Kepler Space Mission - Ready for Launch, NASA TV

The Kepler satellite will be launched into an Earth-trailing solar orbit to get above the Earth’s atmosphere for a clearer view of outer space with its telescope and camera.

Called the Kepler Mission: A Search for Habitable Planets, of the recent missions by NASA, this is one of the most exciting as this satellite will observe the brightness of over 100,000 stars over 3.5 to 6 years to detect planets by the transit method, a method of measuring the intensity of the light from the star as a planet moves across the surface and blocks the light from the star. It’s goal is to not only measure the planets but look specifically for planets closer to the size of Earth, which possibly might be more Earth-like.

Kepler on launch pad - from NASA TV

You can watch it on the NASA Portal for Kepler, and listen and watch NASA Kepler webcasts, podcast, and videos, and get more information on their Kepler Launch Blog, and follow their tweets on @NASAKepler.

Kepler Mission launches - from NASA TV

Beyond the Cradle is a blog on WordPress.com by Rui Borges, a successor to spacEurope, both covering the “fight of promoting space exploration efforts worldwide.” The coverage of the Kepler Mission includes correspondence by some of the mission leaders and reports on preparation for the mission, including:

• Kepler Mission – Aiming at a New Earth – With Edna DeVore
• Kepler Mission – Aiming at a New Earth – With Alan Gould
• Kepler Mission – Quick Note from the Cape by Gibor Basri
• Kepler Mission – Harvester of Worlds – By Rui Borges
• Kepler Mission – Quick note from the Cape by David Latham
• Kepler Mission – The Future Starts Here – With Stuart Atkinson
• Kepler Mission – Yielding an Answer – With Jon Jenkins
• Kepler Mission – Launch in 60 minutes
• Kepler Mission – Aiming at a New Earth – launch post

Kepler Mission Launched leaving Earth - from NASA TV

• Wired – Live: Planet-Hunting Space Telescope Blasts Off
• TreeHugger – NASA Kepler Mission: The Question of How Alone We Really Are is About to be Answered
• Discover Magazine Bad Astronomy Blog – Reminder 1: Kepler to launch Friday night!
• Astronomy.com Blog – Kepler satellite launches successfully
• The Plummet Onions – NASA’s Kepler mission to look for other planets capable of sustaining life
• Kepler to hunt for terrestrial-size exoplanets
• Cosmic Diary – Up, up and away! (Warning: Video in post plays automatically)
• Engadget – NASA’s Kepler spacecraft ready to begin searching for other, cooler “earths”
• Nasa Space Flight – LIVE: Delta II launches with Kepler Planet-Finder Launch
• NPR On Point – Kepler and the Search for Life
• Asymptotia – Kepler Ready!
• Scientific Blogging – 5 Quick Facts About The Kepler Mission To Find Earth-Sized Planets
• Spaceflight – Kepler Status

While I was excited about the various NASA projects to Mars, and upcoming exploration of the moon, the Trekie within me is eager to be a part of the search for intelligent life in the universe, and to go boldy where no one has gone before.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Imagine you are a teenager sitting in a room full of the most brilliant and successful minds in the world. You have a chance to ask them any questions you want. You are free to discuss any subject on your mind, or theirs. You can share what you know with them openly, and they will teach you how to do it better and faster. It’s an open room filled with the greatest thinkers and successful entrepreneurs, geniuses all. Wow!

Now, look around that room again and notice that every one in the room is your age. How does that feel?

On January 31, 2009, at Microsoft San Francisco, you can experience that reality at the first annual Teens in Tech Conference 2009.

Daniel Brusilovsky of Daniel Brusilovsky of Teens in Tech and Apple Universe, and his business partner, Sam Levin, are bringing together youth and technology, some of the greatest young minds to meet with each other and older brains in this unique event.

We’ve all heard the stories of the young kids who turned out to mold our future while they were still almost in training pants, or at least soon out of them. Matt Mullenweg, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Alexander the Great, Mary Shelley, Joan of Arc, and that great dead child king we all celebrate but know so little about, King Tutankhamen – all legends that changed and influenced our lives before they hit their stride. Daniel Brusilovsky is about to join their ranks, I’m sure of it.

