May 31, 2008
Fresh Air Computing
As I type this, it's a beautiful evening with a bit of soft rain falling, I'm enjoying a fresh espresso made from beans from Dark Horse Espresso Bar in Toronto and rather than the usual trick of slouching over the laptop on the couch, I'm sitting outside.
We just today invested in some outside furniture I very much appreciate, which I'm sure is the biggest part of the reason I'm outside. (Not to mention that my sigificant other is at Sex in the City tonight and I wasn't able to make it on account of parental responsibilities). But I have to say, geeking out never felt so healthy as when you can smell the rain and get some fresh air while doing some work on the laptop.
I'm sure if I worked in some type of gazebo thing to keep the direct sun off my laptop screen while still allowing some fresh air to oxygenate my brain, that would be the best thing ever for a lot of reasons.
I think I'm going to have to start working like this more often.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 30, 2008
Great diagram to explain the life cycle of a blog post
This is a good diagram that explains some of the online activity that happens when blog content is generated.
This via Wired.
You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web. Within minutes, if you've written about a timely and noteworthy topic, a small army of bots will get the word out to anyone remotely interested, from fellow bloggers to corporate marketers.
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits -- to You
Posted by Derek Leverington at 1:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2008
Facebook's havoc on my blog
I've thought on a few occasions I'd love to have more time to post things on my blog. Truth is, this is one of those things that you have to make time for but I realized that I definitely slowed down on posting after joining Facebook.
In some ways, there's very little overlap. I don't talk about my weekends on here or anything like that but there's only so much time in the day and I spend some some of it everyday on Facebook. So, the blog suffers...
We'll see how it goes but my only new years resolution is to try to post a little more often.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 28, 2007
Updated Version of MT
Don't ask me how I missed this, but i just assumed that my ISP who hosts Movable Type for me automatically kept the version current.
Apparently not.
I got it upgraded this weekend after wondering why after two years I wasn't seeing any new features in the software. Can't believe it didn't dawn on me to inquire sooner.
Oh well, comments and trackback are back on again with the hope that the spam filtering is going to be effective. (I shut them both off awhile ago after being overwhelmed by spam activity).
So that should be make this a little more fun again.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 12:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 4, 2007
RIP Pubsub?
Went looking for PubSub this morning.
Not to be found.
I haven't followed them much but judging by the entry on Wikipedia, it looks like there is some financial trouble afoot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubSub_Concepts
Posted by Derek Leverington at 9:13 AM
April 4, 2006
Strumpette's Identity Confirmed with Evidence Herein - Brian Connolly of Furthermore Inc.
So as per my gut and my posted yesterday where I theorized that Strumpette was a dude "Strumpette - PR Blogger Meets Dude Looks Like a Lady" I had to do a little digging this morning.
So far, all signs point to Brian Connolly as the "dude" or he at least has some connection with Amanda Chapel.
Here's the process:
The post from an alleged Amanda Chapel on my blog left an IP address of 24.136.10.126.
So, we got IP - looks like an fixed IP address from a home cable modem service out of Chicago.
A little mapping app...not exact but approximate but it's pointing the same direction - close to the location shown in the WHOIS record for the domains below.
So, we got what appears to be a fixed IP address from a residential location, is there any history with the IP we can associate with anyone?
Yup...
And if that weren't enough, the Strumpette site is using the Furthermore DNS!!! Now that's just making it no sport at all ...
Dude looks like a lady!!!!
Posted by Derek Leverington at 9:28 AM | Comments (6)
April 3, 2006
Strumpette - PR Blogger Meets Dude Looks Like a Lady
Cruised into a bar on the shore
Her picture graced the grime on the door
She a long lost love at first bite
Baby maybe you're wrong, but you know it's all right
That's right
Dude looks like a lady!
I'm no hoar or a PR blogger and I'm no Steven Tyler, but I'd know one if I saw them and I'll bet they usually show up one at a time - not together.
Ya, a little kerfuffle over the weekend with the launch of the Strumpette blog getting a few of the establishment wound up.
I think this is a wee bit of a stunt and it sounds like the brainchild of a man more than something a successful woman would do, but either way I think it's great stuff. Professional life is often boring so I'm loving the spice.
Little bit of a display problem in MSIE 6.0 I noticed with the comments getting truncated on the left and right hand side - check this page as an example.
http://strumpette.com/archives/66-Place-Your-Bets,-Ghoulish-Office-Pool-Spreads.html#comments
Other than that, my theory this is some guy doing this but it's interesting to see that the interest (in the form of comments) is pretty much exclusively from men. I guess that's usually how it works though.
So never judge a book by it's cover
Or who you're going to love by your lover
Love put me wise to her love in disguise
She had the body of a venus
Lord imagine my surprise
Posted by Derek Leverington at 4:53 PM | Comments (1)
December 17, 2005
Trackback Spam Issue on this Blog
I noticed awhile ago that my blog was coming up way down in the search returns list - to the order of several pages in - when doing a keyword search on "derek leverington" on Google.
