Entries from Earthling - EarthLink blog tagged with 'earthling'
Thank You
In this final entry on Earthling, I mainly write to say thank you all for reading, commenting, e-mailing, talking, listening, and contributing.
Everything Must Go: Half Off On Used Comments
With me moving on as part of the restructuring, and the company in the midst of transition, we decided it's best to end Earthling's run. I say "we" in all honesty; assessing the situation and available resources, this is the path I recommended, and my leadership agreed.
Lay Of The Land
How the heck do you follow up a restructuring announcement on a corporate blog? A Friday heh list didn’t quite seem right on the heels of such a weighty announcement, and I’ve been struggling with that question and what to talk about next. Nothing seemed quite right, so I stepped away from Earthling for a while. As I return today, I thought it might be useful to give you a brief rundown of answers to questions that you may have about the current state of things:
Afternoon Site Enhancements
I'm working on a couple of small enhancements to Earthling this afternoon:
- Enlarging the width of the main content area to allow for standard 500px photos straight from Flickr
- Added the AideRSS widget to the right side, which provides some suggestions for the top posts on Earthling from the past month
Catching Up And Thanks
I'm back from a restful vacation, and will be spending most of the day replying to emails and catching up. If you haven't heard back from me on something, thanks for your patience this past week. Also a huge Earthling thanks to Tom Harris for his content contributions.
At BlogHer Today
Sorry for the lack of heh today. I'm at the BlogHer Conference in Chicago, meeting bloggers of all kinds and participating in discussions about the world of online content. There are a couple of other EarthLinkers here as well -- Carla Shaw from Corporate Communications is participating, and Liza Barry-Kessler from Legal will be on a panel titled "The Politics Of Inclusion and Exclusion In Online Communities." This is my second year here and like last year it's been an interesting and useful experience to be one of the few guys in a conference composed mostly of women.
New Earthling Feature: More Like This/Tags
... I've put in place some code to offer tags at the end of each article to help you find other articles that cover similar topics. Look for "find other articles like this:" at the end of each full article page:
Comments - Now With Some Semblance Of Threading
As part of the blog software changes this week, I've installed the Simply Threaded plugin, which allows you to reply directly to a comment by clicking the "reply to this comment" link instead of the form below.
Comments and Search Down For Maintenance
We're doing some work behind the scenes to the blogging softwar today, so comments and search will be temporarily unavailable for a few hours. For short periods of time there other pieces of functionality may be unavailable as well while...
A Conversation with Eric Mattson on Corporate Blogging
Rounding out this week in "EarthLinkers in the media", I had an excellent discussion with Eric Mattson of Jenerous.com yesterday about what I do at EarthLink, the value of blogs inside companies, and the ways we measure success, among other things.
Payphones Becoming A Distant Memory
Thank you to the 149 readers who voted in and commented on Earthling's most recent poll, which is now closed. While 56% of you said the last time you used a payphone was too long ago to remember, 12.8% said you'd used one within the past month(including "today" results), and 21.5% had used one within the past year(including "today" and "this past month").
On The Road This Week/Feature Note
I'll be in transit for most of the day today, and will be working out of our Pasadena location all week. Feature Note: On Friday, I implemented a new feature that allows you to track incoming comments to a particular blog entry via e-mail. Sorry robots, you have to be a valid commenter with a valid e-mail address(and follow the ground rules) in order to use it.
More From The CES BlogHaus: Samantha Murphy
I just uploaded a video of Samantha Murphy's excellent performance at the CES BlogHaus to my Blip.tv video collection. From now on, you'll be able to see all of the videos I upload at earthling.blip.tv, and you can subscribe to a separate RSS feed of just those as well.
