Mark brings quite a bit of experience into play as well as name recognition throughout Canada. In addition to writing for the Post, he already is a b5er tracking emerging technologies in Canada at Maple Leaf Two.

Mark says of this move:

A little more than two years ago, I wrote a column suggesting blogs were little more than online diaries for love-sick teenage girls. I was wrong. Dead wrong. As readers of my blog(s) have discovered, I’ve embraced blogs as an exciting way to deliver content and have a “conversation” (a word my friend, Shel Israel, frequently uses) with a lots of people that I would have otherwise never met. These are not only bloggers who have become friends such as Rob Hyndman, Stuart MacDonald, Mathew Ingram, Mike McDerment, Om Malik and Alec Saunders but readers of my blog who have enthusiastically and generously shared their ideas and insights.

I guess we’ve all come a long way.

The post Mark Evans Joins b5media as Vice President appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Well, the day is here and WordPress.com has launched VIP Hosting. A few select high-profile, high-traffic bloggers will be allowed to jump on their robust infrastructure for a “Powered by WordPress” link, a few template hooks for WP.com stats and $250/mo.

I might mention that Automattic developer, Andy Skelton, is dying to get Dan Rather blogging on WordPress.com so Dan, if you’re listening, WordPress.com is a better solution for you than HDNet.

The post VIP Blogging appeared first on The Blog Herald.

There is a new version of Democracy availabe tonight as well as a response. It also addresses the SEO problem that Blog Republic posted last week.

The post WordPress Democracy Plugin Exploit (and a New Version) appeared first on The Blog Herald.

For those of us who rely on and love Bloglines Mobile while on the go, here’s another reason to dig it. Bloglines has now integrated Skweezer technology to optimize web pages for your personal handheld mobile device’s viewing pleasure.

When you click on a link while reading a blog post in Bloglines Mobile, Skweezer will compress and reformat the content so you get it faster and better looking on your small screen. As you surf, the content will continue to be skweezed. Hints & bonus features:

* Click on the “Hide Images” link at the bottom of the page and skweezed content will load even faster.
* At the bottom of the skweezed page, you’ll find links back to the feed you were reading and a link back to your feed list.
* If you run across any pages that are not in your native tongue, Skweezer will translate to more than a dozen languages.

So if you’ve been wary of venturing beyond your Bloglines Mobile on your fancy new Blackberry (or Treo or other smartphone), free yourself from those inhibitions and click away!

Robyn DeuPree
Senior Product Manager, Bloglines

I don’t personally use Bloglines Mobile. I find any web use on my cell phone tedious and limit my use of mobile web to checking in on my Gmail on occasion. But I’d be blind to think that mobile is not a fast-growing trend. More people than ever use Blackberries and Treos who might find this enhancement useful.

Anyone check it out yet?

The post Bloglines Improves Mobile appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Back to your regularly scheduled dry blogging news. :)

The post Pirates v. Ninjas appeared first on The Blog Herald.

See, everyone has their own position from which they speak. Most people, whether intentionally or without knowing, tend to obfuscate that position with arguments, comments and statements that are insignificant to their argument. I come from a family that is strong in “foundations” – that is, we have a way of seeing through the fluff and seeing the root cause of an issue or an argument. We recognize the place from which the person is coming from. My dad is a pro at this. I’ve got the same thing, with far fewer years of experience. His experience comes from being a minister and counseling with people who have messed up lives and screwed up heads. Mine comes from watching him and learning, and practicing the same thing in my own conversations at work, blogging and by just taking a keen interest in what makes people tick.

How Do People Blur Their Position?

