The Amazon Kindle (affiliate) e-book reader has been on my gadget radar for a little while. I thought the price was too much when it came out and didn’t pull the trigger when I was in heavy gadget buying mode, but they’ve since upgraded and made a bigger screen and added a few more goodies. The new Kindle DX is still black and white and still a bit too pricey I think at $489 but being I love to read and am on the move, this device remains on the radar as a possibility.

One of the neat things about the Kindle is it has forever free wireless access to the Kindle store so anywhere you went that there was coverage, you could buy and read a book. Or even a blog. I submitted this blog eons ago but it never got added. You can probably guess the blogs you would find on the Kindle when Amazon chose them.

Well this changed this week when Amazon shared their new Kindle Publishing for Blogs area – open to all bloggers - which means the blog population in the Kindle Store could increase dramatically in the coming days, weeks and months.

Or maybe not, as it’s not like there are a zillion blog hungry Kindle store shoppers.

And unfortunately there is no option to choose what price to charge for the blog as Amazon sets that which is kind of a bummer because I would have chosen the absolute least price (likely free if it was available – which it isn’t - in fact). I marked down the Hmm updates to ‘1-2 updates a week’ for now since that’s pretty accurate as of late, but I suspect this frequency will be increased in the coming months as my stored up writing energy is starting to overflow.

Most blogs cost $1.99/month to subscribe to and the blog owner only gets 30%, so I won’t be retiring off Kindle blog subscription income any time soon.

If only blog publishers could add bonus content

Really wish there was a way I could push additional bonus content a la DVD extras out to these Kindle subscribers as I still have a significant backlog of unpublished posts. It would provide something extra to these paid subscribers to make it more worth paying for.

But so as not to punish loyal readers who didn’t own the Kindle and couldn’t subscribe, there could be a time decay on these posts that eventually kicks them out to everybody. Put that on my Kindle feature wish list for blog publishers. Actually, this might be possible by offering a separate feed for Kindle readers … only since you can’t password protect it or anything, once that feed address was released in the wild, anybody could simply subscribe to it instead of the main feed.

If anybody is reading any blogs through the Kindle, please let me know what you think of the experience. I’m curious.

Update 5/15/2009 6:05am PST: The Make You Go Hmm Kindle edition is live!

It can be found at the following location: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0029U2NUE

Jeremiah Owyang has a good post describing how the current recession is diminishing the value of the guru and putting more focus on the things in business that matter:

The recession. This is going to cause a purging of the opinion-makers, pontificators, and the gurus to be passed up as companies need to make decisions based off intelligence, information and references of previous success. Why? their very jobs are on the line, as they have to be accountable for their budgets within their corporations, and demonstrate a return on investment to their management beyond ‘awareness, buzz or thought leadership’. 

Must admit my time for opinion has been set aside in place of doing things that produce measurable results. When you are in the process of rebooting and rebuilding your business you measure where that time is spent and what it did, if anything, for your business. You also measure what dollars you are spending and if you are financing the right causes.

The Chamber promoting businesses that aren’t in the city where we’re located

Like the Chamber of Commerce renewal that I’m currently deciding on. Last year it didn’t seem like the local chamber did much of anything for our business, but they seem to have some plans in place where they might be useful in 2009. There are three other insurance agents in the Chamber, none of which even have an office in the city where the Chamber is located which kind of bugs me. Shouldn’t the Chamber be for businesses who offices in town, creating client foot traffic in town, not just those who live in town but have businesses located elsewhere?

As I explained to my wife, when we have a client travel to our office, they travel through town and see other businesses and signage. We are creating business traffic in the city and benefitting the other businesses by simply having an operation in town. Those who don’t have a business in town are not providing the same benefit. While a business owner who lives in town may have a right to be a Chamber member by not having a business location in town they are not sharing any client traffic back into the pool for other members. I realize that there are many home-based businesses, heck we have one too, but I don’t believe home-based businesses with no foot traffic that travels through town provide the same benefit. Agree, disagree?

So we’re comparing the Chamber membership to the local Eagles club membership.

