The Scobleizer effect and other thoughts –

This morning I was commenting on 2 different posts on Scobleizer. The first one was Making sure the right story gets out about corporate blogging at Microsoft, a correction to an article appear on Economist.com. The second is Microsoft is rotting, Malone says. I was subscribed to Robert’s feed since some months. I read some of his posts but I never commented on them before. I never really understand how he got his popularity. I thought that I knew it after I read the Economist’s article on Robert; but I was wrong. I fully understood the root of his success when I read the correction to the article. I say that I fully understand? I’m possibly wrong but I’m probably on the good path. Why is he so popular? The answer to this question can be somewhat simple: because he his authentic in his writing. He has an undeniable talent in writing and public relations and these talents help him pass his message, his ideas and his thoughts. He has the capacity to say things as they are, a sort of modesty, and give credit to others. When we read him, we know we’ll not be bullshitted.

Some ideas had surfaced when I read/post comments on these articles. The first one is the power of small ideas, and normal person; how they emerge; how they are promoted and why they changed the world. You just have to think about blogs, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Silicon Valley and Einstein. They are all examples of small ideas or normal folks that changed the world. Why? How? This is the more interesting part of the story because nobody knows the answer to this question. Personally I think that all of these ideas/persons have a focal point: the ability to communicate their ideas; the ability to make these ideas understandable to their community. They are probably the result of their creator’s writing and communication genius. Without these traits, they would not have changed the world.

The second interesting idea that emerges from the discussion was the capacity of enterprises to cope with the changing market. The next big change in today’s market will come from the East. Enterprises will need to change the way they work and the way they communicate if they don’t want to disappear. Microsoft is doing it. Some person didn’t seem to see it or understand it but it’s the case. I personally thing that they are now where HP was some decades ago when they were at war with Digital. They won it because they cope with the market’s changes. They started to communicate with smaller Silicon Valley companies. Like Microsoft or not, we are here now partly by the ingenuity of people working for it.

I suggest you to read the posts and comments to fully understand what I wrote there ๐Ÿ˜‰

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A9 search engine: a funny result on Google

Since some weeks I had some strange results when I was checking my traffic logs. Many people were coming from Google with this search key: “a9.com search engine”. I didn’t take care of it unless I took too many hits from this string. Then, I checked myself what was going on with this one and there is what I found:


A screenshot of the result

At my great surprise one of my old articles was the second hit with this search string. What I find funny in this result is the title I give to it: The consequences on your privacy. By its disposition it’s like if Google was sending us a caution.

It’s not a great post that I’m making today but I think it can raise a smile ๐Ÿ˜‰

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The way we are using the internet is changing; we wait that information come to us

Thank to RSS feeds and other information broadcast channels

Internet is changing. The way we use it is also changing. In the past, the main application of Internet was to search for stuff. We used search engine. Now the role seems change. As I observe what is going on, I perceive that people are now using internet not just to search for stuff, but to wait that the stuff comes to them. They don’t search for information; they wait until that information come to them. They seem to be, in a sense, less active and more passive. Search engines are now sending information to their users (not the results of a specific search but information that can interest his users); think of MSN Search. People now have the possibility to have a bookmark inbox and wait to receive new cool links that are in relation with subscribed tags (interests). It’s getting rare that I perform search on search engines. I only do it when I search for technical things, like while programming or on specific subjects. Paradoxically I never before spend as many time as I spend on all kind of websites; I never found before as many stuff on the Internet as I found now. Why? Because I subscribe to some information channels and I wait that information come to me. Many unexpected stuff arrive by some information channels; I read it and I enjoy it. I would never find it with a traditional search, because I would never think about it. Thank to RSS feeds.

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How to publish, freely and without ads, a RSS feed on your blog – Use Feed2Js services

Yesterday I talked about how del.icio.us was inventive and genial. I talked on how and why I use it. But I had a problem: it was to publish the content of it on my blog. Radio Userland didn’t permit such a thing; the system is not made to refresh content if the Radio software isn’t running. So I had a problem. I searched and tested many solutions but no one was what I needed. I needed a simple, ease and reliable way to post a RSS feed onto my blog with a layout that fit in it.

I finally found what I needed. Feed2JS is a project of the Maricopa Community Colleges. What’s Feed2JS? This is a way to publish a RSS feed on your blog using JavaScript. How it work? You need to generate your feed’s code on their website. After you have to cut and paste the generated code on your webpage and it’s done. After, at each hour, their servers will scan your feed and refresh it with his new content. It’s free, it takes 2 minutes to implement and it’s without ads. You can’t really find a better service.

You also can create your own style for the feed’s box. It use CSS and you can find style examples there. The only thing you have to do is to generate the CSS code and put it at the top of the page where the feed will be displayed.

If you have access to your own server that run a PHP Interpreter then you can download the source code of Feed2JS, modify it, and run it on you server.

It’s really a good publishing tool for you blog and it’s the best I found around. Try it, you have nothing to lose.

Good publishing.

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My new del.icio.us feed – The perfect way to share cool stuff I find everyday on the internet.

As you can see at the bottom right of this page, I added a ” My Del.icio.us ” section. I have been convinced by reading Todd and Slacker to add it. What’s del.icio.us? It’s a social bookmark. You create an account and you add your bookmark when you find interesting stuff on the Internet. It’s just this. All bookmark entries are joining with tags. Tags can be seeing as folders; it’s a word in relation with the bookmark’s content. What is interesting is the definition you write with your bookmark entries.

This is a social bookmark. Who says social, say community and also say sharing. No bookmarks are private in the system. Everybody can see your bookmarks and they are automatically added to each tags’ pages. Then, they are rapidly viewable by thousands of people. It’s why the definition you’ll write about your bookmarks entries is important: it’ll help other users to figure out what it talk about. By correctly entering it you’ll participate to increase the quality of the product, then, the quality community.

Another cool feature is the ability to subscribe to other users entries. It’s called an inbox. Each time one of your subscribed users posts a new entry, it’ll immediately appear in your inbox. It’s a kind of bookmark aggregator. It’s really efficient and interesting when you subscribe to users that post interesting stuffs.

How to use it? Todd and Slacker are suggesting using Splur on internet explorer. Splur is the same type of system but you have an add-in software available on IE, Mozilla and Firefox to help you to bookmark your pages. One of the system’s options is to synchronize your Splur and del.icio.us account together; it’s what make it interesting. But I found that the best tool for del.icio.us available is a small Firefox add-in called delicious. It’s easy to use, small, fast and full of features.

Why I had added this feed content on my blog? Because I found really useful stuff each days on the Internet. The problem is that I’ll not do a post for each of them. I don’t want to make this blog a link repository; I want to make this blog a repository of my written thoughts. So, the del.icio.us feed broadcast on my blog is the best tool to archive these two goals: write my thoughts and share my findings. So, I wish that you?ll enjoy this addition!

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