The Canadian party leaders participating in the debate.

In Canada, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton (@jacklayton) brought pieces of the debate right into Twitter.  He apparently had a team working behind the scenes to offer NDP responses to some of the things said by the other leaders (mostly Harper).  During the debate, several “fact check” tweets were posted, linking to various statements on the NDP website that offered the NDP account of what really happened.

Most of the other candidates have Twitter accounts too — Prime Minister Stephen Harper (@pmharper), Green Party leader Elizabeth May (@ElizabethMay) and Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe (@gillesduceppe) are all up there.  The only Canadian leader who doesn’t seem to have an active Twitter profile (at least not one that I could find) is Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.  @stephanedion isn’t following anyone, and has only a “Hello Twitter!” statement from over a year ago.

I’ve followed all of the leaders, but so far only Jack Layton and Stephen Harper have followed me back.  (Seeing “Stephen Harper is now following you on Twitter!” pop up in my email was amusing to me.)  I’ll be disappointed if Elizabeth May doesn’t follow me, but she hasn’t posted a tweet since the debate, and it looks like she genuinely manages her own Twitter account.

I do hope that whoever becomes Prime Minister does keep using Twitter.

I was repeatedly seeing “Call Failed” when I tried to make or answer phone calls.  I would answer my phone, for example, and a few seconds later it would abruptly drop the call.  At first I assumed it was Rogers’ fault… just because it usually is.  But in this case, it was not.  The solution is simple.

Turn your phone off.

The iPhone is a computer, and as you’re probably aware, computers suck.  They don’t always work like they should, and after some time, they need a restart.  Powering off the phone and turning it back on seems to fix the problem.  I’ll try to remember to restart my iPhone each time I charge it.  (Thanks to the guy in the Rogers Plus store for letting me know.)

I’ll admit, I felt a little stupid after that.  Normally, when I call a support desk or ask for help, I’ve already tried the obvious stuff like restarting my PC, checking all the cords, etc.  For some reason I wasn’t expecting the same with my phone.

I hope this helps someone.

It’s not surprising.  It’s not exciting.  It’s not interesting.

I just don’t care.

I’m not normally impressed with blogs that spend their time repeating what the “A-list” bloggers say.  It seems that every time a blogger like Seth Godin opens his mouth, half the blogosphere reports on it.  It’s awfully repetetive.

But now you’re going to have to excuse a moment of hypocrisy, because I’m compelled to comment on what Seth said today on the topic of blog conflicts through advertising, if only because it mirrors some recent decisions I’ve made.

I have to chuckle a bit at bloggernoob.com, where that site’s author (”the noob”) wrote earlier about an over-emphasis on content.  He likens the stance of the “blogging purist” to a misunderstanding of the blogging economy.  My grin comes from the fact that the next day, one of the most famous bloggers in the world (who quite obviously understands the blogging economy) posted about how he doesn’t sell space on his blog, specifically to make it “as pure an exercise as [he] can”.

Don’t get me wrong — I have no problem with ad-supported sites.  I still run several of them.  But sometimes, a site’s revenue is less direct, and ads can actually pull away from a more valuable opportunity.

Seth makes money from his blog by giving the world a glimpse into his mind.  The very fact that we know his name shows that he’s a good marketer.  The fact that so many bloggers agree with, and repeat, everything he says shows that he’s either very smart, or very charismatic.  Either way, it earns him a living as people pay him to talk or write.

I’m not getting paid to give seminars or write books (yet), but I profit from my online ventures in a similar way.  I’m entirely self-taught.  Over the past ten years or so, I’ve learned how to design, develop and market websites.  Aside from some high-school courses in basic programming, I’ve never been formally trained in these activities.  I learned what I know by putting up websites, getting people to them, and measuring results.

Now, my clients pay me for that experience.  I do a variety of things, from coding Wordpress themes to running AdWords campaigns — from writing email copy to developing full marketing programs.  These skills didn’t come from nowhere: I’ve learned what does and doesn’t work through years of experimentation, both on my own and through employment.

So when I relaunched my Philosophy Index site this week, I decided to remove all ads from the site.  Considering how little they make, relative to my other forms of income, they’re really a burden.  They take up space and distract me from what I actually love about that site.  (I’m starting work on a Philosophy degree this fall, so reviving the site has a double meaning to me.)

I feel really good about the decision, and I’ll be honest — reading Seth’s blog post did re-affirm that feeling.  It’s not a “holier-than-thou” thing, like the noob says.  It’s a choice thing.  I want content to be my focus, and I want this blog (and my sites) to be all me.  If I were writing short content in simpler language with pictures of models, my blog would be horribly inauthentic.  I’m not after the idiots with wallets.  I’m looking to work with smart people who can use (and will value) my services.

This year, Blog Action Day will focus on another global problem: poverty.  Bloggers from around the world are called to write a post about the issue and publish it on October 15 to raise awareness of global poverty and work together to help the problem.

I’ve just registered Work, Web, Play to participate this year, and I’ll be writing on my other blogs where I can.   It looks like I made it into the first 100 sites to register.  Be sure to get your blog registered on blogactionday.org and join in the cause on October 15!