This one day event in San Francisco will bring teen and adult participants together with some of the hottest teens and former teens in web technology, development, and multimedia technology. Speakers include:

• Martina Butler of Emo Girl Talk
• Mark Dwight of Rickshaw Bagworks
• Dom Sagolla of DollarApp
• Daniel Brusilovsky of Teens in Tech
• Sam Levin
• Jake Jarvis
• Adam Debreczeni
• Sam Purtill
• Derek Johnson of Tatango
• Adam Jackson of Daily Tech Talk
• Kyle Neath
• Rishabh “Shooby” Kumar
• Mazy Kazerooni
• Mark Bao
• Jessica Mah of Jessica Mah Meets World
• Eric Kerr

There is no doubt in my mind that the future will come from that room. Already, the speakers represented here are helping us think and behavior differently online and use tools they helped create or influence.

There are still some seats available, but the expectation is that this will quickly fill up. Register now. Ticket prices are USD $20 – 30.

The Twitter account to track for the Teens in Tech Conference is @teensintechconf. The hashtag is #teensintechconf.

Update: Daniel has given me a special discount code for attendees. If you would like to get in for a much lower price, you can get your discount code here to get into this exciting web technology conference.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

If you haven’t reviewed the GigaOM White Paper: The Facts & Fiction of Bandwidth Caps, do it now.

As of Wednesday this week, Comcast, the largest provider of broadband and DSL for Internet access in the United States is going to be restricting your data transfer levels to 250 gigabytes a month. According to Om Malik:

With this move, the cable company will become the symbol of a new Internet era, one that is both monitored and metered. It is an era that threatens to limit innovation and to a large extent, the possibilities for new startups.

Many bloggers are part of online businesses and startups as well as suppliers of video, podcasts, and downloadable and uploaded files across the web. As web designs and WordPress Themes become more graphic and code dependent, increasing our bandwidth access levels, these limits impinge upon that grown and that access.

While WordPress Themes, Plugins, and Widgets account for very small levels of data transfer, what about a new WordPress user who wants to download and experiment with a lot of Themes and Plugins? Downloading more than a gig or two of WordPress stuff is rare, but if you add that to their other file downloads, like software, instant messaging, IRC, email, flickr, YouTube, podcasts, music, news, television, VoIP, and all the information and data that enters our world through our computers – those numbers add up fast.

I just moved from a satellite connection with a 17 gig limit. We hit the limit all the time and we weren’t downloading music or shows. I didn’t even download podcasts until I went on a trip. There were three of us using the web for our work. Download a few software programs, update your computer’s operating system, test out some Plugins, and it all adds up fast.

According to the White Paper, “today’s power users are tomorrow’s average users” with a predication that by 2012 we will be paying about $215 a month for Internet data access. Malik and others are fighting back with words in hopes of changing this “walled garden” limitation. I hope you join us in spreading the word.

The Web Must Be Free

The timing of this announcement comes the same time as the announcement of the new World Wide Web Foundation was announced. In the welcome statement, the founders, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, stated:

The World Wide Web Foundation seeks to advance One Web that is free and open, to expand the Web’s capability and robustness, and to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet. The Web Foundation brings together business leaders, technology innovators, academia, government, NGOs, and experts in many fields to tackle challenges that, like the Web, are global in scale.

One of the focuses of the World Wide Web foundation is to investigate, in its Web for Society program, how to lower the barriers of accessing the Web for people who are not able, today, to find accessible and usable information.

While I’m totally in favor and support breaking down communication and language barriers, as well as all social, cultural, and technological barriers, the biggest barrier we have to fight is greed.

It’s getting harder and harder to find free access to the web. Someone has to pay. With belts tightening around the world, will Internet access be only for the rich?

The Internet was originally started and built on lines abandoned by the phone companies, the same companies who struggled to find ways of charging for that access after they realized they were missing out on the financial possibilities of connecting via the Internet and web. They have been looking under every rock to find ways of making money off this “web thing” ever since.

Yes, we must pay for the continued growth and access to the web, but restricting bandwidth and data transfer hurts an economy already showing the flashing red danger signal.

Be warned, be aware, and let Comcast and others know that you do not want this. Fight back with your voice. Spread the word.

I remember when Arthur C. Clarke predicted that long distance telephone calls would be free by the end of the century. I thought it odd since he was a very intelligent man and he lived in the same world that I did, one where corporate greed controls everything. I couldn’t see such a thing as being possible, but with the web, it became possible. Will that freedom continue or will corporate greed continue to slip into our pockets?

