Short Blogging Break For The Holidays

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Tuesday, or whatever). I am back to work already, and have several great projects lined up for the new year, but in the interest of my sanity and humanity, I’m going to take a brief break from blogging (say that 5 times fast!) until after the start of 2008, so that I can focus on my work, and devote enough time and attention to my girlfriend and, well, to Rock Band, which my roommate should be bringing back to the apartment any day now.

Have a healthy, happy, and crazy New Year, and get ready for a sure-to-be-insane 2008!

Free Blogger Template: Restoration

Adding to the growing family of free blogger blog templates offered here on Frivmo, is a sleek one-column template called Restoration.


Here are some instructions:

Please feel free to download the XML file (which you’ll then use on your blog by unzipping it to your desktop, and then from your Blogger dashboard click on Template > Edit HTML > Browse for the file on your computer > Upload), share it with your friends, and edit it to your heart’s content. All I ask is that you keep the little credit at the bottom, and if you’re feeling generous, link back to this post.

Free Blogger Template: The Second Thing

(Click to view a screenshot of the entire template.)

In the holiday spirit, I will be making available as many free Blogger blog templates as humanly possible over the next several weeks, starting with a simple and elegant one, called The Second Thing. Please feel free to download the XML file (which you’ll then use on your blog by unzipping it to your desktop, and then from your Blogger dashboard click on Template > Edit HTML > Browse for the file on your computer > Upload), share it with your friends, and edit it to your heart’s content. All I ask is that you keep the little credit at the bottom, and if you’re feeling generous, link back to this post.

If there’s a good response to this, I’ll continue making these free Blogger blog templates available in the months to come.

Happy Blogging! And Happy Hanukkah to those whose celebration begins tonight.



Questions? Comments? Problems?

Leave a comment below or email me.

5 Reasons Your Business Should Blog

You should blog. Yes, you should. Especially if you have a business. There really aren’t any reasons not to, but here are some less-common reasons why it’s an absolute must.

1. Everybody else is doing it.
   Sometimes the common wisdom is, in fact, wise. What do you think will happen if your competitor has a strong, personable web presence and your company has only a static site that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the great Bubble-popping of 1999? Well, nothing. And that’s exactly what you should be afraid of. Businesses without a big footprint on the web aren’t likely to hang around much longer, in this world where phonebooks and Chambers of Commerce and even brick & mortar storefronts are but artifacts of an age long gone.
   


2. Your product or service will improve.
   Blogging actively is a great way to get better at what you do because it forces you to think laterally about what your company has to offer. You’ll find yourself doing research on topics related to your field, reading the websites and blogs of your competitors and learning from their mistakes (as well as their successes), and approaching your offerings with new insight gained from communicating with your customers on a regular basis.


3. You’ll like work more.
   Every single time you post on your blog you’ll renew your commitment to the company, strengthening your investment in the business by approaching it from a deeply personal level. Meeting and debating with others in the industry, and sustaining relationships with your company’s biggest fans and evangelists, makes doing work less about the nitty-gritty businessy stuff, and much more about people and fostering connections.


4. Blogging is (practically) free.
   Blogging is a wonderfully cheap and easy way to “keep your website updated” without having to call up your web designer every time you want to announce a special holiday promotion. If you’ve ever hired someone to design your site, you probably know that asking the designer to make your site easy to update alone adds a lot of development time and cost to the project. For most small business and individuals, paying for a custom Content Management System is totally unnecessary. Even using a simple, “free,” alternative CMS like Drupal or Wordpress adds substantially to the initial cost, and offers more functionality than most first-time site owners are likely to use.
   
