I have had two very different reactions to tagging, or labeling my online content. On the plus side, I absolutely love what I can do with Google’s Gmail, and the fact that I can label my conversations, organize them 27 different ways, have different groups of contacts that are the way I think about my peeps has been a very liberating experience.

Over the years I have maintained an electronic version of my contacts, I have had several haphazard systems to keep this valuable data. I think my earliest effort was to use a great Mac program called Dynodex. I am hesitant to make note of it here because I am sure this will kick off a series of emails from other loyal Dynodexers once this column is inserted into the great Google mind meld in the sky. (If you do a search on the term, my columns come up at the top of the page. It is nice to know that I have such authority on a forgotten product.) But Dynodex had four things going for it — it was fast at searching for people, it was cheap, very lightweight (I think the version I used came on a single floppy disk), and you could enter all sorts of free-form information into it if you didn’t want to abide by its data structure. Over the years I have used Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook, but both of them violate the first three rules and were clumsy at dealing with thousands of contacts that I have ended up with.

Now for the past six months or so I have been using Google and I am for the most part pretty happy. All my contacts are online, so I never have to worry about making backups or having them on one computer or another. As I said, I have a couple of dozen different groupings that suit the way I work: someone who lives in New Jersey and works for a firewall vendor and was a source in a story that I wrote could be placed in three different buckets, for example, and I could easily see that. Yes, there are a few things that I would change — such as adding ways to present an initial screen for adding a new contact. And having better import and export features as well (CSV is so old school, and so painful anytime you want to move information one way or another).

I also like the way Google can search through my contacts quickly, and search through the conversations that I have had with each person too. It really is nicely designed.

Now for the other side of the coin. Google I get. Google I grok. But then the whole delicious tagging thing escapes me. This seems like it is just too much work. I don’t particularly get that whole deal, even though I understand why and how and where it works. It just doesn’t do anything for me.

Now I tag and organize my blog content over at Strominator.com with various subject headings, and that is fine too — not that anyone outside of maybe one or two people are really going to be searching my site on these subject headings. But I figure I might as well make it easier for those one or two people. And I guess that is where I think of tagging right now — it is kinda like the number of people that first understood Einstein’s relativity theories back in the early part of the 1900s — you knew who you were, and you could be smug in that knowledge, but for the vast unwashed masses of the general population it was more an intellectual curiosity.

Your mileage may differ, and I’d love to hear from you on how you use tags, or labels, or these other site-organizing tools.

Self promotions dep’t

While I mention my blog Strominator.com (which contains a current archive of these Web informant essays, along with shorter pieces that I don’t send out to the entire email list), I should also promote a couple of other things that I have begun to do in the blogosphere.

One is a collection of podcasts for small business owners and individuals that want quick productivity tips on tech. I call it YourPersonalGeek.tv, and you can subscribe to the podcasts in iTunes if you search on that term, or just point your RSS reader here.

The other collection of podcasts is for all of us that are married, or in longer-term relationships. I helped put them together for a client who is a professional counselor and therapist, Dr. Stephen Frueh. Stephen’s podcasts are called TheMarriageConversation.com, and you can collect all the episodes here (they are also very short snippets and wonderful advice).

At Interop this week, I saw a lot of demos of products with Web interfaces of one sort or another to manage their configuration, reports, and other operational controls. As I am sitting through the 57th one, I am thinking:

Wouldn’t it be a cool thing if the vendor put a link to their actual product on their Web site, so a potential buyer could just click on that link and try out the Webtop (as we call these things) for a test drive?

You could set things up so that the default settings are restored after each user logs out, and limit the actual damage that someone could do by putting the product on its own network, so that you couldn’t get everywhere inside the product, but still get a good feel for things.

I have been asking about something like this for many years, and now with the various Ajax and Web technologies, it would seem like a no-brainer to develop. A good programmer could probably whip this up in a couple of hours.

Yet, when I mention it, I keep getting stares from various marketing folks as if this was a really new and impossible idea.

