an example. Blogging has also introduced me to Charles Wright (journalist for The Age) and to Trevor Cook (an Australian PR guru). The reason I mention these guys, is that when I started playing with the idea of putting on an Australian Blogging Conference, the obvious people to turn to were Cameron, Trevor, Charles and Frank and to see if they were interested in helping....of course they were and it looks like Australia's first full blown (possibly two day) blog conference is going to happen (fingers crossed).

Q: "So the real value to you is...?"

A: Having meaningful conversation is the real value of blogging for me. The network that opens up for you after you start having conversations with people you would normally be unlikely to meet face-to-face is amazing. It’s a powerful medium and we haven't seen the end of it. Moblogs, audioblogs, videoblogs, podcasting...these are just the beginning and I think the real power will come from what syndication technologies like RSS and ATOM allow us to do.

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Hmmm...like i was saying...the power of passion and belief in this space can be pretty strong.

Hilarious blogging cartoon...

From the Cincinnati Enquirer via Corporate Engagement

RSS Calendar...one of the best uses for RSS i have seen...

I have been playing with it for a few days, and it makes sense to me...it makes sense to other blog writers (or RSS publishers) i quickly polled...and i'm damn sure it will makes sense to the average user out there...

Enter you events / meetings / whatever into the the calendar tool on the web site, either post the javascript file on your own web site or blog or get your friends to subscribe to the calendars RSS feed (or one of your calendar feed categories)..and thats it. Your friends will have instant upto date access to your calendar. If they like, they can even import the exact appointments / events into their "desktop" calendar program via vCal or iCal...

Below are examples of my feed for a conference category...

or subscribe to actual feed.

This is one cool little application...except (there is always a but or an except)...it needs to have an easy way to import appointments from you desktop app. It would be great to be able to import vCal or iCal files, or to have a little plug-in for Outlook or **insert email app of choice here** that would allow you to export XML ready data for import...well...it is in beta...fingers crossed...this is something i definately need to put into the Geek Dinner site...when i get around to finishing it :(

Well done guys...well done....

More "podcasting" goodness...but somebody come up with another name...pls...

One of my favourites at the moment is podstar. The podstar site and RSS feed does not appear to have any audio files associated with it, but it does have a great collection of interesting and relevant content for people interested in this podcasting thing.

I Love Radio.org is another site that has lots of interesting content including these great posts; "A Five-Point Roadmap to Podcasting's Future", "How Podcasting Will Survive Radion" and of course "Podcasting 101".

Phil Windley has blogged a post that covers an interesting idea about how podcasting could be used for company/investor meetings...could be something in real world ideas like that i think...

One of the dotcom type sites is PodcastAds...yes, you too can now place paid ads into your podcast...i'll give them one thing..it is a great way to reach the early adopter crowd. (note: the site doesn't appear to want to scroll for me in IE 6...hmmm)

dopplerradio have also released v1.0 of Doppler, which is my current audio / media aggregation tool of choice. It works with audio and video files and probably anything else you might want to place in your RSS 2.0 media enclosure tag...it also has the option of creating playlists for either Windows Media Player or iTunes....nice... :)

"A new spin on blogging"

His latest article, "A new spin on blogging", has been published in the Oct/Nov edition of the Walkley Magazine which is a magazine for journalists, pr professionals and other traditional media related types. It focuses on a few things, but for the PR guys i have pointed it out to, the bit that that grabs their attention is the stuff on Global PR Week which was on around the middle of this year. Version 1.0 of the idea went really well, and i can't wait to see how the next one goes...it will definately have a lot more people keeping an eye on it.

I'm also looking forward to catching up with Trevor when he gets back from Bloggercon, as he is one the kind individuals who i have managed to talk into helping with the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference, which reminds me, i have extended the time that the survey for the blog conference will be up, so if you haven't filled it in yet..you better go do it now... :)

ViPodder...it had to happen...

Thats great for Mac users, but NewsGator (my aggregator of choice) and many other aggregators out there for the PC (and MAC i assume), have had the ability to aggregate RSS feeds that use the media enclosure tag for a while now....it just seems that no one has gone to the trouble to create a complete agregator that allows to specify a folder for downloaded media to be placed in...

I know...want, want, want... ;)

October 2005: State of the blogosphere...

