Blog design is addictive. You can tweak pages endlessly, striving for perfection – which you’ll never reach. Don’t worry, it’s a fun addiction. Better than heroin, so to speak. Therefore, I’ve made a list of elements that are essential for a personal blog. Let it be the next shot you’ve longed for and get inspired.

Continue reading Personal Blog Design: 10 Essential Elements

Last June, I was facing a potential boring Sunday evening. So I twittered whether anyone knew an inspiring, rock ‘n’ rollish or just tough journalism movie. Man, I received a whole lotta great tips from my fellow twitter users. As a blogger at a newspaper, I loved the blogger-versus-journalists references in State of Play, dreamed of an All the President’s Men scenario and sang along with Tiny Dancer when watching…

Continue reading 16 Movies for Journalists, the Follow Up

For those of you who don’t know me: I’m a blogger at a Dutch quality newspaper. Last week I went to see State of Play, a movie about a grumpy old reporter who investigates a billion dollar scandal. He gets some help from a newspaper blogger. The funny situations – ‘I don’t have an opinion, maybe I should read some blogs’ – and the ‘damn fine reporting’ inspired me. They…

Continue reading 24 must-see movies for journalists (and 3 series)

,,What’s the goal of your personal blog?”, I asked on Twitter. Everybody seems to approach their personal blog in a totally different way. Alper Çuğun (@alper) for example, mentioned that he uses his blog as a public CMS. Andrew Block (@andrewblock) defined the goals of his blog four years ago. One Twitter user, Erwin Blom (@erwblo), responded that by I want too much strategy. ,,Blogging is about telling stories and…

Continue reading You’re a writer and strategist at the same time

Last week, geeks from all over the world dominated Amsterdam to learn about the future of their profession at The Next Web conference. Of course, it concerned blogging as well. Blogging is changing due to microblogging. So, how does that affects us? Here’s some advice from investor Chris Sacca, writer Jeff Jarvis, and Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg. They were all at The Next Web and showed us bloggers the way to go.

Continue reading Blogging is changing: advice from Sacca, Mullenweg and Jarvis how to stay ahead

I love to surround myself with persons who have creative minds and an entrepreneurial spirit. People who do stuff, who want to share stuff. Almost everybody loves some attention for his work, let alone feedback. So I tell those hip folks a blog is a perfect platform for that.

This article will function as a personal standard piece on your blog as a platform. From now on, whenever a friend or foe starts a blog – I’ll send him this post to get started. It’s a work in progress, so your suggestions are more than welcome.

Continue reading Your little slice of digital heaven

There’s a weird contradiction surrounding Twitter. If you’re a heavy user, most of your social life consists of the conversations on the microblogging service. Yet when you go to a random bar, nobody in there knows about the damn tool. It’s everything and nothing at the same time.

Now let’s think of a your blog as a bar. The percentage of people knowing about Twitter is probably somewhat higher than…

Continue reading Twitter? Never heard of it…, want a beer?

On a daily bases, I have to at least explain twice what Web 2.0 is and what it means for us. Unfortunately too many people shrug their shoulders after my lyric and slightly persuasive story about this revolution. Sometimes however, a somewhat smarter person does get excited about the new developments. He or she wants to learn more! Debuzzing the buzzword Web 2.0! From now on, I can refer to…

Continue reading Let’s get you started with Web 2.0 news