I use Facebook strictly as a casual way to communicate with people I know. I’m not a heavy Facebook user because their interface sucks, and it keeps on sucking. But there’s one thing about Facebook that was really bugging me, and I finally just figured out how to fix it.

The Problem: The default setting for your Facebook news feed (list of recent updates) is “Top News” — which is somewhat misleadingly named, since it’s really only updates from the friends and pages that Facebook’s algorithm, in its infinite and inscrutable wisdom, believes you interact with the most.

In order to see in your news feed updates from ALL the people and pages you’ve chosen to connect with on Facebook, you need to select the “most recent” option. Totally unintuitive, but that’s par for the course with the Facebook interface.

BUT: In order to routinely see updates from all your Facebook friends and pages, you must change that default setting. Facebook doesn’t make this easy — again, par for the course for Facebook.

I figured out how to do it. Below is my quick video tutorial.

WATCH VIDEO TUTORIAL: Facebook News Feed settings

…You’d think that with all the money they’re making, Facebook could afford to hire some good UI designers and do some usability testing! I think I might mail them a copy of Don’t Make Me Think (old by internet standards, but the principles are timeless).

…Because the way the internet works today, a static brochure site is like a car up on blocks: You can sit in it, you can show it to people — but it ain’t going far.

After discussing some issues in the comments to that post with my friend maiki interi (a talented and thoughtful Web developer), I’ve decided to correct an important piece of advice.

Originally I advised: “You can create a blog using a free service like WordPress.com and integrate that into any site.” Maiki correctly observed:

“Seems to me to be [that may be] massaging the truth, on a technical level. Of course it depends on what you mean by integration.”

I was thinking over what it would really take to integrate a blog into a static site. It can be done, but yeah, it’s a lot of hoops to jump through. Plus, there are many ways this integration could be done badly. Also, it’s not reasonable to expect a non-technical business person to know what to request from a web developer on this front.

So here’s what I’m going to recommend instead: Integrate your brochure site into a blog, not the other way around.

This does NOT means starting over from scratch. You can still use most or all of what your web designer originally built for you. However, you’ll be strapping it to an engine that will play nice with the internet and actually get your business moving.

This also does not mean your site has to look like a conventional blog. It can still mainly look like a brochure, if that’s what you want.

So here’s what the nontechnical people can do to reconfigure their brochure sites…

1. Set up an account on a blog hosting service

If you’re willing to live with some limitations on design and layout, you can use a free blogging service. I recommend WordPress.com. If you need more control over design than those services offer, try Typepad (which isn’t free, but it’s pretty inexpensive: $15/month for a pro-level account, which I recommend if you have custom design needs). Squarespace is another popular blogging service that can handle this job. (Pro level: $14/month)

Whichever blogging service (also called “blogging platform”) you choose, make sure it allows you to create a blog that includes pages, not just posts.

A blog page is like a page on a brochure-style site: It’s a good way to publish information that doesn’t change much, like your “Services” page. Blog posts are items that will be listed in reverse chronological order in the blog part of your site.

I don’t recommend using Blogger (another popular free blogging service) because it doesn’t allow you to create pages, only posts.

Make sure you set up the account yourself. It’s easy. But you want to own your account, make sure your e-mail is associated with it, and that you’re getting billed for it (if you choose a not-free service).

2. Ask a web designer to recreate your brochure site as blog pages.

This means taking all the design elements and assets (logos, colors, etc.), code (HTML), and content (text, photos, etc.) that comprise each page of your existing site and copying it into a corresponding page on your new blog-based site. You’ll end up with a set of pages that exactly replicates your original site.

Ask the web designer to make the new page addresses (URLs) and page titles (the Web designer will know what this is) EXACTLY match those from the pages on your original site.

Also, don’t change any content on your pages — yet. The shift to your new site will go much more smoothly if all you’re trying to do at this point is recreate your site exactly in its current form.

If you’re not technical, you must give your web designer access to your blogging account to do this work. So make sure it’s someone you trust, and tell them not to change the login. They cannot get access to your credit card information (if you’re using a paid service), but a nefarious or clumsy designer could end up locking you out of your account.

