Trust the Blogs

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You can collect some wonderful postcards in some coffee shops and city cafes. This is one of them which I liked most!

/von

Bloggen bei ProSieben

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Unter www.welove.de/flirt/weblogs findet sich die neue ProSieben Kultur unter dem Banner von Blogs. Herzlichen Glückwunsch dazu, doch teilt bitte eurer PR Agentur wunder media bitte mit, dass das Design (wie von Robert treffend festgestellt) keinesfalls übersichtlich aussieht.

Ich freue mich, ein paar aktivere Artikel von den Moderatoren zu lesen, denn Weblogs leben von einer gewissen Authentizität und Aktualität, und mit nur einem Eintrag gibt es wirklich nicht viel von dem Weblog-Geschäft bei euch zu sehen. Wie wäre es damit, wenn ihr mit uns selbst sprecht? Wir sind Blog Autoren, und einige davon sind wie ich selbst auch mit Medien zugange – als angehender Medienmanager und Marketingmensch trifft die Optik und der Stil jedenfalls nicht das, was Weblogs alles verursachen und bedeuten können. ;)
Wir spielen hier in Klein-Bloggersdorf nicht Trendscout oder Hippedie-Hopp, sondern nähern uns dem Thema vom großen Blog ganz natürlich. Ihr schreibt leider zu kurz, zu wenig, und seht auch noch ganz gar fürchterlich aus. Ach und noch eines: Eine Homepage hatte ich auch schon früher, bevor Weblogs in Mode gekommen waren – nur damals hatte ich nicht das, was ein Weblog ausmacht: Ein gelungenes Content-Management-System, mit dem ich auf einfachste Art und Weise mein geschriebenes Wort auf der Homepage darstellen konnte. [via Rob und dem PR Blogger]

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WM Maskottchen Goleo: Ein Plagiat?

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Ich störte mich bisher des öfteren an dem doch ein wenig tuntig daher tappsenden Maskottchen für die Fußball WM in Deutschland 2006. Den Morgen konnte mir daher der notausgang erleichtern, indem die wahre Identität vom Kuschelmonster Goleo enttarnt wurde:

Ich kann mich des Eindrucks nicht verwehren, dass das WM-Maskottchen seinen Ursprung in dem Jim-Henson-Klassiker „Der dunkle Kristall“, in den Figuren der Mystics, hat.
Um Verwirrung zu vermeiden: das Maskottchen ist links zu sehen.

Irgendwie hat Baumgarf da schon Recht, die Ähnlichkeit ist verblüffend! Und wenn die kommende Weltmeisterschaft von weiteren Plagiaten geschmückt ist, dann können ja viele Spieler gleich zu Hause bleiben. Fußball lohnt sich sowieso nur dann, wenn es um Spiele der Nationalmannschaft geht. Also liebe FIFA, seid nett zueinander – besonders wenn es um Sponsoring Verträge geht und die Umbenennung von Stadien, um eure Sponsoren und Werbetreibenden vor den bösen Nicht-Sponsoren zu verteidigen. Sonst kommt der liebe Mystic und tötet seinen bösen Klon Goleo!

/von

The X-Mas Plan

Just a notice for all the listening spirits: It is time for a change. This statement of course is quite sloppy, but after blogging for such a long time in separation, we have to move on. I’ve always considered of merging Katharina’s Blog and mine within a single database and under one banner and cover. This afternoon I’m about to start a few plans on doing this, however we’ll perhaps introduce a new subdomain for her content and mine, yet we’ll publicize the content in the major domus of the MikeSchnoor.com.

Things do do:

  • Find a way how to merge the WordPress database with Blogspirit’s content?
  • Create individual subdomains for individual content?
  • Reset the database or create an entirely new one?
  • Backup the database first!
  • Create multiple layouts for the individual blogs and a major design for the front cover?

In the end, I doubt we’ll be ready for a launch in the next days, but once we’re back home -after the holidays (both Christmas and New Year Celebrations)- it’s going to be the top priority on my list for things to do.

/von

Weblog Top Ten Mistakes

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Jakob Nielsen published his list of the most common mistakes of weblog authors concerning the usability of their blogs: The Top Ten Design Mistakes.

  1. No Author Biographies
  2. No Author Photo
  3. Nondescript Posting Titles
  4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
  5. Classic Hits are Buried
  6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
  7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
  8. Mixing Topics
  9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
  10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

So much about this list, and I am aware of the fact that the MikeSchnoor.com does not conform with the first two issues so far. I believe it is important to reveal a little bit about yourself as an author, and in order to meet that small and simple criteria, I’m going to post my biography and some fancy picture in the About section.

However, the problem with having words linked like „here“ or „click“ as seen in the third issue doesn’t happen at all on this site. Usually it is quite easy for a reader to understand that links created by myself lead to that what they are targeted at.

