Syndicating your blog to multiple sites

In order to get the most out of your blog you need to get it seen by the most amount of people as possible.  Many bloggers setup a new blog on a free service such as wordpress, typepad, blogger, successful thinkers, or even just utilize facebook.  Each one of these sites as a unique following and a new network of people that follow them.  To get the most exposure you will want to reach out to each of these communities.  Here are a few quick tips on getting your blog out to the most number of people, or sites.

Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Understanding RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are how sites pickup your syndication.  RSS provides a standard xml formatted feed in which thousands, if not millions, of RSS readers can pick up.  Be sure that which ever blogging site you use supports sending out an RSS feed of your posts.  Successful thinkers supports RSS feeds of everything you do.  From blogging to comments, posts, forums, our calendar, announcements and even searches.  Most social networks today, support sending RSS feeds, and many support RSS readers.

Setting up your RSS
Once you have a blog setup, that you know supports RSS, you will want to register your blog’s RSS for syndication through Feedburner.  Feedburner is powered by google, and will convert your RSS blog syndication to multiple standards.  As standards evolve, feedburner will be sure to syndicate your blog in the format best formatted for the receiving end.

The next challenge is to find out where to plug in your RSS feed for blog syndication.  Some sites such has facebook have built in utilities for merging your blog syndication directly into your wall and the sites content.  Other sites such as myBlogLog (powered by yahoo), technorati, blogged and Google Reader make it easy for you to claim her blog, simply by entering the URL address to your blog.  Remember to always use your feedburner RSS syndication address in all sites, so that you can easily make changes and control your feed. 

Force feeding other Blogging Platforms
Blogspot, friendster, and wordpress are all great blogging platforms.  Each one of these has its own audience, and you should include your blog on each one of these sites.  The challenge here is that they don’t always provide an easy way for you to just cross post your content.  You can add an RSS reader widget to the side bar so that your blog posts will be indexed and listed on the side of that blog, but cross-posting is much easier.

My favorite blogging site is successful thinkers meetup blog, which is why I post there first.  Within the configuration of your blog, you can even set it up to cross post your blog to multiple sites, beyond the typical RSS feed.  Cross-posting is an easy way to post once, and to have your blog automatically post onto other blogs.  This simplifies getting your content the most exposure.

Adding your blog to Feedburner
To add your blog to feedburner, start here.
The steps are really easy, so I’ll let you follow their online guide.

Adding your blog to facebook
It is a little harder to find where to add your blog, so I have outlined the steps below.
To add your blog to facebook follow these steps. 
Create a facebook account  
Add your blog to facebook
     a. Click Profile
     b. Click on settings (on the far right next to "All Posts"
     c. Click on "Automatically import activity"
     d. Click on "Blog/RSS"
     e. Paste in your URL to your RSS feed to your blog

Setup MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog, powered by yahoo, is a great way to keep track of all of your blogs and sites.  By now, you have probably setup at least 6 different accounts, and are starting to loose track of where your blogs are.  It is best if you create an account on MyBlogLog so that you can easily keep track of all of these accounts and sources.

Another Shortcut to Cross-posting
If you are still having trouble getting your blog syndicated to multiple blogging sites, try using Microsoft Windows Live Writer.  Once you set up each of your blogs within the application, you can quickly switch over to each of your blogs and click the post button to send your post on its way to multiple sites.

More Information
For more information about syndicating your blog to multiple sites, check out my post on Maximizing your blog.

Feedback
If you are posting, cross posting, or syndicating your blog to other sites, that I have not yet mentioned, please list them below in the comments section and I’ll be sure to update this post with your blog.

Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford 

 

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Syndicating your blog to multiple sites

In order to get the most out of your blog you need to get it seen by the most amount of people as possible.  Many bloggers setup a new blog on a free service such as wordpress, typepad, blogger, successful thinkers, or even just utilize facebook.  Each one of these sites as a unique following and a new network of people that follow them.  To get the most exposure you will want to reach out to each of these communities.  Here are a few quick tips on getting your blog out to the most number of people, or sites.

Understanding RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are how sites pickup your syndication.  RSS provides a standard xml formatted feed in which thousands, if not millions, of RSS readers can pick up.  Be sure that which ever blogging site you use supports sending out an RSS feed of your posts.  Successful thinkers supports RSS feeds of everything you do.  From blogging to comments, posts, forums, our calendar, announcements and even searches.  Most social networks today, support sending RSS feeds, and many support RSS readers.

