WordPress has been around a long time and is quite a powerful web publishing platform available to virtually everyone at no cost.

I finally got around to installing the official WordPress app onto my iPod Touch and I have to say I’m impressed with the app. It quickly accepted the credentials to my own WordPress blog, and I found I could update my site directly from my iPod. More impressive to me was when I discovered the ease with which I was able to take photos (or videos) with the iPod’s camera and instantly embed them into blog posts.

Nothing is more powerful than to be able to quickly update one’s own site with not only words but images as well. The official WordPress for iOS is a free download on the iPod/iPad/iPhone/iOS App Store. If you have a WordPress blog and an iOS device, this free app is worth installing.

Every single day, I get at least 2-3 emails from companies looking to buy text links on Geek News Central.  To date non of them have come from what I would term a valid vendor, most of them are poker sites, or some site looking to boost their page search rank. It has become so common that I send the following email in response.

“I understand your desire to purchase as you describe them targeted text links on this highly valuable website, and because you have taken the time to email me, I would like to inform you of our rates for text links. The cost is $10,000 a month, per link, with a 12 month minimum run payable in advance. All links will have the nofollow tag plus will be put in an area of the website that clearly indicates a sponsored link. Here is my paypal address to make payment”

This is usually enough to get them to go away, but some are persistent and will come back with a counter offer of $100-$500 for a 90 day run.  I ignore these responses do they really think I’m stupid.  What’s sad is that I am sure a lot of sites would sell them text links for that kind of money.

Google has specific policies for link schemes and a site risk being de-listed from the Google search engine for participating in those types of activities. Now I am not sure how I would react if someone actually took me up and deposited the money in my paypal account but at what point will link farm agents start advertising legitimately instead of wasting time trying to get me to risk all the work I have put into this website.

With the news this weekend of JC Penny getting busted doing this, it does not surprise me that 3000+ website owners sold their soul for a few bucks to help JC Penny have a banner sales season during the holidays.

So while the lure of money is great, don’t sell you soul to the text link farmers.

For some time we’ve been hearing about the virtues of cloud-based computing.

Certain functions seem to lend themselves to the cloud. Online word processing, spreadsheets, etc. can seem to make sense in some situations, such as collaborating with others.

In everyday use scenarios, does the cloud really make sense in more traditional private computer-use situations? I contend that it does not.

Right now I’m typing this into Microsoft Word on my MacBook Pro. At the moment I have rather lousy Sprint and Verizon connectivity, even though 12 hours ago at this very same location I had really good connectivity from both. The only thing that changed is the time of day. If I was currently limited to using Google Docs chances are I would be unable to write this. Network demand constantly fluctuates depending on the time of day and location.

Is there enough bandwidth available? With the tsunami of smartphones that are on the immediate horizon, will the carriers be able to keep up with the average five-fold bandwidth demand increase that the average smartphone user pulls from the network? Can carriers keep up with a smartphone-saturated public all trying to pull down data at the same time?

However, for the sake of argument let’s say that mobile Internet connectivity isn’t an issue.

What if the Internet is turned off due to a declared cyber attack and all of your documents are online? What good would the network appliance approach to computing be then?

Can e-books be revised after the fact? If government can simply decide to turn off the Internet, then it’s not that much of a leap to imagine laws and regulations being passed banning certain types of blogs or even books that have been deemed dangerous or seditious. There have already been books sold such as “1984” by Amazon that were deleted from Kindles after the fact by Amazon when it was determined that Amazon didn’t have the legal right to sell it in e-book form. What if instead of banning books, they were simply rewritten to remove the offending parts? What’s to stop instant revision of e-books that have been declared dangerous?

On July 23, 2010, CNN anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed on air the idea that bloggers should be somehow “held accountable” or perhaps regulated in some way. Here’s the video of that exchange.

It’s no secret that CNN and other so-called mainstream media outlets, both broadcast and print, have had for some time now an ongoing loss of viewers and readers. A number of traditional journalists from time to time have had and expressed an almost open hostility towards bloggers and the Internet. They perceive the Internet as a threat to their business models, and their vaunted self-appointed job as information “gatekeepers.”

