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Quasi blogs and RSS
Quasi blogs
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I didn’t expect it, but it looks like it will be more expensive to bring quasi-blogs in via Contribute on everyone’s desk than it will having ‘real’ blogs.

Even with 100+ users, MoveableType still comes in cheaper than rolling out Contribute to everyone, plus it comes with RSS built-in, which my client’s current set up of flat html on a fileserver doesn’t have.

So a combination of MoveableType for every employee, plus Contribute for the 7-8 major content producers/managers, works best for my client’s dollar, methinks.

Funny, but I never expected the numbers to stack up that way when I started out…

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Timing is all, isn’t it?

I have a really bad cold/flu. So now is the perfect time for the reverse cycle airconditioning heater to collapse, after less than a year from installation.

It’s a Panasonic unit, by the way…

The repair company that services Panasonic units still under warranty don’t keep a spare of the dual overhead flanging scrumptionshiner that has gone faulty.

So it’s freezing in the Adelaide hills at night, it’s a weekend, there is no ’supply’ date given for the new scrumptionshiner, I feel like death warmed up in a bucket…

But hey — on the bright side, it’s not a cold day, I’m about to go outside, sit in whatever sun is available and record my report for FIR #35; the lovely Heidi Miller gave me a fabulous review in her own podcast (which, by the way, just keeps getting better and better as she, and we all, get used to the medium); I will then create the advert powerpoints for my church’s Sunday service and then get back to re-reading a much-loved classic: ‘Smiley’s People‘.

I’ve been struck by a ‘Desert Island Discs‘ attack, so am currently attempting to re-read my favourite books and compile a list of top 8 pieces of music I’d love to be stranded with on a desert island. And I do believe that I am already in the best country in the world (.mov - corrected link) so it would take a lot to make me want to be stranded on a desert island.

For the record, the favourite book after the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare (which are automatically stranded with you) would be “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch“.

I’ve read some of Terry Pratchett’s other stuff, but it’s the darkness in the humour that works for me in this book. I loved Gaiman’s Neverwhere series on the beeb when it first aired, so was very thankful when someone bought me the ‘book on cassette’ version. As a reviewer said, Neverwhere is ‘the sort of book Terry Pratchett might produce if he spent a month locked in a cellar with Franz Kafka’

Music?

1. ‘Nightporter’ by Japan
2. “Nostalgia’ by David Sylvian
3. ‘Once Bitten Twice Shy’ by Ian Hunter
4. ‘Paper Plane’ by Status Quo
5. ‘Rain Dogs’ by Tom Waits
6. ‘Don’t Stop the Dance’ by Bryan Ferry
7. ‘Dare You To Move’ by Switchfoot
8. ‘Eagle Rock’ by Daddy Cool

And if I could only take one song? Eagle Rock.
My luxury: as George Clooney said, an anchored yacht.

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Okay - this is one of those ‘I need your help’ moments…

In slotting in the last few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle for my client, I am looking at integrating PDA and mobile phone technology.

Of course, the Blackberry exists, but it is cumbersome and ugly. Does anyone have any suggestions as to other options? Must be able to sync with Outlook would be a good first start… battery life not too important, as I envisage the phone/pda being charged overnight each night.

Over to you…

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And in this week’s feature I discuss Oral Versus Written Communication.

At just 8 minutes and 42 seconds long, it’s a bargain!

Download it now and listen to it immediately

Or have your Doppler or Ipodder feedcatcher automatically download this and every new podcast of mine by hovering your mouse over the following link, then copying and pasting the shortcut into your feedcatcher: subscribe to my podcast feed

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Yuch! I have a horrible head cold.

It attacked me yesterday — swept over me.

At 1pm I was fine, by 6pm I was in bed, three layers of clothing and the heating on, shivering.

I’m so glad I have an understanding, supportive wife - she kept the family routine going while I collapsed.

Now I am home from the office, wrapped up in bed, about to record this week’s podcast. Don’t expect verbal pyrotechnics!

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I couldn’t believe this when I read it. A friend in the UK emailed me with the content of a ‘discussion’ they’d had with their IT department.

It seems that any ‘out of office’ auto-reply set up on the company’s email client only gets sent to in-house addresses.

Which means that if my friend Peter sets up a “sorry, I’m on holidays for a month” autoreply then only his work colleagues in the same company will get the message. Anyone from outside the company who sends Peter an email won’t get any response.

Not surprisingly, upon finding this ‘feature’ of the email client software he contacted his IT department. He was told to ‘log a fault’ wherein he received an autoreply advising him it would be approximately 5 working days before he got another auto-email outlining the progress of his ‘fault’.

Peter comments:

Have to update you to say that I received a call telling me that “this is the way it is”. I was actually told that I should send out a message to my customers before I was going on holiday to let them know I would be away. Fine for someone like me who has one company/multiple contacts but what about the account managers who have hundreds of accounts and millions of contacts????

And as we all know, everything communicates - even silence. It just doesn’t
necessarily communicate what you want it to.

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At the start of my third week on this project and I’m almost there…

A couple of minor things to sort out and then I am going to put together a Director presentation (because PowerPoint doesn’t let me do the funky stuff that Director does!)

One of the issues to be sorted out is whether to purchase MoveableType and install on our server, use TypePad for external hosting (but, if I can figure it out, secure so that the world and Technorati can’t get to the content) or go down my original flat html-and-Contribute route.

There’s pros and cons for each course, but the Contribute route has presented the biggest headache so far: without hosting my client’s intranet on a ‘proper’ web server (but instead just as a file in a folder on a windows fileserver) there is no way that any feedreaders can get to any xml file on the fileserver.

So the knowledge-sharing component of my strategy gets derailed because of a lack of any way to notify interested parties to new content available at individual blogs. Instead, they would have to manually go to each blogger’s page and decide if there is new content there, and if so if it is relevant - a large cognitive load for a busy call centre operator or claims processor.

As always, my proposal will also incorporate a significant educative component — what ARE blogs and podcasts and WHY would a business want to use them? I’ve got to take senior management down the path of understanding the WHY first before I can ask them to make a commitment or go to battle with my client’s owner’s IT group.

I can’t remember who’s blog it was that talked about it, but the cure for insomnia, they said, was to spend time discussing bandwidth with their IT folk… I’d add that it is a sure-fire way to raise my blood pressure — having any discussion with IT on getting a commitment to allow an increase in bandwidth usage.

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It is really beginning to annoy me…

I can fully understand why people do it—because of pop-up ads and the blocking thereof—but the lack of a default or ’switchable’ target for links from blogs to other blogs or sites is really annoying. When I want to follow a link from someone’s blog I have to right mouse click and ‘open in new window’.

Whenever I create a blogpost I have to manually edit the html to append the requisite target=”_blank” code to each link. Time consuming and error-prone.

But if I don’t do it then I run the very real risk of someone following a link from my blog and disappearing from view for ever. Not a desired outcome for me.

Does anyone else have a solution to the targeting conundrum?

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