Yes, I'm writing this article on Posterous using my traditional blogging tool, Movable Type. The irony is not lost on me. And no complaints about MT - it's easy to use, stable, and very well behaved.But Posterous is innovative in some important ways. If you have held off on blogging because it just seemed like too much work, or seemed too limiting, you may want to jump in with Posterous.
Here are some of the cool things you can do with Posterous:
You can blog via email. Just attach a photo, write an email and send it to Posterous. It magically appears on your blog. The subject line is your blog post title. The body content is the entry. The photo is sized automatically. Full links are clickable.
You can blog on your mobile device. Let's say you're at an event with your iPhone. You take a picture, write a cutline, and email it to Posterous. You're liveblogging, now, baby. Grab an iPod Touch and blog your way across Europe. As Ram Dass might say, "Blog Here Now."
It's rich media friendly. Email an MP3 to Posterous and the tool knows to wrap the file in an MP3 player. Record a voice memo on your iPhone and send it. Email a YouTube link and it embeds automatically.
Posterous lets you scrape the web. Drag the Posterous toolbar to your browser. Then, when you find content online that you want to blog, click and it opens a window. Choose from available images on the page, write a title, write your comments, and click - you've blogged it, and you're back to your web trawl.
Posterous ignites your networks. Your post is auto-magically distributed to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, or any other popular network you choose.
You can still blog the old-fashioned way from a control panel - useful if you want to clean up a mobile post, for example. Some other features: It's easy to point your Posterous blog to your web domain, if you wish. You can install Google Analytics with one line of code. And Posterous has a Tumblr-like network feature that keeps you in touch with other Posterous bloggers.
I do have some concerns: Posterous accelerates our "Remix" culture, and probably runs over some copyrights by making it ever-easier to repurpose protected content. From a design standpoint, Posterous is clean and effective, but there's just one theme. I have to believe the service will soon allow its customers to reskin their sites.
I first learned of Posterous when Steve Rubel moved his work (formerly Micropersuasion) to the tool. He's changed his blogging style since the switch; shorter posts, more web scrapings, more frequent updates. More interactive. As he says, it's lifestreaming, a bridge between Twitter and a blog.
Here's a nice guide on using Posterous, courtesy of Old Media, New Tricks.
From SteveRubel.com: Getting the Mosterous from Posterous
"And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?"
- John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644
The elections in Iran have yielded fierce protests worldwide over the validity of the outcome, electing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over popular rival Mir Hussein Moussavi. While the results certainly look fishy, I'm not qualified to assess them. However, protests in Iran and worldwide continue to put pressure on Ahmadinejad's regime.
While Iranian citizens are protesting and fighting in the streets, they are also communicating with the world on popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook. The New York Times reports that one virtue of Twitter is that it's harder to block than other networks because members can access it from mobile devices, cell phones and computers.
Outside of Iran, people are aiding the protest, too. They're:
• setting up proxy servers and making them available in Iran, helping citizens escape government censorship of the web;
• launching distributed denial-of-service attacks against the Iranian government's web infrastructure;
• instructing people outside of Iran on how to help, not hurt, the opposition. See this list of instructions from Boing Boing.
• talking, blogging and tweeting the news, putting pressure on mainstream news outlets to continue or increase coverage. Tweeters are turning their avatars green in a show of support of the resistance.
Reporters have been banned from sharing news from Iran with the outside world. If you would like to read news from participants and citizen journalists, try these resources, as suggested by PC World and others:
The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan's blog, contains videos and commentary
On Twitter: Twazzup has created a mashup of relevant Twitter resources; check it out. Or search for the hashtags #iranelection or #gr88
Conversation is a powerful tool to fight fascism. And social networks give conversations about Iran a media-rich megaphone. The whole world's watching - and talking.
• Web browser FireFox is gaining ground with power users due to its powerful extensions. Here are 15 tools to streamline the workflow of blogging, from CNet.
• Transport your Flickr images and slideshows to your blog or website with simple embed code generated by PictoBrowser.
• Want to get into blogging and not sure where to start? Thinking about trying a new blog tool? Check out Alina Yeisley's My Yellow Umbrella blog, which has a roundup of the major content management systems and some advice on hosting.
