Open Source Blogging

Christmas Eve. It’s a wonderful time of the year, isn’t it? My oldest child is three, and he’s just old enough to start really getting into the season, shouting loudly at every sight of Santa Claus, happily collecting candy canes, and singing “JINGLE BELLS! JINGLE BELLS!” over and over again.

As for me, the best part of Christmas is simply seeing all of those people that you don’t get to see very often. I love getting in touch with family, talking to them and finding out what they’re up to, giving a few gifts and opening a … Continue Reading

OK, OK, I’m back to my blog thanks to popular demand.

One new service came up this morning that caught my eye: TechFuga.

As Louis Gray says, it’s like TechMeme and AllTop had a baby.

Now, whether or not you think this will prove successful (the jury is out, especially since TechMeme’s traffic has flatlined the past year) this points to something else: TechMeme hasn’t innovated and that lack of innovation is opening the door to competitors.

How has it not innovated? TechMeme has not acknowledged that there is something interesting going on … Continue Reading

Every few months, I like to open up the doors for suggestions on future directions and post ideas for The Simple Dollar. I often conceive of new areas to cover and ideas to try, but it’s really you, the readers, that decide whether or not those areas are really worth pursuing or not, because if I go down a path that no one wants to read, no one will read.

So, below, I’ve listed six ideas I’ve had for future posting directions for The Simple Dollar. Please let me know in the comments which directions you like and which … Continue Reading

When you’re entrenched in a large pattern of bad habits and you’re challenged to escape those habits, it’s very easy to fall back on an excuse of some kind to “explain away” and justify your poor choices.

I know this from experience. I used many excuses to continue my poor spending habits and I still use them sometimes to talk myself out of exercise or other tasks that I know I need to do.

Excuses are the epitome of failure. Every … Continue Reading

I was deciding this morning whether or not to go to your Professional Developer Conference. It’s being hyped up as one of the most important in Microsoft’s recent history.

I’ve decided not to go for a variety of reasons. The economy. The numbers of bloggers and journalists who’ll be there (so many the stories will get out). My family, which has seen me on the road too much this year. The fact that I rarely get good videos at conferences (even when I worked at Microsoft I didn’t get any good videos at our own conferences).

But the stone that made … Continue Reading

I just finished a speech at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego where I discussed the trend of "marketers as publishers" for about an hour.  Great group, excellent questions. During the speech, we discussed social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (among others).

I spoke at an OMS event six months ago, and the number of people using these three social networking applications have easily doubled (as measured by a raising of hands) over that time. Social media is literally part of a marketer’s life today. … Continue Reading

A few days ago, my truck acted up yet again, with the truck chugging badly before shifting gears (with the chugs vanishing quickly after the shift). Before long, the ol’ “Check Engine” light came on.

Since I don’t need it for much of anything for a while, my wife and I are currently leaving it in the driveway while we make up our minds whether or not yet another repair bill is the correct route to follow, or we should just hang it up and get something else.

Given that it’s already accumulated about $3,000 in repair bills … Continue Reading