activeRenderer's Macros Reference. I've compiled and documented a list of the macros activeRenderer provides for improving Radio templates with outlines: check out aR's macros reference. [read more] [s l a m]

» Cool.  I envy Marc's documentation...

Just listened to the Geoffrey Moore talk (thanks to Rick Klau for the link) about making quota in a down market

He's an interesting guy to listen to and a good perspective on the challenge facing us over the next few years (Moore says decade but I've gotten used to things changing too quickly to believe that).

Basically what it boils down to is pain.  That's all anyone can think about right now.  That and slashing costs.  So if you want to unlock the purse strings you have to be into pain management and pay for yourself in saving.  "Fixing the leaky pipe" as Moore puts it.

But he goes further and basically says that typical mass-marketing lead generation won't work any more.  All enterprise deals will require referrals to get through the door.

Now I'm not quite at the enterprise software level, but the same principles apply to a greater-or-lesser degree wherever you are.  Looks like klogging's going to have to get vertical and start attacking those leaky pipes if it's going to succeed any time soon.

With more people interested in liveTopics the question is coming up: "What is the difference between topics and categories?"

I think Rick Klau sums it up excellently on his weblog (thanks Rick).

What categories do best is act as a channel to route content to different places.  This allows you to, for example, run multiple weblogs from one copy of Radio, or have RSS feeds for specific purposes (e.g. I have a feed dedicated to liveTopics announcements, there is no HTML just RSS).

But, as Rick points out, categories are a poor choice for organising the metadata for your posts.  They are too inflexible and too hard to setup.  They require choices (e.g. theme) that aren't relevant to metadata and impose limitations (both of interface and duplication of content) that are unwelcome.

On the other hand liveTopics are very simple to use.  You create a new topic by using it.  Just type it's name into the field provided when you edit your post.  You can remove topics just as easily.

When you publish a post, liveTopics automatically creates a table of contents that contains every topic you have used, and links to each post using each topic.  You also get a number of handy macros to display topics on your weblog.  For example, here is the output from a macro that shows your "Hot Topics" (i.e. the ones you use most often).

So that's what topics & liveTopics can do for you today.  Tomorrow?  That's another story.   If you want to see for yourself, click the button and download liveTopics today.

Michael DeMaria over at Network Computing wants weblogs to have topical lists of posts.  He points out that the time-based format isn't the easiest thing to use when looking for specific posts on selected topics.  There are obviously two ways find posts contain a specific topic:

1) Use a search engine.  This is the best approach to use when people are resistant to entering metadata. 

2) Use a metadata tool like LiveTopics by Matt Mower.  Matt has built a tool for Radio that makes it easy for authors to enter in metadata with each post.  This makes it easy to provide directories that list post by topic (through use of the outliner).   Basically, Livetopics can create a simple list of topical links to posts, or a complex hierarchy of topical links.  Matt has a complex hierarchy on his site.

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

» With thanks to John for the link.

Clearly I think Mike makes a very valid point.  Weblogs make great diaries, but the by-date navigation structure sucks for locating topical information.  More information about liveTopics can be had by either clicking the liveTopics see-also reference under this post, or going to the liveTopics page on the Novissio website.