The real-world Web demo really extends the whole notion of trying something out before you buy it to a completely new level. Sure, you can download software until your DSL modem is hot enough to melt butter, but nothing replaces the ability to actually go through the screens and see for yourself if something has the couple of cool and killer features that will make or break the product for your particular situation.

So in the interest of public service, I found an example for all of you Web Informant readers to check out. They are a British Intranet hosting provider, and clearly they understand the value of what I am suggesting — not that we have ever spoken. You can tool around the product, create your own entries, and otherwise have yourself a fine time understanding what this company’s product is trying to do, and what are its limitations.

But wait, there is more. You can grab a 30-day free trial, and unlike many “free” trials, no credit card number is required to get it. And at anytime during this trial, if you like the product enough that you want to really buy it, you just click on the subscribe button and all your data that you have created for the trial is instantly preserved in the fully working version, should you so desire.

This seems like a smart sequence of events, and I wish more people would do this. Granted, some of the products that I saw at the show cost more than a couple of bucks per month, but still, this is the way to convert looky-loos into real buyers, and without expending a molecule of bandwidth from any sales force, installing any ad-ware on a user’s computer (as some ecommerce merchants tend to do), or harming any small animals in the making of this software product.

I have been spending some time the last couple of weeks with two clients to try to help them become podcasters. One is a filmmaker, the other a leadership coach and consultant. In both cases, they are somewhat computer and Internet-savvy, run their own small businesses and have put up rudimentary Web sites. They both wanted to use podcasts to promote their core business and as another marketing tool in their arsenal. Where they needed me was to help them get over the technical humps of creating and distributing the podcasts.

It has been a fascinating learning experience for me on several levels. Here’s what I have found out.

First, the whole domain management/registrar system isn’t for mere mortals. While it has gotten better since the go-go days of the 1990s, it still needs work to do even the simplest tasks.

In both cases, my clients needed new domains to point to their podcasts that would supplement their existing ones that they started for their businesses. We had to dig around to find their registrar login information. Now, while I still host one of my domains with Network Solutions, I have found that GoDaddy offers better prices and better service, particularly for managing multiple domains. They also don’t hide the additional charges after you purchase the basic domain name. So we first had to set up the domains on GoDaddy and show my clients what was involved in pointing to these new domains at their old servers. In both cases, they had their domains set up by their computer consultant, but I wanted them to take control and become masters of their own podcasting domain.

I think it is very important for branding purposes that you have a domain that matches the name of your podcast, and that you can say the name clearly and have people remember what they are listening to the podcast. The name should also match your email address too.

Next we started creating a couple of sample podcasts. Creating compelling content is hard work, and requires three skills — script blocking, writing and storytelling. It helps to have that Radio Voice too.

First, before you do anything, you need a template or outline or whatever you want to call it that blocks out what you intend to say, how the podcast will flow, and what pieces you will need to put together. I will never forget how I came to write my first published book. I wrote it with Marshall Rose, the originator of the email protocol that we all use today and author of several books by the time he came to me to help him write his next one back in 1998. Marshall taught me how to block out a book and organize ourselves with chapters and sections in such a way that the two of us could complete the manuscript without having to be in the same city, time zone, or even writing portions of the same chapters together. It was a wonderful experience, and the same thing holds true for podcasts, only on a much smaller scale.

For example, here is one template. First is the intro message that names the speaker and a brief five-word description of the podcast. Then, we state the problem or issue that is at hand. Next, tell the story illustrating the meat of the matter. Finally, wrap it up with lessons learned, or the outro mentioning the URL, email and other contact info.

In addition to blocking out your script, you next have to write one that is solid, and then be able to narrate it so it doesn’t sound like you are reading it. The best podcasts are well written ones that have flowing sentences, engaging thoughts that are connected in some coherent fashion. If you aren’t an extemporaneous speaker, you need to write the stuff down first and go over it so that it sounds natural and like you talk. A great example of this is Nemcoff’s Pacific Coast Hellway podcasts that he claims he does from his car, driving down Pacific Coast Highway on his way to work. He told me that he is reading from a script that he polishes in advance. How he can operate his podcasting rig, read from a script, and navigate the twists and turns of PCH is beyond me. (Maybe Intern Guy is doing the actual driving?)