We’ve never been Eagles members before but we have a bunch of clients who are Eagles members. Any readers Eagles members? Tell me about it in the comments area. It seems like our dollars might be better spent being a member there instead of the Chamber and it costs less to join too (like $80 versus $200). To join, according to the Eagles official website (emphasis mine):

To be eligible for membership in the Fraternal Order of Eagles, you must be a citizen of the United States or Canada over the age of 18 who believes in God.

Citizen of U.S check, 18+ yup, not an atheist, so ok there (I think). We have more than a couple sponsors to get an application so ok there as well. Guess we’re onto phase two. In the Chamber there is no initiation or interviews, just paying the $200 fee every year. Less business, more community focus in the Eagles versus the Chamber as well as social focus. When people talk about how effective social networking is online, I wonder how joining the Eagles compares offline.

Back to the gurus

I don’t feel sorry for most of these gurus. Don’t see spending a penny on them for either of our businesses but if I ran into one online or offline who had a particularly good business idea, I’d open the wallet. So I’m not completely discarding their value.

However if they are as good practicing what they preach then they don’t need clients to listen to their opinions, they can use the advice to generate work for themselves in these lean times. This might be my biggest problem with people who talk a good game: can they do anything with their advice or do they just think others can benefit from it?

Now there is a difference between someone who consults that also does work. Like a programmer who offers consulting on the side while they have contracts and are doing programming work regularly. I have huge respect for these consultants. These are gurus that should rarely fall on hard times.

Truth is many people around the country right now are having to buckle down and work harder. I think at the end of the days, weeks and months the country will be better. We’ve got to get the loan channels open again though. It’s not helping individuals or businesses when the bank purse strings are super glued shut. 

Was talking with a client yesterday and the subject of cold calling arose. The client was wondering how things were going in our business reboot 2009. I had mentioned that part of every week involves me doing some amount of cold calling. I mean frigid, icy cold leads. Calling people out of the phone book that are not on the Do Not Call list and/or face to face marketing.

And yes, this still works. Some salespeople have told me over the years that this is a waste of time and I can’t disagree more.

 
Cold calls are bridges to humility

I’ve been calling primarily from our business line at all different times of day and night (never cold calling before 9am or after 9pm and rarely on Sundays) and the caller ID recognizes our business name clearly so anybody picking up the phone will know exactly who is calling. Not using computers to spam mass calls or some other annoying mass contact strategy. Just picking up the phone and dialing one … at … a … time. And I do not call anybody cold who is:

1. on the Do Not Call List. Each number is checked each time before calling and our DNC database is kept current.
2. has a first name listed in the phonebook I cannot pronounce correctly. I like to be able to ask: “is this John?” “Mary?” rather than the more formal: “Is Mr. or Mrs. Jones available?” I’m sure this puts off some people who do not know who I am and hear me addressing them by their first name, but I feel more comfortable and have had more success starting this way than being more formal.

Tuesday night this week I called someone totally new and random, had a very friendly, productive conversation over their speakerphone, made an appointment and went out yesterday and added a brand new client to our 2009 rebooted insurance business. These folks are really nice too and took a bunch of my business cards and promised to help us out with additional referrals.

Then on the way back to the office I stopped off at a nearby mobile home park. There was a big sign as you enter the park that stated in bright red lettering: NO SOLICITING. I drove straight to the manager’s office and walked up to him and introduced myself as a local, independent insurance agent who had lived in town for nearly 20 years. I asked him if it would be ok if I brought a brochure stand with me for mobile/manufactured insurance to his office. He not only said yes, but promised to put it on his desk right by his computer so that anybody who asked about insurance he’d have it there handy for them. Right on.

Yesterday was one of those magical cold lead marketing days. There are plenty of days where the opposite happens, where you are shut down, hung up on and worse. It’s not easy being a cold call salesman but it is very humbling. That brings me full circle to the client I was speaking about who asked me why I kept cold calling people when I could focus on more warm leads.

There are several reasons but the one that is most important to me is humility. To remember how hard it can be to grow our business and attract new clients. If all one does is work the warm and hot leads, including the referral leads, it can spoil you. Or at least it spoils me. I want to appreciate the bond that people have with those they do business with and how easy it is to break, but how hard it can be to solidify.