First Earthling-generated Video
While I'm out here I'm also field testing a new Casio Exilim EX-770 digital camera. It's about the size of a thick credit card, and has been very useful to have on the show floor. I read that it can take 30 fps MPEG-4 video, but I was skeptical as to how it would turn out. I'm pretty impressed so far:
Blogging From CES This Week
I'm headed to the airport shortly, and through Thursday I'll be at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, catching a glimpse of what we'll all likely be watching, listening to, talking at, texting on, brushing our teeth with, and obsessing over in the world of technology this year.
The Year In Earthling, By Month, Part 2
Part 2 in Earthling's look back at the most commented, most viewed, editor's choice, and best photos from each month.
The Year In Earthling, By Month, Part 1
Today and tomorrow, I'm taking a look back at the most popular, most commented on, editor's choice, and best photo from each month of 2006. Today I'll cover January through June, and tomorrow July through December.
Happy Holidays, Back Mid-Next Week
I'll be away from Earthling for the holidays, and will be back on Wednesday. If you're taking some time off, have a relaxing time away, and if you're working for the holidays may your workplace be pleasant and quiet. Here's...
Off Til Monday - Have A Good Holiday
If you're planning on braving the crowds and shopping on Friday, check out Buzzfeed.com's links and blackfriday.info(thanks, Reid!) for bargains and strategy tips. And if that's not your bag, you can always pick a different way to spend your Friday and/or declare your observance of Buy Nothing Day.
Welcome Guest Blogger John
I'm taking a few days away from Earthling for a computer-free vacation which will include catching my first SEC football game, the LSU/Alabama game in Baton Rouge. I'll try to send some cameraphone pics to the Earthling Flickr account, but will be otherwise out of communication with the blog. In the meantime, Senior Technical Writer John Nolt will be stepping in as guest blogger. You may recognize John's writing from some of his work on the eLink newsletter. You'll be in good hands, and I look forward to reading his stuff when I get back.
A Little Heh For Your Friday
A friday 'heh' list.
Help A Scholar, Tell Him What You Think Of Earthling
Ingo Haupt, a student at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, is doing a study on the value and effectiveness of business blogs. He e-mailed me to ask if we would help him out by filling out his survey, and when I say we I mean you. I've read through the survey and it's a little long, but it asks some very good questions and I think I'll get as much out of it as he will. So if you have the time and the inclination, please consider filling this out:
Feeling More Human Than Usual
See that tag line up there? "By a human, for humans." I felt extremely human by the end of the day yesterday. It's mainly two things:
Earthling Readers Agree - "More Awesome Than Beer"
What is wrong with you people? I can't say I completely understand it, but Earthling readers voted the iPod as cooler than beer by a single vote's margin (29-28). More context can be had here.
Blog Via E-mail: My Blogger's House Has Many Rooms
I added another small feature today in addition to the anti-spam measures (which seem to be working) -- a way to receive Earthling via e-mail. You can see it over there on the right. In a somewhat roundabout way, I...
Pardon Our Dust...
I'm making some minor adjustments to the site today to help stem the tide of spam robots constantly trying to butt in to our discussions in the comments. It shouldn't affect your ability to read the content, but if you see anything funky with the layout, please bear with me for the day. Everything should be back to normal by tomorrow.
Syndicate: Actual Human Beings Interacting In Their Natural Habitat
A discussion about the pros and cons of Technorati's tagging system broke out in Jeff Jarvis' keynote address just now. The neat thing was, not only was Technorati's founder David Sifry right there to be a part of the conversation, but he was also there to sit down with Paul Mooney to look at his product from the perspective of a somewhat frustrated end-user. And Paul was willing to engage directly, and in person, rather than through a blog or some other mediated form of communication. I'm sure this stuff happens all the time, but it's easy for it to be overshadowed (especially outside of the valley) by headlines and online gossip and really nice logos and the impressive software these people produce.
Off To Syndicate - Welcome Guest Blogger Travis
EarthLinker Travis Metcalf will be borrowing Earthling for a couple of days while I get my learn on at the Syndicate conference. In addition to his product management responsibilities on various myEarthLink projects, Travis was instrumental in EarthLink's Protection Blog project, and showed me the ropes when I joined EarthLink back in October. Earthling is in good hands.
