AOL IM Widget called "Wimzi" Released

Today, I was reading Time Warner press releases via my google reader. As I looked at each headline, this one jumped out at me. AOL announces a new widget for your blog called Wimzi. Instead of paper press releases of old, the hyperlink for the Wimzi was in the on-line press release.

I had an eWarrior moment. At least for today, My AOL Wimzi is on my blog. If I start to get to be a "blog star" one day, I may have to have my team answer my IM's.

If you are a blogger you will find the hyperlink at the bottom of the Wimzi widget.

Into the Blogosphere - Looking to have a traffic jam

Time to build the traffic for my site. It's exciting to experiment and really see how far I can go with this blog. One of my ultimate goals is be a paid speaker for conferences and to sales and marketing professionals.

This weekend I worked a lot behind the scenes on my blogs to build a larger audience through syndication and allowing people to subscribe to my blogs through Feedblitz. I have added a widget box to 2 of my websites and will learn this week about this.

I also continue to look for ways to get the "chicklets" on my site to make it easy for people to subscribe to my blogs where it says, add to yahoo reader, add to google reader, etc.

Also by coincidence, I was browsing the website of a local television station to look at how they handle content. I noticed at the bottom corner of their website an area where they were showing "syndicated blogs". The strangest thing about the article I clicked on was that it was written by the founder of Blogher who is one of the leading professional and educational groups for bloggers. So I got a double bonus. I now subscribe to her blog called "Pause" and applied to have my Media Mensch blog syndicated. I attempted to submit the eWarrior blog, but it told me it already had a blog they had to approve, so I will have to sort this out later.

In addition, I am now using Google Analytics and watching my traffic build. Most of this I will attribute to a similar growth in StumbleUpon.com and the support of my fellow bloggers from LinkedIn.

I have also started a new blog for my LinktoCharlotte venture and am using that to experiment with many of these new tools as well. It is only in its first month and I can see this too we be a great way to attract local traffic and those thinking of relocating to Charlotte.

LinkedIn and the Blogosphere

The journey on LinkedIn has been an interesting one. I first strategically used LinkedIn to build my networks of contacts in Silicon Valley in the entrepreneurial startup area.

One of the unexpected surprises of my networking on LinkedIn and also in associated Yahoo Groups such as LinkedinBloggers, is that a group of bloggers have connected from around the world.

The collaboration is exciting as we share new tools and strategies and help each other to build audiences for our blogs.

Today, I have read a post about "pay per post" blogging from an Australian Blogger, I was interested in this topic as I just started to investigate this as a way to earn money. Meg who writes a blog called Dipping Into the Blogpond about Australian blogging and signed up for a 10-days to a better blog e-course from Wendy Piersall who writes eMomsathome. Good stuff from "trusted" authors.

Some of us are sharing our "Blogs of the Week" and commenting or "Stumbling" them on www.stumble.com.

The blogging is a fun journey with unexpected destinations.

LinktoCharlotte VIP Kickoff

Last Thursday, a social network I founded called www.linktocharlotte.com launched with our VIP Kickoff at Bank of America Stadium. The Carolina Panthers we the sponsors and we met in the executive meeting room (the same place where the owner of Panthers watches the draft).

We had a very diverse group from educators, to sports marketers, to PR to technologists and media. We discussed social media and how this can become a great tool for the Charlotte business commnity to connect.

Some of the things we explored were the visual space area where the system helps to match you up by interest with those most like yourself. The system also worked well in helping to promote the event throught the use of group postings, event posting, and newsletters.

This was an exciting new journey, as we expect this system to grow exponentially over the next few months.

Thanks again to the Carolina Panthers for the nice gifts.

jaxtr in the works: Hearing them voices ;-)

jaxtr in the works: Hearing them voices ;-)

Into the Blogosphere - Stumble Upon

A long time ago (maybe 20 years or so) I was reading how in the future we would all have personalized newspapers and content coming into our lives each day. My thought was that this would come from traditional media such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, etc.

For the last few years, we have googled our way to content we want to read.
Some who are more sophisticated are now using RSS (really simple syndication) to bring content into our own "readers".

A few weeks ago, a few fellow bloggers introduced me to the new age of "Stumbling" at www.stumbleupon.com

"Using search engines to locate relevant content typically means hunting through pages of results. Rather than searching for quality web sites, StumbleUpon members are taken directly to web sites matching their personal interests and preferences."

Stumbleupon is collaborative and personal. Stumbleupon seems to learn about your interests via your preferences and the friends and sites you rank . My mediamensch website is a perfect example. I am not showing up very high on search engines for my stories about working on the George Clooney "Leatherheads" film or a conversation with a film producer who has an autobiographical film about being Elvis' bodyguard. My "friends" on stumbleupon are now able to read these and then their "friends of friends" are finding out about this as well.

I use the Stumbleupon toolbar. If I see a website or content that I like, I press the thumbs up icon. If I did not like it I would press the thumbs down.


Since I also list favorite movies, books, television shows, interests, etc. I can find others in the world with similar interests All the stumblers who like the TV show Seinfeld or the film "Godfather". According the their website, Stumble upon offers nearly 500 topics which users may choose to indicate their interests and preferences. The content I have encountered in my first weeks of using stumbleupon has been unique, humorous, informative and enjoyable.

What I enjoy about this site, is that it really starts to find the "essence" of the individual and matches you up with like minded people. Definitely an interesting way to further "flatten the world".

To see me on Stumbleupon just go to http://ewarrior.stumbleupon.com. If you like what you read or see, you can click to become a "friend".

Happy Stumbling!

Online Testing for Leadership and Personality

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

ENFP - "Journalist". Uncanny sense of the motivations of others. Life is an exciting drama. 8.1% of total population.

Take Free Jung Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

I found this website and spent about an hour taking different personality tests. Above is the result of one of my tests.