Setting up your RSS
Once you have a blog setup, that you know supports RSS, you will want to register your blog’s RSS for syndication through Feedburner.  Feedburner is powered by google, and will convert your RSS blog syndication to multiple standards.  As standards evolve, feedburner will be sure to syndicate your blog in the format best formatted for the receiving end.

The next challenge is to find out where to plug in your RSS feed for blog syndication.  Some sites such has facebook have built in utilities for merging your blog syndication directly into your wall and the sites content.  Other sites such as myBlogLog (powered by yahoo), technorati, blogged and Google Reader make it easy for you to claim her blog, simply by entering the URL address to your blog.  Remember to always use your feedburner RSS syndication address in all sites, so that you can easily make changes and control your feed. 

Force feeding other Blogging Platforms
Blogspot, friendster, and wordpress are all great blogging platforms.  Each one of these has its own audience, and you should include your blog on each one of these sites.  The challenge here is that they don’t always provide an easy way for you to just cross post your content.  You can add an RSS reader widget to the side bar so that your blog posts will be indexed and listed on the side of that blog, but cross-posting is much easier.

My favorite blogging site is successful thinkers meetup blog, which is why I post there first.  Within the configuration of your blog, you can even set it up to cross post your blog to multiple sites, beyond the typical RSS feed.  Cross-posting is an easy way to post once, and to have your blog automatically post onto other blogs.  This simplifies getting your content the most exposure.

Adding your blog to Feedburner
To add your blog to feedburner, start here.
The steps are really easy, so I’ll let you follow their online guide.

Adding your blog to facebook
It is a little harder to find where to add your blog, so I have outlined the steps below.
To add your blog to facebook follow these steps. 
Create a facebook account  
Add your blog to facebook
     a. Click Profile
     b. Click on settings (on the far right next to "All Posts"
     c. Click on "Automatically import activity"
     d. Click on "Blog/RSS"
     e. Paste in your URL to your RSS feed to your blog

Setup MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog, powered by yahoo, is a great way to keep track of all of your blogs and sites.  By now, you have probably setup at least 6 different accounts, and are starting to loose track of where your blogs are.  It is best if you create an account on MyBlogLog so that you can easily keep track of all of these accounts and sources.

Another Shortcut to Cross-posting
If you are still having trouble getting your blog syndicated to multiple blogging sites, try using Microsoft Windows Live Writer.  Once you set up each of your blogs within the application, you can quickly switch over to each of your blogs and click the post button to send your post on its way to multiple sites.

More Information
For more information about syndicating your blog to multiple sites, check out my post on Maximizing your blog.

Feedback
If you are posting, cross posting, or syndicating your blog to other sites, that I have not yet mentioned, please list them below in the comments section and I’ll be sure to update this post with your blog.

 

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Web Marketing Analysis Steps Up - Google Analytics API

Google Analytics API Announced
Google announced its new Google Analytics API today.  As a developer, this means more work.  As a business owner or executive, this means more information.  Many of you are already familiar with Google Analytics, as it the best tracking system for free.  When you first started using analytics, you probably learned more about your visitors wanted to know.  But over time, the information wasn’t enough.  You started thinking outside of the box, and began wondering how the tracking information that you saw related to your business data.

With Google’s new Analytics API, you are able to pull data out and match it with data from your proprietary or existing database.  The new API is a read only interface into the life of your website.  All of the information that is available through Google’s Analytic reporting engine, is also available through the API.

Beyond Simple Reporting
Beyond making the data available for merging with your internal reports, you can now expose your web traffic reports to other medias or platforms.  For example, if you want to access Google Analytics from your phone, you can with this Android application from Actual Metrics. Accessing Analytics from your desktop is also an option like Desktop-Reporting as developed. 

See What Others are Doing
Others are well on their way to enhancing their business, like MailChimp who integrated Google Analytics into their email marketing platform and ShufflePoint® who provides a service for adding Google Analytics data into PowerPoint® presentations. Also check out youcalc who has created apps that allow you to mashup Google Analytics, AdWords, Salesforce.com and other enterprise data.

There are plenty more customer examples for you to check out on Google’s developer site. These apps demonstrate only some of the creative possibilities and I’m sure you'll discover other interesting ways to use the Analytics API. 

Start Developing with Google Analytics
If you are ready to get started, you will want to jump into the code at Google’s developer site Google Code.  There are developer guides, example code, FAQ’s, and more.  The complete API is available and ready to use.  With Google Analytics API being so new, you will want to join the Google Analytics APIs Group so that you can reach out the developer community for some assistance.

