Unpublished author (magician and comedian) John Lenahan faced the scenario typical for many unknown writers: rejections from publishers and no-one to sell his book.
Yet when he started to record instalments from his “Shadowmagic” book on the podcasting service PodioBooks.com, he built up a loyal following of some 20,000 listeners and was soon beating back excited publishers with a big stick.
He had bought some good quality recording equipment and practised before committing his voice to the online service (“I wanted it to be good from the start and not starting to sound good by chapter six,” he said). read more
We say this is where the Blogosphere meets the Twittersphere, but what does that mean? Twittorati shows what top bloggers are tweeting about, and how these trends compare to Blogosphere trends. You’ll be able to filter tweets by topic, see the most tweeted blog posts, and compare leading Blogosphere and twitter trends.
The site lets you “follow the highest authority bloggers”. More is to come, but for now, check it out. If nothing else, it helps cement the Technorati Top 100 blogs even further.
The ever appealing hosted blogging platform Posterous now supports posting to Facebook. You might remember that Steve Rubel moved to the platform recently. The addition of Facebook support surely is another reason for switching to Posterous. On the other hand, you can sync just about any blog with a RSS feed to Facebook, so it might not be the big Hosted Blog Killer feature after all.
What media features do you want in WordPress 2.9? That’s the question asked on the wordpress.org blog right now, and if you’re a user you really should cast a vote to help shape 2.9.
I hear from Al Fox that yet another company is reeling from brand damage caused by employees voicing their opinions on social media services. read more
If you are an RSS addict like I am, you probably stumbled acrossthe news that iTwitter, an iPhone App created by @iConnect, had launched on the App Store.
Uttering those four magical words (push notification for twitter) many users downloaded the app before they had a chance to bump the price from free to $3.99 USD.
While the iTwitter app is impressive overall, its push notification feature may help underscore the need for the Twitter team to establish themselves as a gateway to Apple’s servers instead of the various Tweet clients out there. read more
Strategist News has launched an online destination that aims to deliver business news and blog posts that are recommended by like-minded professionals.
The new website hopes to set itself apart with the quality of its community and resulting content selection. Members are a diverse group of business, investment and marketing strategists with an intellectually curious attitude. Blog posts and news articles are selected and ranked based on the number of recommendations.
Strategist News also announced its 2009 Top 50 Business Blogs, an annual ranking of best business blogs on the web. The ranking aspires to shed light on the best business bloggers, based on their popularity, credibility and relevance, from the point of view of business professionals.
Only time will tell if Strategist News can really deliver on its promise of high quality business news and blog posts.
The beauty of social media is that everyone has a venue that is capable of catching fire and getting the words you write in front of the masses. But with this new-found power comes great responsibility – and perhaps the need for a lawyer. read more
