Lining up my promotional campaign

... for "Bring Me the Head of Opal Mehta", which includes:

Getting my blog in order, fixing up the formatting, making sure it's good, good, good

No sense in doing this, if it's not going to be attractive and readable and make a good impression. I need to do some research and see what formats I like for blogs. What makes a blog look credible? What design elements add to its overall effectiveness. I noticed that there's been some action around popularizing the Georgia font, which is good -- it gives us more to work with, instead of the old sans serif fallbacks of Arial (circa 1998), Verdana (circa 2001), Tahoma (circa 2003).

I find it interesting that, for years, we were told, "Sans serif fonts are much more readable on the screen and you should stay away from serif fonts, except for headings and minor decorative touches." It was supposed to be this hard and fast rule that was based on personal experience and scientific findings, not just a visual design preference. I mean, it was like God Himself had handed it down, and if there was one thing you could swear to, with regard to visual design on the web and building effective websites, it was that sans serif fonts were for text online and serif fonts were for text on the printed page.

It was an "online reverse" of the print standard, where headings are typically in sans serif, but text is in serif, because supposedly it's easier to read on the page. Except that online, serif was supposed to be easier to read. I guess that's changed now. Perhaps it has more to do with the type of serif font. Georgia is a more spacious font, all its little squiggles notwithstanding, so that probably makes it easier to read.

I must say, it took a little getting used to, at first. But now I'm a fan. It's all in the execution, I suppose.

Coming up with decent meta tags for the blog/site

I can't very well start putting a lot of content out there, without decent meta tags. They will help me get found. They will help me speak to search engines. They will help me with a lot of things. I suppose I could create a Google XML sitemap, as well, and save it off to my blog, like I would an image. I could try that. But I'm more concerned with the meta tags, right now.

Making sure the RSS feed is fully functional for the blog

It appears that Blogger has succumbed to the great popularity of RSS, and they've added RSS feeds to their Atom feeds. This is a good thing, as now I can submit my blog to all those RSS search engines.

Note to self: test out the RSS and make sure there's a link to my site in the content that gets served by the RSS feed, because when it goes out and gets included in other sites (as it probably will), I'll need to get a linkback from that.

I've heard some controversy around the incorporation of RSS feeds into sites so that people can "steal" other people's content. The problem is NOT that people are "stealing" content from other sites. The problem is that the content creators are not getting credit/linkbacks/mention/copyright acknowledgement from the folks who are repurposing their content. THAT's the issue. Any self-respecting writer who puts content out there via their RSS feed needs to make sure that they incorporate their own attribution. Forget about other people doing it for you. It's not that they're mean or they don't care or they're trying to rip you off. They're probably using an automated process ot include your content, which means they'll never know they're doing a "bad" thing by including your work. Heck, they probably think they're doing a GOOD thing! And they're probably going to wonder why you're complaining that they're using your content.

So, I need to test out my RSS feed (using RSS2HTML, which is ultra-handy!) and make sure that it's displaying what I want it to.

Making sure that all my blogs link to each other

This is important. I need cross-promotion, because it's all related and I need to get the most mileage out of my "online properties".

Coming up with a respectable blogroll

It's all about the conversation, baby, and I need to have a decent list of other folks who are talking and thinking about the same things I am. I need to make sure I look outside Blogger for my cross-links, though. I found a great blog on Rediff.com by an Indian woman who gives really great insight into India, especially the less advantaged areas. She has important stories to tell, and I need to give her some exposure.

Telling all the interested/related folks out there about "Opal Mehta"

including TechsUnite.org and recruiters who have been calling me. We're all impacted by this outsourcing business. I'm not sure how well the book is going to be received in India -- it's a little daunting, thinking about it -- but I can't let that stop me from doing what I need to do, y'know?

Getting a better graphic for the banner

Or perhaps taking the graphic down, period.

I like the concept of the spider web across the world, but I'm not overjoyed with my clunky end product. If anyone out there wants to create a better one for me, I'll happily link to your site in exchange. It's a simple concept, really. But my graphics skills are not quite as stellar as I'd like.

Promote, promote, promote in directories

I've found a bunch of lists of directories, and I need to submit to them. It's going to take a long time, I'm sure, but I'll just have to bite the bullet and spend the hours doing it. I may submit my other blogs at the same time, to make the most of things. Less time-consuming than jumping around from directory to directory, one blog at a time. Economies of scale and all that.

I also need to update my master list of blog directories. I have one on my computer which is actually a spreadsheet where I keep track of my blog (and podcast) submissions. I record what day I submitted them, and which blog(s) I submitted, for future reference.

Add a blogtracker

Either it will be a CSS file that I include and track from my stats site, or I'll use the blog tracker service I see a lot of folks using. The blog tracker service might be good, as I believe you get a linkback(? - must check this out). I think I'll do both, just for the sake of complete stats and recording. I need to know how my blog is doing, and it will be interesting to see this, once the book gets out there.

