If you’re a semi-retired professional who wants to build a consulting business, and you’re not an internet whiz, what kind of web site will really help clients find you? And how can you easily build and maintain a useful professional network?

My dad, Jack Gahran, is a semi-retired management consultant who knows many other semi-retired professionals. Today he asked me to look over the brand-new web site of a colleague of his, to offer some advice as to how it might be improved in ways that will build this person’s business.

The site is a pretty standard brochure site — a few static pages of basic information. It had a nice but simple design, and the content seemed to use keywords appropriately — both of which help search engines like Google index the site well. However, Google generally isn’t very interested in small brochure sites that are infrequently updated and don’t attract many inbound links.

I offered my dad’s colleague four basic tips for improving his site in ways that will make it much more visible in search engines, and thus more likely to attract inbound links from other sites (another thing Google rewards).

I get asked for this kind of advice a lot, so I figured I’d make a blog post out of it, so everyone can benefit.

Here’s what I told him…
1. Ask Google to start indexing your site

Eventually Google will find your site, index it, and start listing it in search results. But Google has a lot of sites to index, so it may take a long time for them to get around to indexing your site.

It helps to tell Google you’re there and ask them to list you, rather than passively waiting for Google to find you. Submit your site to Google.

You should also submit your site to Yahoo.

2. Add fresh content to your site often, the easy way: Blog

So far, your site appears to be mainly an online brochure. That’s someone useful for people who already know to look you up online, but it won’t attract much attention from search engines — and therefore won’t get much traffic from people who don’t already know who you are and where to find your site.

Search engines mainly care about timeliness and relevance. There is an easy way to make sure your site provides that: Add a blog to your site.

I noticed that right now, your site’s “news and events” section has no real content. I’d suggest turning that part of your site into a weblog (or “blog”) so you can easily add fresh items to the site on your own, without having to rely on a web designer to upload the content for you.

…You don’t have to call it a blog if you don’t like that term, you could just call it news and views, which would give you more flexibility in what sort of information you can post there.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: After discussing the following tip in the comments below, I decided that it’s better to integrate your existing brochure space into a blog, rather than vice versa. Read full instructions on how to get this done.

Talk to your web designer about integrating a blog into your site. You should set up the account with the blogging service in your own name, so you maintain control of it. But after you have the account it’s fine to get help with setup.

Once the blog is in place you can easily (right through your web browser) add fresh items to your site, and their titles and introductions will appear on that page, with the most recent item listed first.

You could write not just about news and events, but also share your insight or tips about things that might interest the people you want to reach — including answering common questions they have related to your areas of expertise. These can be really short pieces: just 1-3 paragraphs is enough. No need to write long articles.

The point is to post a new item at least a couple of times a month (of course, more often is always better, but you can start slow). Make sure the title and the first sentence of each post include words that you think people who need your services would search for.

If you add a tool like a blog that makes it easy for you to add fresh content to your site on your own whenever you want, over time you’ll grow the kind of site that Google likes, indexes often, and rewards with traffic.

Even better, when you regularly post fresh content to your site, that gives other people a good reason to link to your site. Inbound links are very important to Google. When people link to deeper content on your site (like specific blog posts, not just your home page), Google thinks your site is more useful and is more likely to position you better in search results.

Oh, and: If your web designers say they can’t easily add a blog to your site, they’re wrong. (CORRECTION: Actually, trying to add a blog to a static site is hard, which is why I now recommend moving your site into a blog.) You can create a blog using a free service like WordPress.com and integrate that into any site. Once it’s set up, then you just keep posting to it.

3. Offer an e-mail newsletter, the easy way

It’s always easier for you to go to people than to expect them to always come to you. For this reason, many people still prefer e-mail to the web as a way to maintain business relationships.

Dad mentioned that he suggested you offer an e-mail newsletter for your past clients and other key contacts, and I agree, that’s a great way to maintain those relationships. However, you can get even more mileage out of this effort by using a blog to create your e-mail newsletter for you automatically.

If you decide to add a blog to your site (as I suggested above), you can use some features of a free service from Google called Feedburner to turn the items you post to your blog into items in an e-mail newsletter which interested people can easily subscribe to. That way, they can see your latest items even if they don’t remember to visit your site.