Please let me know if you are looking into doing any Analytic API projects.  I would be interested to hear about them and would be willing to publish them here, if you’d like.

 

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Google Profiling – Getting your name seen on Google and controlling it

Google Yourself
We all have googled ourselves. Some more often than others, and most not because we have big ego’s, but we are curious to see what it is that the world sees about us. Google has offered little to no support in controlling what it is that googlers see about us, until now. By simply searching “me” in Google , you will be given the opportunity to create or edit your profile.

Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Who are you?
Social networking is all the buzz. And I’m sure that if you are reading this you have profiles on mySpace, Facebook, twitter, and linked In. And now… you need to maintain your Google profile. Often these social networks allow us a little more control of expressing who we are.

Set Up a Google Profile
Setting up a Google profile is very easy and pretty quick. So if you haven’t done it yet, I’d recommend doing that as soon as you finish this short article. Google has modified their search results to include profiles at the bottom of the page. These profiles show up like regular search results, and while it is at the bottom of the page, and you have little control over what is delivered on the top half, you can control what is delivered at the bottom and what Google says about you.

So maybe this isn’t as reassuring as we’d all like it to be, but it is a start. With the improved profile options, it makes it even easier to link to your Google profile, and to control what is shared through this profile.

Get Found on Google
I left my Google profile settings as default, but you will notice that it says “If you want your profile to appear in Google search results, make sure you've selected to display your full name on the Edit profile page. Adding more information will help you improve your profile's rank.” If you take this a step further and verify your name (either by credit card or phone number), you can get a verified icon near your name, showing that you truly are who you say. This isn’t completely reliable yet, and I have not done it. These Google profile searches will appear at the bottom of the first page regardless of whether your name has been verified or not.

Google software engineer Brian Stoler explains, "These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We've also added links so it's easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn."

Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

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Things are heating up – Combating project management delays

These last couple days have been got. We are breaking records, and the cool weekend can’t come quick enough. Yesterday it was 97 degrees, breaking the old record of 94 degrees set in the 80’s. It normally isn’t this hot this early. At work our air conditioning is only working in half of the building, so it is working overtime just to maintain a tolerable temperature. So what does all of this have to do with project management? Happy, comfortable employees work harder.

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup By Josh Shackelford

Big Things Coming
We have a big event coming up on May 23rd, and plan to release about 7 new products. Only half of these are even ready for full production. And if they all were all ready by now, we probably would have already launched them. The fact that these products aren’t ready is not an issue. The challenge is that we need to get all of them created, reviewed by legal, and then sent to print. Once the products are ready we need to create all of the marketing material, such as web promotions, print promotions, flyers, postcards, store display signs, video for the internet, and videos for the live events.

Adjusting to Cuts
I’m sure that IT departments across the US have made cuts over the last year. We have all had to deal with the reality of the current situation. So how do you deal with the staffing adjustments you made in the past, and compensate for the increased work load of the current?

One solution would be to pick up some temps. Without committing the long term work force, you can hire some very well qualified individuals to help get you over that hump. We have had tremendous success with Pride Staff, and Express Employment Professions, both of which are temp agencies here in Stockton, California. Though we use Express nationwide, as we host events across the US.

Having a strong workflow management is the only way to adjust to increased work load, without adding additional staff. IT receives projects from just about every imaginable source within a company, and even outside of a company. If all of these tasks are not funneled through an easy to manage task management list, you will lose too much time.

Lost Time
Your staff needs to be effectively communicated to. Without an easily managed task management system for all projects to funnel through, your staff will have a lot of dead time between projects, and questions will not be addressed very quickly. In addition, if people are allowed to circumvent the task management system, tasks will not be completed on time, and your days will be chaotic. Often executives of companies feel that their tasks will be completed more quickly if they circumvent management, going directly to the laborers that perform the task. While their personal task might be completed slightly a head of schedule, the company will suffer. They do not see the impact on the overall workflow.

Team Work Project Manager
About two weeks ago I started putting our current projects into a site on http://www.teamworkpm.net/, and then 3 days later, I introduced the site to our graphic designers. The following day, to our programmers, and the next to the balance of the IT department. This site was met with excitement from everyone. It was rolled out in stages to the department to ensure a smooth adoption, and was a complete success. The next step would be to start introducing the site to the rest of the company.

