The Blog Craze

Weblogs or "blogs" as they are more commonly referred to, are nothing new. They were made popular by people who wanted to start online journals that published virtually every topic imaginable.
Today, blogs have a much larger attraction. RSS (real simple syndication) has made blogs attractive to business owners because they are an effective way to communicate with customers without email. RSS Readers are beginning to become popular at astounding rates.

When you publish an article on your blog, a sysndicated news feed is downloaded by a special software program (RSS reader) that can immediately update content when it changes on a web site. The ever-growing problems with email making it's way to subscribers has made RSS feeds extremely popular. This trend is only gowing to continue!

To blog or not to blog?

Like I said before, most blogs have their own built in RSS feeds. When you post a new article on your blog, your subscribers can receive the new feed on their RSS readers without email reminders from you. Every time your site is updated, the feeds are also updated.

The cons

As with anything, there are drawbacks to a "blog only" delivery system. RSS feeds are just now starting to become popular. This means that only a fraction of the total Internet population even has RSS technology. At the time of this writing, roughly 20% are using RSS.

Many publishers are still using email to get their subscribers to their content!

I personally feel that it is better to have both a blog and an email newsletter as we watch this technology unfold. Better still, is to have a blog and a "web based" newsletter which uses the blog for archives. This way you appeal to both audiences and you still are moving forward with the trends. If RSS grows as predicted, you will have a jump on your competition.

My personal opinion is that nothing really measures up to good-ole email! It is the most efficient way I know to get your products or services in front of potential customers with the least amount of effort. You simply can't ignore the fact that RSS is making a strong showing on the Internet and it is something we simply can't ignore!

Deep Throat had a Deep History...

On
Jan. 20, 1958, Salt Lake Bureau Chief, Mark Felt posed for an FBI publicity
shot.

W. Mark Felt was one of the architects of
the bureau's notorious COINTELPRO domestic spying-and-burglary campaign.

He was convicted in
1980 of authorizing nine illegal entries in New Jersey in 1972 and 1973 -- the
very period during which he was famously meeting Bob Woodward in a parking
garage. Only a pardon, courtesy of Ronald Reagan, kept him out of jail for a
long term.

Sounds like he did the same thing the Watergate Plumbers went to jail
for!!

New Hobby Site on the Net

A new non-commercial portal for collectors and hobbysts will be soon launched. Anyone willing to
present
own items with photos and description is welcome.
The portal is getting through tests.
If you are a collector or a hobbyst and colleting items, also these uncovnetional,
is your passion and joy please have a look at :

http://hobby.offtime.org

"A Day that will go down in history as a day of Imfamey"

Action Jackson "walks" I f you don't know what this means , don't ask....

A new book comes out stating Bill Clinton raped Hillary thus procreating Chelsea...

After all this , what next??

All Blogs on Deck!!1

It is a "whodathunkit" kind of thing, isn't it? A web log, with its straightforward elegance, its honest and reciprocal dialogue, its inexpensiveness (though time is money), has become the next darling of marketing and public relations-a real time, two-way walkie-talkie, a bulletin board of instant feedback.

Don't think so? It's always good to keep an eye on the industry pace setters. When blue chip behemoths begin to recognize the power of the blog, those who were barely aware of its existence begin to sit up and take notice. IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google-not exactly small fries in the business world-all have/allow/encourage/regulate blogging from within their ranks.

Or maybe you should ask Dan Rather and CBS if blogs have any real influence on events and futures.

The blog has exploded. So much so that Merriam-Webster's Dictionary awarded it "the word of the year" in 2004. In that year, the percentage of Internet users who had read blogs spiked sharply from 17% to 27%. In the US, that translates to 32 million adults.

Still in its infancy, blogging is easy to pick up and is surely being utilized to its corporate potential right? Not even close-eMarketer reported that just 4% of major US corporations have publicly accessible web logs.

And that, dear readers, is a huge waste of resources.

Just from a marketing standpoint, the demographic that blogs typically reach should be attractive enough. The highly coveted, proven-to-be-lucrative, unsettled in spending habits, frequently targeted 18-24 year-old age group is more than twice as likely to read blogs than the rest of the general population.

Talk about a golden opportunity to build a relationship with future consumers!

And that is what blogs can do so well-build relationships, the heart of marketing and PR. Better than broadcast, which is literally like fishing for an audience, a web log can target a precise and already interested user base, virtually free of charge.

"What's fundamentally different about blogs is that you can be very successful if you find effective ways to get to the really precise audiences you want to reach," said John Lee, vice president of marketing at Hostway. "It's a way to reach the right people in ways you could not do before."

