Tag Archive for 'Blogging'

Starting a Blog — Naming It

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 10/6/2008
in Blogging
. 3 Comments

Yesterday, I started Impolite Company to write about political issues. This and the next few posts will document the decisions I made and the steps I took in creating Impolite Company.

First on the list is the name: Impolite Company. I wasn’t looking for anonymity. I just needed another blog to segregate my political posts from everything else. I decided to use politics.blogan.net and went as far as creating the subdomain, installing the WordPress files, creating the database, and starting on the theme before I realized something better was needed, that I wanted a new domain name.

Here are factors I considered in choosing ImpoliteCompany.com:

  • I wanted a “dot com” domain. That’s what people expect. When I say “blogan dot net” people look confused and disappointed. “Dot net?” they ask. I suspect they probably forget and go to the wrong site. Getting a dot com domain name was non-negotiable.
  • I wanted the domain name to be common words spelled correctly — no web 2.0 spelling with missing vowels near the end. I didn’t want a made up word that no one would know how to pronounce and no one could remember how to spell. I didn’t want a combination of words that could be divided differently to yield an unfortunate meaning (e.g., “therapist” or “the rapist”Wink.
  • The length wasn’t particularly important. By now, people are used to multiple words in a domain name without having to add “all one word” when saying it. I hope people don’t type the domain name more than once, anyway. Put it in your favorites list or subscribe by RSS.
  • I used to believe earlier in the alphabet is better. This is probably becoming less important now that most bloggers have abandoned displaying alphabetical blogrolls. I do believe blogan.net benefited from being early in the alphabet.
  • I wanted the name to have some significance to the topic of politics. Although I imagine some would argue I failed on this point, Impolite Company is good enough for me. If you need an explanation, Impolite Company has an about page for you. It helped that I’d recently written on the topic, too.

I found both InPoliteCompany.com and ImpoliteCompany.com were available. Impolite had the meaning I wanted and got it. The other name might still be available if you want it.

Up next, selecting the blog platform.

Update. The Next Web has a great compilation of posts on naming web startups.

___
Corrected post to refer to Impolite Company instead of Intense Debate. Oops!

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Impolite Company Is Alive

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 10/5/2008
in General
. 0 Comments

My political blog, Impolite Company, is open for business. There’s not much there yet, but that soon will change.

It’s been a while since I started a new WordPress blog. There’s a big difference between starting a basic blog and one that has those features and capabilities I consider necessary. Domain names, styles, comments, and feeds, oh my! That sounds like a topic for another post.

In the mean time, drop on by Impolite Company, leave a comment, subscribe to the feed, and prepare to join in the discussion. And for those of you who don’t like politics, relax in the knowledge that I won’t write politics here on blogan.net.

Internet Content Plumbing Simplification

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 9/22/2008
in General and Social Media
. 0 Comments

Inspired by Rafe Needleman’s content overload, I graphed my current Internet content plumbing with an eye to simplifying and improving it.

I have two blogs: blogan.net and Exerslog; their content goes to FriendFeed, as do the comments I write on blogan (they are filtered from the entire comments feed by a Yahoo pipe). I don’t regularly update Exerslog and it no longer inspires me to exercise. Instead, it adds unnecessary overhead to activity I’d rather encourage and makes me feel guilty when I don’t update even though I have exercised. Time to shut it down, at least for now.

I used to write about others’ posts I read that I liked. Then I discovered Google Reader’s ability to share posts. I find Reader’s sharing easier than writing a blog post. The titles of the posts I share show up on the sidebar of blogan’s main page. I also pipe the shared posts to a Tumblr “tumblog.” I don’t like Tumblr because it makes the shared posts look like I wrote them. Google Reader provides a shared items page, so I didn’t need Tumblr for what I was doing. Good bye, Tumblr!

Unlike Rafe, I don’t use ping.fm to stuff status to various microblogging sites (Twitter, Identi.caPownce, and Yammer) because I’d rather not start a conversation somewhere I won’t be watching. Instead, all my microblogging accounts pipe to FriendFeed, where I’d like the conversation to take place. Does this work? No. Time to get rid of the extra microblogging sites I don’t use.

I’ll keep Twitter because it’s where my social graph is. It works will with Alex King’s latest beta of Twitter Tools, which filters out @replies before displaying my tweets on blogan’s sidebar.

I have some miscellaneous sites (Amazon.com wishlist, BrightKite, and YouTube) that go to FriendFeed. I have virtually no activity on them, they self maintain, and it’s not worth documenting them, and not worth the effort of deleting their feeds from FriendFeed. Ignoring them is bliss!

I have a Pownce site that aggregates my blogan and Twitter streams. Pownce is another site I ignore and it can be removed.

Finally, LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace are special cases. I don’t particularly like them, but I have a lot of friends on them so I don’t want to ignore them. They don’t play well with the rest of the Internet, though; getting feeds in and out of them can be difficult. Even in the case where it’s possible, it’s not necessarily advised. For example, I have Twitter update my status on Facebook. The cultures on Twitter and Facebook are different; noisy chatter that’s acceptable on Twitter might be considered obnoxious on Facebook. I think I’ll remove the linking. Likewise, I can’t think of a reason to pipe my LinkedIn activity to FriendFeed. These three sites go back to being the islands I hate.