In July, Technorati was tracking just over 3 million blogs. In October, its tracking just over 4 million blogs (4.2 million today)...there are on average 12,000 blogs being created everyday...thats one blog every 7.4 seconds...400,000 posts created everyday or 16,000 posts per hour or 4.6 posts per second...wow...

Go and check his posts out...though i wonder if he is thinking about releasing his presentation slides at all? I know i would find them extremely useful in helping me to sell the power of blogging (and the blogging conference).

The Perth Blognite....blogging at the end of the earth..

If you live in Perth, and blog or are interested in blogging, don't miss this event on the 27th of October at Curtin University. For the rest of us who don't live in Perth (or Australia for that), maybe the team at Perth Blogs can organise to record the event (audio would be fine), that we can all tap into and hear what's happening and driving the blogosphere at "the end of the earth" ;)

Richard and i have had a very, very small chat about possibly linking up our idea's and seeing how we can work together to create a wider Australian blogging conference...who know's, could be the worlds first blogging conference run in two locations, in two time zones, at the one time. Cool...now that would be something to blog about :)

Once again, well done Perth Bloggers...i hope you have a great evening.

Doppler..for all you podcasting/ media aggregation needs....

I've feed a number of feeds into it from sources like, Adam Curry, Evil Genius, Engadget, Eric Rice, Trade Secrets, It Conversations - Gnomedex feed and a few others and it appears to work really well. I even stuck in my own main rss feed, which has enclosures on video files and it pulled them down as well....nice...

Its sucking the hell out of my bandwidth though....and my time...to much to listen too.. :(

The Flickr Zeitgeist

Trevor Cook on corporate blogging

Nice article with some good quotes/info from Scoble and Buzz (from Activewords)...interesting to see what kind of response it generates....

Podcasting and audioblogging take off.....

We are even starting to see some tools for subscribing to RSS feeds with enclosures for media objects. Tools like the original script based iPodder, iPodder.NET and the terms Podcast and Podcasting are great but all of these "Pod" names are starting to make me feel like the audioblogging world is made up of only iPod owners (yes I know... i own an iPod too)...oh well...i also just ran across a plugin for Movabletype for adding media enclosures to your RSS 2.0 feed called...well...Enclosures.

For more audioblogging and/or podcasting news and feeds check out the following sites: Adam Curry, Doc Searls, iPodder.org, Trade Secrets and of course Eric Rice (check out his Gnomedex4 podcast) and his Audioblog.com tool....i'm sure if you have a small hunt around you will find heaps more...

Addition: I have now added media enclosures to my RSS 2.0 feed.

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster
No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Australian made blogging and RSS tools

If anybody out there knows of any Australian companies that have made any sort of tool that is related to blogging in any way or form, please leave a comment on this post. I think it would be good to have a list of Australian made tools that people could reference when they are looking for applications and i also want to approach them about providing possible speakers for the Australian Blogging Conference.

Australian Blogging Conference

It sounded like a pretty good idea to me..so much so...that i think with all the blogging going on around here (and the lack of decent conferences that have to do with emerging technologies and the like), that we should have our own little blogging conference down under in sunny Australia.

But, first things first...I've put together a little survey to see the interest thats around for an idea like this. If you are interested in either attending or presenting at an Australian Blogging Conference, take the survey (go on...it will take less than a minute of your time) and depending on the reaction i get, we can see where it goes from here.

I have set up a blog category so you can a keep track of the progress of the Australian blogging conference idea by either bookmarking this page or subscribing to the category RSS feed .

Blogosphere Radio

Blogosphere News is just what it sounds like, a sub 5 minute blurb about...thats right...blogging news...The Vlog is a 20 minute long session about..well...just things...and Blogging With... is a 15 minute or so interview with someone about...blogging

The first episode of "Blogging With" is an interview with Darren Barefoot who is one of the organisers behind a Blog conference called Northern Voice planned for Canada for February of next year. Sounds like they have put together a nice little idea...hmmm...

More mobloging goodness

I have a duplicate personal moblog here and another GeekDinner moblog here...feel free to check them both out. So far Flickr wins the best admin interface competition hands down.. the new organizr tool rocks...whatever you want to call it...sign up for a free account and check it out...

Flickr

>

Live Message alerts from your blog to MSN Messenger, email and mobiles...

Whats cool is that it is for free (for the moment)...and whats even cooler is that you can now subscribe to receive "SplaTT's Weblog Alerts"...go on...what are you waiting for???

The orange button below is the graphic to keep an eye out for on sites that are using the service.