Set up a free account on Feedburner, and follow their instructions to connect your site’s blog (they call it “burning your feed”) to feedburner. Then, under their “publicize” section, select “e-mail subscriptions” and follow their instructions. You might want to get your Web developer to help you with this process, but I strongly suggest setting up the Feedburner account yourself, in your own name, so you maintain control of it.

4. Link to your LinkedIn public profile

Dad already suggested that you get active with LinkedIn, a popular online service for professional networking, and I agree it’s very helpful — especially for independent professionals.

One useful option that LinkedIn offers is the ability to create a public version of your LinkedIn profile that anyone can view, whether they’re on LinkedIn or not. (Here’s mine)

I’d recommend completing your LinkedIn profile as fully as possible, and then posting a link to it from your site’s contact page. Then, make sure you keep your profile updated.

…Those are my basic tips, intended for someone with little to no experience with online media. I tried to strike a balance between empowering him to make truly effective improvements in his online outreach, while recognizing that he probably won’t want to spends a whole lot of time online, or know how to use social media.

So even though I could have suggested many social media options for this person beyond LinkedIn, I don’t think that would be a good fit for his current skill levels and interests. Later on he could grow into that. But right now, I think it’s more important for him to create a more effective home base on the web.

I didn’t link to his site because I wanted to give him a chance to work on it first.

What do you think of these suggestions? Are they appropriate for the situation I outlined? Any disagreements, corrections, or suggestions to add? Please comment below.

I’m doing this as a pilot test for a new professional service I’d like to start offering: Great live event coverage.

In my experience, most online event coverage isn’t so great. A few folks will be tweeting or blogging in several places, some hashtags will be used, but it’s all rather confusing and inconsistent to follow. Also, a lot of people tend to tweet items like “Jane Doe is speaking at this session now.” Uh-huh… AND….?

Liveblogging/tweeting has turned out to be a real strength of mine — I’m good at it, and I enjoy it. I’ve also had the good fortune to collect a sizable Twitter following among folks whose interests in media, business, and other fields overlap with mine — and who enjoy my particular blend of reporting, analysis, and attitude. (Or at least I guess they do, because every time I do live event coverage my Twitter posse swells noticeably and those folks tend to stick around afterward.)

I do a lot of live event coverage via Twitter and CoverItLive. For instance, earlier this month for my client the Reynolds Journalism Institute I liveblogged/tweeted J-Lab’s Fund My Media Startup workshop at the 2009 Online News Association conference.

So, being a longtime entrepreneur always on the lookout for new opportunities, I’m looking for ways to offer live event coverage as a service for my clients. Today’s event is an experiment on this front.

I want to figure out how this service could work in a way that would appeal to my Twitter posse, maintain my integrity and independence, and provide value to clients who’d pay for it.

Here are some of the issues I’m wrestling with, that I’d welcome your thoughts on…

QUALITY AND RELEVANCE

I wouldn’t accept just any live-coverage gig. It has to be a good fit for my interests, and those of my Twitter followers. So I’d be concentrating on events in areas such as:

• Media and journalism
• Energy
• Environment
• Government transparency and civic engagement/action
• Key media technologies (mobile, mapping, databases, collaboration, etc.)
• Social trends/dynamics (including race, gender, sexuality)
• Offbeat entertainment (science fiction, indy arts & music, strange festivals, zombies, etc.)

INDEPENDENCE

I’m a lousy lapdog. I don’t generally go out of my way to be rude or snarky — especially when someone has invited me to their event and given me a platform. But I do have attitude, a sense of humor, and I say what I think. I must always feel free in my event coverage to disagree, question, criticize, or challenge.

The people who hire me to cover their events need to understand that at some point I will say something they won’t be 100% comfortable with. I am not their mouthpiece. I am providing a service of visibility and engagement. That’s always going to be a bit uncomfortable. In fact, that’s the point.

So, hiring me is not like hiring a PR agency to make you look good. It’s more like issuing a press pass — but knowing that there will be consistent coverage throughout the event. I’ll also work to make sure the online audience gets represented in the live event, by posing questions and comments on their behalf.

TRANSPARENCY

Here’s the background on today’s gig, so you know what the terms of this coverage are.

