January 2007
Monthly Archive
Wednesday 31 Jan 2007
Buzz: Self Generated Or Otherwise
My arrival on the blogosphere has been a little later than many folks, but my experience with computers goes way back to the days when Basic, Fortran, and Cobol were the programming languages used. Back then, our public school system had this huge ticker tape type machine where students inputted data that was then transferred over phone lines to a computer operated by a nearby school district. I don’t recall much of what I had learned as I know that I was much more enamored with the lengthy green ticker tape that came out of the machine as a result of the data entered. Still, the data transfer took minutes not milliseconds and the year was 1970 when I was a pubescent 6th grade student at Somerville School in Ridgewood, NJ.
Today, computers are everywhere and are influencing our lives well beyond what few people could have imagined a generation or two ago. With the rise of the internet, global communication has reached a fevered pitch, but for users it is easy to get lost in the middle of it all.
Tuesday 30 Jan 2007
Blogging At Age 93
Being part of the MyBlogLog social community, I have come across a variety of people who span the globe. Yes, there are many Americans on the site, but I have seen plenty of citizens from France, India, Venezuala, various Middle East countries and, of course, Canada logged on.
I stumbled across a new community on Monday called, Don to Earth, but when I saw the person’s picture I thought this was someone’s idea of a joke as the photo was of a very elderly individual. I have gotten used to many community members posting caricatures of politicians, cartoon figures, even animals for their profile picture and I thought someone did the same for Don.
Turns out I was wrong. Very wrong. Don Crowdis is a Canadian blogger who is 93 years old. He is the third oldest known blogger in the world following immediately behind 94 year old Swede blogger, Alan Loof and an American, Ray White, who is also 93 but a few months older than Don. Earlier in life Don was the first host of a popular Canadian Broadcasting Company show, The Nature of Things and he was the curator/director of the Nova Scotia Museum before helping to establish what is now known as the Ontario Science Center.
So, what is my point? Quite simply it is this: while the very breath of life remains in your body, you can still impact people. In the case of Don Crowdis we gain insight via his blog of a time long since passed by in the life of a man who isn’t in a hurry to quit living.
Monday 29 Jan 2007
Going Beyond On-Line Distribution With Your Press Release
If you own a business, or you are involved with a civic group, politics, head up an important website, etc. then you may have given some consideration to issuing a press release to let the news media know what is going on with your group, organization, or site. A compelling press release has been written, an on-line distributor has been carefully selected, and all you have to do now is wait. Is that it? No, not by a long shot. There are some additional steps which you can take to ensure that your press release is maximized to its fullest potential. Neglecting these additional steps will likely mean that you are not getting the most out of your news release.
Most of my customers are individuals and small businesses without the budget to hire a public relations firm to help them get noticed. By turning to me, they know that they will get a well written press release with the option to have me distribute it via an on-line distributor such as PR Leap. If we go with PR Leap, then I typically urge them to select the $50 newswire service add-on to maximize on-line penetration.