InkableType.....very cool...

If you have a TabletPC and blog, then check out InkableType from Kunal. Kunal is the same guy who brought us OutlookMT....well done dude...

Now all i need to do is improve my hand writing....22 of years using computers has done nasty things to it... ;)

Blog stats and stuff...

eMarketer.com has done a nice write up and converted some of the Blogads stats into their pretty little red charts...and Tessa Wegert over at ClickZ has also written up a nice three part article (1, 2 and 3) on advertising and blogs...

The blog revolution rolls on...

Audioblog test posting

Gates on blogging

The word is out.....blogging is big news...or so it appears. You know that things are about to change when Bill Gates mentions a technology in one of his speeches, which is exactly what he did at the Microsoft CEO Summit on the 20th of May (and...he even used a screenshot from Channel Nine).

Everbody from the Seattle PI to ITNews in Australia has picked up on it...

Took them a while to notice the whole internet browser thing and look where that has gone.....lets see where Bill's little mention takes us...

Google Blog

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
test
</body>
</html>

hmmm......not much blogging going on yet at the Google Blog....

ADDITION: aahhhh...they have closed the above URL down and opened a new one....http://www.google.com/googleblog

Everyone's getting into the act.....even the World Economic Forum....

The World Economic Formum weblog is being put together by Samantha Tonkin and Loic Le Meur and is no doubt in response to the wide press that the blogging session (pdf) got at the last WEF meeting. The latest meeting is being held in Warsaw, Poland.

Though it is actually officially sanctioned by the WEF (and has a lovely disclaimer page), it will have posts that are about the two authors "personal experience of the Summit".

It all has to start somewhere......

Salam Pax at the Sydney Writers Festival

The Blogger from Baghdad - Thursday, May 20 2004, 6:30pm to 7:30pm at the Parramatta Riverside Theatre
Alternative Media - Saturday, May 22 2004, 1:30pm to 2:30pm at the Sydney Dance Company 2/3
Iraq - Who's winning, who's losing? - Sunday, May 23 2004, 1:30pm to 2:30pm at the Sydney Dance Company 2/3

Guess I'm up for a trip to Parramatta....

International Blog Meetup Day - April 21

The Sydney meetup will be at the Civic Bar, 388 Pitt Street, Sydney....if you can make it, I'll see you there....(i wonder if the venue has WiFi?????)

Mondo Bloggo..

Blogging is slowly creeping into the mainstream...

My moblog gets 100,000 hits

I bought my first camera phone, the Sony Ericsson P800, on the 15th June 2003. I used the P800 until the 12th of December 2003 (nearly six months) and in that time took 627 photos. My first post to my moblog was on the 15th June 2003. It was just a shot of the office but it got the ball rolling.

One of the benefits of having Nokia as a client, was that on the 12th of December 2003 my P800 was replaced with a Nokia 6600. Since then (four months), i have taken 718 photos. The photo that finally pushed my moblog to 100,000 hits today (12 April 2003) was actually not one i took myself. It was one i found (and blogged on this site) and was a leaked photo of the N-gage 2.

1345....thats the number of photos i have taken with my two camera phones in 10 months....damn thats a lot photos....out of the 1345 photos i have taken, i have posted 380 of them on my moblog...The camera phone has changed the way i take photos. Yes, i own a 5 MegaPixel camera, and i take a hell of a lot of photos with that as well....but trust me..no where near as many as i have taken with the camera phones...

The biggest impact of the camera phones has been that it has changed the way i walk around in everyday life....every thing i see and experience i now look at as an opportunity to take another photo...i wouldn't mind betting that i have probably taken more photos in the last 10 months than most professional photographers.....

There have been a number of posts in the blogoshpere the last couple of days that have failed to grasp the whole idea and a few that have shown faith. I for one, along with the other 84 million people who bought camera phones in 2003 (vs only 50 million digital cameras sold for the same period), would tend to say the revolution is not only here, but well and truly over....

Oh yeah...Kodak would probably agree..though they may not like it.. ;)

Local Council uses blogs....

Scott Neal

Scott Neal, "your friendly City Manager for the City of Eden Prairie, MN," explains:

I use this weblog to keep Council members, staff, and interested citizens informally updated on a variety of community-related stuff that's crossing my desk and my mind.

channel 9 is alive....

Test post from OutlookMT

Post to your blog from Outlook...

Scoble will be happy...he has been looking for something like this for a while.....