Doyle Albee, president of Metzger Associates (a PR/communications firm based in Boulder, CO) has hired me to cover this event. I chose to do this because:

1. Doyle is a cool guy and a friend of mine from Boulder. He appreciates my perspective, even though we regularly disagree. He likes how I cover events and wants me to just do what I do — which includes allowing me to question or critize what happens at the event, if I see fit to do so.
2. Dave Taylor, another longtime Boulder friend of mine, is co-leading the event. Doyle and Dave are both great presenters, and I learn much from observing them.
3. The lineup of speakers looks pretty good.
4. This isn’t a mob scene. While I like covering events, major mob scenes like South by Southwest tend to put me on sensory/info overload pretty quickly, and leave me quaking in a fetal position. I prefer covering events for small-to-medium groups where I can get a real sense of what participants think, how peoples’ thinking evolves, and which takeaways are most meaningful.
5. It’s not summertime. Vegas summers slay me. Today is a pleasant, cool early autumn day, more my style.

Full disclosure: Metzger has paid my expenses and waived my fee to participate in this event. I did not ask for a fee for this coverage since I’m fine-tuning this service offer. However, for future live event coverage with this or other clients I will get paid a professional rate for the service.

I decided to not ask for a fee for this event because I want to engage my Twitter posse in a discussion about how I can do event coverage as a professional (fee-based) service in a way that works well for my Twitter followers. That is, I didn’t want to start selling this service before talking to my tweeps about how I can make this work for them.

My liveblog is appearing on Metzger’s site, and I’ll be cross-tweeting to Metzger’s own Twitter account. So while I might occasionally have something to critize, since they’re opening up their platforms for me to use I’ll be civil. Unless something truly egregious happens — and in that case, I’ll still be civil, but I’ll say what I mean.

Anyway, that’s the general plan. What are your thoughts, opinions, questions, criticisms? Please comment below, or tweet me @agahran, or e-mail me.

Again, this is an experiment. I’m not expecting everyone to be happy, or everything to run smoothly. But I do expect to learn a lot. Let me know what you think.

It makes my brain hurt.

This video from EpipheoStudios.com nails exactly why I hate e-mail, and how Google Wave is trying to solve the problems of e-mail.

YouTube – What is Google Wave?.

I don’t know whether Google Wave will actually solve these problems. But dammit, at least they’re trying to tackle the problem. And they have the development power and user base to stand a chance of pulling it off.

A friend has sent me an invite. I haven’t received it yet. But when I do, I’ll give it a try. UPDATE: I just got my Google Wave invitation today! I’ll get a chance to play with it over the weekend. I expect it to be rough. (OK, everyone who’s whining about it: rough is what “alpha testing” is all about!) And hopefully I’ll start to glimpse an end to the e-mail madness.

trim x

RIP, Tr.im

UPDATE AUG 12: Tr.im reports that they’re not dead yet. Hey, congrats to them for working something out, at least for now. But still: As Aron Pilhofer notes in the comments below, relying on any third-party for a core functionality represents a significant risk, so I still stand by my advice in this post.

Yesterday the popular URL shortening service Tr.im abruptly bit the dust — begging the question of whether existing Tr.im shortlinks would suddenly break. (Tr.im says its existing links will continue to function at least through Dec. 31, 2009.)

This doesn’t affect me much, since I rarely used Tr.im — but others relied heavily on Tr.im and its statistics for how its shortlinks were used. Bit.ly, which also tracks shortlink statistics, is now Twitter’s default link shortener. PaidContent recently covered how difficult link shortener service business is. Which means that other link shorteners could fall down and go boom at any time.

So if you really must rely on shortlinks for any reason, it probably makes more sense than ever to create or control your own link shortener…

Despite their difficulties, shortlinks continue to grow more important to how people communicate online — not just because of Twitter’s 140-character-per-post limit, but because of the continuing popularity of e-mail, forums, and print media.

Long, unwieldy URLs still break or truncate surprisingly often in e-mail software — especially when people read their e-mail on mobile devices. They simply suck for sharing links via SMS text messaging. They also can screw up the layout of online forums and blog comments. And some print publishers include shortlinks in their content or ads to make it easier for people to type in URLs that they encounter in print. (Shortlinks don’t matter as much for links from web pages, blog posts, or HTML e-mail where you can specify a complete destination URL without displaying it in all its convoluted ugliness.)

As I wrote earlier in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits, hosted URL shortening services present several challenges of their own:

• Reliability. If a shortening service you use goes down or dies, your links to your content would cease to function.
• Security. If the shortener you use gets hacked, your existing links could end up pointing to different destinations — even to perpetrate phishing attacks on would-be visitors to your site.
• Branding. When you use a hosted shortener service, the links you create visually promote their brand — not yours.
• Breaking the web Tech bloggers such as Joshua Schacter have written about how redirects such as shortlinks can impair how well the web works.