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Little squares, boxes, lines, and funky symbols are often found in blog comments. A friend new to blogging called me about these wanting to know if her blog had been hacked or her computer had a virus. “It looks like alien writing from Star Trek!”

Those strange symbols and characters in your blog comments are foreign language letters that your browser cannot interpret. It doesn’t recognize the language. It is not a problem with WordPress or whatever blogging program you are using. Your browser isn’t translating the characters into their appropriate letters.

Think of it this way. Your web browser comes with a default language. In my case, FireFox comes with English built-in. It recognizes English letters and displays them on the screen for me to read. Because English is one of the romantic languages, using letters similar to French, Italian, Spanish, German and other similar languages, those languages are readable from within my browser.

To add more languages, which would convert those funky characters and symbols into something readable, you must install the different language character sets, called character encoding or HTML character entities, for those languages.

• In FireFox, you can add languages via Tools > Options > Content > Languages.
• In Internet Explorer, look under Tools > General > Appearance > Languages.
• In Opera, look under Tools > Preferences > General > Details.
• In Safari, through Apple Menu > System Preferences > International.

Should You Add More Foreign Languages?

Do you really want to add foreign languages you cannot read to your computer or web browser? While most modern computers can handle extra loads on the memory, older computers can’t. Why add language character sets if you can’t read them?

You can translate them using Google Translate or another online machine translation program to figure out what they said, but these are limited to only a few languages and may not include Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Arabic, and other language characters. Online machine translations for many of these languages are still in development for free access.

You can delete the comments, though those who have those languages enabled in their browsers will be able to read the comments, so I recommend you leave them – unless you are sure they are comment spam. Comment spammers use foreign languages to fool you into thinking these are legitimate comments. The URL that accompanies the blog comment, if one is present, usually gives you a clue as to whether or not the comment is spam. If it is, mark it as spam. If in doubt, delete it. Otherwise, leave it.

No, your blog comments have not been hacked and your computer probably does not have a virus. And no, these aren’t languages from Star Trek. They are just a machine interpretation limitation. Maybe someday we won’t have to add languages to our computer or browser in order to see their character sets. Maybe someday, instantaneous translations will be built into our browsers so we will be able to read any blog in any language in our own language, opening the world up to new life, new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

One of the most wonderful things of being a blogger among wonderful bloggers is our ability to ask other bloggers for help, and their amazing willingness to help – even total strangers. All because we have blogging in common.

When I spent a long month last year writing about WordPress Plugins, I also asked readers and fellow bloggers to answer the call for Plugins I wanted and needed to improve WordPress capabilities and features. They responded, developing some of the most popular WordPress Plugins around. Plugins that are functional and needed.

Today, Google’s Gmail has become the blogger’s best friend, allowing centralization of all our blog emails, fast alerts and access, and more. While it is actually highly inconvenient, slow, and clumsy to use, Gmail works and bloggers love it.

So much so, some bloggers have come up with Firefox Extensions and Greasemonkey scripts to improve Gmail. One of the most popular is the Better Gmail 2 Firefox Extension by LifeHacker, a blog of determined top contributors not only cover blogging issues, they tackle problems of life, living, working, and blogging. And Gmail.

So I come to you, the amazingly talented bloggers, to come up with some better improvements for Gmail now that it has become so critical to the life and work of bloggers. These would need to work within the various web browsers like Firefox, IE, Safari, and Opera, or be limited to only one, Firefox preferably as it is often the blogger’s favorite browser.

Here is my wish list, and if you know of an existing tool, please let us know. I’m sure I’m not the only one wishing Gmail was more useful to bloggers. Maybe if we whine loud enough, Google may fix it, but until then, we bloggers need to unite.

