Blogging gives you the power to expand on your own story. You no longer have to be satisfied with the media account, hoping they’ll amend the story, print a retraction, etc. Mark Cuban said he started his blog for just that reason. (And he gives another example of how he felt his comments weren’t accurately portrayed in a New York Times story over the weekend.)

Here’s a more local example. Alex Muse wrote a blog post not too long ago about his biggest failure — his inability to max out the value he was building with his telecom services start-up, LayerOne. Right after he did that post, the Dallas Business Journal named LayerOne’s acquisition by Switch & Data one of the best corporate turnarounds of the year. How could the company be both a failure and a successful turnaround?

For that, you’d need to go back to the TexasVC blog to get the rest of the story. Alex lays out, in self-deprecating detail, how it all really went down. He even apologizes to his first round investors who lost serious money on the deal. The net net, LayerOne went bankrupt after putting $20 million into a growing business that was just starting to take off. They put together a new team to buy the assets for a fraction of that, got a few centers cashflow positive and then sold the business off to Switch & Data for a few million more than the initial investment. Who won? The management and the post-bankruptcy investors. Who lost? The first round investors and the 60+ employees who built LayerOne, but who weren’t around to share in the post-sale windfall. Including one very smart cookie, Catarina Wylie, who hired me to work on the LayerOne launch. I’m glad to have had that rocketboom experience with Cat, Alex & that great team. I’m also proud of Alex for using his own DIY media tools to tell it like it is. Or at least tell his version of things. The great part is, others can come behind and add their own experiences to the story.

Technorati Tags: alex muse, dallasbusinessjournal, layerone, mark cuban, texasvc

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Originally uploaded by Brian Oberkirch.

One of the great things about hitting the Syndicate show last week was that I got to talk with Shel Israel again. After my panel, in the speakers room and again during the corporate blogging panel. He was taking notes like crazy, doing the best he could without an ‘I’ key.

If you are a Firefox user you are already familiar with the little orange RSS icon in the lower right hand corner of your browser.  Microsoft has decided to adopt it to signify RSS features in their products.  Read more about the news on Microsoft’s blog here. 

I get this question a lot, ‘what is a trackback?’  Wikipedia says, ‘a TrackBack is a mechanism used in a blog to show, around an entry, a list of other blogs that refer to it.’  They continue:

The term TrackBack was introduced by Six Apart which introduced a mechanism in their blogging server, Movable Type, that works by sending a ‘ping‘ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert. The blog receiving the ping typically displays the TrackBack information below a blog entry. This usually includes a summary of what has been written on the target blog, together with a URL and the name of the blog. The Referer field in the HTTP protocol was originally intended as a means of supporting features similar to those TrackBack offers.

Tom Coates has answered the question here.  Another beginner’s guide can be found here.  The official specification can be found here.  Trackback issues relative to WordPress can be found here.  Good luck!

The Architel corporate web/blog site has been launched.  The open source WordPress architecture allows the company to launch the site and make continious changes to it over time.  So you can never say a site is ‘done.’  Kudos go to Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits for the xhtml/css design (as well as the new Architel logo).  Weblogs Work integrated the xhtml/css into WordPress (actually three WordPress installs). 

Architel is a boutique IT support company located in Dallas, Texas that supports small businesses (20-100) employees.  Their unique IT service delivery model (one flat-monthly-fee for all-you-can-eat support) aligns the interests of the small business owner and Architel.  The company was a pioneer in this space and is now a pioneer in the ‘blog as corporate website’ meme.  Here are screenshots or just visit the site yourself here @ architel.com.

The site was entered in the website design contest at SXSW conference and we are crossing our fingers that the judges will enjoy the tight integration between the blog CMS and Dan’s xhtml and css.  What do you think about our work?