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cyberSaps business: blogging news, internet biz, communities, UK angle
A pure blogging company. With history (4 years 261 days ) in hosting Manila weblogging communities and building customised blogging environments for a range of companies and Government quangos. The latest project: building the intranet for the Government Office for the West Midlands, based entirely on Manila. Next project: their internet and extranet. See more details on services and history.

29 October 2004   

 

Photography studio visual

Visual for a photography studio. Working out of an old shop front premises in a small market village in Shropshire.

This from a little hard copy photo I scanned in myself. Thus, the quality of the images in the frames is a little off, still it's merely a visual, to get them talking.

delamotte1

 


1984 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:49:30 PM  . .
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24 October 2004   

 

Blogs vs Email

"My conversion occurred when a grad student in the midwest who I didn't really know invited me to look at her blog a year ago and I came in early one morning and did so, spending about two hours going down her blog, reading comments, leaping from those to examine the blogs of the commenters, looking at the comments on their blogs, looking at the use of graphics on the blogs, following links to web pages they thought were cool, and so on. After two hours I thought I had incredible insight into this whole dense network of people that spread across the country. One link took me to a blog of someone on Capital Hill, and another hop and I was reading a blog in which a MS contractor was discussing how he was going to sabotage the jerk of a manager he worked for."

Good disicssion for and against email discussion lists or the 'pull' of blogs. I don't think one beats the other, just that one can be much better some times. If you're working in a closed community, sure, email is fine. But open that community out...


1982 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:43:42 PM  . .
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19 October 2004   

 

Are you afraid to blog?

Corporate Fear.

Fear of being different. Fear of telling your boss your ideas. Fear of speaking up in meetings. Fear of going up to someone you don't know and introducing yourself. Fear of doing something that might destroy your career.

Fear of weblogging.

It's time we get over our fears....

Excellent from the heart, get off your asses and make a success! How long have we been saying this? "If you haven't got a blog by 2000 your company will be road kill." OK, maybe a little early, but this is the effect. If you can only talk to your customers, suppliers, partners like a marketing droid, we're gonna get bored and find somebody more interesting in a click of a link. Bang, you're history—hello lover.

 Source: Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger; 19/10/2004; 10:45:42.
1981 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:36:19 PM  . .
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14 October 2004   

 

The New PR Wiki: CEOBlogsList

"A list of weblogs authored by CEOs. Actually, this might be a misnomer. It's a list of weblogs authored by people who are in a leadership position in various organizations (corporations, non-profit, etc.)."

I was searching for something like this the other day...


1970 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:37:44 AM  . .
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JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.

Sheesh... I've been meaning to do one of these myself. I use a bookmarklet for each of my Manila blogs, and my Radio site. I'll try this once I restart my browser. "What weblog types are supported by JustBlogIt? Blogger, Drupal, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Radio Userland, TextPattern, TypePad and WordPress. Plus you can add any weblog type you want through the Custom... setting."
screenshot3


[Later:] Works fine. Except that, I'll need to re-jig the HTML to fit in with a window of 400 x 500 pixels. And, one can only 'blog-this' to one site. I was hoping that I could store several sites. As I said, I've perhaps 10 different 'Manila Express' bookmarklets amongst my bookmarks here. Sure, I could use Radio and xManilaBloggerBridge and I do sometimes, but I've not always got Radio running. And I use several machines, far easier to just drag a bookmarklet to the toolbar—even in internet cafés, or more usually, in client demos. "Simply: login, drag bookmarklet to here, highlight some text, and Bob's your uncle—a press clipping mechanism." Says Demo Mode Steve.

To each Manila news page on my servers, I've added some explanatory text and the bookmarklets themselves for both Mozila and MSIE ready to be dragged as is.

Still, will be a 'nice-to-have' addition to the many ways I post news items to the blogs I manage.

Mail-to-weblog from email app, mobile phones, right clicking in Radio. Flip and open front page from within Radio (I used to do this to four Manila sites with one click). Bookmarklets. xManilaBloggerBridge. Editors only: News ==> "Create a News Item." Oh, and telepathy as I lie in bed falling to sleep, though this method invariably fails thus far.

 


1969 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:30:58 AM  . .
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KMPro panel on Blogs in Business

Clipping from a long report about a debate about blogging and knowledge management "...the idea of how blogs can be used to extend the socialisation framework that we get when smart people gather around the cube, board table or in the lunchroom. In those situations, people are sharing and learning from one another, but it happens only within a small group of people who happen to be near each other. With blogs (and admittedly other social software) people can extend that reach out to larger and larger groups of people."

In other words blogging makes one think. It helps others, and others help you. This has been written about so many different ways, I like to note those I've not heard before, ways that are resonant for me.


1968 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:27:59 AM  . .
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My Favorite Javascripts for Designers

Some little JS widgets. My fav is this nice little show hide script. I've been using activeRenderer for this, which is very over-the-top compared to this little JS widget. (aR 2.4 came out yesterday. I'll test drive it in a few weeks. I use 1.4, so this should be quite a big jump for me.)