1. Stop Including Email in Reply: One of the biggest time wasters I do dozens to hundreds of times a day is remove the email content of the email I’m replying to from my responding email. Rarely ever do I need the past information in the email. With email threading, why does Gmail force this upon us without an option? Every email program I’ve ever used, online and off, included an option to include or not include the responding email content. I don’t want it. I can’t find a way to turn it off or remove it. Suggestions? Fixes?
2. Colorize Email Titles: If an email comes if from my Lorelle on WordPress email account, I want it in red so I can jump to it immediately. I want responses to my Blog Herald column emails to be in blue – quickly, eye-catching colors.
3. Faster and Easier Searching: I often have to look up “recent conversations” from specific people. Right now, it’s a long series of mouse and click movements to access the recent conversations link, and I often miss as I move too fast. I want one icon next to the name in the contact list or next to their name in the inbox list that shows me all of the emails from that person. Fast.
4. Ability to Look Up Emails Without Leaving This Email: This is probably a core function, but I want the ability to look up past emails for references to include in the email I’m writing. Currently, it’s a two tab deal, with one open to the inbox and the other for the email I’m working on. Or, if I don’t have time nor energy for two tabs, I’ll have to write up the email in a text editor, copying in the links from past emails, then opening a new Compose email to paste in the email from the text editor. Why all this work for a common behavior with email??

That’s my list of whines for Gmail. As a fellow blogger, what improvements and features would you want to see in Gmail? Or do you even use Gmail? Better yet, if you use Gmail for your blogging, how do you make it work better for you?

Tips for Using Gmail

The following are some of the articles and sites I’ve bookmarked and added to my feed reader to help me learn more about using Gmail.

• And Rightly So! – GMail Tips
• Gmail Tips , Tricks and Secrets
• How to Access a Gmail Account with Mozilla Thunderbird 1.x – About Email
• Gmail Gems
• Gmail : Gmail Tips and Tricks Monster Roundup
• Hack Attack: Supercharge your Gmail – Lifehacker
• Top 10 Gmail tips and hacks – Download Squad
• Over 150 tips and shortcuts for Gmail
• Gmail Tips – The Complete Collection
• How to Make Gmail /Gcal Rock Your Tasks – Lifehack.org
• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips | MakeUseOf.com
• Matt Cutts – 11 Power Tips for Gmail
• Matt Cutts – Three solid Gmail productivity tips
• Micro Persuasion: More Ways to Use Gmail as a Personal Nerve Center

Site Search Tags: blogging tips, gmail, gmail for bloggers, improving gmail, lifehacker, better gmail, improve gmail, google, google gmail

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

My laptop has reached the four year birthday and I’m ready for a new one. Every computer and laptop I’ve owned I’ve pushed beyond it’s capabilities from day one. I will never forget the first computer my husband and I bought “together”. Within three days, I’d filled the 2 gig hard drive, the largest one available at the time. He went to work and bragged to his co-workers that his wife had overloaded the hard drive before the end of the first week. Some weren’t sure what he was talking about so they just nodded and acted like they knew. The others were left with their mouths hanging open at the thought, and envy, of having access to a 2 gig hard drive.

As a photographer, writer, and designer – especially as a photographer – I can fill up a hard drive in no time when I’m photographing or editing images. A few months ago, my husband brought home a little present for me, just to spoil me and show he cares. It was a 750 gig portable drive by Seagate. Hmmm. That’s a man who knows how to please. I added it to my stack of an 80 gig, 250 gig, and 400 gig portable drives.

I used to build and test drive computer systems, building by hand one of the early “suitcase” portable computers with a monochrome amber monitor and a fold down keyboard. Part of the ancient history of Lorelle’s claim to fame for breaking things and explaining how I broke them so the developers and designers could learn how to fix them. I’ve had just about every type of computer built, from old magnetic card typewriters to Apple to Mac to state-of-the-art laptops, and it’s time for another one.

So I’m thinking about replacing this laptop that I’ve hauled all over the world with a new one. This thing has been bounced and brutalized by airlines, TSA, and international airport security checks so many times, I think it speaks 18 languages. On one trip, when it was still new, it was seized by Israeli security at the airport as we were flying out of the country for a short trip. We were told repeatedly that it would be padded and carefully handled and probably be at the airport in Oklahoma by the time we arrived. And for reasons that still baffle us, we believed them. Dumb us.

I picked it up 5 days later as I got on another airplane to fly to a conference. It was in an unpadded and unprotected white box, with lots of banging and bouncing room, with the sides punched out from the banging and bouncing. I’d been on the phone with the airport three to ten times a day since our arrival and they kept saying there was no laptop from Israel there. According to the information on the box, it had indeed arrived the same day as our flight, though not in one piece.

