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 Mr. Jaffe said blogs were popping up everywhere because people want an improved ability to learn and communicate in real time. “One of the things I do is represent the advertiser industry,” Mr. Jaffe said. “Most of the time you can intuit what people's views will be. But in those areas where that's not the case, then getting feedback is critical.”

 Steve Hall, editor and publisher of Adrants, a blog commenting on advertising and media matters, said that blogs open windows for people. “Most corporate agency Web sites are really just fancy billboards,” he said. “It's pretty much impossible to have a face-to-face with every single business contact out there. What better way than to put your voice out there on a regular basis with a Web log?”

Podcasting is a really nifty term for mobile audio devices being able to subscribe to RSS feeds that enclose MP3’s as part of the syndication feed. Right now this means that with my Apple Ipod, which is really the only mobile device able to support this so far, I can subscribe to any number of audio casts and have them auto magically uploaded to my device as they are posted.

Really neat application, and from an audio casting perspective it’s an amazing way of syndicating your audio content. Now, is that all this is? A neat and easy way of getting audio onto my Ipod? Definitely not…

Podcasting is the first step in expanding RSS Syndication past the text and image content traditionally provided by Web logs, and enabling the Mass Market to replace Mass Media as the suppliers. This is an evolutionary leap toward allowing anyone to be able to take content, whether that be textual, audio, visual, or even more and effectively syndicate that to an audience willing to listen through the Internet using their devices that support it.

Amazing stuff really. I can see the day…

When my Smart Fridge that I programmed (And Paid?) to subscribe to a top chef’s RSS feed provides a list of his/her latest recipes. Then based on the recipes that I chose to make that week RSS syndicates the needed ingredients to my local Grocery Store that is subscribed to my feed as their customer.

When my TIVO can display and subscribe to any myriad of amateur Video Broadcasters who syndicate their own shows via their Home PC and a Webcam / Digital recorder, or record a list of shows my favorite personality watches so I can be “just like Mike”

When my Car’s Navigation System is wirelessly subscribed to the syndicated Gas Supplier hot list for Toronto and automatically notifies me when I am near a gas station that has the best price that day in my city.

The key between all of these? They are all standardized through RSS, and they lower the bar for the mass market to adopt and use through multiple mediums. Let the innovation and mass syndication begin!

For those interested in starting their own Podcasting time slot, take a look at Tod’s instructions on how to get started.

Back in August I went on a trip to the Cayman Islands. I have waited quite a while to post the pics due to the horrific damage caused by Hurricane Ivan not 2 weeks after we left.

The pictures posted are beautiful, and display a joy and happiness I had not ever experienced which I do not want to distract from the sadness and suffering that those trapped on the island have experienced after we left. There are many examples of horror stories that those on the island experienced, and I want to make sure that although this is a strong reminder of the beauty that once existed there, there is still basic infrastructure lacking months after the hurricane and the damage has been horrific.

Please do what you can to help those in need and to help bring this paradise back to where it was. There are many charities and organizations trying to help all the poeple of the Caribbean who suffered, please do what you can as well.

I'm packing up to head over to the airport, and I must say this has been one of the most productive business trips I have had in a while. New opportunities and the maturing of existing ones equals even further progress to making Blogware the Blogging and CMS solution of choice in the entire market.

Off to Heathrow and back to my regular posting next week.

My next article will be on Podcasting, probably one of the biggest innovations since the Blog itself. That link is to Tod Maffin's Blog on Iloveradio.org. He feels Podcasting may revitalize radio itself, and I tend to think it will be even more powerful than that….

One question I get from resellers revolves around what the value proposition of blogging is to their customers and how they can compete against freebie blog offerings that have the majority of the market today. There is one Web Log tool provider that has the largest calculated market share and one of the biggest reasons why is that their tool is free to use where they only generate revenue from advertising they place on the blogs.

I’m actually a little impressed with how Blogger has finally caught up with some of the functionality we had released over a year ago after taking a look at their tool recently. Even though they aren’t really a dynamic tool like most Blog providers out there, for a dressed up HTML page creator it’s not bad. They make you go through a little wizard to set it up and they have a few pretty templates, plus they now have a basic RTE and comment capability so it really looks like a dynamic web presence even though it really isn’t.

They have a few of the same features as a dynamic content management system, a few of the same benefits, but there are a couple of huge reasons why I don’t think they will ever be the brand at the head of the revenue generating Blogging front which also results in our resellers having a huge competitive advantage.

1)      The first thing to mention comes from taking a look at the history of the battle between no-frills Free Hosting Providers and the fee-based Hosting services provided by our resellers. The bell hasn’t rung yet, but most free hosting providers are finding it very difficult to sustain their business models on advertising revenue alone. The reason why? Customers want better and more reliable Bandwidth, no third party advertising, their own customization such as their own domain, FTP and Database feature support, ecommerce applications, robust Web Building Tools, great customer service, and this can all be achieved for a fare fee of a few dollars a month. All of these same differences can be applied to Reseller branded Blogware versus freebie Blogger.