Add to that, in the current economy especially we’re providing a valuable service for people with important coverage with excellent rates from good companies and serviced by a family owned and operated agency. It’s a driving force to get on the phones or stop by in person and tell our story. Some folks, perhaps many at times, won’t want to hear our story or take part in our journey but it shouldn’t slow us down.

So to other salespeople reading: keep some cold in your marketing. Humility is very important in business and with clients. Never forget how hard it can be to forge a new client relationship and how easy it can be to lose one. It’s not just about plans, products, companies to me, it’s always been about people and relationships. People can choose to change who they want to do business with at any time for any reason they want. Thank your clients often for the privilege of doing business with them. We sure do.

Twittersheep is one of those does one thing service websites. Twitter has a lot of those, oddly enough. Just go there type in the twitter name you are interested in and wait for the result. It will show you a tag cloud of each Twitter follower’s bio section. Here is mine, taken (presumably?) from 1,600+ followers.

Interesting that so many people are following me using the words ‘social’ and ‘media’ in their bios. This either proves the words are cliched or reinforces that my comment last week about Twitter being a lot about those who are into Twitter and those type of services. Some readers will note that, blogging aside if you count that anyway, I haven’t fully embraced social media to date. I am planning to try and dive into this space and experiment with the 2009 reboot of our offline business, but not there yet.

Being nitpicky, the name of the service bugs me a bit. I don’t think the folks kind enough to follow my occasional Twitter update would like being referred to as sheep. Not sure being ‘part of the flock’ is flattering either. But hey, this is a long way from the dumbest named services on the web.

For readers active on Twitter, what are the prominent keywords for your Twitter followers? Note: if you have a lot of followers (like thousands) it may take a long, long time to process. I tried one Twitterer with tens of thousands of followers and it was still processing after the time it took to write this entire post. If you take a screenshot you can use BB tags to share the picture in the comments area (e.g [img=path_to_img]) below. Go ahead, give it a try. I’m curious if the tags social media comes up prominently for many others. Guessing the answer is yes.

Dave Fleet republished with permission Doc Kane’s curious take on why he thinks more businesses are getting into Twitter than blogs which boils down to blogging taking more time and effort:

Unlike many other forms of new technology, one does not need to be a tech whiz to get up and running on Twitter - and this is a huge advantage over blogging.

Huge advantage? I wonder about that. It takes much less time to craft 140 character maximum updates than write a blog post, no argument there, but what about the other time Twitter takes that blogging doesn’t? The time to track, follow and reply to updates from others you follow? The time to find new and add new followers or remove those who are disruptive?

I think Twitter is a bit overstated in terms of long term business value. It’s a lot more useful than I originally thought and have since taken that criticism back, but it’s not something that every business or even most businesses that require an online presence absolutely must be involved with to help their business grow and succeed.

And, despite my affection for them, blogs aren’t absolutely required either.

Twitter as the relationship builder for, well, Twitterers

Sure, Twitter is great for building relationships with those who are into Twitter. But is that demographic vital to your business? I can safely say I’ve never had one client mention Twitter to me – ever – in our offline business. We have done business with plenty of young, old and middle-aged folks. I mentioned Twitter to a salesman trying to pitch yellow page ads to me and you’d have thought I was an alien.

Reality check.

Twitter is a massive river, flowing fast, free and wild and untamed at times. An online comparison I’ve made several times is a gigantic IRC chatroom with comments aplenty. Some of this activity river is caught by Google, but quite a bit isn’t. If you want to get something out there very fast, Twitter works great. If you want to follow along with feedback on a topic or event in real time, especially if folks are using hashtags like #topic_keyword to group, Twitter is a functional tool.

But Twitter sucks when it comes to the past.

Yeah, you can search through past tweets, but if they are stale beyond a few days or weeks, or in some busy twitterers case a few hours, it isn’t as useful. You can retweet and try and start up an old discussion, but that doesn’t work too well. And what about search engines? Something every business should care about because if people can’t find your business and you, how are you going to do business?