Scarred, battered, and with two cracks in its casing, it keeps on ticking. It’s a Gateway. I’ve bought Gateway since nearly their conception, ordering hundreds of Gateway computers for clients over the past decade. While this one has taken a licking and kept on ticking, I think it’s time for Gateway and I to part company. I’m not sure, but I haven’t been happy with the last two models. I just hate leaving the best ever customer support and service I’ve found anywhere. Their products had always been top notch and way ahead of the competitors in technological advances. Unfortunately, according to news reports Gateway didn’t make a showing at all on the national and international sales in the end-of year sales.

Yet, there are a couple of new Gateway ultra portable laptops luring me in their direction, now available at Best Buy and other store fronts as well as online.

In the past, my husband got my hand-me-down computers. I’d beat the snot out of them and then he’d get the hand-me-down when I got the new toy. Last Christmas, he finally bought his very first very-own laptop – without consulting me. I was traveling. A Hewlett Packard wide screen laptop, the one that tries to squeeze two monitors into one and ends up with a rectangle. He loves it and hates it, sometimes more hate than love. He wishes now that he’d asked for my help. It’s too big and doesn’t travel well and has a fan that you have to shout over. It overheats and the battery is dead, unrechargeable within 4 months, which means it can’t run off the fabulous looking docking station that clutters the kitchen table permanently. Since it won’t run in the docking station without a battery, we put it on the table and it runs too hot, buckling the cheap veneer. But it does what he wants and he avoids traveling with it if he can.

As a full-time blogger and web consultant, my computer is my gateway to the world and my work. While I’m not quite as bad as she is, sometimes I think I agree with Liz Strauss that I live inside my computer. So I’m nervous about my next laptop purchase.

I miss the days when computer manufacturers came to me to test drive their new technology. SIGH.

Starting the Computer Laptop Hunt

So I’ve started the hunt. I found an article from Frugal for Life that says the best time to buy a computer is April. No reason is given. I wonder why? I don’t know if I can last until April.

What I want is something that weighs nothing, has a huge ergonomic keyboard for my weary fingers, a screen the size of the side of a barn, ability to hook up to everything bluetooth, WIFI, projectors, televisions, VCRs, DVDs, and whatever else they come up with next, the biggest hard drive in the world, the fastest CPU possible that expels no heat at all so it won’t burn my legs when I’m using it as a real “lap” top, dozens of USB, Firewire, media cards, and every input possible, and… did I already say that it had to weigh under three pounds? Less than one pound would be even better, but I’m a realistic notebook computer shopper.

I think that’s a reasonable request. Don’t you?

What I would really like is the next generation of Palm handheld computers to use with my wireless keyboard. I love mine, Palm T. It’s small, light, powerful, flexible, capable, but limited as it was one of the first steps into handheld computing. Why did they stop making them? And why has handheld computers dropped off the computer technology landscape? So far, not a cell phone/handheld computer can compete with the power of that old Palm T – at least in capabilities and flexibility, not speed and storage space.

Still, I write my blog posts on the airplane with my ancient Palm T, even with its tiny memory and limited storage capabilities. It takes a licking (literally) and keeps on ticking. It’s the best thing for reading books, though! Wow! I’ve found nothing better, including Kindle, for book reading. Ah! Don’t get me started on that subject! It’s the only way to read books. Ah, skip the laptop. Palm or whoever, come up with a better handheld computer.

Okay, so what do I really want in my next power blogging laptop?

• Light weight – under 5-6 pounds (2 kilos).
• High speed action for games and running multiple RAM sucking programs at once.
• High speed and RAM for graphics.
• Cold temperatures – not heat generation.
• The largest hard drive capacity possible.
• A secondary hard drive.
• Bluetooth, WIFI, and all wireless capabilities with a huge range, with the ability to turn them off with a button.
• Not Vista. (In reading reviews of new computers and laptops, many are scoring a computer lower if it has Vista installed.)
• Not Apple.
• Touchpad with sensitivity, scrolling and hot spots.
• Durable keyboard with laser embedded and sealed keys. I tend to wear mine out really fast.
• Lots of USB and Firewire connections at top speeds.
• S-video and other digital media inputs and outputs.
• Ability to run without the battery on.
• Ability to run without the battery present.
• Ability to turn off the battery without removing it from the laptop (save battery life when hooked to AC.)

So the hunt begins. And I have to decide fast. After lugging my current monster laptop around San Francisco recently, I’m done with it. My laptop case weighs more than my suitcase.

