Archive for the ‘Tutorials’ Category
Social media in plain English June 1st, 2008
Here is a great video from the Common Craft people about social media:
Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.
Just looking at their site there are a couple things that really tickle me. For one thing their videos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives license which means you can download them legitimately, post them on your blogs (which I think you could do through YouTube, Vimeo and Blip.tv anyway through their terms of use) and even pass them around as long as you don’t re-sell them, use them commercially or mash them up). I also like that you can license the videos to use at work (the link didn’t work when I tried it now so hopefully they’ll sort this gremlin out soon).
Common Craft produces a really fantastic service which helps explain some of the confusing jargon to people new to these concepts.
Technorati Tags:
creative commons, common craft, tutorial, social media, license
Posted in Entertainment, Tutorials | Comments (0)
RSS in plain English April 28th, 2007
Do feeds, RSS and all that stuff just confuse the heck out of you? Here is a really simple video that explains what RSS is and what it can do for you:
(Source: Blip TV)
Technorati Tags:
rss, plain english, feeds, tutorial
Posted in Feeds, Tutorials, Useful stuff | Comments (0)
Tips on podcasting with a Windows machine March 27th, 2007
I was asked how to prepare a podcast. The person who asked me the question runs a Windows machine so I put a few thoughts down and then realised they could be useful to other people so here are my thoughts on how to publish a podcast. The tips are aimed at a Windows user and if you are a Mac user the one main change I would make is to use Garageband for your recordings because it integrates into iTunes. You would then need to convert the audio file you import into Garageband into an mp3 file which, as I mention in the post, is a more universal format.
To start, you need a decent recording and to make a decent recording, you need a decent microphone. I have a Logitech desktop microphone that didn’t cost that much although I think a decent quality headset - the air traffic controller kind - is a good investment because you could use it for something like Skype as well as recording a podcast. I have seen some nice ones for a few hundred bucks - the more you spend the better the headset will be (usually). A voice recorder will work too. The main thing is to get a clear sound and the file you need should ultimately be an mp3 file. You need software to capture the recording and on a Windows machine. Audacity is really good and free. Audacity can import files if you record them on a voice recorder and transfer to your PC (they will probably be in wav format if you do this) and the software can then export the recording as an mp3. Alternatively you can record directly into Audacity through your microphone or headset and then export the file (the recording will be in Audacity’s file format) to mp3 which is the most universal file format.
It is a good idea to prepare a script for your shows because it keeps you on track and you may tend to make fewer mistakes (which means less editing).
You then need somewhere to put the recordings and make it into a podcast and I recommend Libsyn. They charge for disk space and not bandwidth (which is fantastic) and their prices are pretty cheap. They effectively create a blog for the podcast geared for podcasting so you basically upload your episode to their servers (they will have guides to show you how to do this) as a post on the site. The content of the post will be your show notes. The feed from that Libsyn site will be your podcast feed which you can also run through Feedburner to give you statistics on your subscribers.
Another way to use Libsyn is to just upload to their servers and publish the podcast posts to your blog under a specific category (you can use the specific category feed which you can route through Feedburner and then give out the Feedburner feed as the podcast feed). People can then get your posts (which will include the podcast posts) in your main feed and subscribe to your podcast feed in iTunes to capture the episode straightaway. Depending on how people access their feeds, they may just see that there is an audio file in the podcast posts and can choose whether to download it as a separate audio file as opposed to it being downloaded automatically in iTunes or their podcast software. The first method means the podcast is totally separate and runs through Libsyn (their blog, by the way, seems to run a version of WordPress) and the second method means everything runs through your existing blog and it is just a matter of using the podcast category feed as your podcast feed that people can subscribe to separately if they want to.
Of course this explanation assumes you have a blog already. You can create a separate blog for the podcast (Amplitude is a good example of this) and use the blog’s main feed as a podcast feed. I still recommend routing the feed through Feedburner so you know how many people listen to your podcast and if you decide to move the podcast somewhere, the feed stays the same (Feedburner feeds are containers for the source feed so if you change the source feed it doesn’t change the Feedburner feed - kinda like having one post box even though you may move homes).
