Archives for the 'blogging' Category
Free Wifi Hotspots in Saskatoon
Saskatoon does a good job in providing wireless capability to it’s residents. The yellow areas show where Saskatchewan! Connected provides free wifi access to Saskatoon (and other Saskatchewan cities. There are also a bunch of other free wifi networks to tap into and I put a list of known public networks for you to tap into.
Downtown Saskatoon:
- Earls, 610 2nd Avenue North
- Hilton Garden Inn, 1st Ave S & 22nd Street E
- Jake’s on 21st Street
- Mulberry’s Cafe, 3rd Avenue & 23rd Street
- Park Town Hotel, Spadina Crescent & 25th Street
- Sheraton Cavalier, Spadina Crescent & 21st Street
- Spadina Freehouse, Spadina Crescent & 21st Street
- Timothy’s, Midtown Plaza, 1st Avenue & 21st Street
Hotspots around Saskatoon:
- Broadway Roastery, 614 Broadway Avenue
- City Perk, 801 7th Avenue North
- Comfort Inn, 2155 Northridge Drive
- Country Inn and Suites, 617 Cynthia Street
- Credit Union Centre
- Days Inn, 2000 Idylwyld Drive North
- Gordie Howe Campground
- Husky House, 315 Marquis Drive
- Market Mall food court, 2325 Preston Avenue S
- McGettigan’s Cafe, 616 10th Street East
- Mackenzie Cole Coffee, 815A Gray Avenue
- Mystic Java, 209 - 3929 8th Street East
- Next Level Game Exchange, 9 - 202 Primrose Drive
- Ramada Hotel Golf Dome, 806 Idylwyld Drive North
- Saskatoon John G. Diefenbaker International Airport
- Saskatoon Inn, 2002 Airport Drive
- Travelodge, 106 Circle Drive West
- Yard & Flagon Pub, 718 Broadway Avenue.
What Makes for a Good Blog?
Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame has a list of things he thinks makes up a good blog.
I’ve come to believe that creative life in the first-world comes down to those who try just a little bit harder. Then, there’s the other 98%. They’re still eating the free continental breakfast over at FriendFeed. A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
The list is a good one but this paragraph got to me. He’s totally right and it bothers me because I haven’t put that much time and effort into this site because I have been too busy doing things that I think are quite a bit more important. It’s a challenge because good writing takes time and time is what I don’t have much of anymore. It’s crazy but I am in the middle of 24 straight days without a day off. Some of those days include 16 hour shifts. It’s hard to find the time or the energy to put into the blog. I cringe when I see posts go live that would be so much better if I had an hour to flesh it out but lately those hours are better spent with Wendy, Mark, Oliver, or just sleeping.
If you stick with me, the quality will return. I promise but it’s going to take a few weeks.
RSS Feed Fixed
Sorry about the lack of updates since I upgraded to WordPress. I had a mistake with my Feedburner settings that I missed. All is working now and everyone should see current updates from the site. You can still follow the site at feeds.feedburner.com/jordoncooper
Is Blogging Dead?
Jason Calacanis thinks so.
> Bloggers spend more time digging, tweeting, and SEOing their posts
> than they do on the posts themselves. In the early days of blogging
> Peter Rojas, who was my blog professor, told me what was required to
> win at blogging: “show up every day.” In 2003 and 2004 that was the
> case. Today? What’s required is a team of social marketers to get your
> message out there, and a second one to manage the fall-out from
> whatever you’ve said.
>
> Think: Nick Denton has reworked the bloggers pay at Gawker Media to
> reflect not the quality of the words but the number of page views
> those blog posts get. He doesn’t pay by word count, he pays by page
> views. He’s closed the loop between editorial and advertising, turning
> the Chinese wall into a block party. It’s the publishing promised land
> while simultaneously being the death of publishing. Gawker is growing
> page views while simultaneously destroying it’s brand equity. This
> will either result in an implosion, or the perfect id-driven magazine
> where our core desires are synchronized in relation to their
> marketability. It will be fun to watch, but I wouldn’t want to be one
> of those bloggers in the cage, running on the Denton’s wheel.
>
> Excelling in blogging today is about link-baiting, the act of writing
> something inflammatory in order to get a link. Many folks say I’m
> responsible for link-baiting–these people are absolute idiots. I’ve
> never tried to get any of these insecure, lonely freaks to link to
> something I’ve said.
In many ways I agree with him but only for those that want to write a weblog for a living. I write because I want to write, not because of stats, page views, or what advertisers want. I don’t really think people care if I continue this or not but I do because at the end of the day because I want to, not because my mortgage is dependent on it.
I know this is kind of old school but if you want a better blog, become a better writer. The rest will take care of itself and you will enjoy it a whole lot more.
