plaxoed!

My uncle happens to be a communications professor at Hong Kong Baptist University so while I was there he invited me to be a guest lecturer. The topic: blogging of course

I put together a quick 60 minute preso and went over the basics, some stuff that’s happening in the media, how blogging is affecting businesses, and how younger people’s views on privacy seem to be drastically different than the older generations. Overall, the talk was pretty quick (perhaps I was speaking a bit too quickly) and the questions afterwards were excellent.

Biggest points of interest that I got out of the session:

• Everyone in the room knew what a blog was. More than 50% of them had blogs. However, no one had any clue what an RSS aggregator was. Wow… hopefully I was able to spread the word about one of the most disruptive changes that blogging has enabled
• For the most part, blogging in the US is about everyday people. However, in Southeast Asia, it seems that celebrity blogging is much more interesting to the masses.
• In the US we never think too much about the government interfering with bloggers - employers yes, but not government. In Hong Kong (or perhaps more interestingly, China), how government will react is always an issue.

Very interesting to explore the cultural divide between blogging in the US and abroad. I’m sure Anil has a lot of experience here too (I might be wrong, but I think he used to head up the international product management effort over at 6A)

A bit out of order for my vacation related blog posts, but I wanted to get these slides posted for the students so here they are

Aha, it looks like they’ve given me some invites for the Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta. If you’d like one, leave me a comment and I’ll send one along. I think I’ve got about 10, so first come first serve

I’ve used the Windows Live Mail Desktop client for a few weeks and I think it’s ok. Since I use it on my computer at home, which always has an internet connection, I don’t really experience the benefit of an offline experience. I haven’t found it to be any nicer than the Windows Live Mail web client, but if you’re a laptop user, I bet it might come in handy sometimes… 

Oh, in other beta news, I’m making this post from inside Windows Live Writer and I must admit, there are some really cool features. For example, in the post preview, they pull the CSS from my blog and apply it to the display so I can see exactly what my post is going to look like with all my blog’s styles applied. I’ve also used w.bloggar, qumana, and ecto and I think all the clients are approximately the same for my needs. I just write posts, assign a few categories, and publish. One feature request: I wish the editors would give me the ability to add new categories from their UI though. Other than that, I’m happy with any of the solutions I’ve used so far… anyone have any killer features that they absolutely love in one desktop blog editor that doesn’t exist yet in the others?