WordPress Plugin - First Time Visitors

Yes, I know I use Blogger and not WordPress. No, I don't know when (or if) I'll make the switch but I must give it to the WordPressers...they sure come up with some good ideas. If you're on WordPress you may like the "What Would Seth Godin Do?" plugin to give new visitors a unique experience the first few times they come to your blog. Any Bloggies got something like this for me?

My bookmarks are del.icio.us

When I first heard of the social bookmarking website Del.icio.us (simply pronounced 'Delicious') I didn't really get it. Why on earth would someone need to save their bookmarks to a website rather than just use the bookmarks on their web browser? In time I heard about how other people used Del.icio.us and I finally signed up just to see what all the fuss was about. Then a funny thing happened. I good hooked. What I found with Del.icio.us was an entire world of functions that I didn't know I wanted but now can't live without. Here are the two big ones for me:

• Tags: The ability to tag every bookmark and even create my own notes and thoughts about that bookmark for future reference. The tags allow me create my own keyword topics around a general idea. For instance, I'm going to be speaking to a PR firm here in Nashville in a few weeks to give them an overview of web 2.0 and how it applies to their work. I've been bookmarking sites and stories recently with the tag "PR" to use for my upcoming presentation. I wouldn't have had that without creating a folder on my browser before which isn't a huge deal, but if a story comes along that I want to tag "PR" and something else then it's no problem for Del.icio.us to let me categorize the link as many ways as I want but where would I put it if I only used folders on my browser?
  
• Web access: The fact that my bookmarks are always online has paid off numerous times. A week ago I was meeting with a few people and the discussion brought to mind something I had tagged recently so I was able to just pull it right up whether I had my laptop with me or not. I've gone to my Del.icio.us bookmarks numerous times when I haven't had my own computer with me and it's been great to get what I need for those occasions.
  

I read somewhere recently that you can learn a lot about what someone is thinking by watching their Del.icio.us tags. Bloggers on Wordpress can even use a widget to post their new Del.icio.us links for the day. I've discovered countless helpful articles and websites through other people's links. Del.icio.us has become one of those tools I use every day for my own link collection and for discovery. If you want to see what I'm tagging, check out Del.icio.us/fourthbill.

New look for the new year

I've been waiting to transfer MicroExplosion over to the new Blogger template system for a while now and finally started playing around with it the other day. Aside from losing my stat tools in the switch, everything transferred nicely. The new customization system Blogger built is pretty handy. I used to have to get into the HTML code to make customizations but now they've created some very easy tools to keep me from doing that.

I've come to like Blogger and even though I've considered switching in the past I think I'm going to stay with it for a while. My biggest beef with Blogger is that it doesn't take full advantage of being owned by Google. There are so many great Google tools available, it's a shame they're not more fully implemented into Blogger. If I could change three things about Blogger's it would be:

• The ability to remove the Blogger toolbar at the top of the blog. I know many people who specifically don't use Blogger for this reason. More than anything their concern is that when someone comes to their blog and hits the "next blog" link you never know where they're going to end up. I think most people are smart enough to understand that a blogger has no control over where that link will take you, but it's enough of a concern to some people I know that they chose Wordpress or Typepad instead.
• Custom header. Blogger's taken customization to a new level for them with their new template features but the one thing they're missing is the ability to let a user create a custom header image. Right now the only header customization you get is in the form of the text changes. I know Wordpress, for instance, has an easy header image customization tool. I hope Blogger's working on making this change. Heck, they could even tie it into Blogger's Picasa software to pull the image. Picasa's already got a Blogger tie-in anyway, so why not?
  
• Stats. Blogger still doesn't have its own stat tracking built in. I hope it won't be long before they build Google Analytics into the system. It would really strengthen Blogger as a whole.
  

By and large the blogging community seems to view Blogger as an entry level blog tool which is kind of ironic if you think about it because Google's such a respected entity by the blog community as a whole, yet their blog tool seems to be looked upon as inferior to "serious blog tools." If Blogger could begin to roll in more Google applications it could really become a contender among the other free tools available today.

3 Things That Make Video a Blog

Today I had the chance to talk with some church staff guys about web 2.0 strategy...specifically online video and blogging (and the resulting combination of the two...video blogging). This church already spends significant effort on video work and weekly communications to their church members and community. Many churches these days are spending more time with video production but might not be thinking through making the most use of their efforts. The guys I spoke to today now realize that with a little more planning and about ten more minutes of video shooting each week they've got all the pieces for a video blog for extended outreach. I informed them about three things they'll need to make sure are included to make it a full fledged blog:

• RSS feed to let people subscribe to the video blog
• Permanent link so it can be referred to by itself and referenced directly in the future
• Comments to get feedback from viewers

I recommended they set up a free blog on Blogger or Wordpress (both of which automatically give you the above components) and load their video to Vimeo as it's done. The code provided Vimeo can be quickly loaded into either blog tool and they have an instant video blog!