IBM(pdf) recently began encouraging employee participation in the blogosphere and released goals and guidelines for employee bloggers. The company believes web logs to be a way of transforming an industrial icon that seems distantly squat upon an unreachable corporate mountain, into a "corporate citizen." The goals expressed in IBM's blogging policy are to learn and to contribute.

Web logs allow employees to learn from each other, from clients and from commentators. They also allow for two-way communication, a conversation in cyberspace that was hitherto mute, or at least, one sided.

"As an innovation-based company, we believe in the importance of open exchange and learning - between IBM and its clients, and among the many constituents of our emerging business and societal ecosystem. The rapidly growing phenomenon of blogging and online dialogue are emerging important arenas for that kind of engagement and learning," as read in the guidelines.

The trick to it, though, is control of the information that is posted. These publications, even if altered later, can be accessible forever. It begs for review, asking, "who says what to whom and who approves it and what are the liabilities and if this thing blows up in our face who fixes it?"

Welcome to the frontier. It's wild out here on the fringes.

Certainly caution is in order. People have already been fired for their blogs. Microsoft and Google both have pulled the trigger on their employees for blogging with poor foresight.

Michael Hanscom was fired from Microsoft for publishing pictures of Apple G5 computers being unloaded at the company docks.

Earlier this year, Google gave the proverbial pink slip to Mark Jen after he provided a bit too much infomation about life at the search engine company.

But control of sensitive company information is part of professional communication. Added to the overall corporate communication strategy, blogging can become an amazing tool.

In fact, I'd say it will become indispensable as it grows and as audiences become aware. Web logs will become the human face of the machine, the moderator of the conversation. And better, he who starts the conversation, usually gets the first and last word.

So if your company hasn't set up a web log, I have to ask, "What are you waiting for?"

There oughtta be a law!!

If the following reaches fruitition, we got serious problems in this country!

Actress Cameron Diaz is suing The National Enquirer for more than $10 million, alleging the celebrity tabloid libeled her in a story that claimed she cheated on boyfriend Justin Timberlake by kissing another man.

Wall st. Wheelin and Dealin

I bought into this last week at 0.110 cause Warren Buffet bought into china stock
Look for it to hit $3.
Im up 20% on QQQQ as of today. Im up 5% on BLU

Dragon Venture Signs a Letter of Intent to Acquire 33.8% Ownership of Shanghai Chengku Information Technology Company, LimitedWednesday June 1, 8:30 am ET
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 1, 2005--Dragon Venture (Pink Sheets:DRGV - News), a holding company of high-tech companies in China, announced today it has signed a letter of intent to acquire 33.8% ownership of Shanghai Chengku Information Technology Company, Limited ("Chengku") for $100,000. Chengku will increase its registered capital to reflect the new investment of $100,000 and the new shareholder and change its name to Dragon Chengku upon completion of the acquisition. Completion of the transaction is subject to the execution of a final merger agreement, due diligence process, and shareholder approval and which shall take place no later than the closing date of August 1, 2005.
Chengku, an e-commerce service provider within China for Chinese companies, was founded in June 2004 and has been profitable since January 2005 by operating its website at http://www.chengku.com/. Chengku owns the biggest enterprise database in China with information on more than 5 million Chinese companies that account for the majority of private companies in China. Chengku officially started its website in January 2005. Since then, its popularity has been soaring. According to http://www.alexa.com/, a site that monitors all websites on Internet traffic worldwide, ranks www.chengku.com approximately No. 4,000 in Internet traffic worldwide. As a professional commercial Internet media, Chengku develops its business based on a B2B model with E-commerce services. Chengku has developed more than 1,500 enterprise members since January 2005 and is the only gateway for urban business trading among businesses within China. Each member pays 5,000 RBM to 20,000 RMB (US$ 605 to $2,418) for annual membership fees.

Newest Harry Potter Book!!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling, the sixth book in the bestselling series, has been scheduled for release on July 16, 2005 in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia.
In making the joint announcement, Barbara Marcus, President of Scholastic Children's Books in the United States, and Nigel Newton, Chief Executive of Bloomsbury Publishing in Britain, said, "We are delighted to announce the publication date. J.K. Rowling has written a brilliant story that will dazzle her fans in a marvelous book that takes the series to yet greater heights. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince delivers all the excitement and wonder of her bestselling previous Harry Potter novels."
In the fifth and most recent book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the last chapter, titled "The Second War Begins," started: 'In a brief statement Friday night, Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge confirmed that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned to this country and is active once more. "It is with great regret that I must confirm that the wizard styling himself Lord — well, you know who I mean — is alive among us again," said Fudge.'
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince takes up the story of Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at this point in the midst of the storm of this battle of good and evil. The author has already said that the Half-Blood Prince is neither Harry nor Voldemort. And most importantly, the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been brewing in J.K. Rowling's mind for 13 years.