Make that three Apple posts in a row, what can I say, a lot of things in my RSS aggregator this morning that are Apple-related. This one, however, I give about a 5% chance of actually coming true. It is a rumour, so don’t anybody get too excited, and comes via Boris Mann:

Here’s my related but somewhat random rumour: Scoble has been talking Apple a lot lately. Jobs has convinced him to come to Apple to do tablet evangelism (that’s the one more thing, and here’s my Mac tablet spec) and kickstart Apple’s entry into the blogosphere.

Hmm, Scoble has indeed been posting more recently about Apple but I doubt he’ll be changing camps, Boris. He’s more likely doing what he recently posted as “penance” for his poorly formed opinion of Gmail not scaling that many of his readers, including I, roasted him over.

However, if Jobs offered to pay Scoble what he’s truly worth — which is more than Microsoft seems to be paying him (Scoble posted awhile back saying that it was less than 100k per year — and in my opinion he’s worth at least double that in PR value alone), IMO — than this would be a curious career move.

Conversely, Apple seems at odds with bloggers. Remember, they recently sued and won over those NDA leaks to bloggers to get their sources exposed. Apple may not want to have an evangelist like Scoble who brings more media — and blogger — scrutiny to their table. Although I’ve never read Scoble has broken any NDA, so if Apple had any concern about this with Scoble it would be unfounded.

As for Apple actually making a Tablet PC? On a positive note for Tablet PCs, I think it would help get Tablet PCs back in retail stores where they need to be if they’re ever going to take off mainstream.

Listen up, Microsoft: you can’t sell to the masses expensive hardware online only, most people want and need to get touchy feely with something that costs over $1,000 USD. This was a major hurdle for me in taking over two years to buy one and I’m a guy who makes technology purchases all the time. If they can’t get somebody like me to pull the trigger faster than 2+ years, then they have a huge uphill battle getting John/Jane Q. Customer to move for his/her checkbook.

Boris seems pretty certain Apple is working on a Tablet PC, though. Apple likes to explore niche markets, so I bet they would design a truly killer tablet, although I’m pretty sure (could be wrong) I’ve read quotes from Jobs saying they had no desire — at that time — in making a Tablet PC. I do have one predicton if Apple does make a Tablet:

It will be white.

Ok, this one grew much, much longer than I anticipated. The short of this is that I’m in the process of creating an editorial policy and I would like suggestions on how to make a good one. An hour later is what follows below.

Now for those who crave the blood and guts, keep reading …

As this blog continues to grow (thank you to all new and existing reader and subscribers, BTW, yesterday was a record non-spike traffic day!), and especially because I’d like to start accepting some more articles from others and thus am seeing the need to develop and publish a more formal editorial policy for MakeYouGoHmm. We already implement a loose editorial policy and pieces of this unofficial policy have been distributed in prior blog entries since the day the site was launched. However, there is nothing official published here yet and I’d like to change that at some point in the future.

In general my objectives for this weblog have been and continue to be as follows:

Review and/or report on events, happenings, and news from the writer’s experiences, interest and point of view as well as limited research/development. Typically I do not spend copious amounts of time (some stuff is literally published within five minutes of reading) researching or reworking the material published on MakeYouGoHmm. In fact, it’s usually very rough draft material as is evidenced by some of the markup I’ve had to do after the fact. Furthermore, I’ve used the words “rough draft” several times when describing this published material.

My underlying writing-related goal for most of this material is to shape, reshape and formulate content so that I can write better and more polished first drafts. It is a form of writing exercise, and usually the kind of content I wouldn’t feel comfortable publishing professionally, but part of the allure and excitement of blogging is the sense of immediacy and raw, reactionary publishing. It most cases this content is not meant to be taken as serious journalism. I know that some people treat their weblog writing as serious journalism, but usually I don’t. I won’t say never, because some of the writing I’ve published here has been edited and polished. But most of the time, I see this material as my first effort — and sometimes a very unpolished, flawed first effort. This isn’t to say that when I’m writing passionately about something that I don’t feel passionate about it, no, it’s saying that how these feelings are cultivated into text in the weblog could be technically flawed. It could be in the ears, eyes and hands, not the heart. Perspective is important.

