I’ve learned a lot about online pub­lish­ing since set­ting up my blog last week. I’ve already made many updates to this site since then and have set­tled on a for­mat which I’ll keep for awhile. I esti­mate that I’ve spent about 90% of my blog­ging time learn­ing about, set­ting up and test­ing the var­i­ous com­po­nents that make up the site. The other 10% of my blog­ging time has been writ­ing and posting.

Plat­form and References

Type­pad makes it very easy to set up the blog and they have a good help sec­tion and user’s resources blog with many tips and tricks. Even so, I found the learn­ing curve a bit steep at first and had to refer to lead­ing blogs for best prac­tices and stan­dard pro­ce­dures, includ­ing Joi Ito, Loic Le Meur, the founder of Type­pad, Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz, Richard Men­n­eveux, and Pappy Boy­ing­ton.

Mid­dle Sec­tion: reg­u­lar posts

This is a per­sonal site and I’ll be post­ing reg­u­lar notes with thoughts, com­ments, pho­tos and links about cur­rent events and my activ­i­ties. My posts are fea­tured in the mid­dle part of the site, in white. I’m new to “nanop­ub­lish­ing” and it will take a while before I find my “voice”, so please bear with me. I’ll also try to keep this site non-technical and will open a sep­a­rate blog to talk about things high-tech, as I described in this post.

A num­ber of you have asked me why I’ve set up a blog? There are many rea­sons, the most com­pelling of which is that this is a way of keep­ing in touch with you and with other  friends I’ve made over the years in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. Since it’s obvi­ously impos­si­ble to travel all the time or even to call reg­u­larly, I see this as an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion to keep up to date. E-mail is of course an alter­na­tive and con­ve­nient method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but we are all already swamped by e-mail. Besides, e-mail is a “push” medium while a blog is a “pull” medium, mean­ing you visit it at you convenience.

Your com­ments on my posts and about the site are always wel­come and appre­ci­ated and will be high­lighted in the right side­bar, as described below.

Left Side­bar: sub­scrip­tions and links

The left part of the site, in yel­low, includes var­i­ous links. There is a link to a page about me, with a short biog­ra­phy, my CV (resume) and links to my address book and online com­mu­ni­ties. On my side­bar you’ll find a link to my e-mail address and an RSS link if you’re using a news aggre­ga­tor. If you’re a Type­pad user, you’ll find a link to add me to your blogroll.

For those of you not using a news aggre­ga­tor, you may elect to sign up for e-mail updates to this site. You’ll receive a daily e-mail with my posts for the pre­vi­ous day and will not have to come back to my site all the time to check for updates. Con­tin­u­ing on the left side­bar, the next link is for my RSS Cal­en­dar. with pub­lic and per­sonal events and my travel plans. Most of my pri­vate events won’t show up, unless they are con­fer­ences or pub­lic par­ties I’ll be attend­ing. The next link allows you to add my blog to blog­lines, my favorite news aggregator.

The remain­ing sec­tions on the left side­bar are my blogroll, which is auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ated and kept up to date by blog­lines, and my del.icio.us links to favorite web­sites, also auto­matic. I’m mostly into gen­eral man­age­ment, mar­ket­ing and tech­nol­ogy and my blogroll and web links reflect my tastes.

Right Side­bar: archives, per­sonal links and advertising

Mov­ing on to the right side­bar, also in yel­low, you’ll find a list of my recent posts, com­ments about my posts, cat­e­gories of posts and archives of older posts. There’s also a Google bar to search my site or to Google the internet.

You’ll also find per­sonal links, for exam­ple, to my photo albums, which are opti­mized for the web. I’ll be adding to these and in the mean­time rec­om­mend the Rio de Janeiro pic­tures. I use Flickr as well and you can find my pub­lic pho­tos here. Flickr works well with Type­pad, as I described in this post. Please write to me if you’d like an invi­ta­tion to addi­tional pho­tos reserved for friends.

Con­tin­u­ing down the right side­bar, you’ll find the music and books I’m cur­rently enjoying.

Next, you’ll find some adver­tis­ing by Ama­zon, which I’ve included since I’m an asso­ciate and will earn a com­mis­sion if you link through this but­ton and pur­chase some­thing. I’ve sub­scribed to Google Adsense and may include key­word rel­e­vant adver­tis­ing on my other site when the site traf­fic jus­ti­fies it, if ever. The link to Spam Poi­son here is a means to fight against spam­mers by ren­der­ing their lists use­less. The last set of links indi­cate the blog search engines where I’m referenced.

Thanks!

Thanks for stop­ping by and read­ing this rather longish expla­na­tion of my site. Please feel free to com­ment and/or ask any ques­tions, it’ll be a plea­sure to hear from you!