Jason Harlan and Chris Goad are geocoding the blogosphere with Blogmapper. Have a look at Jason's inquiry to the radio-dev list. The technical issues are deep and fascinating:

• Maps leverage long-lived content while blogs quickly expire content.
• The syndication formats can be extended, but will they be supported?

Spatial data becomes free, available, and useful as more of us blog via WiFi or mobile phone, . These folks are on the right track. Send your love.

[aka technology]

From my Radio events log...

This is Marc Canter.

I bet his kids will be surprised.

David Gammel suggests...

Perhaps we should enable the writers to write and find another way for the others.

Absolutely.

A few approaches come to mind.

Capture experiences and thoughts differently.

• Photo/caption.
  • Like Spretzatura for the work context.
• Video blog.
  • Is Marc Canter listening? Vogs and vlogs. Daily movie.
• Hand drawings and notes.
  • Pencil to paper to scanner to blog, wacom to blog, whiteboard reader to blog, Photoshop to blog.
• Enclosures of work product.
  • Use your blog to chronicle each Office document you finish, each AutoCAD drawing.
• Music blog.
  • Perform, edit midi and samples, save to blog.
  • Newsreaders become music readers, feeds enqued to a tightly coupled WinAmp. 
• Emails of note.
  • Not just a forward button but a Post-to-Blog button. Suddenly on the record.
• Audio interviews.
  • Talk freely with someone, into the microphone please. Save to blog. Just key the metadata.
• Scanned handwriting.
  • Fax to blog. Might be handy in parts of the world with limited access to computers. For those languages where handwriting is almost as fast (or faster) and more expressive than a keyboard. Captures doodles too.  
• Dictation via handheld recorder.
  • Audio plus machine transcription.
• Voice mail to blog.
  • Handy, accessible everywhere.
• SMS to blog.
  • For the thumbs generation.
• GPS blog.
  • Do you make housecalls? Drive the kids all over the place? Field reports? Your mobile follows you through the day. A quick SMS logs your stops/visits, perhaps a voice annotation. Blogging tool generates a map of the day, overlay of the week/month/year, posts by location, posts by proximity. I can't wait to see what happens with blogrolls, community services, where am I now, and just-in-time meetup. 
• Proxy.
  • "Jim, can you blog this flanistam problem for me?"

Prompt with Structure.

True/False
is easier than
Multiple choice
is easier than
Fill in the blank
is easier than
an essay.

When you fear a blank page, sometimes it helps if someone guides you.

One way is with questions.

• Pick a theme.
• Deliver ad hoc or on a repeated schedule.
• Prompt via enterprise calendar, email web form, or IM reminder.
• Enter via web form.

Consider:

• Bernard Pivot's 10 Questions
• Friday Five - five new questions each week.
• eMode quizzes - users' choice, immediate confirmation, comparison to the average, guide to interpretation.
• Pattern job interviews 

The Friday Five helps you develop your writing voice and add human depth to your blog. But teams and enterprises want other content to support operational and strategic goals.

• By project, flash reports. Maybe even assignments.
• Time sheets.
• Professional development ("What did you learn this week?", "Who did you meet for the first time?", "What are you reading?")
• Performance management (Weekly goals, accomplishments, concerns, and objectives for next week)
• Process support. Polling for product proposal feedback, for example.  

Manage these feeds like subscriptions to opt-in mailing lists. Moderators needed.

Tech note: While not required, it would be handy to extend the metablogger API and RSS to support added schema to refine a post's data and metadata. 

Enterprise system streaming.

For every human prompt, the information systems in a mid-sized enterprise cook up a dozen review-worthy items. Every step in the life cycle of a process or transaction is running through your ERP, accounting systems, recruiting system, SFA/CRM, network monitoring and management system, and your KM tools. They usually stay buried.

Your klogging tool can collect personalized alerts and notices from all these systems, organized for your quick scan. See something blogworthy? Flag it to your blog. Have an observation on the process, on progress, on quality, on results? Jot a note.

Posts include links back to the transaction in the web app. 

Machine prompts for blogging:

• Increase transparency.
• Capture the human experience of impersonal systems.
• Provide opportunities for structured input back to the originating system.
• Help people narrate processes.

See also: Whither blogs? 

[aka klogs]

Reporting a project's status upward shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. The technique is to boil everything down to a well structured, bullet-heavy, one-pager you can forward weekly or monthly.

Be sure you can back up what you report with more detail.

Flash reports, if timely and shared electronically, can eliminate a program management round-table meeting every week. Attendees x payrate x meeting length x 52; you do the math. Even with meetings, you get faster, more focused meetings.  

The simple version:

Project Status for the Month of ___________

Project Title: Project Name

Project Description: (A short paragraph: just enough to refresh the memory)

Accomplishments:

• Planned and unplanned deliverables completed

Schedule Status:

• Plan vs. Actual. Threats to schedule. Revisions, if any.

Upcoming Tasks:

• Just a handful of the biggies.

Issues:

• The short list: risks and issues worthy of escalation, and monitoring.

Depending on your reporting style, consider this more detailed version. Remember, we're communicating up.

Project Status Report

Project Name: Project Name / Code

Period: Start date thru end date (Week Number)

Project Manager: Project Manager's Name, phone, email, home url

Accomplishments this Period:

• List accomplishments this period as bullets.

Scheduled Items Not Completed:

• List items/targets missed in this reporting period as bullets.

Activities Next Period:

• List proposed activities for next period as bullets.

Issues:

• Reference any new issues identified this period from the Project Issues Log.
• Reference any resolved issues this period from the Project Issues Log.

Changes to Stage Schedule:

• Identify any predicted slippage to the schedule end of stage date.
• List causes of slippage.
• Specify corrective action.

Author contact info: name, home url, project home, report permalink

Flash Reporting Tips:

1. Create a channel or category for each project's upward communication. This should be an access controlled web site: you'll be reporting personnel issues and bad news on occasion. Not necessarily for the whole team's eyes.
2. Email a copy of your flash report to your project sponsors, including a permalink.
3. Use a post title when you blog your report, making it easier to find. "Project Name - Flash Report - Week Starting 7/7/2004" lets you organize different reports
4. You rarely fit everything on one page, but force yourself. Prioritizing your messages assures sponsor attention to things that matter most to you.