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I received the email confirmation that I was accepted by Blogburst. Blogburst is a publishing/syndication service. They syndicate many blogs to newspapers across the US such as The Washington Post and the Houston Chronicle. When a post is used, you get a byline added in the publication. So I’m asking everyone for help. Send me post topics. Some of the upcoming posts I’m working on: Building traffic for your Blog Opinions on downloading music Staying organized with MS Outlook Do you have a Terabyte at home? So what technology do you want to know about? Click on the Comment link below and let me know.

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I have a number of tools that I have used over the last year to read my RSS feeds. The one that I am using now is and online tool called Bloglines. I like it for a number of reasons:

• I can read my feeds on any computer without installing software.
• It keeps track of the articles I have already read and only shows me new ones.
• It has a neat little tool to show others what my feeds are. (see my Blogroll on the bottom right)
• It lets me read all of my feeds in one newspaper style page
• 

So give it a try.

See the flags above. These are not there for decoration. Each one will translate this blog into that flag’s language. Choose from French, German, Italian, Portugese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean or Chinese. This makes it simple for anyone in the world to be able to read your blog.

There have been several articles written about Web 2.0. Many have asked how can there be a Web 2.0 if there was no Web 1.0. Shel Israel (co-author of Naked Conversations) asks the question. “Is it already too late to rename Web 2.0?” This post is what I believe Web 2.0 is about. I believe it is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Web 2.0 is comprise of 2 elements. Social Networking and a Rich User Experience. This post will cover Social Networking. Social Networking really got attention with the creation of the Friendster network. This started a community where entry was by invitation only. It grew quickly and today has posted more than 27 million members. Friendster-like sites began to grow. LinkedIn, was the professional or job hunting site. Recently Facebook, for the students. Of course the most well known site is My Space. All of these site share the same thing. Like people, connected via the web, exchanging thoughts, files, photos, music…etc. This social networking phenomena was continued with Wikipedia. Imagine walking into Encylopedia Brittanica and telling them you didn’t need them anymore. That you were going to start a web site, that would allow everyone to add or edit information and create a better, bigger online encyclopedia. Completely moderated and edited by volunteers from around the world. I’m sure the laughter would have been deafening. But here we are today, with over 1 million articles in English, (there are 36 other languages). Anything you need to know is there. If you know more about the topic, then go ahead and add it. As the social networking spread Blogs were created. Blogs have become more than just daily journals. CEO’s are blogging at our company SYNNEX, Intel, General Motors or the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. They give insight into the people that was not previously available to the press.

 In the last 6 months, social networking has really taken off. A photo sharing service, was nothing new on the Web until Flickr came along. They took social to a whole new meaning. You could share your photos with people you knew, or the World Wide Web! They also started adding tags. You could use these tags to organize your pictures. Then you could go out and use these tags to search the archives to see if anyone else had the same tags, and what their pictures were. Now take that same concept above and apply it to Bookmarks and you have del.icio.us. Post your bookmarks, then pick one and see what other people have book marked with the same topic. See what’s popular. And again, tag to your heart’s content. In less than a year one site had sprung up as the people’s news. That is Digg. Taking a page from Wikipedia, Digg lists news stories posted by users. Then users “digg” the story. The more Diggs then a higher rating is given on the site. At the end of the week the hosts post a Podcast on the top stories. Every one of these sites has one thing in common. The user. The user is creating the content and deciding what is right and wrong. But not a single user can change the content for long if it is not correct. Someone said about open source programming code “with many eyes, the bugs are shallow”.

I have to admit. When our CEO Jim Estill first told us about his blog, I think the word I heard the most was “eccentric”. To those people that said this simply shows that we didn’t understand blogs. (“mea culpa” or in the present day vernacular, “my bad”). I consider myself a pretty well informed person. Especially when it comes to technology. I had heard about blogs, and had passed them off a daily journals. That is about 10% of what a blog is.

I had come across blogs as a way of finding out the latest trends and gadgets. I incorporated these into my daily RSS feeds. I came across Robert Scoble’s blog, before the release of his book. (one of the authors of Naked Conversations).Then Jim loaned me a book called Naked Conversations. I’m only about half way through it, but it is fascinating. CEO’s from GM, Intel and several other companies use them. Some companies have become companies because of the power of blogs. From a tailor on Saville Row to a software company.

Blogs are the new marketing, instant messenger and PR department all rolled into one. But without the corporate “stuffiness”. One of my favorite quotes in the book is “blogs should represent the unedited voice of the individual. It’s not an organization speaking. It’s informal. It’s ‘Come as you are. We’re just folks here. We’re not concerned with typos or grammar errors’, which reminds readers that it’s just a human speaking.”

My first post.I decided to create this Blog as I find myself being asked about Technology. I have always been a bit of a ‘geek’. Some may dispute that the “bit of a” part is not necessary. I have been involved in technology for 25+ years. It is something I am passionate about; and someone told me that if you are going to start a Blog, make it about something you are passionate about. This Blog will cover both hardware and software. The good, the bad and the “what were they thinking?”What are the things that truly help us in our day to day lives; and what the the things that just make us go Wow!