In theory you’d like your shortlinks to continue working forever. But judging by how they get used, the vast majority of shortlinks attract the vast majority of their traffic within a few days or weeks of distribution. Still, you never know when something you published, tweeted, or e-mailed in months or years past will suddenly regain popularity or relevance. That’s why shortlink tracking is handy.

For all these reasons, if you routinely publish shortlinks to your content (via social media, forums, e-mail, SMS, and other means), it might make sense to build your own URL shortener, rather than rely on a hosted service.

Amazon.com recently did this. It’s apparently a fairly straightforward technical task — perhaps not always trivial, but very doable for any news site. It doesn’t necessarily involve changing your existing URL regime for published pages. Rather, it’s about generating short redirect URLs that point to your pages.

But if you’re using an open-source CMS like WordPress, shortener modules probably already exist. If your CMS uses a MySQL database, you might be able to use the open-source software Kissa.be to roll your own link shortener. (NetHakz explains how.)

Gary Love, director of product development for the Houston Chronicle, noted in a comment to my Tidbits post:

“For many [sites], the work of creating a URL shortener might have already been done as a side effect of creating canonical user- and SEO-friendly URLs. For instance, Drupal sites allow clean URLs to be created, but it all falls back on IDs in the background. A module like Global Redirect makes sure all content goes to the canonical URL.”

Also, consider buying a short version of your domain. This helps you promote brand while preserving brevity, and also makes tracking proliferation of your redirects easier. Look especially for non-U.S. top-level domains that might work. For instance, the Roanoke Times might secure this domain from Spain for its shortlinks: rtim.es

Once your custom shortener is in place, you could use it in a couple of ways:

• When publishing shortlinks to your own content, make sure you include the shortlinks generated by YOUR system, not the shortlinks generated by a Twitter client application like Tweetdeck. This way, it’s likely that the shortlink with your domain would get copied in any retweets — and thus propagate not just your content, but your brand.
• If your site offers link sharing tie-ins like “e-mail this”, “tweet this”, or “share this” with each content item, make sure your own shortlinks (not the original long URL) gets copied into those recommendations. That will make it even easier for the people who encounter those shared links to re-share them via their own preferred channels.

…Of course, this strategy won’t prevent site visitors from creating their own shortlinks to your content via their preferred services. But that’s okay. You’ll at least retain some control over the reliability, security, and branding of links to your content from social media and e-mail.

I’m an avid Kindle user, mostly because I’ve come to hate paper and need to save space. I love the device, I think it’s a great reading experience and it suits my lifestyle — even though Amazon’s choice to rescind my George Orwell anthology a few weeks ago was simply beyond parody. (Lesson: Back up all your Kindle content as soon as it arrives on your machine. I put Orwell back on my Kindle simply by copying it from my backup.)

In the last couple of weeks some significant problems have developed concerning non-Amazon content for my Kindle — specifically PDFs I’ve been trying to reformat for Kindle reading, and digests sent to my Kindle from my Instapaper account. In late July both of those services stopped working for me entirely. That’s a big problem for me. Without those services, the Kindle is much less useful to me.

I don’t know whether other Kindle users are having these problems, but I thought I’d explain what I’m experiencing just in case someone has an explanation or solution. I’m working with Kindle support on this, but they said it might take a couple of weeks to resolve.

Here are the details…

I’m a fan of the free service Instapaper, which I use to import to my Kindle content that I’d rather not read on my computer (basically, anything long-format). My Instapaper account is configured to send a daily digest of saved items to my Kindle, as long as I’ve saved a minimum of three items. That worked fine… Until July 25. Since then I’ve received no Instapaper digests on my Kindle, although I’ve continued to save Instapaper items since them.

Also, I often use the service available from Amazon under “Manage my Kindle” to format PDF files for Kindle reading. I’ve found this is perfect for reports and other documents I’d rather read on a Kindle than via laptop or printout. The way this service works is that Amazon designates an e-mail address for your Kindle. When I send e-mail to that address, and attach a PDF file, within a minute or so Amazon sends me a Kindle-formatted version of the file. (You can do that for free if you download it to your computer and transfer via cable to your Kindle, or they’ll ding you $0.15/MB to download wirelessly to your device.)