What is the best laptop for a top blogger to blog with – with all the capabilities of a powerful desktop that will not be the only thing she can carry-on an airplane due to new weight restrictions? Got any recommendations?

Site Search Tags: blogging tips, laptop, computer shopping, blogging computer, computer for blogging, notebook, buying a computer

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

I don’t like rumors. I don’t like conspiracies. I like facts. And here is one that has me shaking my knees from CNet, “IE7 coming at you (whether you like it or not)” which says:

With its February 12, 2008, Patch Tuesday release, Microsoft has decided, for security reasons, to push out Internet Explorer 7, even to businesses that have previously blocked the automatic upgrade.

According to this Microsoft knowledge base article the software giant will release the Windows Internet Explorer 7 Installation and Availability update to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) marked as an Update Rollup package. Microsoft says for business customers who have “set WSUS to ‘auto-approve’ Update Rollup packages (this is not the default configuration), Windows Internet Explorer 7 will be automatically approved for installation.” Microsoft introduced the delay feature to give companies a chance to test the browser.

After several years of trying to stop Windows from upgrading unless I say when and how, turning it off and then finding it turned back on again when I didn’t do the turning on, this makes me nervous. I don’t use Internet Explorer and my experiences with those who installed it when it was first released were as the person coming in to uninstall it because it broke their computers. I use it only for testing on computers not owned by myself but others who got it to work but regretted it and switched to Firefox, leaving it to collect dust on their machines.

So what about you? Maybe you have a thing or two to think about this weekend regarding this action.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

It’s almost time for my annual Things I Want Gone from the Web post.

I had quite a list last year, and I’ve been collecting whines, rants, and nags over the past year, but this year, I want to know what you want gone from the web.

Let’s make this a community whine, rant, and nag.

So what do you want to see gone from the web and blogs next year? What fad do you want to see fade away? What tool, site, or gimmick do you want gone?

Site Search Tags: what I want gone from the web, bad web practices, web practices, web standards, poor blogging, bad blogging, ranting, rant, whine, nag, poor practices
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Social Networking Safety Tips by DygiScape is a thought-provoking look at staying safe while participating in social networking services.

It’s no question that social networking Web sites are growing rapidly everyday. This growing trend of sharing yourself more and more online; safety is often overlooked. Setting forth some safety guidelines will benefit the users of social networks, parents and children.

For the most part, common sense and familiarity with how the web works will protect you in the long run.

If you won’t do it in public, like yell your phone number across a crowded room of strangers, or share your address with every twit who asks, then don’t do it online – anywhere. You don’t walk around with piles of cash hanging out of your open pockets? Don’t share your credit card with anyone unless through a secure and trustworthy site.

Don’t trust anyone who has all the right things to say until you have enough experience with the person to give them the gift of your trust. And know that anything you say, and publish on the way, in any way, shape, and form, can and will be used against you, publicly, by anyone, anywhere, any time.

Please, as you put your face and private information out on display in Facebook and elsewhere, use some common sense.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

by engtech of Internet Duct Tape

Sometimes blogging applications like WordPress and Blogger are too much for what you want — they really are content management systems. Writing long-form content might not be your goal: perhaps you want to communicate with friends, or share links? Blogging has evolved into a culture of long-form articles. Sometimes all you want to do is put something on the web with the least amount of effort as possible. Here are a few sites that will help you do that: Facebook, Tumblr, StumbleUpon and Twitter.

What The?

• Microblogging refers to publishing very short status messages or updates of two to three sentences (etymology).
• Tumblelogging refers to publishing short-form, mixed media posts that can incorporate photos and videos.

Facebook – Microblogging and Tumblelogging

• Sign-up: http://www.facebook.com/r.php?r=102
• Example: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=831360579

Facebook – Pros

• Friends list — see updates from your friends
• Import friends from your email address book
• If your friends use Facebook then blogging on Facebook is the easiest way to write a blog they will read.
• It has one of the best systems I’ve ever seen for sharing photos between friends and identifying people in photos.
• Post messages using notes and tag friends so that they know you want them to read this.
• Shared links and video support. Facebook will automatically import a picture and description for the shared link and configure YouTube videos to play properly.
• Imports RSS feeds — as notes.
• Facebook applications — there are a million and one widgets to add to your Facebook page.
• Excellent private message support that even lets you email people from inside Facebook.
• Post by phone
• Surf by phone — the site is optimized for mobile phones, especially the iPhone

