b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Book Reviews
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Conversant Weblog II Now Available
Survey Your Customers Early and Often
Warning on Atlanta-based Software Training Company
Recording via Odeo Studio
Eliot Spitzer's Golden Rule
BlogJet 1.6 File Upload Test 2: Ignore
Not the Scariest Thing I've Seen
BlogJet 1.6 Released
Proof of Global Warming
Congress to Focus on Critical Issues for Holidays
Unable To Connect
Trend Watchers Resource List
Thursday, December 8, 2005
The Colbert Report
Pronounced (ko-bear re-por) because it's French, bitch. Seriously, I watched Stephen Colbert on The Daily Show for the last couple of years and I really liked him. But when he announced his own show, The Colbert Report, I thought, "Oh no. This guy is good in small doses. But he could really be tiresome for a full show."I'm happy to say I was wrong. Colbert is really catching his stride and has developed a killer news anchor parody that is a mix of Stone Phillips (Mr. Gravitas), Shaun Hannity, Rodney Daingerfield, and Geraldo Rivera. The Colbert Report is politically incorrect, irreverent, hard-hitting abuse of the news. And his interviews are often a riot. Highly recommended.
Conversant Weblog II Now Available
This is a very good thing. If you're looking for a solid, flexible, customizable weblog system that can grow to meet lots of publishing needs you could do a lot worse than Conversant.Weblog II is Finally "out There"
After years of private beta (man that's embarrassing to admit out loud), Macrobyte has finally released Weblog II, our 'next generation' weblogging system for Conversant.
Big, smart, easy to use.. and that just describes the lead developer behind it! Weblog II is even better than that!
(No, seriously, Weblog II is fully buzzword compliant. There's even a super-simple wizard for converting your old Conversant weblog to a Weblog II page.)
Greg said, "It's about time!" I agree. It's been like having a lazy, 30 year old kid still living at home with his parents. "Get out there and earn your keep, lazy bones!"
Oh, one of the features of Weblog II is a pattern maker/installer - similar to the themes that other systems use, but capturing lots of complex formatting for Conversant's advanced features. There is a contest brewing for Conversant patterns that should help kick start a nice library of sexy, up-to-date, fully-functional looks for Conversant weblogs. Should launch in January. More as it develops.
Survey Your Customers Early and Often
Short article on the using low-cost customer surveys over at CNNMoney. Made me think. [via TP Wire Service]Customer surveys on the cheap
Want to find out what your customers are thinking for less than what a Madison Avenue consultant spends in a year on his lattes? Consider the case of Konstantin Guericke, the co-founder of LinkedIn, an online network that professionals can use to find new clients or pick up leads on jobs.
Terry Frazier at 9:33 PM
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Warning on Atlanta-based Software Training Company
Atlanta-based Accelerated Learning Group is a small, independent firm that sells software training to the graphic arts market. I know a number of software trainers who make their living doing this and the word from them over the past year has consistently been about financial troubles at the company. Until now I haven't seen any customer complaints, but this post from September indicates that the company's financial problems have surfaced and begun to affect customers.If you're looking for software training on graphic arts applications (or anything else for that matter) you need to do your homework. Always do the following before you fork over upfront fees:
- Find out if the company has a permanent teaching facility. Independent trainers often don't have permanent facilities, but a training company should at least have a permanent facility in their home city.
- Ask if you can come see the facility. If it's in a different city see if you can find someone else who has been there or will go see it for you.
- Find out who will be teaching the course. Many smaller training companies use freelance trainers and try to avoid making commitments, which means you may end up with who's available rather than most qualified.
- Ask to speak to the instructor before you sign up. Some companies will resist this. Push the point. Good teachers want to talk to you. They want to know your expectations and to be sure your satisfied. This is also a good way to make sure the company has full-time or contracted trainers instead of ad hoc.
- Ask about the teacher's certifications. Make sure they're qualified in the software you need. Many training centers advertise certification, but that doesn't mean you'll be taught by a certified instructor.
- Pay by credit card. If you haven't gotten what you paid for within 60 days submit a complaint to the credit card company.
- Remember, there are two kinds of software trainers - those who couldn't make a living in the real world but figure that shouldn't stop them from teaching, and those who could (and probably did) make a good living in the real world and now teach because they want to. Find the latter. You'll be glad you did.
Recording via Odeo Studio
ATL podcast maven Hilary at podcrawl has recorded a test cast using Odeo Studio. Its just a blah-blah podcast, but the sound quality is excellent. Compared to the horrible, crappy sound I got trying to record Skype conversations, telephone conversations, etc. this sounds fantastic. Its not what you can get with $500 worth of equipment and a little home studio, but its damn good. The podcast did not come through with her RSS feed I had to go to the Odeo site to hear it. But maybe thats just a configuration glitch. Im going to try this out. If its as easy, and good, as it sounds you could be recording all kinds of quick, easy instructional or inspirational audio with almost no effort.Recording from Odeo Studio
Create I did, from Odeo Studio tonight. Just a quick shoutout to my peeps. If you are subscribed, you should have gotten it through the feed. If not, you can go here to listen.
This was so simple. It really does allow the average person to podcast without much in the way of equipment or knowledge of the traditional recording process. Back in June, Ross Mayfield said "Podcast is the new voicemail". Being able to create audio in such a short amount of time was blissful in comparison to the time I put into preparation, recording, editing and posting my first podcast, not to mention the software/hardware purchase, setup and configuration. Tonight I went to Odeo Studio, pressed record, talked a bit, then hit save. This opens podcasting to the masses.
