Elemental

What caught my eye today, March 2nd:

• Green – alltop – Spending too much time over at Worldchanging, Treehugger et al.? Alltop aggregates the top sites to one page of top headlines. via Guy Kawasaki.
• Green Building at Stanford Just As Smart As People It Houses – Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki gets a tour of a new green building in Stanford and compares light shelves to Newgrange – got to use that in the future! Always interesting to get an outsiders view on the technology.

mel starrs News Green Building, Guy Kawasaki, Stanford, Stanford Just As

Guy Kawasaki (one of my must reads) has an interview with Tim Berry about Business Plans.  It’s a corker and I’d love to quote it all but I’ll stick to a few of my favourites:

On who should read the plan:

…The (busiess) plan is by you and for you and if tracking it, reviewing it, managing and executing it aren’t important to you, then you don’t understood planning. Planning isn’t about the document; it’s about controlling your destiny, running your business better, setting goals and tracking progress, and keeping your eyes on the horizon while not tripping over potholes in front of you. If you’re not going to read it regularly, then don’t ask anybody else to.

On what are important qualities in a plan:

…cash flow. Growth spurts in a company are good things, meaning more sales, and presumably more profits, but unplanned growth can suddenly sucks up liquidity and in the worst cases kill the company. Growth without prior planning can be as fun a hard kick in the stomach.

Common mistakes:

…You don’t postpone life while you’re developing a plan; you’re always developing the plan. In the meantime, “Get going.”

…The absolute worst business plans ever, anywhere, are those plans in a drawer somewhere. If you’re not keeping it alive, it’s not planning; it’s just a plan. It’s history. It’s of no business value.

Go read it, and then apply it to your business plan (and please don’t tell me it’s stuck in a drawer)…

mel starrs Uncategorized Guy Kawasaki, Management, Tim Berry

When I first had a play with this widget back in November, I was a poor D-lister. As Hana pointed out last week, this corner of the blogosphere is very much still in it’s infancy. The fact that I’ve managed to move up a class in 3 months shows how quickly it is beginning to expand. The widget is based on Technorati. My current ranking in Technorati is 274,602 which is a fairly high ranking for me.

edit::since I posted this the rankings in Technorati have moved – Phil especially has jumped from over 1million to 600,000 odd.  This is because in part I’ve written this post.  Cool.

Technorati explain the ranking as:

• Rank 274,602:the number of blogs, plus one, that have more than 15 blogs linking to them
• 27 links: the number of links pointing at this URL in the last 180 days
• 15 blogs: the number of distinct blogs pointing at this URL in the last 180 days

If I was feeling competitive I might have a look and see how others are doing.  (Phil at 1,214,544 and Hana at 255,924 - longevity and regularity count in this business). My very linking to Hana in this post will push her rankings up.  So, if you want to contribute to my daily ego-boost, start up your own blog and link to me.  Blogging etiquette, especially around linking, is somewhat of a black art.  Some uber-bloggers (Guy Kawasaki most blatantly – although I see he’s dropped to no.41) fish for links specifically to push their rankings up.

If you want to learn more about blogging and link etiquette a great start is Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.

Bloglebrity Groupings Explained:

The Low Authority Group [D-List Bloggers]
(3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
The average blog age (the number of days that the blog has been in existence) is about 228 days, which shows a real commitment to blogging. However, bloggers of this type average only 12 posts per month, meaning that their posting habits are generally dedicated but infrequent.

The Middle Authority Group [C-List Bloggers]
(10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
This contrasts somewhat with the second group, which enjoys an average age not much older than the first at 260 days and which posts 50% more frequently than the first. There is a clear correlation between posting volume and Technorati authority ranking.

The High Authority Group [B-List Bloggers]
(100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
The third group represents a decided shift in blog age while not blogging much more frequently than the last. In keeping with the theme of the maturation of the blogosphere, it seems evident that many of these bloggers were previously in category two and have grown in authority organically over time. In other words, sheer dedication pays off over time.

The Very High Authority Group [A-List Bloggers]
(500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)
In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average – and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we’ve grown up together. Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.

mel starrs Uncategorized Blogging, Darren Rowse, Guy Kawasaki, High Authority Group, Low Authority Group, mainstream media, Middle Authority Group, Very High Authority Group