In the blogging world, you’re more likely to find contrarians in areas of politics, religions, cultural differences, etc. So in that context, how does a position obfuscation work? Take this conversation as an example:

Person #1: Republicans are assholes.
Person #2: Why are Republicans assholes?
Person #1: George Bush sucks as a President and he’s got a Republican Congress and a Republican Supreme Court. I can’t even find a job.
Person #2: So really, what you’re saying is you’re lazy and won’t go find a job?
Person #1: I’m not lazy, the economy just sucks and I’ve got a family to support.
Person #2: There’s a McDonalds down the road. I think they’re hiring. Why don’t you go put in an application there.
Person #1: I don’t want to work at McDonalds.
Person #2: I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to either. Tell you what, my cousin owns a home remodeling business. He mentioned he needed some reliable help to hang sheetrock. Want me to talk to him for you?
Person #1: I’d rather be doing web design
Person #2: I thought you needed a job and had a family to support. Why is it that Republicans are assholes, again?

See, Person #1 begins his argument with his position: Republicans are assholes. But instead of staying on point, he begins to talk about how he needs a job and because he can’t find a job – er, rather, he can’t find one that he wants – then that is somehow Republicans faults.

Getting Under Their Skin

As a blogger, when people make stupid comments, you have the choice to either entertain their stupidity or to flip it on them and come at a different angle. Often times, the affect is to rile the commenter up and expose the stupidity. It’s not that you want to make someone look stupid, but it’s a part of debate. It happens in court all the time. Attorney attempt to turn a witness – in other words, make them less effective in their arguments. The jury will see the inconsistency and the witness becomes irrelevant.

In the above conversation, Person #1 makes the mistake of not connecting his dots. He starts with “Republicans are assholes”, jumps to “I can’t get a job that I want” and concludes that because of this, “Republicans are assholes”.

One way to point this weakness out without coming out with an accusation (let the commenter depose himself) is to ask pointed questions. Confront the commenter with questions that force him to answer questions that expose his weaknesses. In the above example, you could ask questions like Person #2 did, “Why don’t you apply at McDonalds” or “Would you like a job hanging sheetrock”. The answers to these questions highlighted the fact that it wasn’t that Person #1 couldn’t get work, it’s that he didn’t want the work that he could get.

Moving away from politics and back into blogging, there was an interesting debate started by Nick Carr about the blogging “A listers” a few weeks ago. In his entry, Nick asserts that:

As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated – with the best of intentions, mind you – by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite. A blog-peasant, one of the Great Unread, comes to the wall of the castle to offer a tribute to a royal, and the royal drops a couple of coins of attention into the peasant’s little purse. The peasant is happy, and the royal’s hold over his position in the castle is a little bit stronger.

Nick’s argument is fueled by a common sentiment among many bloggers, particularly the long-tail, that views popular bloggers as elitist, patronizing and self-inclusive. A-listers link to A-listers and the longtail is forever put out unless you pay your dues to those A-listers. His piece is actually very poetic and compelling.

However, a few commenters take him to task as the root of his argument is seen as being off base. Seth Finklestein is one:

Another straw-man is to view a shorthand (“links”) out of context, away from what it’s used to signify, and then ridicule that isolated context. Obviously, pure infamy, or a jillion links from spam-blogs, is not what I’m after. But intellectual influence, including professional recognition, and bluntly, some the monetary opportunities which can flow from that, are very reasonable desires (you don’t think people attend conferences for the wild drunken parties, do you?).

Preceding this quote, Seth lays out an argument that is based on a different premise: Not everyone can link to everyone. In this quote, Seth carries on to note that links are often taken out of context – they don’t make sense. Getting an inbound link does not necessarily mean anything. And then, classic point, he ends his argument with an interesting question, “You don’t think people attend conferences for the wild drunken parties, do you?”. This question might seem to be an offhand joke or something, it accomplishes exactly what I have stated: It forces Nick to answer the question about what the purpose is of the conferences that A-listers and others attend is. In this context, the answer is to network, here SMEs speak on various topics and to grow professionally – the shoulder rubbing, fist pumping and extra-curricular activity comes as a perk.

In the spirit of good-natured debate, Nick responds to this question later:

OK, my follow-up question is, does blogging indeed raise the likelihood of this happening, specifically related to your aspirations? I won’t get into all of the ins and outs of “fame” as applied to “A-List” bloggers, but the matchbook cover version is that many A-Listers thrive on “that which is valued”. I don’t mean this as a put-down. More to the point, this comes down to “tell me how you’re measuring me, and I’ll tell you how I’ll behave.”

