Last post of the year
As 2004 closes, I spend this evening alone, pondering how the year went from my perspective. And as I think about it, I'd have to say that overall I'm pleased with it. There are a number of things that I might change if I had the power to do so, but overall, I choose not to be depressed about the year. My part in it wasn't all that bad.

Looking back at my archives, I note that I took all of January off. I didn't post anything to this blog until February 8th.

Also I had announced at the end of October in 2003 that I would be sending out a regular email to a wide circle of friends via email. I soon realized that that idea was not the best one I had ever had. To impose an email on folks who didn't request to be on my list wasn't cool, so after I announced Ron Klieman's pancreatic cancer and his subsequent death on May 25th, 2004, I decided to quit that ill-advised project.

I then resolved that if folks wanted to hear what I had to say, they could visit my blog to see what I was thinking and saying. If they didn't care, then I should respect their decision and not "impose" my email upon them. So I abandoned my "regular correspondents" email mailing list around the end of May.

Once I made that choice, I devoted more time to communicating via my blog. Since that decision, I'm pleased with the results. Those who want to hear from me regularly visit my blog; those who don't, just don't. No hassle from me; no problem for them. That's okay from my point of view. One has to accept that others make choices too about how much communication you'll have with them.

The job I had at the beginning of the year has evolved into something different at the end of the year, but I judge that to be "good." I like being back in tech support. I think I do it well, and I am happy in this role. Unfortunately because of the limitations the company has on hours that they'll allow us to accumulate in any pay period, I'm not making as much money as I once did, but I am doing the thing that I signed up to do when I joined the company, so I am happy with my contribution to our customers' online lives and to our company.

Finally, I'm pleased that I have a photo web site to which I can easily add digital pictures and from which I can easily incorporate pictures into this blog. This combination of essentially FREE services gives me a very nice setup for communicating with friends and family (and yes, even strangers) via the Internet.

So as 2004 closes, I'd have to say I am satisfied with my progress in using the Internet in ways that match my goals. I'm also looking forward to bigger and better things in 2005, but that's a post for tomorrow.

See you in 2005. I hope you all have a safe and happy celebration of the New Year. Thanks for your loyalty and support in 2004.

- posted by Perry @ 9:45 PM 0 comments

 
My 1980 Volvo

The picture at the right is my 1980 Volvo GT that I bought new in December of 1980 for about $10,500.00. It has been disabled since May of 2003, so I finally decided that I would donate it to the East Tennessee Kidney Foundation so they could get some value out of it and I could get a tax deduction for doing so.

I must confess that giving this car away is difficult for me because it has been a part of my life for so long. But it isn't getting any younger (and coincidentally, neither am I), and it is time for me to get rid of it for a worthy cause. It's no longer "Hi Ho Silver" for me, but rather it's now "Goodbye, Old Paint."

- posted by Perry @ 10:11 AM 0 comments

 
Correspondence with the author of SAM
Yesterday my friends Patrick Ahern and Paul Moor both tested out my installation of SAM, the Skype Answering Machine. What I learned from that experiment is that at the moment SAM does not permit me to specify the length of time a caller can talk when he or she is leaving a message. Right now, a caller is cut off at the about the one minute mark. So I wrote the author, Alex Rosenbaum, and asked if he were planning to add that functionality in the future.

Last night I got a response from him indicating that the next version of his little program will have that feature. He said it might be a few weeks before the next version is out however.

I think it is really cool that the Internet permits you to correspond with the authors of software and suggest improvements and that they are, in general, receptive to such feedback. It makes for a better product for them and a more satisfying experience for the user.

- posted by Perry @ 6:39 AM 0 comments

 
Comments (for example about Skype)
Yesterday I received a comment on my post about Skype. This comment was from Janet Tokerud, someone I do not know, and in it she asked an interesting question about using Skype. However, that comment raised a point that I need to make about comments in general. (By the way, it is always a kick to get a comment from a "stranger" because it means that people other than my immediate family and friends are reading my blog, and that usually surprises me. Thanks, Janet.)