In the publishing industry — the real publishing world, as some like to call it — rough drafts are *never published. Usually these rough drafts go through various stages of editing before and/or if ever being published. There is also a stage known as copy editing that takes care of all the little annoying things that can be found in so many different weblogs — including this one. Things like spelling mistakes, misused terms, missing words, proper capitalization, improper English and/or the types of things one would find in The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B White (”Omit needless words!”). There is admittedly very little copy editing in my published posts at MakeYouGoHmm. BTW, that asterisk on “never” above is to leave myself an out for some fringe professional publication out there and since I learned long ago that one should never say never. Never.

Now for the subject of editorial and publisher bias.

In my specific case, and since I currently write and publish the vast majority of articles on MakeYouGoHmm (something like 98%+ of the nearly 1,700 articles here to date have been written by me), that means someone who has been on the web for 10+ years and doing business for most of this time, has engaged in — and currently engage in — various different web-based businesses and is a published writer (online and offline articles in print, but unpublished print fiction writer) also a webmaster and programmer of several different websites for years. This experience gives me a distinct point of view on many issues surrounding the topics I’m writing about. I do try and stay away from certain topics where my level of research and knowledge is limited (like politics and religion). However, this isn’t to say that as a publication I wouldn’t like to see MakeYouGoHmm explore more politics and religion related topics, but most likely these pieces will be written by others more informed and educated on these topics.

Furthermore, I will usually check with several third party sources before declaring something as a ‘fact’, but sometimes in the interest of immediacy I may use only one source as the basis for developing a piece. Hopefully the source(s) I’ve trusted have been responsible and accurate, but especially with online sources I’ve found that this is not always the case. It’s important to highlight this fact:

It is not my goal for this publication to create a totally unbiased source of news and information.

Frankly I don’t believe there is such a thing as being “totally unbiased” anyway — however in the interest of educating new readers as to author bias, I do try my best to reference historical, related pieces published on similar topics/issues/news for consistency purposes. In the event that I make a significant error and/or misrepresentation of facts, then I will publish a retraction and an apology. Not on some buried page, either, but in its own piece and labeled as “retraction” in the title. An example of a prior, public retraction is here. Needless to say, I’m human and bound to make mistakes — as I suspect others will do as they contribute to this publication. I do strive to keep the wreckless driving to a minimum.

In creating this official editorial policy, I would naturally like to be dilligent and thorough, so if anybody has to share any good links, tools, general advice, etc, in putting together a sound, sensible editorial policy, than please use the comments section below (or trackback from your blog and link here) and tell me about it.

The following is a probably incomplete list of things I would like to cover in the editorial policy:

• Versioning - specifically how changes to the original post after publishing will be denoted. Example, word additions/subtractions, spelling errors, mistakes, altered language, etc.
• Content - what types of content will be — and won’t be — published. The use of first person and third person. Dealing with reporting facts, delivering an opinion, rumour and/or reporting of events. How can readers report errors and/or omissions in articles?
• Author byline - how/where will authors of posts be published
• Attribution - policy of linking to and/or identifying sources: what, where, when, how, and why. In particular, how will content from other sites be edited and/or summarized (also spelling and minor edits for space).
• Comments - what type of public comments will be allowed, edited or removed. When will the use of rel=’nofollow’, if ever be used.
• Trackbacks - how will both inbound and outbound trackbacks be handled. Handling of one-way trackbacks as well as two-way trackbacks. When will the use of rel=’nofollow’, if ever be used.
• tags and tagging - how will tags be handled for Technorati, del.icio.us, Flickr, etc.
• Advertising - when and where advertising will be used in the actual body of posts and how it will be identifiable to readers. Advertising outside the body of posts will be handled under disclosing conflicts and copyright
• Changes to Editorial Policy - how changes to the editorial policy will be made and whether or not changes will be retroactive to the content already published or going forward

