Archive for the 'Blogs & Things to Explore' Category

A senior in Oz, Olive Riley, is is blogging at age 107. She blogs at The Life of Riley (what a great title!) Blogging is a great way for seniors to share their life stories and experiences through what is called “legacy blogging” .

It makes me think of my great-aunt who migrated to Australia from Malaysia when she retired from teaching school. She is now in her late 70s and lives with one of her children Every morning she walks down to the local library and logs on to check emails and keep in touch with our extended family who live all over the world. We have a family group site on Yahoo and she takes part in the conversation and news in that group site as well.

My grandfather told us the story of our ancestor who migrated to Malaysia from China, one Xmas thirty years ago and I captured that on an old hissy cassette. He died a year later and that is the only recording of his voice and our family story. It is very precious to us and to preserve it for posterity, I’ve uploaded it as a podcast on my other blog, Fusion View.

My father has also featured as a Guest Blogger on Fusion View with his Memories of Malaya series. He’s 70 today and he writes out his posts by hand and has his secretary type them up!

In Singapore, the oldest blogger in the nation conducted a talk for seniors about how to blog late last year. I’d really like to know the outcome of that event and see some of the blogs that he inspired.

I hope that many other families will be inspired by Olive to encourage their seniors to blog or to record and share their stories in some way through interviews that are then uploaded to social networks like blogs or podcast sites.

In the first week or so of launching this blog, I had one of my first visitors, Michael Beck, who also goes by the moniker digitalnomad. He has been a great resource, showing me a number of social networking sites. These are sites where bloggers can register and join a community of other bloggers with shared interests or themes. You can click on a community to join it and also add another member as a contact or friend. This links you into a diverse and international group of people that you can exchange messages with. It’s like joining a club or society or network in the real world - you all come from your different backgrounds and hook up at the club etc to share your knowledge and experiences.

Here are some that Michael introduced me to:

MyBlogLog.com - you can add some code to your blog and when other community members visit your site, their picture appears on your MyBlogLog roll. Take a look at the roll at the bottom of the far right side bar below.

Ziki.com - a similar site but without the picture roll facility.

Zimbio.com - a similar community site again. Here, you can create a page that showcases all your different blogs (if, like me, you have more than one), photos, videos and music all in one page.

Michael is based in Atlanta, USA andmaintains a series of blogs that review and report on trends specific to working and living in a mobile society. He blogs at The SOHO Quest (SOHO stands for small office - home office) and - his Ziki entry says: “Work and Live Where You Want/ Freedom Through Knowledge”. His interests include travel, photography, art, and anything involving e-commerce and nascent technology in the support of personal and financial freedom. Michael’s other blog The Sovereign Journey deals with the issues of personal privacy, natural law, self ownership and self determination.

Did I know him before this? No. Did he know me? No. Here is a great example of how web communities can work - people helping each other because they enjoy sharing knowledge and information. So, thanks, Michael, for being my guide to some new social networks!

I joined the networks out of curiosity and I’ve found that they’ve been a great way to find new and interesting blogs - especially grouped by themes. You can explore - and join - different subgroups eg about art, photography, technology, business, politics etc. It’s also a good way to connect your blog to a wider audience. Zimbio.com, for example, has a feature where you can capture the feed from your current blog and display its contents on the Zimbio site as well as on your own blog. I like MyBlogLog the most at the moment because the communities and contacts are laid out in an easy to follow, intuitive way and its easy to get the concept of what its all about very quickly. I also like the clever little “widget” that you can put in your sidebar that displays which other members of MyBlogLog have visited your site - see the bottom of the far right sidebar for pics of who has visited ZenGuide recently. You can click through via their pics and discover a new blog - and friend.

Update: Ian Delaney, editor of New Media Knowledge (www.nmk.co.uk)told me: “Why I joined (MyBlogLog)? Because I’ll sign up for almost any new web service going! I actually have some misgivings about the loss of privacy that is created by MBL, but not serious enough to close my account, obviously.” Ian blogs at http://twopointouch.com/.

If you’re part of any of the networks I’ve mentioned and would like to share your views/ experiences about them, please do add a comment or email me. Or if you’re part of another network, please do tell me about it via a comment or email.

Neville Hobson, ABC, is a communicator, blogger, podcaster and Second Life explorer, one of the leading European early adopters and influencers in social media communication for business. He blogs at NevilleHobson.com with commentary and opinion on business, communication and technology, and co-presents “For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report” (www.forimmediaterelease.biz), a twice-weekly business podcast at the intersection of online communication, business and technology, which he began in January 2005. He blogs at NevilleHobson.com

I met Neville at a talk at the City Womens Network earlier this year. The subject was Managing Your Image and he was one of the panellists - speaking about managing your image online. I’d been following his podcast for awhile and you know how you form a view of someone from their voice. Well, he was how I imagined he would be - he is approachable and friendly while having an aura of quiet authority. And he’s very tall. I took that photo of him and made him bend his knees so it could be a face shot and not one looking up his nostrils…

His podcast is a great insiders look into marketing and technology but a bit tecchy in places. He’s also a keen Second Lifer with an “island” in Second Life where his marketing company Crayon has a presence.

Twitter is the new mobile-blogging social network using SMS (or texting) as a base for updating. People are working out diverse ways to use it to communicate, network and carry on up to the minute dialogue locally and across the world.

It’s perfect for up to the minute blow by blow accounts of events which can be received by subscribers on their mobile phones. The newest innovation is a Twitter page that is offering a blow by blow account of the UK Budget 2007. See www.twitter.com/budget.

Live coverage is expected at 12.30pm GMT today, 21 March.

Thanks to Nick Wilson for flagging this link.

For more about Twitter, see the posts on my other blog, Fusion View:

Twittering Away

Mind Map

Photo: thanks to guardian.co.uk

“Blog” is short for “web-log” and started as a way to write a journal online. It looks like a website but uses a software platform that lets you upload your entries very easily. Publishing what you’ve written online is instantaneous and happens at the push of a button - literally.

Entries are called “posts” and they appear on the blog in reverse date order ie the newest post is at the top.

These days, many people use blogs to engage online with their friends or others who share their interests. Businesses engage with their customers by writing about what’s happening in their company or in their area of expertise. Visitors to the blog can add comments to a particular post or email the person blogging, the “blogger”. Other visitors may see the comments and add what they have to say as well.

The best way to find out what the world of blogging is all about is to visit some.

Here are a few to start you off with.

A Saville Row tailor uses his blog to talk about his passion for bespoke tailoring and to share some unique insights into the world of cuffs and lapels and hems. He also uses his blog to share his travel schedule so that his international clients know when he is visiting their part of the world and can book an appointment. His blog has been featured on the BBC and other traditional media. See http://www.englishcut.com/

A creative writing teacher and writer, Sharon Bakar, based in Malaysia, shares her book addiction and writes about the latest books and book news from Asia, the UK and US. Her readership is primarily Malaysian but she has been featured in the UK’s national paper, The Guardian. See http://thebookaholic.blogspot.com/

A photographer has been taking a photo at 11.47am every day since 2000. See http://eleven47.com/. It’s fab!

You can also visit my blog, of course, Fusion View, a cross-cultural view on writing, culture and the arts at http://www.fusionview.co.uk.

I will also be blogging about blogs that strike me as interesting, thought-provoking, fun, unusual, well-designed or has something that makes me want to say to my friends, “Hey, take a look at this!” - go to the category Blogs to Explore in the sidebar on the far right.

Or you can go to Google Blog Search at http://blogsearch.google.com/ - type in any topic or keyword and it will throw up all the blogs you can read on that subject.

Pic: thanks to beth.typepad.com