2)      The key behind Blog content management systems are that they are so easy to use that they effectively lower the barrier for non-technical individuals to enter the world of web publishing. This expands the market from SME’s with an IT staff and/or Web Developers who are the bulk of fee based Hosting customers today to almost anyone with the need to communicate on the Internet, which is pretty much everyone since the Internet is a communication medium. One fragile factor that has been the biggest barrier to mass adoption of traditional HTML based web publishing tools is the attention factor and complexity. There is so much diverse information online and all of it is so easy to access, surfers have developed a 3 second attention span that these publishing tools have to address if they want to convert surfers into publishers. Blogger is a HTML web based creation tool that takes a long time, sometimes even many minutes to generate and FTP HTML pages after designing them in the interface. This is the biggest barrier and something our tool addresses perfectly with its dynamic and immediate gratification of any changes being applied. A customer makes a change, clicks apply, immediately refreshes their blog, and voila! It appears for the world to see in real time no matter how drastic the modifications or updates. No other tool can boast this  without a hefty price tag especially a HTML based creation tool such as Blogger.

So therefore a couple of conclusions:

The value proposition? It is the easiest to use tool available in the market for managing and creating a web presence that provides immediate gratification to any investment in effort that the mass surfing market demands. I won’t even go into how a database driven system like the best of breed Blogware inherently generates traffic which is the biggest “Pain” for any HTML publisher today and provides the most important gratification from publishing online…. Traffic.

How do you compete against Blogger? It has none of the above

Off to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Nottingham today to do some training for our Website Builder Tool and with only a 2 and a half our train ride this time. Two days in a row up at 5AM and arriving back at the hotel after 9PM and you can understand why I haven’t posted as much.

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I moblogged a couple more pics but I wish I could get a few of the touristy sites, London is so beautiful. Unfortunately I still haven’t had a chance to really get out for the non-work related stuff so far. Hopefully before I leave but my itinerary is pretty booked up. There’s always next trip….

What an amazing trip to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Lancaster. After training roughly 25 sales reps on Blogs and Blogware, I have to say it was absolutely fantastic to see so many eager sales people looking to offer the service to their customers.

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The positive feedback and intelligent questions were refreshing, and I think this will mean even more sales of Blogware to happy SME UK customers before the end of the year. This trip was definitely worth the over three hour train ride each way and I personally think the day was a huge success. We have some great customers over here!

I've been here a full day now and it's been great! Past the hotel room for the little people (Definitely won't be doing that again next time I come) and getting used to the Tube system, the people and sites have been amazing.

I've already had some great business meetings that have all been very positive and will result in even more Blogware offerings out here in the UK and abroad, plus a planned Blogware training trip to Lancaster tomorrow means things have jumped to an amazing start. Only thing I am dreading is the 3 1/2 hour train ride each way

I'll keep moblogging my travels, so stay tuned….

 I’m flying to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />London tonight on a 7 hour red-eye. I actually don’t mind the late flight at all; I personally think it’ll help with the jetlag.

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It’s my first time to the U.K. and I’m really looking forward to it. Half of my family is from there so it’s been a longing I’ve wanted to fulfill for a while, plus I hear it’s an absolutely amazing place with great people.

It’ll be nice to get to use my camera-phone and Moblog more often, there are definitely more things to take pictures of so stay tuned for updates and posts along the way. I’ve setup a specific photo-album for this trip as well if you want to subscribe to it separately.

The tech will allow people with disabilities to control the environment around them, from chores to recreation. Amazing.

John Kerry, speaking about his friend Chris Reeve, yesterday said.

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable. And then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

One great strength for any successful salesperson or business is the ability to adapt to a new situation. SME’s and even large Corporations are constantly changing their business model and product / service offerings. So how do you teach your sales staff to sell Blogware if it is a big departure from what they normally have sold? 

One of the first steps in a sales approach is identifying your client profile. If you know what type of client you are looking for with services you already sell, what is the client profile of a blogger? This is pretty simple to do for Domain owners, Hosting customers, ISP customers, Digitial Certificate or Email customers. Hell, you don't even have to use one of these services to effectively sell it.

So why is this so difficult for blogging customers?

Well, I believe that one of the reasons is that since Blogs are applied on so many diverse verticals and new uses are being discovered daily, looking at the application of one doesn’t necessarily give you any better of an indication of client profile than who a cellular customer calls with their cell phone. It may give some indications of the value proposition to analyze a call history, but with people calling so many different places that use wouldn’t be able to “profile” a cell user any better than how a publisher uses their blog. These are just people who need to communicate.

I personally think it is much more psychological in nature, or the need to be “heard”. A blog is a perfect way of doing that and no matter the application this is the end result, you share what you want, when you want, and with whom you want.