Once you have all that sorted out you can also start including audio files (music is a nice addition but make sure it is licensed for your podcast so take a look at “podsafe” music or Creative Commons music files). This methodology also works if you want to create a video podcast. To do that you need to record your video and then publish it in the same way. You obviously wouldn’t use Audacity for the video recording and, depending on your camera, you could probably just save the video recording to your computer and then upload to Libsyn. Another option for a video show is to use YouTube to publish your video blog. People would need to then access your video podcast through YouTube although you can also publish the video on your blog as well.
I hope these tips are helpful if you are looking to start podcasting. Let me know if there is anything I missed or glossed over!
A podcast can be a great tool for business too. We have a few ideas about podcasting for business and would be happy to chat to you about that. Just give us a shout!
Technorati Tags:
creative commons, podcasting, audacity, garageband, how to podcast, libsyn
Posted in Podcasting, Podcasts, Tools, Tutorials | Comments (0)
Medieval technical support March 10th, 2007
I found this gem on The Social Customer Manifesto and thought you’d enjoy it:
Tags: medieval, technical support, support, books, new media
Posted in Fun, Tutorials | Comments (0)
PBwiki and WordPress.com join the OpenID club March 8th, 2007
Two notable services have tied themselves into OpenID in the last few days. Vecosys has a post about PBwiki’s support for OpenID. In other news WordPress.com has announced that you can now use your WordPress.com url as your OpenID credentials. All you need to do is the following:
Look for sites with sign in forms that look like this:
Enter your OpenID - that™s the URL of your weblog:
Click the button, and you will be redirected to WordPress.com. If you are already logged in, you will be asked if you want to pass your identity to the site:
Click Yes; just this time, or Yes; always if you don™t want to be asked this question again for this site.
You will be redirected back to the site and logged in, all without using a username or password!
How is that for an intelligent service. However, as Anne Zelenka on Web Worker Daily points out, ideally you may want to map a unique url to your WordPress.com account (take a look at your Dashboard options). Anne also shows you how to use your url as your OpenID credentials even if you don’t point it to your WordPress.com site.
Tags: openid, wordpress.com, pbwiki, credentials, single sign-on
Posted in Infrastructure, Tools, Tutorials | Comments (0)
Technorati is invaluable February 25th, 2007
I subscribe to the Marketing Voices podcast and finally listed to an episode titled "Technorati: The Focus Group for the Web" yesterday. The episode was an interview with Dave Sifry, the CEO of Technorati, a search engine that tracks roughly 69.4 million blogs as I write this. Technorati describes itself as the recognised authority on what is happening in the World Live Web. The World Live Web is the dynamic web that updates constantly. A bit part of that part of the overall World Wide Web is the blogosphere itself. It goes beyond blogs though and includes all forms of user generated content (videos, photos and other media).
What struck me as I listened to the episode (and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in Technorati) is that Technorati will, on average, index your new content within 60 seconds of it being published. This is in contrast to search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live Search that could take weeks to index your content. In this context, Technorati becomes the search engine to use to ascertain what is being said about you and how your content is valued on the Web. If you are concerned about how your business is perceived out on the Live Web then you have no excuse not to include Technorati in your list of services that you use on a daily basis.
One of the ways to use Technorati to keep an eye on what people are saying about your business or your products is to set up a watchlist on Technorati. A watchlist is a preconfigured search across Technorati’s catalogue that looks for the criteria you specify. So let’s set up a watchlist for chilibean because we would like to know what people are saying about chilibean in the marketplace. The first thing I am going to do is visit the Technorati page:
You need to sign up with Technorati before you can create a watchlist so click on the "Join" link in the top right corner. You’ll be taken to a page where you can fill in your details and create a free account with Technorati:
Once you have created an account, go back to the main page. If you look at the top left of the page you will see the following:
Click on "Watchlists" and you will be taken to a page which will have the following:
I am going to type in "chilibean" because I want to create a watchlist based on that keyword.
The watchlist that I create will list every mention of the term "chilibean". Some of the search results may be in foreign languages and if you use a generic search term, you may also have a few irrelevant search results.
You’ll note that one of the options in the watchlist is the option to subscribe to the watchlist. That link is the link you can insert into your feed reader so that updates to your watchlist (and the watchlist will update with each mention of the keyword somewhere on the Live Web) will automatically be downloaded to your feed reader. You can also refine the search results by clicking on the "More Search Results" link. When you click on that you will be taken to a page that gives you a few options for refining the search results.