All of the staff that have begun using this site have really enjoyed it. I was glad to see that the adoption went so smooth. I had been exploring various project management applications and task management resources, when I stumbled on teamwork. It is very close to Basecamp, but came out a head.

Hopefully within the next couple weeks, I will be able to introduce a login for management throughout the company, so that they can track the progress on their projects, without being able to interfere with our workflow. For now, I just meet with them regularly to give them updates.

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup By Josh Shackelford

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Moving Forward, While Standing Still – Battling IT Security

Creating Security Policies in a Down Market
Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Security is a big issue for all IT leaders. Whether your a CIO, CTO, IT Director, or an IT manager, you are constantly battling security. It can be very difficult to work on projects to move you forward, when you are constantly fighting to maintain a secure network.

New Sources of Attacks
US infrastructure remains vulnerable to cyber terrorism. While the US seems to behind as a country, many of our corporations practice much stricter polices than our governing agencies. Government agencies will always be targets, but more so by terrorists and other countries. These criminals are not the same criminals that we, as corporations, need to protect against. Don't get me wrong, we still need to be protected, but our focus needs to be on fraud, identity theft, financial theft, etc. Most of our attacks will be geared towards financial gain.

Jump Start your Policies
In a slower economy, often security takes a back seat to corporate priorities. Most projects are going to be focused on saving money or generating money, but security at a time like this is just as important, if not more important. We need to stay aware of the increased risks that are brought on my a recession. There are more qualified, intelligent people in circulation that are getting desperate for income. We need to watch out for threats from past employees, current employees, desperate unemployed, and the casual hacker who is just bored.

So how do you enhance security when your time is already so limited? Here are a couple of tips of increasing security, without having to spend too much time devising your own. When constructing security policies, take a look at Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The SANS Security Policy Project and NIST are also great sources. While these policies might not work for you untouched, they give you a good place to start.

Rising Attacks
Attacks are on the rise. There are even reports of attacks on US power companies. We need to minimize our risks as much as possible and if you are on the internet, have eMail, eCommerce, or just a static website, you need protect yourself from these points of risk. Try starting with something as basic as a Web Agreement like, "By using this website, you agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement"

A well-drawn Web Wrap Agreement can help you to significantly reduce your legal risks. The most basic thing that you should put in every Terms and Conditions is a limitation of liability clause. So even if you get sued and lose, at least the maximum damage award against you is nominal. I'll typically limit damages to something like $50 to $100.

To further insulate you from the claims of users, have them agree that use of the site is at their own risk and that you disclaim all warranties. Also, include a clause making them liable to you if they upload things to the site like copyrighted or trademarked material that they don't have a right to use. This gives you some protection if a third party sues you for something posted to your site by a user. Try including a clause requiring that any lawsuit be filed in my client's home state, not the user's, to discourage getting sued over nonsense. Using the courts looks a whole lot less attractive as the mileage increases.

Be Proactive
Once you get sued, you can't require the other side to come to your home state if you didn't have the agreement already on the site. Don't be like the people that put in the burglar alarm after the burglary. A little preventive law is much cheaper and less stressful than crisis law. Try starting with some basics. Here are 10 steps to improve security within Internet Explorer. Don’t be hesitant on implementing new security practices, even if they seem dumb. Often people reserved when implementing simple security practices, as they now change is always met with resistance, and many people fear being hated. But even the SEC is has many basic security challenges to overcome, such as plain text passwords, or shared security accounts.

And if you’re still looking for an extra little oomph to get that financing for that security project that you just can’t get past… Try going back to some of your current vendors and ask for a discount. You might be surprised how many are willing to negotiate. Then try some scare tactics. Often security is on the back burner because decision makers aren’t aware of the true risks. Try looking into 5 things you can’t see on your network.

Move Forward
Even though you might think that your IT security is at a stand still, try working on some basic, free, and time optimized tasks. Some of these things might be new policies, such as the above mentioned password or data policies, or others might simply be applying new updates to your software. Software updates are often free, simple ways to maintain your security. Oh… and read about the updates. The holes they find and fill, might give you ideas about other holes that you need to fill in your own network and applications.

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Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Government technology to speed up private projects

Technology in 24
Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Technology in 24
So I’m a 24 addict. If any of you are following this season or caught the episode from 11:00PM – 12:00AM, then you had a chance to see a pardon document produced and signed by the president in just minutes. For those of you that don’t follow the series, you are missing out and I’d like to explain to you what happened.