Anyway, back to lessons learned. Why all this trouble with the raw materials, you may ask? Podcasts are personal conversations between the broadcaster and the listener. Because so many of us listen to them on headphones, or in the solitude of our cars, we tend to develop relationships with the podcaster and begin to think that he or she is speaking only to us. It helps to have something to say and to say it in a way that will keep the audience engaged. Too many podcasters take the route of having a couple of guys jabbering away: I have listened to the first ten minutes of many of these and don’t return.

Finally, you have to be a great storyteller and put together a compelling story that will keep the audience’s interest. I listen to some podcasts that last for 20 minutes to an hour — in some cases, the hour-long versions have more compelling stories than the shorter ones. It helps to be a gifted speaker and know how to string along your audience with word pictures, letting them illustrate what you are saying in their minds. The best radio broadcasters take this for granted, and it is a skill that only comes with lots of practice.

Once you have a couple of scripts together, you have to record them in your computer. This is where the hairy edge of the podcasting tools really shows its dark underbelly, and where one of my clients (the leadership coach) had the most trouble. He wasn’t a computer wizard, and he was also using the computer to do something completely different from his normal email/word processing milieu. I had to design a set of tools that were relatively simple, and that he could easily use to get the audio tracks on his computer. We ended up with M-Audio’s Podcast Factory, which is a box that includes Audacity software, a good quality mic, and an USB/audio preamp. The product claims to include everything in the box to do podcasts, but only if you are running Windows, and only if you have Strom or some other computer expert looking over your shoulder to tie up loose ends and download a missing piece here or there.

Both clients reached roadblocks creating the final MP3 file that is the actual podcast, and getting them uploaded to the Internet. With the leadership coach using Audacity, the trouble was the missing LAME encoder that converts the Audacity native files into MP3s. We had to root around on the Internet and download the right version to his Mac. My other client, the filmmaker, was used to using Final Cut Pro (also on her Mac), so we used that to create the audio files. But again, FCP only outputs to .WAV not to MP3s, so we had to find something else to use for that. It would be nice to have something that could do the podcast from beginning to end in a single application, but we aren’t there yet.

Finally, there is the upload step, and the promotional step. These two go hand-in-hand and are perhaps the most important ones in the entire process. They are important because otherwise no one will find — and listen to — your podcasts. Part of having a great podcast is producing enough short promos that can be played on other podcasts, and knowing what those complementary podcasts are and being able to find the hosts or producers of them to get the promos played. At this point, I suggested finding the right 20-something who is familiar with online communities and help both my clients out in getting heard in the right places. You also have to tag the files with the right information so that search engines will find them and that iTunes users can view what they are about before they play them.

Obviously, there is a lot more to this than I have put down here. But what is exciting about doing this is that I can help connect the dots for people that have a lot to say and just need to get the technology out of their way and create their thing.

If you are interested in having me coach you to create a great podcast series, drop me an email and we can chat about what fees and time are involved. And maybe one of these days I will actually have time to write my own podcasts too!

Malcolm Mead writes in his blog:

Web 2.0 isn't a commentary on how great the Internet is going to be for bringing people together, it's a commentary for how lousy it HAS been to date in getting people together. So, for years, we've been using technology that essentially disconnects us, keeps us hidden behind emails and text messages. We've been so desperate for connection that we, as a society, invented smiley faces 😉

Everything old is new again, as Bob Fosse once wrote. Myspace is IRC with pictures. Flickr is BBS’s and posting files to anonymous FTPs. And peer-to-peer is Zmodem, or maybe Kermit for those of you old enough to remember these things.

The folks over at Cerado have posted a funny quiz here. There is a list of nouns: you get to pick whether they are Internet companies or characters in a Star Wars film. Now, I thought I was a fan and somewhat in tune, but forget it, I won’t reveal my miserable score. At least not here.