It looks like over the last couple of days I have been recommending a couple of worth while resources or weblog articles worth while reading further and keeping an eye on and somehow it sounds like this is not going to end up today. I am not going to mention, nor point, nor recommend either Carla Verwijs’ weblog or Nancy White’s since by now if you are both into Knowledge Management and Online Facilitation for communities you are probably already subscribed to both of their weblogs, and if you haven’t then I will surely recommend you do so! You will be gone off to a great reading. But that is not the purpose of this particular weblog post. What is interesting and worth while mentioning is what Carla has been mentioning already over at one of her weblog posts: Dictionary of Interaction where she is actually referencing referencing another weblog post published by Nancy not long ago titled Updating My Online Interaction Glossary.

What a fantastic resource that is ! In Updating My Online Interaction Glossary Nancy has put together a must-read glossary of terms that she has been exposed over time in her daily online interactions with other folks. Indeed, a must-go-through resource specially if you are about to enter the world of online, remote collaboration and if in particular you would want to catch up with some of the hot terms as far as social software, knowledge sharing and collaboration is concerned. That is why you would be able to read in very brief notes on terms like Aggregation, Weblog, Blogroll, Communities of Practice, Feeds, Folksonomy, Knowledge Management (Where I would probably need to add, yet again, another definition to The Essence of Knowledge Management weblog post I created not long ago), Mashup, Permalink, Presence Indicators, RSS, Social Software, Tagging, Virtual Community, Web 2.0, Wiki, etc. etc.

Yes, I know that lots of you out there who have been on the Internet for quite a while and who have been having and maintaining your weblogs and whatever other online spaces ma be a bit far too simplistic list, but I must that is the beauty of the whole thing. It is its simplicity what makes that particular weblog post very handy and very helpful, and straight the point. And on top of that you would see as well how Nancy not only gives a very short descriptive definition of the word but she also includes a URL link which points to online resources where you can get some further details, if needed. Very nice actually!

This is one of those resources that I will continue to use as time goes by and I dive into facilitating the on boarding of the communities I provide support to on making use of some of these new social software tools coming out there. And Nancy’s Online Interaction Glossary is just not only a good start but a superb one. I would be able to save up so much time not having to recreate this and I am glad she has put it together. Also I am sure that as time goes by she will be adding some more entries, so that is perhaps one of those articles that would be worth while bookmarking elsewhere for a later retrieval and catch up.

So from here a big thanks! to Nancy White for putting such a handy resource out there and for making it available to us all. Well done !

Tags: Carla Verwijs, Nancy White, Online Facilitation, Online Interaction Glossary, Glossary, Social Software, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Online Communtiies, Virtual Communtiies

It looks like lately I have been talking quite a bit about stuff related to IBM and although it is not something that I am actually doing on a very regular basis I am glad to see how every now and then I get a chance to comment on some of the cool things that are going on inside and outside of IBM, and all related to the Knowledge Management, Collaboration and Social Software areas, amongst others. It should not come as a surprise to anyone some of the stuff that IBM has been doing around the world of podcasting, for instance. I have been weblogging about this already several times; however, I thought that you would be interested in a single new initiative that has come out and which I am sure you would be looking forward to it and, of course, subscribe. Let me tell you about it.

Check out Shortcuts (Organise your digital life - A weekly shows from IBM). An IBM external podcast offering where both George Faulkner and Jennifer Clemente (Two of my IBM colleagues) will be providing you, on a weekly basis, with an online show "to help you make the most out of e-mail, IM, blogs and other great tools". I am not sure what you think about this but I feel this is just a superb initiative ! How many times have you wondered about performing a particular task and not having a clue as to how it would work? Then you start working your way through whatever the search engine and before you know it you end up in a web site doing something completely different to what you were supposed to be doing in the first place. Well, Shortcuts is supposed to be helping out in this area by providing you with some weekly hints and tips on how you can get the most out of the IT tools available to you. Pretty slick, indeed !

