Monday, May 22, 2006

Business / Business Technology Blog Short List

Yet another list… However, it’s a very good list of business-related blogs.


The brother of a great friend and colleague of mine asked for reading recommendations for “business blogs.”

As such, here’s my short-list of business-related blogs that I find to be worth the time it takes to read (listed in alphabetical order):

Blogspotting (BusinessWeek)
Blogwrite for CEOs (Debbie Weil)
Business 2.0
BusinessBlogWire
BusinessWeek Online
Dealing with Darwin (Geoffrey Moore, of ‘Crossing the Chasm’ fame)
Fast Company
Forbes.com Business News
Innoblog (Clayton Christentensen, of ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ fame)
Let the Good Times Roll (Guy Kawasaki, Father of Marketing Evangelism)
Life Beyond Code (Raj Setty)
Micro Persuasion (Steve Rubel, Edelman)
Moreover – Entrepreneur news
Official Google Blog
PodTech.net – (John Furrier) Silicon Valley, Technology
Scobleizer (Robert Scoble, Microsoft Geek Blogger)
Seth Godin’s Blog
The Intuitive Live Business Blog (Dave Taylor)
The Long Tail (Chris Anderson, EIC Wired Magazine)
The Tom Peters Weblog

If you subscribe to any of them, please tell them I sent you!

Sunday, May 21, 2006

FeedBlitz--Meet The RSS Pundit

If navigating the blog doesn’t suit you, you can now read The RSS Pundit in HTML right from your e-mail inbox.


I told you I’d get this posted this week! Shame on skepticism...

Through the fine folks at Feedblitz you now have the option to read The RSS Pundit blog posts by e-mail.

Again, the blog is still here, and is still the best way to read and participate. But if you prefer, you can use your inbox instead.

The instructions for subscribing for updates by e-mail are as follows:

1. To subscribe to the blog and receive e-mail updates, look for the section in the upper right on the blog’s home page, and find the text that says:

“Don't Know How to Blog? Now you can receive The RSS Pundit by e-mail instead. Just enter your e-mail address in the box below, and press the 'Subscribe Me!' button, confirm your address, and you're done.”

2. Once you find this text, just enter your e-mail address in the entry box below this text, and click on the Subscribe Me! Button. You will be taken to the FeedBlitz page, and asked to subscribe to The RSS Pundit by checking your e-mail address, and typing some text from an image you are shown below (this is to stop Spammers from clogging up e-mail boxes with junk). The last step is to again click on the “Subscribe Me!” button. The screen will change and tell you that you must complete the registration process by clicking the link in the email just sent to you. You can close your web browser at this time.

3. You’ll soon (within seconds, actually) receive an e-mail message with the subject line:

[FeedBlitz] Confirm your registration to "The RSS Pundit"

You must respond to this message in order to finalize your subscription to The RSS Pundit by clicking on the highlighted, underlined text/link in the e-mail that says (and looks like):

Click this to confirm your registration now.

Your web browser will open again, and you’ll see the message:

“Welcome to FeedBlitz!”

4. Again, close your browser and you’ll start receiving e-mails whenever there is a new post to The RSS Pundit. If you want to comment by e-mail on any of the messages you receive, just choose the forward option in your e-mail, type in your question, and send it to my address (kip.meacham@comcast.net). Let me know if you want to include your name and e-mail address in case people want to contact you or discuss the issues with you via e-mail.


Of course, please feel free to share information about how to receive The RSS Pundit blog posts by e-mail with your friends and colleagues.

Thanks to those of you who are reading and commenting. If you have a syndication question, I would love for you to share it with me (anonymously or not—you choose), and we’ll address it on the blog.

I hope The RSS Pundit continues to be a useful syndication technology resource.

Monday, May 15, 2006

I’m Baack!!!—The Return of The RSS Pundit

Life came at me with a vengeance, but one job change later and it’s Life 2.0 for me. The posts will resume—even if you want them via e-mail...


In what can only be described as an act of social media suicide, I have been on an almost three-month hiatus from this syndication love affair of mine called The RSS Pundit.

There’s a great quote from Alvin Toffler that says: “It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution.”

Sound advice I should have taken six months ago, rather than one month ago.

So, with a job change behind me, and feeling energized and challenged all over again, the task before me of creating a syndication strategy at my new gig has me back at the keyboard.

While brewing up my next round of meaningful posts, let me point you to a very interesting site: FeedBlitz.

While chipping away at some civic duties and employing a blog to do so, I discovered the majority of the Republican contingent in Utah (Yes, in the spirit of transparency, I am a Republican—but one who doesn’t agree with the more bellicose Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, nor with the doctrine of pre-emption as instantiated by the likes of the Iraq War—but we’ll keep those discussions off this page, please.) is much more comfortable and adept at communicating through e-mail groups rather than blogs. They say numbers don’t lie, and both of those e-groups consistently receive substantially more participation than the blog.

While there is a clear argument the quality of the blog’s content is the reason for the difference (a fair criticism, but not the explanation, in my humble opinion), I have concluded people know more about e-mail, and are more comfortable using it than a blog as an avenue of expression and dialogue.

I lament this situation. Blogs are simply better suited to the organized and systematic review of material for the masses. Hunting through e-mail folders for a particular item is not an organized, systematic content management and review system for large quantities of information.

That said, all marketing professionals know that educating a market is an expensive and undesirable position in which to find yourself. So, FeedBlitz offers a great bridge that allows readers to receive blog posts by e-mail.

I will add it to The RSS Pundit this week, and let you know what it does to the numbers.

Of course, the blog is still here. It is still the best way to get the word out, and the best way for everyone to participate.

I hope you’ll welcome me back into your readers and inboxes. In return, I’ll continue my endeavor to make the ideas worthwhile and the words easy on the eyeballs.

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