It’s interesting here how Nick responds to Seth’s question. These two are coming to the middle and finding a common premise to preach from. And he answers the question with another question. Ding ding ding! “Tell me how you’re measuring me, and I’ll tell you how I’ll behave”.

This conversation goes on both on Nick’s blog and crosses over into other blogs as well, and I’m not coming down on either side. In this case, the substance of the debate matters not. It’s another debate. What is important to note is the structure of effective debate.

I’ve gone on long enough on this topic, but next time you encoutner someone saying something completely absurd in your mind, stop and think about how to approach him. Figure out before you go in, where the commenter has weaknesses before jumping in. Plan your work before you work your plan. Chances are, the other guy will be the one coming out with egg on his face without you having to resort to pointless arguments or character assassination.

The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege. ~Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The post How to Get Under a Commenters Skin appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Dan Rather is keynoting.

Yes, you heard it right. The posterchild for being dooced by blogs is now touting how, and I quote, “emerging technology is shaping the news”.

Well, if anyone can be a posterchild for such a topic, Dan Rather is it. The only reason the Web 2.0 crowd is embracing this goon is because of Mark Cuban’s dollars. He had no credibility when he left CBS, what makes an HDNet deal give him any more credibility now?

Hat tip: Mark Jaiquith

The post Just in case you needed a reason to NOT attend SXSW ’07 appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Owens discovering MySpace, while it may not win her an election, gives cultural weight to the service that has become in many ways equivalent to Google.

The Maryland Comptroller race is a small race compared to some of the bigger ones to come, and one wonders how MySpace campaigning will work out and who will be the biggest winner of a windfall MySpace election in the future.

The post MySpace Politics appeared first on The Blog Herald.

September 11th hit very close to home for me, both geographically and emotionally. I worked in a government facility outside of Baltimore, a mere 50 miles from the Pentagon. That morning, as I drove into work, I observed a crystal blue sky, a faint early-fall crispness in the air and a usually easy commute into work. I had gotten back from a weekend at the Ocean just days before and really wasn’t feeling very worker-like.

That morning, I settled into my make-shift mini-cubicle that had been erected for me. There was no other space so this was my home at work. I began to sift through my emails for the morning. Around 8:15, my coworker Mark made his regular early morning jaunt down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a bagel.

About 8:50, he came back into the data center where I worked and shouted out to me, “Hey Aaron… Do you see anything on the internet about a plane hitting the World Trade Center?” I had not, since I had not even opened a browser that morning. Initially, I thought that some small aircraft had flown off course and hit the tower. Not by any stretch ‘normal’, but that kind of thing does happen occassionally.

I opened a browser and typed in cnn.com, hit enter. The site sat and spun while the page tried to load. Hmmm, I thought. Must be down. Typed in msnbc.com. Same thing. Strange. foxnews.com. Same thing. Wow, the network must be down, I thought. I suggested to Mark that we go over to the Command Center. There was a television in there and if a plane had indeed hit the towers, it would be on the television.

Not thinking too much about it, Mark and I jaunted over to the Command Center. As I reached to the door handle, my gaze fell on the clock above the door. 8:59am. Opening the door, the room was packed like I had never seen it packed before. I waded through the crowds of people close enough to see the television. Smoke poured from one of the tower and the low murmur in the room made my heart skip a beat.

“What happened,” I whispered to an African-American gentleman to my right?

“A commercial airliner hit the Twin Towers,” he said.

“What??!” I exclaimed. “I thought maybe a turboprop or something. Did he fly off course?”

“We don’t know,” he said.

At that moment, we watched as a second plane crashed into the second tower. At that moment, everyone in that room understood what was happening. New York was under attack. We were all under attack.

“This is terrorism,” some folks quietly said as tears began to fall. Still others became possessed with a righteous anger, “This means war!”