Enable moderated comments

I need comments, but I also need to moderate them. Or I'll end up getting all these "Love your site -- please check mine out -- www.hotrussianbrideswantomeetyou.ru" "comments" from people. Comment moderation is VERY, VERY IMPORTANT.

I call those off-topic, non-solicited messages "blamming" -- blog spamming -- and they're a pox on the medium. Even moreso than spam, because that you can remove from your inbox. With blamming, they're interrupting a focused conversation to inject absolutely positively unsolicited content, which is a violation of the contract between blog writer and blog reader. It's just plain wrong. Comment moderation makes sure that doesn't happen, and I'm so glad Blogger has now enabled that feature.

I do have a lot to do -- and I've also got to get to work, so I'll leave off for now. It's a good thing I've got the book finished. Now I need to catch up on setting up the blog -- and this is just the setup, let alone the actual posting.

Posting, comparatively speaking, is easier. But it's a long-term commitment, whereas these tasks (and the fifteen others I haven't listed here yet) will be a once-and-done deal. Until I decide to refine them.

But it's all very important and useful. It's vital that all the pieces be properly set up from the start, because it's so very easy to lose people online. Talk about once-and-done... if you lose them, they may never, ever come back, so it's important to envision as many different worst-case scenarios as possible up front, build around them, and get it right the first time. Planning is key.

The wonder that is Lulu.com

I've been pondering the wonders of on-demand printing/publishing for a few weeks, now. I'm hard at work on a new book Bring Me the Head of Opal Mehta, which ties together the plagiarism scandal around Kaavya Viswanathan and American IT offshore outsourcing to India.

There are more parallels than you'd imagine -- you'll have to buy the book to find out more .;)

Anyway, I've been hard at work on what could turn out to be a watershed work for a lot of folks. It's the kind of book that a lot of people I know would love to write, but a) they don't have the time or b) they don't want to lose their jobs. Well, I'm in a "positive" position with my job scene, so the pressure is off me. So, I can write this book.

One of the real discouragers of this kind of work, is that the market and industry can move so quickly, that you're out of date before you know it. There are books about outsourcing listed on Amazon.com which are 10 years old, and there are ample comments from folks about how the books' observations on outsourcing are mainframe-specific and don't cover the current situation.

Those books should be yanked. But if the publishers still have 1,800 old copies lying around in storage, they have to do something with them, don't they? Well, yes. Which is why they're still listed on the online bookseller sites. Or Half.com.

This is a waste on several levels -- first of all, it's a waste of space in storage. Second, it's a waste of time for the publisher(s) to keep tabs on them. Third, it's a waste for browsers and book buyers to have to parse through old info, if they figure out it's old info, till it's too late. Fourth, it's a waste for people who read the book and find out after they've bought the book.

Wastes of time, energy, money, space, resources all around.

There should be expiration dates on these kinds of "intellectual collateral" to spare us all. And the books should be send to recycling.

As for me and my PEAPOD Mix, I have no such issues. Also Thought2Form Productions, LLC, my publishing/production company does not have to carry extra inventory and find a place to store it.

Lulu.com handles all the printing and fulfillment of orders. I don't have to get into calculating how many books I can afford to print in a first run, a second run, etc. There is no run -- there's only print on demand. I don't have to get into stocking books and filling out delivery labels and paying for postage and expensing it all out. Lulu takes care of all of that. When Thought2Form gets really big -- and I believe it will -- I'm still going to stay with Lulu, because the model works. It works for writers, for publishers, for readers. And it teaches one patience, 'cause it takes about a week for a book to be printed, period, and then it takes a few days longer to get shipped. But the printing quality is good and the fulfillment process is absolutely painless for me and my humble staff.

Lulu.com is a wonder. It deserves every accolade I can think of. They've earned it!

How slow can you go?

Okay, so I got all excited about the idea of Squidoo, with my own Lens over at Offshore Observer, but alas and alack, Squidoo has been so slow, lately, as to be entirely unusable. Pity, that.

It's a great idea, what with being able to add your own links and generate potential ad revenues, but if it's too slow to be useful, and you can't update it quickly and easily (even from the Firefox extension), we've got issues.

I'll keep trying, of course, but this is a problem. A big problem.

It causes me to seriously question the wisdom of folks who are putting together a lot of the social networking applications out there, who may or may not be database gurus, who may or may not be cognizant of all the social aspects of developing software for a large and impersonal audience.

It's not just an issue for Squidoo, it's an issue for Blogger (sometimes) and Flickr (sometimes) and other apps that are intermittently down. It just brings up all the more importance of having capable people doing the development, capable people testing it, capable people setting priorities, and capable sources funding it.

It's all connected, people, and so long as we lag in one area, we lag in all. So, get educated, get crackin' and get it right!