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I am not only writing this in terms of my own blog, but I’m sure there are a number of blog administrators that feel the same way.

Lately, there have been quite a number of comment submissions on my blogs. Some comments have little or no substance to them. Some examples are as follows:

“Nice post” or

“I read your blog all the time.”

That’s nice and all, but in the end, the same type of comments can get old, bland and boring.

When commenting on a post, one should express their thoughts that are specific to that post, i.e. their experiences with that particular topic, of how they felt about  that particular post.

With approval of blog comments, I have every right to be picky, after all, its my blog. As my grandmother says, if you don’t have anything constructive to say, don’t say it at all.

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I just downloaded the WordPress for Blackberry app and I’m testing it out on this post.

So far I’m a little annoyed because it took a while to figure out how to add a category. If you have child categories, its easy to get lost in a guessing game as to what category your really suggesting. So, it best to select a parent category and either tag the rest or add multiple categories when you are back to a desktop and/or laptop.

However, I’m sure that with time, the kinks will work themselves out.

In the meantime, I’ll change the status to “publish” and hope for the best.

Join me throughout my journey as I apply the Thesis Theme to one of my blogs and take it from a "plain Jane" blog into something that is uniquely out of the box.

“What is the big deal?” I kept asking myself. Its one thing when every other online person started to talk about and implement the Thesis Theme on their blogs. All of a sudden, I started getting inquires as to if I worked with the theme and if I could do tweaks for them.

I’m used to making blogs look like their main websites, but since Thesis came to town, I have been hearing more and more about it, that I just had to see what the big deal was about.

So I caved and got the Personal Version. I decided to apply it to one of my fairly new blogs, Never Left College, to see what could be done.

The installation was self-explanatory. I am also impressed with both the Thesis and design consoles.

So far, I managed to change fonts, installed plugins and widgets and uploaded some images.

Tune in next time, when I dive into the world of hooks.

Dear Palm,
It has been 9 years since I first became a Palm owner.

After much consideration, the time has come for me to move on.

I’m not going to go over the many Palm devices have have owned over the years.

I was slightly annoyed last year when my Palm 650 was exchanged for a Treo. The reduction in keypad space was a real heartbreaker.

Yes, I did demo  the new product, the Palm Pre, but small keypad memories still lingered on.

Plus with my luck with winning the iPod Touch, I have grown used to having more display space, so that I can actually read not squint.

Plus with more clients calling and contacting me with requests that needed to be done yesterday, the choice was clear to finally become a Blackberry user.

I guess my public did have it right all along.  At least there is a Blackberry iPhone Theme.

As is the case with most business owners, I have problems with delegation.

As an only child, I’m used to doing everything on my own. So most of the time, I rather stick it out and make it work, no matter how long it takes.

Finally, my back was “against” the wall and and I had to make a decision. I took a deep breath and  I asked a friend from around the way to help me with basic coding edits. This was a big step for me, since I’m so used to being in control of everything involving my clients.  A good book  to reference in this case is The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.

Slowly but surely, I am evolving, as most business owners need to do to survive. I have also taken the bold step of having someone else review my taxes instead of me doing them by myself.  At least next time around, I know that I do not have to be afraid to ask for help.

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Think your company shouldn’t have a social media policy in place? See what happens on a “King of the Hill” episode when good intentions go all wrong.

Peach uniform,
originally uploaded by i_am_jared.

Sports is a topic that I normally, don’t cover here, but when it intersects with advertising, well, that’s something else.

There was an article in yesterday’s Daily News about the speculation of baseball uniforms being laden with corporate sponsorship. When I first saw this, I was miffed to put it mildly. In my opinion, in this age of sponsorship being nearly everywhere, shouldn’t baseball, the scared all-American sport remain sacred? Players should be focused on the game, not be in competition to see who has the most patches on their jerseys like kid scouts.

Read the article, and let me know what you think.

Are you concerned about your brand across different blog sites?

Serveral people online have embraced some good tips and tools to protect your brand.

Michelle Goodman of The Anti 9-to-5 guide had a good idea by having a Wordpress.com page that redirects to her website.

So what do I do? Get nextsteph.wordpress.com of course! Don’t expect any bells and whistles there, I’ll just be mostly playing around with themes for inspiration.

It was also mentioned in a John Jantsch’s Small Business Marketing Podcast to also claim multiple Twitter identities. Some people have even registered their personal names and protected their updates.

So what steps are you taking to maintain your online brand?

Thanks to the folks at ClickBooth, I won an iPod Touch. Now that it has finally arrived, I should be jumping for joy.

However, I already have an iPod with over 15gb of capacity left. So I’m wondering how both my new shiny toy and my steady can co-exist in harmony.

I stumbled upon a Lifehacker post about how Gina Trapani uses her iPod and as an external hard drive.

Another friend suggested that I keep all the music on the iPod and put everything else on the iPod Touch. I looked this up on the Apple support site and yes, it is possible.

I do have a list of applications I would like to try like Pandora for the music I can allow, Facebook, Everenote, and Freshbooks iPhone Time tracking App for starters.

I am perusing around the Apps store, but can anyone recommend any other apps that I may like? With the iPod Touch, I am at the mercy of Wi-Fi so be kind. Feel free to comment below.

Like most business owners over the past several months, I have been doing a lot of internal auditing and reflection.

Like with any move, one decides what they need and what they could let go of. The same can be said about business services. Are there services that you are using because everyone else is doing it, or is it something you and your business genuinely need?

After deciding to let some services go and cutting down on others, I also decided like any good designer type, that I needed to update my look. So here we are.

I am still in the process of moving things around here, but in the meantime, you can take a look at some past blog articles that are in some ways the catalysts for this change.

• Cleaning up the email clutter


• Digital Spring Cleaning

Have you made some decisions in regards to your business to cut back on some services? Let us know what for and why in the comments.

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Unfortunately, I will not be going out of town due to circumstances beyond my control. Also with the possibility of being trapped by local transit, I thought this would be a good time to catch up on the books that I’ve acquired during conferences so far this year.

Here are some of them in no particular order:
The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right by Debbie Weil
Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, Revised Edition by Andy Sernovitz
Fresh Customer Service: Treat the Employee as #1 and the Customer as #2 and You Will Get Customers for Life by Michael D. Brown

As soon as I’ll get through these, I’ll post a summary. In the meantime, if you’re looking for something else, you can always look in my extended recommendations list.