For long minutes, we stood as more people pressed into the room inquiring what had happened. Rumors began to trickle out from the room and the phone systems went dead under the deluge of phone calls out of the building.

Soon thereafter, a new report came across the wire. For many, it was the straw that broke the camels back. Brian Williams of NBC broke the coverage in New York with a new story – the Pentagon had been attacked in Washington, D.C. With the news of a new attack in another city and the fact that it was a government building, the resident government worker bees streamed for the exits. Not only was this attack closer to home (many of our workers lived in Virginia and commuted to Baltimore), but it suddenly had no sense of order or predictability. Our building might be next!

Not long after the Pentagon attack, we heard rumors of another plane in the air. Some said it was headed for Washington – maybe to the Capitol building, maybe to the White House. No one knew. Others thought it might go to Baltimore where the Social Security Administration was. Others thought it might be headed to Southern Maryland where the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power station was. As it was it crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers revolted against their captors. Their story would come out in the days afterwards.

Those days changed the lives of us. All Americans were affected. Le Monde in France declared the next day, “We are All Americans“. But in the Washington Metro area and in New York, deep scars will remain many years beyond today.

Today, political pettiness rules the world. The clear and present danger that filled all of our eyes in the days and weeks after September 11th without question, has been replaced by staunch resistance to terror-fighting policy. Americans sign away their civil rights in the hopes that they might be free of fear, and to many outside the U.S., the threat of Al Qaeda has been replaced with the threat of George Bush. That clouded vision is a shame as another attack will happen again on American soil. It is not a question of if, but when and on that day, it will not matter how much anti-Americanism exists or how badly the war in Iraq has gone, or if Iran has nukes. Allies of America have already experienced it in London, France, Spain and Iraq among other places. The ideals of terrorism know no international boundaries. Like Le Monde declared, “We are All Americans”, the truth is, “We all love Liberty”.

The post The Day that Will Live on in Infamy II: Revisited appeared first on The Blog Herald.

• The Flickr Show at Hampdenfest – September 16. A localized big event, Hampdenfest, which celebrates all things Baltimore in the same fashion that Artscape dominates the local Baltimore art scene, Flickr photographers will be sharing their Baltimore photography for all to see.
• Balticon 41 – May 25-28, 2007. Though well in advance, this interesting science fiction festival attracts all kinds of bizarrities and is a central icon in the odd Baltimore landscape every year.
• The Underground Online Seminar – March, 2007. I’m told that the man putting this thing on, Yanik Silver, is really very good though I can’t for the life of me figure out how much this event costs. It is being hosted in Washington, D.C.
• New Technology Seminar with Khoi Vinh – September 21. Khoi is, of course, the director of design for NYTimes.com and runs his own blog at Subtraction.com.

So what can you find interesting in Upcoming.org or other events happening in your locality?

The post Interesting Local Events in Baltimore appeared first on The Blog Herald.

This is a sad day for me, but I’ll subscribe to VB as soon as it is back up.

The post SiliconBeat Graduates appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Darren Rowse just recently announced an addition to his Problogger site called Problogger Jobboard.

I suspect this kind of move toward centralizing opportunities for bloggers to make money will really work well. Whether trhough combinations of gigs or through specialized gigs that allow a blogger to devote their full time to a single blog, I believe there is a charm to this kind of system that doesn’t quite meet the same lack of cohesiveness demonstrated by other blogs-turned-classifieds sites.

The post Now, You can be a Problogger Too… appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Apparently this unnamed senior vice president of Blogmedia doesn’t realize that what starts with Scoble stays with Scoble.

I’m sure this is just a rumor as Blogmedia must know the odds of actually winning a war on such terms as business cards. Isn’t that right, Matt?

The post Blog Herald Wants a Blog War appeared first on The Blog Herald.

It’s good to see bloggers getting out there and doing more and its very good to have a friend who is also an Olympian whom I can help promote.

Scott is considering competing in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and can be contacted via Timed Finals.