If you leave an anonymous comment, or even if you register with Blogger and leave a comment that identifies who you are, I don't usually have an email address for you so that I can reply by email to your comment. For that reason, the only way I have of answering your question is to post a comment in reply to yours. Therefore, you should check the comments section once you've left one there to see whether you have gotten a reply to your question (if you ask one). I don't mean to imply by this that I'll post a reply to every comment, but I often do, so please check the comments to the post on which you commented to see if there is a response from me.
- posted by Perry @ 8:53 AM 0 comments

 
Dropping in for Christmas

The drive from Knoxville to Lula, GA., where my older son, Jeff, and his family and my ex-wife, Carole, live, carries me along highway 64 between Cleveland, TN, and Murphy, NC, along a stretch of the Ocoee river that served as the venue for the Kayaking competition in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The picture at the right is one of the calmer stretches of that river.

The road that winds around sharp curves in the mountains beside that river is quite scenic, though it is a very tiring drive because of the constant twisting back and forth. The entire trip usually takes about three and a half hours from Knoxville to Lula or vice versa, and I usually make it once or twice a year for special events, such as Christmas, which as I said the other day, is Jeff's birthday.

On Christmas day, I made this trip to celebrate Christmas with the family there, and though I only had about 24 hours for the trip, it was good to spend the time with the family. Unfortunately, because Lula is about 50 or so miles north of Atlanta, I didn't have time to travel the extra distance to visit other family members and friends who life in the Atlanta area.

One notable "highlight" of my trip to Jeff's house was that Jeff decided to show me a storage closet that he had cleaned up in Dustin's room on the second floor of his house. It is one of those closets that is constructed from the "extra" space that is created by the slope of the roof so the ceiling for that area is slanted such that one can only stand erect as you first enter the space. Jeff stepped into the room ahead of me. When I stepped in, I didn't realize that the flooring in that area did not cover the entire space. There was one section immediately inside the door that didn't have flooring. Naturally, being the graceful person that I am, I stepped into the gap and immediately my left foot and leg plunged through the ceiling to the kitchen below. Here's a picture of the damage I did to the ceiling. Had the joists been further apart I might have fallen through to the Kitchen below, but instead I hit the left side of my hip on the joist on the left and my right knee on the joist on the right. I was stuck, with my left leg dangling in the Kitchen below, such that I couldn't extract myself. Jeff and Dustin had to lift me up back into the closet/storage area onto the flooring that was in place there. I am quite fortunate that I didn't apparently break any bones in the fall and the primary damage, aside from a bit of soreness, was to the ceiling in the kitchen.

In that period of relief that comes over you once you realize that nothing tragic had occurred in what could have been a catastrophic situation, everything was funny. Maegan, my granddaughter, thought I had died. Carole, who had just walked out of the kitchen, said she thought the turkey had fallen off the counter. We joked that "no, the turkey had fallen through the ceiling." Of such things, I guess, are Christmas memories made, so Christmas of 2004 will be remembered, I suppose, as the year Daddy Perry "dropped in for Christmas."
- posted by Perry @ 7:43 AM 3 comments

 
Merry Christmas to all
My son, Jeff whose 40th birthday is today, and his family sent me this animated Christmas greeting card last night. I thought I'd share it with you as a way of wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

- posted by Perry @ 8:32 AM 2 comments

 
Lawrence Lessig's innovative use of the Web
Lawrence Lessig says that it's time for an update to his book "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace," which was written and first published five years ago. His publisher has agreed to the following plan:

"Beginning in February, we'll be posting Version 1 of Code to a Wiki. 'Chapter Captains' will then supervise updates and corrections. Depending upon the progress, sometime near June, I will take the product and edit and rewrite it to produce Code, v2. The Wiki will stay live forever (under a Creative Commons license). The edited book will be published in the fall. I have donated my advance for Code, v2 to Creative Commons. All royalties beyond the advance will be donated as well. "

In case you aren't familiar with who Lawrence Lessig is, you probably should become so. He is a very influential thinker in his interpretation of the law and it's relation to our connected world. He first came to my attention when he was appointed a "Special Master" in the government's case against Microsoft a few years ago. Since that time I've read many things that he has written and have found him to be both thoughtful and clear.

- posted by Perry @ 7:43 AM 0 comments

 
First Skype call with Paul Moor
I have just completed the first Skype call with Hans-Christian Steinhoff, Paul Moor's local computer guru in Berlin, as he was testing out Paul's installation of Skype. All went well for a first effort.