   If you’re at all like most small business folks, you have your plate full-to-overflowing without needing to learn the ins and outs of how to update your webpage, and certainly don’t have the time for it. Quite often, for folks with new businesses, all that’s necessary and practical is a set of static content pages outlining your product and your company and a frequently-updated blog where you can announce deals and new products, create some keyword-filled (but always relevant and helpful!) articles, and connect with your customers. And if you opt for just a blog, you don’t even have to pay monthly web hosting costs. Just be sure you hire a designer (Shameless plug: I’m available.) to get things looking professional. Few things will dampen your impact more than using a default template. Even better, if you get a good designer who cares about web standards, he or she will make it super easy to extend the scope of your website with little effort as your business grows and the money starts flowing in.
   


5. Blogging will keep you honest.
   It’s all too easy to slip into the evil syntax of marketing-speak on your website and in your printed materials and this is precisely the wrong thing to do if you’re operating a small business. Nothing turns away customers faster than not-so-well-placed, and likely dishonest, “Number One In America Blue Ribbon Ultra Edition Highest ROI Billions Served Daily Bigger Than Amazon.” Having a blog helps you avoid these demons, because your customers and competitors and friends in the industry will no doubt call you out in the comments or on their own sites anytime you resort to such puffery. After a bit of time and effort and honesty, you’ll find the perfect blend of personality, approachability, and authority in your blogging voice.

Tag Clouds: Still Cool?

Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s no denying that tag clouds have played a big part in the design of a lot of so-called Web 2.0 sites. Today, Smashing Magazine devotes another of its lengthy posts to this loved/loathed navigational element, and it’s worth a look, whether you’re in the mood for good examples or some painfully bad examples.

It seems to me that tag clouds as a design trend have been true to their name, especially susceptible to subtle changes in the weather, and I forecast clearer and clearer skies as the months roll by. Done right, tag clouds offer a unique and sweet alternative for navigating the increasingly-hard-to-categorize content in the miscellaneous and meta Web, and they can definitely look cool. But far too frequently they are an usable mess of word soup, used as an excuse for not considering which information is most relevant to readers, and how to best optimize the site so they can find what they are looking for.

That said, if you’re a Blogger user, I’ve got a super-simple tutorial for adding a tag cloud to your blog that was written back when this site had a tag cloud of its own.

Check it out at the link below:

• How To Make An Awesome Tag Cloud

There are some nice tag cloud generators linked to on Smashing Magazine, too.

Posting About Posting About Not Posting: This Is Far Too Meta Even For Me!

Because I don’t really have time to post (!), I’m going to point you to a post about not posting about how you aren’t posting. It’s from a pretty great blog by Matt Thommes (self-proclaimed “developer and alternative thinker”), and well worth a read if you didn’t see it last month.

Instead of posting about your lame life and why you can’t post, he recommends that you...

...make it worthwhile. God knows you haven't been sitting in a box thinking about nothing. There has to be something that caught your attention during your posting drought:

Rather than posting, I've been brainstorming new ideas about using the internet to thwart global warming! Here's what I think...

So there it is - I’m off trying to save the world. That’s why this is all I have time to write today. Being a superhero in the Age of Information is hard work!

Thanks for the great excuse, Matt!

Next Monday Is Blog Action Day

Monday, October 15, is Blog Action Day, a day when thousands of bloggers worldwide unite around a single topic - the environment. It’s a great idea, and I’m excited about posting. If you’ve got a blog, it’d be awesome if you signed up and let me know. I’ll try to link to a ton of other great posts on Blog Action Day, so if you want to be included in my list, just drop a comment with a link, and, if you already know, some info about your upcoming post.

Here’s the official Blog Action Day promo video:

Happy Labor Day!

Your gift: a rerun of a classic Frivolous Motion rant about (what else?) pregnancy. Enjoy your day off if you’re off, and your non-day-off if you’re not.

Pregnancy is a Disease (24 April 2007)

Pregnancy is a disease. A sexually transmitted one. More specifically, it is an affliction whereupon a parasitic and potentially deadly creature is permitted to grow inside a woman’s body. She is, more often than not, a willing host to this parasite known as a fetus, but the damage it causes her is real and irreversible.

