An online notebook
Just been reordering all my Bloglines feeds in FeedDemon. On Bloglines I had kept them all on the ‘top level’ and not sorted them into folders, but that method makes things far too unwieldy when working offline. So, I have chosen the following categories:
Obviously the ‘General’ one is a bit of a catch-all, but surprisingly it doesn’t have that much in it at the moment…
The second Chapter of the blogging book being written on a blog is here.It was actually posted 5 days ago, but have only just had the chance to have a look at it.
My first comment is that I’m not sure at all about the title – Souls of the Borg.It sounds like a ghost written Star Trek novel or something. I guess it’s a pretty appropriate title, but for the average executive, a geeky reference like this may well be off-putting.
Still,it’s full of fascinating stuff about life within Microsoft.
If there is a Microsoft blogging policy, it would be those two words: “Blog Smart.” Its author is unknown, but it seems to be the perspective of the bloggers we encountered. There is a general sensethat at least so far, management is trusting bloggers to behave as responsible employees, and employees sense that the longer they can keep an open blogging policy the more unlikely that it will ever be shut down. They argue that by blogging they have an important competitive advantage over companies that don’t allow open employee blogging. What is even more important, they argue, is that blogging lets them get closer with their customers.
It’s all good stuff, except for that damn title…
During the time I have been ‘away’ from the blog, I haven’t been keeping up with the comment moderating very well. Apologies to anyone who’s comments haven’t appeared yet, I will get it sorted out, at some point…
I changed my mind on FeedDemon. It’s just too damn good. Especially now I use BlogJet, too. It’s simply a case of dialling-up (no boradband at the moment 🙁 ) and downloading all my feeds, then reading them at my lesiure and using BlogJet to comment on them. Then, at the end of the day, I just dial-in again and update this blog.
BlogJet did take me a while to get set up, but now I have I realise it is going to become indispensible. The one criticism I have is that the documentation is pretty lacking – just an online wiki and nothing locally to speak of. This isn’t so much of a problem once you are up and running, but there are a few questions I would like answering. At the moment I save my entries in a folder in My Documents, then upload them and delete them one-by-one. This process must be able to be automated, I would have thought.
Also – it would be nice to be able to include trackback links in posts.
edit: for some reaosn the timings of these posts are wrong. I thought BlogJet was supposed to publish the times that the posts were saved locally. Nadgers. Will have to look into it, at some point.
Not if his blog is anything to go by. Full of interesting information on getting published.
One recent highlight was In Search of the Perfect Computer Book:
I’m going out on a limb here to say that the “perfect” computer book has yet to be published. Code errors, incorrect steps, typos, etc., somehow manage to infiltrate the book no matter how meticulous the development editor, copy editor and tech editor are. Everyone involved in the project generally works hard to eliminate the problems. It’s human nature to want to do a good job, right? It’s also human nature to make mistakes.
Some publishers don’t like to promote the fact that errata exist – they feel it’s an unnecessary admission of a less than perfect system. I don’t like to see errors in my books any more than the next publisher, but:
- I’m willing to admit they happen,
- I want to get corrections to customers as quickly/easily as possible, and, most importantly,
- I want to continue looking for ways to improve the system.
I think every book page on a publisher’s website should have an errata link. Shouldn’t we go further though and offer errata via RSS feeds so that customers won’t have to hunt for the corrections? Is this something you would like to see? What other suggestions do you have?
Joe has only recently started blogging, but his approach is excellent, offering genuinely useful and informative information and also asking for contributions from readers.