Our culture is generating more messages than ever, as we email, blog, Tweet and text our way through each day. Everyone can communicate using multiple channels, and that's a good thing.
But there's a cost: all of these pipes are filling up with junk. Junk people writing junk messages, junking up the channels of communication. Junk, junk, junk. So good luck finding an original thought:
"What's another word for Thesaurus," by the way, is attributed to comedian Steven Wright. The Tweeters above seem unconcerned about stealing his words. All they care about is to look smart, to be in the game. This, of course, is why so many people hate Twitter, which The Ad Contrarian says is how the narcissistic keep in touch with the feckless.
Good manners - and that includes academic and journalistic training - suggest that when we use other peoples' words, we attribute them. Our copyright laws reinforce this. But as a culture, we are increasingly ignoring these norms.
So fight that urge to retweet someone else's wisdom without attributing it. Think of that other person for a minute. Think about the rules of discourse that you learned in school. Think about copyright, so important to the production of knowledge that it's part of our Constitution.
Are you really adding to the conversation? If in doubt, maybe you should stay out. Try thinking more and speaking less. More signal, less noise. So when you do speak, people might actually listen.
It's an exciting time in the halls of the academy these days; graduation is near. And it's also a scary time, because graduating students are entering a marketplace in shambles. Old structures are crumbling; new ones have yet to figure out how to monetize. Ack! What to do? Get to work, that's what. Do something, for someone; build your networks; gain some experience; and do some good in the world. And listen to these guys, who feel your pain.
Fifty years ago today, Miles Davis completed the album "Kind of Blue." It's my favorite recording of all time, and also the best selling jazz record in history. While this post is off-topic, I just wanted to share this short documentary on the album, below.
If you don't own "Kind of Blue," go buy it. And then really give it a listen. It's not music that just fits into the cracks of your life. It deserves your full attention.
If you'd like to know more about "Kind of Blue," I highly recommend the book on it by Ashley Kahn.
Great visual directory of online collaboration tools: Robin Good's Collaborative Map (thanks, Bobby Rozzell)
Look at what Google Labs has cooked up now: Google News Timeline
Become a lean, mean, Tweetin' machine with iGoogle, from Micropersuasion
Look at what Google Labs has cooked up now: Google News Timeline
Become a lean, mean, Tweetin' machine with iGoogle, from Micropersuasion
I normally don't write about my personal life, but I've got exciting news to share with my friends, students and colleagues:
Loyola is in the process of creating an extraordinary school of communication, and it's my privilege to be part of it.
So what makes it special?
The University has made a strong commitment to the program, hiring a new dean (Don Heider), a talented group of new faculty, and creating a new facility (The Clare, at 51 East Pearson in the heart of Chicago's business district). It's literally steps from the Water Tower, and near many of the city's ad agencies and media outlets.
At Loyola I'll be able to pursue my interest in social media through a combination of teaching, research and professional practice. I'll be working with a collegial faculty with deep academic and professional training. And I'll be able to connect with industry professionals working at the highest levels for national accounts.
Oh, and in one of the most exciting cities in the world.
I'll leave Wichita State with sadness. I have great affection for my colleagues and students. And I'll miss the wonderful group of friends I've made through the years. So you can be sure I'll return regularly.
I don't leave Wichita State lightly. But there's no permanent position for me there. So it's time for a new adventure. And I couldn't have asked for a better one.
My favorite store is having a sale this week, but you wouldn't know it by looking at its web site.
That's because the site just sits there. It's little more than a business card with some pretty pictures.
The site isn't updated because it's a hassle to do it. If the job requires a web designer, complex software and an arcane process called FTP to send information to a server, it's too complicated to do regularly.
But it doesn't have to be that way. A new kind of web site - a content management system, or CMS - makes it easy to administer from a secure dashboard. And when it's easy, you'll update it when you're having a sale.
A CMS can be expensive, as a custom-designed and programmed site might be. Or it can be free, if you use an off-the-shelf or open source tool. Many companies use blogging platforms such as WordPress or Movable Type as their CMS. If you need more power or control, there are open-source tools like Joomla or Drupal. When you choose one of these, you gain support from communities of experts who provide free programming modules or visual themes.
Continue reading Free tools for managing your store's web site.
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