Mark Evans

The Weekly Wrap

A weekly wrap of the week that was on MET:

Highlights:

- The week started with an unveiling of sorts as my brother, Sean, and I talked about how we had been writing and trying to attract an audience to another blog, Four Reasons Why. Truth be told, it difficult to gain a following on the blogosphere unless you’re producing great content, you’re focused on a particular niche, and/or you’re lucky enough to catch the wind in your sails.

- The mesh meetup was a great success with more than 100 people coming out on a Monday night to socialize. It just goes to show again that as much as tech people love to e-mail, IM, Twitter, etc., there’s a huge appetite to get together in person. meshU starting to gain momentum as more people recognize the strong line-up of speakers.

- My friend and co-mesh gang member, Stuart MacDonald, launched his new online cruising start-up, Tripharbour.com. mesh@sea only a matter of time!

- Is the iPhone finally coming to Canada? The Toronto Star reports Rogers could be coming out in May/June as part of a campaign focusing on touch screen phones. Truth be told, I’ll believe it when I see it given it’s been a year since the iPhone was launched. Canada is a digital peasant!

Most popular posts:

- Who’s Going to Say the “P” Word, looking at how aggregation services such as Friendfeed are really social networking portals. Yes, portals are back.

- Talking to Disqus: A Q&A with Disqus co-founder Daniel Ha

- Communications 101: How to Communicate Better: A post written in April 2007 that for some strange reason keeps attracting traffic, probably because it’s the number one result on Google if you search for “how to communicate”. I got to figure out a way to monetize this baby! Hello, Skype?

New Theme

- As a Canadian, I really liked the red and white theme done by Headset Options but it was time for a change. The new theme is called “Statement” by Jai Nischal Verma (aka BlogohBlog), a Wordpress blogger and really good designer. Next WP project: giving the header some sizzle.

Mystery of the week

- a sudden 20% drop in Feedburner subscribers after steady growth over the past three months. Maybe many people are doing some RSS spring cleaning!

Here, Beta, Beta

- Betas in the “must check out pile”: Evernote, Fav.or,it, Presdo, Toluu. Betas checked out but given a quick pass: The Filter (not intuitive, couldn’t see the benefits), Alert Thingy (bad interface, not user-friendly, the hype is killing it).

Technorati Tags: Beta, Blogging, mesh, meshU, Wordpress