Sometimes technical, sometimes not, never a kitty

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble's new book, "Naked Conversations" arrived today, looking like the bizarre love-child of the USAF's Project Blue Book reports and the exam books at Allegheny College.  Thankfully, they have a real cover aready designed. 

Separated at birth?  Decide for yourselves.

Congratulations, Richard!
Your IQ score is 135

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Facts Curator. This means you are highly intelligent and have picked up an impressive and unique collection of facts and figures over the years. You've got a remarkable vocabulary and exceptional math skills — which puts you in the same class as brainiacs like Bill Gates. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results.

Not to pick nits, but the second sentence should start "You have a remarkable..."

Here's the link: The Classic IQ Test.  You'll have to create a free profile, but that's what GMail is for.

Specifically, to optimize blog entries for search engines, MoreVisibilty advises its business clients using blogs on their site to focus on a very limited set of keywords in any blog updates. The main keywords should appear it the title of the blog entry, and the same keywords should also be mentioned one to three times in the blog entry itself, based on its length.

Read more at http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=16268.

One of the best sources of content ideas are the statistics for your website.  If you run your own website, your host should have a statistics package that gives you summary information, or you can look in the raw log files.  What you want to find are the search engine referrals--the phrases people typed into the search engine that led them to your site.  You want to dig through these search phrases, and find ones that relate to your business.  By focusing a blog posting on these phrases, you'll draw people to that blog post when they search for these terms.  Make sure you link to specific products or categories on your site.

If you remember Chad and Bob talking about "search engine optimization", this is one part of doing that.  The idea is to put content on your site or blog that is interesting to potential customers, and that will be found in the search engines, hopefully turning searchers into customers.

In a previous post (http://aspadvice.com/blogs/rjdudley/archive/2005/05/21/2595.aspx), I showed one way to protect files from direct download by configuring IIS.  In a shared hosting environment, this usually isn't possible, so I'll show another way to protect these files.

First, a little review.  Out of the box, only certain file types are mapped to the ASP.NET ISAPI filter.  These include .aspx, .ascx, .ashx, etc.  If these pages are requested, IIS hands off processing to the ASP.NET filter.  Otherwise, IIS serves the file directly (or hands it off to another ISAPI, as necessary).  There are also a number of file types mapped to ASP.NET that are protected by the HttpForbiddenHandler.  This is an HTTP Handler that prevents direct download of files of the specified type.  If you examine the <httpHandler> section of your machine.config file, you'll see the list.

It would seem that simply adding a file extension to the <httpHandler> section and have the HttpForbiddenHandler prevent its download would be great, but unfortunately, you need to also configure IIS for any new extention you want handled, which is the problem in the first place.

However, there's a little trick we can use.  Let's say you have a file named "protected.pdf" which you wish to prevent direct download of.  You can rename this file to "protected.pdf.resources", and since the .resources extension is already forbidden, users will not be able to download this file directly even if they can guess the file name.  Try it and see.

When it comes time to allow users to download the file, you can use the System.Web.HttpResponse.WriteFile method to send the file to the user.  You may have to clear the response and add a content type to make this all work correctly, as shown:

In addition to all the information I have on my slides, I was making notes all through the breakfast and early session to work into my presentation as well.  I've numbered the slides here, but you'll have to count them on the printed copy:

Slides 9-10: Why blog?
As we heard in the breakfast session, consumers want/need educational material.  A blog is a great place to put some of this information.  You could create a section on your blog for "Care and Handling Tips", and have posts for the different types of flowers and arrangements.

Mike's study also found that the greatest barrier for younger consumers is that they don't know how or what to order.  These consumers probably do know how to read a blog, so adding content to your blog that is very basic could help draw younger customers to your shop.  I can almost guarantee a series of posts about corsages and boutonnieres as prom season approaches would be a great draw, and you could probably sell some different styles merely by highlighting them.

Slide 12: Blogs as a marketing tool
"Customer evangelism" is a fancy new term for "word of mouth".  This is where your loyal (or PO'd) customers talk about you, good or bad.  Be careful what you say or do, as it may be easily broadcast to thousands.  Personal blogs will tip the balance of business to consumer interactions back toward the consumer again.

