Lorelle VanFossen has just written a great blog post about using blogging as a communications tool during natural disasters–particularly relevant given the recent landfall of Hurricane Gustav. Her blog post is a bit long, but certainly worth reading, so I won’t take the time to summarize what she wrote. She does, however, point out some of the many ways that blogs were used both in Gustav and in Katrina back during 2005 to provide local information about the storms, to provide communication to others about the local situations there, as well as providing other kinds of vital communication. (And, this year with Gustav, Twitter also played a major role in that as well.)

However, a lot of this ties into what I really think is going to become more and more commonplace as the internet continues to evolve and mature, and quite frankly, this really is what blogging is about. In my opinion, one of the biggest aspects of blogging is that it provides a medium through which independent people can become journalists in their own right. If you were to just watch the news media to see the latest on Gustav or any other local disaster, you’d only get to see what the news media would want you to see. But go onto Technorati or Google Blog Search and start searching the blogs, and then you get to start getting reactions from actual people, many of whom were actually there and can give their own unique perspective. And that really is one of the ways that blogging is helping to rejuvenate the First Amendment here in our country: it’s allowing ordinary people to provide resources and information and opinion and other kinds of things that the national media wouldn’t be able to give us.

This is one of the many things that blogging is all about.

Tags: article, Blogging, disasters, Gustav, hurricane, Lorelle VanFossen

I’ve recently been converted.

No, I’m not talking about religion here. (Who knows why I would ever want to blog about religion, anyway!) I’m actually talking about something much more relevant to most of us in this day and age: e-mail.

I’m sure that many and relate themselves to me when I talk about how, during the past school year, I really didn’t do much to keep my e-mail under control, and I found myself having an inbox full of stuff dating all the way back to last September. By the end of June, I had over 1500 messages in my inbox, and I didn’t even remember what most of it was.

Well, one of my goals this summer was to get my life better organized (both in the real world and the computer world), and e-mail was certainly a major target for getting my life back in order. And lo and behold, I found my inspiration in the July 2008 issue of Macworld, which featured a three-part article by Joe Kissell called Empty Your Inbox (part 1, part 2, part 3), which was heavily based on the Inbox Zero philosophy by Merlin Mann. I delved into the Macworld article, Merlin’s video presentation and Merlin’s own set of blog articles surrounding this novel idea of getting your inbox down to nothing.

And after reading and watching, surprising as though it may seem, I’ve successfully implemented Inbox Zero into my life this past month, and now could hardly imagine going back to letting my inbox fill up. (I’m still going through the last few transitional growing pains of adjusting to a new paradigm for my e-mail, but a lot of this stuff is finally starting to become instinctive.)

While you can go check out this info for yourself, here’s my summary of what Inbox Zero is all about, and how it works.
Continue reading »

Tags: data detectors, e-mail, inbox, Inbox Zero, Macworld, Mail, Merlin Mann, OmniFocus, organization

Okay, I totally love this article. The article apparently says that 75% of surveyed U.S. cell phone users doesn’t want talking on cell phones to be allowed in-flight, because they don’t want to be forced to listen to other people’s cell phone conversations during the flight. And apparently these folks are paying attention, because even as services like in-flight wifi are being developed, talking on these devices will still be prohibited. As a very strong-voiced member of that 75%, I must say that I’m just loving this.

Tags: airlines, article, cell phone, flight, passengers, survey

I don’t frequently talk about politics on this blog, but it seems like pretty much the whole internet agrees that last weeks’ ABC debate between Clinton and Obama, run by “Gibsonopoulos,” was a complete joke and an insult to the point of even having debates. Absolutely insane.

This particular blog did a good parody of this by showing what the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 might have been like had they been moderated by Gibson and Stephanopoulos, and it’s absolutely hilarious. You’ll want to take a look at this. Props to the guy that did this because it’s very well done.

Tags: ABC, Clinton, craziness, debate, Douglas, Gibson, Lincoln, Obama, parody, Stephanopoulos

Macworld has just posted an excellent guide to Time Machine that for the first time, truly explains in great detail exactly how Time Machine works in Leopard, exactly what you need, etc. Personally, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to muster up a hard drive for backups, so I’ll probably have to leave my files to fate for just a few months more. Still, an interesting read for anyone who wants just a bit more information about what they’re getting in exchange for the $129 shellout.

Tags: backups, features, guide, hard drive, Mac OS X Leopard, Macworld, Time Machine

If you were our president today, we would live in a much better world.

Read the news artice | Check out the Special Apple.com Commemoration | Digg Story

Tags: Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, congratulations, global warming, Nobel Peace Prize, peace, president, world

Many many props go to Macworld writer/editor Christopher Breen who just posted his editor’s notes entitled Is Apple on the Wrong Path? I think that this was an excellent article that really clearly puts everyone’s feelings towards many of Apple’s recent decisions, in particular the iPhone bricking issue, in words and presents an argument that makes perfect common sense. It definitely does it better than that “Is Apple the New Microsoft?” article that Computerworld’s Mike Elgan posted awhile back, which made totally unclear points. This article is really clear, and I really hope that Apple reads it and understands that what they did last week to iPhone owners is not cool, and is going to turn people against them. Apple’s success has gone to its head, and they need to wake up and start thinking about the actual consumer and what’s best for them, not what’s best for Apple or AT&T.

Tags: Apple, bricking, Christopher Breen, decisions, iMovie, iPhone, Macworld, opinion, stupidity

Many of my readers know friend and PreviewCast regular Caitlyn Imburgo. She just got a brand new design up on her blog, which is great to see her blogging again. Today she posted a guest blog article that I wrote for her blog about a month ago which talks about how iWork ‘08 completely changes the game for Microsoft Office for Mac, and calls into question just how many people will be upgrading to Office 2008 when it comes out next year. Check out the article.

Tags: 2008, Apple, Caitlyn Imburgo, guest blogging, iWork, Microsoft Office, productivity

Lorelle VanFossen, blogger extraordinaire, celebrated the 2nd anniversary of WordPress.com and her blog by inviting many guest bloggers to post various articles about blogging during the month of August. (The upcoming month of September will feature many non-stop WordPress/blogging tips.) She invited me to write a few articles, and I must say I really enjoyed writing them. The first one was Ways to Build and Retain Your Podcast Audience, posted almost two weeks ago, and the second one was Blogging and Social Networking as a Teenager, which was just posted this morning. I highly recommend that you check out these articles, which I am very proud of!

Tags: article, Blogging, guest blogging, Lorelle VanFossen, podcasting, social networking, teenagers

WordPress superstar Lorelle VanFossen is spending the months of August and September featuring guest bloggers on her blog to celebrate the 2 year anniversary of her blog and of WordPress.com. (By the way, you might see me do an entry on there later on this month…) Today’s guest-blogged article is a very interesting article by Edrei Zahari all about personal blogging, including how personal blogging has been under-appreciated, along with tips for what really makes a personal blog one that readers would be interested in. He really emphasizes how it’s a blog about yourself and your personal life, but it’s written with an audience in mind–not so that you cater your posts to what the audience wants, but that you write in a style that the audience can relate to. This article really strikes a chord with many of the philosophies that I’ve had behind the production of this blog, and it’s really good to see my ideas written down in this article. I highly recommend that you go check it out.

Tags: article, Blogging, Connections, Lorelle VanFossen, Personal, tips, WordPress