An Intelligent Take on the HBO Debacle and Blogging

I came across this article over at KansasCity.com’s TVbarn. Aaron takes a level-headed look at Buzz Bissinger’s unprofessional and profane tirade on HBO, and points out an important issue.

Where does the line get drawn between commentor and poster with regards to a blog’s identity? Comments or no comments? Moderated or not?

If you haven’t seen the video we’re talking about it’s here on deadspin.com. Buzz Bissinger ironically criticizes deadspin for being trash, but does so by swearing, interuption, resorting to logical fallacies (like ad homimen arguments, appeal to antiquity, hasty generalization and more) and acting extremely childish. I’m not sure how Buzz thought childish behavior would win over any supporters.

A blog can be interactive, allowing comments and can develop into an online community. All too often people associate the members of that community too closely with the founders, or the blog writers. It’s a tough balancing act, allowing the public to participate and giving your readers a voice while trying to maintain a separate voice for the writer.

I only receive a few comments here and over at http://pinstripers.blogspot.com my baseball blog but I read each and every one. I delete any obvious spam and would moderate or delete anything that was too obnoxious. I think most people who read blogs and are somewhat internet savvy understand how comments and moderation works, but a lot of people, especially an older generation (like Bob Costas in the video), don’t quite seem to have a handle on it.

Windows Live Writer WordPress Tags

WordPress.com blog users know that WP supports both categories and tags. Windows Live Writer (a fantastic, free blogging client) also supports both of these but the interface isn’t obvious on first glance.

Categories are handled through the scroll box and entry field at the bottom of the screen (labeled “Set categories”).

Tags are hidden initially. To add tags, click on the upward pointing double arrow in the lower right corner (shown in the picture above)

This brings up a new set of options. The section marked “Keywords” is for WordPress tags. Simply type in the desired tags, separated by commas and that’s it!

It’s a straightforward setup, but isn’t always intuitive at first glance.

Good luck!

Windows Live Writer Just Got Better

WLW is my go to program for composing and publishing blog posts. I’ve written about it a few times and have been using it exclusively for posting to my blogs.

I recently switched from Blogger.com to WordPress.com and Live Writer handled the transition marvelously.

Today, thanks to a blog post over at makeuseof.com, I came across a very important link: a series of extensions for Windows Live Writer. Just visit gallery.live.com and you’ll find a whole host of awesome plugins to make WLW even better.

There are a number of extensions to integrate other web services like Flickr or Picasa into WLW, which I am taking advantage of with this post. The Picasa plugin lets you upload images to Picasa from WLW and link them in your blog post. Very cool.

There is also a “blog this” extension for Firefox that helps you blog a particular web page or article. It’s a pretty simple plugin that helps automate appropriate links when referring to a particular source.

There are currently 80 plugins available, so you’ll have to look for yourself to see them all, but if you’re a WLW user, you’re sure to find something useful.

-Jeff

Pownce Disappoints

I’ve continued to check Pownce a few times a day, and try to reply to the posts of others and make interactive posts myself, but it just doesn’t seem to be working out.

It’s been a little while since my last blog post about Pownce and I’ve seen little improvement in the usage. A few new friends have stopped by and connected with me, but their posting has been minimal.

A few people are using Pownce heavily, but not in a way that appeals to me. Most of the Pownce activity I was seeing early on was from a few individuals who would constantly post announcements and links to random websites. Thanks, but I’ve already tried Digg and Stumbleupon and don’t need you trying the same thing with Pownce.

A select few people have replied to my posts and have made interesting posts themselves which I’ve replied to, but they are few and far between. I’m not implying that most Pownce users aren’t interesting, rather what I’m trying to say is that most Pownce users aren’t using Pownce. It’s still stuck in the early stages of sign up, add a few friends, check it out and say “Hmm, looks sort of interesting, but there really isn’t much here. Bye.”

The Pownce interface looks nice, but lacks real utility. There is no “replies” tab like the one that gets heavy use in Twitter. Individual messages take up a lot more room and take a little more time to sift through than with Twitter. Conversations are extremely difficult to follow. If you reply to someone, they will see it, but odds are that you won’t see their reply to your reply, or other replies after yours that may be directed at you.

This last bit really turned me off to Pownce. With Twitter, people usually just include an @someone to indicate they are replying to their post or replying to their reply. With Pownce, you need to go back and find the original post and look at all the replies to see if someone has responded to your reply. Frankly that is too much work for me.

I haven’t seen any improvements or heard talk of upcoming improvements, but I have heard quite a few unimpressed users express their apathy. Not a good sign.

I check Pownce less and less each day, and really don’t have any desire to post there anymore at this point. If someone develops a Twhirl or Snitter style application that can aggregate incoming posts from Pownce and Twitter, it may start seeing more use, but for now it remains a disappointment.