Looking for sponsors
The Jesus Manifesto is looking for sponsors.
If you look to the right sidebar, you’ll notice sidebar images for Christarchy, Missio Dei, and Submergent. These are groups that I’ve helped get started. There’s also a link for the Breviary there. In addition, I’ve used a banner ad (which is also displayed in the rss feed for each article) to promote things like the Pentecost Writing Competition, the Missio Dei Breviary, and the Cobalt Season’s latest album. With the exception of the Cobalt Season, I’ve used these to bring attention to some of my other ventures…things that resonate with the same impulse as Jesus Manifesto. Below that, there are a list of still other groups and sites that share the same impulse as Jesus Manifesto.
I’d like to take the images down for Christarchy, the Breviary, and Submergent (moving them into the regular set of links) and replace them with 3 or 4 sponsors. In addition, Missio Dei would only appear in the banner section and rss feeds about 1/4 or 1/5 of the time, depending upon the other sponsors.
I am not sure if his traffic justifies the cost of the sponsorships but it is a good idea for raising some money on a weblog other than the generally tried and failed Google Ad-Words. Daring Fireball uses subscribers and being part of The Deck as a revenue generator while others have gone to ads alone. The problem with advertising is you need significant traffic and with subscribers, you need exclusive content which is kind of hard for many blogs or even the mainstream media. That being said, I wish the best for the Jesus Manifesto and I hope his business model works. I like it a lot better than putting ads all over his site. That being said, I would love for someone to do a high quality ad network like The Deck.
A Moving Faithmaps
Stephen Shields is moving Faithmaps back to Blogger. The new (old) address is faithmaps.blogspot.com.
The blog thing is confusing a lot of people
I have been getting weird comments and e-mail all day on my TSA post. People are following the backlink on the TSA blog to my blog and leaving comments thinking that I am the TSA which I find funnier each time I read them.
The TSA Blog
The TSA has a blog. A pretty good blog written by employees who are actually engaging those other travelers. This is a great illustration on how a government department can use a blog and YouTube to communicate. You will want to check out this post on the problems some checkpoints have had with MacBook Airs and how the TSA is responding to it. via
jordoncooper.com vs. warrenkinsella.com
Warren Kinsella posted about the Top 25 Political Blogs yesterday and mentioned what I said here. My comment was that I think his ranking is hurt by bloggers who are still linking to www.warrenkinsella.com/musings.htm which was his old web location instead of linking to www.warrenkinsella.com which is his new one (it took me a couple of months to change my link so I am not judging anyone). A quick look at Technorati shows 1,213 links (or as Technorati says, “blog reactions”) to his www.warrenkinsella.com and another 530 links to www.warrenkinsella.com/musings.htm. Google’s algorithm shows 2,010 links to his site from both blogs and other websites. (of course those numbers will be one behind as soon as I hit publish)
On the other hand, jordoncooper.com has 1414 total incoming links on Technorati and oddly enough I beat him with 2,050 links on Google.
What’s the point of this? 1) It shows how flawed most web data analysis is because the number of readers or linkers does not equal influence. A better metric would be how far does ones ideas travel and who is reading one’s blog instead of how many. Also my links come in from areas a long ways away from politics in Canada, mostly from church leaders and pastors with some sports blogs tossed in for good measure. Another way to look about it, when I write something brilliant, Mike Duffy doesn’t hang on every word.
Of course links and clicks are often used out of context and even if they were, I liked what Warren wrote here.
Here’s one of Warren’s truisms, then: legitimacy is not found in numbers. Rightness does not equate with popularity. You can be entirely, utterly alone, as Jesus Christ was in the end – as the other prophets were, like Mohamed and Moses, at key moments in their lives – and still be irrevocably right.
So how does all of this relate to web stats? Because, for me, this blog stuff is worth doing because (a) it is truly DIY punk rock journalism, and (b) it is a literal extension of diary writing. Personally, it permits me to write in a way that newspapers and magazines – having quit or been fired from not a few – never permit me to write. It allows me to write as I am writing right now – and then, three inches later, link to a hardcore punk band I currently adore. I do it, too, because I am – when you distil me down to my base elements – a diarist. I am alleged to have been writing 1,000 words a day since I was eleven years old: it is as fully part of me as is breathing, or Slurpees.
This made me ask why I keep this site going. It isn’t a money maker. Despite my bluster, there is no jordoncooper.com media empire coming. I find myself using Twitter more and more which doesn’t have stats and I have no idea if anyone is reading my most random and random thoughts. Yet at the same time I enjoy writing complete thoughts in 160 character or less and find it even more fun reading political campaign coverage in 160 character or less.