Now, I look forward to being able to communicate with Paul regularly via this wonderful free medium of the Internet. What a nice early Christmas gift for both of us!

- posted by Perry @ 10:02 AM 0 comments

 
Infested
Increasingly, when I am answering customer calls about why they can't surf the Internet as they could before or why their computer is running so slowly, I end up trying to educate them about Spyware. This morning I found a worthwhile site, called "The Spyware Warrior Guide to Anti-Spyware Programs: Feature Comparison," that should prove useful to anyone beset by these problems. There are links at that site to the two major Spyware removal programs that we recommend at work, Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. In combination, these two programs do an excellent job of identifying, removing, and, in the case of Spybot S&D, immunizing your computer from becoming infected again by the nuisances.

Microsoft also has an excellent series of articles about Spyware and their suggestions for dealing with it. You would do well to visit this site and read the various links found there. Most people find out about Spyware once they are infested with it, and as is true with most things, it is wise to be informed about such things beforehand rather than after the fact. It is easier and less time-consuming to prevent the problem than it is to cure it.

- posted by Perry @ 6:55 AM 0 comments

 
Seminal articles
If you read enough blogs, you'll run across links to articles that are influencing the blogosphere and hence the culture of the online world significantly. Although it was published before blogs took off in 2004, The Cluetrain Manifesto is one such work. Also "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond has had a profound influence on people's thinking.

Another article that has gotten a lot of buzz appeared in Wired Magazine in October of this year. It is "The Long Tail." If you find yourself with some time to spare over the holidays, you'll find reading this article both interesting and perhaps thought-provoking. Also see this link for further comment as the author blogs about turning the original article into a book.

- posted by Perry @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

 
Skype
Much of this post will be taken from an email I sent to some friends today about using Skype. If you haven't yet investigated Skype, I urge you to do so. There are versions of it available for both Windows (Win2k and WinXP) and for the Macintosh. In general, Skype can be summed up as an application that permits you to make voice telephone calls over the Internet to other Skype users anywhere in the world at no cost.

One interest I have in Skype is to use it as a way to communicate with friends who live in other parts of the world but I am also interested in developing the ability to record those calls (interviews) and preserve them for posterity. All of this would be above board, of course, so that the interviewee would know and agree to being recorded. Being able to do such a recording makes capturing life stories possible, but not necessarily easy. I am exploring the setups that are necessary to enable such recordings. One treatise on how to do that can be found here. There is also a PDF file that gives more details about what is needed to permit such recording.

This morning I discovered a couple of free beta programs that permit you to enable an answering machine technology for your Skype calls. One is called SAM and the other is Replay Telecorder.

In the coming year, I hope many of you will download and install Skype and add me (perrynelson) to your contact list so that we can communicate via the Internet at no cost. And I intend to continue to explore this project for recorded interviews by conducting them using Skype. Stay tuned.

- posted by Perry @ 9:00 AM 4 comments

 
Belva Ann and Jackie -- Christmas 2004

I received a Christmas card this week from my friend, Belva Ann Yoss, who lives in Spokane, WA. It was taken in her backyard in the snow.

Her dog, a Corgi named Jackie, is the new "man" in her life, and she is just crazy about him. She says she has always wanted to have a Corgi.

Belva Ann and I have been friends since we met in Portland, OR, in 1980, but it has been a few years since we've seen each other. The last time we were together was on a sailing trip to Key West with my friend, Don Vernine.

- posted by Perry @ 9:30 PM 0 comments

 
Understanding and Reading a Blog
John C. Dvorak has posted an article that talks about, Understanding and Reading a Blog. He says,

"This article is for the readers of blogs, not the writers."

The post is pretty basic and most of you may already have mastered the things he talks about, but reading it might provide you an insight or two that you didn't have beforehand.
- posted by Perry @ 9:09 AM 0 comments

 
Send Christmas greetings as plain text only
In this PC Magazine article, Christmas Virus Makes the Rounds, Sebastian Rupley reports on 12/14/2004:

"Security firm MessageLabs, which tracks millions of e-mail messages each year and posts graphical propagation data on the Web, is warning of a fast-moving new virus that is spread through Christmas greeting messages. MessageLabs had intercepted 25,000 copies of the W32/Zafi.D-mm virus, a variant of the Zafi family of viruses by Tuesday morning. The first copy was intercepted Monday, so the virus is relatively new. It ranked sixth in terms of number of infections on MessageLabs' Top Ten Viruses list as of Tuesday morning."