Her weight increases substantially as the fetus siphons vitamins and minerals from the food she consumes in order to increase its own mass at an alarming rate. Because she is unable to get the full nutritional content of her diet, she becomes fatigued, weak. People give up their subway seats for her because they fear, at any moment, she may fall to the ground. She becomes nauseous. Vomits daily. Sweats. Aches. Has odd, and often disgusting cravings. She becomes irritable. Overly sentimental. Her breasts swell and become tender and start to produce a milky substance. She loses control of her body. Her periods cease and she can no longer ovulate. She goes into a shopping frenzy, and her credit is destroyed. All her savings are used up in these thoughtless sprees. She becomes aware of another being inside of her as the parasitic fetus continues to grow. Trips to the hospital confirm its development, but nothing is done to stop it from continuing to feed. She allows it to consume her body from within, using a tube it has attached to her insides. After many months, the fetus begins to move around so weightily that she can feel it, and she shares this fact with others, who humor her politely.

Later, the fetus sets into action a horrible hours-long sequence of coordinated attacks on her body which will lead to its violent expulsion through her vaginal cavity, forcing it to expand many times its normal size in the process. There is blood, she screams, and a whole host of bodily fluids are expelled. The pain she endures is horrendous, and many women (to this day - even with medical advances) do not make it through alive.

After this horrific exit, she continues - astoundingly! - to allow this creature to live off of her. She offers up her breasts, and her every waking hour, in this sickening, saddening example of the Stockholm Syndrome. For years and years she plays willing host to this parasitic being, often to the dismay of her husband or “partner,” who, as one-half of the reason his wife became infected, must acquiesce to the new, demanding lifestyle she has chosen in this moment of extreme psycho-biological distress. The financial burden placed on the couple is debilitating. They bear it until their death.

I’m just saying.

Happy Birthday Frivolous Motion

One year ago today, I started writing this little blog. Five-hundred-fifty-something posts later, it’s still going. Allow me a moment of self-indulgence to say, “Wow.”

Thanks for sticking around (or for just joining, if you’re new!). It’s been quite an experience getting this far, and I really look forward to Year Two.

It’s nearly impossible to believe that only a year ago Facebook was still this little social networking site with a controversial new feature called a “News Feed.” How far they’ve come.

How far we’ve all come.

2008 is going to blow my mind.

WARNING: Big Layout Changes Underfoot

Watch out for falling DIVs. Frivolous Motion will be back to normal by the end of the day. For now, subscribe to the feed for updates and close your eyes.

Thanks!

500 Posts!

Well, this is actually number 501, but the fact remains that Frivolous Motion (as in the blog, not me - my name is Kevin) has reached a milestone. And we’re not far from another, bigger milestone: the one year anniversary of Frivolous Motion.

I’m pretty excited about this, and really grateful that I have a bunch of extremely cool readers from all over the world. It’s you guys that make doing this worthwhile. In the next couple months, I hope to add some new features, and I am working on a free e-book of some of the highlights of the past year plus some new insights that have never been seen. Which reminds me - if you have a favorite post that you’d like to see in all its formatted PDF glory, leave a comment here, and I will strongly consider sticking it in.

Thanks for sticking around. There’s much more to come!

If you haven’t already, now just might be a great time to go back to the beginning.

Freakonomics Blog Kinda Sucks These Days

Back in May, Freakonomics Blog announced they were getting an editor for the first time - a woman named Melissa Lafsky - and she has since joined the team of Levitt and Dubner in posting on the site throughout the week. I recognize the reasons why they added her to the team (they probably have a book they want to spend time on, for one), but I can’t help but think the quality of the blog has suffered since her arrival.

The quantity of posts seems to be up, but a large part of this is due to completely worthless and fit-for-your-grandmother’s-blog posts about some random holiday of the day called “And Today Is...” I don’t read Freakonomics to know that yesterday was Different Colored Eyes Day, nor do I in the least care. It’s entirely possible that the rest of their posts remain as quality as one would expect, but I can’t take them seriously anymore. I’m certain that Lafsky adds a lot more to the Freakonomics team than these trite articles, and it’s a pity that they’re the only ones to which her name gets attached, but it pulls the quality of the blog down so far that it is difficult to keep reading.

