Posts tagged blogging

Twittered Out?

Mar 25th

Posted by Mike Beckham in Blog

Are you like me? Sick of all the media attention Twitter has been receiving lately? It’s so over the top, you’d think its the next sliced bread.

I have been a user since 2007, and only now over the past few weeks has it gotten any attention and I am completely over hearing about. I’ll continue using it, as it is useful and fun but I don’t need to be told by news anchors who know nothing about it, how fantastic it is.

John C. Dvorak a noted technology columnist has written an on point article about why it is useful, and not just a fad. It may be a fad with the media – however in the long term for end users it could be a long term service.

‘The Nine Ways to Use Twitter’ is the article and two of my favourites are…

Public Address System: Because I produce a couple of streaming podcasts that have no official start times, I use Twitter to announce the fact that a streaming show is going to begin. It’s a bit like using Twitter as a public address system.

Crowd-sourcing: I also use it to poll people and for crowd-sourcing information. I can ask my Twitter followers a question that I cannot find the answer to, and within seconds someone will know the answer or have a link to it.

Of course for some of these to work, you need a lot of followers. Otherwise its just a nice way of keeping in touch. Just like Facebook, but for those of us who don’t want application invites.

Need someone else to follow? @mikebeckham is the way to go…

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To blog or not to blog…

May 29th

Posted by Mike Beckham in Blog

2 comments

Should I blog?As you may have noticed if you frequent the site, I have not posted much lately, although I have been a little more busy than usual it’s not got to do with that. April 7th is the last time I did a regular post and even that was a follow up.

The reason for the lack of new material is I have none. As someone who enjoys writing, blogging and broadcasting it is the worst thing to happen, however there is nothing that sparks my interest lately enough to write about. The U.S. elections feel like they have been stuck in the same position for months, nothing new there. Locally, there isn’t much to talk about. Personally – zilch interesting. So I am stuck in a position writing about how I don’t have anything to write about. Which usually is an excruciating thing to read, but I feel I have to put something new on the blog, and at least this is original and something I put (meagre) effort into.

The problem with a blog is it needs to be updated regularly, unlike a normal website which could not be updated for extended periods of time and no one would bat an eyelid. However because a blog has a sense of immediacy and with functions such as RSS, people get content straight away and can comment on it as soon as it’s posted.

So I am stuck in a position of having nothing worthwhile to post about, so I either do the lazy thing (which I have done quite a bit of) and just post videos or articles. Or I leave the blog collecting dust. Neither prospect seems beneficial to the site. So I decided I had to do something and at least explain the delay of new material.

So there we go, now I just hope there is something I can feel empowered to write about soon. Otherwise – stand by for 20 posts about how there isn’t anything to post about. It’s going to be exciting.

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