Category Archives: Twitter

10 Steps to a Professional Looking Blog

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Have you ever taken a look at some of the blogs out there and thought “Man that seems like a lot of work”.?  Here is how you can make the Blog you see before you in the space of 2 Hours!

Broken down into steps here is what I did:

  1. Got Bored of Blogger / Felt I needed more Style
  2. Bought BlueHost space
  3. Read up on how to Migrate to WordPress
  4. Changed my twitter landing page to suit
  5. Installed a Cool Theme
  6. Installed a Plugin that auto hides text in old posts
  7. Used the Migration feature in WordPress to move my Blogger Content
  8. Installed some Search Engine & Admin Plugins
  9. Spent a little time writing an About Page
  10. Started writing this post!

There is a long way to go, I look at blogs like Chris Brogan, or CopyBlogger which are repositories of incredible content… then I look at my own site and think “Man I ramble”.

How to Blog More Effectively

My Problem is usually I cant finish so I’m attempting to alleviate this by following up on my 2010 Goals.

The hope here is that if a goon like me can make a blog like this, Imagine what you could do.  It is a lot easier than it looks & actually quite enjoyable.  Be sure to let me know how it goes for you, and contact me. Give it a go, I mean… Why not?

The Social Media Vibe

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“The vibe” is something that you either love or hate about twitter, and social media. Like everything that is a trend, from the outside it is downright annoying. Partially because everyone won’t shut up about it. The criticism is that all people do on twitter is talk about their love of twitter. (Unless they’re the celeb stalker type, I’m looking at you Justin Beiber fans).

But is there something to this twitter thing?

The mainstream media loves to talk about how big Facebook got on a slow news day, but you get the sense they still don’t take it as seriously as they could… and I’m beginning to think the gap is generational. For this post to make sense, we’re going to have to generalise a little, but here goes:

Baby Boomers – Born Prior to 1961


The Baby Boomers still occupy the prominent social & business positions, their thinking is the status quo for how business and society reacts to new trends. Their lens, is the lens we have used successfully for a very long time. Kudos to the Baby Boomers. Things are a changin’ though…

Generation X – Born between 1961 and 1981


Generation X or the “MTV” Generation is often cited as the rebel generation and is a little more reactive. Responsible for the .com boom, the growth of the personal technology industry and further liberalisation of media Generation X lived up to its name. It still did all of this through the Baby Boomer lens of Globalisation…

Generation Y – Born between 1976 and 1990


Generation Y is the favourite of AdAge and a whole lot of PR / Marketing companies right now. Understanding Generation Y, is fundamental to getting the Social Media Vibe. Having grown up with technology and to a lesser extent the internet, as a generation; Y see’s nothing wrong with giving away its data to the information for convenience. Facebook and Google are trusted because they are Trust Agents, ie. They are trust worthy in the eyes of todays youth.

Social media has real value to these Generation Y types. Not because it’s a fad, but because it fits the way they see the world. These views are challenging convention and causing an awful lot of upheaval in the old economy. Just look at how unhappy News Corp is with Google, or the Advertising revenues of Newspapers. The Baby Boomers and Generation X take some level of comfort from the human interaction, but the very key of Social Media is humanising our online interactions. Being ourselves online.

It leads to a lot of philosophical questions. Am I more myself online? In person? Alone? Outdoors?

These kinds of questions don’t sit well with the old world, since they challenge some pretty fundemental beliefs. The key is how this change will impact YOU. The way we interact is changing. Knowing the change is coming means you can take action today to be ready as these changes begin sweeping through into daily life, and business as usual. No matter what age you are, these trends beg some very interesting questions indeed.

  • Maybe you could pitch social media to your company?
  • Maybe you could start a blog and begin building your digital identitiy?
  • How about looking into this Social Media thing, are you part of the conversation?
  • Does this Generation Y lot have a point?

Or you could just wake when the change has already happened. You don’t have to do anything, you lucky thing! There is an awful lot to be gained by taking advantage though. Worth a shot right?

Oh and a word to the wise. High pressure sales don’t trick anyone but other high pressure sales types. Snake Oil is endangered.

Network Building – Location Based

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There is nothing more distasteful than a cliché to start a blog post with, so instead this one starts with some good old common sense. The bigger your network, the easier your life.


I always loved those old Mafioso types who could hook you up with anything you need. Picture the scene. It’s the 1930s and you just walked into a bar after your car broke down. You’re having a terrible day, and the barkeep and his whiskey collection is your only friend. On telling the good barkeep about your troubles, he mentions “I know a guy, Jimmy Hands can fix you right up”.

So it struck me recently, that whilst my bunch of friends is wonderful and I do pretty well meeting people, it’s never something I really attacked with purpose. For some reason this morning, I figured why not try some location based searching on twitter? See if anything interests me.

Today I’m reminded of why I love twitter. The Advanced Search feature lets you search for tweets by location. Most people from Leeds infrequently mention Leeds in their tweets. When you think about it, it makes sense. Why would you mention where you are from in everything you say?