I believe that those are the main components of a solid editiorial policy but since I’ve never written/created one, I’m drawing on the advice and expertise of others (especially readers, so please chime in). I do not want to make — or change — things too drastically or constraining as I still write for this blog primarily for entertainment and enlightment and don’t want the pressure of having to over edit every blog entry before publishing them, but at the same time as the amount of readership for MakeYouGoHmm continues to grow, I’m seeing/feeling the need to be more transparent about the procss (sorry to those who hate that buzzword) before hitting the publishing button (yowsa, majore run-on sentence).

Perhaps this need is totally unjustified as MakeYouGoHmm is not The New York Times. Also, this doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be sanitizing what I have to say or who I say it about — no way — but this does mean that I feel like the basic process just needs to be refined and tweaked somewhat. Evolve. And then made public in the interest of all readers.

In summary, a structure is good for myself and others who will continue to be published here. I guess you could say we are starting to make the transition from blog to … publisher. Subtle transition, hopefully. And ideally the quality and raw edge is not lost during the transition. That would be against the premise behind Things That … Make You Go Hmm. I don’t want to change the style or tone of writing, I just want to make sure that people realize what axes are being grinded, by whom, and the history, if any of the blades being wielded. More responsibility. MakeYouGoHmm is growing up. It’s time for middle school.

So what do you know about writing/creating a good editorial policy? What suggestions/recommendations can you offer?

The question, which doesn’t yet seem to have an answer is: how soon? (the press release says: “generally available later this month”) And the next most logical question: how good will it actually be?

TVEyes is rumoured to have this coveted search technology that actually indexes every word spoken in video and audio, which they plan to offer via podscope. Podscope will provide searchable text within podcasts and you can enter in your podcast URL so they will get it indexed. I already put Webmaster Cookbook in there.

So far it’s just a “coming soon” site, but if they can pull this off successfully, then they will be providing a useful service.

Thanks Steve who learned about this from a post on Search Engine Watch.

Note to budding ‘Citizen Journalists’ who actually want to be paid for their writing the following is not a good deal. I’m surprised that Dan Gillmor didn’t at least mention that this “pay” needs to come with several asterisks. Dan wrote used the word “applause” but what is he applauding? It all sounds rosey when you hear the pitch:

GetLocalNews.com, a nationwide network of 6,000 local news sites, is planning to share its advertising revenue with thousands of volunteer writers.

Cool concept, citizens write local news and other human interest stories and receive a 50% split of the ad revenue generated based on the page views of their articles. They calcuate this based on the total amount of page views and money earned. Once the author reaches $25 they’ll send them a check, but — and here’s the sucktacular fine print — if after four quarters the author hasn’t reached $25, then the account will be zeroed out.

This reminds me a bit of epinions.com, the site where you can spend tons of hours writing reviews of products and services and be lucky to make pennies. However, at least epinions doesn’t zero your account after a year if you don’t make the minimum payout.

To make matters even worse, check out what it says at the end of the article:

Its most frequently visited site, BeniciaNews.com, covers the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Benicia, Calif., and gets as many as 5,000 page views per month, Canon said.

My bolding on the numbers. So they calculate 1,000 page views to be about $2-5 and their busiest community site only generates 5,000 page views? Yowsa, this doesn’t really look to me like the intention is to pay anybody for anything. Instead it seems like they just want to generate a bunch of free articles from gullible people.

Now back to Gillmor’s applause. Is he applauding the fact that citizens can write in various communities? I think one would more often than not get more attention contacting local publications than using a network like this one. Or, aspiring citizen journalists, here’s another idea:

Start your own community based blog and/or news site, throw up Google Adsense and you’ll have about a 99.9999% chance of making more money than you ever will with this ‘arrangement.’

I know, it’s not about the money. It’s about other things. Riiiight. Then why is this network offering to pay anything then?

Update 4/10/2005: After writing this, I saw that darkmoon had already dismantled this deal.