Therefore, if you are planning to send a Christmas greeting by email this year, please do all of us a favor and make sure that it is sent as simply a plain text message so that we can receive your greetings without having to fear that the cutesy HTML message contains a virus. It's not nice to find a virus in your Christmas stocking!
- posted by Perry @ 10:15 AM 0 comments

 
A modest change to my template
This morning, as a result of reading this interesting piece at Jay Rosen's excellent blog about the movement underway in Greensboro, NC, to nurture a blogging community in the city, I followed a number of the links and found myself fascinated, once again, by the Wikipedia. That inspired me to add a link to my template (it's in the righthand column, just above the list of recent posts and titled "About Knoxville, TN") that will help readers know more about the city in which I live. This link may save me the embarrassment of not being able to answer people's questions about my home city, such as how many people live there or who the major employers are in the city. And since it is now permanently there in the template, those who are interested may learn about Knoxville till they satiate their interest from a source that is updated by the community at large. That will mean the information about Knoxville will stay current without my having to work to make that happen.

While I'm talking about Knoxville, I must acknowledge that when I came here 25 years ago from Stone Mountain, GA, which is just outside of Atlanta, I felt as if I were moving to "the sticks." But after having lived here for this long, I must confess that I love this area and this town, not because it doesn't have its warts but because it has its charms. The size and pace of the city and its life suit my temperament perfectly. My only regret is that I don't avail myself of some of the surrounding features of this area of the country often enough. For instance in particular, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is within an hour's drive of my home, and every time I take a day to go there, I come back refreshed and enriched and promise myself I'll do it more often in the future. But too often I let too much time pass between trips. I'm afraid that says something about my tendency to get trapped in the routine of my life and not varying my schedule enough. I think it may be a problem common to many of us.

- posted by Perry @ 7:15 AM 0 comments

 
All "Tuckered" out
Last night I returned a call to Tucker Childers who lives here in Knoxville and with whom I used to work at Behavioral Systems, Inc., back in the 1970's. Tucker is a former guard on the University of Georgia football team, circa 1960, and an associate of Fran Tarkenton, who was famous for having to scramble to make a living after he got out of college. Tucker and I talked for about 20 minutes about old friends and associates at BSI. Tarkenton and Aubrey Daniels had teamed to form BSI in 1972, and I was the first consultant with that organization. They split up in 1978, and Aubrey formed his own company, Aubrey Daniels and Associates, that has since become Aubrey Daniels International.

The reason that Tucker had called me originally is that he had heard from the folks at Aubrey Daniels International that they had been in conversation with me about an invitation to a retirement celebration for another former fellow-associate, John O'Connell, that is occurring today at noon at The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Atlanta. Neither Tucker nor I are going to be able to attend the fete, but it was good to hear from him and catch up on the news about old friends. As Tucker brought me up to date, I learned that one friend, Jesse Watson, had been killed a few years ago in an auto accident and that another who shall remain nameless, for obvious reasons, had done some hard time for income tax evasion. Tucker has always been a good, down-home teller of tales, and our conversation last night proved that he still is.

Up until about 10 or 12 years ago, Tucker and I would occasionally cross paths on flights to or from Knoxville as each of us was traveling to or from consulting assignments, but when I stopped flying around that time, we lost track of each other. I learned in our talk last night that he, too, had stopped flying about a year or two ago when he retired, so even if I were still "on the circuit" we wouldn't be seeing each other at McGhee-Tyson any more.

That chance to reminisce with Tucker about old times reminds me that when you are a part of a group, you seldom realize and appreciate what an extraordinary collection of talent and skills that work group is until after you have been away from it for a while. I have been privileged to be a part of a number of very unique such groups in my working career, and I enjoy remembering them when such occasions arise.

So to wrap this up, let me say publicly here to John O'Connell, who today ends his 26-year association with Aubrey Daniels International, that I hope you have a wonderful celebration with your friends and that your retirement proves to be all you have hoped it will be.