The reason you may want to refine your search results is that not every mention of your keyword is necessarily going to be a meaningful mention. One of the options is to view search results based on degrees of authority. As Dave Sifry pointed out in his interview on Marketing Voices, blogs with more links to them are regarded as more influential and you may decide that you only really need to pay close attention to bloggers whose opinions are more influential in the marketplace because these are the people your customers may be more inclined to listen to. In this case I have decided to limit the search results to blogs that are regarded to have "some authority" and to English posts. This will refine my search results from 258 results to 76 results (at the time I write this).
You’ll note that not only can you see who has mentioned chilibean in their blog posts, but you can also see how influential those people are. One of the options now available to you is the option to subscribe to these more refined search results in your feed reader. In this screenshot you can see that Mike Stopforth has mentioned chilibean in his blog posts and that he has 165 blogs linking to him. You can visit the page dedicated to Mike’s blog where you can see who is talking about Mike Stopforth and his blog and get a pretty good idea who he could be channeling to chilibean, in this example, through his posts that mention chilibean.
I am sure you are beginning to see just how valuable Technorati can be. Just through this simple demonstration I have shown you how to monitor what people are saying about you or your product, how to refine those search results and how to find out more about the people who are talking about you.
There is something else which will probably interest you. You may have noticed that one of the options you have near the bottom of the registration page was to claim your own blog (you will also see an opportunity to claim your blog on the front page and elsewhere on Technorati). This enables you to claim your blog as your own blog on Technorati and when you visit the Technorati site in future, you will be able to see how your blog is positioned in the Live Web. For example, when I visit Technorati and I am signed in, I see this item:
If I then click on the name of my blog I will be taken to a page with more information about chilibean on Technorati:
This is really just the start. As Dave Sifry points out in his interview, Technorati can show you quite a bit of information about your blogs and it is worthwhile running a variety of searches based on blog posts, the blog directory and even tags to get a sense of what people are saying and linking to as it may be relevant to your blog or business.
Tags: technorati, watchlists, marketing voices, dave sifry, search results, authority, links, refined search results, rss feeds, market research
Posted in Tutorials, Useful stuff | Comments (0)
Comprehensive introduction to del.icio.us February 22nd, 2007
Mike Stopforth has posted a pretty comprehensive introduction to del.icio.us and, in his words, "How To Use del.icio.us To Take Over The World". The premise of Mike’s post is that it can be a fantastic way to gain insights into what other people are reading (in particular key thinkers on the Web today), subscribe to their incoming bookmarks, create and participate in networks of like-minded people and other plan to take over the world. I love this portion of Mike’s post because it really expresses this idea well:
So let me tell you how this was useful for me. Andrew McAfee is one of the most influential thinkers in a new movement dubbed Enterprise 2.0 (or social software in business), and just happens to be an associate professor at Harvard Business School - not a bad resource. I read his blog often and have downloaded his whitepapers. Now imagine being able to get a glimpse of what someone like Andrew is reading on a daily basis - what influences him, what he regards as important, what he believes is influential, bleeding-edge thinking. I figured if I could guess his del.icio.us username I could SEE that - and any one else I considered important or influential. Andrew doesn™t advertise his username publicly, I do, and there are no rules about whether you should publish your username or not, but there is nothing wrong or illegal about adding him to my network - by using del.icio.us he is automatically publishing his ˜thought stream™ - his IP - to the WWW. To cut a long story short, I eventually guessed his username, added him to my network and have been enjoying inspiration from his brain ever since. If only Einstein had del.icio.us¦
We’ve spoken about del.icio.us a couple times in the past and we remain steadfast fans of the service. It is such a flexible service that you can use it for pretty much whatever you want to do, provided that involves web links and bookmarking. Del.icio.us is a fantastic research and brainstorming tool. You can use it just for yourself or as part of a community of users. There are communities who use the "for:" tag preface to send links to other people or to communities of shared interests (the sablogs project is a great example of where a community, all of you really, has come together to bookmark and tag South African blogs using a shared tag) or just a common tag (for example, we encourage chilipod fans to submit links to us for consideration for inclusion in the podcast using the chilipod tag which we have subscribed to).