Goodness knows I’m not arguing against covering a multitude of topics (one glance at the tag cloud above tells you this is something I am quite guilty - and quite proud - of). What I am saying, however, is that if you add a feature to your site, you need to make sure it’s worthwhile to your readers. This one fails that test.

Besides, what are they going to do next year? Rerun blog posts? We’re in more trouble than I thought!

Making The Case For Twitter, More Or Less

Copyblogger puts it quite persuasively (if unintentionally):

On November 19th, 1863, popular orator Edward Everett gave a two-hour speech that nobody remembers. Following Everett, President Abraham Lincoln stood up, delivered 269 words now known as the Gettysburg Address, and sat down. Lincoln’s two-minute speech is regarded as one of the greatest in American history.

Vaspers the Grate continues to drive this point home, as well.

My mom always said, “If you can’t say it in 140 characters or less (fewer...let’s talk supermarket checkout lines), it is probably not worth saying.”

Perhaps that wasn’t my mom. But she’s into the simplicity thing, too. Especially when it comes to food. Mince words. Eat chicken.

Brevity(ness) is next to Godliness.

This post is too long already.

Vacation: Posting Will Be Light

I am on vacation at the moment, so posting here on Frivolous Motion will be a bit infrequent (or non-existent) for the next several days, giving my American audiences time to enjoy Independence day free of guilt for missing a ground-breaking post, and my non-American audiences time to rejoice for being awesome.

In the meantime, there tons of great stuff in the archives. Just click a word at random in the tag cloud above and see where it takes you - could be somewhere unexpected and magical.

By Thursday things ought to be back on track.

Have a wonderful, iPhone-filled weekend!

Future Of Online Advertising: Day Two

Back at the Future of Online Advertising conference organized by the great folks at Carson Systems. I’ve got a Venti Orange Mocha Frappuccino in hand to get my veins pumped full of caffeine and sugar, and was just delighted to see a comment from Lisa of Carson Systems on my rant from last evening about 10 things that sucked at the conference yesterday. I plan to go talk with her today about a couple of my concerns (the few of my points that are actually relevant) and will report back here with some details of that conversation.

I really appreciate her taking the time to comment and I look forward to meeting her. This all just goes to show how dedicated these people are to their conference and company, and I’m pleased that they recognize that the single best way to diffuse negative comments is to address them head-on, to comment candidly, to open up discussion, and make bloggers like me feel guilty for being jerks.

Businesses - are you taking notes?

10 Things To Consider Blogging About When You Don’t Know What You Should Blog About

1. Your cat
2. My cat (Hint: it is an invisible cat)
3. Hypoallergenic cats
4. Schrödinger's cat
5. 10 Ways to Cook a Cat
6. Cat Power (Better than Girl Power)
   
7. Catacombs (Not the fur-care product)
   
8. Why Twittering Your Cat Is Bad Form
9. One Zillion Ways Dogs Are Better Than Cats
10. Lolcats (Which is the one I’ve chosen- see below)
    

New Comment Policy

Dearest Readers,

I’ve decided to change up the way comments work on Frivolous Motion in an attempt to make things easier and more awesome.

First, comments are open to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Leave your (real or fake) name, leave your site, or sign in with your Google/Blogger ID to have your name link back to your profile.

I don’t believe in censorship except under the most extreme circumstances, so if I delete your comment there’s either something seriously wrong, or I made a mistake (in which case a quick email to me will usually fix things). The only comments I disallow are blatant Spam. Otherwise, I’m inclined to believe that open discussion is the best choice. But what am I saying? You Frivolous Motion readers don’t need me to tell you what’s allowed! You guys are awesome!