Since July 21 I’ve tried to format several PDFs this way. I e-mail them to Amazon, and nothing comes back. No file, no bounce message or error message. It just vanishes.

I just talked to a gentleman in Kindle support. He didn’t have an answer, but is looking into it. He has no idea what might be interfering with my attempts to reformat PDFs. However, he did say it’s possible that Amazon may have elected to block my incoming digests from Instapaper even though I’ve authorized Instapaper to send files to my Kindle for months!

He’s checking on whether Instapaper was blocked from my account, but it could take a couple of weeks to get an answer from the Kindle tech team on that.

While it’s possible these two problems are unrelated, it’s conspicuous that they developed simultaneously. The effect is that right now the only content I can get onto my Kindle is content acquired through Amazon’s Kindle store: purchased or free books, sample chapters, my Technology Review subscription, the Amazon Daily newsletter, etc. It’s weird.

Has anyone else had this Kindle problem lately? What was the cause, and how did you resolve it? Please comment below. I’ll be posting updates to this issue.

UPDATE: Right after I posted this article, David Herrold told me (very nicely) that you can indeed turn device updates on for individual Twitter friends via the Twitter interface or by texting “on username” to 40404 from the phone number you’ve connected to your Twitter account. So you don’t need to convert RSS to SMS to get text updates from specific Twitter users. Still, the strategy I outline below is helpful for following Twitter search queries and hashtags via text messaging.

Technically, Twitter is designed with that frustrating 140-character limit so it can work even over the barest of bare-bones cell phones via text messaging. But even so, twittering by text messaging is cumbersome and a little financially risky.

A colleague e-mailed me with a Twitter question. She wants to use her mobile phone to send and receive tweets via SMS text messaging, but doesn’t have a data plan for her phone. (Hey, there’s a recession on, you might have heard.)

Yes, you can indeed read and post to Twitter solely via text messaging if you choose. I do think it’s a good idea to get set up to post to Twitter via text. You never know when you might need it.

The tricky part lies in receiving tweets via text messaging, while controlling costs…

Currently, Twitter only gives you the option to receive (via text message) either all tweets or no tweets from everyone you follow. When you turn “device updates” on from the main settings for your Twitter account, you run the risk of unpredictably running up extra texting charges, depending on the text messaging plan you have with your cell carrier.

Not to mention the annoyance factor of getting pinged every couple of minutes — or more frequently — depending on how many people you follow on Twitter, and how prolific they are.

I realize that there are far more people with bare-bones cell phones out there than who have smartphones or regular internet access. Why shouldn’t these folks be able to follow however many people they want on their Twitter account, while also exercising some control over the amount of text messages they receive from Twitter, to limit cost and annoyance?

I’ve discovered one possible hack to help in this situation.

There are some free services that convert RSS feeds to text messages. A free one I just tried out is Pingie, which I found on Lifehacker.

Every Twitter user’s account gets its own RSS feed. (Here’s mine.) Similarly, any Twitter search query also gets its own feed (like this one for the hashtag #homeless). When you set up a Pingie account, you can add to it any RSS feed. Once you have this set up, when a Twitter user you’ve added to your Pingie account tweets, the tweet goes out on their RSS feed. Pingie sees it, turns it into a text message, and routes it to your cell phone.

So if there are just a few Twitter users whose tweets you really want to get via text, or a few hashtags or search terms you really want to follow, you can use a tool like this to receive just those tweets . This is one way to control texting costs and annoyance.

…It’s not a perfect system, of course.

For instance, if one of your chosen few Twitter-by-text friends decides to post 100 tweets in three hours, you will receive all of them as text messages — and pay for them, depending on your mobile plan.

Also, as far as I can tell, you cannot delete a particular feed from your Pingie account via text message. So if a Twitter friend goes on an unexpected rampage, you probably won’t be able to stop the flood until you can access the Pingie site via a browser. Which could cost you money in the meantime, so there is still some risk.

And with Pingie you must add feeds individually. Depending on how many Twitter users or search terms you want to receive via text, this could be tedious to set up.

Finally, I don’t know how reliable Pingie is over time. I tried it, and it does work — but I don’t know whether it has outages, misses some tweets, or has other glitches or service delays. Also, other RSS-to-text services might offer different features.

Still, a service like Pingie at least makes Twitter less financially risky for people with VERY limited technology, web access, and budgets. A version of it more tailored to meeting that growing need might be surprisingly popular.

