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

Tag: Flickr

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.

A Quick ‘Blogwell-Minneapolis’ Video (My First One Ever Created with Animoto)

Just for the heck of it, I decided to try a service called Animoto, which promises to lets you create videos in minutes from your own photos, letting you add music you select from their site, or you can use your own track. It’s free for creating 30-second videos (like the one here), or, if you want longer videos, it’s just $30 for a full annual pass, to create as many as you want.

I just uploaded a selection of my Flickr set from the Blogwell event, which I attended a couple of weeks ago (see previous post), chose an instrumental track, and — sure enough — I got the end-result in minutes. Pretty cool. Kind of a poor-man’s way to do video… 🙂 Especially if you’re like me and shoot a ton of stills at events of all kinds. Man, do I have the archive.

Hey, I just might make another video with the pix I shoot this Friday, August 28th, at our next Social Media Breakfast-Twin Cities — it’s at the Minnesota State Fair. That’s right, “Social Media on a Stick!” I just might wear my cowboy boots and hat…

Wonder what music track should I use for that one? Hmm, the possibilities boggle the mind…

GSP West 08: Hot and Cold

It’s a hot conference, and what do I get?  A damn cold!  And I just had a doozer back in January, too.  Is this the worst, hellish year for colds and flu that you can remember, or what?  It sure is for a lot of people I know….

Anyway, I’m sucking it up (oh, god, that’s bad), tryin’ to keep up…. I did my live-Twittering thing yesterday, after getting well practiced at DEMO. Gspopeningscene
See my 40 or 50 something tweets (I lost count) here.  Then chatted over wine with Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch), Dan Carroll (Somr.org, former Twin Citian, now Mountain View), Chris Messina (DISO guy), Maria Sipka (Linquia, a fellow Aussie and surfer), Chris Gammill (a buddy from LA), and others — all while uploading my pix on Flickr. Gspplatformwars

Afterwards, attended part of AppNite (couple of cool ones!), then managed to hear most of Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at 8:00 — it was good, very inspired. Tim is amazing. Took a lot of notes, but was all out of Twitter juice by that time. So, dragged myself back to my hotel (a very cool little boutique place called the Sophia). Now it’s Tuesday morning, and I’m seriously looking for a Walgreens so I can load up on cold medicine…  🙁

CES Post 7: Winding Down

This will be my final post from the BlogHaus, at about 11:00 am on Wednesday. It’s been great. Now sitting here with Tom Hawk of Zooomr and Andru Edwards of Gear Live and some of his people, who are all busy publishing. (Tom told me he won’t make his 1000 photo upload goal, but he’s halfway there. He only uploads really, really nice pix, though. Somebody else just said there are 30,000 photos now up in Flicker tagged CES 2007. Yikes! I did a bunch myself, mostly of the BlogHaus.)

Had a great time last night at the Blogger Business Summit party — met a lot of interesting folks. Then back to the BlogHaus, which was going at full capacity, Robert Scoble holding court in one corner, pizza in another. And lots in between. One new person I met was a guy who’s launching the first trade show for the the blog world….called, guess what? BlogWorld! Sounds like a serious endeavor, from a guy who’s run lots of successful shows — Rick Calvert is his name. It’s scheduled for November — in Vegas! Don’t know if there’s a site up yet, but looks like it’ll be at www.BlogWorldExpo.com.

Anyway, I’m going off to some other business soon here, then heading for the airport about 3:00. Just picked up all my email, and learned I missed the cut for a lunch with Guy Kawasaki in Minneapolis on the 19th, before his big talk at the U of MN. Apparently there were only 7 slots at the table, and my friend Gary Smaby tried to get me on the list, but too many muckety-mucks already, I guess… 🙂 [Thanks for trying, anyway, Gary.] But I’ll sure be there for the talk following, which is already sold out.

Guy should be very happy the temps are finally dropping in Minnesota (lows below zero this weekend, I hear) — because, as you may recall, what got him to our state in January was the National Pond Hockey Championships, which are held on one of our city lakes. And people were getting real nervous they wouldn’t have ice, with our temps hovering around 40 for so long. Sounds like the ice will be real hard by the time Guy gets here! Anyway, looking forward to seeing Guy again, hearing his talk, and seeing him play hockey.

Cheers from Vegas! It was a good trip…

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