- posted by Perry @ 8:35 AM 0 comments

 
Family Headstones

While visiting in Atlanta in November, I happened to visit a couple of cemeteries, Melwood which is located between Stone Mountain and Clarkston on Ponce de Leon Avenue and the Stone Mountain cemetery while attending Julia Ann Floyd's funeral. While there I took some pictures of the headstones of various family members' graves.

Though I'm not much for visiting cemeteries in general, I took these pictures primarily to make it easy for me to find the birth and death dates for those family members. I decided to load 10 of these pictures at my Flickr site for other family members to see, if they are interested.

- posted by Perry @ 8:45 AM 0 comments

 
Tom Wright's birthday dinner

As is our custom, our group got together last night to celebrate Tom Wright's birthday, which was on Saturday, December 11th. There were 9 of us in attendance at El Charro's here in Knoxville, but I only took a couple of pictures. The one at the right is of Tom and Terry Vanderplas.

- posted by Perry @ 11:15 AM 1 comments

 
The Lenoir City High School's Christmas concert

Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of attending the Lenoir City High School's Christmas concert, where about 100 of the students performed a program of Christmas music from around the world. They clearly had fun putting on the presentation and did a nice job.

The event gave me a chance to meet Alan and Gwen Kegley, Diane Kegley's children, for the first time. Diane and I have known each other for about 2 years or so because we worked together at ClientLogic. However, Diane left ClientLogic to go to work for IPIX in their graphics department and she is currently working on the production of Shrek 3. She is a very talented artist who has done a few paintings and/or drawings of me that, for a variety of reasons too complicated to recount here, I have yet to see. I'm looking forward to getting to see them, just to learn how I turned out in them.

- posted by Perry @ 11:00 AM 2 comments

 
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you haven't yet discovered Wikipedia, hie thee hence and check it out. It's a fascinating example of collaborative effort that'll help to restore your faith in what people can do when cooperate with each other.

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any article right now by clicking on the 'edit this page' link that appears at the top of the page."

Instructions on how you can participate by adding articles, correcting them or elaborating on those already provided on the site are available at the site.

You can easily lose yourself, as I did, in exploring the links to various definitions, explanations, and elaborations, learning and being entertained by the discoveries you make there. To cite one diversion that illustrates my point, I ended up at the Car Talk website exploring Tom and Ray Magliozzi's devilishly-clever list of so-called "staffers" as a result of following a link from this page.

Why more companies haven't taken advantage of this technology to create a knowledge management system within their company, I can't imagine. Maybe it is just too new and they haven't yet learned how to use or trust this kind of tool within their company. Maybe someday!

- posted by Perry @ 5:13 PM 0 comments

 
Cute photo on Flickr

This picture was uploaded to Flickr on Dec. 4, 2004, by PT, a.k.a. Phillip Torrone, who has a terrific blog called, Engadget.

If your dog isn't yet listening to Podcasts, he doesn't know what he's missing. There is a world of content produced by ordinary people like you and me, some of it slick and some of it not-so-slick, but all of it quite fascinating. And you don't have to own an IPod to be able to listen! The vast majority of Podcasts are MP3 files that you can listen to on any MP3 player or on the Windows platform, using Windows Media Player.

Do your dog a favor and check out this link, and get on the Podcasting bandwagon.

- posted by Perry @ 11:21 AM 0 comments

 
The fastest growing technology phenomenon in history
Shel Israel says in a post this morning that his search at technorati shows that there are now more than 5 million bloggers; that over 12,000 new blogs are started each day; and that 10,000 weblogs are updated every hour.

- posted by Perry @ 10:48 AM 0 comments

 
Google "suggest"
If you've got a few minutes to kill, go play with this new toy from Google. Google Suggest (beta) Just start typing some word on which you want to search, and watch as Google suggests possible completions for your search. Once you see the word you want or if you are distracted by another more interesting term, just cursor down to the one you want and press Enter. Very cool!