I started a blog for the reboot of our insurance business, but haven’t gotten setup with Twitter yet. Am I doing things backwards? I don’t think so. I wanted to make sure our new website got ranked in the search engines ASAP. Commenting on and/or through Twitter might make that happen if somebody blogged one of my Tweets, but it would be faster to just setup a blog and write an introduction post.

Here’s the funny thing: I didn’t even get my first blog post written and Google had already indexed the blog. The blog isn’t even linked off the home page of the site yet (bad, I know, but I’m not happy with the design yet, long story). Wonder if I had setup a Twitter account and made a few tweets referencing the site and see if the tweets got into Google faster?

Here’s a humorous aside. I showed my first offline business blog post from Saturday to a couple different friends. One loved my introductory blog post entitled, Saturday Morning Insurance Fever and another remarked that it was “too personal.” Since we are in a small town and our insurance agency has a personal feel, I’m ok with things being a little more personal in tone. I think the blog format, even for a business, works better in a less polished, but still professional tone. I’m hoping to post more informational pieces related to the insurance world going forward, but when you start a blog out and realize that some people reading might not know what a blog even is, it makes you go hmm. I need to show this first post and the blog in general to some clients and get their feedback. It’s on the to-do list, believe me.

Back to Twitter. The same friend who gave me the feedback on my first blog post that it was too personal has been using Twitter for his new online business Merchant’s Mirror (MM). He seems really excited about how Twitter is working for him. Allowing him to communicate with people in real time. I’m not completely certain how great it has been for generating business for MM so far.

My friend, Ben, is also blogging through his business site. I checked how many updates the Merchant’s Mirror blog has had since the year started? Three. Decided to check Google and see if I could find his “Merchant’s  Mirror goes live!” post. Indeed, it was the second result. Interesting that the tag for ‘live’ was ahead of the actual permalink page. Next I went to see what I could find in Google for the MM Twitter account. A search through Google for ‘twitter merchants mirror’ leads to Ben’s personal twitter account, not the business twitter account which is, appropriately located at twitter.com/merchantsmirror 

I was impressed to see that this account had 157 followers already. Well done, Ben. But I think my search engine point is made by trying to find merchant mirror tweets versus blog posts. One is easy to find, the other is not. This is what leads me to Twitter and blogs being two entirely different tools for a business owner. I think if a business can do both, it should. Not every business must have a blog, but those who would like to share information with their clients in a pull instead of push environment as well as help improve the online visibility of the business website blogs are powerful and useful.

Business blogs must be updated on a schedule

But blogs are far from perfect. I think a blog that is seldom updated does very little to help the business. In fact, if the blog gathers too much dust — it’s been too long without an update or updates seem to come with no pattern or reliability — then it could give the impression that nothing is happening at the business. Ouch, that’s the opposite of helpful.

So once you decide to start a blog for your business, then make it part of the workflow to keep it updated. I think it’s even more important for a business blog to be updated than a non-business blog. I don’t mean posting nonsense just so you can say hey, the blog is updated, but if there isn’t activity in your business that you can write about, then it’s not living, it’s dying. If you haven’t got the writing chops then designate blog updates to a trusted employee or partner. Make that individual your reporter and have them send the copy through you before hitting the publish button for the final ok. Make it a priority.

Too much hassle? Then don’t do a blog at all. It’s not the end of the world having an online business presence without a blog. Not having a business Twitter account isn’t either.

Ben’s MM blog is on the edge of not being updated enough to be as useful as it could be to the business. I wonder if a client and/or prospective client with a busy life and business subscribe to something that isn’t updated on a schedule or routine? My feedback for my friend’s business blog is simple: update on a schedule. If the schedule is once every two weeks or once a month, that’s cool, but there should be a minimum amount of updates on a schedule for a business blog.

I’m going to try and have a minimum of once per week updates to our business blog. I have a bunch of different post ideas in my head and need to put them down digitally. If I can update a couple times a week that would be awesome, but my goal will be once a week updates on average.

