Thursday, June 30, 2005

pc4media - Peter Caputa

Worcester, MA... not far from my current abode, home of my alma mater, and home to Peter who writes:
Read this. Get involved. Or get lost. This is my place to help turn ideas, proposals, and projects into business reality. Please chime in!
This is a man after my own heart!

And one whose site is better viewed directly rather than thru a reader.

View it and see for yourself!

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Greek Tragedy - Stephanie Klein

Stephanie writes in "Why I blog":

Sometimes I read things—Nabokov, Irving, Munro—and I shake my head. “Yeah, in my entire life, I’ll never be that good.” Then I read other things—I’m choosing not to share what I find wretched writing—and I’m like, “If that can get published, I certainly can.” But now it’s not about being published; it’s about feeling proud of my work, every single sentence. Every word selection and storytelling tactic magnified under a critical glass of assessment. I was born to do this; I won’t fail at it.

Then you can’t sleep. You’re addicted to the refresh button on Amazon’s Top Sellers list, eager to find your position in the lineup. You know when you awake the reviews will be out. A critic will tear you a new asshole, and you’ll weep, realizing not just your dreams but your nightmares came true. Your writing is only popular because of the subject. Your sentences are forced, and you and your life are unoriginal. Your work will be summarized into one laconic phrase: “She tries too hard and fails at that successfully.”

That will happen. Rejection happens to everyone. But I’ll keep writing because I’m not doing it for praise or condemnation. I’m doing it just for me, being true to myself and what I know I was put on this earth to do.

Stephanie has more than one hundred facts about herself and bunches of photos.

Read more of Stephanie here.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

This Fish Needs a Bicycle - Heather Hunter

Heather's mission statement:
It's lovely to be a feminist and all. I have gotten in plenty a tizzy over the inequity of the female role in this bizarre universe. Have even tried out the independent, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" track, and been quite good at it. Eventually, however, I settled upon this conclusion:

This fish needs a bicycle.

If not for comfort, at least for entertainment's sake.

This is not about man-chasing or desperation. It is rarely even about dating. It's about me deciding that I can be well-educated, independent and happy and still see the need for someone else in my life. That's not desperate; that's real.
Heather writes in About This Fish:
THE FISH: 26 years-old, fresh to manhattan and hoping that neurotic stays fashionable for at least a couple more years.

THE SITE: in 2002 thisfish.com began as something of an anonymous venting session -- internet style. you can see not much has changed, excepting the anonymity part. on april 27th, 2004, thisfish.com leapt out of the closet and onto page 131 of the bastard on the couch. thisfish.com thanks editor Daniel Jones for his continued support and a shove in the right direction.
This is good writing!

Visit This Fish often!

Monday, June 27, 2005

Country Bee

Michael Levy was once called an "intellectual pigmy" by an editor? How absurd!

I just ended my first visit to Country Bee and I enjoyed it very much. Mike and team do good work. Country Bee is a team effort. Kenia Morales writes about intuition. Amanda Shoemaker writes about procrastination. Amanda says, "Life should be and CAN be fun!" Jo Ball writes about the bigger picture. Others write about other stuff, all good for you.

“…the success in writing books with true meaning is just to write them.” - Michael Levy.

Just write.

Read Country Bee.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Blog Business World - Wayne Hurlburt

Wayne Hurlburt writes at Blog Business World where in a recent post he states:
Blogging improves your writing skills.

Better writing ability, and an enhanced ability to express yourself in print, is a rarely thought about benefit of blogging.


While most people think of writers as infinitely talented, living in some rarified air denied to the rest of us, writing is a learned skill. While some people are indeed born more talented with the written word than others, most people can become better writers simply through practice.
He also has a discussion going on writing styles; how long should sentences and paragraphs in a blog be?

Good stuff!

Read Wayne here.

Uncommon Knowledge

Mission: Improving mental health through applied psychologyProfessional hypnotherapy training and self improvement courses. Personal development resources to enhance efficiency and performance.

Self Help, Cure Insomnia, Build Self Confidence, Improve Low Self Esteem, Personal Power through Self Hypnosis, Beat Clinical Depression, Prevent Panic Attacks, Stop Smoking, and Boost EQ.

Jason Santa Maria

Jason Santa Maria is a Graphic Designer living in sunny Philadelphia, PA with his fiance Liz and three cats. Someday he hopes to join the circus as the resident geek, but would settle on being a roustabout for a time. Jason is most certainly available for work. If you are looking to merely win his favor or to persuade him, he is easily won over by candied offerings. Though he is purportedly open to bartering, wild bets, and challenges involving feats of strength, Jason survives as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire him.