I will never forget the birthday song my brother left on my answering machine several years ago. He called me on my birthday and since I wasn't home, he picked up his guitar and sang to me through my answering machine. Sadly, the song is long gone because it was on a crappy, little tape. Next year, I'll send him to Odeo so I will be able to save my birthday song mp3.
Once again, I am impressed with Odeo. Great job guys!
Terry Frazier at 8:07 PM
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Eliot Spitzer's Golden Rule
Cover story in the current issue of Business 2.0 is My Golden Rule, where 30 leaders offer their best one-liner pieces of wisdom. NY AG Eliot Spitzer's is:Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.Ummm.
Wednesday, December 7, 2005
BlogJet 1.6 File Upload Test 2: Ignore
Another test of the BlogJet 1.6 file attachment/uploading function. Please ignore.
photo should appear below.
Update: It seem the "attachment" uploaded by BlogJet is rendered in a separate message immediately preceding this message - in this case, the attachment is in msgNum 1964, this is msgNum 1965. In order to use the attachment I need to be able to specify the msgNum parameter, but I won't know it until the message is already posted. That's not good.
Update update: Looks like this is a limitation of the various APIs used to send blog posts. The enclosure function is unique to Conversant and isn't supported in the leading APIs. I still need a strategy to make it easier to post photos as part of a blog post. Nothing I've tried is brain-dead simple and easy.
Not the Scariest Thing I've Seen
But certainly one of them. Ryan Capes jumps 310 ft. Here's a video of the entire jump. These freestyle guys are sick. Not the sort of thing where you can afford many mistakes.
BlogJet 1.6 Released
New version of BlogJet is out. I've been using BlogJet 1.5 for about a year with no problems at all. There are a number of helpful new features. More after I've upgraded and tried it out.I'm excited to announce the new release of BlogJet 1.6 "Lime".
Though it's a minor version number update, in fact it can be considered as a major update, since it have *lots* of new features. But it's FREE for registered users.
BlogJet now smoothly integrates with *Flickr* (photo-sharing service) to give you even better photo sharing capabilities. It now has the *Auto Replace* feature that saves your time, *group posting* feature to post to many blogs with as little as two clicks, and a lot of other improvements and bug fixes.
Terry Frazier at 1:59 PM
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Proof of Global Warming
I don't know where this came from. I don't know who created it. I don't know who to credit for it. Someone sent it to me via e-mail.
Congress to Focus on Critical Issues for Holidays
In the best of all worlds the government would do things that made our lives better. This isn’t actually possible, so the best we can hope for is that they do things that don’t make our lives worse. This is possible, but only rarely and usually about stuff that doesn’t matter. Now that the Republicans have had the run of Congress for a few years, have spent all the money, porked up everything they could find, greased the palms of all their corporate supporters, and generally run out of ideas for f***ing up the domestic situation, they’ve decided to give us a break – today they are holding hearings on the college football Bowl Championship Series. Let’s see, so far this year the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee (which somehow got the idea they were supposed to regulate sports instead of commerce) have held hearings on horse racing jockeys and workers, and now college football. And don’t forget the House Government Reform Committee, which got the idea it should regulate sports instead of government (see a trend here?) and held hearings about steroids in baseball earlier this year.
Before you go off wringing your hands in disappointment remember this – while this group of 58 self-important windbags led by Joe Barton spins their wheels on idiotic sports issues, they are NOT drafting legislation to cripple the internet, stifle your rights, infringe your speech, destroy your privacy, strip-search you at airports, and myriad other things they could be doing in relation to commerce. Whiling away the days in a group circle-jerk about college football is the very best thing they can be doing in the imperfect world in which we live.
So this Holiday Season let’s remember just how important this sort of useless, meaningless, grandstanding really is. If your representative is among the 58 members of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, please call or write today and thank them for their innattention to things – like energy and commerce – that could really screw up our lives. If your representative isn’t on the committee, or on any committee (what good are they then?), encourage them to start a campaign to study greyhound racing, or NBA parity for women’s basketball, or illegal fertilizer use among professional grounds keepers. Just any damn thing to keep them occupied and away from stuff that only grownups should handle.
Terry Frazier at 11:53 AM
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Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Unable To Connect
I love this!
Courtesy of the hosts file I found via Gregor.
Trend Watchers Resource List
A list of resources for trend watchers, from Gerald Celente, founder and director of the Trends Research Institute. Published at StartupJournal. [via TP Wire Service]Recommended Reading For Trend Spotters
Current events form future trends, says Gerald Celente, founder and director of the Trends Research Institute, which has been tracking business, consumer, social and lifestyle trends since 1980.
[...]
Here is a selection of books Mr. Celente counts among the exceptions, as well as his daily online reads for spotting trends.
The Secrets of Economic Indicators: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities by Bernard Baumohl. "Whether you're tracking pop culture, high fashion or health care, all things are connected, and economics is the tie that binds them all."
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism by John C. Bogle. "Tracking trends is a way of seeing where we are, how we got here and where we're going. And John Bogle's new book does just that."
China, Inc. : How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C Fishman.
The Chinese Century: The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, the Balance of Power, and Your Job by Oded Shenkar. "I'm among those who believe that while the 20th century was America's, the 21st will be China's."
The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living: Advice and Information on Just About Everything You Need to Know to Live on Planet Earth by Walter Szykitka (Editor). "One of hottest trends we see is the rapidly growing desire of more people to be self empowered, non-reliant, and 'off the grid.'
Haaretz, Al Jazeera, the Independent and China Online. "These four are our daily must-read news sites."
Drudge Report and the Raw Story. "We log on to these two Internet sites daily because they generally span the ideological spectrum."
Terry Frazier at 12:57 PM
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