"Seattle-based Newsvine, Inc. was launched in March 2006 by a small team of like-minded colleagues with one purpose: to build a perfectly different, perfectly efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news."

Yet another online addiction... now if I only had time to write about all the ideas that pop into my head at 3am. I have like four unpublished articles that want to make it onto my newsvine page, but I lack the time and energy to make it happen.

nielle.newsvine.com

What I love about this site is all the various ways to interact with the news and bounce ideas off other people and even become a journalist yourself. It can occasionally get bogged down in egomaniacal shameless self-promotion, but when it works as an idea-tool, it's totally gnarly! :)

about a year ago, i realized that as a "technology" person, i was pathetically behind in terms of online networking. my eyes were opened to sites like del.icio.us, technorati, digg, linkedin, etc... so i started using those sites (by that time i was already an avid myspace addict). but it seems every time i turn around there is yet another website community i should be a part of if i really want to get seen in the technology world. after all, what kind of tech person doesn't join in the geekery of all of these widgets, gadgets, communities and blogrolls?
so now i am a member of MyBlogLog (under "nielleshimmies") --- so please connect with me if you use that site because right now i look like a loser with a capital L with NO friends ;)

someday i hope these initiatives lead to lucrative career moves rather than just more online distraction and amusement... i was already doing just fine there!

i found this interesting... from Yehuda's site, "How I Became a Professional Blogger"

Thursday, June 07, 2007

How I Became a Professional Blogger

(You can skip this post, ekted; I know you don't like it when I talk about blogging :-) )

I didn't really plan it, but I dreamed it.

1. First of all, when I started blogging I knew I had something to offer. One of my strengths is the ability to come up with new and creative ideas. Sometimes what I come up with falls flat, but I always have another three or four ideas waiting as a follow up.

Everyone has something to offer about something. Whatever you are good at or know about, other people will be interested in it. Worst comes to worst, by blogging you'll be practicing your writing and organizational skills. Even if you just do it for fun, like most people.

2. I picked a subject that I'm passionate about to begin with. I really do play games, and I really do evangelize about them. And I really believe the things I write about (at least at the time that I write them).

3. I wasn't afraid of failing, because I started from nothing: no audience, no readers, nothing to lose. When I got some readers, I thought: well, the worst that can happen is that I post something lame or offensive and I lose them all. In which case I'm no worse off then when I started.

4. I have lots of dreams, and only so much time to devote to them. In order to succeed with this one, it was necessary that I made blogging a daily priority. Especially at the beginning, when I didn't necessarily have anything to write, I wrote anyway. I scoured news and web sites. I made it a point of writing every day (at first, three times a week), regardless. Often, usually, about halfway through writing something, I realized that I finally had something to say. I then erased everything I had written and started over.

Sometimes the ideas only start flowing after the pen hits the paper; most people want it to be the other way around, but this doesn't work for me.

5. Since I wasn't getting paid for this, I had to justify the time spent to myself, to my wife and family. I had to fight adversity and answer questions like "why am I playing around on the computer?" Because I am laying the groundwork. I am spending the time now to get better at it, until one day I may be in a position that I will have enough experience and enough traffic, or be offered a blog position, so that I can quit my other jobs.

In the meantime, the time spent is no more wasteful than the time spent in school that you don't get paid for. It's education. It's experience. It's building habits and working through errors. Especially getting those errors out before I have a big readership, when failure becomes a bigger problem.

It was also a commitment; because even if only one other person is expecting me to write something, I feel a need to write for that person, money or no money.

6. I turned to the professionals: Problogger, Performancing, Gaping Void, Seth Godin, Copyblogger, Kathy Sierra, and so on. Some of these are specifically about blogging, while the others are about branding. Both are key. Professional blogging sites help you with the technical stuff: how to be a good blog citizen, how to network, how to optimize, how to write content in attractive ways. Branding/Marketing sites help you identify what you have to offer, how to connect to what people like to read, and how to tap into the creative process. There's an overlap between the two, of course.

7. Not only did I find myself in a good niche (board gaming), but I found things that weren't being covered in my niche and covered them. There are blogs with session reports and reviews about Eurogames, war games, Go and Chess, but basically none that cover all board gaming - which, by the way, is my interest. I collect and report on daily gaming news that nobody else reports. I cover game patents because nobody else does them. I write game poetry because, um, I'm crazy (but I like to do it, and few others do). I maintain an up-to-date blogroll like no one else does.

I also branched out into a few other subjects, when I found myself with something particularly unique or interesting to say (well, at least something that I found interesting, anyway).