Effort is everywhere in business

Now getting back to Doc Kane’s comment that blogs require effort. Of course they do. Running a successful business requires lots of effort. Running a successful marketing campaign requires effort. Heck, running a successful business Twitter account requires effort. I’m sure the MM twitter account didn’t get 157 followers with no effort. I’m having a hard time thinking of anything in business that doesn’t require effort. You have to work it.

I plan to get on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn with our business, but am taking it slower. First, I’m starting with a blog and making sure I can schedule regular updates. I’m doing this blog for tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m worried about today too, and I think Twitter would be a handy tool for dealing with today.

For those businesses who don’t have a blog or use Twitter

Before publishing I asked another friend who is in the printing business how things were going. While some of their competitors are laying people off their business is up 30% and they are having a great year. They don’t use Twitter and they don’t have a business blog.

Twitter or blog absolutely required for business? No. Might one or both be helpful for some businesses? Yes. It’s up to you to decide in your own business how well these tools might fit. Be careful about jumping in just to say you have one because it might be better staying on the sidelines.

After the last post on automated related links in posts I mentioned liking the relevancy provided by the Zemanta service and promised to check into the service in greater detail. Bonus: Andraz the Zemanta CTO stopped by in the comment section and answered a few questions which piqued my curiosity further. I like seeing company executives and reps out responding to blog posts, being transparent about their service. Andraz promised more features were on the way as backed up by the active Zemanta GetSatisfaction page. I’m guessing he’ll dig the info in this post for his team which is loaded with wish list items to make Zemanta a killer application.

Important note: the spam category placement is not intended to imply that I think Zemanta in any way spams anybody, rather I’ve noticed their service is being used by some spam blogs and splogs. There are lots of legitimate tools that are being abused/used by spammers, this is not meant to be nor should it be construed as condemnation of the Zemanta service.

I downloaded the Zemanta Windows Live Writer plugin and have been experimenting with using on a few posts at our group blog, VTOReality.com (e.g Anarchy Online 30 day free offer expires December 31, 2008). There are Zemanta plugins available for self-hosted WordPress, wordpress.com, Blogger and more, but I won’t be covering those here.

What Zemanta does

Think of Zemanta as an almost real time blogging research assistant. On GetSatisfaction they self-describe as:

Contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again.

Imagine having somebody — or something — that sits beside you while you write posts and presents you with ongoing number of choices for adding external content to your blog posts like: pictures from Flickr, Wikipedia entries, homepage links, links to related stories around the web, company info, map locations and more. 

Above you’ll see a picture of what it’s like working in Windows Live Writer with the Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer active in the middle. Along the right is a full-size screenshot of only the Zemanta pane. 

Wish list #1: Allow width resizing of Zemanta pane in Windows Live Writer.

The Zemanta pane is either open or closed by clicking on the two right arrows (<< and >> respectively). When writing I tend to want as much space as possible, but found that I liked the idea of having this pane open a little bit. This brings me to my next wishlist item.

Wish list #2: let users customize what sources and types show in the Zemanta pane

For example, maybe I only want to see pictures from Flickr. And maybe only pictures licensed for commercial use. There is a Zemanta filter option but it’s not clear how to use that to only retrieve commercial licensed ok pictures. If that is possible, then please somebody tell me how? Most of the plugins I’ve seen for showing related pictures don’t include this very important option. This blog has advertisements, turns a profit, and thus is considered commercial use by many TOS so a tool that shows me non-commercial licensed images is useless here.

Also maybe I don’t ever want to see links by Wikipedia or links to posts made by resources I already use or feel are too common. Then there are certain times I want to see only related content from sources in my OPML list. 

Wish list #3: increase number of sources from 160 to 500+ and include feature to allow to only draw from these sources

Lightbulb flashes went off in my head when I learned you could add your own list of sources, but was quickly disappointed to learn only a maximum of 160 sources are currently allowed. This comes up short for the number of individual sources used at VTOR and the number of current sources which I pull for this blog is over 600 RSS feeds alone, not counting my network of Twitter and Friendfeed contacts. We haven’t even gotten into StumbleUpon, digg or the many other places one can find stuff that encourages them to write a blog post.