Update 4/11/2005: Edgar Canon, CEO GetLocalNews.com stopped by in the comments and said that CNET misprinted the correct monthly traffic numbers for BeniciaNews.com — they actually receive 500,000 page views a month (that’s a considerable misprint, CNET). That’s certainly more enticing from an exposure point of view, but I’d be curious to see the numbers for what one average article on their network typically generates. Since Mr. Canon indicates that they have a track record then it should be no problem producing these figures. I’m sort of surprised that they weren’t/aren’t detailed in the agreement.

I have one fictional character written blog. And no, it’s not this one, and no it’s not linked now nor has it ever been here — at least as far as I remember. I don’t update it much so far, because I have to get in a certain mood to write under the character. Hey, It’s a writing thing. If you count my name ChefTD from Webmaster Cookbook as a fictional character, then make it two, however, that isn’t the blog I’m talking about.

Fictional character blogs to me offer a challenging creative outlet, ability and exercise to move outside the framework placed around ourselves online as real people. Should a business owner blog under a fictional character? Maybe for some it’s the only way to get a blog online.

Some people are very shy and they may not want to write under their name. Writers use pen names not only to protect their identities but sometimes to get out of being typed by fans for a certain type of work. They want to explore and build upon their versatility. But if under another name the writer becomes popular than all that old work under different pen names can come out under the other name as new content. It’s a marketing move and it’s sort of the quiet, acceptable deception in the publishing industry.

Now take Gourmet Station:

Delicious Destinations is written by T. Alexander, “a fictitious character created by GourmetStation, it’s creative partner, Blue Marble Media, and marketing partner, Bloomberg Marketing. T. A. is our icon, who through reflections about food, customs and travel, adds a bit of spice to our website and newsletters.”

Some people are taking exception to fictional character blogs like the one by T. Alexander, but I think this kind of thing is pretty cool and clever. No, I don’t care much for the subject matter, so I’m not subscribing, but if I was interested in gourmet food, I wouldn’t be disturbed by the fact the blog is written by a fictitious character.

Steve Rubel labels the gourmet station blog “another fake blog” which I think is wrong. Since Rubel is also in the PR business and Toby Bloomberg is a competitor it doesn’t surprise me that he seemed to subtly put a negative spin on this with the power of one simple word.

Words can be so powerful. Maybe Rubel’s intentions weren’t to fart on the effort, but it sure has a pungent scent this side of the ’sphere.

To me, a truly “fake” blog would be a spam blog. A blog created without any soul or human purpose whatsoever except to sell somebody something. Unfortunately I’ve seen a few spam blogs like this that are nothing but keyword-driven drivel in blog format. Now that’s a fake blog to me. That’s the type of blog that deserves as much condemnation as fellow bloggers and PR people can muster. Those type of sites should find their own private purgatory where every search engine spider on the planet scurries away from them. In my dreams.

However, the question of whether a fictional character can dispense real world advice and/or provide value to a business/organization is a fair question. Look at Ask Jeeves. The Geico Gecko. There are fictional characters all over the place that dispense advice or are mascots with ‘tude. (BTW, the butler’s searches are are of little value to me, though, but I’m hopeful that Ask.com can get it together but it’s been awfully quiet in the butler’s den since the Bloglines acquistion and the sale).

Frankly, I’d rather read an interesting, useful and/or entertaining blog from a clearly identified fictional character than a boring cat/dog/life blog from a real person. A fictional character isn’t a problem in and of itself.

Maybe it’s even a good solution for some folks.

Update 4/6/2005: Travis stops by to comment, disagree, and add a link to author Susannah Gardner’s opinion on the matter: Deliciously fake. Links inside the comment area get that awful rel=’nofollow’ (I need to fix that one of these days). Only the link in your signature actually has the rel=’nofollow’ stripped out.

