A topic has been discussed recently by a bunch of A-list bloggers that crops up from time to time as apparently these A-list bloggers are a bit obsessed by it.  The conversation deals with whether bloggers are journalists and how bloggers should act if so.  I know this is a bit off-topic for jkOnTheRun but it keeps coming up and I want to share my thoughts on it.  Now I know that these A-list bloggers will not even see this as they only read each other but here goes anyway.  First of all I understand why these bloggers are concerned about it as there comes a certain level of responsibility when a blogger gets outspoken enough to get a big audience.  With a public forum comes a level of awareness with what the blogger says that means the blogger should act with an appropriate deportment whether he/she likes it or not.

I don’t particularly worry about whether I should be considered a journalist or not.  I have been referred to as a journalist by main-stream media (MSM) for what that’s worth but I don’t really care.  You see the way I view it it doesn’t matter if the blogger thinks he/she is a journalist or not.  It also doesn’t matter if MSM thinks the blogger is a journalist or not either.  The only group that matters at all is the readers.  Yes, these bloggers should only worry what their readers think of them, not each other.  With a public forum comes a big responsibility in what bloggers say and do.  A few simple rules that I follow would go a long way to alleviating the concern in the minds of the A-listers.

1. Always tell the truth.  It doesn’t matter how trivial the topic or how serious.  The truth will set you free and keep you that way.
2. Opinions matter but only if they are clearly identified as such.  Don’t pass opinions off as fact and your readers will keep trusting what you say.
3. Never quote a statistic without revealing the source.  Bloggers are starting to fall into the same pit that MSM journalists often fall into by quoting some arcane statistic that is meaningless.  Let the reader decide if the source means it’s a reliable statistic or not.

These rules may seem to be simple common sense as they are but they are violated so much every single day by bloggers and even MSM journalists.  Trust is earned and must be kept and these rules will help see that it lives.  Trust is the key ingredient in the relationship between bloggers and their readers and is not guaranteed nor should it be.  Earn it with the truth and you’ll keep it a long, long time.  Until you violate one of these rules and your intentions start getting questioned.  That’s my take on it, anyway.

I’m saddened by the news that we’ve lost Russell Shaw, who passed away Friday night unexpectedly. I had the pleasure to virtually work alongside of Russell when we both blogged for Weblogs, Inc. Russell covered the Blackberry scene for several years and then moved on to ZDNet to cover VoIP and broadband. I always enjoyed Russell’s writing and he will be sorely missed. Peace to you, my friend.

I hope this doesn’t mean I’ll need to double my daily post quantity, but TypePad just made it easier to blog from the iPhone. I tried to use the standard TypePad interface in Safari when I first bought the iPhone and while it generally worked, I was unable to add any images. The standard interface was also a bit clunky for a mobile device and I didn’t feel like I could use it on a regular basis with the handheld. That all changes now that TypePad has a mobile client specifically desgined for the iPhone. The new interface complements their already existing web clients for Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian and is easy to access at http://i.typepad.com. Kudos to Jenn K. Lee for giving me the heads up! Jenn, if I write twice as many posts, it’s all your fault.

I spent a few minutes with the new client this morning and it looks very usable with a few minor nuances; direct image uploads aren’t possible, which makes sense since you’re really not storing images other than your own photos on the iPhone. You have to e-mail images to the TypePad server for any availability. Additionally, I didn’t see a way to select multiple categories for posts so I had to finish this post on a full web client.

I have a Nokia N800 but not a WordPress blog but if I did I’d be all over it if someone pointed out a WordPress blog editor for the little mobile device.  Mobile maven Oliver Starr of BlogNation has indeed pointed out an editor for the N800, WordPy, which is designed to make it easy to make blog posts from the N800.  According to Oliver WordPy will let you save posts for uploading at a later time meaning you’ll never lose another post in progress due to problems again.  Oliver’s rating:

All in all, I give WordPy pretty high marks. It seems to do just about everything one would wish for on an ultra-ultra mobile device and with the small issue of finding the correct URL for set up it seems to have reasonably good usability, particularly for a 0.4 release of the software.

If you haven’t heard already good friend Marc Orchant recently left ZDNet blogs for BlogNation and with Marc and Oliver onboard I didn’t waste any time getting them into my feeds.  I highly recommend you do the same.