I’m not expecting Zemanta to cater to users like Scoble who pulls from tens of thousands sources, but there lies a middle road between that extreme and 160. That’s where I’m at anyway and hazard a guess that plenty of other blog writers fit this demographic. Please let me know otherwise in the comments if you have less than 160 sources including Twitter, Friendfeed. I doubt many do that are blogging regularly these days.

As I’m writing this it occurred to me one could create a plugin mashup using the Y! context checker and provide those results from their own sources checked say once every few minutes or so. This would give the ability to draw from a specific source list much greater than 160. A toggle could be used for pictures or external articles giving very similar functionality to Zemanta. I wonder if some enterprising developer has already done the lifting here?

Wish list #4: Fix Windows Live Writer (WLW) plugin stability issues and allow easy disabling/removing of WLW plugin

If this wishlist were in order of importance, this would be #1. During the writing of this post with the Zemanta plugin activated, WLW crashed multiple times. Before activating the Zemanta plugin, I rarely encountered WLW crashes like this so I’m led to believe Zemanta was the culprit. Indeed, I exited the Zemanta plugin and finished the rest of this post and it never crashed again. Here are the errors received:

Obviously the worst kind of blog helper imaginable would be one that came and shut you down in the middle of writing something.

Fortunately during each crash I could save before the application needed to be restarted and my work-in-progress was safe. This is where Zemanta as my blog assistant got fired. I tried to disable the plugin in WLW. When restarting after the plugin being disabled it still starts up in the middle pane. Huh? This needs to be fixed ASAP. When something is marked as disabled it should not fire upon application restart. I exited again and uninstalled from add/remove programs in Windows. I saw a complaint on GetSatisfaction that another user had to use RevoUninstaller (freeware) to purge the Zemanta installation files completely. This type of once we’re installed we don’t leave on uninstall behavior is totally unacceptable and borderline adware tactic. Fix this now.

Wish list #5: scrap the Terms of Service requirement to use the Zemanta reblog image service link and allow something more (better) customized

I don’t see myself using Zemanta on this blog for the other wishlist items mentioned but the Zemanta TOS requiring me to use their button in every post that I use anything showing in their interface is a big reason to say thanks but no thanks. I wonder how many are using Zemanta to find related content and get angles are skipping fulfilling the TOS requirement which clearly says this is not optional.

Here’s the Terms of Service quote, Zemanta users:

• Service Description. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content on your site or within your application, you agree to display the Zemanta Icon logo.
• Service Icon/Logo Display. When deploying or utilizing Zemanta derived content, you agree not to make any changes to the shape and size of the Zemanta logo, or other Zemanta created content
• Service User Interface Display. When a reader clicks on the Zemanta icon logo you agree to hyperlink that logo directly to our home page at http://www.zemanta.com, or other appropriate page within our site.

NOTE: even though Zemanta screenshots are shown in this post and the review is about the service absolutely no links or content was used from the interface, so you won’t see that image link here as required by the TOS. In fact during the writing of this post I uninstalled the plugin as mentioned above.

Zemanta, just get rid of the TOS requirement altogether. Credit link in a blog post like this should be more than sufficient as a site-wide mention of the service. This post will be spidered by Google and will remain as long as this site — or your service — is live. There is no reason for me to promote Zemanta in every single post where Zemanta was somewhat helpful. That would be the equivalent of mentioning a human blog assistant’s name in every post even when it’s not relevant. It starts to feel kind of spammy to me, which leads to another concern I had about Zemanta. And one that I voiced to their CTO in the comments about my familiarity with their service to date.

I’ve noticed a considerable number of sites using posts from this blog as related links on very spammy/sploggy blogs and trackbacking in from those posts. This just sullies the Zemanta brand. It also could lead to search engines punishing these unrelated, forced Zemanta links someday. The lines between paying somebody to put up a link without rel=nofollow and bartering for the link (which is what Zemanta is doing) are fuzzy, IMO.  I’m not saying that Zemanta is spamming anybody or is a haven for spammers nor that they can control whether or not spammers are using their services, but it’s an issue worth mentioning.