As I’m going through the various female-authored blogs recommended to me a couple are standing out so far. I’m probably in the minority in that I like a blog design that matches the tone and personality of the blog. Not anything too garish, but something which reflects who is writing the blog. Sort of like an illustration to go with the text. The slickest design in the world won’t draw me back though if the text content doesn’t compliment the design. Conversely, a really well written blog will suck me in regardless of the design.

Check out the screenshot above of Debbie Weil’s blog. I like how she’s pictured (I assume that’s her) peeking out with a smile just behind the blog and holding onto what looks like a printed document. That’s pretty sharp! She mentions a March 2005 study that says only 7% are reading blogs and most are political blogs.

Halley’s Comment also has a unique and stylistic logo where we are staring at a woman’s feet in heels (is this Halley or stock photography?). A recent post has her talking about the importance of not being a boring writer:

A lot of well-known mainstream journalists are … boring. And a lot of new voices which are a lot more interesting are surfacing in blogs.

There are some plain, default blog designs too, which actually is fairly common with technology-oriented blogs. For those that read the entire content through an aggregator the design of a blog isn’t important, but for those of us who primarily use RSS for headline skimming and do actually visit the blogger’s website, the design can increase interest.

The two hours of tech radio show is on riiiight now. It’s a very weird, April Fool’s Day edition.

Technorati: april fools

Scoble was quiet for a few days in preparation it seems to go on an overnight blogging frenzy. He even “fell off the linkblog wagon” and added 122 items there (2 of which were from this blog, thanks Robert!). I was wondering when or if he’d be pointing to the recent controversy surrounding Google’s #1 Matt and sure enough he did. He had these brief words to add about disclosure:

To all bloggers and journalists, though, here’s the rule: disclose your conflicts or we’ll disclose them for you in a messy way.

This got me thinking. I write about a lot of different things on this blog and some people might be wondering what my conflicts of interest at this blog might be, if any, so I thought I’d specifically spell out my business interests with this blog. Also, the copyright (see footer of each page) for being able to use the content from MakeYouGoHmm. Yes, there are business interests, please don’t be surprised. If you don’t really care what the financial interests are for this blog then you might want to stop reading here.

Microsoft (MSFT) - I’m a user and sometimes developer of Visual Studio projects. This is explained on the bio page that has been linked on this blog since the day it was created/started. As of this writing I do not currently own any Microsoft stock, but I’m thinking about buying some. Sometimes I’m invited up to Redmond to do beta testing and in return for that time I’m awarded a piece of software for each two hour session of beta testing. They do 1099 those who receive more than $599 worth of software in a calendar year in accordance with IRS tax laws.

Google (GOOG) - I use Google search every day, many times a day. I use Gmail every day, many times a day. As of this writing I don’t work for them currently and have never worked for them as an employee, contract worker, etc, however as of last Sunday 3/27/2005 we started using Google Adsense on the permalink pages of this blog, and we are paid for clickthrus on these advertisements. We’ve been in the Google Adsense program for over a year and used them on another of our websites. I also own some Google stock. None of this means I won’t be extremely critical of Google if I don’t like something they are doing as readers have seen time and time again. Naturally, with the addition of the Google Adsense last Sunday, we have some new guidelines we must follow according to their Terms of Service and we will comply with these guidelines to the best of our ability.

Yahoo (YHOO) - I own some Yahoo stock but I’m not currently and have never been a Yahoo contract employee. I’m a user of some of their services.

Ask Jeeves (ASJK) - I own some Ask Jeeves stock but I’m not currently and have never been a Ask Jeeves contract employee. I’m a user of some of their services.

Note: I’m not going to list my entire investment portfolio, resume or current jobs as I don’t think that would be in the interest of disclosure, but an invasion. Also, these things change as I buy and sell stock, take on new contract projects, etc, so it would be a PITA to keep updating the blog. I will try to indicate — when I am able to by contract — and when I think it’s specifically important where I’m working for somebody or on something and/or have a direct or indirect finanical interest. I must be allowed by contract to disclose this type information. I will not break any Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for any reason except judicial order So if I’m doing work for somebody and it’s not supposed to be disclosed — it won’t be, period. That’s not only because of an NDA requirement, it’s because that’s the ethical, honorable way to conduct business.

