Boston.com: Enthusiasts call Web feed next big thing

All our clients’ weblogs include RSS (web feeds).

Rep. Ray Cox and I did a weblog presentation to freshman members of MN House GOP Caucus yesterday, arranged by Sarah Anderson, Executive Assistant to Speaker of the House, Steve Sviggum. Over two dozen legislators were present.

As far as I know, Cox is still the only state legislator in the US who has an active weblog.

I gave them a little tour of Cox’s weblog and how posting to it actually works. I also pointed them to Citizen League President Sean Kershaw’s weblog, and Eden Prairie City Manager Scott Neal’s weblog.

I also highlighted the advantages of a legislative weblog via this simple Powerpoint presentation.

Dave Winer’s Scripting News links to this Forbes article titled The Coming RSS Revolution.
Watch a few of your favorite Web sites these days, and you may have noticed some orange-colored icons showing up. Most often they’ll be labeled “XML” or sometimes “RSS.” If you don’t know what they are, you’ll likely start hearing more about them in the coming year, because 2004, it seems, is the year the RSS feed–the letters stand for real simple syndication or rich site summary–is going mainstream.

The Winter 2003 issue of The Non Profit Quarterly has an article titled What’s a Blog, and Why Should Nonprofits Care? by Zafar S. Shah. A client, Wayne Jennings of the International Association for Learning Alternatives (IALA), is one of those profiled in the article.

Also profiled is a blog I’d not heard of: The BeneBlog, “a weblog by Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman, on issues and ideas that affect the application of technology to unmet social needs.”

The weblog/website for Careful Painting is now up. Posts from Mark Lange should be forthcoming in the next week or so.

I’m on a panel tomorrow hosted by the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation, titled:

Creating Dialogues: a symposium on civility and civic dialogue
Governing “by the people” is a cherished American value. Communities cannot govern effectively, however, without addressing complex issues. Unfortunately, civic dialogue often ends in conflict, dividing communities. If you want to change this in your community, join us at – Creating Dialogues – a symposium on civility and civic dialogue.

I’ve titled my presentation: Online Civility: Oxymoron?

I’m in the process of moving this site from OLM to TigerTech.

What could go wrong?

The weblog/website for Knecht’s Nurseries and Landscaping is now up. Posts from Leif Knecht and Deb Knecht should be forthcoming in the next week or so.

Small Business Computing announced their list of Top Software for 2003 back in December (a tip of the hat to Len Witt at Public Journalism Network for the link) and I’ve been using three of the ones on the list for the first time.

OpenOffice, an open source replacement for several of the apps in MS Office.
The Google Deskbar
ActiveWords; here’s the magazine’s description of it:

The $50 ActiveWords Plus is sort of the antithesis of Windows XP Media Center� an interface that reacts when you type words on the keyboard. A throwback to the memory-resident DOS utilities of 15 years ago? Well, yeah, but ActiveWords is also an exemplary power tool for quickly performing repetitive tasks, launching favorite programs or Web pages, and applying the idea behind Word’s AutoComplete to customize and optimize your whole computing environment. Who’d have guessed that keeping your hands on the home row could be such a productivity booster?

What’s hooked me on the product is its ability to learn the words I associate with doing the many different tasks on my PC and to treat them as one word commands, no matter what window or app I have open. I can be using a photo app and if it occurs to me that I need to go to this weblog, all I have to do is type “wig” and press the F8 key and it boots up my browser and takes me here. I’m just scratching the surface of this intriguing little app.

I met the creator of ActiveWords, Buzz Bruggeman, at last week’s Trend Agenda conference in Minneapolis.

Here’s Buzz with his hand on the frost-covered window in Gallery 8 of the Walker Art Center. It had been 24 below earlier that day. He grew up in International Falls, MN but has lived most of his life in Florida. So he’s pretty much a wimp when it comes to cold weather.