- posted by Perry @ 7:42 AM 0 comments

 
The latest on The Red Couch
Shel Israel has published the proposal he and Robert Scoble plan to shop around to publishers for their book, The Red Couch. The proposal itself is interesting, but the comments by the readers are equally fascinating. They demonstrate how a community becomes involved in a blog, and in fact, I would suggest that they illustrate one of the most important indicators of how significant a blog is. The more active the comment area to a blog's posting is, the more vital and alive the blog is.

- posted by Perry @ 8:50 AM 0 comments

 
Brokaw's gone; Rather's on the way out; Get ready for DJBSteele
This news item from Indianapolis only serves to prove that "time and the tides wait for no man."

Ben Steele, the 16 year-old son of my friends David and Lynne Steele, has been selected to be the DJ for his class at North Central High School from 6-9 PM on Saturdays on the 1000 watt radio station, WJEL, which serves Marion County and the surrounding area. He won the honor for "displaying responsibility" by manning the station alone on Saturdays during that time slot. Any of you who might be interested in catching his show can do so by clicking here for an audio stream of the show (during those hours, of course).

The call letters, WJEL, stand for the J. Everett Light Career Center, the vocational arm of North Central High School, and from the station's web site comes this bit of history:

WJEL went on the air on September 3, 1975. Prior to that date, Radio-TV students only pretended to be on the air while working in training studios. The station was first licensed as a 10-watt, Class D FM station, broadcasting in monaural.

By 1981, we raised our power to 125 watts and in 1986, WJEL began broadcasting in stereo. In the early years our students played albums and 45-RPM records from turntables. Later, we advanced to putting on music on tape cartridges.

From 1976 to the early 1980's, we broadcast various instructional programs on science, spelling and history, that were heard in the school district's elementary classrooms. From the beginning, WJEL has featured current music, news and North Central High School varsity sports.

In February of 1996, WJEL increased its power to 1,000 watts becoming the most powerful high school station in the Indianapolis area.

My congratulations to you, Ben. Who knows what these early working experiences might mean for your life? My friend, Al Dale, who grew up in Gainesville, GA, began his working career in a local radio station in his home town at about your age and later went on to become a news broadcaster for ABC News and traveled the world on many assignments before his retirement a few years ago. You've come a long way from the young boy I used to know (since about 1989, but more personally from the year I spent in your town in 1994) who loved playing with Legos and was a dyed-in-the-wool Pacers fan. I hope you enjoy the challenge and opportunity this assignment presents you. I'm confident you'll handle it well.

- posted by Perry @ 6:20 AM 0 comments

 
Blogging and representations of the professional self
In this thread, Joel on Software - blogging and representations of the professional self, one writer says: "I recently was rejected for a job, because I don't have a blog. Er, at least I think that was why I was rejected. The job involved producing blog-making software at a startup, so the company had a right to be concerned about my 'lack of internet presence.' " A number of others replied to this post and that resulted in some interesting dialog about this person's dilemma.

That snippet from the discussion section of the Joel on Software blog provides an entirely different perspective on the discussion that Darrell Beasey and I had in the comment section of my post from Saturday. Darrell had pointed out that he had read in other blogs that a few people had been fired because of things they had written on their blog. I had heard that too, and the thread on Joel's site provides a link to one such instance. What's different in this thread though is that the primary focus is on why NOT having a blog can be a handicap. Like everything else, I suppose there are pros and cons to blogging, and you are "damned if you do and damned if you don't."

In another development about the corporate blogging book, Scoble posted a note on the 7th at his The Red Couch blog laying out the rules for ownership of the content of both what they post and any comments anyone else makes about their project on their site. That statement of position is apparently necessary to guarantee that they can approach a publisher and claim legitimate ownership of all the material in order to get it published. When I first read his statement, particularly in point #2, I misread it as saying that they were claiming ownership to anything that I, or any other blogger, might publish on our own site pertaining to their book was theirs, which sounded very wrong to me, but I now see that my original reading was incorrect. The statement seems entirely justified and probably wise as a way of avoiding any complications later on. Also after the first rush of enthusiasm has waned, the harsh reality of the difficulties of the project seem to have dawned on Robert and Shel, and they have now begun to deal with the details, wherein it is often said the Devil resides.