Twitter vs. Pownce: the Ultimate Showdown!

Apparently some people out there haven’t quite caught on to the microblogging craze, or are a bit confused about the differences between the two. Here’s a somewhat lighthearted look at the two in a no holds barred, knock down, drag out fight.

Lets get ready to rumble!

In the light blue corner, the reigning champion - Twitter.

Twitter has been around longer and has a large userbase. The number of clients, addons, extensions, related websites and methods of access is impressive. Lately though, the champ has been stumbling, suffering from extended outages and downtime.

The various clients available for Twitter, when working, are a great alternative to the web interface. My current favorites for Windows are Snitter and Twhirl, but both can be buggy at times. There are also multiple plugins for firefox available. If that’s not your cup of tea you can get at Twitter from IM or SMS. If you’re a fan of text messaging, this can be a fun way to occupy your time while riding the subway to work.

There are a large number of websites that extend Twitter’s functionality. Tweetscan lets you easily search Twitter for tweets containing certain text. Twitter Karma helps you keep track of who is following you and who you are following. Twitterpacks help you find people with the same interests as yourself. Tweetstats reports on your usages, and there are a host of other websites as well.

Reliability is an issue with Twitter, and drives people to Pownce during the downtime. Twitter officially broke up with Joyent recently, and some of the stability issues may improve. Time will tell.

In the green corner, the cagey up and comer - Pownce

Pownce has just come out of beta and has some catching up to do with regards to the number of users. A reasonable number of people have signed up, but a majority of them don’t use it much. Activity has picked up with the recent Twitter outages, but it is still far behind.

Pownce goes beyond the realm of just text and allows you to post pictures, videos, music and other files easily. Also, it’s remarkably simpler to add links just by clicking the button, compared to the usual cut and paste then tinyurl process with Twitter. Most of the videos are just youtube viral videos, but it’s a fun way to share amusing vids with friends. The ability to share photos is very cool. I threw up a picture of my dog, but there are some gifted photographers out there who frequently share some excellent material. I personally enjoy these very much. There is a lot more creative stuff being shared around on Pownce compared to the Twitter’s pure text and links.

There are a few fan created and third party applications and extensions for Pownce, but for the most part Pownce is still in the infancy stage for this category.

One cool feature in Pownce is the ability to group friends in sets. This can be useful when your friends list starts growing and you need an easy way to sort or separate them. I wish Twitter had such a feature.

Also, if you wish, Pownce has plenty of room to provide all of your other contact information like Twitter ID, Flickr, Facebook, IM, email, blog, homepage. I find this a handy way to find people on other networks. I just go to Pownce, click their profile, and presto, all the info I need. Currently Twitter just allows one link for each user.

Pownce has a nice interface for finding friends. It can easily scan your Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, GMail, Hotmail, AOLmail and Yahoo mail contacts. Twitter will only search email contacts (from the same 4).

Point by Point Comparison

Number of users/activity: Advantage Twitter, by a large margin. Pownce may slowly creep up, but Twitter has a huge head start.

Third party support, addons, and extensibility: Advantage Twitter, by a lot.

Reliability: Advantage Pownce. Twitter has been having problems lately and it’s trying people’s patience.

Accessibility: Advantage Twitter. Web, IM, Txt and local clients provide many options for getting connected.

Flexibility: Advantage Pownce. Videos, pictures, music, easy linking, and text sans the 140 character limit.

Friend Finding: Advantage Pownce. Both let you search by name, but Pownce has more options for importing from other services.

Tally

That’s 3 for Twitter and 3 for Pownce. OK, the numbers are misleading. Twitter wins, easily, if only because it’s what people are using right now.

In the end, it all boils down to what you want. If you want to share a variety of media types, you need Pownce. If you want more access options, Twitter is the way to go.

Personally, I’m still using Twitter most of the time, because that is where the action is. I also use Pownce on a daily basis and enjoy the different kinds of content that pops up there. If you into social networking and web 2.0, you should probably start using both.

Before long we’ll start seeing clients that aggregate both Pownce and Twitter, and by then there will be no reason not to enjoy the benefits of each.

-Jeff

Online Identity Anonymity

Take a second and answer the poll on the right side of the blog which should be up for the next week.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about privacy, identity, anonymity and other related topics on the Internet. I’m curious what other people’s thoughts were on the subject and would welcome any comments.

For most of my online activity I keep a slightly anonymous profile. For business transactions and shopping, I obviously use my full, real name, but for most forum posting and twittering, I use my username. I don’t post anything controversial or illegal and am rather tame (bordering on boring at times) with my blogging, forum posting, and Twitter tweets. I can’t think of anything I’ve ever done online that I’d necessarily want to hide.