3. Map your domain name to your new site.

Once your site has been copied onto on your blogging service, you need to tell the internet it’s there. This involves something technical called domain mapping, and you’ll probably need help from your web designer or another tech-savvy person for this.

A domain name is the main address of your site on the web. Typing a domain name into a web browser takes you to that site’s home page. (For instance, the domain name for this site is Contentious.com.)

If you’ve already bought and are using a domain name for your existing site, you’ll want to get that domain applied to your new site. This is very important for making your business easily findable through search engines, and for people who already know your site.

After your new site (which so far is just a carbon copy of your old site) is up and running, ask your web designer to map your domain to your new site. Here are domain mapping instructions for WordPress.com. This is an extra service that costs about $10/year. Typepad offers domain mapping as part of its base fee.

Domain mapping takes a little time. After the technical work is done to map your domain, it’ll take a few days for servers around the internet to notice and start routing the traffic to the new site. So be patient.

Once your domain is mapped to your site, when you type your domain name into your web browser, your new site will pop up. As long as the new pages have URLs that exactly match the URLs from your original site, the search engines won’t get confused and existing inbound links won’t be broken.

4. Create your blog within your new site

In my experience, small business owners and independent professionals typically don’t want to spend a lot of time posting content online. If you don’t think you’ll post fresh content (articles, observations, photos, specials, etc.) frequently, then don’t put your blog on your site’s home page, because it’ll just make your site look stale.

Instead, tell your designer to designate one of your new site’s pages (recreated from your original site) as the home page. Then, create your blog as a section of your site and list it in your site’s main navigation bar. I recommend calling it “News and Views” to give you flexibility in what you can post there.

5. Learn how to post to your blog

Once your new site is set up, log in to your blogging service and post an item to your blog. Follow the blogging service’s instructions

Make your post short and relevant — just 2-3 paragraphs is perfect. If you’re not immediately comfortable writing in the blogging service’s posting form, then draft your post on your computer and copy it into the form. However, use a text editor (like TextEdit or Notepad), not a fully-featured word processor like Microsoft Word

I recommend picking a story from current news headlines that’s very relevant to your business or field of expertise, link to it, and write up a few short observations about it. The point is to quickly demonstrate your value and relevance. Do you disagree with the local paper about the potential impact of proposed parking regulations near your business? Is a new technology potentially important to your clients? Did Time Magazine overlook an important point about international shipping?

Practice creating links. If you’re referring to a specific news story, look it up online, copy its web address (URL), and link to it from your post. Both WordPress.com and Typepad make this very easy.

Work your links into the flow of your writing, don’t just say “click here” or “see article.” For instance, a link in your post can look like this:

“Philly.com reported today that SRS Energy is building a new solar roofing tile plant in Montgomery County. This project is funded partly by state programs promoting a green economy in Pennsylvania. I think more local companies should be aware of and could apply for these programs…”

…From there you could add a little more information, maybe list a couple of business sectors that you serve that could benefit from this information. And then maybe link to the program’s web site, or provide a contact phone number or e-mail for the program. And that’s enough for a post!

The point is to emphasize, not expound. You don’t have to be comprehensive in order to be useful, timely, and interesting. Make your first few blog posts quick hits. Make it easy on yourself and useful for the people you hope to reach.

Now your new site is really ready for action.

From here you can follow the rest of my advice: steps 1, 3, and 4 from my earlier post.

Try posting to your blog at least a couple of times a month, if not weekly or more often. After you’re comfortable with posting, learn more about categories and tags — tools that will make it easier for people and search engines to understand what your site covers.

This strategy should work much, much better for your business than a stale, limited, hard-to-update brochure site. It’ll be easier to stay connected to your current and prospective clients and allies.

Of course, if you’re creating a web site for your business for the first time, it’s best to use a blogging service right from the start. It’s always easier to do things the right way the first time.

…Honestly, it kinda burns me up that some designers are still selling small business people on static brochure sites that don’t allow blogging, and which often they can’t update on their own. I see no point to brochure sites for a business. For an individual product? Maybe. But for a business? No way.

Have fun with your better business site!