Andraz pointed out in the comments that these brand name companies are using Zemanta: Real Networks official blog, HP Marketing Blogs, Chris Brogan, some start-up CEOs, Geekdad blog at Wired.com, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want to deprive Zemanta any credit for being a blog helper — links here and there where relevant are fine, just not in every single post. Adding to that I strongly dislike where these links point to: the Zemanta reblogging web interface.

This thing is an eyesore from a design and usability standpoint.

Not sure if it’s the hard to read text (writers need their eyes!) or the fact that we’re being sandwiched into a dual pane and then being asked to give Zemanta our blog login credentials. It’s all around fail to me from a blog owner perspective. Why should I send other bloggers off to use that? Most bloggers already have their own blog interface they are happy using. At the very least give me the ability to customize what that link does and/or provide the interface directly on this blog at least. It would be awesome if Zemanta would allow Zemanta registered users to redirect that link to their blog interface of choice: e.g launch windows live writer with that text highlighted or Firefox plugin and so on.

Zemanta still the most useful that I’ve seen in this class of tools

Despite Zemanta’s shortcomings mentioned in this Hmm Review, it is the best I’ve seen/used to date at what it does. Much better and contextually related than Sphere. If Zemanta fills the wishlist items mentioned here, I’d strongly recommend this tool to blogging friends and probably use more myself. As it stands now, the Windows Live Writer plugin needs too much work to be added to my workflow. Might be worth reviewing the other plugin options to see if they are better. As always, I invite you to agree or disagree below. Grade: C+

A week or so ago the AJAX-powered service usernamecheck.com was all the rage in the various tech rags for being able to check a bunch of different websites (all shown below) to see if a username was already taken. I held off blogging it at that time because the service was crippled by the attention, but the tide has passed and today you can reliably get there (knock on wood).  Before you wonder if I succumbed to the lemming blogger bug (definition: to blog something just because everybody else is doing it) read the next paragraph.

The first time I saw the service I thought immediately of a second, more appealing use: to explore some sites/services you might not have heard about before. This is something I enjoy doing online and if it’s something not blogged too much already, can generate interesting blog posts. If you find an entertaining or useful service it can be like opening a present at Christmas.

With that in mind, I looked through this list and was able to explore the 10 following sites/services (links lead to registration page, where possible):

1. Vox - YABS? (Yet Another Blogging Service). This one looks a little too familiar although PC Mag gave it high marks and it "works seamlessly" (whatever that means) with sites like Amazon, YouTube and Flickr. The web is littered with third party blog hosting services. Your Vox member name is not unique, which is kind of different. Registration email confirmation required.
2. visualizeus - picture bookmarking service. The URL is a mess in a del.icio.us sort of way, fortunately the dot com redirects. Uses YAFBE (Yet Another Firefox Bookmarking Extension). Registration email confirmation required.
3. Posterous - YABS with a slight twist: post by email from your confirmed email address to post@posterous.com and it blogs it. Your email can have photos, videos, MP3 as attachments and Posterous will include in your blog post at yourname.posterous.com.
4. Meemi - is there an English version of this site? Could have used Google Translate to help, but I passed on registering for this one. YAFSIDU (Yet Another Foreign Site I Don’t Understand)
5. koornk - YATC (Yet Another Twitter Clone). Bonus points for using OpenID but didn’t see anything that breaks this one from the pack. I asked my Twitter friends/followers if there was something nicer to say about this service. Registration email confirmation required.
6. isfingawesome - self-described as mixtape + microblog, my non-awesome description: YABS+YATC. Bonus points for default profile message that reads: "This profile is completely void of anything awesome" and the screenshot to the right, save the uncapitalized ‘d’ in my name (I’m joking, friends, just joking). Their logo contest has borne some cool fruit.
7. iLikeLoveIt - ??? Where is this ??? Link from usernamecheck bounced back to usernamecheck.
8. hexday - interesting concept. Choose a different color every day and see if herd mentality generates different color patterns. I like this one.

    
   I went psychedlic today: fuschia. What color would you pick to describe today? Would have probably chosen red yesterday for the history drop in the DOW (-777.7).