8. Any person who has played a negotiation or trading game can tell you that you have to trade promiscuously to win. As such, I am promiscuous with my links. I link to all the hundreds of people that I love and read. If only 10% of them link back to me, thats still hundreds of people with one link (from me), and dozens of links back for me.

9. I maintained focus on my readers. I don't write for transient hits from Google or Digg. Not that I reject them, but I don't make that my focus. If my post isn't good enough for the regular readers, it's not good enough. On the other hand, my regular readers do get a wide range of topics covered.

I RSS full feed. Anyone who subscribes to my feed doesn't have to jump through hoops to get my content. I can count on them coming to my site a few times a year at the very least, which is a heck of a lot more than the other billion people on the internet. I'm not going to purposely annoy them.

I try not to annoy my readers with ads. I played around with ads and rejected most of them because they would annoy me if I went to read the site. I use only a small ad on the top. I use affiliate links to sites where I would also buy products, and which don't pop-up or interfere with the flow of text. I began writing reviews only of sites that I thought contained at least something that I would be interested in, anyway (and rejected many others).

Yes, it's a little extra work to tune ads properly and add all the affiliate links in my posts, but I got used to it. With little exception, I don't think I've annoyed my readers too much.

10. After I had experience in blogging - three years, now - I looked for the opportunities. There are blog positions advertised online, and there are companies that looked like they could use blogging help.

A. The direct results:

By post number 1000, I had made $75, which I gave back to my readers in the form of games. I'm now up to around $50 a month in Text Link Ads ($35), Google Ad-Sense ($12), and Amazon ($3).

Not very impressive, I admit. However ...

B. The indirect results:

I landed a professional blogging position at a company. I went in for a programming position and offered instead to be their company blogger. And they accepted.

I have had a game published by a publisher who is one my readers.

I've received dozens of free games to review.

My writing is getting better all the time.

I know hundreds of great people around the world.

I've had articles published in professional journals around the world. I've even been interviewed a few times on various subjects.

I know a lot about my field and interest.

I'm enjoying myself.

C. Will I ever run out of things to blog about?

Blogging is now easier than ever. Where I once scrounged for topics, I now have to hold back from writing too much every day.

- I have played 250 games and have only reviewed 50 of them.
- I can compare any two games
- I can review and compare game genres
- I can write about gaming in every country, city, religion, or culture
- I can pick any topic and write about the games that concern that topic (I did Zebra games, once, as an example)
- I can find thousands of unusual games any day on eBay
- I can write about other game blogs and websites
- I can respond to articles on these sites
- I have thousands of game books to read and review
- Each of them covering topics in intelligence, theory, culture, history, fun, tactics, and so on, all of which I can also write about
- And that's off the top of my head, and doesn't include keeping up with game news and patents and the games that I play and design
- And so on

And you can do it to, if you really want to.

Yehuda

P.S. You may also want to read my Ten Lesser Known Secrets of Blogging.

this is from the Moving at the Speed of Creativity blog.
non-computer geeks will most likely be uninterested in the contents of this article, but it affects everyone...
lately I've been tempted to drop-kick my PC and experiment with linux.
this reinforces that desire. ~NM

Rather than innovate, Microsoft may litigate against open source

On May 14, 2007, senior editor of Fortune magazine, Roger Parloff, published the article “Microsoft takes on the free world.” According to the article:

More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers. But now there’s a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it’s being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft’s patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google, Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won’t be free anymore.

I learned about this article via Steve Gibson and Leo Laport’s Security Now Podcast #93, “Microsoft Patent Wars,” from May 24th. In the podcast, Steve relates some history for U.S. patent law as it concerns computer software. In “the early days” (really not that long ago) the U.S. Patent Office wouldn’t grant software developers patents for their code because prevailing views held that like mathematics, software code “existed” and could be discovered but not invented. That perspective underwent drastic transformation at least ten years ago, and now the U.S. Patent Office issues software patents for a dizzying array of software code. According to Gibson, the issuance of software patents in the U.S. has gotten completely out of control in the past decade. Rather than issue patents for things which are truly novel and useful, Gibson maintains the software office now issues patents for very generic, broad software code which simply invites more litigation. The entire situation is a big mess, and this latest article about Microsoft and the ways they want to use their software patents to kill FOSS (the free and open source software movement) is both instructive and disturbing. As with many legal issues, it appears the only clear winners in this morass are the lawyers.