To get things started they have got a podcast with Rocky Oliver on how to tackle all that annoying spyware that we all get to experience on a daily basis while we surf the Internet. In that podcast Rocky is actually suggesting to make use of two different programmes that I have used in the past myself: Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy, to try to help out with that ever growing problem. They are indeed very good programmes, no doubt, but one other that you may want to consider as well and which I have been using myself quite a bit is Windows Defender, which so far has managed to keep my home computer clean and without any major issues. It is still a beta release but you can already download it from here and take it yourself for a spin.

Thus, as you can see, all these tips coming from Shortcuts actually have got another great purpose, which is also share your own tips and tricks to take control over the tools you get to use on a daily basis and be as productive as ever. That is why they are encouraging folks as well to leave comments or to actually post a question yourself out to the experts. Now, what a better way to build up on the collective wisdom of us all than to share some of the best tips out there and make them available through podcasts and / or comments.so that everyone has got the chance not only to learn from those tips but also at the same time engage in the conversations? Terrific stuff, don’t you think? 

I have already subscribed to the podcast myself and I hope you do, too. I will surely be catching up weekly with some other hot tips. I am certain I would get to learn a thing or two. However, for the time being just, take a look into what other folks, like Rocky himself, Alan Lepofsky or Ed Brill (Three of my IBM fellow colleagues) are saying on this new IBM initiative. I love it when people say that IBM has not been doing enough around the Web 2.0 world and then you bump into offerings like Shortcuts, amongst other others. But more on those later. One at a time…

Tags: Shortcuts, IBM, Tips, Hints&Tips, Productivity Tips, Spyware, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, Windows Defender, Rocky Oliver, Alan Lepofsky, Ed Brill

Some time ago I received some feedback via e-mail and IM from several readers from elsua indicating how they were not very enthusiastic with the actual pop-up that was coming up every time they would visit my weblog directly without going through the RSS feed. Back then I explained that the reason why that pop-up was coming up was because I was making use of a hit counter widget that was offering its services for free but with the slightly annoyance of the pop-up itself. So at that time I decided to start my quest to find a good hit counter, available for free, and which I could use here in this weblog. And after having searched extensively for it I have finally found it. I have been trying it out for the last couple of weeks and it seems to be working really well and it is actually providing some really good and relevant information about the readers of this weblog, so I thought I would share this weblog post to let you know about it, in case you may want to have a look and use it yourselves.

It is called GoStats and, like I mentioned above, it is available free of charge so you can sign up for an account and add your weblog, update your weblog template with the widget and you would be ready to go ! As simple as that. You would then be able to get and display daily hits along with the referrers, which is always a good thing so that you can see who else is talking about you, and a whole bunch of other stuff, that instead of me boring you all with the description I better point you right to those stats so that you can check them out for yourself and see what elsua has been up to.

Now, let’s move on to the next widget that I have found earlier on this morning, thanks to the hat tip from one of my friends from the other side of the pond, and which I have been enjoying a great deal thus far, since I have added in all three weblogs that I currently maintain. The actual widget is an offering coming from Digital Point Solutions and it is called Geo Visitors. This is actually a web site that you would allow you to track your web site’s or weblog’s visitors and place them in a worldwide map using Google Maps so that you can see right away where they are located in the world. Right, how cool is that, eh?

I am not sure about your folks but I have always been very curious to find out where you all are, specially the faithful readers that keep coming back repeatedly to get your daily elsua dose, so when I saw Geo Visitors I just couldn’t help but put it together into this weblog and start watching where you are all coming from. Fascinating ! I know it is a bit too early but if you would click on the little widget I added for this new hack you can already see some interesting data. First, for instance, that my main readership seems to be folks from the English-speaking world, which I guess it was to be expected since this weblog is written in English (Although I am thinking about making some changes in this particular area, but more on that at a later time), then I have got a number of regular readers who come from very exotic destinations like Venezuela, Finland or India (I wonder who that would be) and growing…

Thus now you will be able to see how I am going to be spending a little bit of my time from now on. Just finding out some more about you folks. And the great thing about Geo Visitors is the fact that when you actually click on the Site Visitor button from someone who may have been to your site you have got the possibility of using Google Earth (If you are into Geography you gotta love this programme, I tell you!) and follow up to right to the very same city where that hit is coming from. Awesome ! I love it!

