It's News to Me

Yesterday, I received a call from a friend inquiring about advice on buying a digital camera. He knew that late last year I purchased a Canon G2 and just wanted some information about how to make a decision about which camera would meet his needs. Fortunately, this bit of advice is easy to give because I am pretty confident that the answer to almost any question someone in the market for such a camera could want to ask can be found at Digital Photography Review. There are, of course, other fine sites out there on this subject, but it is hard to match the accuracy, completeness and depth of information that Phil Askey provides at this site. It is an easy recommendation.

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While exploring some of the functionality in Blogger this morning, I discovered that you can set up a blog in which you permit others to be co-authors. Given how quirky and personal some blogs are, co-authorship seems a strange concept. However, I've been thinking how appropriate a co-authored blog would be for a web site where a group wishes to permit its members to have a meeting place where they can post their musings about the topic to which the web site is devoted.

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Last night, a bit before midnight, I got a call from my friend, Phil Petty, seeking some help with his email program. (It isn't too unusual for him to call late at night since he tends to operate on that end of the day.) While we were talking he mentioned that he had visited my blog and posed a rather interesting and legitimate question. He asked why I wanted to have a blog anyway. Why does anyone create a blog?

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At the moment we're having a system problem here at work, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to prove that one can indeed update his blog from work. Hooray!

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Some days at work are really depleting, as I'm sure you know. Yesterday was one of those days for me.

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On Saturday the 6th I received a phone call from a friend whom I've known for more than 10 years announcing that he was no longer with the company who had employed him for the last 20 years. He began work for this utility digging ditches and working on their gas lines in the street. At the time of his separation he had risen to the position of Vice President of Customer Services and Marketing. We met when he was a supervisor in Customer Services who had just taken over responsibility for training and had called our company to inquire about the services we offered for training his people. After a sales visit to his company at his invitation in 1988, I went on to do a variety of training and consulting services with them through the years, so I know most of the people involved there, from the front-line employees to the CEO.

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My friend, Patrick Ahern, suggests I need to supply a link to email so that others can react to what they find here. That seems like a good idea to me, however I haven't yet found a place where I can place a permanent mailto link in the template used to post this page. So I have added to the information in the general description at the top left corner of the page, since it appears in the same place all the time. That should do as an interim solution, until I figure out another strategy.

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I was delighted to see in Dan Gillmor's blog today his reference to this article that describes how blogs are now being used among business users. Highly recommended, if you have an interest in new ways to use the Internet.

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For some folks learning new software is a chore to be avoided with an enthusiasm normally reserved for things like cleaning out the gutters, going to the dentist or, as in my case, going shopping for clothes (something I absolutely hate to do). However there are a strange few of us who routinely subject ourselves to this learning experience for fun. No matter which of these groups you fall into, I want to share some observations about the value I have gained from learning to use my latest email program -- The Bat.

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I heard from my friend, Stan Herman, with a couple of thought-provoking questions that I'd like to address. First, he asked «Is it your intent to keep it like a running diary of external events that cross your path + internal musings about yourself?--how deep will you go?» The answer as to the depth question is probably further than I should. That's my general tendency anyway. Once when I was being quite open about things that were going on with me in an online community called ILink Writers, one of the participants asked why I didn't just keep a diary rather than put such things out in the public online. My answer was «a diary doesn't talk back.» It's nice to have others contribute their thoughts when you are so stupidly-bold as to reveal your inner thoughts online. And of course, not all that feedback is necessarily supportive. Still, I value openness and I'm too old to hold back any more, just to gain people's acceptance.

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