By Griff Wigley, on July 12th, 2006
I’ve been searching for other tools to automate the email notification options for a weblog. While RSS is all the rage and the best way to go, IMHO, most visitors to a website/weblog still don’t use it or know how to use it.
For several years, I’ve used Dada (Mojo) Mail for my own blogs and a few clients and although I still like it, I’ve not figured out how to make it work seamlessly with weblogs.
 A few months ago, I noticed that Feedburner, which I now use for all my RSS feeds (free), added an email notification option which emails an individual blog entry out to list subscribers as soon as the blog entry is posted.
 And then earlier this week, a UK colleague and blogger Mike Alderson at Open Eye Communications alerted me to Problogger (“Helping bloggers earn money”) where I saw how he was using email for his site visitors… both Feedburner‘s email service and a service I’d not heard of called Zookoda (free) which he installed back in March. It works in harmony with the RSS feed and has the great advantage of allowing you to send out emails automatically (“broadcast” is their term), once per week or per month or per number of new posts (the latter is the option I’m going to use and recommend for most of my clients).
So I’ve set up these two new features on my right sidebar, plus I’ve created a Subscription Options page where all this is explained, along with the RSS feed and podcast. And I’m going to use it today to broadcast to all the subscribers who previously had signed up to my Dada/Mojo list.
If you’re a client and would like me to set this up for your weblog, let me know.
By Griff Wigley, on June 14th, 2006
 I have a couple of leaders now who are ready to make selective use of the WordPress comment feature.
So I’m experimenting with it here to find the best way to make it easy for the site visitors, yet prevent spammers from abusing it.
Upon the recommendation of this recent message thread in the WordPress forums, I’ve enabled the Askimet, Bad Behaviour and Spam Karma 2 plug-ins, while avoiding the Captcha approach.
I’ve turned on comments and trackbacks on this and all future blog entries to see if it works.
By Griff Wigley, on June 5th, 2006
The May 22 issue of BusinessWeek ran this article:
And here’s a follow-up on the piece by SixApart, the makers of the Movable Type weblog
platform they’re using:
Of the two external blogs mentioned, I’m most interested in Randy’s Journal, as the consultant describes it as “… the classic senior executive/thought leadership blog.” Randy Baseler is vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle.
By Griff Wigley, on May 19th, 2006
I’ve added a little gizmo to my right sidebar here that indicates whether or not I’m currently logged into my Skype account.
For geographically distributed teams, I see this form of instant messaging (real-time voice and/or text chat) as the equivalent of showing up at an office, hanging your coat on a rack near your workspace, and turning on the lights — all little cues to your colleagues that “I’m here. I’m around. I’m available to talk/collaborate/socialize.”
By Griff Wigley, on April 20th, 2006
 Just testing the blog editor called Zoundry. I'm particularly interested to see what it does with advertisements, as well as images like this big fat photo of some of my goofball family members.
Report: The image editor appears to be very good. Wraps with several options, including automated thumbnails and thumbnail resizing, with margin-setting.
Setup was very good. It'll be relatively easy to talk clients through the setup.
The only thing I don't yet understand is how they handle advertisements. Update: they offer a Zoundry Lite which doesn't require the adv. program. Coolio.
By Griff Wigley, on March 28th, 2006
I recorded this short videoclip last night after returning from Rochdale. It’s a little thank you note to Ian Robertson for the day.
I used Audioblog.com’s service to create this private URL for it, and then emailed that URL to Ian Robertson. This avoids having to send a large video file as an attachment. Here’s what appeared in my email to Ian:
Normally, this type of videoclip wouldn’t be posted to a weblog but I’m doing so for teaching purposes.
By Griff Wigley, on March 8th, 2006
A 35-second video clip of Scott Neal, Eden Prairie City Manager, explaining why he doesn't turn on the comment feature of his blog.
I typically encourage government leaders to leave the comments features of their blogs turned off by default, especially if they're worried either about getting trashed by site visitors or about having to spend too much time responding to comments.
I told Scott after the meeting that since he now has a blog with a better comment feature, he may want to pick one or two blog posts/month in which he flips on the comment feature and asks for participation for X number of days. He can then opt to join the comment thread during that time frame, as well as add new blog entries that reference comments being left.
By Griff Wigley, on March 1st, 2006
 I was in Eden Prairie Police Chief Dan Carlson’s office when we recorded this short audio via my cell phone, to show him how easy it is to do. It’s particularly advantageous to someone like Dan who’s typing skills are pathetic marginally adequate. Click the photo for proof.
Posting to a weblog from a device other than a PC is often referred to as moblogging. When it’s voice, it’s an audioblog. A podcast is when the audioblogging becomes a show that can be subscribed to.
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