If you look back over the past few years, almost every major story, particularly scandal stories, originated first on blogs. In many cases the mainstream media were dragged kicking and screaming into reporting stories. The clearly forged National Guard documents that ultimately ended up forcing CBS to fire evening news anchor Dan Rather comes to mind from a few years ago. Bloggers quickly picked up on the fact that the supposed National Guard documents had been typed up in the default template for Microsoft Word and then ran through a fax and/or copy machine a number of times to make the documents look dirty and/or old. The trouble was, Microsoft Word didn’t exist in 1973. If it weren’t for bloggers, this story would have likely never come to public light, and what is clearly a forgery and a made-up story would have passed into the public mind as the truth.

Should free speech be curbed? Should bloggers somehow be licensed or officially regulated in what is purportedly a free country? Should we be forced to get our news from “professional” or even “licensed” journalists?

I’m talking about the company that starts with “Twit” and ends with “er”, and seems to be the hottest social media site around these days. A year ago I would mention that I was using Twitter to friends and family and I would get a strange look. Now it seems everyone wants you to follow them on Twitter: radio and TV stations, news shows, companies, and the list goes on. I even had a few friends sign up for Twitter, “just to see what it was all about.”

Lately with all the news breaking about the death of Michael Jackson and others, and the happenings in Iran, Twitter seems to be the way a lot of people are getting the news. The information may be short, but it can happen in real time. I heard a story about someone sending Twitter messages from Iran and someone else commented that their comments were pretty short. The person replied that “140 characters seems like writing a novel when you are being shot at.”

It’s no wonder that Ev and the team over at Twitter want to protect their name and brand. In a blog post today, they stated, “We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of ‘going after’ the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter…”

They also state, “Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well…”

I started with Twitter over two years ago when it was mainly a way to keep up with your friends over SMS. (That is where the 140 character limit came from.) At the time it was mainly the A-list bloggers who had accounts and the rest of us geeks came along for the ride. At the time there didn’t seem to be any business plan to monetize the service.

Fast forward two years, and to my knowledge Twitter is still not generating any income, but I think that will change soon. With all the attention it’s getting and all the commercial companies looking at Twitter as a cheaper way to provide customer support and keep in touch with customers, the Twitter team must be finalizing plans to support these commercial customers by having them dig into their pocketbooks. I’m sure ads will come to the site as well.

People new to Twitter (i.e., on-air news people) don’t know what to call these Twitter messages: twits or tweets. Today’s Twitter blog posting clearly shows that the official term is “tweet.” I know this makes Leo Laporte, the owner of the TWIT (This Week In Tech) podcast, and who also owns the TWIT trademark, a happy man. There has been past discussions between Leo and the Twitter team about how similar the names, TWIT and Twitter are, and I’m sure today’s posting was an attempt to clear that up.

Oh, I almost forgot: you can follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/Fogview

73’s,

Tom

There are many articles comparing the pros and cons of physical print news versus the online/blogging news.  The following lists are not pros and cons but what each group has that the other side wants.  What could happen with the merging of the two?  Thanks to Tech Crunch for stirring my brain.

What Newspapers Have and Bloggers Want/Need:

1. Bloggers have less official access to many press conferences and meetings. Who gets the press pass?  How do you get the press pass?  Will it not eventually recreate a few sources for news as different agencies pick and stick with favorites?  Newspapers made narrowing it down easy.
2. Bloggers have less incentive/time to investigate and search out multiples sources. Bloggers seem to surf the web not pound the streets and interview people face to face.  Newspapers live that way.
3. Bloggers write about what interests them, not what interests others. With no boss giving assignments, who will report on those needed but sometimes mundane happenings?  Will we be stuck piecing together all of our news from 500 RSS feeds?  Newspapers make basic world, national, and local news easy.
4. Bloggers are not the one “go to” place for news. Difficult to find a local blogger.  I do not know of a single blogger reporting on news in our area of 175,000 people .  I guess I would have to look if the paper shut down.
5. Bloggers have less accountability/oversight to preserve the truth. I know, I know, that the community could police itself just like Wikipedia.  I’m not sure they will or really have the ability.  Besides, most people believe whatever they read and probably won’t go back to see any updates or corrections.