I think the reason I keep this blog is it is a place that I can explore new ideas that I am thinking about and a borderline extrovert, it allows me to process and get feedback. The random links here and there get formed together later on and occasionally become and idea worth caring about.As I have written before the person who probably influenced my thinking and writing this blog is Thomas Homer-Dixon and his book, The Ingenuity Gap which is the idea that the problems and issues affecting us are far more complex than we often understand. I think my keeping this blog is my part of exploring and understanding the world around me (which does at times include sports).
Top 25 Canadian Political Blogs
and for some reason I make the list. I beat Garth Turner out narrowly and for some reason I beat out Warren Kinsella but I imagine that has more to do with Google not clicking into the fact that his URL of his blog has changed recently with many people linking to his old URL.
I am not really a political blogger but in the spirit of being ranked, here is a great story about Barack Obama and his apology to local reporter.
Update: Some more thoughts related to the post are here.
Technorati tags: Garth Turner, Warren Kinsella
The Brian Mulroney Media Room
Now normally an ex-Prime Minister having a blog (with a nice theme) would be kind of interesting but when I read it, it seems below what I expect from an ex-Prime Minister. I don’t know if I agree with Warren Kinsella that he is guilty of anything but it sure makes me wonder more about it. Of course what I really want to see is Jean Chretien start using Twitter.
Best Canadian Religious Blog of 2007
In a weird fluke, jordoncooper.com won the Canadian Blog Award for Best Religious Blog. Thanks to everyone who voted for this blog and all of the finalists would have been excellent choices as well. Here is a link to the announcement video.
Canadian Blog Award Finalist
I am a finalist again this year for the Canadian Blog Awards. In the past I never mentioned it but if you would like to vote for the best Canadian religious blog, here is the link. All of the blogs listed there are worthy so you can’t really go wrong. Other favorites nominated are James Bow, Calgary Grit, and Daveberta.
The next version of Blogger
I was home sick yesterday and thought to myself that since I was pretty much immobilized that this would be a good time to switch to Wordpress. I looked at AKMA’s new blog and I really like his template and went looking around for some other templates I liked.
That is when I realized why I don’t like WordPress. It is the themes. I am finding that sites like Adam Cleaveland and AKMA’s site are the exceptions and many, many WordPress themes compete with the content rather than let the content shine. The minimalistic themes that I like seem to have been used over at Wordpress.com so I would have a theme just like everyone elses.
I installed MovableType 4.x the other day and while I liked it, it is a lot harder to use than it needs to be. I can’t believe that blogroll support was not included and has to be added via a plugin. Also, Windows Live Writer does not work with Movable Type for some reason. I suppose I am looking for a Typepad type version which SA is smart enough not to do because everyone would host Typepad themselves which would cannibalize their revenues. I did try out a free trial of Typepad and I do like it but then I am paying to host my site at Typepad and then also some hosting for Resonate as well on a different site which makes little sense. Although importing 8000+ posts into WordPress is easy but rather difficult into Typepad or MT. If anyone has an easy solution for this, I think I would switch.
In the end I am still using Blogger and here are a couple of features I would love to see for those of us who use FTP and host our blogs ourselves.
- Integration with Google Sitemaps. I know it can use my RSS feed to update with but there has to be a better solution for our old content. The publication of a complete sitemap of our blog content would be wonderful, even if the file was stored on Google’s servers.
- A separate archives and labels page. This way people could browse our labels and archives easier and we could even move our listing of archives off our main page if we so desire. Actually Blogger used to do this and it is a feature I would love back.
- Some new templates please. If Yahoo! 360 has more template options, something is wrong. In the Pyra days you had design competitions. Do one again and involve the Blogger and design community. You may be surprised.
- Integration with del.icio.us: I don’t know who started this feud but it would be great if my contextless links could be posted daily via del.icio.us. While you are at it, could you get together with some of your old coworkers at Obvious and work out some cool inline Twitter integration as well.
- Can you please enable labels of longer then 100 posts. When Blogger publishes it republishes almost all of my categories anyways. Why not have it publish less unchanged pages and update a couple of current pages. Limit each label to 100 posts on a page but simple do the “previous” link to older labels.
Best Religious Blog
Voting for the best Canadian religious blog has just opened for the Canadian Blog Awards, head on over and vote. There are some excellent blogs to chose from.
Round one is open until January 21st. You can see all of the categories here.
Our Cabin Weblog- Recently listened to music
- David Gray – Be Mine October 19, 2008
- David Gray – December October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Knowhere October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Real Love October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Last Boat To America October 19, 2008
- Recently additions to my library
- Messy Faith: Daring to Live by Grace by A. J. Gregory October 28, 2008
- Rediscovering Church: The Story and Vision of Willow Creek Community Church by Lynne Hybels October 26, 2008
- The Teeth of the Tiger, A Novel by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell October 26, 2008
- The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
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