I found this site called Cliptive today and it’s pretty fun. You can have a cell phone movie festival or contest, let them host it, and it incorporates voting. Now if we could just have code to paste it on our blog or site and an RSS feed of them…

Twittervision is a world map (a Google map) with twitter comments from around the world. Pretty fun.

Also I just added a scrolling news feed on this blog from Marketing Experiments. I’m experimenting, I like to bring more news into the site. Maybe it should be a scroll of recent headline in the sidebar. The one I found is pretty basic and old school, but easy to use.

I found another free news ticker but I need a little technical help to get it set up. I don’t really have time to worry too much. This is actually testing for a future web site I’m creating about presidential candidates (link to come when site is up).

I went to the Utah blogger’s dinner. I brought my son along (the same one who wrote his first email of his life to me today: “hi mom, I’m being good, Love Bjorn”). I have been really skimping on sleep (obvious, unfortunately). My attention span is down to about 5 minutes. I had a great time though. We should’ve played magical chairs so we could hear conversation at different parts of the table.

I finally got to meet Laura! And we were the only women there. These dinners happen every month so we’ll have to get Kelly to the next one (and others).

Topics of discussion
Twitter and why Chris hates it so bad – but we love it – and Chris
Met Conner (see Rob’s list of bloggers) who is a Chris follower (but not on Twitter, in real life)
Steve who owns Twelve Horses gave me insight into the world of corporate blogging services and prices (by the hour or on retainer is the question). Plus should the blogging ebook be for a corporate audience. Online PR ebook is taking longer in favor of finishing blogging book before the blogger’s conference on June 25th).
Utah blogger’s conference lineup and tossed around t-shirt ideas

So you have to love that Phil is in the middle of the table twittering or blogging everything (so was Rob) as it was happening. Lively, loud conversation. I’ve heard my friend Mikal say that meeting bloggers in real life was disappointing. He needs to join in because unless I’m biased (I’m sure I am). I have never met a blogger I didn’t like.

I have the complete Affiliate Classroom training for affiliate managers. It’s worth about $1000. It’s hardly used because I decided that’s not exactly what I want to do. What I need is Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula that costs about the same.

I know this is a long shot, but anyone up for trading? Or, if anyone wants to buy my affiliate manager’s course, email me and I’ll give you a good deal on it. Or if you have the Product Launch Formula and want to sell it to me. I wonder if there is a secondary market for these things. Maybe I should list this on Craigslist but I can’t imagine anyone searching for it there. They are not on Amazon (this is why they are so valuable because you can’t find them another way, but could there be a secondary market where we can buy and sell these products?).

Last night at about 2am, the time I seem to finally get to sleep lately, I stopped to catch up on my blogs. I’m not keeping up. But I read a little of Penelope Trunk’s blog – blog.penelopetrunk.com (thanks for indulging me). I read her first hand account of being in New York City on 9/11 and being trapped and thinking she was going to die. She fought to find breath. She fought to find life. It didn’t matter what the risks were or what was happening around her or what anyone thought. This is a great metaphor and one I keep picturing in my head.

Sometimes we are so confronted by our own power of choice that it scares us into silence or the phrase, we are scared to death. Other people in the same circumstances are scared to life. When confronted with our own power of life are we in fear or in action?

Funny enough, I talked to someone else the night before. He’d been to Guatemala and while he was swinging from a vine it broke. He fell 25 feet. He survived and I think he’s having a good look at his life. If I’m going to die it may as well be from swinging in the trees than boredom or other ways we could die right now.

I’m really inspired by stories of life. I think business is a form of living in which you are always looking for ways to create and grow value as a part of life. And when you get it, money comes to you. When you take responsibility for your job then you take on risk and choice.

Penelope’s entire blog is a commitment to life, a life of invention and adventure (which necessarily involves risk and trust). Mine is a commitment to getting it (learning) and knowing (I’m still thinking about it). I’m not sure I see everyone else’s as clearly. I love blogs because they are someone almost in real time. Twitter really is someone in real time – as close as I can see online. I can recreate a person in what they write and who they are in their blog. Sometimes, like today it’s incredibly moving what is there.

The search engines are probably going to say I’m straying too far from internet marketing. Internet marketing is just a piece of a bigger picture that is called life. I love this part of life because I don’t get lost here and it’s always evolving and creating. It’s forever expansive. So is life itself but I get it most in this part of life.

Robert Scoble and Jeff Barr are going to be speaking at the Utah Bloggers Conference. There isn’t a venue yet but it is June 28th – 29th 2007 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

There will be four main topics covered in multiple sessions: Blogging, Podcasting, VidCasting and Available Services/Building Communities. They will be beginner, intermediate and advanced level discussions. There will local bloggers speaking and guest speakers. Watch Phil’s blog (and mine) for details.

The conference will be free to everyone!

I’d like more push and less pull in my writing. I’m aggregating news for the most part. However, it would be great to get some original content too. If you have any insights or hot news about Google or Wikipedia, please send it over. Use my contact form in the top navigation of my blog. I’m not stingy with links.

If you don’t know what I’m up to from Twitter (well I haven’t been keeping up so you wouldn’t anyway) I’ll tell you. I’m writing about Google and Wikipedia for TheLatestAt. It’s a Podango podcast station.

This is meant to be bite-sized news about your favorite companies. Since my friend writes about Yahoo, I noticed that I’ve started weaving some Yahoo news into my stories. I also keep up with some other companies this way myself. You can listen to a daily wrap-up of the news in a one-minute podcast or read my more in-depth blog posts.

It’s a little tricky for me to find my voice in speech. I’m still working on that not just in my transcripts but in real life too. I’d much rather hide behind a computer screen than be in front of of people talking! But that will change over time as I find that voice. When I started blogging I had to find my writing style. I found myself having to find it once again in these blogs. Is it straight news? Witty and clever? A little commentary?

I’d love your reviews and/or feedback. I hope you’ll leave comments (be my first, please!).

I’ve just been doing it a week so there are some kinks to work out in a few key areas. Right now there are no permalinks so you’ll just get a page with all my posts. If you want to market through Wikipedia (wait, did I just write that) you’ll have to check out my post about an amazing guide I found yesterday that walks you through how to approach it.

As usual you can expect whatever I’m up to will show up in my blog in some form or another. Even if I don’t outrightly say exactly what I’m doing. Now you know. But catching up or keeping my breath, good luck! I’m not even doing that yet.

Check it out:
TheLatest.At/Google
TheLatest.At/Wikipedia

Twitter updates: http://twitter.com/newspapergrl
Skype: newspapergrl

I was too busy talking ideas and being out running around to catch this but today ecomXpo starts. It’s free if you want to just listen in real time. It costs if you want to listen later. The content and even networking is usually pretty good.

Super affiliate Jeremy Palmer is speaking on a panel tomorrow about arbitrage I believe. Vinny Lingham will also be on the panel.

You can see who is online and chat with any of the attendees. I saw a few friends. I wish people would Twitter it, but Twitter is having issues and freezes up a lot lately.

I need to start writing about Google and Wikipedia so that’s all for now. I’ll post on what I learn, if I can sit still long enough to catch any of it!

My friend Paul mused about a WordPress plugin that would format a blog into printable pages. Here’s what he has to say:

“I was thinking how nice it was to blog because it is able to capture a part of my life I am not recording in my journal–well that’s if I journaled. Than I
thought that it would be nice to create a blog plugin which created a journal format that I could print out. It’s foolish for us to believe that our web presence is going to be around for our children’s children to read.”

Any ideas? Is there something that prints off blogs in a nice format now? with comments? I think I’ve asked before but didn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I also want to save my blog into print format.