LBY3
The continuing adventures of Beau Yarbrough

Yahoo! News: Blah, blah, blog

Tuesday, July 5, 2005, 15:44
Section: Miscellany

Perhaps a little late for me, but Yahoo! News’ newest edition of Tech Tuesday talks all about the history and practice of blogging.

Well, maybe it’s not too late. Jonah has had a blog for years, and just revamped it quite a bit this past week, porting it over to the same software I use, WordPress, and making other changes. Check out what he recently saw around the neighborhood, where I lived until a year ago.

Anyway, Yahoo on blogging. There’s four blogging articles, and more on podcasting and RSS, which I think somewhat fall outside the strictest definition of blogging. The blogging articles themselves:

  • Everyone’s Blogging (But You?)

    • Can my employer fire me for criticizing the company in a blog? Maybe. Freedom of the press means Uncle Sam has to tolerate your ramblings, but your boss doesn’t necessarily have to–especially if you use a company PC to monitor or manage your blog. That said, some companies encourage blogging as a way for employees to engage customers, partners, etc. Several, such as IBM, have issued guidelines for employees to follow, so everyone understands the rules. In general, unless you’re at a company that encourages blogging as a way to communicate, like Sun Microsystems, don’t blog at work. Anything you create on an employer’s PC is fair game for monitoring.

    If you’re going to talk business on a blog–regardless of where the PC you actually post it from is located–make it clear you’re not speaking for the entire company. And remember, if you keep a racy or controversial blog, potential future employers may find it when they do a Web search for information about you (and many will). You may be proud of your creative writing about Carmen Electra and Paris Hilton, but the folks in human resources may not see it your way.

    This would probably be a good time to mention that nothing said here on this site should be taken as representing the views of Freedom Communications or the Daily Press family of newspapers.

  • Starting a Blog – Free spots to blog. I’ll pass: I like having control over my own destiny, and the article neglects to mention that free blog sites have suddenly shut down in the past.
  • Radio Blogs? – All about broadcasting (or, rather, podcasting, “a made-up word that’s a combination of IPod and broadcasting”) your voice across the Internet, much like Augie does as an adjunct to his main site.
  • Bloggers Go Mainstream to Fight Regulation – Bloggers fight threatened campaign finance regulation changes that would extend campaign finance laws to them.
  • How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) – An Electronic Frontier Foundation article on how to blog without losing your job. Other than their (perhaps slightly obsessive) focus on anonymity, I’m already following their tips, although apparently, under California law, I couldn’t be fired for my political views. (It’d just make things extremely difficult with sources, so none for me, thanks.)

    • No Comments »

    No comments yet.

    RSS feed for comments on this post.

    Leave a comment

    Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

    (required)

    (required)


    		 





    Copyright © Beau Yarbrough, all rights reserved
    Veritas odit moras.