I finally attributed it to a bunch of trackback spam that was pointing to all manner of sordid sites. I inadvertently ended up with several spam trackbacks that had gone unmonitored. I deleted all of them and went through all the historical entries in my blog and disabled trackbacks to prevent it from happening in future. (An unfortunate but seemingly unavoidable tactic in light of no prevalent solution to block this kind of spamming activity.)
I just checked again this evening the "derek leverington" keywords and this blog is back up to the number one spot again.
So, lesson learned: keep an eye on trackbacks to spam sites - they may well be affecting the search return performance on your site.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2005
Another colleague joins the blogosphere
I don't have a blogroll on my blog so I need to be overt with the promotions.
Give her a couple of weeks to find her voice and expect some ace advertising savvy by the paragraph-load.
Welcome to the blogosphere Janna . . .
http://jannaespeseth.blogspot.com/
Posted by Derek Leverington at 3:02 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2005
Congrats to Alec Couros
Hats off to professor and fellow local blogger Alec Couros, author of Couros Blog - Frequent Rants from an Ed. Tech'er who I discovered was cited in Maclean's annual university guide as one of the favourite professors at the University of Regina.
Alec did a presentation on blogs, RSS and the like for the local IABC chapter that I attended a few months ago. We were able to use the resources of the university with its wireless environment and raft of Airport-enabled iBooks and it made for a hands-on and interactive session. It was certainly interesting to observe as many of the individuals who attended were hearing about these kinds of new technologies for the first time. Suffice to say, although I was quite familiar with the technology, I found the presentation both informative and enjoyable.
(While on Alec's blog prior to the session, I also read a copy of a presentation he did on cyber-bullying that was very, very interesting stuff).
Anyhow, that was the first chance that I had to meet Alex in person, having read his blog before attending. I'm sure his passion for the tools of the trade that I have no doubt he employs in his classroom is one of these reasons for his acknowledgement in the Macleans guide.
Congrats.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 2:16 AM | Comments (3)
August 22, 2005
I therefore now exist
Alas, Google has acknowledged the existence of this blog under the keyword search of my full name.
Frankly, I have found this somewhat frustrating as until very recently Google still had a cached version of the Blogger profile that I had set up for an experimental personal blog that I had played with back some time ago but had abandoned. And yet, this blog which had been quite active for months and was even registered under my own full name failed to get indexed.
Admittedly, I hadn't done a great deal to create any awareness of its existance other than registering it with Open Directory Project and a few others but I did notice that Yahoo and MSN were much quicker to pick up on things - MSN in particular.
So, not sure what to do with the idea of trying an alternate search engine. I have experimented with it some but I have to admit that I've become quite the creature of habit in using Google and using MSN seems quite foreign still.
I think I'll use this as an excuse to go back to Google with my pride intact.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
Digital Isolation
With our lives and interaction increasingly becoming facilitated by web based mechanisms, not being connected is like it's own form of isolation - digital isolation.
I've had a hiatus from blogging for about the last week between travelling, really not having time and being out at our summer cabin for the weekend where getting connected is something of a challenge.
It's interesting how I start to experience separation anxiety when I'm away from my laptop for any period of time. When I'm not connected to my main sources of information and communication, it's no wonder I do genuinely feel isolated.
That said, today is good. There's two good album available on Napster today (the new Audioslave and Wallflowers), I've got a good cup of coffee in hand and I'm ready to take on the shortened work week.
Ahh, connected again.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 8:56 AM | Comments (0)
May 6, 2005
Blogs? What about effective websites?
It seems funny in one way that a whole new trend like blogging is catching on.
Frankly, there's still a lot to be desired with most websites as they exist.
There's no shortage of problems with outdated content, usability issues, lack of meaningful functionality, little followup on online requests, no ongoing resources, no performance monitoring and nebulous ownership. In general, there is often a lack of vision or strategy for the purpose that a website is supposed to serve within the organization.
So, now what happens to the website? Does it get ignored even further due to the attention being placed on the blog or does it get brought back up to speed due to the new attention placed on the web/blog as means for external communication.
Next post: what you can learn from blogging that can be applied to your website.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
May 4, 2005
Trajectory of Interest In Blogging
I think we must be right around the peak of media interest in blogging. Frankly, I expect beyond. I believe that right behind blogging gets its dues comes near total fatigue in hearing about it all the time.
I fully expect blogging and podcasting to start showing up on overrated lists any day now.
According to research from Pew, the total number internet users in the U.S. who have created a blog has increased from 7% to 9% from January to March 2005.
