blogs

The 150 or so of you I've added in the past couple of days may have noticed that the comments weren't working right for you. They're working for everyone now.

Moo! Your pal, Bessie

I'm thrilled by how many of you want to join 'ol Bessie at The COWBlogs. The initial stampede came faster than my hooves could send the approvals, but by now, everybody should be all set. New accounts should also be getting approved much more quickly now.

If yours hasn't been approved yet, it's probably because you didn't use your real name when creating your account. I've tried to notify everyone in that situation, and will be activating those accounts as soon as you reply.

Any more questions? Swing by the COWBlog Help forum, and we'll get things all sorted out.

Thanks again for your enthusiasm!

Moo!

Your pal,

Bessie

I've been getting a lot of questions about how people can get their own COWBlogs, so I added a link to the Navigation menu in the upper left. The link says "Get a COWBlog." It takes you to the first entry in the Writing COWBlogs FAQ, which has all the details.

Speaking of FAQs, Bessie says read 'em! My boy Timmy did a pretty good job with them. I could have done better, but with the whole COW to run, I have to delegate sometimes.

So if you have any questions or suggestions, including telling Timmy how to improve the FAQ pages, please visit the COWBlog Help forum, using the link in the upper right.

Moo!

Your pal,

Bessie

Blogs aren’t just popular. They’re exploding: 70 million of them as 2007 begins, and 100 million expected by the end of they year.

While hundreds of COWs already have their own blogs, there’s never been a community of blogs created by video and film professionals.

Until now.

Why does The COW have blogs?
One of reasons why The COW is so successful is that we match the tool to the task. We don’t do many tutorials in the magazine, because tutorials work better online. We don’t make half-hour video podcasts, because long tutorials work better on DVDs. And so on.

Well, there are some aspects of community building that work better in blogs than they do in forums.

• Conversations are nonlinear. Discussions in The COW forums are linear: specific tasks, specific toolsets. That’s not how conversations work. They might start out on one topic, but they naturally include others as well. That’s where blogs come in. A single blog entry can cover multiple topics, which doesn’t work as well in a forum thread.

• There’s more to talk about than problems. We’re geeks. We keep our eyes peeled for new technology. And not just work-related technology. Sometimes we have strong feelings about what we see, and other times we have questions. In any case, we’re ready to talk.
  
  To use one early-2007 example, there’s not a forum to talk about Apple TV….even though it’s something that we’re all talking about privately.
  
  And yes, there are already blog entries about Apple TV at the COWBlogs. In fact, we blogged that Apple TVs were shipping before Apple announced it.

• Communities are made of individuals. Forums let you be an individual, of course, but blogs are an even better way to express yourself as individual. Talk about what you want to talk about, including things that have nothing to do with technology at all.
  
  

These are jus a few of the reasons why blogs are the best tool for The COW to take the next step in community building.


Here's some information about how reading COWBlogs works.

Here's some information about how writing COWBlogs works.

Moo!

Your pal, Bessie

I, Bessie, love the music of the cowbell as I graze. I also love the sounds of The Grassroots, The Animals, The Crickets, and The Beatles. I know that many of you COWs love music while you graze as well.

That's why we started the Now Playing podcast: to talk about music with producers, performers, and more. You'll see that the first episode has already been posted, with more on the way.

That's also why I wanted to start the Now Playing forum at The Creative COW. It's still new, but you'll see some conversations underway, especially talking about the music people are listening to and discovering right now. (As in Now Playing.)

Both the podcast and the forum will also take in TV and movies, snuggle up in your jammies to join the fun.

You can control virtually everything about how the text in your blog looks. The best part is that you can see it all as you compose your blog.

Nearly all the features you expect from a word processor are here

• Easy lists, both numbered and bulleted
• Bold, underscore, strikethrough, etc.
• Multiple Fonts and SIZES,and more
• Select text and press the eraster tool (toward the left of the bottom row) to remove styles
• Find-replace
  
• Smileys What can I say? Bessie loves smileys.
• A button to paste text from Word that also cleans it up for the web (a HUGE feature). It's the icon in the third row, about the middle of the row, that has a clipboard with the Word "W" logo.
• There's a magnifying glass icon in the second row, a little left of the smileys. It's a super-speedy preview that pops up window. It's designed to preview of the text only. For previewing your post as it will look in a full page, including the summary, you'll still want to use the Preview button below the text window.
• There are some fanatastic features for pictures too, but they'll need their own post

Rich text is on by default. You can turn it off for each post by clicking to disable rich text, just below the text entry window. To change the default, go to My Account: Edit, and choose false (off by default). Don't forget to press the "Submit" button all the way at the bottom of the page.

Okay, back to chewing the grass for Bessie!