Will Kelly

WWD Post: iPhone Blogging Tools Roundup

When I made the jump to the iPhone 3G it was most definitely a platform play for me. As a web worker who can be on and off client sites all day, I still want access to my personal web properties, especially my blogs, which serve as a professional face for me online.

via webworkerdaily.com

Revive Your Online Presence After A Career Splat

In February of this year, I found myself on the wrong side of the United States economy and back in a very tight job market. During the course of my employment, I made the mistake of letting my online presence and my personal branding languish because I made what I thought was a career move and my Web presence related to my work as a technical writer and consultant. This was a huge mistake.

To me my personal brand and online presence are synonymous since I am a technology writer. Based on my lessons learned, here are some tips if you find yourself needing to revive your online presence.

Back to Writing on my Blog

I've been spending time getting up to speed on my new role at WebWorkerDaily and pitching some new client projects and now plan to get back to the backlog of posts I have for this blog so please stay tuned for some upcoming posts.

WordPress and LinkedIn

LinkedIn is really pressing forward with the integration of third-party applications and Web services into their platform. All in all, this is a prudent move for LinkedIn to keep pace with social networking and to do the best to augment their platform.

Their integration with WordPress means LinkedIn users can tie into their WordPress site and have their latest posts  show up in their LinkedIn profile.

Some Random And Recent Projects

I try to keep myself busy during my downtime. Here are some random and recent personal projects I've been pursuing:

Added Social Media as a New Blog Category

Considering where the current market, my thinking, and my writing is headed, I've added a Social Media category to my blog.

Just crossed 1000 posts on my Blog

According to TypePad.com, I've just crossed the 1000 post mark on this site since  the first post on this site went live on July 31, 2003.

My current plan is to write more substantative posts about technology and technical writing as I work to further mature this blog to become an integral part of my online presence.

My Tumblr Site

While this blog is my main personal site and blog, I do maintain some other Web sites including one on Tumblr.com,  a great light weight blogging service.

Google Results for Will Kelly

I am very surprised that willkelly.org, a Web presence and an archive of my old blogger powered blog shows up in the first page of the Google results for  Will Kelly.

Blogging from Word 2007

While my new job offers me plenty of opportunities to write, when I left writing, I made a promise to myself to write for myself more often.

Checking out Tumblr

I've been writing on willkelly.typepad.com since 2003 and it has evolved as time has gone on since its inception.

While some do (or did)  consider my blog a technical writing blog though I now consider this blog a platform for my views and analysis on consulting and technology.

I've never been a believer in posting my innermost thoughts online either. It's not the right medium for me to express myself that way.

My experience with Twitter has been favorable. However, the current shutoff of IM and the frequent outages

A New SEO or Blog Spam?

It seems wheneverr I link one of my blog posts  to a post on blogs.zdnet.com, some SEO or blog spammer named datasystemsplus is impersonating me in search results. The screen capture in this post comes from a Google Alert I have running on my name.

I should probably research this further and email my findings to somebody a ZDnet since it only seems to happen when I link to one of their blog posts.

Updates to this Site...

Have fallen by the wayside lately because of many things including:

• My nasty Northern Virginia commute sapping the motivation of me to write for myself lately.
• Work and my nasty Northern Virginia commute sapping the motivation to write for myself.
• The $5200 I had to shell out to get a new AC and heat pump for my house which made me reconsider some other freelance projects to help make up the money.
• A lot of half congealed thoughts that should/could lead to posts that I haven't had much time to work on lately.
• Allergies brought on by a nasty Northern Virginia spring have been slowing me down.

It's always good to be busy albeit my personal projects like this site are often the first casualty.

WordPress crapped out on willkelly.com

It appears the installation of WordPress that I was running on willkelly.com has crapped out for some unknown reason so it looks like I have to reinstall WordPress or perhaps migrate the news page back to Blogger.

New PC Today Magazine Article: Mobile TypePad

My article entitled Mobile TypePad appears as Web content for the March 2007 issue of PC Today Magazine.

Blogger Leaves Beta and is Now Official

According to Download Squad, the new version of the venerable Blogger has left beta and is now official.

Blogger used to power my personal Website for years but as the first casualty of a too busy schedule for me is personal projects, I chose TypePad to handle hosting  for my blog when personal projects became the first casualty of working too much.

The Official Google Macintosh Blog

Google recently launched the Official Google Mac Blog highlighting their Macintosh development activities. I use a Macintosh as my primary writing machine for articles and other freelance projects and I am glad to see  a major company put some muscle into Macintosh development efforts.

This site definitely goes into my RSS reader.

Adobe Contribute Adds Blogging

I got turned onto Adobe Contribute when it was still a Macromedia product because I wrote two articles about early versions of the product. It was easy for me to see the promise for Contribute fter having worked on documenting the infrastructure and publishing tools for a major broadband ISP's Web portal and participating in the development of intranets for clients.

When Adobe acquired Macromedia, I hoped that Contribute would survive the acquisition and this new launch shows. At least Adobe's quest to become an enterprise software company hasn't quashed tools like Contribute.

The latest version includes blogging support which is a natural niche for the application.

Windows Live Writer Followup

I have had the chance to work with Windows Live Writer a bit more and after getting a hang of the views, I must say I am really starting to like this tool.

If you choose the View menu, you have the following options:

• Normal view which makes Windows Live Writer a more traditional editor with a poor man's Microsoft Office Word 2003 feel.
• Web Layout view which tries to place the background of your blog. However, Windows Live Writer seems to only place the background that was on your blog when you first setup the application.
• Web Preview which offers a preview of how your text will look against a mockup of your Website.
• HTML view is for previewing the HTML code of your post.

Windows Live Writer is especially suited for users who are already comfortable with the Microsoft Office System 2003 user interface.

Windows Live Writer

While I've been setting up my new desktop PC as I prepare to move back into my home office after 11 months on a client site,  I decided to check out Windows Live Writer.

As a TypePad user, I've grown comfortable with their editing tools and user interface but started to resort to Writely for composing blog postings that took longer to percolate. However, Writely does have some limitations especially when it comes to assigning categories.

Composing blog entries with Windows Live Writer was a bit awkward at first because it really doesn't layout the text in the blog entry correctly. In some ways it looks like I am writing in the left margin of the page like so: