Blogging Archives - Page 24 of 33

Sans Accent; Marc Fleury’s Feet in the Dish and the Walk of the Waiters

Posted on April 19, 2006 ·

It’s always fun to try to make sense of machine-translated text, so I gave it another run today. Jeff Clavier announced his French blog, Sans Accent, the most recent post being the French version of his congratulatory article to Marc Fleury on occasion of the JBoss sale.

Here’s how Google translated it back from French to English. I like the opening:

“Cheer has Marc Fleury for the sale of JBoss – and assembling it ($420M)

Marc Fleury well is known, and recognized, in the mediums of the open source since the launching of JBoss not hesiter does not have to put the feet in the dish and to take aggressives positions – which have amene its company has its current position of leader of the walk of the waiters of application (“server application”), with 35% of share, in front of IBM and BEA.”

I hope “Walk of the Waiters” is not a reference to a restaurant strike – and would the strike have anything to do with Marc’s feet in the dish?
OK, before my readers think I’ve gone crazy, it’s 4:30am – see, Jeff, you’re not the only on up in the wee hours, the only question is: is it the end of a long night or the start of a long day?

On a more serious note, Sans Accent will not simply be a translation, Jeff will “deal with topics related to France and/or the French community – including politics and general rants about what is happening (or not happening) “over there””

Tags: Sans Accent, blogs, blogging, Marc Fleury, JBoss, Jeff Clavier, humor, Google, Google Translate, Google Translation, machine translation

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor ·

Blogging is a Body Business :-)

Posted on April 17, 2006 ·

OK, let’s just all come clean. Blogging is a hoax. It’s just a cover to hide our primary business: selling our bodies. First Robert and Shel got got naked…

Then came Chris Pirillo, renting out his chest for 20 bucks… I have not seen his complete price list for other body parts, but check out his pix at Rentmychest.com.

You don’t have to get naked though to sell your body: Stowe Boyd is putting himself up for auction on eBay and he promises to wear only startup-branded T-shirts for the rest of the year. Sorry, no pix yet, his “launching the new venture” May 1st.

Now, I appreciate all the entrepreneurial effort from all these guys, but blogging is not a “male thing”… so perhaps we’ll see more variety when it comes to… let’s say, startup-logo’ed swimwear?

If that happens, I promise I’ll put myself up for wearing logo’ed …socks.

Update (6/16): I told you …

Update (7/2): Here’s another Classic, via Robert Scoble

Tags: blogs, blogging, advertising, marketing, logos, banners, t-shirt, body business, swimwear, Scoble, Stowe Boyd, startups, humor

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor, Marketing / PR, Startups ·

Missing my Morning (tech)Crunch

Posted on April 15, 2006 ·

Missing my crunchy breakfast today:

Tags: techcrunch, outage

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor ·

37Signals Lost the Signal (for a Moment)

Posted on April 12, 2006 ·

(Updated)
Signal vs. Noise is all noise today, as the good 37Signal folks decided to make fun of their customers, posting their email inquiries they disliked. “Useless, absurd, appalled, infuriating” are words from actual customer emails but apparently this is what 37Signals think of those inquiries – or the customers themselves?

They may be onto something… after all, as long as you have great products, who needs customers? This must be the new way, I’m just too “old school” to understand. Time for me to read Getting Real – perhaps that will help me catch up with this great new world. (how funny that their PR agency just asked me to review it…)

Thanks Espen for finding this “gem”.

Update (4/12): I guess the best defense is offense, just check out Matt’s response to a reader comment: “And while you call it whining, others might call it offering the other side of things in order to give some perspective. Perhaps you need to stop looking for occasions to be offended?”

Hint to Matt: you may want to read this post by Robert.

This will not hurt either: The Art of Customer Service, Part II

Update (4/12): I don’t even know what’s worse, the original post or the rather defiant attitude they show defending their stance against 140+ comments (on a blog where the average is 8–10 comments per post). I certainly hope Jason and Matt will have a good night’s sleep, wake up fresh, and make amends. Like Scoble did (see above).

Update (4/13): So much for hoping for some humility. They woke up, but they did not wake up. This response to comments from Jason shows he simply does not get it: “I don’t believe quoting someone directly is mocking them. And I never called these comments stupid.”

Tags: 37signals, getting real, signal vs noise, customer appreciation, customer focus, marketing, customer disservice, scobleizer, scoble

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Customer Service, Misc ·

Online Backup and Desktop Search

Posted on April 12, 2006 ·

Friends Don’t Let Friends Lose Data says Chris, and I agree, so I followed his recommendation and signed up for the Mozy online backup service – now I can sleep at night. Previously I used FolderShare to sync data between my multiple PC’s, but now I am left with one laptop, so the free 2G storage and automated backup is now a real(data) life-saver.

However, I noticed it makes full backup every day, instead of doing it incrementally, as it’s supposed to, after the initial backup. Other users don’t seem to have this problem, which makes me look for the culprit elsewhere. I could not imagine (digital) life without Desktop Search anymore, and I tend to believe Copernic is by far better than any of the GoogleYahooMicrosoft products.

I wonder if Copernic Desktop Search causes files look “changed” during the reindex process – that would explain while they get backed up again. I am an early beta tester of their 2.0 release, so end up reindexing quite often.

This post is also an experiment in effectively using the “edge” – sure, I could go to Mozy’s site, register, describe the problem there, then go to Copernic and do the same, and probably play messenger-boy for a few rounds between the two companies – let’s see if they pick this up and find a resolution.

In the meantime I am patiently impatiently waiting for Box.net to add their long-awaited synchronization feature.

Tags: backup, data backup, online backup, data sync, data synhcronization, desktop search, copernic, copernic desktop search, cds, box.net, mozy

Filed Under: Blogging, Customer Service, Personal Productivity, Software, Technology ·

I’m Topping Yahoo News (?)

Posted on April 9, 2006 ·

No way .. that can’t be – that’s what I thought when my visitor log showed Yahoo News as referrer .

Clicking the link explains it all: Yahoo News Search also displays relevant blog posts in the sidebar. I wrote a piece about the elections in Hungary – not so much about the elections or the political situation but the fact that the incumbent Premier blogs daily.. for all I know he could be the first Head of Government doing so.

Apparently the Hungarian elections are not the most talked about topic in the blogosphere, so my obscure little piece got listed right next to AP, AFP, UPI … so there’s my 5 minutes (1 hour?) of fame.

Tags: blogging, elections, politics, Hungary, blog search, YAHOO, Yahoo News, News Search

Filed Under: Blogging, Misc, Politics ·

The Blogging Prime Minister

Posted on April 8, 2006 ·

How many Heads of Government are known to be bloggers? Hungarian Premier Ferenc Gyurcsany may be the first one. The country is preparing for parliamentary elections this Sunday, and the incumbent’s move to start his blog several months ago turns out to be smart in many ways.

It’s all about getting close, personal: the occasional TV-interview at their private home, with kids running around always boosts politician’s ratings, but how often can they do it? Gyurcsany talks to tens (hundreds?) of thousands of users every day on his personal blog. His readers now know his family, they know about his son’s football accident, about his dog breaking expensive china ..etc – considering that polls show this election to be extremely tight, for the undecided voter it may just come down to this level of “personalization”.

Starting the blog was a perfect coup, putting his opponent in a rather inconvenient situation: if he starts his own blog, he’s a copycat, if he doesn’t (which is what he chose), he clearly sends at least tens of thousands of undecided voters to the incumbent’s way.

Tomorrow we’ll see how it worked. I certainly hope the blog will not die after the elections, independent of the results – in fact I hope this will set a precedent for other Heads of Government.

Update (4/13): The Premier’s party won the first rounds in the elections.

Update (9/20): German Chancellor Angela Merkel started videoblogging. Btw, the Blogma post incorrectly identifies Merkel Head of State. Germany has a (largely ceremonial) Head of State, the Chancellor runs the Government.

Tags: blogging, elections, politics, Hungary, democracy

Filed Under: Blogging, Politics ·

Re: Censoring Blog Comments

Posted on April 7, 2006 ·

Nick Carr received an offensive comment which another reader asked him to remove. His response:
“My policy is to let idiots speak freely. It makes them easier to spot.”

I like that policy. Vinnie further laments on the ethics of deleting / censoring comments, and invites reader feedback on what the right approach is:

Avoid blogging about political or controversial topics in first place
Moderate comments and delete the offending comment
Email back to commenter to re-post using cleaner language
Delete the offending comment when the second reader protested
Let comment stay and react like Nick did

I generally favor #5, the only comments I delete are the obvious spam, of which I have my fair share. As a matter of fact the only truly hateful comment I’ve received was such a “masterpiece” that I elevated it to the rank of a post: Anonymous Hate Commenter.

That said, while 5 is my choice, I think 2,3,4 are equally acceptable. We’re not a public service, but individuals who decided to share our views via blogging, and it’s perfectly right to try and maintain a certain standard – again, what that standard should be is up to the author.

#1 is a bit different in my mind. I would not avoid blogging about political or controversial topics only to avoid conflict. But it may be advisable to maintain a certain professional or other focus. It’s an editorial choice. Personally I mix software, politics, humor, and whatever I feel is interesting, although I try to stay close to software. I actually believe this “mix” brings me closer to my readers, revealing some of my personality. I definitely enjoy reading these tidbits on other blogs. For many “pro” bloggers staying focused is the right way though, but again, this is a business / content decision, not conflict avoidance. Some of the focused pro bloggers decided to create sidekick blogs, specifically for these random musings, without clobbering their main blog.

Update (4/15): Robert Scoble decided to moderate comments from now on. The Blogosphere reacts: Kent Newsome, Eric Eggertson, Mini-Microsoft, Damien Mulley …etc.

Tags: blogs, blogging, comments, moderating, censorship, blogging ethics, business blogging, politics

Filed Under: Blogging ·