May 19, 2012

Vendor Bloggers 1: Why Does It Matter?

Are you a vendor blogger or an independent? Can you straddle the line and be both?

What does it mean for the community when independent bloggers go to work for vendors? The Internet has changed the old game of leveraging publications for PR. Can you still trust what you read?

Google Is Heading For A Cliff; What Will They Do?

Google is the most important company to the Internet. Hyberbole? I think not! Without Google, the Internet that we all know and love would be a very different place, as would the business of IT. Along with Microsoft and the supporting community around LAMP, Google is the very foundation of modern computing. But the foundation of Google itself, its ability to rank Internet content and present relevant information to its users, is at risk. What will they do to fix it?

Twitter Loses Control Of Twitter

Yesterday afternoon, Twitter made what they called a “small settings update“ to their eponymous service. Who cares? That title fooled me, too, but let me tell you, everyone cared. Within hours, this change spread across the worlds of bloggers and micro-bloggers alike. And less than 24 hours after announcing the change, Twitter’s founder, Biz Stone, [...]

Ten-Year Trend: Mobility

IT infrastructure is following consumer technology out of the glass house and into the wide world

What is the megatrend of this decade? I suggest that we are witnessing a wholesale shift from information tied to place/device to information mobility. Cloud computing, server virtualization, and even flash memory are all contributors to this massive trend, along with the user-side trends of the post-PDA mobile phone, 3G data, social web services, and connected home.

Introducing Gestalt IT, a New Web Magazine For Enterprise IT Infrastructure Commentary

Gestalt IT is a new publication for the best independent IT commentary

Times are changing in the tech media world, so a core group of independent enterprise IT bloggers have come together to combine our writing into a mega blog or web magazine focused on enterprise IT infrastructure topics like virtualization, networking, and storage: Gestalt IT. The idea is that the best content from the best enterprise IT folks is brought together in one place.

Nine Blog Suggestions from a Grumpy Reader

Attention bloggers! I've got a whole disk of whoopass aimed at your head!

I subscribe to hundreds of RSS feeds, and read them religiously. According to Google Reader’s statistics, I read about 200 items per day out of over 700 posted to all of those feeds. As you might expect, I’ve got some strong feelings about blogs and news sites after reading that much. So this message is aimed at all of you content providers out there: Fix your darn blogs and feeds so I won’t be so grumpy anymore!

Measuring the Importance of Google’s First Page

Google's first page accounts for more than 2/3 of my web site traffic!

I’m not blogging to get traffic; I’m blogging because I have something to say. But, being a curious person, I do measure my blog traffic, and I’ve become interested in how the search engine optimization gurus ply their trade. So a recent tip on using a custom Google Analytics filter to determine “front page” placement on that search engine piqued my curiosity.

The Register Gulps Down Blocks and Files

News today is that powerhouse IT publisher, The Register, has snapped up storage industry reporting up and comer, Blocks and Files. Included in the deal is amusing editor/writer Chris Mellor and the back catalog of editorials. Left to rot are the sponsored (?) advertorials and regurgitated press releases. B&F will become a new storage-focused Register [...]

Jargon Watch: EMC 3D = Data Deduplication

Watching the announcements coming out of EMC World today, one bit of jargon stuck out at me:  The EMC bloggers are starting to refer to “data deduplication” as “3D”.  I had never heard this terminology before yesterday, but the EMCers are all using it, so it must be a popular term inside that company.  So [...]