Later today I’m giving a talk at an entrepreneur’s group about how you can get more benefit out of social media by using hashtags. I’ve found that these can be exceptionally valuable tools to connect with topics and people. They also can help you make yourself (or a topic, organization, or event that matters to you) much easier to find and connect with.

I’ll be fleshing out these ideas in a later blog post. But for now, here are my main points I intend to make — Plus some resources I will to demonstrate…

HASHTAG MONITORING TOOLS

Hashtags are a radar screen to pick up early on trends, emerging issues, events, breaking news, etc. Business intelligence, spotting opportunities, troubleshooting, etc.

Use a Twitter client or service that lets your monitor hashtag. Twitter search, Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, Monitter, Twitterfall (article by Paul Bradshaw), and Twazzup.

Why not just monitor regular search terms, rather than hashtags? Use both, if you like! But search terms tend to be more inconsistently spelled or phrased and thus are more difficult to search for. Still, it can’t hurt. If I’m really into a topic, I’ll usually start my radar screen by monitoring several search strings (hashtags and not) and then hone in on where most of the action is. But when a community forms around a topic, one or more hashtags tend to crop up.

USE HASHTAGS ROUTINELY

Great way to get known as a go-to person on a topic.

Great way also to find smart, interesting, or important people on topic of interest to you. And to encourage serendipity based on your interests.

Popularity rules. Whatever hashtag is popular for a topic, use that. Like ad keywords: Use hashtags that reflect the perspective of the people you want to connect with.

Be specific: Easier to get reputation as the go-to person on a specific topic like #coalash, rather than a general one like #environment. Use both if you’re not well-known yet.

Try using hashtags in a sentence. Less awkward and more intuitive than jamming them all at the end.

If you see a hashtag and don’t know what it means, try looking it up in Tagalus or WTHashtag. If you don’t find it listed, @reply to the people using it and ask them what it’s about.

START HASHTAGS!

This is a great First search Twitter to see if it’s already in use. Don’t overlap current hashtags. Then register via Tagalus to make it easy for others to look it up.

Or tweet: @tagref: [#hashtag] is [definition, link]

More detailed listings: WTHashtag wiki — another good place to register hashtags.

If you have a company or brand that’s short, start & monitor the hashtag for the company name.

LIVE-TWEET EVENTS

Find out the event hashtag in advance, follow it, and use it for all your event tweets (including pre and post). Great way to get followers. They tend to stick around after the event.

Example: I recently called an event hashtag (#futurej) for a Senate subcommittee hearing on the future of journalism. Promoted it by searching for “future of journalism,” told those tweeters about the hashtag, and thanked people who used it. It caught on — About 900 tweets used it.

DELICIOUS TAGS ARE COMPLEMENTARY

For your radar screen, if you monitor a hashtag on Twitter, there’s probably a corresponding tag on Delicious. Use subscriptions function for tags on Delicious to expand your radar screen. My current Delicious tag subscriptions.

As I’ve mentioned before, hashtags are a powerful tool that allows Twitter users to track what many people (especially people whom you aren’t already following) are reporting or thinking about a particular topic or event.

Here’s the catch: Hashtags aren’t an officially supported Twitter service. They’re merely a convention that Twitter users have adopted on their own, within the 140-character text-only constraints of tweeting. So you can’t really “follow” hashtags through the main Twitter site.

Many third-party Twitter tools and services “play nice” with hashtags — but you must first know what these tools are and how to use them in order to get maximum value from hashtags.

This can lead to a bit of basic confusion, especially among people who are new to Twitter. Specifically, how exactly do you follow a hashtag?…

For example, this weekend my colleague Pete Myers, publisher of Environmental Health News, asked me:

“So I just Twitter track #bisphenol and it will search for tweets with bisphenol? Where are instructions?”

I hear many similar questions. So let me use Pete’s example to show a few options for tracking Twitter hashtags…

YOU CANNOT “FOLLOW” A HASHTAG DIRECTLY THROUGH YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT

This is perhaps the most confusing point for people who are new to hashtags — but it’s important to understand. From your Twitter account you can only “follow” other Twitter users (accounts set up for an individual, organization, project, event, etc.). A hashtag is not a Twitter account that you can click a “follow” button for.