We have another exciting use for del.icio.us which we will hopefully tell you about tomorrow (Victoire is working on what I suspect will be yet another brilliant post about this mini-project). There are so many possibilities with del.icio.us. If you haven’t started using del.icio.us, why not give it a go today. Mike’s post is a great place to start. We also have a couple ideas. The point is, try it. You’ll probably find loads of uses yourself.
Tags: del.icio.us, tags, social bookmarking, mike stopforth, del.icio.us, chilipod, sablogs
Posted in Infrastructure, Sharing, Tutorials | Comments (0)
More on what Web 2.0 is … February 15th, 2007
I came across this video on Home Office Lawyer. The video is a brilliant look at Web 2.0 without getting into lots of jargon. In a way it tracks the evolution of the Web from the 1990s to what we see around us here and comes to the conclusion that Web 2.0 links people.
Tags: web 2.0, youtube, video, home office lawyer, wesch
Posted in Tutorials | Comments (0)
Podcasts. What’s the big deal? February 5th, 2007
We’ve talked a bit about blogging and how valuable and important it is on chilibean. What we haven’t spoken about all that much is why podcasting could be valuable, particularly to a business. I’m going to throw out a few ideas about podcasting and its relevance in a business context in this post.
An important consideration when it comes to new media is making it relevant to a business where the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. It is all well and good how cool new media is but coolness is of limited value when you have to justify the expense. It makes sense to go back to what a podcast is and then proceed from there. A podcast is a pre-recorded media file that is made available for subscription using technologies like RSS. Although the term "podcast" was originally derived from the device that supported them, namely the iPod, podcasts can be downloaded and accessed using a variety of applications, not just iTunes and can be played on pretty much any device that supports mp3s (the most common format), not just the iPod. You can subscribe to episodes using a feed reader or applications designed for podcasts like iTunes, Juice and a variety of podcast clients.
So what does all of this have to do with a business? In a way, much of what a blog has to offer a business except the format creates a few interesting opportunities. Like a blog, a podcast gives you the opportunity to speak to your customers and prospective customers in your own voice (literally). If you publish a video podcast you can actually show your subscribers what you do and how you do it. Start thinking about the possibilities with audio and video formats and you begin to appreciate the potential of a podcast. Some of the principles of blogs remain relevant. The podcast should still be an expression of an authentic voice. If it becomes a series of adverts then you will lose your subscribers. The idea is to tell your subscribers about you and your business. A big part of that may be talking about what is going on in your industry or what your take is on your products. Things really start to become interesting when you open up for feedback (something I highly recommend you do) and how you respond to that feedback.
Something to bear in mind is that you don’t need to stick to a specific duration for your episodes. The nice thing about podcasting is that it can sometimes work better if you have a shorter show every week or two rather than a 40 minute diatribe about your latest product twice a week. The idea is to give your subscribers an insight into your product, your business and the people behind the scenes. Another thing to bear in mind is when your subscribers are likely to listen to the podcast and take this into consideration when you record the episodes. You may find that your subscribers will listen to your podcast during their commute or while they are on break so you may want to keep the duration shorter.
Another consideration is the format of your podcast. Some easy podcast recording applications will save the episodes in a specific format. For example, Apple’s Garageband prefers to export the file to iTunes in .m4a format (the iTunes format) which will only really suit people who listen to the podcast using their iPods. A better option if you want to appeal to a broader audience is the .mp3 format which will play on the vast majority of audio devices. Of course there is no rule that podcasts must be played on a portable audio device. Subscribers can just as easily listen to them on their computers or burn a collection of podcast episodes on to an audio CD and pop it into their car CD player.
There are a lot of podcasts out there and as more people start listening to podcasts you are going to find yourself competing for a very limited amount of time available for podcasts so you should make sure that your content is worth setting aside some rare listening time to listen to. People are not going to subscribe and listen to your podcast just because you publish it. There has to be something of value to them in it and to keep them coming back so I suggest you plan each episode and include show notes or even have your podcast transcribed and the transcription made available to your subscribers. Make your podcast accessible and engaging and it could prove to be a valuable tool for reaching your customers.
Of course, podcasts could also be used to communicate internally with your employees or even your stakeholders. A properly prepared podcast could replace a newsletter and perhaps even make your communications more human simply because it would be your voice on the podcast. The advantage of humanising your communications is that people tend to respond better to people they believe they know and if you come across as more human, you will probably find people start to identify with you and start to feel they know you better than your competitor. Think about it this way: if you are looking for a plumber, do you prefer someone you know or a total stranger?
