Rajesh Jain's - All in a day's work

Rajesh writes

I post items to my weblog every morning (sometime between 7 and 9 am India time). I tend to make all the posts in one sitting. Besides the Tech Talk daily column, I do about 5-6 posts on weekdays with 2-3 on the weekend. It takes about 30-45 minutes to do this. This is because I am also reading from the 150+ feeds that I have subscribed in my Info Aggregator, and scan a few sites that do not yet have RSS feeds. It is a routine that only gets disrupted when I have to travel or have an early morning meeting. In that case, I will try and prepare the posts the previous evening and just flip the status from “draft” to “publish” in MovableType, the software I use for blogging.

In most cases, I am doing the post without any comment. I take items that I think are interesting, abstract a part of the text from the original story and link to it from the blog. This has a dual purpose: it helps me find interesting items easily later, and I serve as a human filter (or aggregator) for a small part of the content web. At times, I will add a small commentary to the post, adding my unique perspective on what I’ve read. Otherwise, most of the time, my fresh thinking comes in the form of the Tech Talk series that I write. The Tech Talks give me a longer format to build on ideas others or I may have explored in brief blog posts earlier. I typically write the Tech Talks on Sunday mornings – it takes about 2-3 hours to write the five columns (each is about 500 words) for the week.

For me, the blog has become an ideas refinery. I learn a lot from reading what others write. Much like the open-source software community shares and gives back, the blog is my way of contributing back into the ideas community in my own small way by not just taking the time (a precious resource for all of us) to link and write, but also by discussing the ideas that are uppermost in my mind. The blog is a mirror of my mind. It reflects my latest thinking, built on the minds of many others. The comments I receive from many of the readers (and other bloggers) helps in real-time refining and getting the best out from a community smarter than any single individual.

Perhaps, the most important part of blogging is making the time. There are days when I found it difficult given the things that are always needing to be done in our action-packed lives. But, as with everything else, it is a matter of prioritisation. The blog has now become part of work for me because this is the way I think, enhance my thinking and get feedback from perceptive readers. By fixing a time and place for it (early morning, from home), it just becomes that much easier. During the day, when I read something interesting or think about an idea which could be posted, I will either make a note of it in my diary or if I am on the computer, create a “draft” post which reminds me about it the next time I sit for blogging.

Every Web-Site Ought To Be A Blog

Dana blankenhorn writes that Moore's Lore: Every Site Ought To Be A Blog

Every Site Ought To Be A Blog

Every site ought to be a blog. (This illustration came from a blog.)

A blog defines a template with dynamic content in the center and static content along the sides.

Most blogs are built on a database metaphor, to make searching for items easy. Why couldn't those be product searches?

The best blog packages are also scalable. They enable community as a basic function.

So why do we still see so many static home pages?

Both corporate and political sites still use static home pages and reserve the "blog" for an inside page. As a result, as in the Dean campaign, people simply bypass the home page and bookmark the blog.

What people most want in pages they bookmark is dynamic content. They want to know that each time they hit the page there will be something new to see. Blogging software enables just that.

The blogging metaphor also makes it simple to build a site that's dynamic, scalable and easy-to-maintain.

So why aren't big companies doing this?

I blame the media. You only need to look at Kathleen Pender's recent blogging article, or the piece of tripe I saw when I opened my local fishwrap this morning, about a 25-year old kid who dubs himself the "amateur gourmet" and photographs the aftermath of his meals.

That's what people think of when they think of blogging. They think of amateurs, and sites that aren't serious.

But that's just prejudice. And if you take what you read in the newspapers as gospel then you deserve to be disappointed.

So dump your current site. Do a redesign. Get Movable Type, or Radio, and create a dynamic, scalable, database-driven, easy-to-update site in minutes.

You'll be glad you did.

Welcome !!!

This is yet another brave attempt to bring more discipline into my life. Hope it helps me.