Read Jason Santa Maria

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Marketonomy - Christopher Kenton

Christopher Kenton writes about "Unforgetting the Laws of Marketing" at Marketonomy.

In a recent posting, he writes about a phone call he had with a friend doing some research on how to reach folks in IT. What he found was:

What's interesting to me is his characterization of those stalwart IT influencing tools: the whitepapers, demos, benchmarking guides and analyst reports. These are touchpoints IT marketers rely on to get their message out, and if my friend is any kind of a canary-in-the-coal-mine, the outlook isn't good. His characterization of "the game" is that he now assiduously avoids any content in which he can't clearly discern the motivations of the messenger. Benchmarking study by a leading analyst: who's funding them? Buyer's guide in a magazine: who's advertising? Discussion guides on a popular forum: who's seeding the boards?

My take on these issues has always been: read them, and think critically about the source. My friend's take: avoid them and look for more reliable information from peers. He summed up his attitude when he told me he treats it as a game: "any time I think anything has been influenced by marketing, I run screaming."

Note that the friend did take his phone call, otherwise he might have not had this conversation.

As a member of IT at a major financial firm, I do ask the same kinds of questions his friend does and generally avoid any attempts at marketers trying to sell something.

I am curious how this will develop. I will continue reading Marketonomy.

Will you?

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Classic Horror Library

Check out Dragonbyte's Library of classic horror featuring:

Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, Brom Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Gaston Leroux, and H. P. Lovecraft.

Thanks to Emerald City for the link.

Some are Dead

"Some have died, although they are still alive; some live forever, though they have passed away." - Zang Kejia

From The Blog of Death, a morbid, but interesting piece of work memorializing famous and anonymous alike in this collective conscious we call the Blogosphere.

Brand Autopsy - Williams & Moore

In the About section we find that Johnny Moore and Paul Williams describe their work in this way:

The Brand Autopsy Marketing Practice was established to share the many lessons we've learned about meaningful marketing from working deep inside the marketing departments of Starbucks Coffee and Whole Foods Market.

We believe meaningful marketing connects with people by telling them the story of why a business is remarkable. It's about designing marketing activities to deliver on the vision of the business all the while being clever, savvy, and authentic. It's about treating people as being interesting and interested. And, it's about building brand preference more than brand awareness resulting in loyalty beyond reason from customers.

If you are into meaningful marketing, this is the place to do some reading.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Bag and Baggage - Denise Howell

Denise Howell's blog tagline is
Some of what's left when an appellate/IP lawyer leaves out the monthly statements, spam, brochures and incomprehensible expositions intended to cover someone's behind.
Her posts range legal issues, blogging, life on this wonderful planet, and other topics along the way.

I learn about legal issues everytime I visit her site.

I found out about a Dr. Suess book I had not known about.

Who knows what you'll find when you visit Bag and Baggage!

Monday, June 20, 2005

Funny Business - Elana Centor

Elana writes:

This column delights in telling tales out of school. It’s about what really goes on in corporate America, corporate England, corporate Israel, corporate Australia, corporate Argentina... well you get it.

The focus is on the story, not who’s telling it, or what company the story is about. I’ll leave that to the investigative reporters.

If these stories were attributable and on the record, heads would surely roll, departments would re-org and HR would be working overtime. These are real stories, about real people, who work real jobs, for real organizations. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I couldn’t make this stuff up. Not the shenanigans, not the showstopping, not the hidden agendas, and definitely not the policy statements.

This is what Dilbert would be like if Dilbert was a blog.

Read Funny Business!

Saturday, June 18, 2005

How to save the world - Dave Pollard

It is Dave Pollard day today. I found his blog earlier this week and have been finding much food for thought there.

I wrote about his posting on serious thought here.

I wrote about Dave's advice on how you can help save the world here.

I am sure I will find more to write about.

Read Dave here.

Friday, June 17, 2005

SEO Files

How does Google do what it does?

How do other search engines work?

How can you optimize what you do on your site to better position your site for a good ranking?

If any of these questions interest you, then this group blog covers "search engine optimization" and if you have not already found it, you should follow the link to read about the secrets that Google just revealed!

Check out SEO Files!