Yep, I just had to try it since it runs a full browser. Using the on-screen keyboard certainly works, but it’s cumbersome at best. Adding Bluetooth support for an external keyboard would be nice, but without a stand for the phone it would be awkward. This exercise really shows the glaring omission of a basic cut and paste feature as well. That ought to explain why there’s no links in the post; manually typing a lenghty URL isn’t something I’d enjoy on a regular basis. Oh, and that lack of an easily accessible file system puts the kabosh on any images, at least on TypePad, which is what we use here. Luckily, I also have my UMPC so I went in and added the pic. Otherwise, the post was created entirely on the iPhone. I wouldn’t have thought to try this on a Windows Mobile or Nokia device simply because the screens aren’t big enough and it would be a challenge without a QWERTY keyboard of some type. It’s not an optimal blogging tool, but is good in a pinch!

Tag, I’m it. James tagged me in this blogspheric get-to-know-you game; I’d hate to be a spoil sport and not reply, so here goes:

• I owned three cars before I even had a license to drive. All three were Ford Mustang’s from the 1960’s; my father and I used two for parts and ended up with a sweet ‘66 that had a rare bench seat in the front.
• I essentially flunked out of college after two years. Personal quote: "Freshman year was the best two years of my life." I ended up taking a full-time job with the University and over the next five years, retook all of the classes I failed and was able to pull the GPA up to get right into graduate school.
• After several years of not training, I jumped into the Philadelphia Marathon with six weeks of ‘preparation’. I limped to the finish in around four and a half hours. Two years later, I finished the Chicago Marathon over 70 minutes faster. Amazing what a little training can do.
• I grew up a New York Yankees fan: favorite player was Thurman Munson and I can still remember the day he died unexpectedly.
• Keeping with the sports theme I’ve got going: I went to high school with a guy who was drafted by the Cardinals in the NFL. I’ve been a die-hard (and miserable) Cardinals fan ever since. I also did a whirlwind, under 24-hour trip to Phoenix simply to attend Pat Tillman’s memorial service at ASU. He deserved my time and respect.
• Favorite books are the "Lord of the Rings" series. I read the books one summer in the late ’70s and I’ve re-read them at least once a year since then.
• I’m not a beach person, I think it’s giant box of cat litter. Barb and I tend to vacation in the mountains….bigger cats and no litter.
• I listen to music constantly…probably about 12 hours a day, or roughly the same amount of time I’m reading.

So, who would I like to know more about? How about:

ThoughtFix

Dave Zatz

jezlyn

Sammual James – McLoughlin

While most folks here in the States are relaxing and enjoying the holiday, there’ s no rest for the weary over at Mobility Site. Chris Leckness just spent the better part of a few weeks merging his Aximsite and Mobility Site communities so you can catch all of your mobile device news in one place. As if that wasn’t enough work, he’s running dozens of contests over the next few weeks. You can catch the details and all of the prize packages right here. The biggies are shown above however….how about an 8 GB iPhone,  iPaq 6920,  Cingular 3125 and  Mio A701 for starters? Chris says that some contests will run for a few days, while a some will only last for a few short minutes, so get that Refresh button ready!

No, I haven’t done it but Michael Connick has.  Take a look at this:

To find out how he does it check out his post.

I should formalize my earlier report about our problem with comment spam since I have a little more information about it and I am hearing from other TypePad bloggers who are also affected.  Last Friday TypePad apparently made changes to the CAPTCHA feature that up until that point had been very effective in eliminating comment spam.  The changes they made broke CAPTCHA so that even if it is turned on in the settings it doesn’t work nor does it appear when someone posts a comment.  It didn’t take spammers very long to realize this as we immediately began getting hit with 100s of spam comments, and I’ve spent a great amount of time this weekend dealing with them all.  The latest word from the TypePad support folks is to see how it goes after the weekend so I’m hoping that means they are fixing it.  I sure wish they would just roll back the changes they made that broke CAPTCHA, but apparently that must not be an option.  I can’t think of any other reason they would subject the massive number of TypePad blogs to what must be millions of comment spam messages when they already had a good system to trap it.