All comments from here on out have the NoFollow attribute removed, which means that links within them (and links to your profile/website) will be followed by the Search Bots. Think of it as thanks for contributing to the discussion. And as an incentive to comment more - especially if you’ve not done so before!

I got rid of the word verification, because in my experience it was too finnicky and unreliable, and I hated having to type the word in several times (even when commenting on my own blog!).

To balance things out, I have added comment moderation, which means it’ll take a little bit for your comment to appear. Basically, I’ll receive an email when you submit a comment, and as soon as I have a chance to approve it (which will usually be immediately - I try to keep on top of things), your comment will appear on the site. I might turn this off from time to time as a test, but we’ll see.

Like any system, it’s bound not to be perfect, but I think it will be a nice improvement over what came before. Let me know if you run into any problems or have some suggestions (by email or in the comments!).

Thanks for reading, and thanks for being such an important piece of Frivolous Motion.

~Kevin

How To Make An Awesome Tag Cloud!

I get a lot of emails asking me about the giant tag cloud hanging out at the top of my site. So many, in fact, that I thought it’d be a great idea to make a post out of it, as a bit of a mini-tutorial. So, without further ado, here’s how to get an awesome tag cloud in the New Blogger (formerly Blogger Beta).

(UPDATE 24/08/2007: Obviously there’s no tag cloud up there anymore, since I redesigned the site. I’ve posted a screenshot below of what it used to look like. Click it for a larger version.)



Okay, back to the regularly scheduled tutorial.

First start a new blog in Blogger. Got one? Cool.

Now, navigate in Blogger to Template > Page Elements (clicking Layout from the Dashboard will get you there, too). You’re looking for the screen that says “Add and Arrange Page Elements.” Now, in the sidebar of this representation of your blog, click “Add a Page Element.” You’ll get a nice pop-up with a ton of options. Click Labels, cause that’s what you want to add, after all. Keep it alphabetical, change the name if you feel like it, and click “Save Changes.”

Save your template.

Now click over to “Edit HTML.” Definitely a good idea to “Download Full Template” here, to be safe, before you start editing the code. I’ll wait.

Backed up? Good. Moving on.

Search through your code for a line that looks exactly like this:

<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'/>

The “title” attribute might be different if you changed it in the step above. Otherwise, this is the line you’re looking for.

Copy all of this code below.

<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>
<b:includable id='main'>

<div class='widget-content'>
<div id='LabelDisplay'>
</div>
</div>

<script language='javascript' type='text/javascript'>
function zoomStyle() {
var max = 0;
var min = 10000;
<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
if (<data:label.count/> &gt; max)
  max = <data:label.count/>;
if (<data:label.count/> &lt; min)
min = <data:label.count/>;
</b:loop>
var display = &quot;";
<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
var delta = <data:label.count/> - min;
var size = 80 + (delta * 100) / (max - min);
display = display + &quot;<span style='font-size:" + size + "%'><a expr:href='data:label.url + "?max-results=100"' style='text-decoration:none;'><data:label.name/></a></span> &quot;;
</b:loop>

obj = document.getElementById(&#39;LabelDisplay&#39;);
obj.innerHTML = display;
}


zoomStyle();
</script>

<b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

And paste it over (on top of, instead of, replacing!) the line you found. Be very careful not to overwrite the </b:section> that will most likely follow it in your template code.

Click preview, and if you’ve done everything properly, you’ll have a sweet tag cloud with links of various sizes based on frequency of occurrence (if your blog is brand new, you’ll need to post in it first to see the code at work).

If you don’t want it in your sidebar, go back to the Page Elements page, and move the widget around to wherever you like (different templates set different limits on this, which can be subverted, but that’s beyond the scope of this tutorial - email me if you want to get hardcore).

Enjoy! Get tagging! Post your results in the comments for all to see!

(Note: The code up there is a modified version of the Multi-style labels widget written up on Hackosphere. Credit where it’s due.)