What Bloggers Have and Newspapers Want/Need:

1. Print Media has a narrow chain of command that dictates what and when news is published. It is no wonder why dictator, communistic, and extreme governments want control of the media?  Why are news agencies tending to endorse political candidates? The news has been far from fair and balanced for a long, long time.  Blogs are more numerous, yield less individual influence, say what they think, and allow more free interaction.
2. Print Media has a need to make a larger profit.  Bloggers hope to pay the bills.  There is nothing wrong with this.  It is the goal of every business owner to make money.  Why should newspapers be any different?  The problem is that it is a very low margin/no margin business that is about to go on a ventilator.  The motivation and ability to survive is decreasing.
3. Print Media has a high overhead for getting the news to the reader. Ouch this is number one.  Manufacturing and delivery is expensive.  Presses are extremely expensive, paper is expensive, labor is expensive, management is expensive, delivery is expensive.   The web does it on the cheap.  I can deliver the same news to as many people for pennies on the dollar as a blogger.  And it won’t take much ad revenue to pay for that delivery.
4. Print Media has few ways to guage how much of their content is read. The newspaper does not create a log file ever time my eyes read a certain article or ad.  Advertisers are left to subjective decisions on whether business increased because of the ad most of the time.  The web brings freedom and analytics.
5. Print Media locks down the content and its distribution. There is no open source in this land.  Republish the AP article and receive a DMCA.  Everything is copyrighted.
6. Print media now publishes old news. 24 hours is not soon enough.  12 hours is not soon enough.  2 hours is not soon enough.  What do you mean “The game was not finished as of press time”?  By the time your article reaches me 36 hours after the game, you have lost me.  I can visit a site, use an RSS reader to get the headlines, or subscribe to email updates and text alerts.  I do not even have to wait for the “top of the hour”, “quarter of the hour” news on the radio.

Enough of my opinion.  What is the real truth?  Will you, the community, let me know?  Are we really ready for this new world of news?

The switch from Movable Type to WordPress is now complete and what a journey it has been.  Yes I know let the rejoicing begin the last diehard MT user has left the building.  The move was needed but there were a number of significant challenges in moving from MT to WP that I will highlight below.

My hat is off to the team at SpaceBlue for the redesign and integration work. They went above and beyond the line of duty. I highly recommend them great design team. Although the logo redesign in concept was my idea and Brian improved upon it in a big way. Contest starting next week on Geek News Central on where I came up with the logo idea.

This is Geek News Central Version 3.0 aka this is the third skin and the first in which we are running on WordPres. I hope the look and feel is something we can stay with for a few years. Let me highlight the reasons for the switch from Movable Type to WordPress.  First and foremost I don’t think SixApart cares about their bloggers  anymore and in my opinion have been too slow to meet my new publishing needs.

Second their new media support was literally non-existent, and only a few small improvements have been made to taht part of the platform  since 2004. But I will be very honest, without my team working hard on the PowerPress Podcast Plugin making a clean and seamless transition from MT to WP would have been nearly impossible! Let me explain that more in a few paragraphs.

Some background Geek News Central while running on MT was in fact three separate blogs made to look like one the reasons why are to complex to get into. To make the move I had to combine content from all three blogs into a single wordpress install. Then we had to map links from the old blog to the new. With over 8000 articles this was no small challenge but 99.8% of all the old links were able to be re-mapped.

A condition of the move from MT to WP required that I have static RSS feeds. This site gets way to much traffic to depend on dynamic rss feeds.  Angelo from SpaceBlue had a “Static Feed” plugin that solved this issue. End result my podcast listeners and blog subscribers see no change the feed is the same url it was on MT.

Why no other Podcast Plugin would do and how PowerPress saved the day.  PowerPress has the capability to setup multiple RSS feeds. Being I had a Blog, Audio, Video and Special Media RSS feed each with different content I needed a Podcast Plugin that could support that many feeds. Additonally this will allow me to start creating media for other devices like mobile phones that can be subscribed via new feeds. So we have huge growth opportunity now.