The Pitch...

If you think you have a good idea, go to The Social Software weblog and enter it into the " The ‘Perfect’ Corporate Weblogging ‘Elevator Pitch’ Competition…"

Mobile RSS reader and the MDC

mobilerss essentially allows you to subscribe to indivual feeds or to upload your OPML file with your entire feed list in it, and it then provides you with a URL to view on your mobile device....it even gives you a few options on simple formating.

Oh yeah... its free.... :)

I found this gem on the MDC Bloggers site, and they appear to have some sort of blogging tool contest running in conjunction with MDC 2004...

Some of the stuff coming out of the first day on the blogs looks pretty cool...wish i was their...but i'll have to do with the Australian version in Sydney on the 20th of April

Blogging article in the Australian Financial Review

He has posted the article on his site as you need to register (and pay) to access it online.....will they never learn????

Its a good article and the value of having a double page spread on blogging in the AFR will do me wonders in helping to sell in blogging as a corporate tool...up until now most of my clients have had trouble grasping the idea and hopefully this will help.

I would love to know how Trevor got them to publish it though....well done....

Dave Winer talks at Microsoft on weblogs

The MURL Seminar Series has some great tech video sessions available for your perusal....and what else would you expect from the combined talents of Carnegie-Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft Research, Stanford University, the University of Washington and PARC.....

Lots of stuff to watch to fill in any spare time you may have...

I've moved to movable type...

It look OK and seems to have some nice functionality...i really like the "category" feature and its nice to have the blog now searchable as well....

Another nice thing is that it automatically creates mutiple syndication feed types....I now have RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM syndication feeds available....

I will have a bit more of play with the plug-in feature later as it looks quite interesting....i'm just glad to have ot all up and running....

w.bloggar 3.03....offline blogging tool.....

I know that a lot of other tools offer this service, but as i said, i like the blogger system and w,bloggar gives me access to easy updating...wether its text or text and images.....

It also has a couple of other nice tools.....Microsoft have developed a plug-in for Media Player which talks to a number of blogging tools which automatically pulls the title of the song you are listening too and makes it part of your past...see below...

webcamnotes test blog...

blogging at Davos...

I love the fact that Joi not only looks like he's blogging whats going on a round him onto his powerbook, but about one minute into the panel 7 mpeg (16MB),he pulls out his Nokia 6600 and takes a photo of the audience...I think this may be the image that he mobloged later but i'm not sure...

Links: Joi's davos related posts, International Herald Tribune

OneNote and its development...

As a user of OneNote on my TabletPC, i have to give credit to the guys for creating a great app, and his blog provides an interesting window into the process and issues that come up with developing a 1.0 application.

I always wondered why they created OneNote when the Journal application is so similar, his explanation covers the logic well....While Journal is specific to the Tablet, OneNote is an application that can be used not only on a TabletPC but also on a standard desktop or laptop. Come to think of it...i was using OneNote on my IBM laptop before i got my Toshiba Tablet and it was still a great app to use.

If only i could blog directly from it.......then again...my handwriting is no where near as neat as it should be.. ;)

corporate blogs and conversations...

I think that the point he raises about companies "having a conversation with customers" is spot on....it doesn't matter if the conversation is on a blog, a web site, or whatever.....The Cluetrain Manifesto was right all along...if only more people understood the whole of idea of "markets as conversations" ...

I realise that i've been sounding a bit pro-Microsoft these days, and believe me, my friends are letting me know it, but i think they are one of the first to accept some of what cluetrain talks about and to understand its wider implications....i haven't coded seriously in ages, but i'm spending a lot of time reading the blogs over at blogs.msdn.com trying to get a grasp on what MS is working on next....and having someone like Robert Scoble blogging his heart out (hmm... he's taking a break this week...damn), is doing wonders for Microsofts perception in the tech and IT world (it doesn't matter if you agree with him or not), and its probably creating some good PR for them while he's at it. All of this information that i'm discovering and reading is helping me to do my job better and its not coming from the PR agency, but from the coalface itself...and the fact that i can converse with the people who are telling me these things at the same time is amazing...

