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category archive listing Category Archives: tips

Twitter for Newshounds: My New Strategy

Today I set up a new Twitter account just for following the news. It helps.

I’m both a media/news geek and an avid Twitter user. Also, several news organizations post their current headlines and breaking news updates to Twitter. These facts have dovetailed nicely for me — I follow several news orgs on Twitter.
But this morning, [...]

Growing a Quality Twitter Posse: My Do’s & Don’ts

My Twitter posse is always there for me. Today they offered fast, good ideas for E-Media Tidbits.

Like a lot of people, I’m an avid user of Twitter. But I don’t do so aimlessly. Twitter is worth my time because every day it offers me clear rewards:

Posse power. The 700+ Twitter followers I’ve accumulated have proved [...]

Why you should disable “sharing” on your laptop

I’m sitting at the Las Vegas airport, hoping to get an earlier flight home on standby. They’ve got free and reasonably fast open wifi here, which is helpful.
But apparently some folks here aren’t too conscious about wifi security — they’ve left their laptops open to “sharing” (access by other computers on the network. I’m not [...]

Beth Kanter digs further into the Nokia N95 firmware quandary

eschipul, via Flickr (CC license)

My friend Beth Kanter is keeping a close eye on Nokia, hoping to keep her new N95 from turning into a brick, like mine did.

Recently I bought, fell madly in love with, and then sadly had to return a near-perfect moblogging tool — the Nokia N95 — after the very first [...]

N95 Report: Why I had to give up

NOTE: I posted the article below about 10 minutes too soon. After completing the Nokia firmware upgrade as instructed, using their software on a Windows laptop, my lovely N95 morphed into an expensive brick. It won’t start.
It’s surprising how upset I am about this. I’ve held off for years on getting a serious cell phone [...]

Making your home page “bloggier,” but not “a blog.”

JoniMitchell.com

A bloggier home page definitely doesn’t have to be ugly.

Right now, several of my clients are working on site redesigns and also are looking for ways to increase site traffic. One of the most basic strategies for attracting more traffic to your site is making your site more appealing to search engines. That’s why I’m [...]

Conversational Media Mindset 101

Gaetan Lee, via Flickr (CC license)

Is your wetware due for an upgrade?

On Monday I’ll be co-presenting a session on “Future Tools” at the Knight Digital Media Center seminar: Best Practices: Editorial/Commentary in Cyberspace. My fellow presenter Leslie Rule (who runs KQED’s Digital Storytelling Initiative) and I will be explaining to a room full of [...]

The Catch Is the “Challenge” Part

I’m at WeMedia 08 in Miami today, because at 4:15 ET I’ll be speaking on a panel about the Knight News Challenge. That’s where my colleague Adam Glenn and I got the grant to fund our community journalism project, Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker. Gary Kebbel, director of the News Challenge progam for the John S. [...]

Why Blogging Your Problems is Good

If you get really creative about it, failure and frustration can be the most engaging part of your blog. Don’t be scared to be human.

On a discussion list, a colleague recently asked for opinions about whether it’s a good idea to sometimes blog about the sucky stuff: Obstacles, frustrations, disappointments, setbacks, etc. Several people on [...]

Bluehost’s Bad Attitude: Customer Service 101

Bluehost’s director of customer service? Maybe.

More than a year ago, after significant frustrations with Westhost, I switched Contentious.com to Bluehost — and went through the hassle of moving the complex mass of files that this 10-year-old blog has become.
I’m really starting to regret that decision.
When I pay someone for service, at the very least I [...]