This is what my Internet content plumbing looks like now. This captures at least 95% of my online content reading, creating, sharing, and other social networking activity.

___
Hat tip: Steve Rubel for tweeting Rafe’s article.

One Question To Ask Yourself Before You Start Blogging

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 9/10/2008
in Blogging and Rants
. 4 Comments

There’s one question you need to ask yourself before you start blogging:

  1. Do I want to blog?

That’s it. End of story.

Forget about some narrowly-focused questionnaire that makes blogging sound hard or serious or demanding.

Do I want to blog?

Suppose the next time you’re in a bookstore you see a journal. You think to yourself, “Journaling might be fun. I had a diary at summer camp. Ms. Provansha made us journal in high school composition class. I wonder if I might like it now.” So you buy the journal. You take it home and you write in it. Or not. No big deal.

Now imagine going to that same bookstore and seeing that same journal. This time a poster next to the shelf of journals challenges, “4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start Journaling.”

  1. Can I write well?
  2. Am I passionate about a particular topic?
  3. Am I willing to purchase the best equipment to write?
  4. Can I commit to serious writing?

Um, let’s see… No, no, no, and no. You leave the journal on the shelf and exit the store thinking, “I guess I’m just not cut out to journal.”

Shame on that bookstore. Not everyone who buys a journal is angling for a book deal. Likewise, not everyone considering blogging is planning to chase the advertising dollar.

Do you want to blog? Go for it!

___
Hat tip: Rick Turoczy who dugg the article prompting this rant, “4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start Blogging“.

Jamison the Blogger

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 8/26/2008
in Blogging and Family
. 0 Comments

I check my inbox and found this:

Dear journal. From the the time we left the house to now, a lot has happened. We left our house at 2:18. Then we drove over to the fredmeyer parking lot and stopes at Panda Express. There I got a pandabowl with rice and orange chicken. After that we got on to highway 26th. Heather and Melissa decided to watch What Happens in Vegas. While they watched that I read a little of my book Hedge Hogs in The Closet. Todd just fell asleep. We drove for a hour and fifteen minutes then stopped at starbucks. We all used the restroom and got a drink. I got a grande double chocolate frap, Todd got the same as me, Heather got a tall iced chai, Melissa got a tall chai tea frap, and mom got a vente iced chai. After that Heather and Melissa finished there movie and started another called Step Up Two while me and Todd played ds downloads on Super Mario Bros. We drove another hour and a half then stopped at a shell gas station and went the bathroom and filled up the gas tank. We left the gas station at 6:45. Heather and Melissa finished Step Up Two and Heather started the movie 21 and bored of it and switched to just reading a book. We drove another forty five minutes and entered Washington. From then on we drove untill we reached Grampa and grandmas house

The End

From Jamison.

I think I might be raising another blogger. His domain name is ready when he is. Wink

CNN Fires Blogger

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 2/19/2008
in Asides and Blogging
. 0 Comments

CNN fires a blogger. Just added to my RSS feed.

Exerslog Not Quite Dead

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 2/15/2008
in Asides
. 0 Comments

I wrote a new post at Exerslog. I had to. Google Reader was taunting me that it was inactive. No promises for the future, though.

Update Your Blogroll Automatically

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 11/8/2007
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

I used to use WordPress’ built-in blogroll capabilities. No more — it was too much work. My blogroll now updates automatically to always show the feeds I’m reading. Here’s how you can do it, too:

  1. Set up Google Reader as your RSS reader. I suspect other online readers would also work, but I know Google’s does.
  2. Create a tag to apply to each feed that will show up in the blogroll. Being quite the original, I used blogroll.
  3. Apply this blogroll tag to those feeds you want in your blogroll. If you read a lot of feeds, this can take some time. Use it like I did to delete feeds that no longer update or that you don’t really read anymore.
  4. From Google Reader, select Settings > Tags and make the blogroll tag public, then select “add a blogroll to your site.” I chose the “none” color scheme so I could style the appearance myself. If you are putting your blogroll on a Blogger blog, you might want to select one of the pre-styled versions.
  5. Cut and paste the code from the previous step to display where you want it. WordPress has widgets (or the K2 Sidebar Modules that I prefer) and Blogger has template settings to configure your blog’s appearance.

That’s it — you’re done. Next time you subscribe to a new feed, decide whether you want it displayed on your blogroll. If you do, apply the blogroll tag and it will automatically show. Delete a feed from your reader and it’s gone from your blogroll. No additional work is necessary.

Brutal Blog Readers

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 11/1/2007
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

Catch My Attention. I read a bunch of blogs. So many that I don’t really read them — I skim them in my RSS reader. If something about your post catches my eye (the title, a graphic, bolded headings) I might actually read it. Provide only partial feeds and I’m likely to pass on by. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Give me a reason to read your post or I won’t.

Don’t Disappoint Me. Sometimes, it would be better if I don’t read your post. Because I continue to add new blogs to my reader, I’m always looking for an excuse to dump a feed. Disappoint me too many times (or once really bad) and that post may be the last I read.

Give Me a Say. Invite my comments and make it easy. (Those of you with captcha; I’m talking to you. Find another way to prevent spam.) Send me updates when someone else comments and I’ll keep coming back.

What Say You? Are you a brutal reader? What makes you read a post? What makes you never come back?

Ashley Posts Again

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 9/19/2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments

New post from Ashley. She’s posting about as often as I am…