Alan’s Blogometer

My server, ljubljana.blogometer.com, will sometimes hang after receiving too many requests. I don’t want it to keep me from getting in via ssh, so I’ve written a rather drastic shell program to monitor the server. It fetches the blogometer.com home page using curl. If it takes longer than three seconds, it blocks port 80. This is run by cron every minute. The script will write out the output of the programs ps ax and free. I’ve not been able to figure out what’s really causing the server to choke with that output so I’ve added top -n 5 -b and tail -n 500 /var/log/httpd/access_log. I’m open to any suggestions of commands to add to this snapshot.

This is a photograph that I’m going to use as a header image for the new Kubrick based theme for my blog. Karen annotated it at Flickr to show how it exemplifies multiple land use.

New theme for less gloom and more content. A lighter, brighter theme. Familiar Kubrick look bores your attention towards the pretty words and images.

Thank you for visiting Blogometer. I’m working to help people get started with web publishing in New Orleans, to share information through the recovery, and beyond. That’s at Think New Orleans.

I’m looking to pay more attention to blogs outside of New Orleans with an interest in New Orleans. Let me know about you blog. I’ll be blogging about the local bloggers in the coming days, so stay tuned. I promise, I’ll link you out of here, to every darn blogger I know. You’ll get to meet everybody.

In fact, I promise that I’ll introduce you to a New Orleans blogger every seven days. I’d start with whichever blogger wants to introduce a new blogger every seven days. They could start the next dy by introducing another blogger who could in turn introduce a new blogger every seven days. At the same time, I’m going to introduce friends of New Orleans bloggers, because if we pay attention to others, they’ll pay attention to us.

I’ll really make the introduction too. I’ll pull quote and link and you’ll have every reason to read that person and you’ll know why I read that person.

Fellow New Orleans bloggers my attention is all yours.

If you love conferences, come down for the Rising Tide Conference. You can also attend a number of commemorations of the anniversary of Katrina.

You could also help me get some new bloggers off the ground. I teach people how to use WordPress to communicate with their neighborhood. I’m starting new web sites every week. New voices from New Orleans.

Update: Hey, I’ll give a proper introduction tomorrow, but you can go and read Adrastos writing about the Katrina memorials right now. I’m busy this morning, and need to compile some examples of his work. Sorry, I thought I’d have a post already, but this isn’t as easy as you would think.

AccMan Pro in Thingamy - part 2 - CRM v.2.0

After Ric’s remarks I had another thought. Could blogging become the Web 2.0 CRM package of the future? Why did that thought occur? Because if I can tie Thingamy apps to content management system based websites (blogs/wikis) for document management purposes, then I can link my blogging activity to sales of product and back into the capture mechanisms I need for running my business - which could also manufacture at the same time.

Ric and Dennis, the answer is yeah, baby! CRM, baby! That’s where corporate blogging has got it all going on.

Blogging is a conversation, and conversations produce relationships. If you are a producer of goods, or a provider of services, some of those conversations are with customers, and that puts blogging in customer relationship management.

Which means we need to prise blogging from the marketoids and put in the hands of the customer representitives, human resources, and tap into all the other people in your organization who can take time out to tell the story and make things right.

If Ric is watching, any further thoughts on blogging as CRM?

The Web Enabled Business Card

I’m talking to folks in New Orleans about blogging. I’d like to make a business of helping business reach new customers through blogging.

I have to start from a strange position, however. People are talking to be because they want a web site, not a blog.

When folks around here think web site, they think business card. To them, a web site is a business card, but on the web. They want a web site so they have a web address to put on their business card.

I’ve noted before that New Orleans has little use for social networking software, since they have so much social networking hardware, the cafes, bars, restauraunts, churches, corkboards, etc.

People here don’t use the web much. They tend to expect a brochure, or if they’ve been sold flashy gew-gaws in the past, splash screens and animations.

Before I can help them with creating a content based web site that will help their business, I have a lot of explaining to do.

A Special Kind of Web Site

You’ve got to start with Google. Blogs are because of Google. Google begat blogging.

I ask a fellow New Orleanian, “what search engine do you use to find something on the web?”

They will say “Google.”

I’ll reply, “So, you don’t type http://plinkityplinkityplonkplinketyplonkplonk.com/ do you? You go straight to Google and type in the first words that come to your head, right? That’s what most people do these days.”

Then we look at were they sit in the Google rankings. Given the web sites most folks have around here, it is usually quite low.

The genernal explaination of the value of blogging is as follows.

Once your web site is attracting Google, it’s going to attract people who might never visit New Orleans, who might never visit your shop, or meet you personally. Google searches information you see, so it needs to search text not pictures and flashy gew-gaws. You need to place more and ever changing text on your web site and you’ll attract new customers, and keep in touch with visitors to New Orleans.

I’ll explain that a blog is a special kind of web site that lets you attract Google. It’s not a diary, although they look like a diary. It’s a format that is easy to update for the author. You choose a subject and write an open letter. It’s an open letter to the people that may stumble across your web site. It’s an open letter to Google.

Over time, if you keep writing these open letters, you’ve got a lot of information out there. People will keep finding that information though Google. With comments in place, they can respond to your open letter.

Then it’s a quick run down of the basics of what Google likes and why.

1. Ever changing text means something going on here.
2. What the links say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

Google Juice is another word for links, of course.

Here are points that I make in the course of the explaination.

• If Google can’t read you, then Google can’t find you.
• If Google can’t find you, no one can find you.
• Google can’t watch a flashy gew-gaw and say, oh that’s a cartoon hammer, this must be a web site about roofing.
• Google likes what people like, information.

A blog is a special kind of web site. One that is easy to update frequently. One that attracts customers and retains the interest of existing customers.

Life Outside The Conferences

You all know this isn’t shinola. It’s all old hat to you, the blogosphere.

Tell me California, how do you preach when there is no choir?