Why I Blog

I have been writing for Frivolous Motion every weekday (and some weekends) since September of 2006, now over eight months and nearly 400 posts, and as I sit here this morning, about to fly “home” to Las Vegas, I can’t help but think, “Whoa.” To me, that’s a long time. But I can easily see myself doing this for years to come. Or something like this. Like Twitter, or Tumblr, or YouTube, or podcasting, or something so new and innovative I don’t even know about it yet. Something, though.

But why? Is it delusions of grandeur? Do I see myself becoming the next big superstar of the Web? Do I think I will influence presidential elections? Get a huge advertising deal with a hot tech company? Nah. Do I think thousands of people will start emailing me to do design work for them based on my posts about iTunes and controversies sweeping the blogosphere? No again.

I blog because I believe in connection, and I believe in the power of technology to help make and highlight the connections that exist infinitely in life. I am far from the camp of skeptics who think the internet and other technologies are pulling people apart, distracting them from making “real, meaningful connections” with others. These individuals just haven’t discovered how to make it work for them, in the same way that not every person who attends a frat party or a concert is able to connect with other people there (yeah, I used to be that guy from time to time).

There are connections to be made everywhere, and an infinite number of ways to make them. The internet allows you to touch and be touched by individuals who, in a pre-Web age, you might never have known. In the shrinking of the world enabled by cyberspace, we experience life as one great piece of fabric; each one of us making tiny ripples in the sheet that have a profound (if at times unfelt) effect on the global equilibrium. In day to day (non-networked) life, it’s much harder to see that every action, every decision, changes the world. With the internet, you can feel it just a little bit more, and that is hugely important. Your tiny blog posts about tiny things significant to you are discovered and read by individuals all over the world. And in this act of reading, two lives, two histories, two experiences intertwine in the present. Connection is made. Life is shared. A relationship, previously hidden, becomes visible. Becomes felt.

Many of my “real life” friends and family members read this blog, and as a result, they have a much stronger idea about the things that I care about then they might get seeing me from time to time. This blog has strengthened my relationships with those close to me, and built relationships with those far away, many of whom I’ve never met (and may not ever meet).

I believe, and I want to believe that technology has a human soul. I believe it isn’t cold and distant by nature, and see it getting warmer and more organic every day. I can’t even begin to imagine what the next ten years will bring, but I know (and I have faith) that it will be nothing short of astounding. Call me a crazy ignorant optimist, but I trust that humanity will learn to use these tools appropriately and conscientiously for its own sake.

I blog because I like to write, and because there are too many interesting things happening in the world not to try to make sense of. If my sense-making makes sense for another person anywhere, I’d consider this whole endeavor to be a success.

There is no difference between blogging, iChatting, or forum-posting and the Real World. It is all the same, and the sooner we see this, the greater our perspective will be. As long as we persist in making arbitrary distinctions, as long as we continue to treat technology as some alien presence that somehow magically exists outside of what is real, we will be unable to accept and understand it and use it wisely. Everything is real. Everything is natural. Everything is true.

The world is changing. And you are changing it.

That, above all, is what this blog is about. That is why I’m doing this.

Thanks for reading. Thank you very much.


(Note: No new stuff until Monday due to my trip home. Have a wonderful Friday, and a great weekend.)

You Know You Run A Failed Tech Blog When...

• More people trash your blog on Digg than visit in a normal week
• 10% of your readers have dial-up connections
• Your most commented posts have something to do with pregnancy
• You have any of the following in you tag cloud: celebrity, animals, cute, fashion, holiday, language, philosophy, shakespeare, vampires
• You’ve written about Sanjaya but not Linux
• “wooster group hamlet” is the most-Googled phrase leading to your site
• The phrase “macro-clitoris” appears anywhere on your site
  
• Your most loyal readers are women
• Your most-used tag is “art” - even beating out “apple”
• Your most-viewed post of all time is about music
• You get linked to from Steve Rubel before Robert Scoble
• Your mom reads your blog
• EDIT: How could I forget America’s Next Top Model?
  
• You’re happy about all of the above