Random Culture

Kenneth Cole Activist Blog

Kenneth Cole has launched a blog, and it's not about fashion. The Awearness blog is about politics, the environment, social responsibility and much more. The question remains, will users really care what Kenneth Cole thinks about this stuff? Read more at: Awearnessblog.com

DEMOfall 2006: uControl

uControl is one of a select few companies that were invited to present at the prestigious DEMOfall conference this week in San Diego. Over the last few months, I've been lucky enough to work with them. They truly are poised to revolutionize the home security industry. If you have a home alarm system and VoIP, check them out! If you only have a home phone line because you have an alarm system, check them out! If you want to make sure that your home is REALLY being monitored, check them out!

You can learn more about uControl by:
Watch video of the uControl presentation at DEMOfall
Visit the uControl website: www.ucontrol.com

I'm also excited that uControl has decided to become involved in the blogosphere. They recently launched a blog at: blog.ucontrol.com.

Update: The Slowskys

I posted recently about the new "Slowskys" campaign from Comcast, which includes some funny commercials and a character blog. In that post, I talked about how the campaign could be more interesting if we got to see more video footage.

Well, my wish has been granted. It looks like the "Slowskys" have some outtakes they're circulating. Here's one for your viewing pleasure.

Sprint Blogging... Sort of

Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion points out that Sprint is now blogging. Well, actually, it's the Sprint Business Solutions folks that are blogging. Like so many other business blogs we've seen, it seems to be updated very infrequently... which is a shame. Has Sprint fallen victim to the same problem other businesses have when they approach blogging: trouble dedicating resources to keep it updated?

Blogger vs. Journalist Pay

There's been some publicly released information about the revenues of the Gawker Media blogs, including what they are paying writers.Tristan Louis has posted a great entry on his site that tries to break down some details, such as the amount of payment for each word.

And guess what... blogging is not that competitive with the pay of journalists. It may not pay as well on a per-word basis, but bloggers are writing a lot more often, and don't have many of the constraints that journalists do. Pros and Cons?

Link via SmartMobs.

MLB Blogs: Why?

Six Apart has joined forces with Major League Baseball to create MLBlogs.com, a blogging service that lets baseball fans created their own blogs using branded templates. Business Logs has a great write up on the effort, and addresses some of the issues. Some of these issues are the value proposition to users, as well as failings in the design of the site.

It will be interesting to see what kind of traction this blogging effort receives. As Business Logs puts it: "Remember those football team collectible pencils from back in the day? Yeah, this is about as cool as those were." I've done some work in the arena of sports and blogging, and the sports audience is extremely active online. I wouldn't be surprised if the community aspect of these blogs is enough to give it some momentum.

Red Hat is Blogging

Red Hat has entered the blogging arena by launching blogs for several different divisions within the company...

The Red Hat Executives Blog
The Red Hat People Blog
The Red Hat Intern Blog
The Red Hat Magazine Editor Blog

While they've done some things right, such as making sure they have XML feeds and allowing comments, I can't get past the fact that I see some buggy interface issues in Firefox...

What's more... Photo Matt, who made us aware of the Red Hat Blogs, points out that this is a part of their "open source" initiative, but they aren't using an "open source" blogging tool. They're using an old version of Movable Type.

Signal vs. Noise Redesign

One of my favorite blogs, Signal vs. Noise, from the folks at 37 Signals, has redesigned. It's worth looking at, and since 37 Signals are my personal usability role models, I'm inclined to say it's a good one. Although I'm still digesting it...

The first thing that popped into my head was a flashback to something I read about how BIG text is "in." Heck, it may have even been these guys who wrote about it.

A couple thoughts about the redesign:

• I like the call to action for "grabbing" the RSS feed
• I like the BIG text headlines for posts with a lot of text
• I don't like the grey text (dates) against the light blue background in the comments section. It's impossible to read
• I don't like the BIG text headlines for posts with little text
• I don't like the prominence of the name of the person who posted. Seems irrelevant.

They've said this is a work in progress, so we're sure to see the redesign refined and considered, and should have an even better Signal vs. Noise to read than we had before.

.rand

Fortune 500 Bloggers

Jeremy Wright's Ensight blog has posted a list of Fortune 500 companies that are blogging. The list is based on information he's gathered for a business blogging book, and he says:

"...this obviously isn’t complete. My suspicion is that at least 10% and as much as 20% are using blogs in some way. However, I can’t confirm that."

I know there's at least one not mentioned there... and surely there are others.

Link via Micropersuasion.