There is so much more to podcasting. This post is really intended to be an introduction to some of the possibilities. Feel free to drop us a line if you would like to chat about more podcasting tips and ideas.
Tags: podcasting, podcast, how to, tips, ideas, audience, subscribers, introduction
Posted in Podcasting, Tutorials | Comments (1)
Blogging the good fight February 4th, 2007
This is a repost from one of my posts which appeared on Jo’s Toolkit.
What are blogs? Aside from the software the blog runs on, what exactly is a blog? Well, a blog is a conversation. Blogs are structured to facilitate interaction between the blogger and the blog’s readers and use simple tools like RSS feeds, comments and trackbacks to keep those conversations going. Blogging lends itself to informality because of the emphasis on the expression of an authentic voice as an essential element of a blog. The problem is that in expressing that voice we often forget that there is an appropriate way to express that voice.
Many moons ago I wrote about a blogger by the name of Mark Jen who was fired by Google because of comments he made on his blog about being hired by Google and the salary he was paid. He was interviewed extensively about his dismissal because, back then, there was a sense that bloggers should be able to say what they wanted in their blogs. There simply wasn’t a sense that blogging about certain things was stepping over a line drawn in the sand.
Mark Jen wasn’t the first blogger to lose his job because of his blog posts and he wasn’t the last. Michael Hanscom had his 15 minutes of fame when he was asked to leave his contract position with Microsoft after he published photos of a few Apple G5 computers in a Microsoft loading bay. He was soon asked to leave and in his post mortem, Michael acknowledged that he had made a mistake. He had ignored signs forbidding cameras and hadn’t taken into account contractual limitations on his activities (for example, a non disclosure agreement).
It is important to bear in mind that as casual as a blog may be, it is a publication exposed to a potential audience of millions. There has been a considerable amount of discussion about the power of a blog and its ability to reach a huge audience both directly (through visitors to the blog itself) and indirectly (through links and feeds). While this potential is a tremendous selling point for marketeers and new media evangelists like myself, it is also open to considerable abuse by bloggers who would strike out at a competitor, employer or some other party that displeased them. Sometimes great harm arises from blog posts that were not well thought out and it doesn’t matter whether there was malice behind the post or momentary frustration.
A local blogger made derogatory comments about a popular speaker (I am intentionally not disclosing details because the parties have expressed a desire to put this matter behind them and the more often this matter is discussed, the more it will pop up on the Web) in his blog post. The speaker concerned took issue with the comments on the blog post and instituted proceedings against the blogger concerned for defamation. This case is a good example of how devastating a blog post can be. Like much of the material published on the Web, Google cached the post concerned and it remained in the top 5 search results for over a year after the original post was removed.
You are probably familiar with the law of defamation in the context of the media. Publishing a blog post puts you at risk of being sued for defamation if your blog post satisfies the test for defamation. It doesn’t really matter whether you are blogging in your personal capacity or whether you are blogging for an online news publication. The consequences are pretty much the same. Your right to freedom of expression or the freedom of the press will be considered in the context of the blog post’s target’s right to dignity and privacy. The casual nature of a blog or the respect for a blogger’s authentic voice is no protection from legal liability for a post that crosses that line.
So, what is a blogger to do? Mena Trott, founder of Six Apart (creators of TypePad, Movable Type and Vox), suggested that we, as bloggers, work at being nicer to people we blog about. In a recent interview with the Times Online, Mena suggested that we adopt a golden rule that if we are not about to say something to someone’s face then we shouldn’t blog about it. She sees the relative (or apparent) anonymity of the Web as something that emboldens bloggers. Going further there may even be a sense that something said on the Web isn’t real, not like saying it face to face, so what harm could possibly result? Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Blog posts can have serious consequences for both the blogger and the person blogged about.
Perhaps another way to put it is to paraphrase Uncle Ben in the first Spiderman movie during his last conversation with Peter Parker:
A blog gives a blogger great power and with great power comes great responsibility. Use that power wisely.
Tags: blogging, technique, blogger ethics, defamation, purpose of blogging, how to blog, what to blog
Posted in Blogging, Tutorials | Comments (1)