This year, it’d be great to see some more corporate blogs take part as well — social awareness is always a great trait to see from the corporate world.  This is a great opportunity to promote your business as a socially conscious, forward-thinking organization.

I was working with a friend today on a website for his new business.  We got to talking about business ideas, and he told me a story about one business case that arose from recognizing and seizing an opportunity:

A worker in a sawmill noticed the huge amount of wood shavings that were being shipped off as waste.  Any bit of log that didn’t divide nicely into lumber was deemed useless, and discarded.  What’s more, the mill was actually paying to have the discarded bits of tree taken off the premises.

But those shavings were far from worthless, and this employee recognized that.  He offered to start picking up the wood shavings for free, saving his employers some cash.  He then took the wood shavings and sold them to local pet stores as litter.  Consumers would then buy the litter for their hamsters, rabbits and guinea pigs.

There’s nothing revolutionary about what he did, but he saw an available resource and recognized the opportunity to do something with it.  He satisfied a need for both his employers, who didn’t want the wood chips, and a market that did.  He also made a respectable amount of money in the process.

So while reading about the latest business idea can help you learn what’s working for others, sometimes nothing beats finding a new opportunity a little closer to home.  All you need to do is keep your eyes wide open.

It took a few tries/revisions to find the best way to do this, so I thought I’d share my solution.  All I did was create a page with a specific slug (”sidebarpage”) and echo its content.  I used it in a sidebar widget, but you could use this anywhere in your Wordpress Theme if you’d like to have an additional editable area.

Be sure that you’re creating a seperate WP_Query object ($sidebarpage in this example) — otherwise you’ll modify the query on the page itself, and your sidebar content will show up in the main body of your posts/pages as well!

The down-side of having this content stored in a page is that the page will appear in page listings, so be sure to exclude it if these are used in your theme.

Like most publishers, I started searching for some of my own sites, including my company site.  If you search for “XAdvance web” (searching for XAdvance alone seems to ignore the “X”), you get this in the results.  I have one question for Cuil — who is this woman?

I don’t know her.  She’s got nothing to do with XAdvance.  So what’s the deal? It might be interesting to learn how Cuil chooses these images. Also, the title and some of the content are several months old.

As I write this, I can see another publisher, Patrick O’Keefe is going through something similar.  He points to his blog (via Twitter) where his sites are also paired with irrelevant images.

Cuil, pronounced “cool”, surfaced yesterday with claims of an index larger than Google’s.  It’s been developed largely by former Google employees, along with some from IBM, eBay and others.

We’ll have to see what happens as the search engine takes shape–after all, it’s brand new.  But for the moment, I don’t see its format or results replacing Google anytime soon.

I wonder who will be the first to publish some new SEO practices for it.  It looks like there’s already enough spam on there.

So if you make websites, take the survey now!  (Thanks to Sara for pointing it out.)

Everyone’s really excited about Web 2.0. Still. That in itself isn’t a problem: there’s lots to be excited about. All this Web 2.0 stuff — social media, network building, picture posting, wiki writing, Twitter tweeting and all the other things bloggers do while high on AJAX — is making the Web into a much more collaborative, open and accessible medium. That was pretty much the point of the Web from the get-go, so kudos to them for the job well done.

But, talk has been growing over the past year about the future of this utopia we’re all building together — or at least, its business future. The analysts say the tides may be turning yet again: that Web 2.0 is forming a bulge of a bubble that’s about to burst at the seams.

And they’re probably right. If you look around, it’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot of noise going on. Of course, we’ve had Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Flickr and the great big blogosphere for a while now. But every day it seems I’m learning about some new Web 2.0 app and how it’s the best thing for me since sliced turkey. There are way too many social media sites out there, and I’m afraid that sitting in the middle of this with my Web Marketer and Web Developer hats on has gotten me awfully dizzy.

And while wearing those hats — yes, I wear actual hats — I’m often browsing freelancer sites looking for fun and exciting projects to work on. Without fail, there are daily postings from investors looking to build the next MySpace, Digg or i-silver-bullet. If not, they at least want a new Facebook app that will create the viral marketing their business always needed to get off the ground.

After the 2000 dot-com burst, this kind of if you build it they will come smack in the face of rationality came to a grinding halt, and the executives who didn’t smarten up were politely asked to die in a hole somewhere. Now, it seems like the coffers are opening up again to buy a piece of Web 2.0 pie.

Of course so many “Web 2.0″ companies are living off of traffic and ad revenue alone — but what about those using the Web to sell something tangible? My friends over at Sitebrand paint a brighter picture for those involved in online retail, where the Web may actually be the safer bet as the U.S. economy slows down.

Meanwhile, the clients I work with have all increased their online marketing spending over the past year or two — but every single one of them has become obsessed with their web metrics. Conversion rates, cost-per-lead and ROI are on the tops of their minds, and rightly so.

So it seems that at least some people have learned from the first dot-com burst, which is great because they’ll need to use that kind of sense again to search for new marketing tactics when the bubble bursts and Internet users worldwide simultaneously fall into comas.

I guess what I’m trying to say in all of this is “smarten up, Internet”, because if everything goes to hell again the Web won’t be any more fun and I’ll have to get a new job.