Kumbuka: This was originally posted to www.endusersharepoint.com.

A few weeks ago I had the chance to speak at SharePoint Saturday in New York. Mara nyingine tena, a tremendous event. Wakati huu, I spoke about “learning SharePoint” – a very broad topic. During the presentation (which you can get here), I talked about a variety of techniques for “learning” SharePoint, including stuff like book learning, class room training, creating your own VM and most importantly (kwangu), community participation. One way to participate in the SharePoint community is via blogging. Someone asked me about blogging in particular and asked my opinion on a few concerns he had that I’ve heard others mention before. It’s been itching at the back of my head for a few weeks so in my usual fashion, I’m scratching that itch by blogging about it.

Some people seem to think that there are so many quality bloggers out there on the scene today and that so many quality blog entries have been written that in a sense, there’s nothing new to write about. Au, the “new” thing is so narrowly focused that it’s not going to be interesting to anyone. I don’t agree with those sentiments or the underlying assumption about them.

For starters, if you’re blogging because it’s part of your personal attempt at learning SharePoint well, it’s really irrelevant if someone has written on your topic or not. One of the drivers behind community participation, whether it’s for personal learning or not, is that you need to get it right. No one wants to put up some weak blog entry and look silly in front of the world. In the course of getting it right, you’re going to think the subject through more carefully, nk. Thus, you’re thinking, studying and considering this topic from all kinds of angles, left to right, up to down, inside and out (or at least you should be). That’s a very valuable exercise. Kwa kweli, it’s almost beside the point of pushing the “post” button by the time you finish writing it since you’ve already derived much of the benefit by now. Bila shaka, you do want to push the post button anyway for a variety of reasons, but I digress. The bottom line is that blogging is a valuable learning exercise in and of itself, period.

I also reject the “it’s already been done” argument. So what if it was? The terrible consequence is that people who are looking up your topic via bing will now find two or five or a dozen articles. Who cares? I always prefer to find several articles on the same topic when I go searching the tubes for stuff. Different points of view, different writing styles, different approaches to the same problem – they all help me understand what I need. In my opinion, the community is no where close to reaching a saturation point on good quality blog articles on any topic in the SharePoint world.

Hivyo, blog away! You won’t hear me complaining about it. I guarantee it 🙂

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Kujiunga na blog yangu.

Kufuata yangu juu ya Twitter kwa http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

Mimi nilikuwa DM'd ujumbe kutoka Twitter leo na mawazo ningependa blog jibu.

Swali ni: "Hey Paulo, haraka moja kwa ajili yenu,jinsi gani ya kupata counter twitter katika nafasi yako kuishi kama kanuni script ni imefungwa wakati kuokolewa Thx "

I did this by adding a custom html widget to my live spaces page and using the little code snippet:

<a href="http://twittercounter.com/?username=pagalvin" 

 cheo="TwitterCounter for @pagalvin"> 

 <img src="http://twittercounter.com/counter/?username=pagalvin" 

 upana=88 

 height=26 

 style="border:none" 

 zamani="TwitterCounter for @pagalvin">

</a>

This uses a version of the twitter counter widget interface that gets past the windows live censor thing that we all hate so much and wish would get a bad case of poison ivy.

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Kujiunga na blog yangu.

Kufuata yangu juu ya Twitter kwa http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

Mimi ilichukua madirisha nafasi ya kuishi nyuma katika Julai ya 2007 as my blogging platform. For the most part, Mimi hawana majuto na Microsoft hakika inaenea zaidi ya muda (ingawa mimi hasa kujua kuhusu makala mpya kwa ajali).

My biggest complaint right now is blog spam. This person / akaunti (http://cid-82b0534bceed9881.profile.live.com/) (miongoni mwa wengine) frequently adds a lot of spam comments to my blog in the form of comments. MSFT added a nice feature to show “recent comments” so at least I can fairly quickly identify them (ambapo kabla ya, Mimi nilikuwa na kwenda katika kila kuingia blog tofauti) and clean them up. It’s still time consuming.

Napenda kwamba:

1. MSFT bila kuweka baadhi ya kuchuja bora kwa spam.
2. Kwamba mimi naweza kuzuia watu maalum kutoka kuongeza maoni.
3. Kushindwa hapo juu, I could more easily identify and delete spam. Right now, Mimi haja ya kufanya hivyo maoni na maoni na ni mwepesi, hasa wakati baadhi spam robot mtu / mpango anaongeza 25 kwa 50 maoni katika kikao moja.

Kama wewe ni mtumiaji madirisha kuishi na kuwa na baadhi ya mbinu muhimu ya kushiriki, Ningependa kushukuru.

</endGripe>

Kujiunga na blog yangu.

Kufuata yangu juu ya Twitter kwa http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

Huu majira zamani, while I was working on two chapters for the best SharePoint social computing book ever, I began to get very far behind in my blog reading. I use Google Reader for my RSS stuff and when you have more than 1000 unread vitu, tu anasema, "1000 ".

Zaidi ya mwisho ya wiki chache, I’ve been sitting down and systematically reading them and tagging them as I go for future reference (I use Delicious.com).

This past weekend I watched all of Lost, season four in a couple of sittings and catching up on 1000+ blog entries feels the same way.

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Kujiunga na blog yangu.

Kufuata yangu juu ya Twitter kwa http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

Wao kuvuta mimi nyuma katika!

Windows Live Spaces doesn’t do a good job protecting me from comment spam. I assume MSFT has good spam detection, but that the spammers are better. The fact remains, hata hivyo, kwamba mimi kupata maoni mbali zaidi spam kuliko mimi kupata maoni ya kweli na mimi nilikuwa tu kufikiri katika wiki ya mwisho au hivyo kwamba mimi alikuwa anaenda Disable maoni.

