BlogOrlando is underway!

Tom and I are both well into the day here at BlogOrlando, the fantastic conference that’s been organized by Josh Hallett. So far this morning we’ve gotten Josh’s introduction and a keynote from Shel Israel before breaking off into the different tracks. Tom led the first session in the PR/Comm track talking about his love of shellfish. (wait. he’s tapping me on the shoulder. it was about blog relations and community building. hmmm. what did I listen to?)

Both of us are taking pictures and taking notes, most of which will probably be up soon, likely both here and on our personal blogs in some way shape or form.

Not only is this a great conference so far (and we’re only a couple hours in to the formal thing) but it’s also been tremendously fun and a great opportunity to meet up with some of the smartest people on the interwebs.

More to come.

LOTD 9/26/07

• Following up on Tom’s post with advice to Netflix from a few days ago, Ron at Grok says Netflix has implemented some of the changes to its website that he originally advocated. Despite the fact that Ron says no one from Netflix actually contacted him it seems that someone was at least listening.
• Joe Jaffe wonders where the blogger outreach by the big players covering Advertising Week gone and disappeared to.
• Armani is opening a location in Second Life. Did they not get the memo that brands we had moved from “rush into” to “abandon” mode when it comes to SL?
• The Onion, as usual, kills me. “Google Launches ‘The Google’ for Older Adults.”

LOTD: 9/24/07

• Danny Sullivan at AdAge makes a point that I don’t think gets enough mentioning, which is that search-engine-optimization is primarily a public relations tool. The idea behind SEO is similar to that of PR, which is to have a brand name of some sort appear as a non-paid listing or mention. Sullivan also wisely points out that paid search and SEO need to live together and that, like other marketing efforts, the ideal solution may be a mix of the two. (CT)
• Web entities of all shapes and sizes are adding features that resemble those found on social networks to try and connect their members/visitors. These features encourage deeper user interaction, but it’s also leading some sites that never used to to sell ads, sales of which are helped by these longer visit numbers. (CT)
• AOL has trimmed the portfolio of sites it inherited from Weblogs Inc a bit more, shutting down a number of the life sciences blogs WIN was running. That takes the number down to 26, not including the various translations of Engadget and Autoblog. (CT)
• I’m trying to figure out what the thinking is behind so many people praising services that consolidate your RSS reading to just what the service thinks is important or relevant. Isn’t one of the points of reading RSS feeds to be exposed to alternate viewpoints and a variety of voices? Or is that just me? (CT)
• Everyone sees the funny behind Rocketboom deciding to turn ad sales over to Blip.tv, right? I know that they’re still going to be able to sell ads on their own site, but doesn’t this largely mean the RB team decided it couldn’t keep up with the emerging world of video ads and decided to ditch “original and clever” in favor of “simply a variation on the overlays everyone else is testing out.”? (CT)
• Someone at Metafilter revisits the “You’re the Man Now, Dog” fad. Always a good way to kill 15 minutes while your boss if off celebrating his birthday. (CT)
• I still used CD-Rs for data back-up I haven’t carried a floppy disk of any sort in years, opting instead for my handy flash drive. Apparently I’m not alone. (CT)
• Seems MySpace News links, which just show a framed version of someone’s story, are being indexed as original sources by Google News. So you have a service that frames (read: brands) a publisher’s content getting traffic directed its way instead of the story itself. No, that’s not a problem at all, why do you ask? (CT)

LOTD: 9/22/07

• Seth Godin Is looking for some help with a simple solution for reunion organizing. (TB)
• Over at Diva Marketing, Toby’s got a great post about thinking on your toes when prepping for a presentation and then ending up providing a slightly different version (read: more detailed, but less detailed could be relevant as well) than originally planned after finding out more about your audience. (TB)
• According to at least this article from Lisa Scherzer, spamming about microcap / pink sheet stocks is actually just as profitable as you might think it is. (TB)
• Go help Dave Winer figure out how to sponsor an open source project. (TB)
• Some Channel 9 forum posters are expressing concerns about how Wikipedia is “changing” to meet its “needs.” (TB)

TIME Widgets

Ooh, never noticed this either – Lost Remote sez you can embed a widget from TIME magazine with a quote of the day in your own site if you want to. Wow, a widget with a credible source behind it. Go figure.

LOTD: 9/20/07

• Lifehacker gives us a heavy hitter with a fantastic potential lifesaver from the world of Google Maps mashups, RottenNeighbor. Wow. (TB)
• Valleywag isn’t broken, is it? I got worried after seeing this item about the “new” Digg. (TB)
• Two of my fave services – Newsgator and Socialtext – are doing a free Webinar late next week. (TB)
• Dude, it’s like scheduling with a collaborative vibe and stuff. (TB)

LOTD: 9/18/07

• Bloglines is now bringing in feeds using the stylesheets originally intended. (TB)
• A billion dollars per year is the cost of fraudulent clicks on Google’s ad network. (TB)
• For those of you who think you can get away with anything when it comes to bloggers, think again. (TB)
• The WaPo’s Zachary Goldfarb and Sam Diaz have some skinny on AOL’s move to New York City and what’s really behind it all. (TB)

LOTD: 9/14/07

• Read/WriteWeb’s Richard McManus informs about the big news that Marshall Kirkpatrick has joined the team at that site, as Lead Writer next Monday. Congrats, Marshall! (TB)
• Dave Winer points out that Valleywag doesn’t run ads. Never noticed that myself. Oh, wait – that’s because Valleywag does run ads. Or at least they do when I visit. (TB)
• I’m really wondering why people aren’t paying attention to the fact that Facebook just signed its first outside PR agency. Seems to me that a move like that does as much to signal the company’s next moves as much as ad strategies. (CT)
• As someone who used to spend a fair amount of time scraping gum off the underside of theater seats I find the invention of non-stick chewing gum to be just fascinating. (CT)
• Yes, it might be true that teens learn about new TV shows from promotions on TV itself, but that’s only dependent on there being quality programming to draw them in in the first place. Hope everyone realizes that. (CT)
• If this is true and MySpace is adopting a design that lessens my desire to gouge out my own eyes then that MIGHT be enough to get me to use it again. Might. (CT)
• I’m linking to this story about Prince suing to keep his music off YouTube simply because I like to think in his complaint he spelled it U2ube. (CT)

Chicago transit hypebole

(Note: Typo in title is intentional. Keep reading)

I saw Rachelle post about the dire warning pamphlet that was handed out to El riders here in Chicago regarding the “doomsday” cuts the CTA would have to make if Springfield doesn’t find some coin to keep all the trains running and avoid price hikes.

I got a similar little card of what impact funding cuts would mean for Metra – the mass transit system that connects the suburbs to the city – sans monetary bailout. It probably would have been  more effective without the typo, but what do I know.

LOTD 9/11/07

• If any of you are out there fighting for innovative, original thinking in terms of what you can do on teh Interwebz, Steve Safran has a list of things that we were told would never happen online. Print them out and show them to the person shooting you down. (CT)
• GSM mobile technology is, apparently, 20 years old. I’m not sure what to do with this, other than feel old, but there that is. (CT)
• SixApart released an interface that allows people to update their Typepad blogs from their iPhones. There are a couple jokes I could make here:

• Better hope your AdSense revenue is enough to pay the service charges.
• It’s too bad people without Typepad blogs couldn’t use that $100 in credit to get one