I can believe that perhaps 9% of users have created a blog, but creating a blog (something accomplished in 5 minutes in many instances) and maintaining a blog are two very different things. I would be helpful to know some more behavioural data on both content publishers and readers to get a better sense of what this trend really suggests.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2005
Blogger Family Values
As PR and advertising professionals seek to figure out how they fit into the new blog reality (or perhaps how they can shoe-horn themselves in or wrap themselves around somehow), I think there is something very important to keep in mind:
There is definitely a set of values among the community of early adopters and they include: transparency, openness, independence, genuineness, . . . you get my drift.
In many ways, the M.O. of modern communicators has run counter to these values with placing value on: positive spins, polished messages, flash, sizzle, hype, etc.
No doubt about it, this has created cynicism.
Blogging is not a technical phenomenon really (although innovations are abounding in this space). Content management systems have been around for years to assist in web publishing, so there's nothing new there in terms of the capabilities of the software. It's first and foremost a societal phenomenon.
So, what is going to happen?
Will professional communicators and advertisers discover ways to hitch themselves to the blog-wagon? I suspect they will. Someone will create the framework to sell mass ad space. Or will they come to terms with the notion that some of the shortcomings of how communication has been conducted helped to create the blogging phenomenon in the first place? Some will. Some won't.
In time, I think the values I mentioned above will be diluted by commercial interests as more and more people get involved and the values of the initial movement are set aside. This, in many ways, is really unfortunate because there is something very valuable and (dare I say) right about transparent communication even though it may need to come at the expense of commercial interests.
I think commercialism is the logical end of most blogs & podcasts that are successful in gaining an audience. As long as there is a way for the originator of the content to trade the attention of the audience for appreciable financial gain from advertisers, it's bound to happen.
You have to wonder if there a better that would actually catch on.
I'm really anxious to see where this ends up in 5 years. We are really so early in, that it's hard to predict what form this will take. Will it be looked back on as revolution or a fad?
If I knew the answer to that, I could be selling ad-space on here for a lot of money.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 12:44 AM | Comments (2)
April 27, 2005
Blog Prediction #2 - Blog Macro-Analysis Tools Will Emerge
If this happened already, I'm not aware of it.
For those monitoring their brand online, a more sophisticated toolset is needed.
While BlogPulse, PubSub and tools of the like can tell us of activity around a given keyword, as blogs grow in popularity, a metric that gives us more than the number of mentions is needed.
This is no simple task I realize, but this kind of language analysis shouldn't be out of reach. In essence, the toolset needs to analyze the context of the blog and make assessments about the sentiment of the blogger related to the brand or subject.
In essence, we need a way to hear the macro-message from the crowd of micro-voices.
I don't know how this will emerge and I suspect that a service offering sophisticated macro data analysis could fetch a premium price. At a certain point it become entirely impractical to do qualitative analysis on all these these blog entries, particularly for global brands.
It'll be interesting to see how this emerges.
I think PR professionals would appreciate more structured data in their decision making about how to react to blog activity related to their brand.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 9:02 PM | Comments (0)
April 7, 2005
Podcasting - Usability, Technical & Audio Production Suggestions
With every new channel comes the challenge of making it easy to use.
With podcasting being something of a new phenomenon and often being undertaken by those without training or experience in the area of audio production or experience in usability design, I thought it worthwhile to give some thought to some suggestions for making the content as consumable as possible.
Paying attention to some basic considerations can go a long way to improving the audio quality of a spoken word recording.
Appropriate Use of Meta Attributes
(with the common implementation for many being ID3 Tags in the mp3 file format)
Ensure you use the ID3 tag. In the absence of this, the player will only display the file name which may not be particularly communicative of the content of the podcast and may be named around entirely different considerations than its use as an plain-English description.
Recognize the character limitations of the playback devices and avoid unnecessarily long titles. In many players, longer titles will need to scroll like a horizontal marquis to reveal the entire length of the title, and at that, only when selected in the menu. So, as users will likely view several podcasts in a list, ensure the differentiating part of the podcast name (the individual program name) compared to others in the series appears relatively early in the title - saying within 20 or so characters. As a result, users can scroll through the list quickly without having to select a specific podcast name and wait the see the entire title scroll through the display to read the podcast name.
Not to pick on the For Immediate Release podcast produced by Shel Holtz & Nevill Hobson, whose program I enjoy very much and am a faithful listener of, but for the purposes of illustration and accessibility of the example to many, I'll use the For Immediate Release naming conventions as an example.
They typically are titled according to this naming convention:
For Immediate Release -- #19 -- March 28, 2004
For Immediate Release -- #20 -- March 31, 2004
For Immediate Release -- #21 -- April 4, 2004
In my player (Creative Zen Micro 5 GB) the screen cuts off after the '#' character, making it difficult to scroll through the list quickly and differentiate one podcast in the series from the rest.
The recommendation I would make is to choose a succinct podcast name that affords some characters left over to describe the individual program. This is a matter of design for the constraints and realities of the medium.
