A new way to embed things in your posts..kwout

There’s a new “clipping service” you can now use that lets you embed screen clippings in your post. When you clip a web page or a section of a page Kwout generates a code that you put in your post in order to render the image. So let’s give it a shot:

kwout | A brilliant way to quote via kwout

 Note, in order to do this successfully when using WordPress you need to use the Code window of your editor.

Free blogging course?

I came across this free course offer from Simpleology. To get the course “free” you need to embed some code so here goes:

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

What they want is for bloggers to promote their blogging course on their blogs. To prove that you’ve done this you have to embed the code (which results in the indented copy above) and register the post URL to prove you’ve done just that. When you’ve done this you get a confirmation page that looks like this:

Google Reader/Notebook/Bookmarks?

I’m a huge fan of Google (who isn’t) but there’s some interesting “cross breeding” taking place particularly between Bookmarks and Notebook. I use Google Reader as my mass input source for feeds which I scan and then if I want to store a page I’ve used Google Bookmarks. However, the new highlighting/annotation feature, for Notebook has me experimenting! Instead of bookmarketing the page I want for future reference I now Notebook it by hi-liting the title of the page. This accomplishes the following:

• It files the page under a notebook (major classification catagory, like Marketing Planning) and I can use “Labels” (same as Tags, although there is a bug in Notebook that makes me have to open the label box twice before I can use it properly)
• If I somehow stumble across this page at another time I automatically know that it is already bookmarked because the title is hilited (I never notice the “bookmark” yellow star in the browser menu so this ads “redundency”)

Here’s a screenshot I clipped from a blog attempting to demonstrate what I’m referring to:

There is an issue though. Since I use Google Reader to receive blog, news and site updates I would like to know, within my reader, whether I’ve already Notebooked the page or not! I don’t want to star or label anything in Reader….this creates double work.

Perhaps the brainiacs at Google are already working on this crossover feature/service.

Blogging with Flock

What Blogging Platforms Does Flock Support?

A table of supported blogging platforms is detailed at: http://wiki.flock.com/index.php?title=Blog_compatibility.

I am trying out Flock’s blog posting feature which you can do directly out of it’s RSS feeder. I’m using it to post to Blogger and WordPress. The Blogger one didn’t work that well. The font style and type was screwed up. Here’s the WordPress test to see if it is any better. I also couldn’t select tags which sucked.

I tried to paste a picture captured using FastStone Editor but couldn’t. Embedding pics should be an option.

Blogged with Flock

Slideshare working with WordPress? Not yet….

Slideshare is a free web 2.0 service that allows you to upload your presentation deck for the world to see. A YouTube for PPT essentially. You can embed code in you post so that the presentation will show in your own blog. So let’s give it a shot:

[slideshare=<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=9053&doc=bloglines-training-11997" width="425" height="348"><param name="movie" value="https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=9053&doc=bloglines-training-11997" /></object>]
Hmmm…. =(

As soon as I figure it out…I’ll let you know. Web 2.0 service providers need to make it AND KEEP it simple for people to blog. Why? Because most of us do this in our spare time and out of “love” and “enthusiasm”. Don’t ever lose site of this folks. If you want mass adoption AND continued use…keep it simple, fun.

As I speak I’m having trouble with Windows Live Writer. In fact I’ve abondoned using it because images are not loading properly and it’s not working with IE 6.0 (with tabs) properly.

Blogger Beta issues

I came across BloggerBot today and thought wow, this could be cool! It promises easy and fast posting of images into a Blogger Blog. No issues having to resize images etc. So, I download the software and register for an account (yet another web 2.0 account).

I assume that this works with Blogger (beta or otherwise) because there is NOTHING on the site that says it doesn’t work with beta.

With the software installed and account set up I go ahead and begin this easy, seamless and “integrated” service experience and guess what?! I’m asked to login, within the “Hello” account to my blogger blog (this is my Marketing Superhero sibling blog) and no dice.

So, being the earlier adopter that I am (means that we like to find answers and give beta providers some grace while they work out the “bugs”) I go an hunt to see if I can fix this issue. I “FOLLOW” Google’s self-help steps and arrive at Google Groups on the topic….voila I find a post that identifies this issue and asks for help. The post was made Sept 2, 2006…pretty recent…great. Unfortunately there was no response and to make things a more frustrating … the topic has been closed by “a manager” (see above).

Google you owe me $250 for wasting an hour of my time. Shame on you. When you integrate services, accounts, tools or whatever…even at the beta stage make sure you either tell us that they won’t work or better yet get them working ahead of time. Blogger is not Beta ready in my opinion.

Zune ad on Technorati can’t be accessed using Firefox?

Interesting. The Zune MP3 player is being advertised on Technoratii. I decided to head over to the site but Firefox couldn’t take me there. There are many rules for web 2.0 (just web in general actually): Seemless, Easy, Always Works.

Hmm, this isn’t what I expected but an interesting idea nevertheless.

I was trolling around Technorati and came across this banner ad with the call to action to make a blog post. I wasn’t sure what to expect. This was an ideal lab experiment if I ever saw one! Since Technorati has both my blogs indexed would my post go on my blog? Well, I was wrong. Here’s what happened.

I filled out the fields in the web ad below

Which resulted in my post going on their official site. You’ll notice that the post makes reference to my one of my Web 2.0 lab experiments and not the actual movie. I may study this on my Markeitng Superhero blog.

Typepad vs WordPress Analytics

As a blogger I like to know how many folks are visiting my blogs, what posts are popular, how they got to my site etc.

Out of the box analytics is a KEY factor for non-technical folks. As far as I’m concerned it must be provided by Blog providers in order to be taken seriously. But more importantly, it must be provided out of the box with no configuration or add ons or extensions…etc.

So, here’s two examples of out of the box analytics from Typepad and WordPress. I pay $150 USD for Typepad and $0 for my WordPress account.

Typepad:

One word: Sucks

WordPress:

Note – to view this clearly click on the image, then click on it again and you’re good.

This shows number of visitors, page views, trends and search terms used by a person to get to my blog.

And there’s more!

This shows how many RSS feeds are being capture by RSS readers.

So, what am I getting for $150? Good question. Typepad, care to answer this question for us?

150,000 Blogs to go!

 My goal is to get into the top 100,000 blogs. Why? Because this graphic on Technorati is bugging the crap out of me. I am very competitive and goal oriented and the fact that this graphic continually reminds me that I’m not “qualified” to be measured burns my butt.  Analytics and measurement is a key differentiator the internet has over traditional marketing in that it can be measured.

The problem with blog tools/services is that some provide analytics (out of the box – simple and automatically provided) such as WordPress and others that don’t. In order to businesses to adopt blogs analytics must be offered “out of the box” and “self service”.

Technorati would incent more bloggers (especially corporate) if they provided additional value regarding analytics and bring the traffic history measuring “requirement” down to 0! This is “anti” long tail thinking in my view.