Hata hivyo, leo, Nimeona mbili maoni bora katika kukabiliana na hii post (kuhusu Access Limited) na hii post (kuhusu kikwazo tafuta nyaraka, kinyume na folders). Those comments are so complementary (kwa kuwa wao kuongeza mengi ya thamani ya post yangu), I can’t see disabling comments and thereby closing off that avenue of useful information. Hivyo, Nimekuwa alijiuzulu mwenyewe kwa kuwa binadamu spam catcher / cleaner. Live spaces does provide a pretty decent way to clean up comments, lakini ambaye anataka kupoteza muda kufanya hivyo?

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Kujiunga na blog yangu.

Kufuata yangu juu ya Twitter kwa http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

Yangu EMC mwenzake, Erik Swenson, imekuwa hakika kuruka katika Fray, stand up and be counted 🙂

He blogs about about a wide variety of SharePoint branding topics at http://erikswenson.blogspot.com/. Some of his recent posts include interesting stuff about Photoshop, Ofisi ya Microsoft Live ajili ya biashara ndogo, SharePoint Utawala, creating custom WCM styles and so forth. He does not confine himself to branding. It’s quite an interesting mix which is a little bit different from a lot of the SharePoint blogs with which I’m familiar.

His RSS feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SharepointBrandingDesign

Check it out and give him a little encouragement. We all need that from time to time, especially when we first really dive into this blogging world.

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Kujiunga na blog yangu.

Twitter is a very odd duck. I’ve been using Twitter for a little over a month and in some indefinable way, it’s almost as important to me as email. I find myself vaguely unsettled if I wait too long before looking over what others are twittering about. I get annoyed at Twitter’s occasional performance problems because it means I’m missing out. I get a little puff of excitement when I see a new Woot announcement.

Ni kweli jamii wajenzi katika njia ambayo kweli mchango blogs na vikao na hata binafsi uso kwa uso mikutano.

Katika mwezi wa mwisho, Nimekuwa ikifuatiwa majaribio ya mtu mmoja katika kutetereka baridi wakati akijaribu kusimamia Seder.

I’ve learned personal detail about many folks I mainly "know" kupitia blogs — ambapo wanaishi, aina ya miradi ya kazi juu ya, kwamba wana kazi / familia masuala ya kusimamia tu kama mimi.

Mama ya mtu mmoja alifariki … a sad event for sure. But sharing that fact changes and enhances the character of the whole experience.

Hiyo tu mambo binafsi.

There’s more to it than that. It’s also another medium for sharing ideas, au zaidi mara nyingi nadhani, seeking help. Throw a question up on Twitter and you’re never left hanging and the responses typically arrive within minutes.

Kama si walijaribu, you should really give it a go.

Kuangalia yangu hadi saa http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

Kujiunga na blog yangu.

katika http://twitter.com/pagalvin

Cha kusikitisha, Mimi kusafishwa nje masaa yangu gmail akaunti kabla ya kusainiwa, hivyo hakuwa na kupata mtu yeyote wakati searched kwa mawasiliano.

Kama wewe ni kutumia Twitter, napenda kujua na mimi itabidi furaha kuungana.

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It seems fairly common in the political blogging world for a given blog to host a "guest blogger". When I’m in political blog land I must be wearing a different pair of eye glasses because it never occurred to me that "guest blogging" might make sense for a technical blog like mine. That is, mpaka mimi kusoma makala hii na Khipple Kanwal zaidi ya saa Juu ya SharePoint Buzz- Januari 2008.

Kufikiri juu yake, Naamini kuna inaweza kuwa mengi ya watu huko nje katika nchi SharePoint kwamba kuwa na kujikuna kuweka pamoja makala, mfupi au mrefu, kiufundi au biashara zaidi oriented, nk, but don’t run their own blog for all the usual reasons. If you’re one of those people, I’d be happy to host it. You can reach me via email or leave a comment. I haven’t thought through any kind of guidelines, lakini nadhani ningependa wanataka kuwa ni karibu oriented SharePoint, lakini mimi pia kama kutupa katika baadhi ya uchunguzi binafsi kuhusu kushauriana sasa na kisha. I’m also trying to publish a "Jumapili Mapenzi" kila wiki na mimi nina amefungwa kwa kukimbia nje ya mawazo kwa ajili ya kwamba.

Kama wewe ni mwanablogu wa mara kwa mara tayari lakini angependa majaribio na mabalozi mgeni, Mimi dhahiri wazi kwamba pia, either as a host or a guest 🙂

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I started off my "blogging career" using Microsoft’s platform and it’s been good to me. It’s easy to post, there are good options and widgets for managing your "space", decent web storage and so forth.

Hata hivyo, I really just fell into the MS solution with almost no planning. That alone calls for me to evaluate where I am and where I’m going, in terms of a blogging platform. There are also two important limitations that bother me right now vis-à-vis Windows Live Spaces.

Kwanza, I can’t get very good statistics. There are stats but the detail is often truncated and not presented in a way that allows for any kind of analysis. There no sorting or export capability. I get many blog ideas based on the kind of information people find (or especially fail to find) when they search my blog. It’s very hard to use lives spaces for that.

Pili, there does not seem to be any mechanism to "monetize" a windows live space blog. Kwa kweli, in order to get rid of MS ads (from which I derive no benefit), I need to actually pay Microsoft. (At least, that’s how I understand it; I have been unable to get definitive answers to this and questions like it).

Now that I’ve got an established pattern and set of blogging habits, I want to evaluate other options. I’ve done some research and there are a lot of choices, but I’m curious as to what other people, particularly others in the SharePoint community (as bloggers or readers), like to use.

If this subject interests you and you have an opinion or are willing to share your experience, please leave a comment or email me directly.

Shukrani!

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