January 2005

Update June 27, 2005: December 2004 through February 2005 I was part of Marqui’s “Pay to Blog” program. I wrote about them and linked to them once a week. During the three-month program I had this icon displayed on my site in the right sidebar area.

Marqui has opened up their communications management system to outsiders with 100 dabble mode accounts. I sent them an email requesting a test account since I thought it would be interesting to try it out on a system that doesn’t get wiped out every night. From the way the below application process is described, they don’t seem to be qualifying the requests. Will the first 100 people who ask for a test account receive one, no questions asked? More information is available on Marqui’s website on a page described at the top as an interactive brochure. On the right side of the page (err, brochure), Janet Johnson’s information is included but it looks like she forgot to indicate her phone number. It says “Click here to email me or give me a call at “. It also seems a little strange to put the link to her email on “click here” instead of just taking out those two words and putting the email link on “Email me.” There’s no title tag on the email link either.

I checked out the dabble mode website and now they are referring to CMS as “communications management suite” instead of “communications management system” that is used on their main website. It looks like they are also dabbling with what they want to refer to themselves as.

1. Prospect sends e-mail to dabblemode@marqui.com and requests one.
2. Alex captures their information and responds with userID and password(s)
3. There are roles-based versions of the password so they can access Admin, Maestro, Composer and Writer levels
4. Prospect goes to www.dabblemode.com to access their dabblemode site.

Today’s (front page) print and online editions of The Boston Globe includes an article about Meetup.com by Robert Weisman. The article features two Boston Meetups he attended on January 12th: The WiFi Meetup that I organize and then later that night he checked out the Belly Dance Meetup.

I wish the Globe would use links throughout online articles or include a “related links” section at the end.

Nick Finck writes:

I want to be in a place where I am surrounded by the best and brightest people I can find. This is what motivates and allows me to succeed within my career, because to me success isn’t measured in profits, stock options, or material wealth, it’s measured by the people you have in your life.

tags: success, wisdom, Nick Finck

MIThenge is happening this afternoon at MIT’s Infinite Corridor.

As viewed from a stationary point on the earth, the path of the sun through the sky is roughly a circle which moves north and south as the seasons go by. In mid-November and in late January every year, the circular path crosses the axis of MIT’s Infinite Corridor, which runs a distance of 825 feet (251 meters) from the main entrance on Massachusetts Avenue through Buildings 7, 3, 10, 4 and 8. When this happens, the setting sun can be seen from the far end of the corridor. By analogy with Stonehenge, this phenomenon is sometimes called “MIThenge”. (The same cannot be seen at sunrise because the other end of the infinite corridor is blocked by Building 18.)

Additional taggy goodness: MIT, MIThenge, Geeks

I’m working on taking my 2005 aspirations seriously so towards the end of each month I’m going to post a summary of where I’m at and related thoughts. I’m not really expecting anyone else to find this particular fascinating. ;) (My RSS reader isn’t showing up the “continue reading” link for some reason so if you’re looking at this from your reader, too, you’ll have to visit my site to see the rest of the entry.)

This month I moved into an office/studio in Somerville that I share with two other women: Wendy Constantine (art director and designer) and Jessica Finch (fine art and design). We sublease our space from Wooden Kiwi Productions. They are an entertainment production company. They build things like theater sets and dance floors. I found the space on Craig’s List. I don’t know what I’d do without that website.

[click to continue...]

Nick Finck at Digital Web Magazine has an excellent collection of notes while attending the Business Blogging Summmit 05 in Seattle.

• BBS 05 Keynote
• BBS 05: Blog Business Models: What Strategies Make Money
• BBS 05: Building Traffic: Posting isn’t Enough!
• BBS 05: The Entrepreneurial Blog: Monetizing Your Interests
• BBS 05: Picking a Platform: Blogging Engines Compared
• BBS: True Voice: The Art and Science of Blog Writing
• BBS 05: Good Blog Design: Speed, Accessibility, Transparency, and Clarity
• BBS 05: Corporate Blogging: Strategy and Policy
• BBS 05: Marketing Strategies and Tactics: PR and Beyond
• BBS 05: Dealing with Bloggers: Partnering and Defense Strategies
• BBS 05: Enhancing Internal Communications with Blogs, Wikis, and More

Update June 27, 2005: December 2004 through February 2005 I was part of Marqui’s “Pay to Blog” program. I wrote about them and linked to them once a week. During the three-month program I had this icon displayed on my site in the right sidebar area.

I have no idea how I missed this but I just stumbled across The Gobe and Mail article about Marqui’s program to pay bloggers (including me) to write about the company. The article is dated 7 December 2004 on their website and includes a few tidbits about me in the opening paragraph. Marqui has the article archived on their website but without any links. (What’s up with that, Marqui?) The odd thing is that no one from The Globe and Mail contacted me to verify details such as my full name. It’s true that my name is listed on Marqui’s website; but it seems odd that they wouldn’t contact me directly.

Their description of this website is funny:

On her personal blog — “The Life & Times of Sooz” — Susan Kaup writes regularly about her friends, her Internet radio station and Boston’s indie rock scene.

I think they confused the dinner parties and networking events I host as a “friends” thing. Which isn’t really all that accurate.

On a somewhat related note, I set up a separate domain for my event planning and consulting work a while ago; but I haven’t really done much with it yet. I’m thinking of just keeping everything at sooz.com and setting up a subdomain for the work related stuff. I like how Molly Holzschlag and Nick Finck have integrated all of their public-facing endeavors on each of their websites: weblog, consulting, etcetera.

The Nearest Neighbor News Network is a collaborative filtering RSS aggregator recently created by Jacob Lee and Ben Hodes, students at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I submitted my feedburner feed for my site but it’s noted as invalid in the NNNN system. Looks like that might be a bug to send their way. They’ve got a development blog documenting their adventure. [via SearchViews]

UPDATE: I tried to fill out a comment on their development blog but it didn’t go through. I guess I’ll try a trackback and then old fashioned email. This is a screen shot of the problem I had adding three feeds.

I finally set up a Word Press blog. It’s a site that Michael and I are using for a 15-day road trip we’re taking in mid-to-late April. I’m thinking about moving some of my other sites to Word Press, too. Though right now, I’m a little overwhelmed since I’m not all that savvy with PHP. Some things that seem so basic, like listing the category name at the top of each category page, are a huge challenge. At least for now. I can’t seem to figure out where the template is to add this little tidbit.

Yahoo added a tab for video search on their front page today. I did a search for “boston blizzard” to see if any citizen journalism reports came up but the only thing that turned up were hits for NECN, WHDH-TV and CNN. Are many video bloggers using Media RSS?