A hashtag is not a source of tweets. Rather, it’s a way to label (tag) tweets so they can be easily pulled together.

TWITTER SEARCH: EASIEST WAY TO TRACK HASHTAGS

Since a hashtag is nothing more than a character string inserted into a tweet, it’s something that you can search Twitter for. Therefore, the most basic way to track hashtags through your web browser is:

1. Go to Twitter Search.
2. Search for a hashtag you want to track. Include the “#” in your search query. Here’s a search for #bisphenol
3. Keep that page open in a browser tab, and refresh it periodically to see the latest results. Or subscribe to the feed for your search in your feed reader, and check there occasionally for updates.

If I plan on only following a hashtag for a short time (up to a couple of hours), I usually just track it via twitter search. But for something I want to watch from several hours to a day or more, I used a different tool…

COLUMN-BASED TRACKING TOOLS

There are many, many third-party tools for using and monitoring Twitter. Several of these allow you to set up columns to track tweets based on search terms. One that I use quite often is Tweetdeck, a very slick Adobe AIR application that runs on your computer.

Tweetdeck allows you to configure up to 10 columns where you follow tweets according to criteria you specify. These can be all the people you follow on Twitter (your “friends”), or a subset of friends, or the ongoing results of a Twitter search. So if you search for #bisphenol via Tweetdeck, a column will appear showing all the latest tweets using that hashtag — and it will automatically update for you. You can add, delete, or reconfigure columns anytime you like.

There are also configurable web-based Twitter tracking tools like Monitter that offer similar capabilities. Personally I prefer Tweetdeck, but that’s just a matter of preference.

…So those are the bare basics for how to follow a hashtag. They’re definitely not the only options, but they’re some of the simplest. And if you want to look up what specific hashtags mean (or spread the word about a hashtag you launched or like), there are some hashtag glossaries that can help.

gigapan-dc

Gigapan fragment, DC Union Station

Gigapan isn’t brand new, but it’s a fascinating visual tool that allows people to deeply explore panoramic photographs — and to collaboratively tell stories through pictures.

It’s part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Global Connection Project

What’s so cool about Gigapan?

• Conveys a strong sense of place — almost a 3D feel
• People can create their own experience with snapshots
• Provide text or link context
• Allows examination and discussion of details
• Plays nice with Google Earth

I like Gigapan because it offers an experience sort of like this:

More about Gigapan…

Key technologies:

• Robotic camera mount for capturing very high-resolution (gigapixel and up) panoramic images using a standard digital camera. Current cost: $279
• Custom software for constructing very high-resolution gigapixel panoramas
• Interactive web site for exploring, sharing and commenting on gigapixel panoramas and the detail this community discovers within these images
• Google Earth interface allowing you to add a compelling layer of context for panoramic images.

Example Gigapans:

• Boston Back Bay Charles River
• Union Station (almost)
• Palm Deira
• Burning Man 2006

Here, Tom Vilot demonstrates how the robot works to shoot a Gigapan image:

Cool things you can do with a Gigapan image on the Gigapan site:

• Zoom and explore
• Take a snapshot
• Conversations (like this)
• Google Earth browser

Posting images to and participating in Gigapan community makes your story not just about your site! It makes it easy for Gigapan and Google Earth users to connect with you. Especially Google Earth — their user base is HUGE! I’ve seen estimates of 350-400 million downloads — probably higher than number of actual users, but still it’s a LOT of people! Get Google Earth, participate in Google Earth community.)

Watch it. This could save your life. Or at least your brain.

“What’s the real difference between a blog and web site? Can I have a link to my favorite sites, favorite videos, host a forum, etc. on my blog, or am I better off just building a Web site…and maybe having a blog on that. Likely I will probably only do one or the other.”

My take on this is that the difference between blogs and web sites is steadily vanishing. These channels are definitely converging.