So there you go. Two weblogging tips for you before the beginning of the weekend so that you can go and explore them as you may see fit over the next couple of days and see if you would put them together into your weblog template. Now I will just go on with that  everlasting task of finding a new theme to use with elsua. Sigh. Oh, I tell you what, if you know of a WordPress theme that you feel would fit in quite nicely with the topics I get to talk about over here feel free to drop a comment over here or contact me offline and I will look into it. There has got to be something out there that I could use and feel comfortable with, right? So let the hunt continue …

Tags: GoStats, Geo Visitors, Digital Point Solutions, Google Maps, Google Earth, Blogging Tips, Hit Counters, Blogging Measurements, Metablogging

As I keep encouraging both people at work and outside work to explore all these relatively new social software tools available out there: wikis, weblogs, social bookmarking, web syndication (RSS / Atom), podcasting, and whatever other social networking tools, in order to improve and augment the way they may be sharing knowledge and collaborating with other knowledge workers, I have always been encouraging them to go out there and start playing with all these tools; trying them out to see if they would fit their needs or if they are tools they would want to explore further at some point in time. And in the world of the Blogosphere time and time again I keep getting back to one of the fundamental resources, in my opinion, for every weblogger out there who may want to expand their weblogging boundaries.  Yes, indeed, that key fundamental resource is Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger: one of the most relevant and resourceful weblogs out there that helps people  improve their weblogging experience a huge deal !

If you haven’t check out his project on 31 Days to Building a Better Blog you surely should ! It is one of those must-read series of weblog posts that will certainly help you getting started with your own weblogging experience and much more importantly it will provide you with an extended set of tips you could make use in order to get your own weblog where you always wanted it to be. Worth while a good paused read, for sure. But that is not the reason why I am actually creating this particular post. It is actually for one weblog post that he has created that can certainly keep you busy for a whole weekend reading through it all.

A couple of days ago Darren created what has been, up until now, one of my favourite weblog posts of all times and one post that I have been already using a few times to spread the message around about weblogs and weblogging in general. It is titled A - Z of Professional Blogging and in it you would be able to find an impressive list of 130 tools and platforms, thus far, all of them related to weblogging or to your own experience with this relatively new social  software application. Yes, indeed, quite impressive!

That is why I wanted to create this particular post today, Friday, so that folks out there who may be interested in reading further on some of those tools or applications would have as well, at least, some time to play around with them. As I said the list is huge and it has got some really handy tips on weblogging tools available out there. By no means it is a complete list, but it surely is a good start and I am sure that as time goes by and people continue to provide more feedback on missing tools Darren would be updating the list to make it even much more resourceful. I haven’t yet gone through the entire list of tools put together, that is going to be my homework for this coming weekend but I can see already a couple of weblogging tools that I am using that are not in the list, so perhaps beginning of next week, when I have dug into the already existing ones I would be updating this particular weblog post to include the listing of those which have not been included just yet and, hopefully, Darren will include them as well as part of the list.

Let’s see if I am able to finish the homework or not. But either way, just get yourself over there and dive into it. I am sure that weblog post will keep you busy for a few hours with some fun exploring to do. And if you are using a weblogging tool that is not in the list, by all means, please let Darren know so that we can all make it grow bigger and bigger by the day. After all, it is our weblogging guide, right ?

Tags: Professional Blogging, Metablogging, Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, Blogging Tools, Knowledge Management, KM

Folks who may have been reading from  elsua for some time now would probably remember how fond I have been all along about one of my favourite offline weblogging tools available out there: Qumana. I have weblogged a few times already about it under the name of QumanaXP, specially since they have been working on their latest beta. So earlier on this morning I was actually quite excited to read over at Qumana "How To" Blog a weblog post by Arieanna where she has just announced the latest beta client available for Qumana: New Qumana Beta Release: Easier than Ever.

Fantastic piece of news, folks ! I tell you. This is one of those offline weblogging releases that will certainly help people come a lot closer to weblogging than ever before. It will no doubt help them improve their own weblogging experience quite a bit not only because of its incredible ease of use but also because some of the really nifty features that have been put together on this latest release and which you can read some more about over at Qumana Is Font Crazy and Qumana’s New and Hot Image Interface.