- posted by Perry @ 6:50 AM 0 comments

 
A blogged book on Corporate Blogging
Robert Scoble has begun a project with Shel Israel to write a book on corporate blogging by using his new MSN blog to write it. This is really an innovative way to try to write a book, and he has just begun it. I have subscribed to the RSS feed for that blog so that I can keep up with the project and see it as it develops.

Why, you might ask, am I interested in corporate blogging?

In part the answer is that my friend, David Steele, and I have been discussing the value of blogging in the corporate environment for some time because back in October he invited me to help him stimulate the thinking of his employees in his new role as Vice Chairman of IEI Financial Services, LLC. His original idea was to send the employees a newsletter monthly about dealing with customers and invite them to provide questions and feedback on the ideas discussed in that newsletter. I declined that invitation because I thought the use of a newsletter with that much delay was an outdated way of doing things. Given the speed with which things change and the importance of immediacy in creating any sense of involvement by participants, I began introducing him to blogging as an alternative. He has been very receptive to the idea, but as yet we haven't agreed on the right formula for doing it.

I believe that a corporate blog, even one that isn't open to the public and is entirely behind the corporate firewall on their intranet, is an excellent way to give managers and employees a way to interact with each other about issues and policies within the company. There are issues, of course, that have to be considered and worked out. Whoever authors a corporate blog needs to speak with an authentic and authoritative voice and be open to views from the front line people that may be contrary to the company line or that may reflect an incomplete understanding of all the things that motivate the management to take the stances they do. And the management of the company has to know in advance that some will disagree, perhaps in hostile ways, with what is going on within the company. Many companies aren't inclined to permit such dissent, preferring instead that people not rock the boat, but then again many companies also stifle the contributions that their people might make if the management were more willing to permit it.

A good model for the kind of openness I'm talking about is Robert Scoble, a Microsoft employee who has no problems with praising competitors and/or criticizing the company who pays his salary. That's one reason that I think The Red Couch, Scoble's name for his book and his new project, is going to be worth watching. I am hopeful that it can provide rationales and insights that will help to convince companies like David's of the utility of such tools in achieving their goals.

I don't want to be guilty of "having a hammer and seeing every problem as a nail," but for the kind of concern David originally wanted me to help him address, I believe a blog is infinitely better than a newsletter both because it would be updated more frequently and because it would facilitate responses more easily. How long would a conversation last, for instance, if there were a month between responses? Though blogs are more immediate and more responsive, they require infinitely more time and effort than a newsletter would and they may carry more risk. So I understand why some companies may go slowly into this new way of communicating, but go they will eventually. Of that, I am sure.

- posted by Perry @ 11:30 AM 4 comments

 
Flickr getting high praise from all over
Flickr continues to get praised from all quarters, and I have to agree.

In this post in the yesterday's technology column at the Globe and Mail website, Donald Melanson points out that the service is platform independent, meaning it can be used whether you are using a MAC, a PC or a Unix/Linux box. He says, "Parts of Flickr look a lot more like a desktop application than a web page, but no special software needs to be installed on the computer and nothing is dependent on a particular operating system."

Then Tom Lauer writes in his column yesterday that "At its most basic level, Flickr allows people to upload images, describe them, and then allow others to discuss them. Throw in a bunch of features such as slide shows, notes, RSS/Atom feeds, groups, tags and weblog integration tools, and you have one of the best community building tools found on the web." I should point out that lately the pictures I've been posting here on my blog have all been integrated by way of Flickr.

And Bob DuCharme says, "I love the free picture-sharing website flickr. I love how I can upload pictures and add as much or as little descriptive metadata as I wish. I can point anyone to these pictures, and they can just view them with no need to register. (For example, see these alien head prizes in Cape May, New Jersey, waiting for the lucky children who accumulate enough tickets to win them at the little boardwalk's arcade.) I can even add tags to a web page to insert thumbnails of randomly selected pictures from my flickr collection into that web page, complete with a link to the full size version, as I did recently to my home page."

Finally, Kareem gives the site high praise in this post from November 24th at his blog.

If you are tired of sending photos by email to family and friends and perhaps having to send them more than once to different people, you can't go wrong by heading over to the Flickr website and investigating this tool. You won't regret the time you spend learning about it by taking the tour. And just for the record, here's the link to my photos on Flickr.

- posted by Perry @ 9:00 AM 0 comments