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The Jer Zone - Jerry Halstead

Jerry's byline is "A man, a dog and a camera."

This is one site that you can't read very well in your RSS Reader. Jerry posts pictures and the feed doesn't handle them (at least my feeds don't). However, once I am aware that there is a new posting, I click through for the view.

It is always worth it!

Check out this view of the sun (and sunspots).

This moth wing (yes, everything has hair).

Follow Jerry and what he views in his camera!

Monday, June 13, 2005

Becker - Posner Blog: Gary Becker & Richard Posner

This is not your normal blog. These are two senior fellows exploring the sides of many major issues today.

Gary Becker, economist and professor at the Univ of Chicago, amongst his many honors won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1992 "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including nonmarket behavior."

Richard Posner, senior lecturer in Law also at the Univ of Chicago has an extensive background in law including service on the US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, from 1993 to 2000.

For a serious view on Retirement, Poverty and Terrorism, and Blogging, Spam and Taxation of the Internet amongst their most recent postings, check them out. Read Becker-Posner!

Friday, June 10, 2005

Out of Control

The byline reads:
Out of Control and into Choice and Competition. Reason Public Policy Institute's web log on competition and choice in public policy. The choices are out there and the ideas are here.
As an example, in Dobbsbot-3000:

Journalists give loads of attention to jobs lost from offshore outsourcing, yet, as I note in the previous post, robots steal many more jobs than foreigners.

Maybe journalists have focused on outsourcing partly because the think it could cost them their jobs. Maybe they figure a robot could never do what they do.

Maybe those media types just haven’t met Actroid Repliee, the newscaster robot.

Would there be a future where there would be robot bloggers?

For additional food for thought read Out of Control.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Jory Des Jardins - 36 B

I started blogging, because I love to write, but blogging is more than writing to me. Blogging is building relationships as well.

It is hard to build relationships with sound bites.

This is why I read Jory Des Jardins. While everyone else is framing their brands, Jory is building her reputation. She is an excellent writer with a sharp wit and she writes about universal topics to which we can all relate.

Read Pause by Jory Des Jardins.

Paper casting - Packetrat

You've heard of podcasting, it's the latest rage. Well, have you heard about paper casting? or padcasting?

What is that you say?
I am glad you asked. The answer is found here.

Who is doing this?
Packetrat is the inspiration behind paper casting or padcasting.

Where do I go to read more?
You can read the plog right here.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Yoga Girl

Yoga Girl has 57 things about herself, she couldn't quite make it to 100, and some of them are:
  • I am an email/blogger junkie.
  • I can still stand on my head. I taught myself to do it at age 6 and wore a bald spot into my head. Luckily the hair grew back.
  • I will not each spinach... I will not eat food next to spinach either.
In How to Please Me, she writes:
  • tell me I look like a "superhero" dressed in my turbokick gear.
  • give me a blank CD *before* you ask me to copy some music for you.
  • tell me my turbokick was the best class you've ever taken at this gym.
  • describe "69" as "mutualness".
  • exclaim you come to yoga class to get a "butt like mine".
  • pretend that my jokes are funny.
In How to Peeve Me, she writes:
  • ask me if this is a yogafit class or a "real" yoga class.
  • start janis joplin MP3s on your computer and then get up and leave the lab.
  • bring pralines back from N'awlins the week I give up sugar.
  • wait until class starts to remove your pants in the yoga room (at least revealing some workout shorts underneath)
  • look at my dog's chest xray and ask if she's alive.
Read more Yoga Girl!

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

37 Days - Patricia Digh

Another flow the link, follow the link, and look at what I found. Such a power piece of writing by
Patricia Digh in her posting Redefining Normal.

Her one line bio gets to the point:
Whatever else I am or do, my most important job is being a mother to my two daughters.

She writes:
My agenda? I want to fully understand and help other people understand the individual, interpersonal, business, and societal costs of exclusion, prejudice, and discrimination. I work to help people be more culturally literate and build their cultural competence.

To achieve that, I spend my time in four major ways: first, as a mother, helping my children learn about those issues, and then as a writer, business consultant and trainer focused on diversity, inclusion, globalization and leadership issues. The whole professional bio is at http://www.inclusiveasheville.com/patti.html,
if you're interested.


I suggest that you add Patti to your RSS reader.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Groundhog Day - Dave Rogers

Following a link, then following another leads me to this discovery. I think you'll enjoy reading Dave Rogers.