Example:

I already use Paul Sowden's CSS switcher which remembers the user's preference (for 365 days) with a cookie. I may think about that form checker too, better than awaiting the server to tell one, one's missed something out. Drop down navs? Nah! Don't like links hidden away like that, though I do like the design in the Sucker Fish's demo.


1967 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:12:11 AM  . .
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13 October 2004   

 

Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, October 2004

"We're now tracking over 4 Million weblogs. Regular readers will remember that we tracked the 3 Millionth weblog on July 7th, just 3 months ago. In addition, the blogosphere has been doubling at a regular pace, and it is now more than 8 times as large as it was in June of 2003. In addition, the slowest rate at which the blogosphere has doubled in size is once every 5 months."

Call me when there's over 6 billion blogs.
Slide3

 


1966 Also posted to: Home page . At: 5:14:59 PM  . .
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07 October 2004   

 

Viral & Buzz Marketing Association: Manifesto

"All members of the VBMA share the conviction that Viral Marketing,

Buzz Marketing and Word-of-Mouth Marketing (and other related marketing approaches that harness network-enhanced word of mouth) are based on the principles outlined below, and that we work constantly on improving these marketing techniques:"

This certainly makes me cringe. Their 4th point: "we believe that whatever our target, we will always be dealing with educated people who detect when they are being deceived" means, we'll trick them into doing our work for us. Some how.


I know it would be a wonderful power for marketers to harness and exploit but genuine memes do not come from group brain storming. The only corporate memes that have taken off have been anti. Or, laughing at the stupidity of artificial 'buzz.'

But then again, I could be wrong, perhaps the best have been so insidious, I've missed them.
 


1962 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:10:41 PM  . .
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06 October 2004   

 

Content manangement without a system

Good article about CMS verses people. Much of the battle of creating a good, useful, up to date site, is in the people, not the system. "I know that," as George Bush would say.

This is the same issue that comes up in knowledge management. It's just too hard or too burdensome to add knowledge to the store, so people don't.

At the Government Office where I've set up a CMS using Manila, and where they've been using it now for over 4 years, the same was initially true. It was a tedious chore to add content, no matter how easy I made it. Sure they said they could understand the end benefits, but nobody steped forward to do it. Ultimately, the only solution was to make it part of some people's job description to update their section of the intranet, with one person over seeing the show and maintaining the content for everything. This has worked successfully. The intranet has grown enormously, and is the first port of call for questions. I think it was much of Manila's ease that made it a successful intranet. Some of my skills making weird and wonderful additions. But, mainly, OK, mostly the people process.


The distributed content editors know what to add and when. It's their job to. So far I've trained 50 or so such editors. A two hour beginner course is all they need. Many only come to the training for the laugh, Manila's CMS is so easy, and they've been doing it for so long, they know it as well as me. Though they threaten intermediate courses, and some have signed up, I don't think they'd need it, learning on the job as it were, is far better. I hope one day some will migrate up to managing Manila sites with Radio and it's outliners and the wonderful tricks and fancy flourishes that could occur there... Sigh, but they don't need it.

The main content cheese, rattles cages if things aren't in the right place at the right time. He knows if he doesn't his boss will rattle his cage, roughly. I think this is the way of it in the UK civil service.

Meanwhile the IT bods, keep the thing going, and call me in now and then when a special needs doing, or something weird is happening.

Of course, I try to get everybody in the whole place set up with their own Manila blog. "Bung it in, we'll sort it some how. Let anarchy reign, freedom for thinkers," cry I. But giving freedom of thought an airing in public, even if it's behind a firewall is near impossible in such an antagonistic, hierarchical structure. I think this is how it is, in the UK civil service. Nice people, but I wouldn't want to work there.
 


1960 Also posted to: Home page , GOWM . At: 9:32:25 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: CMS or people

 

05 October 2004   

 

Two years to get a yellow star

It's taken me two years to get a yellow star. I've been a member since 7th November 2002. One receives a yellow star after 10 positive comments. Currently I've a dozen, so this certificate should have come a while back. Nevermind. I'm quite pleased.

Such a cool community, eBay. Millions of people hang there. I wonder if there'll ever be anybody to rival them? Me thinks its too late, forever. The community certainly's locked in. Perhaps it would take a citizens' revolt against the management being found to be paedophiles, or something equally catastrophic. Can't see it happening.

I may just print out my yellow start certificate and pin it to the wall. Wonder when I'll get another? Another two years?

yellow star

 


1951 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:03:09 AM  . .
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03 October 2004   

 

(X)HTML / CSS / JS Slideshow [BETA]

"With one file, you get a slide show, a printable outline, and a screen presentation"

Now, this is very clever. Very simple. Nice one Eric ";->"


1949 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:19:09 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: (X)HTML / CSS / JS Slideshow [BETA]