Additional Randomized Headers On The Way
I've put one of the new headers in place statically while I implement and test the randomizing script. Thanks to Chris Doherty at Citizen Studio for design help. The photo is mine, from a photo shoot for tiny envelope.
Earthling Polls Closed - New Headers On The Way
Thanks to everyone who voted. I don't think I can shut down the poll without deleting it, so here's the official final tally in case we get some late votes:
- Leave the header alone - 26 votes (30%)
- Add a new one - 18 votes (21%)
- Add many new ones - 41 votes (47%)
- Use some submitted art - 2 votes (2%)
Is Blogging Cooler Than A Firetruck?
A few of the kids really liked it though. Arvind's son wanted to write down the location of his blog so he could post more later. And one of the girls wrote several posts and didn't want to leave. I saw her later and she said blogging was cooler than a firetruck.
This Week's Bag of Heh
As is customary every now and then, here's a round-up of things that have ended up in the del.icio.us heh tags of me and others. Also, don't forget to vote in the Earthling header referendum before 10pm Sunday.
Polls Will Stay Open Until Sunday Night
Thanks to everyone who has voted and/or commented. I'll keep the poll open until the end of the The Sopranos episode on Sunday night at 10pm Eastern. If you haven't voted yet, make sure you do so by the time we find out if Vito gets to live out his days in pastoral New Hampshire. I should be prepared to take any needed action based on the voting early next week.
A First Earthling Poll - Change Or Keep The Header?
Please vote on whether you'd like the current header image up top (the thing that looks like a shocked robot face) to stick around, or if you're ready for a change. If you have any thoughts about the polling software, or poll suggestions in general, add those in the comments. You can comment here on Earthling or over there. Also please let me know if the software acts funny at all for you -- this is my first time trying it out.
Back At Earthling
- I had high hopes for Coke Blak. After giving it a shot on the way to work this morning, I declare myself not a fan.
- Brown Bookstore, my favorite bookstore in Providence, RI and the first great independent bookstore I came to know as a kid is at risk of losing its local autonomy and may be turned over to a national vendor. Some of the authors from McSweeneys were in town as part of a rally to save it.
- In my experience, if you're in a small town barbershop, it's still tough to find the right opening in the conversation to bring in something like RSS, VoIP, or location-based searching.
- I want to know more about how this guy put together a re-enactment of Game Six of the '86 World Series using Nintendo's RBI Baseball game. I wonder if he's been deluged with requests since he published it last week.
My Earthling Honeydo List
It's a Sunday so I have lists and chores on my mind. I maintain a list of improvements I'd like to make to Earthling. Here's where it stands currently: Add the ability to ask poll questions More comment spam-proofing, like...
Bee Kind - Update Your Earthling Feed
Hello you. I've updated my RSS feed address, so if you currently read Earthling through RSS, please unsubscribe from the old address and subscribe to this one: http://feeds.feedburner.com/EarthlingBlog I've changed the buttons on the right of the home page to reflect the new address too. If you don't currently read Earthling through RSS and think you might want to, here's how.
From Radio To Rocketboom
Last week EarthLink agreed to sponsor the Rocketboom vlog for the week of March 13, 2006.
Welcome Protection Blog Readers
Since today is the first day I've placed a link to Earthling on the Protection Blog, I wanted to welcome all of you who are coming here from there. You're getting an early look at our new blog, as we...
Where Did Earthling Come From?
Note: I wasn't at EarthLink for most of this, so I'm going through the history as I've come to understand it. EarthLink first got its feet wet in corporate blogging with the Protection Blog. The Protection Blog's goal was to...
Welcome To Earthling - First Entry
My name is Dave Coustan, and I'm EarthLink's newly hired full-time blogger. This thing you seem to be reading is a new blog called Earthling. You'll find two kinds of entries here -- some about what goes on at EarthLink, and some about things that interest me on the web.
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