Blog Variations

You should be seeing some changes in my blog in the coming weeks (okay, maybe not over the holidays but next week and in January). There is a reason for this and it is here. Notice that on the Visual C# developer center, there is a section called "Duncan MacKenzie on C#" which is just below the main headlines. This is actually Duncan's Blog...well, part of it.

Through the wizardry of RSS, our crack staff of MSDN scientists, were able to take the blog entries that Duncan posts about C# related information, and actually place it on the homepage of the C# developer center!

MSDN, in all of our wisdom, decided that people would probably prefer to read our content if:

   a) The content changed once in awhile

   b) It was provided in something other than dry technical prose in mind-numbing 10 pt. verdana

Now we are constantly posting new articles...but the word "constantly" is relative. We tend to have a couple new articles a week that we headline, but twice a week content is probably not something that will keep you riveted to the Web Services Developer Center home page (this is my baby). Therefore, if results from our test on the VC# developer center go well (and they appear to be going well), then we will roll the concept out to the other developer centers. So as the Content Strategist for the Web Services Developer Center, this would be my job.

If you are a regular reader of my blog (and I know you are) then you might realize that twice a week is probably on par with about how often I normally blog--maybe even more than my normal speed. So you may be wondering how I think I will be able to keep a fresh face on my little blog space. Well, I do very little linking right now. I figure that if you are trying to follow what Don Box has to say about Indigo, then you are probably monitoring his blog and not mine and you don't need me to link to it. But the tens of thousands of folks visiting the dev center via their browsers, many who are trying to figure out what this Web service stuff is all about and who don't have a feed reader running on their desktop constantly, they need to know about things like when Don posts about the future of Web services. I can also link quickly to any number of other pieces of information and have it show up as well as keep you up to date on the sorts of things we are doing with the developer center.

For those of you who are blogsavy, you could potentially use the dev center blog to find the good, technical Web service info without having to read about sump pumps and tree frogs. So, my blogging will be changing and will include more links and will happen more frequently. At least that is the plan. I am currently starting my own personal judgment phase to see if I can keep a steady stream of posts coming (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 or 2 a day) and continue doing all the other things that my job entails.