The post Podcasting at the Pan Pacific Championships appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Other bloggers talking about this milestone:

• Ads Terra Spera Spera
• Brian Smith
• Technosailor (me)
• Benign Thoughts

More to come as I find them.

The post One MILLION Times appeared first on The Blog Herald.

As a sysadmin for a major media company that has experienced outages before, I begin sweating profusely the moment I get my first alert of an outage. Forty-five minutes is too long for me, despite how small of a downtime percentage that represents. I can’t imagine running the servers at YouTube and the stress that places on an individual.

Interesting question though. If you are responsible for the uptime of a high-demand service, do you admit failure and hope that fate smiles fondly, or do you just keep plugging away when service is restored? If it’s a self-inflicted wound, do you admit that or if it is a third party, do you blame them?

The post YouTube Canned appeared first on The Blog Herald.

I’m not really a Yahoo or Windows Live Messenger user. I have accounts for both and used MSN much more in the past but for now, I’m a Skype man. Nonetheless, the fact that Yahoo Messenger and WLM both work together now is somewhat of a coup for interactive collaboration fans everywhere.

I have not really used the interoperability much so welcome feedback on the feature is encouraged in the comments.

The post Windows Live Marries Yahoo appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The post State of the Word: Matt Mullenweg appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Having never attended a “valley” event before, I don’t have a lot to compare the event to so I’ll just “wing it”.

As an event, it was more than Automattic intended it to be when it was first announced. As Matt Mullenweg puts it, he figured it would be 50 or so people crammed into his SF living room. Matt, you’re far too humble, man.

As an event that was organized in under a month, I think it was quite amazing. They excelled in some areas, such as BBQ (the best ever!), getting great session topics, and throwing an after party at a fabulous venue at Pier 38. Toni, how did you find that place?! Folks, it was essentially in an abandoned warehouse with a shoreside deck out back. Add about 10k square feet and some music and you have a rave happening.

Where they lacked was in communication. Emails going unanswered. Folks not knowing about the event until the last minute and having to pull off flight/hotel reservations with little to no notice for an event sandwiched in between BlogHer and SES and not really knowing where they should book hotels for. Airport? Downtown? I chalk this up to a “live and learn” event.

Of course, as Duncan Riley points out, the short notice of the event also led to lesser known people being session hosts – such as myself for Blog Architecture, Chartreuse for Compelling Blogs, etc. I, for one, feel like the trip was the biggest career move I ever have made, allowing me for the first time to meet really great people I would never have otherwise known. And I made Lauren’s Men of WordCamp list. How great is that? :)

There were some very high profile people there. Mike Arrington of TechCrunch made a token appearance leading many to wonder, “WTF?” Also Om Malik from GigaOM shared his thoughts on Blogging and Journalism and I shared my thoughts today on why Om has lost it.

So many great people: Donncha, Matt, Greg, Lauren, Chartreuse and many more.

I’d recommend some heavy hitters be brought in for sessions like SEO and WordPress – sessions that were sadly lacking in substance. I’d also recommend that grassroots session hosting be continued for other sessions. If I have to be objective, I imagine it is difficult to provide something for everyone in a one-day session and mostly, Automattic did a fine job of doing so.

For now, I guess I’m the last of the Blog Herald to close out the weekend and call it a wrap. Well done, all who were involved.

The post Wrapping up WordCamp: What it all Really Meant appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Basic SEO practices so far:

• Using alt tags for images. Keep them relevent.
• Use the Head Meta Description plugin to make sure you have a meta description tag describing the page.
• Some guy was asking to be banned by Google because he thinks that opening up a bunch of sites to link back to yourself is helpful.

This session has some really stupid question in them. Aside from the above comment, the same guy has asked about what is, in essence, keyword stuffing. How dumb can you get.

Mostly this session is very elementary. Backlinks, keyword density, some stats programs that analyze search terms, etc.

The post Liveblogging: SEO and WordPress appeared first on The Blog Herald.