The fourth issue of posting a list of the top articles in a blog is useful, and I might do this in the near future. Fortunately I don’t even use a calendar for its horrible usability. But I’m not sharing Nielsen’s opinion about mixing topics or posting irregularly. I do prefer to mix topics since I cover many issues on this blog. For this, the four major categories (shown on top of the site) combine the others which are seen as the „big list“ in the sidebar. And how can one expect to judge content by posting only if there’s time for blogging? If you have other things to do, this is more imperative than covering the show in your blog. Thus this is a problem which is aimed directly at corporate or professional bloggers who post once a week.

The question about your future boss is always important – never forget that one may like to hire you and become offended from your writing. But one may never forget that a flame war in your blog is different from a critical opinion and thought. If I have a problem with the fictional Company X, and I get hired from that company after two years, the company should accept that employees with critical opinions are more valuable than the simple digest that oyu can find on the street.

Last but not least, we do have a domain name here – or you wouldn’t read us at all, or not? ;)

/von

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005

According to Dimension2K and Dr.Web, the update to our „Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005“ have been published by Jakob Nielsen. I’m d’accord with Evil.Bert since some of Jakob’s Design Mistakes are not necessarily a real mistake, but sometimes a wanted necessity. ;)

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News.Com: Blogs and German Content

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This morning I’ve spend some time reviewing the new CNET News.com layout, and of course I set my main focus on their Blogs section and the German tech news area. I guess I was inspired by John Roberts from their own product development team – thanks for noticing me! Let’s see if you’ll catch this feedback.

CNET’s Blogs
Fortunately, their authors write alot. They really do and its an interesting news grabber site. So far I’ve observed hundreds of blogs, yet within their main Blog site are things beneath the content. First of all, reaching the blog section is easy by using the main navigation-bar. At that point, I’ve been directed to excerpts and summaries of their entire totality of blogs. These excerpts lead to the articles or you can click at a major category for further topical research within these themed blogs. So far so good, now comes the problem.

  1. Leading RSS Feed
    I cannot aggregate the entire blog section via RSS (or any other feed). CNET is only offering to aggregate the categories as independent feeds or the other main non-blog-related categories at their site. And I’m not likely going to add every to my RSS aggregator! On top of this, the link to their XML led to a 404-not-found page.
  2. Comment Requirements
    I understand the legal issues that come along once you’re allowing your visitors to comment on the site, but I’m not interested in using a fully-featured CNET account for this. On the other hand, the Pingbacks/Trackbacks are available for everyone. Where’s the comment regulation on these? Seems like a puzzle of illogicalness…
  3. Main Page
    Yes I’ve been rambling about the main blog section page already above. But in comparison to the individual categories (blogs), the same layout would be applicable. Without information about how many comments already exist and who wrote the post, I’m less interested in clicking to expand the post.

The German Section
I’m not going to doubt the integrity and quality of ZDNET as a sister site for CNET. Please let your readers know the publishing date of the linked articles. They already do it on their own site, and if a sister site offers to integrate their feeds to you guys at CNET, I’m sure they or you can modify the final appearance on how their feed appears on your site, or not?

/von

WordPress.com: They got me!

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Today I received my invite by Anonymuis to become a WordPress.com-User! I was quite excited to test-try-and-error the newish system and created my new account named BeLoved. I plan to write on this account with a third person perspective, and aggregate thoughts which don’t really belong to the MikeSchnoor.com at all. But as being a user on WordPress.com, I noticed a few things that keep upsetting me. Not in an angry way, but I’m missing functionality from this installation here. While the optical illusions of the new semi Web2.0 interface are quite handy for adding new posts and editing the old ones, there is no chance to install plugins or other themes such as a fully customized one.

On top of this, I made the following two feedbacks to the WordPress.com administration:

Redirect Problem
Upon using „http://beloved.wordpress.com/wp-admin“, it redirects me to „http://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=%2Fwp-admin%2F“… ;) Its no real problem for me, but perhaps for other people, since the redirected URL won’t let me sign up with my username.

User Management?
There seems to be no chance to add more users to my account on this multiple-user-based plattform. I mean – I cannot maintain the blog being accompanied by my beloved girlfriend, and my original thoughts about creating the BeLoved-Blog cannot be met anymore. Is there any chance of being able to add a sub-user to my account or is this one of my irresistable hopes and wishes?

I’m curious on their answers, and we’ll see what happens with my BeLoved account.

/von

News.Com Redesign

I like the current look of CNET’s News.Com. Now if they’d have some more Web 2.0 features like i.e. Microsoft’s Start.com, the effective art of customizing a news website would be completed.

According to The eStrategyOne Buzz,

[…] The new site is bolder in both graphic design and content. The navigation includes two sets of header tabs. Some of the old familiar tab names are missing, but the new scheme allows CNet to add personalization, and separate tabs for their newsreader, blogs, and Extra stories. The new design is horizontal than vertical, and provides more emphasis on the photos or illustration for the lead story. […]

Of course this is just a beta phase and can change back anytime.

/von