Give it a shot, simply enter your location, and a radius you want to connect, and then see if anything looks interesting. Interest lead search is GENIUS. I could lose myself in it for days. Humanity comes off looking a lot smarter when you filter for things you are interested in :p

Lets see how well this whole network building thing works. Bookmarks updated, daily search of Leeds based tweets ftw

Another Twitter Commentary Blog

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Blogging about twitter is now so popular it has become a cliché. It’s a loop of people talking a funny language about a confusing service to the outsider. Yet there are those who go crazy about it’s potential with a kind of zeal usually reserved for religion or sports fanatics.


Why then has the growth become a little sluggish? I can only relate this to my own experience, and those who I have tempted to try twitter and who eventually gave up. See, the whole thing is a bit daunting and weird at first. It’s not like spotify, hulu or facebook in that signing up actually feels like you’re doing something satisfying or worthwhile.

You sign up with no followers, nobody to follow and the whole thing is very dark.

Simplicity is the key for many of the larger social media mega sites. Despite the message presented by the media, and the best intentions of those willing progress, the vast majority of people are still internet novices.

Lightweight internet use covers your occasional youtube visit, possibly even iplayer and access to online music. The lightweight user also probably uses their PC as a Word Processor, however this user is still not digitally connected in the way many of the social media and technology savvy are.

There are hundreds of services that try to wrap up other services into one simple and easy to use application. Still from the user perspective it’s confusing.

Twitter falls into this category of a service with hundreds, if not thousands of apps. Now unless you are following your favourite celebs, how do you get involved? Twitter has an interesting ecosystem and may find the answer. However so far, it seems to require the brilliance of a Mark Zuckerberg to really engage users with a valuable product.

Twitter clearly has value. It’s faster than the news for breaking news, an amazing way to check the pulse of humanity and the first service where people come together based on interest rather than social structure.

Does that mean it is useful to your Mum? Probably not. If you’re missing the twitter revolution and you want to make a difference in the world. It’s wise to get clued up. Otherwise, let the thing happen. It’s still very early in its development, and you’re not missing much… Yet.

Nerd ADD.

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They say men can’t multi task, but do Nerds count as men? Tell me to rub my belly and pat my head & I’m already thinking about what’s for dinner and how to improve my gym work out.

The media age we live in, and its constant endless flow of information is too much for most of the population. So they end up with spyware riddled PCs suffering from winrot after a year, when all they did was surf for a little porn, and chat on facebook a bit. See most people look at the PC as a big fat phone. It is functional, but to Nerds? It’s a window into the bit of the brain our memory isn’t good enough to deal with.

What was that song I wanted to listen to? Oh yeah NP: Lamb of God – Reclamation.

rands explains it better.

Stop reading right now and take a look at your desktop. How many things are you doing right now in addition to reading this column? Me, I’ve got a terminal session open to a chat room, I’m listening to music, I’ve got Safari open with three tabs open where I’m watching Blogshares, tinkering with a web site, and looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I’ve got iChat open, ESPN.COM is downloading sports new trailers in the background, and I’ve got two notepads open where I’m capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to do lists. Oh yeah, I’m writing this column, as well.

See, if I do the same task here is the answer. Two firefox windows. One has facebook, this blog, lifehacker, BBC News, a better writing article & rands in repose article. The other has a bunch of windows about java mobile application development. I can’t bring myself to close those, because they’re not quite worthy of bookmarking. I have my email inbox open, and tweetdeck feeding my live updates. uTorrent is downloading a few things, I have a log file with todays thoughts and ideas as well as winamp entertaining my ears.

The truth is, without those distractions, I don’t work as well & can’t get through any task. Sharing my time between each of them results in me hitting this zone where round pegs do your bidding and nestle right into that square hole. Good little round peg.

New music, New Social Networking, New Cloud?

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Yes, I do love the new TI & Justin Timberlake song. The production is stunning, it has strings and hippety hop all in the same song. It’s well done, catchy and has a good message. Still there are a few things in there that are annoying. Hip hop has this whole “eyyyyyyy, ohhhhhhhh” thing going on which could be more annoying than stubbing your toe.


After a month or so on Twitter I think I finally get it. By blogging about it, I also join the ranks of the millions of people who do nothing but twitter on about twitter. It’s brilliance is that people actually write what they are interested in or up to. With blogs people try to be interesting, or at least have enough content to fill a blog. The character limit and the the URL linking you can be on the bleeding edge of any subject within a matter of seconds.

It got me thinking.

Doesn’t email seem like a long time ago now? Why don’t all my other services work like twitter, with lots of interesting apps and ways to organise data streaming from what is otherwise pretty unorganised. My MP3s are sorted by artist, my movies by year… but if the Cloud netowork or Semantic web is so smart… Why can’t it join up all my data too and sort it in the way twitter does.

The beauty of the cloud is that it works with tripples. That means that we have more than just data and it’s title. We know how it relates to other data instantly. A cloud network knows the difference between an MP3 and an avi. It could then sort that data for you, or search it… or tell you who of your friends also has it. Or what they thought of it if they blogged, tweeted or posted on a forum about it.

Services like glue are heading in that direction… but until someone joins the dots. We have a lot of floating data that isn’t working as hard is it could. If I want to learn about a subject, or have been given a task I don’t know how to complete as a competant net savvy member of Generation Y I would have gone to google or wikipedia and found something

Now I’m including twitter in that search. That shift is seismic and it’s coming.