Video comes to the blogging world

This week the focus will be on logs, not the wooden kind but rather the electronic versions - blogs and vlogs. The first is the basic web log (blog) consisting of text and optionally some pictures, while a vlog is the video version of the same thing. In its simplest form a blog is a personal diary that you make available to others. This could be as exciting as a day-to-day description of a climb up the north face of Everest all the way down to what Mary Beth had for breakfast somewhere in the southern parts of the US. If you want to rush right in at this point, or if you had something really interesting for breakfast, jump over to the Home Builder article (page D7) that describes how to get started in the blogging world. Blogging or making comments on web sites and bulletin boards goes back to the Neolithic age of computers. I remember commenting on the local bulletin boards (they were from way back in computing terms), and posting comments on a board. In contrast the blog is a personal item but it can still attract comments from readers, some who will not be so polite. If you do decide to start your blog expect that at least one person will not like what you are doing. There is no way around this. There are people will disagree with just about anything no matter how tame you think your writing is. Just like some people in bars prefer to listen to a tone deaf singer over the trained version, there are people out there who will not share you love of fluffy animals whose picture you want to share with the world. A video blog is the same as a standard blog in all ways except that it comes in the form of a series of video clips. This is still an interactive online diary, just one that moves. Some of these are edited and produced, others are just raw footage taken with a mobile camera or web cam and dumped into the blog. Vlogging started about two years back and at the end of 2004 the online directory Mefeedia listed less than a hundred of them. You can visit this site and after a quick, free sign-up search through over 310,000 vlogs. If you want to learn how to vlog for free then visit freevlog.org for information on how to do it and some of the tools you can use. The biggest difference between a blog and a vlog is the amount of work you may have to put into it. Posting an edited video versus a raw capture requires software tools and possibly some additional hardware. To do it well is an artform and not something everyone can do. There is even a conference on the subject, Vloggercon . The better-known video site You Tube also has vlogs from such names as peanut, samui, plissken and koh. Hard core Vloggers believe that vlogging will one day replace TV since they can get unedited footage rather than the standard talking head slant on every story. One popular blogger, Seth Godin, recently announced that he doesn't like comments in blogs, particularly his. This has created a flood of responses from people that feel they have the right to comment on anything they like. The reasoning is simple: too much time spent clarifying based on comments or, worse, writing based on the anticipation of comments. Another reason is that most comments tend to be insults or rants. These do not encourage any real interactivity and you are usually in a losing battle with some kind of logic-deprived fundamentalist. For the most part the old gentlemanly art of conversation gets lost in the electronic world. One potential problem with blogs of all kinds is one of bandwidth. If the blog is pushed out or pulled in as part of an RSS feed, the volume of bits will add to the already overloaded communications architecture of the globe. Locally people are complaining that they are getting very slow responses, both here and from external networks. Blogs do provide some anonymity, particularly if you use a service like blogger.com, so your blogs can be on things that you may not be able to share from, say, the work blog or even your home country blog. You cannot, for example, criticise the Chinese government on any local local blogging host but you could from an offshore version. Industry news Local foreigners have been complaining about the lack of access to any English versions of the World Cup broadcasts and I know more than one person who has signed up for the Malaysian satellite feed. Sadly the Internet feeds have either been poor or blocked from many of the English speaking countries such as the UK and Australia. This leaves Thailand as one of the few countries in the region that do not provide an English commentary feed for the tournament. Not a very positive indicator for Thailand, again. It will not be surprising to readers that Microsoft is developing its own music and video gadget that it will use to compete with the Apple iPod. If you remember I already told you that the software giant is putting together its own iTunes equivalent service. With its own hardware Microsoft can also control who gets to listen to what using its own built-in security. Despite its own proprietary music format, I will hazard a guess that you will be able to convert to MP3 thanks to some clever program from a 14-year-old, before the MS hardware hits the streets. The unit is already in a demo form and being shown around to RIAA members as you read this. It is interesting that the Microsoft-branded music service appears to be in competition to other services that it has provided the software for, such as the Viacom MTV Networks service that was launched a few months ago. The technology also provides a protection base for other music subscription services, all over the planet. Unlike some other service, Microsoft's will be primarily based around the pay per download model, with some type of subscription service also available - details are sketchy at the time of writing. Some of the early feedback appears to indicate that the new Microsoft service is better than iTunes in the sense that Microsoft is building a community-based system instead of a basic shopping store like iTunes. It will be interesting to see how well Microsoft does in this venture, with giants like Amazon also moving into the field. Final delivery dates are unknown and I suspect somewhat flexible. In other news, Microsoft lost the appeal on a legal case involving Office. It means that Office versions will be changing the way they communicate with Access and this will have the expected effect on existing programs and macros in products like Excel.