The biggest challenge was one that a lot of podcaster face if they are on Blogger or on other platforms like Movable Type in that. Movable Types 3rd Party Podcast plugin was simple in that you Hyper-linked a media file in your blog post and the enclosure was detected and written in the RSS feed.

WordPress natively supports that method minus iTunes support. So my guys at Blubrry updated our PowerPress Podcast Plugin so that I could import all of my past hyperlinked podcasts into the specific Powerpress feeds I had created. The import function in PowerPress probably saved me over 100 hours of cleanup work.

So here we are all setup on WordPress, and while there are some tweaks to be done, I am very much pleased with the end result. Comments will be able to left easier now, and I have the tools I need to move forward with Geek News Central in a way that I feel very good about.

We will see how nice Google is to us in the transition I am expecting big results based on what changes have been made and what we have planned for the future.

My team at RawVoice is proud to announce the new site design for PodcasterNews.com. PCN was RawVoice’s very first site that we launched in 2005 and has had significant success in being a primary point of presence for a number of podcasts that are all short format content.

With this update a whole new site design has been implemented including a new publishing and site management system which will allow our podcasters to publish Video along with Audio. We also are now featuring new content on the front page in a unique way that allows all podcasters to get equal exposure to listeners.

The new design really brings out the fact that the content being created on the network is truly a team effort and that ever content creators content is treated as a integral part of the overall network.

With this roll out we have introduced our new stream lined Podcast Publishing system which allows podcasters the ability to essentially have a full blown multi-media publishing system as media creators can now Blog, Publish Audio or Video all within a very streamlined interface that we feel is quite evolutionary

The RawVoice generator is the first comprehensive media publishing platform that has integrated podcast media publishing and a blogging component that is commercially available to any third party company looking for their own platform.

Be sure to visit PodcasterNews.com and check out the power of the new website in consuming content and if you want a test drive of the new publishing system contact the team here at RawVoice.

Tonight I just by chance found out about a Blogging Expo in Las Vegas in November. Apparently the planning for this has been in progress for some time, but come on now — how come no one knows about it?

A blogging conference that no one is blogging about is not a good Omen. The conference tracks look pretty good and I think we will look at having a booth at the event but I am pretty surprised by the lack of publicity.

Has anyone else heard about this event, does anyone know the people behind it and again how come no press on this. Honestly I am pretty shocked. If you’re going, start blogging about it so this thing gets out from under the radar. BlogWorldExpo.com

It seems some Bloggers love to air their own dirty laundry on their blogs. For those that are gossip mongers I am sure that type of material really gets the juices flowing. I must admit that I love industry gossip. But the type of gossip I am looking for is not usually associated with  a deal gone bad or someone getting fired.

Here is some advice, when you have a business deal go bad close the door talk about it, learn from it and move on. When you fire someone do it in private and if a public statement has to be made, be as gracious as possible and leave the dirt off the net. If someone calls looking for a reference then you can say your piece otherwise when I and many others look to do business with you we will likely avoid ya like the plague because loose cannons can cost companies and projects millions of dollars.

Seeing the buzz around this I am pretty sure that the rumors are true then indeed this is a pretty amazing turn of events. The question to be asked is what’s next Jason? I know that he is doing a podcast over on Podtech and that makes me wonder if he is going to get more heavily involved in that space or will he try something else.

But regardless what he does, whether it be a new startup, lead another company or just take some time off I am sure that he will continue to be a major force in the new media online space. [TechCrunch]

I don’t think I have ever seen Chirs Pirillo say anything negative on his Blog but someone must have really shafted him. The packing trucks where coming to move his household goods when all of a sudden the moving plans were canceled and he has apparently been sworn to secrecy as he is indicating he cannot say anything about the situation.

But a tell tale hint that it was related to a company in the blogging space is that he says this at the end of his post.

One thing is certain: my trust in the future of our industry (and the alleged transparency of the blogosphere) is at an all-time low.

