Archive for blogging

Site Rebuilt

// December 14th, 2008 // No Comments » // blogging, development

I’ve just finished a complete rebuild of this web site with the following changes:

Why the changes? Recently cross-browser bugs have been biting me in the ass at work and I wanted to examine ways to get to get sites to render similarly (since identically is a tall order) across browsers. I researched several solutions and found two key points:

  1. Using a browser reset helps zero the differences between browsers, helping to even the playing field when beginning to develop. Yahoo had already done the work for me with browser & font resets and more intelligently than the classic *{margin: 0;padding: 0;} reset.
  2. Using strict over transitional keeps browsers out of quirks mode making it more likely that your code will render as expected.

Lastly, I have been building in xhtml transitional for a while and I wanted to see how difficult it was to write strict. I was surprised how simple it was to do and how easy it was to get Wordpress to render in strict. The skill I learned in this experiment will no doubt help me when building future pages at work. Plus now that I have this site the way I like it (at least for now… I’m finicky) I can focus my efforts on doing more writing posts instead of code.

6 Reasons I Didn’t Follow You on Twitter

// October 26th, 2008 // 8 Comments » // blogging

I’ve been using Twitter for quite some time now and find the more I use it, the more followers I get. Most people who follow my Twitter feed get a reciprocal follow back from me, but not everybody.

I’ve compiled a list of reasons why I don’t follow back with the hopes that it could help people struggling to get subscribers. Hopefully this will help you examine your Twitter strategy and improve upon it if you’re having difficulty.

  1. I don’t know you
    This is not to say I don’t follow strangers, in fact most people I follow on Twitter I don’t actually know. I do however follow lots of people I know by reputation through their work or by reading their blogs. I don’t know Darren Rowse for example, but I have read his book and subscribe to ProBlogger. If I know you personally or know you by reputation, you’re pretty much guaranteed a follow. If I don’t know you even by reputation, that doesn’t mean I won’t follow you, but it does mean I’ll take a look at other criteria (listed below) before following.

  2. You are what you Tweet
    When someone follows me, the first thing I do is look at your tweets. What do you tweet? Do you tweet about topics of interest to me? I personally use Twitter to get useful links and communicate with other users. However if all you tweet are links to each & every blog post you write and never talk about anything else, I don’t see any reason to follow. Twitter is not a substitute for an RSS feed. That said, I do not mind a high level of link outs, just don’t make that all you tweet.

  3. You Tweet too much
    There are a few people I have un-followed simply because they tweet too much. My twitter screen just gets filled with only their updates and because they tweet so often, there’s often little of value said. Despite Twitter’s reputation that bathroom updates are the norm, I really don’t want to know that level of detail in your day. If you tweet so often that you feel it necessary to mention that, I won’t follow. This type of activity can trump reputation (yes this includes you Scobleizer. Look at the frequency!)

  4. There’s no link in your profile
    Don’t forget to fill in your blog or website when you’re completing your profile, it’s one of the main things I look at when considering a follow-back. Chances are if your site interests me, your tweets probably will too.

  5. Your updates are protected
    If you’ve followed me and I don’t know who you are, I can’t assess the quality of your tweets if I can’t see them. Unprotect your updates if you want followers who don’t already know you.

  6. You have no Tweets
    I appreciate we all have to start Twitter somewhere, but if I don’t know you, you haven’t filled in your profile info and you haven’t made any tweets except “I just started Twitter” I don’t follow. I try to remember to check back in a week to see if you’ve been sending out some interesting messages, but sorry… sometimes I forget who that person was. If you’re new to Twitter and are looking for some followers, make a few tweets first so people can assess whether your tweets will be of interest to them.

Not everybody is aiming to get followers on Twitter, but if you are and you’re finding it challenging I hope this list will help you.

Do you use Twitter and if so, what do you consider when deciding to follow somebody?

New Media Olympic Coverage

// August 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // blogging, broadcasting, events

I’m flying to Winnipeg and I’ll be away from my computer until next week, but before I go, I had to at least mention what is going to be the best new media coverage of any Olympic Games ever.

The big story is NBC’s Olympic site which will cover over 2,200 hours of live video streaming highlighting 25 sports and 3,000 hours of on-demand video including highlights and replays. This is unprecedented online coverage and is substantially more than NBC Television will be providing. Add in photo galleries, athlete bios, statistics and nanogaming and there’s no denying that the for the first time, the best coverage of the Olympic games is going to be online.

NBC is taking a shotgun approach to see what works online and is using the popularity of the games to get some good data and testing under their belts. What they learn from this impressive experiment could put them ahead of other broadcasters for future projects. I’m thoroughly impressed at what they have planned.

Back in Canada our own official Olympic broadcaster is not doing too bad of a job with its new media coverage either. Streaming video will be available, but not nearly the same number of hours that NBC will be providing. They also have regularly updated Olympic headline and athlete blogs.

The IOC has placed extreme limitations on what athletes can blog during the games. Violation of the IOC’s blogging rules could have athletes, “withdraw(n) of such person’s Olympic identity and accreditation card” and, “taking legal action for monetary damages and imposing other sanctions.” With restrictions like these, it’s nice to see that athletes have bothered to blog at all.

Being a sucker for both the Olympics and new media makes this a really great games to watch, read and comment on. It’ll be interesting to see what other new media coverage will gain traction. I’m already watching the live blogging happening over at ScribbleLive.

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