The nice lads over Elastic Path (from right here in Vancouver) have put together a great white paper called “Blogging for Retailers.” (Follow link to download your copy)

If you blog for business’ sake – at all, then you should read it. They talk about retailers, specifically of the ‘large scale’ variety, but literally every word applies to any blogger who uses their content and conversation as a marketing tool; be it a service business, or any-sized online retailer. Toward the end is a glossary of terms for the uninitiated.

Also, Dave O had fellow ‘Elastic Pather’ Jason Billingsley and Bryght’s Boris Mann join him for a podcast on the same subject. A great listen to go with a great read.

Many thanks, Gents.

We’re in here having a great chat, and we want you to join us.

You see, now you are not just welcome to join us for lively conversation here on the blog, but now we can get a little more interactive, in the brand-spanking-new Tell Ten Friends Forum. A truly “2.0 enabled” chit-chat spot. Check out the separate RSS feeds for individual topics and threads. Oooh! Aaah! Marvel at the cleanliness of the design; the ease of use.

Why a forum? Because sometimes, blog posts are too one-way, even with comments enabled. Not only that, but this way our questions and discussions can be discussed within a community, effectively “crowd-sourcing” for a more cohesive, collective uber-answer. Or something like that.

I’m creating two “topics” to kick things off; more on that in a bit. First, I have pay special thanks to the Architect of this new, fully-functioning fantastic forum. For real.

Rob Masefield, our Creative Consultant here at TTF, built it for us to show off his talents. If you haven’t done so for a while, have another poke around our site, and then check out his own blog and portfolio while you’re at it. Both are excellent examples of sites with Wordpress built in; something of a specialty of ours, thanks to Rob’s considerable talents.

I used to think that he was a rare commodity in the fact that he could design incredibly well and manage code intuitively too. Now, I’m beginning to think they broke the mold. And I’m not just saying that because he built me such a stunning new forum.

Please, pop in for a chat. Just click through to register, log in and start posting! Two topics to get us started:

1. How do you generate coverage and word of mouth for a non-profit horse show event, with no budget?
2. From Digg: Should MySpace allow parents to download a special spyware to monitor their kids activity on the site?

Let discussion begin…

We are growing in numbers. We are are extremely polite, almost to a fault. We say “eh” a lot, even if we try not to. We work in Marketing and Communications and we are…

Canada’s 1% Blogging Army.

We spread the word about new media marketing and PR tactics, and we evangelize the things we love. We get to know one another through generous linking to one another, and then of course, we say thank you. A lot.

Big thanks to Sean Moffitt for creating the list of 150 ‘MARCOM’ bloggers in Canada. It’s a great list, and one that I sure am proud to be part of. Click the image above the read the list over at Buzz Canuck.

Is just days away. Seriously!

I had originally set out to give instructions as to how to use Windows Movie Maker to show all the ‘PCers’ the easiest way to get video online. That is, I was going to do this even though I usually use Sony Vegas to edit and render my vids.

And then Lisa informed me via email that she isn’t able to render her video small enough (<100 MB) to be uploaded to YouTube. So, before I try to figure out the magic formula in Windows Movie Maker (I can hear you all laughing by the way), perhaps someone would like to recommend a web-based app that I can demo for all of the folks?

Has anyone tried Jumpcut? They have a cool little demo, here. If no one has a better suggestion, and the Windows app can’t make it happen, then maybe this is our tool. By the way, all we’re looking for is a suitable, easy-to-use editing/compression program.

Apologies again to Sean, who is also waiting patiently for my the rest of my series.

John of Obviousness.net tells us of his favourites, and I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, so here’s mine:

Like John, I couldn’t get on without:

• Gmail- Email me for an invite: jordanbehan[at]gmail.com

• Bloglines- Although I hype Netvibes for its simplicity, I’ve been monitoring my favourite feeds in Bloglines since the beginning.

• Wordpress- She drives this site, and many client sites as well. And we love her. Code is Poetry, after all.

• YouTube- for the same reasons John gives. (Except the part about the kids) It’s the most widely used, and it has everything.

• Flickr- If you don’t love Flickr, then I’m not sure you and I can get along. Just kidding. Or not.

Also, I’m rather dependent upon:

• Basecamp- For project management, to do lists, etc.

• Pandora- So I can rock out while I work!

What are your favorites? The ones you just can’t live without…

Well, wouldn’t you know it? According to Read/WriteWeb, Yahoo spent a cool $10-12 million to acquire MyBlogLog, the latest social media web 2-point-whatever tool that all the cool kids are using.

I first mentioned MyBlogLog a few months back, and since then I’ve started to make use of the widgets, stats counters and even messaging that it offers. Fellow blogloggers, hello! For fun, why not click through to the site to have a look at your own smiling avatar in the sidebar? I love that feature, it reminds me of some of the cool people that come by to have a read, and it makes me feel happy. No, really. And if it sounds like I’m gushing over MBL, it’s because I am. I like it, almost as much as my brother likes MySpace. But not quite .

Update: Duh! Here’s me on MyBlogLog.

The surprising thing to me is how good Yahoo is at acquisitions. Such a big company, with such an epic history on the net (relatively, of course), and yet they still have the wisdom to secure great web services like Flickr and the former example; ones that actually have a certain amount of genuine cachet among the early-adopting-power-user set. And they’re not afraid of spending some dough to get them either. (Update: Later, in the shower, I realized how funny that line must sound, considering what Google paid for YouTube) So, although I was starting to think that Google would always provide me with all of the tools I needed for absolutely free, I find myself migrating away from the big G, and oddly content with a handful of Yahoo products. Have you used Upcoming.org lately? It’s wicked good (Italics represent poor impression of a Boston accent) for events and networking, in case you didn’t already know.

I don’t mean to sound as if I don’t still use about a half-dozen Google products that I am just “chuffed” with, (Google, I am heartily sorry if I have offended you…) I just can’t help but notice that Yahoo is always upping the coolness factor too.

On a related note, I just finished re-reading Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Revisited, and I’m starting to build operations manuals as to “How we do it here” at Tell Ten Friends. You know, just in case someone were to one day make me an offer of 10 mill or so to buy this here small but thriving firm.

I would want to keep the chair, of course.

I’ve added some new gems to my blogroll (”Stuff I Read,” in the right column). As always I only add things that I read on a regular basis, and that I’m keen to share with readers.

You might find yours in the list, but don’t be heartbroken if it’s not there…I have several others short-listed that may be added soon.

Enjoy!

Update: How could I forget Converstations, and Obviousness.net?