9. hellotxt - a microblogging aggregator, think a bunch of twitter clones (++YATC++), although they also aggregate Friendfeed and some networks. I tend to like aggregators as long as they aren’t sploggy-like because they save time. Didn’t see any ad play here which is good. Could be useful to heavy microblogging users but it’s a bust for me because I don’t want to share my microblogging passwords with it. API keys no problem, passwords are a big no-no.
10. FunnyOrDie - watched several videos from this site and might have even blogged one or two (didn’t check archives). Funny stuff, good production value and celebrity comedians. Prepare to laugh. Registration email confirmation required.

Note to owners/developers/webmasters of these sites that may appear in the comment/trackback section below: My brief overview comments above were based on signing up (except for Meemi and iLikeLoveIt) and looking around for a few minutes not an exhaustive review. Did I miss something cool about your service? Tell me about it below and I’ll be happy to look further. Call this the second chance saloon if you will.

Beyond that, save for hexday and FunnyOrDie, I wasn’t that interested in the 10 sites above. Not all prospecting is fruitful; sometimes gold, mostly dust. There are good services though in the overall usernamecheck list, so look through that.

If you compare the list in the screenshot to the list above, you’ll see not every site is duplicated that showed as ‘available.’ Commercial services are in there like Smugmug that I know about and have chosen not to pay to use and/or have used in the past (TypePad).

There is also some bugs with the usernamecheck service, like Virb where I already have an account (’TDavid’ not ‘tdavid’) and diigo which does not have this username available and is the reason I had to register ‘tdavids’ instead.

So keep in mind just because a site/service in usernamecheck might show your name as ‘available’ it might be taken and vice versa.

Happy exploring to you!

Talk about a sceptic start to the morning with pun very much intended in the title. I woke up and learned that my name looks like ‘toilet’ when using the Side View Generator.

Is it worse than my 18 year old son’s name Jowlstar from the side which might be clitoris. Or how about a few friends in IRC? Lestat is like defect. Darkmoon = burglary. JohnnyRS = dishonor.  Forser = terror. My lovely wife Kara = fear.  MakeYouGoHmm wouldn’t fit, so I tried the alternate spelling MakeUGoHmm and that looks like omnivorous from the side. I’m not sure how accurate this tool is, especially since names are limited in size, but it made me smile. Hope it does the same for you.

Added this to the list of the 43+ other web generators. Hat tip to Ben Parr.

If you can’t draw — or remain graphically challenged like me (remember CRink = crappy ink) — but always wished you could make a comic starring you and friends look no further than Bitstrips. Using the Flash-based menu allows you to quickly and easily choose different expressions and build your own comic book character. Here’s mine:

I’m sure an artist could do better, my face isn’t as fleshy, but this was my first effort. Creating your character is the start. Next you can piece together a comic by point, click and type, preview, publish and share with friends.

Below is my first comic effort using Bitstrip: ‘Going Hmm bananas’

Don’t gag, but there is also a social function which allows you to add your friends. An interesting approach: when you go to add friends you can make a comic book character of what they look like. This could be fun!

Could be a creative way to reply to other blog posts. I’m a fan of comics and have written about other web comics sites like stripcreator in the past and this one could catch fire because it’s easy to use, intuitive and is one of the few services that makes sense in the crowded social network pool.

Oh, and you know the drill: go ahead and add me as your Bitstrips friend.

We haven’t used Network Solutions for many years for domain searching. This morning I learned what the word frontrunning meant in Mashable’s coverage of a class action lawsuit aimed at Network Solutions and ICANN:

Frontrunning is the practice in which users would look up a domain name via the registration-site WHOIS, and would appear available, but every other internet registrar would show the names as unavailable, and registered to Network Solutions, thus forcing the user to purchase the domain from them.

If what this lawsuit alleges is true, this is a dirty anti-consumer tactic and punishment should be severe.

Remember, this is the same outfit that once upon a time was charging $35 a year for domain registration when others were half or less the price. I’m not going to use this post to recommend other domain registrars, but there are plenty of viable alternatives to Network Solutions. These days you can register a domain for $5-8 per year and some hosting companies offer free domain registration if you pay for hosting with them.