I love it! One of the recent features I have implemented over here, and that I mentioned some time ago, is now easier than ever ! That is  just a terrific piece of news because I have been looking for a nicer way to implement this and I was never sure how to get the most out of it and it looks like now, with Qumana, I would be able to get it going, just the way I want it. Lovely.

Overall, I am quite pleased with this last beta release and I am sure that we would get to see some more in future versions. The folks over at Qumana do certainly know how to keep innovating in such a precious space as offline weblogging tools, because I am not sure if you have noticed it or not but going through the initial set up and the Blog Manager is just such a treat that I am really glad they have made the latest client available because as I have gone to maintain a couple of other weblogs setting them up through Qumana has been really easy. Too easy. So what is your excuse ? Why not give it a try and start experiencing the way weblogging was always meant to be. Go ahead, download the client, and get busy with it!

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Oh, and in case you are wondering about this, Qumana is not the only offline weblogging tool that I am using and that I have enjoyed quite a bit so far. In the past you have probably read how I have been using w.bloggar, Performancing for FireFox and Flock’s weblogging component. You may be thinking that these may well be far too many offline weblogging tools and you probably are right. However, I always like to work on different drafts for different posts from several weblogs that I maintain, so for each weblog I have developed a technique to use a particular offline weblogging tool. So I can keep things separate but at the same time with a flow that works for me. And now it is about to get even better with this latest release of Qumana. Easier than ever. Good stuff!

Tags: Metablogging, Qumana, Performancing, w.bloggar, Flock

If you have been reading my weblog for some time now you would know how time and time again I have always been saying that weblogging, whether you do it on the Internet or on the Intranet, is always about the conversation(s), about engaging in them and sharing your knowledge and collaborating with others. Indeed, a very interesting option for Knowledge Management to explore further if you would want to look for alternative ways of facilitating that knowledge exchange. However, there are times where you may be engaging in the conversations and lose track of those folks who you may have been collaborating with just because at some point it may be more difficult to catch up than anything else. So how can you get that focus back and give you and your readers some more visibility about where you are engaging with other webloggers in the Blogosphere?

Check out WhoLinked, folks. You are going to like it. At least, I have been enjoying it quite a bit since I got it installed in my weblog after having gone through Corporate Blogging 101’s Cool New Service - WhoLinked.com by Patrick Dodd. Patrick shared a very nice overview describing how it actually works but basically with WhoLinked, and in three very very easy steps, you would be able to get a more visual view of what other webloggers are saying and linking about your own weblog. Pretty neat, indeed. Yes, indeed, it is all about keeping track of the conversations.

So if you scroll down in elsua under the blogroll, on the left column, you would now be able to see who is linking to my weblog and with a direct link so that you can go there and check out some more about those different conversations. I know you are going to say that Technorati does some of this already and you are right but the main difference between both offerings is the fact that Technorati forces me to go to their web site whereas with WhoLinked I get to see the direct links and it would take me there right away without having to go through an interim web site to find those links. Yes, I know, very handy !

Right now you would be able to create that widget in a couple of minutes (Even less!) providing you with information from web links up to 10, which I think would be a good number to give you an idea of who else is currently linking their weblog to your weblog. If you go and take a look now you would be able to recognise some of the webloggers that I have been following up for some time now and some other interesting links that you probably never thought would be there in the first place, which is always a good thing because you can then see how diverse and engaging participating from the Blogosphere could be.

Thus if you are looking for a way to bring some visibility to those folks who link back to you and want to find an easy and inexpensive way of doing so I strongly suggest you have a look into Patrick’s weblog post Cool New Service - WhoLinked.com to see how WhoLinked works and then head over to their web site and set up your widget in less than one minute, upload it to your web site and start seeing the immediate benefits that, believe it or not, you are not along out there in the Blogosphere!

(Thanks, Patrick, for the headsup and for the great tip!)

Technorati Tags: Metablogging, WhoLinked, Technorati