How do you quantify that? What percentage of customers have this personality trait? I really don’t know other than to say that I love to be heard, I know most Sales people love to be heard, and the fact I use my blog all the time makes it really easy for me to sell the service to my clients. If you are not at least somewhat emotionally invested in an offering, you will never be very successful at selling it.

The key behind blogging is that it is part of a new culture that is developing. It’s a belief in the ability for everyone to be heard, its Mass Media controlled by the Masses. What does that mean? It means that the target profile is anyone who has ever voted, called into a talk show, provided feedback, coordinated a party, has a special interest, wants to be successful at anything business related… or just likes to keep track of their thoughts.  This means most of everyone.

Blogware has been designed from the ground up to be intuitive for anyone who has surfed the internet, used an operating system, and knows the basics of any email client. The fact it is database driven and dynamic means immediate gratification to publishing on the Internet and no need to understand FTP delays or understand what a “HTML Page” is. This immediate gratification and ease of use lowers the bar for entry to the majority of internet surfers out there whose attention span is less than 3 seconds, and although it may be a little too much for your Gram and Grandpa, it’s not too much for your parents, you, or especially your children, and that means the Hosted web presence market has opened up significantly past business applications which is the majority of paid Hosting customers today. This results in a very broad target market and more customers for you. All you have to do is help your clients “get it” by exposing the benefits of Blogging. Traditional Mass Media is doing that today by mentioning blogs and bloggers on a daily basis in major news articles. Prominent Bloggers are doing this every day on their own creating a viral marketing effect for all of their visitors.

The only way for you to do this from a sales perspective is to insure your sales staff “gets it”. The key is blogging is “Sticky” and so rewarding that although strongly encouraging use of the tool by your sales staff may be a burden at first, as the benefits of networking through this revolutionary Internet Printing Press are exposed, people become addicted. This is the same process your clients will go through, and if your sales reps have as well then they will be way more effective in evangelizing the use of the tool to your customers.

The key is use. If you use it you “get it”. If you “get it” you can sell it. The rest works out in the wash…

Another great vertical application of a Blog is explored in this great article.

Is it a way to eliminate PR staff? No… but definitely an amazing way to significantly increase the effectiveness!

Caught him!

Ok, so you now know what RSS is… but how can you use it?

Take a look at Chris Pirillo's article, simple and efficent for all those wishing to learn to take advantage of RSS to enrich their online experience.

Oh… and don't forget to check out his Blog… Full of all kinds of amazing information and insights on the Internet to software, and even some personal epiphanies. As a great value it should be one of the first you subscribe to, well other than mine as a pitty offering maybe 

I am seeing a few resellers struggling with the issue of Internet Traffic being presented with generic system branding when signing up for a reader account on their customers Web logs instead of their own brand. They wonder why this is not separated into their own offering and kept disconnected from other reseller offerings citing competitive concerns.

“We are not only competing against other Blog Software providers, but also against other resellers!”

IMHO this is completely wrong , and to explore the details there is some great reading from all the way back in 1997 that will expose the reason why in detail when you read Point #2.

One of the key aspects of this new Blogging communication technology is the inherent networking capabilities of the tool and how all reseller offerings are connected via the Blogware engine. The value of any communication network depends on the total number of people in the network.

The greater the number of people that participate in the network, the greater the value of joining the network.

If you are the only person in the world with a phone connection, it is of no real use. If many people have a phone, it is useful to have a phone yourself and the returns to participating in the network increase with the number of users. How useful would the phone network be if a phone customer of ATT couldn’t call a phone customer of Bell?

The fact I have a reader account means I can comment not only on one reseller's blogs, but also on other reseller's blogs without having to create new accounts. The value I derive from a reader account is far greater than just being able to access one reseller's Blogs and will mean more of a likelihood I will sign up to become a paid member of the network no matter which provider I choose.

The bottom line? This is probably the only service we provide to our resellers where it actually benefits the value of a reseller offering to somewhat expose their competing reseller's blogs as being part of the network a user signs up for. That user will eventually sign up for a Blog and whether that be with reseller A or a Blog of Reseller B, the more blogs and readers in the system the more exposure the system receives which will eventually result in more new customers for me.

ATT competes with Bell, but neither denies they don't co-exist in the same ecosystem.  Promoting each other and our differences is the only way to help each other succeed in the network economy of the burgeoning Blogging industry of today.

Market the service how you wish which is what was always intended, just make sure you understand what you give up when you try to segregate your offering from the Network.

Finally!! Got it to work. Very cool, very easy to use. Check out the results of some quick stuff around the Barn.

A couple of issues with the provider setting things up aside, it is really damn easy.

Why you would use this on a regular basis not so sure, but due to being tied via ball and chain to the office as of late I'll probably discover what the real apps are as I start to travel more on business. Off to the UK in October so I'll keep posting them