Comment Cleanup

Who's the dick writing comments on my blog? by Scott BealeIt was overdue really.  Over 7 years on this blog and I hadn’t done a thorough review and cleanup of my comment section ever.

There were nearly 4,000 comments and, unfortunately, a very large chunk of them were duplicates and a more than I want to admit were some kind of spam comments.  The duplicates undoubtedly came from the time that I imported my comments into Disqus and then exported them back out to my blog to stand alone. I should have caught the duplicates then, but I must not have been paying attention.

The spam comments are a frustration.  They weren’t rampant, but there were a lot more than I thought there were.  Some were the passive kind of spam where they didn’t leave a link in the comment, but the name and URL they used to “log in” were certainly links to follow.  Luckily, only a handful were “lightly” inappropriate, counting them on one hand easily.

In the end, it turns out that there are just under 2,000 comments left, but they are at least valuable conversations that I had regarding posts with a number of readers and a good many friends online.  These I will treasure.

Photo credit: Scott Beale

Post Idea Giveaway 2012

ideas-notebook

Ideas Notebook By Matthew Allard

Sometimes you find that you’ve got too many ideas.  Ever have that problem?  I do this week, and I swear I’m going to do something about  it. I’ve got blog post ideas going back several years covering things from social media to technology to life topics and so on.  It’s time I liberate these post ideas.  I’m giving them to you to take and run with, just in case you’ve run out of ideas and need some inspiration.  What better way to end the week, right? Alrightly, here we go:

  1. Social Networking & The Impact On Your Personal Brand
  2. Moleskine Notebooks – Going Analog For The Fun of Writing
  3. How To Balance Social Network Participation In The Workplace
  4. 101 Uses for Twitter
  5. Why I Believe The “Smartphone” Isn’t So Smart
  6. Your Blog IS Your Social Network
  7. Online Communities – You Get Out Of Them Only What You Put Into Them
  8. The New Social Economy
  9. Social Media Is About Sociology Not Technology
  10. Never Stop Experimenting To Grow Yourself Or Your Brand
  11. If Words Mean Things
  12. Old Media Using Social Media
  13. Building A Better Branded Blog
  14. Decline Of Technology In America?
  15. Social Media And The IT Professional
  16. Anonymity – Pros & Cons
  17. Can You Connect Up To 6 people?
  18. Linux: Ubuntu Or Fedora Or ?
  19. The Most Powerful Social Media Tool: YOU
  20. Decisions: iOS Or Android
  21. Personal Branding And The IT Professional
  22. 10 Reasons For A Windows Hack To Love The iPhone
  23. Disengage From The Collective That Is Your Corporate Mindset
  24. “Who Am I?”
  25. How Can I Help People?
  26. Linux Software Installers – Why Do They Suck?
  27. Essential Software For The Blogger
  28. The New Intellectual
  29. Is the Theme/Style Of Your Blog Important To Readers?
  30. Social Realities Of A New Generation
  31. What Do I Do?
  32. What Can I Accomplish?
  33. Powerful Writing…
  34. Do I Realize How Lucky I Am?
  35. Social Media In The Enterprise
  36. Negativity In The Workplace
  37. Don’t Talk, Just Do
  38. Social Media Is An Evolutionary Step
  39. Tear Down This Wall (Cubicles That Is)
  40. What Is A “Social Entrepreneur”?
  41. Enterprise/Corporate Culture Clashes
  42. Good Enough
  43. Social Media Shoehorn
  44. Blogging Is A Commitment, Social Networks Are A Fling
  45. Making It Happen
  46. Why My Blogging “Rock Stars” Are From the Z-List
  47. SharePoint Can Be An Internal Enterprise Social Media Tool
  48. Labeling Things And Why It’s Ok
  49. Why Paper Publications Will Never Go Away
  50. A Culture Without Culture
  51. To Meme Or Not
  52. Step Away From The Ledge – It’s Going To Be Ok
  53. Help People
  54. Want To Be A High-Buck Consultant?
  55. Positive Growth Through Negative Feedback
  56. Virtualization: For Technology Only?
  57. Build Your Own Brand Armies
  58. Networking For Fun And Profit
  59. Fostering New Communication In The Enterprise
  60. What Social Media Has Taught A Techie Geek
  61. Afraid To Succeed?
  62. Stodgy Or Stale Brand? 10 Sure-Fire Ways To Freshen It Up
  63. Social Media Does Not Equal Marketing Or PR
  64. Fearing Free (Free Rage Fears?)
  65. The Problem With Technically Excellent Solutions
  66. Be Your Own Editor
  67. Thinkers – The Ones To Watch
  68. Getting Back To Where We Came From
  69. Go Where Your Forefathers Couldn’t
  70. Unsung Heros: Headhunters
  71. The Line In The Sand & When You Step Over It
  72. Landing Pages – Why Bother?
  73. Put It On paper
  74. Gen Y & Why They’re different
  75. Engage HR For Change
  76. Friend Counts Do Mean Something
  77. Anatomy Of Twitter
  78. Lack Of New Examples
  79. The More You Share
  80. The Android Dilemma
  81. Is Your Day Job Your Only Gig?
  82. When Self Promotion Goes Too Far
  83. The Joys Of Building Community
  84. Is Social Media Respected In Corporate Environments?
  85. Lets Not Screw Around
  86. Why The Old Tools Don’t Work
  87. Why The Old Tools STILL Work
  88. Corporate Obsolesce
  89. The changing Face Of Social Media
  90. What’s The Big Deal About 4G?
  91. What’s Next For Social Media
  92. The Dark Side Of Social Media, And Why It Sucks
  93. You Will Live Online
  94. Why Tablet-Haters Loose In The End
  95. 10 Billion Apps
  96. Do What Comes Naturally
  97. The Decline Of Social Media
  98. Social Media Posers
  99. Ongoing Standards Wars
  100. Shortsightedness Of Newspaper Publishers