For instance, a surprising number of low-income and homeless people have cell phones that are SMS-ready, and also occasionally access the net from public terminals. What if a local social service agency used Twitter to broadcast announcements of services and opportunities, and also to solicit feedback from clients? What if a news organization set up a Twitter account that posts just a couple of headlines daily especially relevant to the working poor, or used Twitter to establish a dialogue with that community? The advantage of doing this via Twitter, rather than simply via direct text messaging, is that the content of these announcements and discussions would be more widely visible and findable as well as accessible.

Giving people more ways to exercise a certain amount of control over how much Twitter by text might cost them could create a whole new market for Twitter, and offer new options to people with scarce resources. And it might help make the Twittersphere a bit more economically diverse — which would be a cultural benefit and useful reality-check, I think. And social media might reflect society just a bit more accurately.

This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.

So please comment below or e-mail me to share your thoughts and questions. Thanks!

To compensate for our government’s human-unfriendly info systems, some people have developed civic info-filtering backup systems: news organizations, activists, advocacy groups, think tanks, etc.

In my opinion, ordinary Americans have come to rely too heavily on these third parties to function as our “democracy radar.” We’ve largely shifted to their shoulders most responsibility to clue us in when something is brewing in government, tell us how we can exercise influence (if at all), and gauge the results of civic and government action.

Taken together, these backup systems generally have worked well enough — but they also have significant (and occasional dangerous) flaws. They’ve got too many blind spots, too many hidden agendas, insufficient transparency, and too little support for timely, effective citizen participation…

In other words, the patchwork network of backup systems often fail to supply enough civic information to precisely those people who are most likely to be involved or affected by civic issues, in ways that engage them and support participation. Also, often the civic info they offer generally reflects the providers’ own agendas, assumptions, habits, and preferences — about which they may or may not be conscious or transparent.

Yes, having these backup civic info systems is certainly better than relying solely on the government’s own information systems — but too often, not by much. And sometimes they can even be much worse.

JUST GIVE ME THE DATA

The Knight Foundation has been supporting some efforts to make civic and public info more user-friendly and direct, like Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock project. This is another third-party civic info “backup system” that aims to provide a more direct experience of civic info. They try (and mostly succeed) to improve upon government communications by enhancing relevance and usability. Everyblock empowers users to search and filter civic info as they choose (at least within a geographic context).

…But there’s a big catch to offering this valuable service: Everyblock must cope with the fact that usually getting raw civic info from government and public sources is a huge pain. It requiring considerable tweaking and maintenance to constantly adapt their “screen scraping” processes.

Screen scraping is a painstaking, cumbersome programming technique. A screen scraper program extracts data from the final display output of another program (what gets shown in, say, your web browser). According to Wikipedia: “The key element that distinguishes screen scraping from regular parsing is that the output being scraped was intended for final display to a human user, rather than as input to another program, and is therefore usually neither documented nor structured for convenient parsing.” That means the whole process is inherently pitfall-prone and inefficient.

Blogger and author Jon Udell nailed the underlying problem of data friction inherent in situations where civic media are forced to resort to screen scraping to obtain public information:

“Data friction can be intentional or not. When it’s intentional, you might have to file a FOIA request to get it. But in a lot of cases, it’s unintentional. The data is public, and intended to be widely seen and used, but isn’t readily reusable.

“…Now it’s time to grease the wheels. Here’s one way that can happen. An enlightened city government can decide to publish [its] data in a reusable way. I’ve written extensively about Washington DC’s groundbreaking DCStat program which does exactly that. I can’t wait to see what happens when EveryBlock goes to Washington.

“But city governments shouldn’t have to go out of their way to provide web-facing data services and feeds. Databases should natively support them. That’s the idea behind Astoria (ADO.NET Services), which is discussed in this interview with Pablo Castro. If the NYC Department of Health had that kind of access layer sitting on top of its [restaurant inspection] database, it wouldn’t put EveryBlock’s screen-scraper out of a job — it would just make that [person's] job a whole lot more interesting and effective.”

This all leads back to why I like what the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is doing: They’re flipping the focus around, to put people’s needs first.

They’re doing this by starting from the question “What kind of information do communities need?” — rather than simply settling for “How can we tweak the badly designed, human-unfriendly entrenched patchwork system of civic information so that it becomes at least slightly less painful or more useful?”

…Well, they’re doing that to a point, anyway. The crucial limitation I see in their approach lies in how the Knight Commission has chosen to define “community.”

