Stephen Blyth's Blog

I have a suggestion for The New Zealand Herald (and any other New Zealand newspaper for that matter): how about offering readers a Kindle edition of your newspaper. I thought I’d explain why. Yes, the NZ Herald already has an excellent website. Not only is all the content from the paper and more available online, [...]

It didn’t take long to learn how many people opened my first email newsletter. Though much later than planned, I eventually sent out my first issue on 7 November. I really wanted to get issue one out to subscribers so they would get the notice about the Wellington NGO webmaster event before it happened. I’m [...]

At the end of my workshop I quipped “I hope you haven’t ended up more overloaded than when you began.” The participants in my workshop at the Engage your community conference on Friday smiled warily in reply. Setting out to cover the main bases of how to fine-tune harvesting information online meant we had to [...]

It’d be fair to say I like lists. Not necessarily other people’s, such as the 1001 movies to watch before you die prematurely, or all time top 10 songs of 1974. The lists are my ones. I got to thinking about lists to see if it might help explain why I’m failing to blog as [...]

Yesterday when I arrived at Deirdre Kent’s place she was sitting with a friend sharing tools and tips for using their laptop computers. It looked liked they were having a productive session. Deirdre is a convenor of the Transition Towns Aotearoa social media network. It’s about the third time in the last fortnight where I’ve [...]

I’ve been perfectly happy with Apple’s iWork ’08 suite of software. I’ve created business cards, brochures and reports, a few slide presentations and played with the spreadsheet. It’s been easy to learn and use, especially with loads of templates. Best of all it only cost about $80. Last week I hit a glitch – I [...]

Normally I don’t touch the insides of computers or other electronic gizmos. Maybe it’s because my fingers are too clumsy, or eyesight poor. Adding some RAM in a slot and changing batteries is just about my limit. I was pretty alarmed when a sad face appeared on my ipod. The official Apple help pages shed [...]

The recent decision to open anyone to create any internet domain name has been widely reported as starting a potential boom on the Internet. The release of an unlimited number of domains, currently restricted to just 21 top level acronyms, (including .com, .net, etc), will allow for unrivaled personal expression. Every family of individual could [...]

I’m sure I could find somewhere on the Internet everything I want to know about Google, plus tonnes I don’t. There are websites with search guides, how-to videos, gossip, a Google maps mash-up list and much more. Next week I’m running a one hour training course on effective search techniques for people working as elder [...]