The banners that run on many MakeYouGoHmm pages are either static or randomly rotated. Many of these ads are online educational programs or business opportunities and almost all of these banner ads are money-making advertisements for the site. When people clickthru and sign up for these offers, KMR Enterprises (that’s our business) makes money. There are also some affiliate text links just above the fold of entries on the category and archives web pages. Again, money-making links. We may add affiliate text links like these above, below, to the sides, wrapped around and/or even inside some blog entries (but only where relevant inside entries).

The official MakeYouGoHmm Internet Explorer toolbar is distributed and operated by Effective Brand (effectivebrand.com). With the exception of customizing features of this toolbar KMR Enterprises is not responsible for the code produced. I use this toolbar personally and I have not discovered any spyware or any other deceptive tactics [EB privacy policy]. Please, if anybody using the toolbar notices any unethical activity with this toolbar than please contact me immediately. The MakeYouGoHmm toolbar is FREE and can be downloaded here. There is an option inside Effective Brand where some searches can result in revenue via Search Feed. We have not yet signed up for this affiliate service, but we likely will do so at some point in the future. I like this toolbar service a lot and think it brings great value to both me and readers as long as they don’t do any sneaky stuff, so please anybody who uses this if you notice anything sneaky then contact me ASAP.

There are two rarely used categories at MakeYouGoHmm called adfeed-products and adfeed-services (which aren’t even linked up in the category area as of this writing). These two categories are specifically and entirely used for advertising. The sole intention and purpose of these categories is advertorial interest and expectation. We will put products/services in these categories that I have likely not personally or professionally tried / used / purchased. We may use banners, buttons, links, etc in these categories that are generated by the affiliate programs for these products and/or services (adfeed-products is for products and adfeed-services is for services). The sole purpose of these two categories is making money. The category that any item is placed in is clearly marked next to the byline on the MakeYouGoHmm.com website. If/when we choose to use either or both of these two categories, please understand that we are trying to encourage readers to buy something and thus we make a small amount of affiliate revenue. Again, we have rarely used this in the 1600+ blog entries, so it’s not something readers will likely see very often, especially now that we’ve added the Google Adsense.

Some links in other categorized posts may sometimes lead to affiliate programs like Vonage. However, we’ve been signed up with the Vonage for a long time and have never been paid a penny from their program (not an affiliate program I’d recommend signing up for, BTW). From time to time, there might be a piece of software I’ve used and liked that also has an affiliate program and I might link to that inside a category that isn’t adfeed-products or adfeed-services. Remember, the key distinction is: haven’t tried / used / purchased. The vast majority of the editorial inside the blog, except as otherwise noted, contains no money-making links. We do not disclose which links are money-making links on an entry-by-entry basis except as noted by the category above.

I would classify MakeYouGoHmm as a business blog, not a personal blog. Since, this is a business, we do expect to turn a profit. If this concept upsets anybody reading and they think we’re out of line with any of the disclosure and practices being utilyzed above then you have a clear choice: unsubscribe. Lots of other blogs run Google Adsense and include affiliate links in some (or all) blog entries.

Now what kinds of things do I write about? Something of interest to me. Am I swayed by money when writing? With the exception of the adfeed-products and the adfeed-services category: no. I do not specifically write entries to target specific adsense keywords or do any other type of engineered postings. I write about what’s of interest to me and if along with that these postings have advertising appeal, then I include those links. That’s the way I do it here at MakeYouGoHmm.

All blog entries and content at MakeYouGoHmm, unless otherwise noted, are copyright KMR Enterprises and makeyougohmm.com. Bloggers are welcome and encouraged to use small quotes and/or snippets from MakeYouGoHmm.com in accordance with Fair Use guidelines. Bloggers and any other business or individual may NOT use entire blog entries without express written permission from KMR Enterprises. Does this mean people can’t aggregate headlines on their blogs? Of course not! You are welcome and encouraged to do that, just don’t pull in the full text RSS feed into your blog and wrap ads around it (readers can get confused about who actually produced content). That’s not cool and we will contact you and/or your hosting company to have that content removed. We do not mind what you do with the feeds for personal use as long as it doesn’t mean the content being republished or resyndicated elsewhere in any medium: text, audio, etc.