Keep your head up Chris you have a lot of fans out here. [Chris Pirillo]

I asked in this Blog a few days ago why the Top Digg users don’t start blogging versus digging. These writers are obviously very talented in finding great content. Well today I received an e-mail from a Top 50 Digg user and he for now at least is going to Blog versus Digg his decision was partly due to my original post.

In response I have added his blog to my daily read list, if he really wants to kick it up a notch launch a new blog and recruit a team of top digg users post to and share the spoils. Count me in as a subscriber if they do. Heck I would pay to get access to a blog that the top diggers were actively posting to.

The price to get started is as close to zero as one can get. If they work together it could be a very powerful thing! [hemphill81.blogspot.com]

 What is the deal with Technorati? It seems every time I go to that site and enter a search term their search is broken. I am finding more cross linked post via Google than Technorati. Has the blogsphere gotten so big that they cannot handle the task of indexing blogs.

I am disappointed in Technorati’s performance and am really tired of getting screen that say this feature is not implemented yet. When you get that error it’s because their servers are to busy.

It’s nice to see Dell listening, and responding on their blog, and I am sure that the blogsphere and small companies like mine will appreciate that enough that if they can get some of their customer service ratings up. That I as a small business owner may be inclined to check out some dell products next time we need to buy some computers or hardware.

It’s too bad that they took this long to blog, we will see how sincere they are, and if they really answer the tough questions directed at them from within, and outside the blogsphere. [one2one.dell.com]

Well this is post 6033, and today Geek News Central turns 4 years old. What a ride it has been. If you would have told me that this blog would have been largely responsible for my book deal which lead to the launch of two companies, and associated formation of new media networks with, Podcast Connect, and RawVoice. With me leading those companies I would never have imagined it.

But as I run down the major events since May 1, 2002 writing this blog has definitely been a growing experience, but to think that four years has flashed before my eyes is amazing. I am sure the next few years are going to be even more exciting, as I share with you my thoughts on technology, and give you my insights into were things are headed in the new media space.

Todd..

Seems someone at Google deleted their own blog by mistake, can you imagine that, luckily backups were in place and they were able to recover, goes to prove that the human finger connected to a brain can still make mistakes [Google]

Seems everyone is in the mode of creating top 10 lie list at the moment this one is pretty funny. [GapingVoid]

I can tell you what happens because it happened here earlier in the month and it was partially my fault. You simply panic. I can also tells you what it does to your momentum it slows it down. The 3-4 days I was having trouble caused my site hits to drop by nearly 20% the initial week after the recovery. Only now are we back to pre-blog blackout days.

How do you mitigate it if your running your own site. It’s called redundancy. I have two dedicated severs now and both of those boxes are going to have the data from each mirrored on the other and both now have the DNS propagated in way if one goes down the other can take over very quickly. We will only be risking 24 hours of data as we are shipping the databases to each box each night.

But if you are on a hosted service that you cannot touch your kinda screwed. A large number of Typepad users where without service for a few days and let me tell you I felt your pain. I thought I was going to have a heart attack before I got my sites back online. It was terrible.

If you blog is serving data thousands of visitors a day spend a little money and put in some safeguards. [gigaom.com]

I have been thinking it would be cool to go to CES but the only way we can do it would be with a sponsor. My idea is simple have 4-6 of the techpodcasts.com affiliates storm CES then Blog and Podcast till we dropped. This would be a great sponsorship opportunity for some company. If your interested lets talk podcast@podcastconnect.com

I have went to very great pains to create over 100 search terms for each of the major blog search engines including. Over the past year they have served me well but I find myself going to those search terms on a less frequent basis. The fact of the matter is the blog search engines are becoming less reliable most report links as new that were created months ago. They often are not able to find stories with the specific keywords clearly labeled completely, and of course the results are permeated with spammer sites that just clutter up the results.

