Judith Meskill is up to her usual tricks again. She gently persuaded me to be one of the judges.

The 'Perfect' Corporate Weblogging 'Elevator Pitch' Competition....

Scenario:

A business executive, with whom you have been trying to arrange a meeting, is available for a condensed pitch from you on a one minute elevator ride.

It is your goal to convince this attentive business leader -- who has heard about weblogs -- to sponsor and resource a critical mass of weblogs in his/her organization so that their benefits can be demonstrated in a meaningful way.

It's a long elevator ride to the top floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago -- [1,354 feet at 1600 feet/minute!] -- visual aids are not available and your entry will be judged on your ability to present your pitch "on the fly" -- just text.

Rules, Preparation Requirements:

Submission: text entry between 50 to 160 words.
One entry per person.
Please make sure that you include, with your submission:
your full name,
your website and/or weblog url(s), and
a valid email address.
All entries must be received by midnight (EST) April 15, 2004. Entry scoring will be completed by judges by midnight April 22, 2004.

Winning entry will be announced shortly thereafter --
date to be announced in the near future.

Prizes:
No 'monetary compensation' -- but excellent 'sur-prize' To Be Announced!

Competition Submission Format:

For now, please email completed submissions to:

pitch at weblogsinc dot com

Once an alternate form of submission is created -- it will be prominently displayed on this weblog!

If you have any questions or comments please post below in the comments field.

Please DO NOT post competition submissions in the comments field!

Submissions will be kept 'anonymous' so as not to sway the esteemed panel of judges... (-:=

I am including a few excellent links regarding 'corporate blogging' in the Related Links. Feel free to recommend additional links in the comments field and I will add them to the Related Links field. Thanks and Good Luck! [The Social Software Weblog]

10:34:51 PM •  • comment  

Something to follow up on. Interesting both from a marketing point of view and as a potential tool for knowledge work.

Axsoft is offering a free 3-user license for their bug-tracker.

Axosoft: Free 3-User Offer

Axosoft is offering bloggers a free 3-user version of their .NET & SQL based OnTime defect tracking software (bug tracking software). For more information, visit

http://www.axosoft.com/Free3UserOffer.htm.

An interesting way to market software and build buzz.

[Marc's Outlook on Productivity]

5:42:41 PM •  • comment  

Here's an interesting experiment that I plan to follow up on for my own timeline data. I'm one of those who think at least one important aspect of weblogging is its ability to serve as a back-up brain. As I get older, I want to have better ways of thinking about lots of data for my own purposes. Timeline and event data is one important category that I still need to crack.

Blogging and Calendaring.

Michael Sippey has an interesting experiment with his Timeline (example):

A couple of years ago I started keeping simple timelines -- "major" personal events over the course of a year, to make it easier to scan a period of time without being bogged down in the dozens of weekly appointments that clog the day-to-day calendar.

I'm in the messaging business. Focused -- today -- on email. But lately I've been interested in how messages (of all stripes) could more effectively be integrated into where we best process specific types of information. Your average inbox is not great at organizing time-oriented material, especially reminders about events that will take place in the future -- calendars are obviously better at that. And with iCal (the format, not the app), it becomes reasonably brainless to publish individual events and/or a stream of events out to users. Case in point: it was probably less than one day of effort for the engineers at Expedia to add a downloadable calendar event to your online travel itinerary. But the fact that I can automagically pop my flight info into Outlook is at the top of my list of reasons why I'm loyal to Expedia.

So, anyway. Sippey.com/timeline is the result of some noodling on those two issues. A single page view of a year. Which is also rendered in calendar form, and made available for layering on top of your calendar. It's hindsight publishing, of course (this did happen on this day, instead of this is going to happen on this day). But calendars are not only planning tools, they're rememberance agents. And layering information like major news stories, weather (a la Jerry's story about his old DayPlanner habits), sports scores and even personal bloggish notations could be an interesting use of the iCal format.

This is a small part of an idea Ramesh Jain has talked about - the EventWeb.

[E M E R G I C . o r g]

5:38:53 PM •  • comment  

And I have no qualms about piggybacking on top of Scoble's work.

75 top security tools.

What kind of stuff do I read in my feeds? Well, I see there's a list of the 75 top security tools. Now, why do I link to those here? So that when I need them, I'll be able to find them in Google.

Thanks to Alex Moskalyuk's feed for bringing that one to me.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

5:28:54 PM •  • comment  

I'm beginning to think through whether it's time to redesign the toolset and processes I use to blog. This looks like it will provide some useful input.

Jeff moves to Das Blog.

My mentor and co-worker Jeff Sandquist moved his weblog from Radio UserLand to Clemens Vasters' "Das Blog" (which was written in .NET) over the weekend and writes about the experience.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

5:25:47 PM •  • comment  

Some good ideas for making your posts more useful to readers. Something I should pay more attention to. I focus so much on the RSS side of the equation, that I sometimes forget that there are those who prefer getting their weblog content in their browsers.

Making Your Blog Posts Spiffy. Kaye offers up some tips on making the most of blog posts:

Use a pull quote

Adam Polselli's unique blockquote style for showing code labels it as such (scroll down to see)

Adrian Holovaty's blockquote style for showing code highlights it & changes the font

Put quote marks around your blockquote content

Use a different font in your blockquote

Jay McCarthy puts a dotted line around his blockquotes

According to these suggestions, I'm doing a fairly good job. But the pull quote thing is very cool, something I'm going to have to experiment with.

UPDATE: Well, that was pretty easy... [Weblogg-ed News]

5:01:48 PM •  • comment  

I'll be adding this to my machines, especially the ones that my two boys use.

Spyware Blaster 3.0 - great protection.

This is an essential piece of your tool kit for keeping malware off of your PC. Download it, install it, and know you have another layer of defense in place. Spyware Blaster is free for individual use.

SpywareBlaster: "Spyware, adware, browser hijackers, and dialers are some of the fastest-growing threats on the Internet today. By simply browsing to a web page, you could find your computer to be the brand-new host of one of these unwanted fiends!

The most important step you can take is to secure your system. And SpywareBlaster is the most powerful protection program available.

- Prevent the installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers, and other potentially unwanted pests.
- Block spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox.
- Restrict the actions of potentially dangerous sites in Internet Explorer.

SpywareBlaster can help keep your system spyware-free and secure, without interfering with the 'good side' of the web.

And unlike other programs, SpywareBlaster does not have to remain running in the background.

[Marc's Outlook on Productivity]

10:16:09 AM •  • comment