(COMING THURSDAY: Part 3, Beyond Geography…)

The main reason I went was because my good friends Susan Mernit and Lisa Williams were presenting the flagship product, WhozAround, from their new company, People’s Software Company. I’ve been watching them endure the TechStars maelstrom this summer, and they pulled through great despite lots of pressure and stresses.

WhozAround is currently a Facebook application in alpha. It’s the first step in their plan to bypass the current communication chaos that ensues whenever two or more people try to agree on a place & time to meet. As Susan said in her presentation today, “Do all those e-mails, IMs, texts, Facebook notifications, and other messages really make getting together easier?” I can answer that with a resounding “NOT!!!”

Here’s Susan giving the presentation:

And Susan and Lisa taking questions from investors:

(Apologies for the crappy images, my iPhone camera isn’t great for that sort of lighting and distance. I was sitting in the balcony.)

I’ll be heading back to the Boulder Theater in a couple of hours for the Tech Cocktails event there:

But some more cool stuff happened today…

Last night I learned that the person who I thought was going to be teaching a video workshop I was arranging for this year’s Society of Environmental Journalists conference (Oct. 17-19, VA Tech, Roanoke) wasn’t going to be able to attend. Ack! So I had to scramble today to find a replacement. And I did, within an hour! Thanks to VA Tech communications professor Ken Garland for volunteering to help! I prefer short-lived crises

Then the mail arrived. It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I got some really great gifts from my family today:

A gorgeous handmade glass necklace from my sister Lynn:

A much-needed new memory card from my brother, the Cub!

A fun book from my parents, who know I need to laugh more:

I’ve got a really cool family Thanks, guys!

Plus, a birthday present I got for myself also arrived: Power to the People, a book by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the very best energy journalist in the business, IMHO. (Could we get him to take over as Secretary of Energy, please?)

Well, that’s all. Just wanted to let folks know that so far it’s been a good day, and I expect that to continue…

Nokia has been running a US TV commercial featuring the world’s most inept magician, to tout its high-end N95 8G phone. How appropriate — because today, Nokia’s high-end US market just went “Poof!”

Apple just announced its new 3G iPhone — and I think it’s most of the way toward being a pro-level tool for journalists and mobloggers. I plan to get one as soon as they become available in early July.

I say “most of the way” because the 3G iPhone still has a glaring omission — no provision for an external full-size keyboard, either Bluetooth or docking. That’s a bummer. I’ve demoed the iPhone touch keyboard several times, and have found it frustrating to try to write anything more than a few words at a time with it. That may be fine for the vast majority of iPhone users — but for serious journalists, bloggers, and mobloggers, that’s a serious handicap.

But lack of keyboard support no longer a dealbreaker-level handicap as far as I’m concerned. Not like Nokia’s abysmal US service, which can leave users of the fancy, pricey, delicate N95 (a superior device for journalists and mobloggers, in my opinion) without a phone for up to a month — or longer, some users report.

In contrast, Apple offers prompt, excellent service at many, many US locations. I’ve used that service for other Apple products, and I’ve been impressed.

I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: For a high-end, can’t-be-without-it mobile device that people put their entire lives on, service quality is at least as important product quality. Nokia may still have the superior product for high-end users — but their service sends a clear message: We don’t really care about your experience after you buy our fancy phone.

Besides myself, I’m sure that the new 3G iPhone has swayed the opinion of many other would-be high-end phone users in the US who have been waiting (and waiting, and waiting…) for a mobile device that will let us create and share the kind of content we’ve always wanted to make on the go — with the confidence that if and when it goes awry, we won’t be stranded.

This is very, very bad news for Nokia USA. Because…

In addition to the 3G iPhone being nearly as functional as the N95 — it’s also available at fraction of the price. According to MacWorld, the new iPhone “will sell for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. That’s a $200 discount from the previous $399 and $499 prices for the 8GB and 16GB iPhones, respectively.”

…Meanwhile, Nokia USA is still selling the N95-3 for $582, and the N95 8GB for $750. (You can save some money by getting them from Amazon.com: $496 and $629 as of today, respectively.)

Nokia, for about a third of your price I’m willing to get by without an external keyboard for now. I’ll hold out some hope that some smart iPhone developer can use the iPhone developer’s kit to hack together Bluetooth keyboard support — as well as, perhaps, cut-and-paste and built-in video editing.