Facebook – Cons

• Walled garden — if your friends aren’t on Facebook then they won’t be able to read your blog, Conversely, it might be the simplest way to get non-bloggy friends to read your blog since they’re more likely to use Facebook than an RSS reader.
• Limited reach — you can’t reach people who aren’t your friend already
• Too many privacy settings confuse the user
• Facebook applications — there are a million and one widgets to add to your Facebook page, and a lot of them suck.
• No custom domain name support — you don’t own your URL

Tumblr – Microblogging and Tumblelogging

• Sign-up: http://www.tumblr.com/register
• Example: http://engtech.tumblr.com

Tumblr – Pros

• Best looking microblog tool — they hired one of the best web designers to design all of their templates and it looks amazing
• Photo / Video support — it understands how to style posts differently for photos, links, videos, quotes and conversations.
• Import RSS feeds — which means you can automatically integrate content from any other sites you use (photos, messages, book reviews, etc)
• Custom domain name support — if you own a domain name then you can map it to the service
• Full theme customization — there is a simple wizard for changing colours on existing themes, but you can get to the nitty gritty and change anything
• Friends list — show updated tumbles from other people who also use the site
• Import friends from your email address book
• Post by email
• Post by phone
• Surf by phone — the site is optimized for mobile phones
• Very simple and elegant.

Tumblr – Cons

• No way to send public or private messages to other users.
• No way to contact other users
• No email address book import of contacts

StumbleUpon – Tumblelogging

• Sign-up: http://www.stumbleupon.com/getstumble.php
• Example: http://ninetimessix.stumbleupon.com

StumbleUpon – Pros

• Truly excellent toolbar that integrates with Firefox or Internet Explorer
• It is very good at discovering new sites you’ll find interesting
• Very simple to share things you have “stumbled upon” with other people
• Potential to reach a huge audience — it is common for sites you share to reach 100s of other people
• Private messages between users
• Photo / Video support — but photos are limited in size
• Friends list — show updated stumbles from other people who also use the site
• Import friends from your email address book

StumbleUpon – Cons

• No mobile phone support (not that it would work well with the concept)
• Limited customization/template options
• No RSS import from other sites you use
• No custom domain name support — you don’t own your URL

Twitter – Microblogging

• Sign-up: http://twitter.com/signup
• Example: http://twitter.com/engtech and http://twitter.com/et

Twitter – Pros

• Friends list — updated messages from other people who also use the site
• Import friends from your email address book
• Private messages between users
• Post by phone
• Surf by phone — the site is optimized for mobile phones
• VERY simple to use
• 3rd party utilities — there are a million and one applications you can use to access Twitter other than the official web site.
• 3rd party import RSS feeds — through TwitterFeed.com

Twitter – Cons

• Short length — only allows for 140 character length messages, about two sentences.
• Design is ugly and inconsistent
• No embedded video or photo support
• Shared links are usually hidden by a URL shortener, and that makes it hard for people to know what you’re linking to ahead of time
• Not very many customization options
• No custom domain name support — you don’t own your URLlore

Jaiku and Pownce are a lot like Twitter but with more features. I won’t go into them in depth about them.

Summary

If blogging looks like too much work, then I’d seriously consider using Facebook or Tumblr as try as a microblogging service. They might satisfy your desire to communicate without adding as much overhead as traditional services like Blogger or WordPress. If you are looking at sharing your ideas and “finds” on the web then StumbleUpon is the best choice because it easily reaches a wider audience than even traditional blogging services. Twitter has its place as a public instant messaging service, but it doesn’t have enough gristle to satisfy in the long term.

What Other People Think

• WisDump compares Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, and Tumblr
• LifeHacker is a huge fan of Tumblr and thinks highly of StumbleUpon
• Web Worker Daily posts 10 things I hate about you, Facebook
• Why the Lucky Stiff recommends tumblelogs over blogs
• Dosh Dosh explains how to use microblogging to build traffic for your blog

Internet Duct Tape on Microblogging and Tumblelogging

• How to configure privacy settings on Facebook
• How to configure the privacy settings on Facebook applications
• How to fix StumbleUpon when you can’t submit new pages
• Exporting your Facebook status updates into Twitter

engtech blogs regularly at Internet Duct Tape. His latest post was Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey and The 3 Step Success Plan. Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape by RSS or by email.