How to join the blogging community

You can contribute to the world of blogging in just a few minutes. One way is to join sites like My Space at www.myspace.com or more specialised services like the Digital Divide Network at www.digitaldivide.net. There are many other hosting sites that support blogs, with one of the most popular places to start at Blogger.com. To join Blogger, just follow the following steps: 1. Enter www.blogger.com in your browser. 2. Click on that big orange arrow labelled "Create your Blog Now." At this point you will need to select a username and password that you will be using to access your blogger account. Remember to make the password interesting - include some numbers and mix the case. You will also need to think of a display name that is used to sign all your posts. This name can reflect your blog type, say SoccerMum or ArticExplorer, or something unintelligible like MxplOz4, which is more like a password than a username but you will see a lot like this. You also need to provide a real email address. Some people will create a blogger email account for this. 3. When you have identified everything, check the box that says you accept the terms of service then Continue to go to the next step. This is where you give your blog a name, something as simple as My Blog Report or as heady as My Philosophical Musings on the Nature of the Universe. What you call it is completely up to you. The hard part will be picking the URL address that people will use to access your blog. This can be anything you like as long as it is not already being used by someone. You want to make this concise and easy to remember. Be patient, it may take you a while to find something that has not already been taken, as there are thousands of blogs already in use. At this point you will also need to type in the word you have been shown to confirm your selections and to block automated blog creation. Click Continue to move to the next screen. You are almost finished. All you need to do is select from one of the template styles that Blogger provides. There are 12 of them, click on the radio button and then on the Continue Arrow. There will be a brief pause while your Blog is set up and then you are ready to go. Click on Start Posting and you are shown the posting screen with some other tabs for modifications. The Settings tab will allow you to make some changes ranging from your blog title, some access settings and to the deletion of this blog. You can restrict comments, create teams and lost of other stuff in this section. The Template tab is where you change the colour of your navigation bar or for the more adventurous you can use your HTML and style sheet knowledge to modify every part of your blog's appearance. Unless you are sure, best not to play in this area too much. The View Blog tab only works after you have created your first blog, so back to the Posting tab. Enter your blog title then enter in some text, add in some links and even some pictures if you wish. Then click on Preview to check what the final result will look like than when you are ready, and Publish. Now try the View Blog tab and there it is, your first blog. The really hard part will be to think of something new to post on a regular basis and of course to let everyone know about your blog's URL so that they can go and see it. If your blog becomes popular, be prepared for your first comment. This can range from a poor to well crafted flame from someone called Anonymous to a congratulations from your grandmother on passing your O levels. Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging.

I want to be a Webmaster. Tips and suggestion for new Webmaster.

I want to express my knowledge of Webmaster to everyone. I am just a beginner on webmaster and learning about 1 year but I have studied hard in this field. If you have any suggestion on my writing, please let me know by post your message in article you want to suggest or email to me. My email is satiz2000@hotmail.com . I appreciated for every comment to me.

Do want to be a webmaster? Why? I think the basic of decision you want to be a webmaster because you love it. This job isn’t easy as you think. It’s about learning and doing by yourself. Every beginner webmasters feel really hard to pull their website to be popular and they get too little expected thing from their effort. It’s look like no way for new webmaster to success or satisfied result. Oh, forget about that sad story. I want you put more effort for your success. I have a roadmap for you to be a successful webmaster.