What does scare me a bit, is the power of the Internet and Google to archive everything I’ve said or done online. Try using Google to search for your real name first, and then do a search for your most common usernames. The amount of information out there is stunning.

As a physician, I’m aware that many patients are starting to do Internet searches on their doctors. I don’t have any qualms with this practice and think it is reasonable for patients to know certain things about their doctors. Information like where the physician went to medical school, where they did their internship/residency/fellowship training, prior employment, scientific research they’ve done, license and board certification status, standing with various medical organizations and a host of other information can be useful to patients evaluating their doctors. On the other hand, personal information, family photos, comments someone may have posted on a forum about Windows XP or the Dallas Cowboys probably doesn’t need to be made available to a doctor’s patients.

How many of us have used a search engine to check out one of our dates? I know of one ex-girlfriend who would look me up on Google occasionally. Do we really want all this information about ourselves made public?

There are many occupations or hobbies where more exposure is better. I’m sure there are quite a few consultants who want their name and business splattered all over the web. That makes sense to me but what about the other, more private details unrelated to business. If you expect clients to research you or to discover you on the web, do you take steps to ensure they will only see what you wish?

I personally try to keep use of my full, real name to a minimum on the web, and keep it related to professional issues. My online handle or username I am fairly free with. There isn’t anything incriminating out there associated with either name, but I like to keep the two separate.

What are your thoughts on the issue of online identities, anonymity and privacy? Do you use your full real name frequently or do you use an anonymous handle? Do you keep more than one identity with different levels of anonymity? Are your usernames easily traced to your real name? Have you searched yourself online and found anything you wish wasn’t there? I’m very interested to hear people’s thoughts.

In closing, just remember - the Internet never forgets!

Cheers,

Jeff

ESPN Widgets

All you sportsfans out there who can’t get enough ESPN news and scores will be happy to learn that ESPN now has a collection of widgets available for use on your homepage or blog. There are a variety of different widgets for sports news in general as well as individual sports. They can be downloaded from widgetcenter.espn.go.com.

I don’t think I’ll be sticking them on my blog, but I will try them out on my various customizable homepages like My Yahoo and Netvibes.

Pownce Update

Over the last few days I’ve added most of my Twitter friends to Pownce and have about 25 people that I’m friends with (two way connection) and about 25 that I’m fans of (one way connection - either they haven’t bothered to log in and accept friends, or they don’t wish to follow me).

I have gotten updates from exactly 7 people. I have gotten private messages and replies to my posts. There have been a few general updates that I noticed across both Pownce and Twitter. The vast majority of the updates I’ve received have been from two “internet people”, tech news blogger and podcaster Cali and Mahalo guy Jason.

Most of the updates are small text messages (basic tweets) often with links and some but not all are shortened with TinyURL. One person posted an MP3 file and I posted an image just to try it out.

When clicking on the picture of one of your friends on the left side of the screen, you are shown their public updates, and all the public updates they receive. The most common thing I saw was this:

Which was the picture I posted over a day ago. Since I’m not the most prolific microblogger out there, this tells me that most people on my friends list aren’t exactly knocking themselves out using Pownce. Most of them have much smaller friends list than I do suggesting they haven’t imported friends from Twitter or another service.

I know it’s only been a few days, but Beta has been around for a while and Pownce certainly has been talked about for a good deal of time. I expect action to pick up slowly, but am a bit surprised that it hasn’t taken off quicker than it has.

I think the two main problems at this point are that Twitter has established the early lead as far as the messaging component goes. Where Pownce stands out it the ability to add other media such as files, MP3s, pictures etcetera. I get the impression that most users really haven’t figured out a way to productively use the added capabilities of Pownce.

One of my Twitter friends posted a link to her latest blog post, which was pretty bare bones, but at the bottom contained this image she was using for promotional purposes (there was a link provided as well).

What I’m wondering is: Why not stick this image in a Pownce post? Rather than just giving people a link to a page with the image on it, why not give them the image right up front in Pownce. I’m a very visual person and so using pictures and graphics is a good way to grab my attention.

Curiosity will still probably suck me into following your link, but placing an image up front grabs my attention and makes me take a closer look.

I think this is where the strength of Pownce will come in, but the people behind Pownce would be wise to get the word out there before other competitors start catching up. If they were able to better demonstrate how Pownce’s unique features can be better used, they might generate more of a buzz.

For straight text, quick updates, and TinyURLs, I like Twitter. I don’t see Pownce replacing Twitter, since Twitter has more experience under its belt, a much higher user base and much more more traffic.

