by Ron Miller

A Video and a Live Panel In a Week of Firsts

Photo by marcopako on Flickr

I'm not really a person who tends to make New Year's Resolutions, but when I began looking ahead to 2009 in December, I decided to set some goals. I set out to raise my profile a bit, so I wanted to take a stab at speaking in public and I wanted to write an eBook.

Here we are on the last day of February, and this week I am pleased to report that I have two eBooks in progress (and ideas for two others on the back burner). This past week I made a video interview for EContent Magazine that will be shown at the Buying and Selling EContent Conference in April and after that I think it will be on YouTube (and I will put it here in this blog when it is).

I also wanted to do some public speaking and this past Thursday, I took my first stab at it speaking on a social media panel sponsored by Hidden Tech in Northampton, MA. We had a great crowd--every seat was taken and there were people standing in the back. I was on a panel with 3 other local folks--Tish Grier, Morris Partee and Ann Kingman--all of whom are involved in social media in various ways in their jobs, and I think the knowledge we had to share fit quite nicely together.

I'll be moderating a webinar in March for FierceContentManagement and we are discussing me running my own webinar for Fierce in April. All this is new to me, and I'm finding I really enjoy this type of interaction and I look forward to doing more.

Please watch for the eBook announcements, which I will post here when they are ready and watch for another announcement regarding an exciting new project I hope to lauch in the next month or so.

Google Humility or Google Hubris?

Photo by Senor Codo on Flickr

It's been quite a couple of weeks for Google as the search giant has had to deal with adversity for perhaps the first time ever and it's been interesting to watch how they respond. In the end, they have behaved like any other large organization under pressure and the result has not been pretty.

Read why on DaniWeb.

One on with Sid Probstein of Attivio on FierceContentManagement

I talk with Sid Probstein of Attivio this week in my One on one interview on FierceContentManagement. Sid is a guy with years of industry experience having worked at Northern Light and later Fast. Attivio takes a unique approach to search and Probstein discusses his company's product and the search industry in general.

Read the full interview on FierceContentManagement.

Coolest Toys Ever: Siftables - Digital Blocks

   

One of the reasons I write about technology is because it fascinates me. So maybe that's why when I saw this video, I just loved the idea of these blocks you could manipulate digitally. It's just so incredible to me and I still get excited when I see a really clever piece of technology, and believe me this applies. Check out this video and watch the whole thing. You won't be disappointed.

When you install a CMS, don't forget the human touch

Photo by Il Quoquo

My latest column on FierceContentManagement is about making sure you remember the human touch when you implement your content management system. In fact experts have suggested this is the single most important factor in project success or failure.

Ready why at FierceContentManagement

Let's Not Trash Cloud Computing Over Gmail Outage

Photo by Anarchosyn

When Gmail when went down over night, it gave some people an excuse to trash cloud computing in general, but let's be serious, just because it's in the cloud doesn't mean it's immune to the same problems any software faces.

Read my defense of Cloud Computing on DaniWeb.

Microsoft Retail Strategy Doomed to Fail

Photo by Star5112 on Flickr

Microsoft's latest strategy to open retail stores, not only copies Apple, it fails to take into account the horrible economy and a dearth of Microsoft branded retail products.

Read my DaniWeb post to find out why this strategy will fail.

Let's Not Get Hasty About Defining Twitter

Graphic by Kathy Sierra.

I had a little debate with Daniel Tunkelang from Endeca this morning on Twitter. Daniel is a brilliant guy whom I have a great deal of respect for, but he was arguing that when publications like the New York Times use Twitter to post links to articles without engaging readers in conversation, they are using Twitter incorrectly. You may recall I just wrote an article the other day called Beware of People Dictating Social Networking Rules. As much as I like Daniel, I feel like he's trying to tell me how to use Twitter and there's only one right way to do it.

Started with O'Reilly

Apparently this whole discussion which I jumped into the middle of, was started by the brilliant Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media. (You can follow the whole conversation at #timesopen). O'Reilly felt that the New York Times was missing the point of Twitter by using it as a glorified RSS reader and Tunkelang agreed. Tunkelang and O'Reilly felt that it should be about conversation. While I agree that in most cases Twitter is about conversation, publications are the one use case where I see companies offering information without putting a human face on the content, and so far at least, this approach seems to be working.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

When it comes down to it, I guess don't like being told how to use a tool. For publications, Twitter is a good place to publicize their content and drive content to their web sites. This is making intelligent use of social media and I don't think the NYT, TechCrunch, ArsTechnica or any of the other myriad of publications using Twitter in this fashion have anything to apologize for. What's more, I took a quick peak at the NYT Twitter profile and learned it has over 147K followers, which is a huge number in Twitter terms. Tech Crunch has more than 113K followers. Obviously people like getting their news in this fashion or they wouldn't be following these publications in such large numbers. (Although Tunkelang believes this use case is short-lived.)

Ultimately, It is About Conversation

I don't disagree that Twitter is a great place to engage people in conversations, and I see many journalists doing just that. The publication publicizes the article on Twitter. The writer engages in conversation and everyone wins. Tunkelang and I do agree that Twitter works best when people engage with one another (as we did this morning), but I have to draw the line when someone tries to define a tool like Twitter in such black and white terms. We're all still learning what works and what doesn't and in my view trying to tell people how to use a social media tool could end up stifling the use.

The use cases that evolve over time will happen from experimentation and we'll find out what works and what doesn't. And there's still a chance that in finding what works and what doesn't work - we'll still be many shades of grey away from black and white rules.

One on one with Michelle Manafy on FierceContentManagement

I interviewed my EContent editor, Michelle Manafy as part of my One on one series with content management industry movers and shakers. I talked to her about issues around content delivery and search.

Read the interview at FierceContentManagement.

Is Apple the New Neighborhood Bully?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Apple has been throwing its legal weight around of late trying to use IP law to protect its turf. Seems to me Apple should call off the lawyers and let the products do the talking.

Read my Post on DaniWeb to learn more.