All the blogs that sprung up around Microsofts PDC late last year, and the one that has appeared for the MDC in March, are all providing somewhere for a conversation to take place....sure its between coders and coders and not companies and people/consumers/cutomers (no insult meant to coders....they are people too) but it has to start somewhere....

finally.....atom but not rss

Now i understand that ATOM is the going to be the standard moving forward, but my RSS reader, RSS Bandit, is just that, an RSS reader. It certainly don't like looking at the ATOM feed i now have (for a start it doesn't even support links). NewsGator 2.0, which i just installed reads the ATOM feed perfectly (including links).....hmmmm...just might have to get used to NewsGator or another reader until RSS Bandit add the functionality as i really like the layout of their reader, especially the version i just installed (1.2.0.81)

PS. I just noticed that if i view the xml file in IE, it also doesn't show links...hmmm.....

Big Day Out 2004 moblog

We've set up a basic .net app, that checks an email address for images that have been taken and then MMS'd from a number of Nokia 7650's we have handed out to channel V staff at the event.......check them out.......

moblog company raises EUR3.2 million

This article at Electric News has a few quotes from Newbay CEO, Paddy Holahan, and he mentions that they will be launching a new product soon that is not just an upgrade to FoneBlog....i can't wait to see what it is....

well done guys, and congrats on the investment..

wwmx - mapping your moblog...

I saw wwmx (World-Wide Media eXchange) a while ago, but i stumbled across the site again today and noticed that they released a tool called the Travelogue Authoring Tool recently (nov 2003).... You take your digital photos, and if you happen to have recorded a track with your GPS you can map your photos to the track.....if you don't have a GPS, you can use the aforementioned tool to give your photos a co-ordinate reference via a drag-and-drop interface...very easy and very very cool

Where is gets even cooler is when you roll your mouse over one of your images in the thumbnail area, a dot on the map highlights so you know where the photo was taken...the same works in reverse, roll over a dot and the relevant thumbnails images get a highlight...

The tool has been built by the talented guys and gals over at Microsoft Research Labs in Redmond. An article explaining what it is and exactly how it works can be found here..

well done guys...

thinking (blogging) in ink...

www.inklog.com
www.inkpositive.com
BLInk
www.jdhodges.com/log

the gift of blog...

hive-mind

We all have memories. What if these memories were able to shared and "assimilated" like those of the borg?

The way i see it, the advent of weblogs and moblogs is taking us in the very direction of the borgs hive-mind...a shared consensual memory enabled by the formation and global acceptance of the internet. The question that rears its ugly head in this time of shared memories gone wild, is that which memories should we choose to let in as part of our own personal life experiences and which ones should we leave locked out, not allowed into the limited space we all have in our own heads?? And does it really matter when the space in our brain is augmented by our computers hard drives??

That's when i think the concept of "trust and reputation networks" kick in. Trust networks are based on the idea that because i know you, i trust what you tell me, so logically, by default i would then trust information passed onto me by a third person that you trust. This is pretty much the exact way that friendster works.

But are trust networks in themselves enough??? Does this need to be taken even further???

This idea is investigated in Cory Doctorow's recently released book "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" when he introduces the concept of "Whuffie". Whuffie is something that is given/praised upon you when you do or offer something good to other people. It is something you earn, not something you can buy or trade or market. But be warned...its also something you can have taken away from you...

The idea of trust networks is also explored in Howard Rheingold's latest literary effort, "SmartMobs". In all reality it has actually been used on Slashdot since the number of postings became to hard for the original developers to maintain. With Slashdot you can choose to view only the postings of people with a high rating or karma as they now call it. I suppose Google also runs on a similar sort of network....the more sites you have that link to your site, the closer to #1 you become in the search results.

It will be interesting to see where this all ends up.....while i'm sure that a large corporation will be able to develop a very well structured trust network, will anybody be able to trust it unless it springs from the wells of free minds....a trust network that is trusted by all of us....

blogger test from blackberry

Just testing and trying to send a post to blogger via a wap-to-blogger interface from my Blackberry device.

catching up...

Just finished reading "The Art of Innovation" by Tom Kelley of IDEO....what an amazing company, and the book captures their spirit perfectly.

Just started reading "Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold...starting off as a great book, but then again, most of his books do.

This whole idea of community coming back as an important piece of the internet just reminds me of how quick the net changes. The whole internet was based around community when it started and now a decade after it went visual with the release of Mosaic, we seem to be heading back in the same direction.

The advent of Flash Mobs is also amazing....read more at SmartMobs site or at cheesbikini (what inspired that name I'd love to know)

Will have to blog on the whole Smart Mob / Flash Mob thought at a later time....time to get back to the book....

The information war age.......

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/...the Salam Pax site......