So what’s that sound? I think it’s the death knell of Nokia’s N-Series in the US. Although Nokia’s PR team has tried hard to get the company to solve its glaring US market and service shortcomings, it looks virtually impossible that Nokia will turn that ship around before the 3G iPhone hits US stores in early July. And after that, who’d want to pay three or more times the price of an iPhone to take on far more risk?

It’s a shame, Nokia. I still think your product is better — for now. But it looks to me like you just lost your high-end US market. Unless you’ve got a hell of a rabbit to pull out of your hat — and fast — it’s probably time to say goodnight.

I’ve been hearing the rumor, and Gizmodo claims it’s true: Apple is supposed to debut the next-generation iPhone on June 9, during the keynote address of its Worldwide Developers Conference. I would expect it to go on sale in the US pretty soon after that. (But of course, you never really know with Apple.)

Apparently this new iPhone will include 3G network compatibility. That’s really important for people who want a true multimedia content creation and distribution tool, not just a phone. It’s also likely to have real GPS — which is far more accurate and useful than the crappy fake GPS the current iPhone uses (based on cell phone tower triangulation). That’s important if you want to accurately geocode the content you create (photos, video, etc.).

BUT… the new iPhone is not likely to be the complete Max Headroom device that journalists and mobloggers really need. Because it’s not likely to get a much better camera (currently just 2.0 megapixels). And it’s not likely to support a Bluetooth keyboard. And it’s not likely to get a built-in video editor. So it’s still meant mainly for mobile content consumers, not creators.

In other words, the new iPhone still won’t be as good a product as Nokia’s N95 already is — at least not as far as journalists and mobloggers are concerned.

Nevertheless, I might soon end up settling for an iPhone — unless Nokia pulls its US service act together damn quick. (Specifically, before the new iPhone goes on sale in the US.)

Why? Because the new iPhone might be barely good enough for much of what I need a mobile device to do. More importantly, Apple has proven, through its service practices, that it stands behind its products and cares about customers’ experience after they buy. Apple understands and respects that users of high-end phones run their lives on those devices, and thus cannot tolerate being without them for more than a few days at a time.

Meanwhile Nokia’s dearth of US local service centers, requirement that customers ship damaged or dead phones to Nokia at their own expense, and warranty that allows Nokia up to 30 days to return a phone — plus its risky, clunky, PC-only firmware update process — convey the message that Nokia doesn’t really care much about its US customers. (At least, not after they fork over $500-$700 for an N-Series phone.)

And when it comes to must-have, multi-use mobile devices, service quality is at least as important as product quality. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that, for me, service is more important — since evidently I am willing to compromise (within reason) on the product I want in order to get the service I need. I doubt I’m the only journalist/moblogger willing to make that tradeoff.

That said, I know that Nokia has recently woken up to the fact that its US customers are so very displeased with their service, and they are starting to try to make amends. Here’s where that’s at so far…

Today, Nokia blogger Charlie Schick writes that Nokia Care USA (Nokia’s US service/support division) is now “interested in getting directly engaged” with discussing US service issues in public with US consumers.

Charlie’s helping Nokia Care craft a plan to conduct this conversation “over the next few weeks,” since “We here at Nokia Conversations have taken this discussion as far as we can. And I do not think we or this site are well suited to take this discussion where it needs to go.”

That’s some progress — but it many not be fast enough given Apple’s plans and US consumers’ impatience.

Charlie also noted “I do know that in the past three weeks the head of Care USA has been exploring and working on something concrete that she attributes to the conversation going on [in the Nokia Conversations Blog]. I do not have the details, so do not want to say anything further until the head of Care USA is ready to tell us the whole thing. Indeed, we are trying to give them some space so that they come out on their own and speak for themselves.”

That also sounds interesting — but once more, time is of the essence.

What I want to know is: Will Nokia take most of the risk of their fancy phones off US consumer’s shoulders? Specifically, will they devise a way to guarantee that they will repair, replace, or deliver loaners for damaged or dead N-Series phones to US users within, say, seven days? (For a start — 2-3 would be a better goal. Apple already moves that fast.)

Most critically: Can and will Nokia USA put that kind of solution in place by the time I can buy an iPhone? (Or very shortly after that launch.)

We’ll see. Meanwhile, tick, tick tick, Nokia… I still hope you succeed in the US, but it’s really up to how fast you’re willing to move at this point.