1) Find the correct keyword – In the past, I have build my website by random thinks. I love playing game so I build a game website and then no one come to visit my website. “Why?” I thought. This is a example of ordinary webmaster mistake. I had didn’t know that I jumped to very competitive market. It’s almost impossible for the beginner to win this fight. So, the first thing for new webmaster to do is researching keyword. You should find the keyword that few competitors that will make you have more chance to success promote your site. You should stick and focus only this keyword.
2) Choose the correct tools – This part is about planning your website to what it look like. After you select a keyword then you should design your website that which components should have such contents section, forums section, etc. , roughly design and search for appropriate tools (you can ask me or in webmaster forum such as digitalpoint.com).
3) Compose your website – This step is gathering everything to build website. Building website can be very easy to extremely hard from choosing tools in the previous step. If you can’t build website as you want, you should consider changing tools or programs.
4) Promotion – In my opinion, this is the biggest and hardest part of webmaster works. Website can be compare as “Goods”. The promotion is very important factor to success or failure. Promoting can be do by various method such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), buying Traffic from Search Engine, Email Marketing, etc. The factors you should concern are traffics (number of visitors) and ROI (return of investment).
5) Monitor result – It’s very important to check progression because website require improve and maintenance carefully. Try the various monitor tools , gather data , analysis data and use information to optimize your website.

Webmaster is quite a new job, much knowledge wait for you to discover. Try it and do it you will find it’s very fun.

Vista a yawn, not a 'wow' - bloggers

While Microsoft trumpeted Vista worldwide on Tuesday, the Internet abounded with postings with postings from people who people who were unimpressed or down-right disappointed with the new operating system.

As Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates headed a multi-million dollar "The Wow Starts Now" ad campaign for Vista, computer aficionados online countered "Yawn, not wow,"

Headlines on weblogs and news websites included "Think whisper, not bang" and "Why you don't need Vista now."

Critiques mocked Vista's grand promotion campaign, contending the system that Microsoft spent five years and $6 billion to create had little to offer that hadn't been available in Apple's Macintosh computers for years.

"Not that I have a hate-on for Microsoft or anything...but I think this Vista was just a joke," wrote a blogger at Microsoft or anything ... but I think this Vista was just a joke," wrote a blogger at Microsoft-operated Windows Live Spaces website .

"Just like (Windows) XP it's going to take like two years to work out all the kinks. And by the way, I'm still finding problems with XP!"

Numerous patches, fixes, and updates have been released for the Windows XP operating system that Vista is replacing since its release in 2001.

Unlike the releases of Nintendo's Will and Sony's PlayStation 3 video game consoles in November, throngs did not queue up at stores to buy Vista when it went on sale after the stroke of midnight on Monday, bloggers observed.

"In fact, it was kind of the opposite," a Tech Blog author identified only as Josh wrote. "No one really cared."

Bloggers complained that Vista was expensive and slowed computers that lacked upgraded memory and graphics components.

"Your software won't work," Chris Pirillo wrote while providing "tips" on Vista in a Windows Fanatics weblog. "Consider that a huge tip."

"Assume that if something works in Windows XP, there's a good chance it will not work the same way in Windows Vista."

Vista also scanned computers to insure film or music files there were legally copied, bloggers complained.

"They can search your computer via the Internet and delete any illegal files including music downloads," Josh wrote. "My privacy has been breached."

Microsoft has proclaimed Vista its most secure and thoroughly-tested operating system release.

Webloggers advised readers to put off buying Vista until flaws had a chance to be discovered and fixed.

Online complaints included needing to upgrade most old software along with hardware to work with Vista.

WildTangent, a major computer game publisher, has accused Vista of "breaking" many popular computer games.

Some bloggers praised Vista features such as photo handling, speech recognition and desktop search but contended that Vista offered nothing revolutionary.

"Much of the new goodness has been available on the Macintosh for years," Adam Hertz wrote in an online posting.

"But, for those who wouldn't consider crossing that particular chasm, Vista seems like a good thing."