In fact, they started out converged. After all, a blog is nothing more than a kind of web site supported by a content management system that provides a useful collection of features: Comments, a permalink for each post, categories, tags, a home page where the latest content automatically appears on top and earlier stuff scrolls down, etc. (If you thought a blog was something else, see: What’s a Blog? Bag the Stereotypes)

So what’s someone who’s just starting out online with a blog or site to do?…

Keep in mind that blogging is far more versatile than it used to be. You can embed video or audio or photo galleries in your posts, use the blog as a base for a podcast, integrate widgets or interactive tools, and have separate static pages for things like your bio. It’s not just text anymore.

However, today’s “blogging tools” generally can do so much more than mere blogging. For instance, WordPress, which started out as an open-source blogging platform, has grown to become a full-fledged content management system. Blogging is just one part of what you can do with WordPress. You also can integrate static pages, forums tools, media libraries, and virtually anything else you’d want to have on a “web site.”

So my answer to Dan is: If you think you’ll want to do more than blog, choose a platform that will let you expand. If you think you’ll want things like a forum, video library, or wiki, you’re probably better off building a site in on a more full-featured platform like WordPress, Drupal, Movable Type, or Expression Engine. Then you can start with a blog and grow from there.

In contrast, if you’re pretty damn sure you’ll never ever want to do anything more with your site than blog, then you’re probably fine with a hosted blogging service like Typepad. It’s technically simpler, the cost is low, and you don’t have to update your software.

If you’re not sure, then I recommend either starting with a full-featured CMS and just use it for blogging at first. That gives you room to grow later.

The important thing is: Your site should have its own domain. Don’t settle for a subdomain like dan.typepad.com. Having your own domain not only improves your search visibility — it also makes it more feasible to move your blog to a different platform or host if necessary. (Never fun, but sometimes necessary.) If you decide to start with a hosted blogging platform like Typepad, be sure you map your domain to it right from the start, so every page on your site bears your domain in its URL.

Also, your site should definitely include a blog, even if it’s not limited to that. And your blog probably should appear on your site’s home page. Why? Search engines love blogs. They really, really, love blogs. And if you’re in the media business, you want search engines to love you — because like it or not they have become the arbiter of your career.

Think of your blog (or the blog portion of your site) as Media Career Insurance. If you use it right, it can allow opportunities to keep finding you, regardless of what happens with your current job or employer.

Charlotte Anne Lucas of UNLV was showing me this process last night. She got all the gear to rig this up so her team of students can use N95s to cover the DNC in Denver this week.

YouTube – External microphones for Nokia N95.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was trying out the search widget Lijit on this site — not just for site search, but as a “me collector” (to aggregate all my content posted in various places online). It appears to be working fine — except in the Firefox web browser, where I’ve hit a snag.

Turns out that Lijit search and the popular Firefox add-on Adblock Plus (which I use) don’t play nicely with each other at this point. Consequently, if you view Contentious using Firefox (at least the Mac version) and try to conduct a Lijit search, it’ll probably just hang there and deliver no results. However, the Lijit search for my site works just fine for me in the Safari browser.

Lijit community analyst Tara Anderson recently contacted me to ask how Lijit was working for me, and I described this problem. She replied, “Do you have AdBlock as a plug-in on your Firefox browser? If so, then that will block any results from being returned. There is a workaround — you have to add Lijit into the whitelist of your AdBlock and then it should recognize Lijit as a safe site, allowing the results to be displayed.”

OK, so how do you do that? Tara was kind enough to give me the answer…

Here’s how I made this fix in Firefox for Mac OS X:

1. Display Adblock Plus on your browser toolbar. Select: View –>Toolbars –> Customize.
2. When the window pops up with the icons for your add-ons, find the Adblock Plus icon and drag it onto one of your Firefox toolbars. Then click “done.” You should now see a red stop sign-like icon that says “ABP” on your toolbar.
3. Go to the Lijit site.
4. While on that site, open the drop-down menu for the ABP icon. Click the “Disable on www.lijit.com” option. Once you do that, you’ll see the ABP logo turn green.

After I followed those steps, I went back to Contentious.com and tried a Lijit search from my site using Firefox. It worked!

…Well, until Lijit resolves the Adblock Plus conflict, this was a simple enough fix — and it makes Lijit search via Firefox work on any site where it’s installed.

Thanks, Tara!