A Technorati search for “microsoft” and “patents” reveals a sizeable buzz in the blogosphere over these issues and their implications. Some are saying Microsoft should specify WHICH of its patents are among the 235 which are allegedly infringed upon by FOSS, others point out that is not how U.S. patent law operates, people should figure that out on their own. Steve Gibson asserts it is virtually impossible today to write any software code that doesn’t infringe on someone’s software patent ludicrously issued by the U.S. patent office, especially since prior knowledge of the existence of a patent can result in a legal judgement which is three times as harsh. That creates a disincentive for software developers to research existing patents and become knowledgeable about them, since ignorance can be used as a viable defense in a patent lawsuit.

I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t understand all the issues completely, but a few observations seem reasonable based on the information I’ve read to date:

1. Open source operating systems are amazingly capable and robust today, and offer a genuine threat to Microsoft’s dominance of the operating system and office productivity software markets. The ones I have played with the most to date are Ubuntu and Edubuntu. If you haven’t used one of these, spend some time working with a system. Live CDs are available, so you can try the system out without even installing code on your hard drive. AMAZING this level of functionality is available today and FREE. With such robust operating system and software alternatives available, it’s no wonder a company like Microsoft appears to at least be contemplating litigation as an alternative to innovation when it comes to Linux. How do you compete against something that works great and is free? It’s quite difficult. You have to truly INNOVATE, something Apple does consistently well, but Microsoft seems quite challenged to do by itself.
2. Novell and Microsoft’s “settlement” at the end of 2006 indemnifying SUSE Linux users from PERSONAL LIABILITY for theoretical infringement of Microsoft’s patents, along with the subsequent resignation of several Novell employees involved in their Linux project, smells more than a little funny. We cannot be certain, but these events and pronouncements suggest a sinister agenda for Microsoft when it comes to Linux and open source software solutions. Rather than innovate, it appears Microsoft will opt to litigate.
3. Even if Microsoft does not formally litigate to protect all of the alleged 235 patent infringements mentioned in the Fortune magazine article, the THREAT of this litigation could likely have a chilling effect on the adoption of open source technologies by businesses as well as school districts. That, indeed, may explictly be part of Microsoft’s strategy. Consider the string of lawsuits initiated by the RIAA against file sharers. While those lawsuits have ostensibly been launched to punish those using file sharing networks to break copyright law, the demonstration effect and PERCEPTION OF FEAR created by those lawsuits is undoubtedly another goal of these actions. FEAR is a powerful motivator, for action as well as inaction. If Microsoft can create the perception that individuals, businesses, and even school districts will be subject to costly litigation if they use and adopt open source technologies, then one of their major goals will likely be achieved. In the security now podcast (#93) about these issues, Leo Laporte asserts that Microsoft wants to kill Linux. That may be impossible, since the Linux software project is so far along and so globally distributed. It seems unlikely any company (even one with the clout and resources of Microsoft) could completely kill it. If Microsoft can create a perception that Linux users stand an even small chance of being sued in U.S. court, however, it is likely they could succeed in substantially and broadly chilling the adoption of open source software solutions. Last fall at an Oklahoma technology conference, rumors spread based on the presentation of a single educator that blogs were illegal and any Oklahoma schools using blogs would lose their eRate funding. Irrational fear spread quickly! It seems likely Microsoft would like school leaders to believe that open source operating systems are illegal, and therefore reject out-of-hand altogether reasonable suggestions that many of the school’s desktop computers run free versions of Linux.

Perhaps more conclusions can be made, but I’ll stop speculating at this point. This is a very important issue to follow, and I will definitely be staying tuned. Back in 2000, Stanford law professor Larry Lessig penned the prophetic article, “In Search of Skeptics: We need to be willing to think about the effects of regulation on the process of innovation.” He wrote seven years ago:

The recent explosion of concern about the effect of patents in cyberspace is a reaction to legal imperialism. Software coders had not lived in a world where their right to write software was regulated by bureaucrats in Washington. The founders of the Internet had not experienced life where every innovation had to be passed by the lawyers’ committee. An unregulated - and extraordinarily creative and innovative - space has begun to balk at the idea that business here will be lawyers’ business as usual.

These issues of creativity and innovation are some of the most important in this landscape of litigation, fear and uncertainty. Patent law was not devised in an era when software coding was possible. Our copyright and patent laws in the United States are in dire need of revision, and this entire situation seems to support that opinion. Hopefully reasoned heads will prevail in this case, rather than only well-heeled heads. Having read Philip Howard’s book “The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America” several years ago, however, I will not be optimistic about this outcome if the lawyers are permitted to shape our copyright and patent law future by themselves.

For some interesting reading about FOSS and the philosophies of some of its most ardent supporters, check out the WikiPedia article for Richard Stallman as well as his personal homepage. He’s a radical, and I don’t necessarily endorse all his views, but I think it is illuminating and challenging to consider many of his perspectives.