Again, MakeYouGoHmm is not content in the public domain or Creative Commons licensed. We’ve granted republishing rights to a few people like Scoble with his linkblog, and some web-based RSS aggregators, but please ask first if you intend to be using more than a snippet of any MakeYouGoHmm blog entry. The copyright is clearly shown on the footer of each page on this blog and included in the RSS feeds. The MakeYouGoHmm full text RSS feeds are not intended to be repackaged and displayed on other websites.

In some cases we might choose pay other bloggers to write entries on this weblog and though we haven’t done that yet, someday that might happen, and if that happens that disclosure will be made clear as well as “paid contributer” or something to that effect will be added to the contributer’s piece. Sometimes, I use “we” to indicate to other writers/contributers to this blog, as we have had a half dozen or so contributers over the years, none of which yet has ever been paid specifically to write anything on this blog. I am, of course paid, by the Google Adsense revenue and income from other affiliate links.

KMR Enterprises is the company I am co-owner with my wife (she’s the “KMR”). Our business is based out of Puyallup, Washington and we run a number of commercial and personal websites.

My long term plan is to clean this entry up and put it on its own separate DISCLAIMER PAGE and link it from every page, probably down near the copyright notice.

CONTACTING KMR ENTERPRISES (and me, TDavid)
Have a question, concern or specific issue with anything described here and/or on MakeYouGoHmm.com? Would you like to become a contributer to MakeYouGoHmm? You have several options to contact us:

1) Write a comment on this blog entry — or write one on your blog and trackback to the relevant blog entry. I do read all comments personally.
2) Call. Our business number is prominently displayed on our primary business website: [Updated 7/31/2006: (253) 843-6283 (via Skype, BTW!)].
3) Skype me - my SKype name is TDavid. Feel free to add me to your Skype list if it’s for business/networking reasons. I have very limited time to just “chat” so please keep that in mind when contacting me.
4) IRC. We have our own IRC server that is professionally managed. I hang out in the channel sometimes: irc.scriptschool.com #scriptschool — please be aware that on Fridays from 2-4pm PST this is the official chatroom for the live Script School Radio show.
5) Email. This our the least preferred method of contact and actually, due to the volume of email received daily, doesn’t reliably guarantee a response. If it’s important then I would suggest using one of the other four methods. With this in mind, my email address is listed on our business contact page.

I’ve admired the work of the Webtalk Radio show for years now, literally. Last Thursday when I got back from the underwhelming PSP launch an exciting email invitation to their show later that night was waiting for me. I had a scheduled IRC chat event committment but thankfully Rob and Dana let me use their studio WiFi while they recorded the show.

Historically, I haven’t received too many invitations to be on other radio shows, I guess because folks don’t believe I’ve done or do much worth talking about, I’m boring to listen to and/or because I’ve had my own online radio show for years (and thus folks can just tune in and listen to what I’ve had to say about the web there).

I think Rob and Dana were a bit surprised that I was sort of a closet fan of their show. I don’t listen to their show regularly but I invariably enjoy their program when I have had a chance to listen to it. Their studio setup is definitely professional.

So, I was able to live one of my internet-related dreams last Thursday by being a guest on a show that I’ve respected and admired from afar. Thank you to Rob and Dana Greenlee and Webtalk Radio! I would love the chance to be invited back someday again to pinch hit for Mitch or whomever else.