Slide 13: What to blog about
Do you have e-mail newsletters like Chad, Marty and Tina?  Put copies on your blog!  You can keep the newsletter special by delaying posting for a couple of days.  As I mentioned in a previous slide, there is a growing reluctance for consumers to give out their e-mail address.  Blogs are anonymous, so there will be a certain percentage of consumers who would rather read a blog.  But, if they see great value in your newsletter, they might sign up.  Blogs and e-mail marketing are complementary technologies, and it would be good to do both.

Slide 14: Where to get content
SAF gave us great "Hip givers guides" at breakfast.  You have a number of great ideas in there.  Mike's presentation has some interesting statistics--some you'll want to share, and some you'll want to use to plan content.

I've posted my presentation at http://www.rjdudley.com/ArticlesPresentations/Presentations/tabid/109/Default.aspx.  To navigate the menus, go to www.rjdudley.com, and then Articles & Presentations >> Presentations.

The file is PDF format, so you'll need Acrobat Reader to open it.  Almost everyone has Acrobat Reader, but if you don't, you can get it for free at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.  If you need the slides in a different format, let me know (you can catch me at rich-at-bloomery-dot-com).

Thanks to everyone who attended our session today.  The room looked packed, and I know Chad, Brian, Bob and myself enjoyed sharing what we've done and answering your questions. We had several conference calls and e-mails to make sure we covered a wide variety of topics, and I know we hope everyone got a lot out of the session.

One question I think I failed to have a concrete answer for is "What is a blog", leaving some people feeling I didn't answer it at all.  I'll try and clear it up a little here.

As I mentioned in my presentation, a blog is really several technologies working together--data storage, presentation, and administration.  Data storage is usually a file format called RSS, presentation is usually handled by templates created in XSLT, and administration is the back end where you enter and maintain your blog posts.  Data storage and presentation are what make blogs so difficult to define concretely.

In a web browser, a blog (such as the one you're reading) looks like a web page with a number of short articles on it.  In an aggregator (a program that downloads RSS files so you can read and manage the posts off-line), the blog entries look just like e-mails.  Same exact data, just a different presentation.

This is where things get really cool.  Remember Chad's wedding gallery?  You can find it at http://www.kremp.com/album.asp.  Visit his site, open any gallery, and then open any album.  Look down in the lower right-hand corner of the album.  You'll see a little orange button with a white "RSS" label.  With Chad's gallery software, you can use a blog aggregator to subscribe to any of their albums.  When you first subscribe, you'll download all the photos in the album, each like an individual e-mail.  As they add additional photos, your aggregator will automatically download each one as a separate message. 

Does this mean their photo gallery is a blog?  In a way, yes.  It uses the same data storage (RSS), and templates to manage the presentation.  In a web browser, it looks like a web page; in an aggregator, each photo will be a separate message.  One of the main differences is the administration part.  Chad's gallery is geared toward the uploading of photos, and short comments.  The blogging app I use on this site is geared toward entering a lot of text data, but with some ability to upload photos as well.

The software I use at FloristBlogs.com has both a blog and a photo gallery built in together.  Why not--they're practically the same thing!

I hope this helps clarify a little what a blog is.  Unfortunately, there isn't a concrete definition, and that's just because blogs are so flexible that they can be many things.

I'm testing Kevin Daly's Diarist app on my Axim. I plan to do a live blog demo at SAF from my PDA, if the wi-fi works in the room.

I used the first version a little, but this more recent relese is much improved. Great job and thanks, Kevin!

I'm thrilled to be selected as a Galley Reviewer At Large for "Naked Conversations", a forthcoming book by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble (yes, that Scoble, as if he needs the link).  "Naked Conversations" looks into how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with their customers.  I'm speaking at the Society of American Florists convention in two weeks on using a blog as a marketing tool, so this is very exciting to me.  In addition to this very blog, I also run The Weddings Blog at http://www.bloomeryweddings.com/blog, and my new site Florist Blogs at http://www.floristblogs.com.  I'm stoked, thanks to Shel and Mr. Scoblizer (can I call you that?) for the opportunity.

The date for the Philly VS 2005 / SQL Server 2005 has been changed from December 13th to Nov 17th.  More info as it becomes available.