Request a pardon
The FBI Director requested a pardon from the President, who then asked for him to draw up the documents and send them over to her when he was done. Of course he was already prepared. I imagine that the document was drawn up in MS Word, and converted to a PDF. I would also imagine that this would normally be a template, so this part isn’t impressive, but what happens next was pretty hot.

Remote desktop and file sharing
The director tells the President that he has the document and pulls it up to show her the document through a Cisco Webex. I would have opted with a different solution, one that was less expensive. But if you’ve got the funds behind you, Cisco’s Webex is a very reliable and robust application for sharing. It was pretty cool that they had 4 different people up on webcams for the conference, and had full control over their applications. You’ll also notice that they are using Logitech Webcams.

From here the President was able to add her digital signature to the document by signing it through the webex session. She used a Wacom tablet to add her signature. It caught my attention since I had just blogged about the newest Wacom tablet. This is so awesome that they were able to quickly produce and sign an official document all remotely.

Send document to helicopter agent
While the document was still at the FBI, now with the Presidents digital signature, the FBI director needed to get the document out into the field so that his field agents wouldn’t restrain and arrest the person that was just granted immunity. He was able to send the document wirelessly to his agents while they were in transit in a helicopter.

What makes all of these even more amazing, is that all of this technology is publically available. You could even have all of your templates stored on Microsoft Live, or Google Docs for quick access from anywhere.

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Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

The Perfect Tools – The right mouse

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Like the mighty pen for a writer, our mouse is our tool that we bond with and bring our dreams to life.  I had the experience of using a wacom tablet a few years back, and unfortunately I don’t have one right now, but I wanted to take a moment to share a few details about the most recent release.  The wacom tablet is the perfect tool for a digital graphic artist.  If you really want to expedite your graphic design projects, get your designers the new Wacom tablet, INTUOS4 professional pen tablet.

I’m sure that there would be no argument that Adobe’s Photoshop is the perfect tool for creating original photo quality artwork.  The latest version, Adobe’s Photoshop CS4, is phenomenal.  All of the new features will speed up productivity immensely.  And coupled with the next generation, Wacom Generation 2 tip sensor pen tip, your designers will be unstoppable.

While Wacom’s Cintiq has an LCD surface and can display your screen, I think that most designers would make the transition to the Ituos4 more easily so that you can gain speed without losing focus on the screen.

Since I don’t do much design work myself, this would definitely be a luxury item.  I find myself spending most of my time in long documents.  Whether it is programming, reading configurations, schema’s, reports, or data documents, my files tend to run really long.  My mouse preference is Logitech’s MX Revolution.  The endless scroll really speeds up time, and the comfort has no other match.  I’ve tried many Microsoft Mice, and while I use a Microsoft keyboard, I prefer the Logitech mouse.  On my laptop I use a Logitech's VX Nano, again with many of the same features, but mini for the laptop.

The right keyboard and mouse will make all of the difference in your work day.  In fact, I just went out and picked up a new mouse for a CEO.  His old mouse was slowing him down.

Which mouse and keyboard combination do you prefer?  How about for work versus play?  Leave me your comments.

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

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IE 8 increases productivity – Finally a Microsoft Product worth Installing on first release

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Internet Explorer Developer Tools
One of my developers said “Microsoft finally put out something worth installing.” I had encouraged everyone that I work with to install Internet Explorer 8, even though it has just been released. Many were shocked. You see, the normal policy for installing Microsoft products, is to wait until the first service pack. Microsoft has been known to release software with bugs, so most of us wait until the first service pack before installing new applications. Especially when it comes to security, and network administration of applications.

Debugging New Interfaces
This developer was working on a new feature for Successful Thinkers Meetup, and was having challenges getting everything to line up correctly. We are currently working on increasing a groups ability to customize their group own page. We would like groups to have their own identity, and in order to do this, we need to change a lot of things. With Internet Explorer 8’s new Developer tools (similar to FireFox’s FireBug), he was able to quickly locate the tags, and styles that were giving him the most trouble. A multi-hour project took just a few minutes to resolve. All developers should become familiar with the new IE 8 Developer Tools.

Troubleshooting Tags
Trouble shooting tags and styles for multiple browsers can be very frustrating. Having the right tools can make all the difference in the world, especially when dealing with dynamically created pages. I’m sure that we all have felt the frustration at some point, where we can’t figure out what is wrong. We go through the usual, delete process and border process, trying to pin point which object is causing the problem. You really should install IE8, and check it its new features. There are many time saving features built in. And if you are worried about some of your sites not working, there is always the view in IE7 button.

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

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