From the tail end of a longish posting, you find this gem that makes the reading that much more worth it all: (the BOLD is mine for emphasis)

All this competition for rank in the hierarchy has brought about some unquestionably wonderful things, and I'm not suggesting that all this competition stop, or that we forego advancements and innovation in science and technology. I'm suggesting that we might be well served if we understood more about ourselves, the limits to what competition for rank in the hierarchy can achieve, and to think about what effort we might make toward achieving those things we all seem to say we want in the world, which all our technology and all our competition have failed to give us.

I think it's possible we may be in the relatively early stages of the process of doing this. I have little doubt that some of that effort itself will be turned into a type of competition for authority, though we might be able to factor that into our efforts this time around, to some extent. I have serious reservations about how successful we might be. China and India are now coming on strong in their competition for rank in the hierarchy, and they won't be deterred from their efforts by thoughts of introspection and reflection. Technology will continue to shrink the world and expand our capacity for both good and ill.

Most days, I kind of think it's pointless to think about people creating a "better world." I suspect it's mostly enough to worry about trying to create one better person, the only person I'm truly responsible for, and that's me. We're not here to change "the world." The world is here so that we may learn how we might change ourselves. Maybe that's the point.


Read Dave!

larry borsato

Unpredictable and unfocused. Like life.

Larry writes about his thoughts, his writing and his speaking. Refreshing. He offers his opinions without apology.

Give him a look.

Elisa Camahort's Personal Weblog

...a pithy blink of a blog. Creative. An easy read. Interesting. And a good source for ideas.

Escape from Corporate America!

By Laurel Delaney of Chicago, Illinois...

More and more women are abandoning big companies to strike out on their own. This blog is intended to chronicle the reasons why.

Only the bold and courageous dare go here.

Friday, June 03, 2005

optional n: a blog about jen(n)

Jen(n) (with the optional n) has this compilation of rules that is described as follows:
A constantly evolving set of guidelines for dealing with resplendent Jenitude on a day-to-day basis. (The gaps in the numbering are intentional and represent rules that have yet to be written, not rules that have been omitted, and I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed Rules or suggestions -S)

#1 Jen is an exceptional person who is to be worshipped and adored at all times.
#2 Jen is always special.
#3 Jen is frequently up to something.
#4 Jen can usually get away with it.
#5 If your relationship with Jen fails, it's your fault.
#6 (The Jennocious Tenet of Remote Control Ownership) If Jen wants to watch a particular movie or TV show, she will. Even if it clashes with The Game. You may, however, purchase and fit new batteries in the remote.
#7 There is no rule 7.


There are more. Good stuff! Read Jen(n)!

Thursday, June 02, 2005

BigPictureSmallOffice - Nameless

In his About section he writes:

Here to Unblog the Drain

Welcome to my world. It is the world of big business and small minds. It is the world of paradigms and paranoids that populate the corridors and boardrooms of a certain very large company that, like the disarmed forces, is not all that it could be.

The company must remain nameless. Nameless protects the innocent…in particular, me. Suffice it to say that it is a leader in its field and a follower in its approach. It is a large company that manages to think small. Or, better put, it manages by thinking small. This is a shame because it is a company with all the makings of greatness. If, like me, you can see the big picture, you will understand why I sometimes feel stifled when trapped in a small office, narrow vision, short horizon and shallow pool of cash.

He choses to remain nameless, which I respect. This is different than being "anonymous".

He continues but if this much has interest you, the I recommend that you read the rest.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Ageless Marketing - David B Wolfe

David B Wolfe, author with Robert Synder of Ageless Marketing, has this blog by the same name.

He writes in this posting titled Transcending Our Primordial Roots:
One thing is for sure: Our future is not your father’s future. This is not inconsequential to us as marketers. The collective soul of humanity is maturing – or as one might say, moving toward collective self-actualization. In Maslow’s model of self-actualization, the well being of all transcends the well being of the individual. This is the direction that in which society is moving.

The notion that the well being of all transcends the well being of self guts the foundation of traditional consumer marketing. Most such marketing makes the individual consumer the center of attention. This promotes egocentrism. In the Age of Transcendence, this will increasingly seem crude and unwarranted. This means marketers should be realigning the values they project to regain synchronicity with consumer values. The bottom line takeaway is that gradually but persistently people are becoming less concerned with the pettier needs of the individual self.
Read more of David here.

Updated 7/10/05 - actually discovered that I had posted about David here before. Oops!