What’s a Blog?

Well, you’re on a blog! This site is part of the WordPress.com blogger site. A blog is an online diary or journal that anyone can keep about any topic. There are blogs about hobbies and TV shows, politics and books, the Supreme Court of the United States and Jessica Simpson. Anything and everything. Some large blogs have thousands of people read their site every day, but most have just a handful. If you have a passion about a topic, blogs are a great way to plug into a community of people with the same interest who want to share their views and share information with like-minded folks. Most blogs have a column called a blog roll that lists links to other blogs that the blogger likes. This is one of the key differences between blogging and broadcast media. Bloggers hope and expect that visits will click and visit other sites. Broadcast media wants to keep you captive – an unrealistic goal in this connected age.

Here are some popular blogs (as reported by Technorati, a blog tracking site, really there are sites that track these things!):

Boing Boing

Daily Kos

Huffington Post

Meetups

Meetup is a website that helps people who live near one another, but who don’t necessarily know one another, organize meetings around a certain topic. People are meeting up around the country who want to talk about knitting or their dogs or Elvis. The Meetup site burst into public consciousness during 2004 as the primary tool that the Dean for President campaign used to organize local Dean enthusiasts to meet and plan local campaign activities.

The great thing about meetups is that you don’t have to create anything online to participate. You can just type in, say, moms and your zip code and joint a group that meets at 10 o’clock Tuesday mornings at a local Starbucks. I was going to list steps for creating your own meetup on Meetup.com, but you have to pay at least $12 a month to organize your own meet up. There is another site called Zanby that does the same thing and is free. Why would Zamby be free if Meetup is making money? Well, that’s the beauty of Internet true believers, their site says that “Zanby was created on the premise that community organizing and meeting sites, by their very grassroots nature, should be available to all, not just those who can afford the fees.” How they’re going to stay afloat, well, not my head, not my headache! It’s easy to use and free, so let’s use it! Here are the steps for creating your own group on Zanby:

1. Register as a new user.
2. Search for a group by you by zip code or interest area.
3. If there isn’t one that you want to join, you can create your own group

Warning: I have to admit that I have tried several times to register at Zanby to create my own group with no success. I will keep trying and if it doesn’t work soon will take down this post.

Calendaring

When did the word calendar become a verb? When it become something that a group of people need to do togehter — and something that is too often time consuming and frustrating. Whether you’re trying to organize a group of parents in your neighborhood to meet about the school curriculum or a group of environmental advocates across the country to organize Earth Day activities, you can share a joint calendar on Yahoo! or Google to block out times that aren’t good for people, and pick times to talk or meet. They’re both free. One person becomes the administrator who invites other people to view the calendar (or on Yahoo, you activate the sharing function)

Warning: Web-based calendars are only as good as the last entry. I have had trouble sustaining the energy that to keep them updated and useful to the group. It may be that it works best for short-term activities, like planning a special event or a political campaign that is finite. I’d be curious to hear what other people have experienced in this regard.

Free Email

I thought I’d start a list of places where you can get free email accounts. Of course, there is usually a string attached in that your email will come with advertising, but, hey, free is free, right? So, here are a few and here is an article telling you more about each.

1. Gmail -
2. Hotmail
3. Yahoo! Mail
4. AIM Mail (Aol’s free email service)

You’re Having a Party and I Wasn’t Invited???

Evite is a very simple, easy and free way to send out a lot of party invitations. To get started, go to http://www.evite.com/.

1. Like Meeting Wizard, you can choose to get started with your invite, or you can register to log in which you’ll have to do eventually to send your invitations out.
2. In the upper right corner is a “Log In” button. Click there to register for the site. Note: It’s important that you use a real email address to register because you will have to verify that you are you from your email to finalize your registration.
3. After you have registered, click on “Send Free Evites. Once you’ve selected a theme and clicked “Get Started” you get into the guts of Evite.
4. It can look a little confusing one you’re “in”. But basically, you fill out your day and time, your location, the email addresses of people you want to invite (you can create your own address book on Evite if you are planning to use it often), a message to attendees and an email message.
5. There are a couple of new features of Evite, which has been getting easier to use over the past year (although filled with lots of advertisements to keep it free, oh well.) One is that you can create a potluck by posting a list of things you want people to bring and they can sign up for them. You can also poll guests about the event. You could ask questions like do you want to swim before or after the bbq, or should we try to eat outside or in? Fun ways to get people involved in planning the party.
6. At the bottom of the page where you are outining the specifics of your Evite is an option to preveiw the email that goes out to your invitees asking them to click on Evite to view the invitation. It’s important that you click on the preview to make sure everything is the way you want it — dont’ want to have to send out corrections to 50 people, but also to personalize the message.
7. Reminder: If you end up cancelling the event, you need to cancel it out of Evite. Otherwise,guests will receive a reminder to come to your party — the party that you’re not having. I’ve done that, embarassing!

Warning: The only trouble I’ve ever had with Evite is that recipients can sometimes think they’re getting spam when it arrives in their Inbox and don’t click on the link to Evite to actually view the invitation. I’ve gone so far as to email people out a message telling them they’re going to be receiving an Evite from me so that they don’t toss it. Why bother sending the Evite if I’ve already emailed them, you ask? Because I want them to use the online website to track responses, send out reminders, ask them to bring things, etc. If I email them an invite then they will respond to me directly and I am responsible for reminding them, tracking responses, etc. I want to point them to Evite to have all of that done on the web.

If You HAVE to Have a Meeting . . .

Use Meeting Wizard (http://www.meetingwizard.org/). Meeting Wizard is very simple to use and free. Here’s how it works:

1. Click on “Login” next to the Home Tab in the upper left. It’s a very simple process to create your own account on Meeting Wizard. You can get started creating a meeting request, but eventually you are going to have to create an account or log in.
2. After you have logged in, click on “Meeting Request”
3. Propose either a range of days/times or choose a specific day/time.
4. Fill out purpose, type of meeting (by phone, in person, etc.) put in email addresses of people you are inviting to the meeting, whether you want to be sent an update every time someone replies or only after eveyone has responded. There are also three optional pieces of information: a message about the meeting to the invitees, the location of the meeting, and whether you want a reminder email sent to them a day before the meeting. Also, note the choice on the right side of whether invitees can see the list of people invited and how they have responded. This is a choice that has some repercussions. For instance, you may want to totally transparent and let all of the info be visible to everyone. However, it may sway their responses. If Bob and Jerry say they’re not coming, others may follow their lead.

(Warning: “Select from Address Book” may be confusing. It does not refer to your own electronic address book you may be using in Outlook or on your Mac (although you can import those addresses by clicking on “Import” on the upper right hand menu), but to an address book you can create on Meeting Wizard. If you are using Meeting Wizard a lot this may make sense. This site feels spam safe to me. I have not received any spam from them since I created an account in June, 2006.)

5. Review the review page. You may want to click on “Preview Response Form” or “Preview Outgoing Email” on the right side to customize them for your folks.

6. Click on Send Now.

7. You can log back in at any time to see the responses. You can also invite more people, sent out reminders, change any details about the meeting.

That’s it! Now if only we had half the number of meetings for a quarter of the amount of time . . . maybe I’ll send an email to these guys proposing a button like that!