There’s a big misconcpetion about the difference between blogging and journalism. I disagree with Om as he defines blogging as a personal genre. Perhaps thats the misconeption for those of us who do professional or niche blogging that what we do is actually more journalism than anything else.

Quote of the day:

If you can write something in 1000 words, why write it in 2000? If you can write it in 1000 words, you can write it in 500 words. If you can write it in 500 words, you can write it in 200 words. Those 200 words have to be the best quality words that convey the message.

The photo above was taken by Scott Beale (Laughing Squid).

The post Liveblogging: Blogging and Journalism appeared first on The Blog Herald.

I started the session describing some of the stuff I’ve been wrestling with over at Technosailor as well as the wholesome argument about tags and categories.

The post Blog Architecture Session appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Matt thanks the people who have made this happen and thanks the sponsors.

When WordPress got started two years ago, as a fork of b2evolution, WordPress has come a long way. WordPress 1.5 was downloaded 700k times. WordPress 2.0 has been downloaded over a million times. Matt thanks the people who have submitted patches, plugins, themes and forum support. Such a great community… er, he used the term ecosystem. Good choice of words.

As we progress, there is so much that everyone wants that is specific for them. The key is to keep the core light so many different avenues can be pursued for various purposes.

Many other products – pingomatic, akismet, bbpress and more – have sprung up around WordPress.

A few things we’ve done right in history, a few things we have done wrong, and a few we still want to do.

Stuff We’ve Done Right

• Installation process. The five minute install.
• Theme System.

Stuff We’ve Done Wrong

• Way too much opinionation in the developer circles.
• Media Handling
• Plugins written in a universally “usable” way

Stuff We Need to Do

• Directory of WP consultants – pay per service
• Cleaning up the Codex. 30 mins in support forums or editing the Codex would be very useful

The post Liveblogging: State of the Word appeared first on The Blog Herald.

What is “Compelling”? He is taking questions about what is compelling… in a movie… in a TV show… in a song. What makes things compelling? An emotional response?

Chartreuse is as compelling, pardon the pun, in person as he is on his blog. He is a natural speaker, really has a great knack for capturing the attention of people, and communicating his heart in an incredible way. It’s hard to document it.

Continuing on with the “What makes something compelling”… Personalize it. Everyone is all about vanity. How does it affect ME? How can a blog about vending affect me? Can it motivate me to read because it affects ME?

This is a great point and the more I think about it, it makes sense.

Oh, 100 point bonus to Chartreuse for using the word “esoteric” in a sentence. :)

The post LiveBlogging: Blog Promotion and Writing a Compelling Blog appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Greetings from WordCamp! So far there’s quite a few people here. Some great stuff happening here.

The first session just began. Andy Skelton, fabled Automattic developer, is presenting on the topic of WordPress Widgets.

Widgets give bloggers the ability to drag and drop widgets, or modules, and modify the way sidebars are displayed. More to come.

Additionally: Andy has opened the floor up for widget authors to talk about their widgets.

• RawSugar has provided a widget tag cloud that allows searches across blogs. Any search in RawSugar has an RSS feed associated with it.
• Goodstorm is developing a widget called MeCommerce. Great way to seel things from a blog, a la Amazon. Goodstorm was the company who provided the WordCamp tee shirts.

Editorial: I personally have just recently been turned on to widgets, though they’ve been around for awhile. Technosailor has been widgetized and being able to simply put modules in by drag and drop as opposed to hacking out PHP. I recommend anyone with a WordPress blog to experiment with widgets.

RawSugar
I feel like it is important to talk a little more about RawSugar. It is a search engine for tagged content. Bill is doing a live demo on it now. I’ve posed the question that this doesn’t appear any different on the surface from Technorati, but the difference is in blog-local searching. Another atendee wonders why we can’t use Ultimate Tag Warrior instead. Basically, the difference is in live drilldown. Presumable Ajax?

The Widgets plugin is available at http://www.automattic.com/code/widgets. Additionally, over 100 widgets are linked at the Widgets blog.

The post WordCamp Liveblogging: Widgets appeared first on The Blog Herald.