If you would like to increase Pownce usage, and get more use out of it, start thinking outside the box a little. I know it often takes a momentous effort to get friends and clients just to warm up to new things like Twitter, and it won’t be easy, but I think there could be potential for the mutli-media microblog.

If you’re really connected to the Internet these days, you’ve probably got a Twitter account, a Flickr account and maybe you’ve even started using Seesmic or Utterz as well. Why not start putting some of that content up little by little on Pownce? Record a short MP3 message and post it. Put the latest picture of your nephew doing something silly up, whatever strikes you.

If you are promoting something, trying to get more traffic to your website, trying to get friends to join you for a night out or whatever, why not throw some multimedia advertising out there? The poster displayed above is a good example of something you could stick in a Pownce post. If you have any graphic talents, instead of just providing a link, how about a link and a logo? With a little thinking outside the box, or a slightly different approach, Pownce could be a cheap and easy way to get attention or at least add some flair to your microblogging.

Cheers,

Jeff

Pownce - A Quick Look

A few days ago Pownce went from closed beta to completely open. If you’re not familiar with it, Pownce is a social networking and microblogging site. It is found on the web at Pownce.com. There are a few similarities between Pownce and Twitter, and a few notable differences.

If you are completely unfamiliar with some of the concepts of social networking and services like Twitter and Pownce, I’ll give a quick rundown. The first thing you need is friends. Pownce lets you search for other uses by name, or you can quickly import your friends from places like Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL mail, and Yahoo mail. This will send out a friend request, allowing you to follow their public posts and if they accept your request, will allow them to follow you and allow you to see content designated for friends only.

Once you have a network of friends and fans (a fan is a one way friend, you’re following someone, but they aren’t following you), you are ready to start Powncing. You can post short messages, similar to a blog, and all of your friends and fans will be able to see what you’ve posted. Likewise, all of your friends latest updates will be displayed as well.

This is pretty similar to Twitter, allowing you to post random thoughts, updates on what you are doing at the moment or whatever strikes your fancy. Right now, it doesn’t look like there is support for IM integration or SMS integration, which for some is a big draw of Twitter.

What makes Pownce cool, and possibly more useful than Twitter, is the ability to share other types of media, such as pictures, videos, music and even files.

Here is a post with an MP3 file in it. You can listen right from the browser, or download to your computer.

Here’s an example of an attached file in a post

There are various other types of files and media that can be attached, and it looks like a great way to blog your favorite new music, pictures, videos or whatever else you are into.

Right now my circle of friends still relatively small and only about 1/4 of my Twitter pals are on Pownce at the moment. Many of those that do have accounts don’t seem to use them with as much frequency as they use Twitter. I think the number of people using Pownce and the frequency with which they use it will increase shortly, once people start seeing what you can do with the service. If the Mahalo Multisubmit extension takes off, we’re likely to see a lot more Pownce traffic as people submit their posts/tweets/pownces to multiple sites simultaneously.

I like Twitter for the rapid fire conversation and IM-like atmosphere, but Pownce has a great deal of potential for posts with a bit more depth to them, and looks like a great way to share things other than just text. It may even get me to start taking more photos and posting them online from time to time. I like the idea of sharing music (legal, free music of course) as one of my best sources of new music comes from friends.

Pownce is free to sign up for and there is also a pro account available for $20 per year, which gives you a bigger file upload size and a few other features. I’m currently using the free, basic account happily.

Check it out and let me know if you come up with other cool ways to use it. I’ll be adding my Pownce links and a button to my blog soon so feel free to check me out there and show off your stuff!

Windows Live Writer - Image Fixes

First of all, special thanks to Joe Cheng for his quick reply to my last blog post. I’m impressed that one of the developers on the Windows Live Team found my tiny blog post and offered help with my problem in less than 24 hours since it was published. Talk about great service!

Below is an image taken with the same program and settings as before, with the tweaked Windows Live Writer settings.

This screencapture was taken with the same program (Gadwin PrintScreen) using the same settings. The image is being saved as a GIF file. Taking a closer look at the options in the image properties sidebar of Windows Live Writer, it was originally set to use a dropshadow as the border by default. Changing this setting to “None” or “Inherit from weblog” immediately changed the quality of the picture. It was evident right away in the Windows Live Writer screen and should be evident when published to the blog.

For the sake of curiosity, I’m posting the same picture below with the default settings (using the dropshadow).

Definitely not as sharp. If you are using Windows Live Writer, and are inserting GIF image files, be sure to check the properties and don’t use the drop shadow border. Also, make sure to check the bottom of the image properties sidebar and save the new settings you select as default, to prevent the problem from recurring.

Thanks again Joe, and hopefully this will help out a few others as well!

Cheers,

-Jeff