Blogging: new frontiers
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Several organisations use blogs as their marketing and dissemination tool
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Generally, blogs are supposed to contain reasonably lengthy articles or commentaries and not merely links with short descriptions.
THIS EDITION of NetSpeak profiles the features of a free blog hosting service meant for hosting a different kind of blog called Tumblelog.
No one can belittle the role of blogs in disseminating information. An organisation without a blog is fast becoming an unthinkable proposition. In fact, several organisations use blogs as their marketing/dissemination tool as well.
Generally, blogs are supposed to contain reasonably lengthy articles or commentaries and not merely links with short descriptions. However, we often come across a variety of information bits (like a link, a video or a bit of an Instant Messenger conversation), worth sharing with friends/clients/public, without the intent or inclination to write a lengthy piece on it. In such circumstances, we just need to post an SMS kind of message.
Though technically one can use a blog for this purpose, it is not that appealing — as the conventional blog is not meant for quick sharing of information bits. Also, the current blogging systems lack built-in tools for displaying entries in different styles/formats according to the type of content. For instance, an entry on a video link should look different from that of an Instant Messenger (IM) chat. The blogging system called `Tumblelog' is designed to overcome such shortcomings of the mainstream blogging tools.
Tumblelog
A Tumblelog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblelog) allows you to create brief blog posts in a format specified by you from the given set. For instance, if your blog content is an IM conversation, the Tumblelog system provides you an input Window, appropriate for it and for a video post it offers an input screen with more fields. Once the content is posted, the system displays it in a style suiting the type of content.
Now, if you want to try out a Tumblelog, access the free Tumblelog hosting service, Tumblr (http://www.tumblr. net/).
Tumblr lets you build your own free Tumblelog with the domain name of the form `your-name.tumblr.com' (example: `http://murali.tumblr. com'). Besides providing you an interface for entering a variety of content, Tumblr also offers a bookmarklet for posting directly from your browser. Once this bookmarklet is planted on to your browser, whenever you wish to post the page being viewed, just click on the Tumblr bookmarklet.
Another notable feature of Tumblr is the facility for importing webfeeds on to your Tumblr blog.
To import a webfeed, access the `Settings' page and click on the `Manage feeds' option.
This feature lets you automatically update your Tumblr blog with content from other blogs or services. For example, if you are a Twitter user, you can integrate your Twitter page (like this: http://twitter.com/jmurali) feed on to your Tumblr blog and thereby make all your Twitter updates automatically appear on your Tumblr blog as well. Twitter (featured in the previous edition of this column- http://www.hindu.com/biz/ 2007/03/26/stories/200703 26000 91700.htm) is a tool that helps you send/receive small messages via IM or mobile phone or web.
Yet another Tumblr feature worth a mention is the facility to upload content via e-mail or mobile phone (yet to be tested).
A file conversion toolbox for converting files from one format to another is very essential. Though free conversion tools are available for some file types (like Wav to MP3), such free tools are still not available for certain other file types (like PDF to Doc). In this context, the availability of online file conversion tools makes our life less cumbersome. Media convert (http://media-convert.com) is one such file conversion service.
Recently this author stumbled on another valuable free file conversion service, ZamZar (http://www2.zamzar. com/). You can convert image files, video files and PDF/document files with this free service.
While submitting the file for conversion, you need to provide an email id. Once the file is converted to the desired format, the service drops an email on your box with a link to the converted file. The facility (http://www.zamzar.com /tools/) to convert videos from video sharing services such as Youtube and Google video is another notable feature of this service.
J. MURALI
He can be contacted at: jmurali@gmail.com
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