Well, there’s a handful of the post ideas I’ve got in my notes.  That was just from one page of a OneNote notebook of post ideas! Sometimes, you just run out of time or simply never get back to the ideas you had when you thought of the topic.  Whatever the case, I figure somebody might make use of one or two, or ten of these.  Better to set them free than keep ’em in a dusty digital notebook right?

Photo credit: Ideas Notebook By Matthew Allard. Thank you Matthew the use of your photo!
Blog Header Photo credit: JOH_1994 by star5112.  Thanks for a neat picture of post-it notes that captured my thought!

Doing It Wrong

Sometimes you have to write, even if it’s wrong.  I’m not sure if this is right or wrong, but not sharing ideas, thoughts, mistakes, and successes with you surely is wrong.  That’s what I’m hoping to change.

I’ve kept from posting for who knows what reasons.  I know I can’t explain it well.  So I’m not making promises about regular posting and I’m not suggesting any new directions with my blog here.  I do know that I’ve been holding back and that’s the one thing I am going to change.

Will I still blog about corporate social media, or challenges therein?  Sure, but I think, no I know, there are a number of topics that I want to chime in on, but haven’t felt like I should.  I don’t know where or when any of those will pop up, but I do know that it begins now.

Content Creation

wordjam #2 [read and create] by the|G|The amount of time I’ve wasted of the last several months not creating content for this blog is simply silly. When we all have so much to share and so much to say, why do we find it so hard these days to create content for our blogs?

We’re so connected to nearly instantaneous interactions on Twitter and Facebook, or IM & Skype that we forget how groundbreaking a blog actually is. Our nuggets of wisdom have been shortened to 140 characters or less and thrown into the rushing stream of status update consciousness.

Yes, this knowledge is out there, shared, and searchable, but how does it track back to what we represent to other folks?

I keep thinking about these things as I miss the opportunity every week to write content for this blog and share things I’ve learned or that I think would be useful to other people. That’s the frustration I’ve had with Twitter and other status update services or tools.

I know I’m not alone in this, many I talked to at SXSW this past week had similar comments, and we’ve read this online from many others. What I want to do is to get back to a regular blogging schedule where I’m sharing things I’ve learned through the week. There’s so much going on all the time, and it’s a shame not to be able to create content around that knowledge.

At least, this is one of many things that SXSW woke me up to. The rest I’ll save for more posts.

Picture courtesy of the|G|

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