The ABC of Blogging + Linux WiFiRadio

linux wifi radio
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

My brother's going to Europe with his wife in April. He hasn't been before, nor has he blogged - even though he is an early adopter with most technology. He may blog when over there - We'll see. Certainly easier than email, and a better scrapbook too. Dave Winer's explanation below is very simple for non-bloggers who want to get with the program. And for blogs to go mainstream it needs to be even easier. Blogs to some journos short of a social media flip to report on, may be nouveau dead, but there is a huge curve still to ride. It will be interesting to see how projects like Wordpress.com + Six Apart's Project Comet go in driving adoption. (With a $100m+ valuation and a payfor model sixapart will need to do something special for C-round investors to get the returns they expect.)

Segments such as business (broader content management tools) and family (easier) require better products. Vertical applications such as sport and education have extensive growth to occur. How ironic that it is easy to click on "Geocities" from the Yahoo Home Page in 2006, but the word blog is nowhere to be seen. (Maybe I should have guessed if I clicked on Y-Small Business/Web Hosting, there would be some Movable Type + Wordpress 'hosting' packages a few clicks down : Or maybe Yahoo 360 where's that ?) I guess I should shutup about this because it all seems rather obvious in terms of Product Planning 101 : Features, benefits, brand names, customer segments. Where are the pre or click to install customised themes, plugins and applications ?

Dave Winer on how to setup a blog : "First, create a new weblog on one of the free services, like Blogger or MSN Spaces. It takes about five minutes, and is about as hard as creating an email address on Yahoo or Hotmail, and represents less of a commitment. Then make your first post, something like Hello There, or Testing 1-2-3. Once you've verified that it works, you can stop there. Then someday, when you're in the shower or lying in bed in the morning and get an idea that you wish you could tell everyone, remember that you have a blog, and go to the computer, and write it up and publish it. That actually feels pretty good, even if you think no one will read it, because you got it off your chest. Then in a few days Google will probably visit your site and index the post, and then when someone searches for that subject, your page will come up, and maybe you'll pass that idea on to someone who can use it, or meet someone who agrees, or someone who disagrees. And that's blogging, and that's all it is."