People, places and things that we talked about on the show:

• Robert Scoble - leaving his link blog behind
• Stuart Henshall - there since the beginning of the Skype revolution
• 8 of 10 annoying blogger habits (never got to the last two, no thanks to my incessant rambling)
• financial future for podcasting (podcasting as a business)
• an interview with Steve Stroh, editor from Broadband Wireless Internet Access and co-host of Wireless Tech Radio on the future of wireless broadband
• The problem with cellular phone company lock-in
• Multi-tasking with IRC chat during the interview
• About the PSP launch day, the PSP’s UMD proprietary format, the green screen of death, Spider-Man 2, white earbuds paying homage to iPod? Browsing on the PSP … which a day later woud become possible through the Wipeout Pure DNS hack
• William Shatner! Token reference to Spock and Kirk
• The “insider” talk between Scoble and Winer, plus the legitimacy of the pioneer directory. Mainstream news frenzy and Dawn and Drew’s house
• Looking at what Matt May is doing with Staccato.
• Adam Curry and the use of Sniff ‘N Tears Driver’s Seat, plus licensing and fair use. The ASCAP Podcast License.
• Who — or what type of business — will make money podcasting?
• Being the dustbunny on somebody’s podcast hard drive: the problem with podcasting mechanics
• Google News and blogger sources, the importance of source filtering. Will too many (of the wrong kind of) blogs in Google news ruin the overall value? What type of blogs should be listed in Google News?
• 10,000 emails a day!
• How to take live callers on a podcast or streaming live show

If any of these topics or people are of interest to you, then stop by Webtalk Radio, download the show and leave some feedback. From what I understand, they only put up one show at a time so you only have a couple days to download (Rob or Dana feel free to correct me on this one).

Anybody with a technology, creative writing/blogging and/or developer-related radio show or podcast, please feel free to contact me via Skype (TDavid), phone or by email if you’d like to chat. You might be surprised just how flexible and approachable that I truly am and, who knows, maybe I’m already a fan of your program.

I’m so excited (in a good way)! Yeah, I know I’ve been kind of writing some broodier entries lately and I’m going to try and knock that off for a little bit (at least this entry anyway).

Since I haven’t exactly been inundated with links after making this post (man, ask for links and very few people send them, what’s up with that?) I decided to get proactive earlier today and fired off an email to Toby from Bloomberg Marketing.

Toby kindly wrote me back with a bunch of blogs authored by women that I should check out. Some of them I’ve already been reading, some of them I’ve seen before and will read more closely, and a few of them were brand new. Goodie, goodie!

I love it when people share. Rest assured, I will be sharing from this shared list as soon as I have enough time to go through them.

On my to-do list still is updating my blogroll again as well as the OPML files and Bloglines reading list. The total list for all sources is around 350, but I’m going to be dropping some folks who don’t post often enough or don’t post enough items of interest and replace with fresher, more regularly updated and more interesting bloggers and news sources. If someone reading this blog happens to be dropped, then don’t fret, if you start writing again regularly and/or writing about things I’m interested in then you’ll be back. I’ve got a couple sources I’ve dropped and readded several times.

So now I’ll make this request one last time before letting the subject die for awhile. If you happen to be a female blogger or know of a good female blogger (or group of female bloggers), then please use the comments and tell me about it. I’m looking to expand my list of female authored blogs because my current list is very male-dominated and I’d like to balance things out a bit more.

My primary interest is technology, developer, business, marketing and web-related material , but I’m willing to read other types of blogs as well. So please take a look at your blogroll and comment or trackback if you have a good blog to suggest. Feel free to suggest your own blog if the shoe fits.

The blogs and/or news sources in my daily reading list make up the bulk of what I write about, so I’m really looking for as much diversity as possible. And if I start linking to some of your stuff here somewhat regularly, then I will make a little icon to add with your links that looks like this:

Thank you to Mr. Snitch and Rhonda for their recommendations, as well as Nicole Simon for the trackback, whom I already was listening to her podcasts (she’s got a killer accent!). I’m thinking Nicole doesn’t really like my legend indicating the sex of the bloggers. That’s more for my own memory than for readers, so I might be removing that. Or perhaps I could find a more graceful way to indicate the authors of a blog (small picture, color, icon, etc). Oh, so many things, so little time.

Thank you for reading.