Something I have done out of habit for about a year is add every site that links to Geek News Central or makes mention of the site or me in special categories in my RSS reader. There are in fact now five separate category listings with 500 sites in each of the 4 categories and another 300 in the the fifth. I then do searches from the river of news listings within FeedDemon when I am trying to dig out specific information. I allow each listing to have 200 articles and I do not erase the entries I make them get pushed out. So in a sense I have my own blog search engine within FeedDemon I am able to search all sites that link to us, along with the 400 sites I pull data from. This has worked out pretty good but it could be better here is a idea/

I am going to recommend to Nick the author of FeedDemon that he work with the Google Desktop search folks so that the FeedDemon index is search able. Then we need the Google Desktop to create and associated RSS feed for those desktop searches. So we can use the power of Google Desktop Search on FeedDemon and then use FeedDemon to do the requesting from the desktop application.

I take 36 hours off and come back to Skype messages e-mails and all kinds of havoc in response to a post that Chris Pirillo has put on his weblog. He talks about spamblogs, trackbacks and completely bogus entries on blogs over at Blogspot. I have talked about the massive amounts of comment and trackback spam I get here not to mention the high number of sites that just hijack our info.

Blogspots is a haven for bots that setup weblogs by the thousands and do nothing but steal content, target trackbacks and comments to try and drive people to websites so they can build page rank, or get a click through on an advertisement or worse deliver malware. I still track how many times a day here we get hit bogus comment or trackback spam, for the past 9 months my server has gotten hit nearly every second of every day. The amount of server load and traffic is enormous and 90% of that crap is coming from those on BlogSpot..

I realize their are a lot of great sites on BlogSpot but for the most part they are surrounded by the scum of the earth. [Chris Pirillo]

I am very proud to announce that Geek News Central has been selected by News.com as a Blog 100 website in their Cutting Edge Category. I am beyond humbled congratulations to the team here and other fine websites that were selected.

“Geek News Central has been selected as part of the News.com Blog 100, a feature in which News.com editors and reporters are helping find the best news and views on the Web for the convenience of our readers.” [News.Com]

I found the Wired article “Can Bloggers Strike it Rich? quite fascinating and a bit shocking. If what Wired came up with is true then a significant number of people that are blogging for Weblogs Inc. are not getting paid very much.

If you do the math, based upon comments that Jason puts out on how they are going to do a million dollars in adsenses this year along with the other stuff he likes to brag about all the time, the $500.00 a month wage seems really low, of course the boss and the staff have to be paid a regular wage. It appears those doing the heavy lifting may be getting robbed. Speculation on my part of course.

If they came to me, and wanted 125 articles a month and offered $500.00 a month to blog, I would not know to laugh or be insulted, especially if the contract had a exit clause that said I could not write on a subject for six months. That would be a deal killer.

Considering an article I wrote for a major magazine several months ago was 600 words and I was paid $500.00 in return for services rendered it seems to me writing 125 articles a month for $500.00 amounts slave wages. [Wired]

I think the gang over at techpodcasts.com have really outdone themselves working through the agenda today we are going to have a really awesome event. If you are available on Saturday Sept 24th at 1:30 pm Pacific you will want to join us and our 3 guest for this live event.

This will be a comprehensive 90 minute event covering Podcast Hosting, Advanced BitTorrent, Weblog Setup for podcasting using Drupal, Movabletype, WordPress and Radio Userland we will also discuss Coral and Dijer.

Guest include Peter York from downloadradio.org, Dave Chekan from libsyn.com and Stephan Uebelhor who will be showing us how to get Drupal podcast ready!

I am not surprised that content publishers are being hurt by blogs. I used to get about 20 periodicals delivered to the house and went through their painful registration process to keep them coming. Guess what today my mail box is empty I am not killing tree’s

Why do I want to read two week old tech news and commentary from someone that usually has an agenda. The blog revolution continues to whack away at the regular media model.

Podcasting just a year old will continue to change the models, two years from now people are going to be getting all of their content via new models. [Information Week]

The day that companies like technorati, pubsub and feedster feared more than anything is here lets call it “G Day“. Personally I think those companies are now dead meat. I just created a huge number of search terms, and added them to my news aggreator, and I will know in several days how well it works. [google.com/blogsearch]