Ensure Absolute Consistency In Naming
Be sure that your podcast names are consistent to the character from one podcast to the next. As they will appear in a list in the player, any aberrations are quite noticeable and detract from usability and the visceral sense of quality of your production.
Audio Considerations
One of the benefits of mainstream radio is the level of production quality that we've become used to. Between the voice talent, writing (though not always), production proficiency and quality of equipment not to mention experience, the bar is far higher that what I would expect from many podcasters.
I expect that to hold true at this stage in the life of podcasting where the impetus for one to podcast likely has more to do with the desire to communicate than possessing technical proficiency and access to quality audio equipment. With many mp3 players having onboard microphones that can write directly to a digital file that can easily be posted as a podcast, the barrier to the lowest point of entry is quite attainable. That said, achieving a technically satisfying production and desirable content is another matter entirely.
Avoid Problematic Locations To Record
The key to being effective in this endeavour from a technical standpoint is clear and intelligible audio. Anything other than the sound of your voice works against clarity and ease of listening(unless in some instances the ambient noise of your surrounding is an important element of the content or creates a mood).
Avoid locations where there are surfaces nearby that will reflect sound back to the microphone. Flat, painted or shiny surfaces are the worst offenders for this. They will reflect sound back and give a few-millisecond echo throughout the whole recording. The use of soft materials can dramatically improve the acoustic characteristics of a space, so don't discount using bedding or blankets to improve the acoustic qualities of where you record. I may not be typical of every user, but I find a close-reflection echo quite annoying and distracting and it's a tell-tale sign of amateur production.
What's worse is that audio compression (discussed further down) which normally has an enhancing effect on a production only accentuates the presence of this type of audio problem.
Use Headphones When Recording
If you using discrete audio components i.e. not simply speaking into an mp3 player, consider wearing headphones so you can monitor what you record. You will inherently tend to speak in a manner that is more pleasing to the microphone and you will become aware of any obvious technical problem like the aforementioned slap-back echo and hopefully correct it.
Invest the Time To Experiment
Experiment with recording locations, equalization, microphone position, pace of the dialogue and your own technique for projecting your voice. A few minutes invested in this will absolutely make a difference in the quality of your recording. A few cumulative improvements will add up to a better overall production.
Maintain a consistent volume
Dramatic changes in the level of amplitude is something to be cautious of as many people listen to podcasts in their headphones. As such, dramatic amplitude changes are exaggerated and can be quite jarring for the listener.
If there is more than one person speaking, attempt for a balanced audio level between the two. Also, try the match as closely as possible the tone or tambre between the people speaking through equalization as recorded to tape or in post-production. If there are dramatic differences in tone or volume that result in one voice being louder or more easily heard, the user has to make a compromise when setting the volume of their player. If a user has to have the volume set higher due to the presence of ambient noise in their own surroundings, the level that they have to set it at to hear the quieter of the two people speaking may make the louder voice uncomfortably loud or annoying.
Compression
These days, almost all recordings have a appreciable amount of audio compression applied to them to. Among other considerations, this is done to enhance the recording to make it sound a rich and loud as possible on playback. FM stations also dramatically compress when broadcasting.
For those not familiar with audio compression, it's the process of reducing the amplitude (volume) of the peak levels in a recording. As a result, the overall level can be boosted resulting in the average volume of the recording being louder. If you listen to a compressed and an uncompressed piece of audio, even though the peak levels may be the same, the compressed audio can sound much louder than the uncompressed audio.
One of the benefits of this as a listener is that is provides a consistent volume level with no spikes or drops in volume.
If you have access to audio editing software, look and see if you can find a compressor to apply to your recording. I would suggest no more than 2 - 3db of gain reduction in most cases. After a certain point the voice no longer sounds natural.
A note of caution: using compression will elevate the level of background noise, mouth sounds and other ambient nosies that are not always desirable.
Other Potentially Useful Audio Processes
De-esser - to reduce sibilance - those ripping 's' sounds that again can be quite dramatic in ear buds
High-pass filter - this will filter out low frequencies - try a setting of 120 Hz to start to reduce popping p's (a pop filter or wind screen will also help with reducing popping on more explosive consonants . . . as does practise speaking on-mic)
And of course, it never hurts to have something worth listening to - this just makes it easier.
This is by no means comprehensive as I expect to add to this as I give this further consideration(although I didn't expect it would be this long to begin with on a first draft). I believe if these things were followed and podcasters were armed with some basic knowledge of audio production, we would be able to see the technical quality of podcast improved quite dramatically.
Many of these things listed are not difficult to accommodate. Where software is required to audio processing, it is not particularly expensive either. Any modern audio editor comes with standard audio tools to accomplish equalization, compression, de-essing, etc.
Posted by Derek Leverington at 12:28 AM | Comments (2)