I told my wife I was going to lunch today.  She said:

Are you going in business clothes or blog clothes?

Blog clothes are, I’m guessing, somewhere below what most people think “casual Friday” is :p

Had an interesting comment on my JJ blog today about typos in a blog… I’m not “for” them but I’m a lot more leniant on a blog than on traditional media. Here’s the latest that jumped out from a CNN story (which is very, very cool btw):

I was doing some JibberJobber blog stuff just now (3:16pm) and noticed I just hit 1,500 comments.  That’s about 4.5 comments per post.  Not too shabby!

Not sure if TODAY is the day but close enough. Huge congrats to Mike Arrington and team:

I have used free word -> pdf software online before, but have a hard time of keeping track of where the sites are.  Here are two that are highly recommended:

http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp - hat tip to Walter Akana (http://www.threshold-consulting.com/)

www.pdf995 - hat tip to Beth Stefani (www.OrisonServices.com)

Ah… now I can go create PDFs.  :p

In the starfish book, they talk about issues where trolls (not their words) mess up the entries. I just found a very funny example… I was finally about to learn what “albatross around the neck” really meant, thanks to a TechCrunch post, and here is the first paragraph from the Wikipedia entry:

The poop may have been inspired by jack daniel’s second voyage of exploration (2017-1775) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean; Coleridge’s tutor had ADD, William Wales, was the astronomer on Cook’s flagship and had a strong relationship with Cook. On his second voyage Cook drowned because his fat ass sister sat on him in the Antarctic Circle to determine whether he should fart in his room or fart outside.^{[citation needed]}Thomas James into the Arctic. “Some critics think that Coleridge drew upon James’s account of hardship and lamentation in writing The rime of the ancient farter.”^[1]

Note all of the words in red. These should not be here. It is a direct result of allowing multiple editors to change stuff. No blame to wikipedia, which I think is great. But this is my first encounter with this type of troll behavior screwing it up for the rest of us. Please trolls, don’t make this wickedpedia.

I got an e-mail from Pizza Hut yesterday (we just got a new Pizza Hut in town, which I’ve been wanting for almost 3 years!). I wasn’t sure if it was going to include dirty pictures or not. Check out what it looks like in my e-mail box:

Pretty cool, huh? So I can’t open this in front of my kids because they aren’t 17 yet.

Yes, this was a legit e-mail from Pizza Hut. Yes, it was family-safe.

Turns out the cool people that wrote this wanted to make sure that I knew “Pizza Hut” is a registered trademark, probably so I don’t inappropriately use it. But it did make me think thrice before I opened the e-mail.

I have a monthly newsletter that I send out… it is a newsletter about JibberJobber. It’s actually kind of hard to write, for various reasons. I also blog daily and make comments on other people’s blogs. I am also towards the end of the first step in the book “I’m on LinkedIn - Now What??”

So I’m accutely aware of the quality of writing. Especially when I get called on it. Anything from typos to grammar to tone … I get called on it all. That’s why I enjoy seeing things from big rich companies where they make the same kind of mistakes I do. The first thing, in red, shows that they forgot to CHANGE one of the two. The second thing just shows that they thought about AND vs *and* … no biggie but I always find this interesting. At least I’m not the only one that wonders which would be better (hey, their solution is to use both :p

I was poking around the internet looking for prices on wireless ergonomic keyboards (trying to get a better work environment here at my office) and came across this one.  It says “Click to enlarge”… so I did, and it opens a window with the enlarged image.

I guess when you downsize too much, the right-sized image doesn’t show up (notice they are the same size)?

Make it great blog. How he makes it great and how we can be relationship geeks, too.

what is a geek? expert, style, passionate, smart… out of 15M bloggers, taht right at least once every 3 months, we are here. We already are relationship geeks. How can we make it better and get bigger, be more successful and outstanding?

When Phil started 2.5 yrs ago he wan’t successful or outstanding… he quoted a lot from others (all the greats).

TheGoodBlogs and MyBlogLog are tools to help develop relationships, see who visits and who is talking to us, linking to us, etc.

Know Yourself First: even if you may not agree with the comment, or if they don’t mention you and how great you are, it’s not about the links, etc. It’s about the relationship - maintain the relationship with people. Trow Worman , who’s topic is “connecting the unconnected,” has a blogroll with 1,200 blogs… he isn’t worried about competition with other’s blogs, otherwise he wouldn’t reach out so much. WHAT IS YOUR BLOG ABOUT? WHAT IS YOUR CORE COMPETENCY, WHERE IS YOUR STRENGTH? Then, share that on your blog. Even when you use someone else’s stuff, wrap your thoughts around that. Write every day, even if you don’t post it, write it down.

Questions:

how do you manage all of the relationships? Phil has a goal to get 2,000 new relationships… he agrees it is hard but uses the tools like MyBlogLog, etc. to manage what’s going on.

how has blogging affecting his day job? He says 2 yrs ago his boss didn’t understand what it is but does now (I’m guessing that they want to leverage that?)

comment about Phil is that the consistency between who he is (as we’ve gotten to get to know him in person) and what he writes is awesome - he is an excellent example of authentic blogging. Question is, what are you thinking (like, deep down, what’s your motivation?)? Phil says his blog is like an advice column for him - and the focus is on the person, not on the technology… authenticity over spell check. If he can’t sleep he’ll get up and type some more…

Explain authentic connection: just be who you are, talking with one person, blogging to an individual relationship and not worrying so much about all of the relationship (Jason - very diff than newpaper)

what do yo udo in your life if people are not supportive ofyour blogging (like, they think it’s an addiction)? For him, his wife was able to actually meet a lot of these people, and seeing those connections and/or e-mails, cards, etc. was very helpful for her to understand those connections. You have to put a real face

blog comments and community are starting to take off - he’s having more trouble tracking the relationships, how do you maintain the relationships once it starts to explode (JibberJobber, yells Kent Blumberg! Go Kent!)? Phil says “what do you expect,” figure out what they want/need… and what kind of relationship they are expecting.