Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Weblogs/Blogging (Page 1 of 22)

MN-Based EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users

Yesterday, I stopped into the EduTech Minnesota conference at the U of M. I wanted to catch up with my friends Matt Hardy and Dan Flies, cofounders of Kidblog.org, and hear about the latest with their startup. 

KidBlog-logo It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced at the event: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here's my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way:  Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It's designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students' blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses. 

Matt likes to say it's "built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process." He also points out that teachers who've tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, "will notice the Kidblog difference immediately."

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

 

Blogging Gone Wild

TechSurfBlog-post1 People who've been reading this blog for a while may know I started it in 2005. That's a long time in blog years, and it's resulted in a monstrous archive of what people now call "long-form blogging" — at least it is for me, as one, lone writer.  My quick tally is about 400,000-500,000 words (several books' worth), and I can't even begin to guess the *time* I have into it. Let's just say it's been countless thousands of hours that I've spent filling this space — planning, thinking, writing, editing, covering events, managing comments, and, not the least, all the time spent in the behind-the-scenes (pain in the ass) administration of the site. That last part is especially a challenge with Typepad, the platform I chose way back when. Unfortunately, it hasn't kept up with bloggers' needs, especially from a UI/ease-of-use standpoint. (But the time to convert my blog to WordPress, as I might like, has just been way too much of a time hurdle to consider if I want to keep paying the bills with the income I have to generate in the non-blogging part of my business life.)

The whole notion of "micro" blogging wasn't even in our minds back in 2005. But, of course, those of you who follow me regularly know I've been posting the majority of my online content for the past few years on a certain site that starts with a "T"Twitter-logo With 11,000+ tweets there, at 140 characters each, that works out to some 200,000 words. And to say that's cut into my long-form blogging frequency here on this blog would be a gross understatement. Twitter, as it turned out, opened the floodgates on short-form, real-time blogging. But "blogging" almost seems like the wrong word these days, doesn't it?  Seems like it's really just about "content sharing" anymore, in the age we're in of never-ending "status updates." Speaking of which, yes, I'm of course on Facebook, too — here and here. Friend me at the first (my personal page) and fan me at the second (my company page). Or is it all about "Likes"? Whatever! Just click something there, will ya, and I'll be happy… :-)  [Note you can also now hit the little "Like" icon at the bottom of each of my blog posts here, as well as "Like" my blog overall in the sidebar to the right. We all *so* need to be liked these days…]

Where does it all end? Well, it doesn't. Which is the reason for this post. It's not to bore you with stats about my huge trove of blog content (which, along with $3.00, will get me a nice cup of coffee anywhere), but to tell you about other places where I'm now doing even more of that shorter-form blogging thing, in case you haven't run into me there yet. Flickr-GraemeAt least I'm having fun (I think). Just gotta keep sharing! These other domains of mine are more for my personal, random thoughts — and for sharing photos when I have some text to go along with them. Sure, I can share photos on Twitter (and I do, often, from my iPhone, with various Twitter apps) — but there are times when 140 characters just won't do. And then I have my Flickr account, which I think I've had about as long as this blog, where I can share anything I shoot — and I've done that with some 4500+ images, all neatly organized into sets.

Medium-Form Blogging?

But I like to say these other blogging places I'm about to tell you about are "somewhere in the vast expanse between my long-form and short-form blogging."  Here's one of them: my Posterous blog, which I've actually had for several months now. PosterousBlog-GraemeOn a site like this, I put up all kinds of stuff — I don't think much about it (unlike this site, which is really all about my serious, professional life). I can even email something to Posterous that instantly becomes a post. So, you'll see a whole array of…stuff. And maybe you've heard of PicPlz? It has an iPhone app I've started to use to share photos. Well, I've set those pix to also show up on my Posterous blog as individual posts.

TumblrBlog-Graeme As opposed to Instagram, another iPhone photo-sharing app (which I like even more). I have the pix I shoot with that app set to show up on my Tumblr blog, where I also post…other stuff. Just kinda started that one. Actually, there's no telling what posts will show up where, really. They just kinda happen, I guess, which I 'spose is the whole idea of real-time content sharing, right? I even did a kind of long post there recently (at least for Tumblr), a rarety — most people on it are just blogging a single photo, or maybe a video. But what is blogging, I say, without a little text, huh?  Words, baby! They make the world go round, don't they? (But, hey, that's a blogger talking.)

Like I say, blogging — it's gone wild.

DEMOfall 2010: A Chat With Primal About “Thought Network” Publishing

Primal-PeterSweeney+DerrickCho I heard last week about a company that was returning to DEMO to introduce something new.  I'd seen Primal at DEMO '09 in Palm Desert (they were called Primal Fusion then), so I was interested in getting an update. The company introduced on stage today a product called "Primal Pages for Publishers," based on a very interesting semantic technology they call "Thought Networking."  When you're a blogger or a writer, you pay attention to this stuff, a big part of the promise of Web 3.0.  Primal-logo With Primal, you build a topic, kind of a dynamic outline of sorts, and it essentially fills it in as you go along. As Peter Sweeney, founder & co-president says, "publishing gets easier."  Hey, that future can't come too soon for me!  With Peter in the photo is Derrick Cho, director of sales & marketing.

 

Download or listen to Graeme's interview with Primal about "Thought Network" publishing… (MP3)"

 

Podcast: A Chat with the Founders of MN Startup Lawyerist.com

Lawyerist-logo I had the pleasure today to sit down over coffee with the founders of a content site for attorneys called Lawyerist, based in downtown Minneapolis: Sam Glover (left in the photo) and Aaron Street. I met Aaron at a recent monthly lunch meeting of Club Entrepreneur, which is run by my colleague Rick Brimacomb. Lawyerist-founders And, today, I had the opportunity to meet Sam, whom I learned continues as a practicing attorney as well. What I find so interesting about this content site, in addition to it being founded by attorneys (whom you’d not normally think of as having a bent for publishing or content), is that it actually has a business model, with real revenues, based on a subscription offering it launched in January. It’s attracting some leading contributing writers, as well as a significant amount of traffic for such a early-stage business.

Listen in — it’s about a 20-25 minute conversation. Here’s the MP3 file:

Download or listen to Graeme’s interview with the founders of Lawyerist.com(MP3)”.

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What I’ve Been Doing for the Last Month and a Half…

…because I sure haven't been posting here.  Wow, I can't believe it's been 45 days!  My last post was soon after I got home from Defrag.  It's a long story.  First, I got sick right after I did that last post, coughing and hacking and generally feeling lousy, which went on for — I kid you not — four weeks!  Never had anything like that.  I think it was something I picked up on the plane.  Then, to top it off, I was really busy with new client work during this time … for BusinessCard2, VISI.com's ReliaCloud, three Skyya Communications clients, and others yet to be named — so, I was basically hunkered down at home, trying like mad to keep things moving forward. (We self-employed don't get no stinking sick days!)

Anyway, I just noticed that, although I didn't post here on my Typepad blog in those 45 days, I did post, count' em, 19 times on my Posterous blog! … pictured here in all its (semi)glorious splendor.

Posterous-GT


I remember doing a post about a year ago here explaining that I'd been gone so long because I was micro-blogging (Twittering).  You see, for us long-time bloggers, there's these huge guilt feelings we get for not blogging more often on our main blog.  So that was my excuse last year.  This year, it's Posterous that's to blame.  For me, it's a site I subtitle "somewhere in the vast expanse between his micro and macro blogging."  So, first it was short-form blogging (Twitter) that was taking me away from my long-form blogging.  Now it's, what, "medium-length" blogging?  Anyway, I find it pretty easy and non-time-consuming to post to Posterous (which I do fairly effortlessly via email). I actually use it more as a quick social-bookmarking service of sorts, when I find a valuable link — as I used to do with Delicious.

So, now you know I haven't been ignoring my contributions to the cause of online content and knowledge-sharing.  I just have too damn many places to do it!  And I've hardly backed down on my participation on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn, either.  Oh, and I wrote two posts and participated in four weekly podcasts on Minnov8, too, with my colleagues there.

So, please keep following me here, there… or how about everywhere?  :-) 

Thanks, and Happy 2010!

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