I have been putting together a series of Blogging seminars for the Boston Young Entrepreneur group. The idea came up because, as a Board Member, we’ve been talking about launching skills workshops. I know a lot about blogging from running The Second Glass, so I volunteered to launch the program with a series of three, workshops about starting and running a blog.

Part I focused on the basics. What is blog? Why should you blog? How do you get started? What do you write about? How do you get people to come? View the PowerPoint Presentation below:

There was a good-sized crowd with at least 40 attendees. There was a large mix of skills range as most of the room currently keeps a blog, but many were just getting started.

The next seminar will focus on setting up your blog, with essential plug-ins and features. We’ll dive into them much more in-depth, talking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) components.

The third workshop will focus on promotion.

While I only have two more workshops on the books for now, I am planning on breaking the blogging classes down, even further, with Blogging 101 – for those with little knowledge of how blogs and the Internet works, all the way up to advanced blogging and getting your stories on Digg’s homepage.

Stay tuned – I will be putting the information on my blog.

There is a difference between iPhone Apps “I Can’t Live Without” and iPhone Apps that are simply frickin’ cool. Let’s start with the ones I am completely addicted to.

Facebook

Yeah, it’s kind of a given, but the latest version of this app totally kicks ass. It allows you to view your ‘Notifications’ as well as all ‘Recent Activity.’ Basically, it’s the same Facebook you have on your computer, only on your iPhone. It helps you take your addiction on the road.

New York Times

Even though it’s been closing randomly on me, I still read two or three articles a day via this app. It doesn’t have all the articles from NYTimes.com but it has the important ones. It would be nice if they intergrated their videos and their other web content, but for now, I’m just happy I can read the paper on the train.

WeatherBug

Yes, the iPhone comes standard with their ‘Weather’ app, but it’s very limiting. I mean, who just wants to know the average temperature for the day? The WeatherBug will give weather alerts (snow storm, thunderstorm, flood warnings, etc), show the high and low temperature and is updated every 15 minutes. It doesn’t allow for many loctions, but they are easy to change.

Flashlight

Seriously. How do you think I stumble through my dark apartment after a night of “wine tasting?” This is how I find my keys, look for outlets under my desk and search for pots and pans in the labrynth that is my kitchen cubbord.

Yelp

Although it has yet to get me out of a jam, it did help me find a killer pizza place in NYC during a business trip. I keep trying to use it, but find there could still be some significant improvements. First, it would be nice if it told you cool places to eat within a few blocks of you. Also – if the money filter worked better, that would help too. All in all, I’ll keep trying to use it but will look forward to the day it really hooks me up.

Since starting The Second Glass I’ve been amazed at all the new software that we’re using. When we first started the magazine, in 2006, we edited all of our articles in Writely, which is now Google Docs. Writely was the first web-based word processing software. Not only did it allow you to write, edit and email documents, it allowed for multiple editors. This meant, that no matter what computer you were on you, and anyone you shared the documents with, had full access to everything.

Now, Google Docs is a cornerstone for our business. At least five times per meeting someone will say, “I’ll put it on Google Docs.” Spreadsheets, word processing, databases… the docs never end.

In our last meeting, we realized that Google Docs weren’t cutting it for our now large list of business contacts. Our team needs to share these contacts and keep track of communication so today I signed us up for Zoho CRM software. It compares with SalesForce, but it’s free for up to three users, instead of $25 per month.

After talking it over, we decided to say screw it. Worst comes to worse we can always export the info and start paying for Sales Force. Best case, we save some cash. After taking a look at Sequoia Capital’s 56 Slide Presentation Of Doom I’m pretty much sold on anything that’s free and can be compared to the paid version on the same chart.

Finally, the last online program I haven’t been using as much as I should, is Picnik. This is an online photo editing program, similar to Adobe Photoshop. It’s suprisingly powerful and can link directly to your Flickr, Picassa or Facebook photos. The nice thing about running software not hosted on your own computer is that a team of servers are processing the information, instead of your potentially, crappy, five-year-old junkbot. In the very near future you’ll be able to do some cool stuff with a device such as your iPhone.

Thanks Wired for pointing me to these totally awesome pict-o-grams relating the candidates to pop culture icons. My personal favorites are the Brittney Spears, Sea Lab 2021, typography and game machines.

On a serious note, there is a great website for tracking and making sense of the polling data. It’s called Five Thirty Eight (the total number of electoral votes) and it crunches the data from all of the polls into one, easy to read site. The site is run by Nate Silver, a famous baseball statistician who is able to accurately predict team wine/ loss records and player performance. He recently turned his sites to politics, which, like baseball, is a data driven field. During the primary’s, his numerical predictions were right on the money. As of today, the polls look good for Obama.

It is insanely important to know what is going on with the current economic crisis and what it means for you. Agreed, it changes by the minute (the DOW dropped 1,000 points, went into the positive and is now hovering around -400 in three hours this morning) and the factors are ridiculously complicated. However, I argue that everyone should know what’s going on and if you run your own business, it’s even more important.

I’ve been doing everything I can do to figure out what’s going on and how to follow. Here are some sources I’ve found highly useful:

• This American Life has been producing a series of episodes that explains, in simple terms, exactly what is going on. Only the most recent episode is available for free but I suggest spending the $.95 as it will most likely save you 10,000 times that in the coming months.
• Planet Money is a blog that is doing a great job following the economic crisis. They also have a podcast that comes out everyday around 6pm.
• Marketplace is also a great podcast/ radio show/ blog that explains the crisis in simple terms.

In short, pay attention and try to follow what’s going on, but don’t sweat every detail. The big picture is what’s really important. If you can understand that it’ll make sense of the day-to-day tidbits.

It seems simple enough, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday. Even two out of three wouldn’t be bad, but it’s amazing how easy it is to skip a meal or even two. When you work at different hours and staying up past 1am three or four nights a week, it’s difficult to maintain a regular eating schedule. However, today, I felt the effects of not eating anything until 3pm.

Your body doesn’t function as well when you skip meals. It’s hard to concentrate and in many cases, it’ll take two hours to complete a one hour task. Here are some tips that work for me:

• Keep your office stocked with nutritious snacks. Apples or carrots and hummus are my favorites.
• Emergency energy bars can save your life… or at least productivity. Odwalla makes decent ones.
• Cook dinner in bulk so you have lunch for the next few days. Pasta, rice dishes or Mexican food works well.
• Have a quick and standard breakfast ready at the office. A good morning routine helps get work done.
• Don’t get over hungry, because there is no going back!

Even though it doesn’t seem like it, eating well is an important key to a successful business.

Setting up this was a long time coming but, after seeing a Media Bistro presentation about Personal Branding with Gary Vaynerchuk, Julia Allison and Loren Feldman, I was convinced. Although the presentation wasn’t very scripted and it definitely seemed like a battle of egos, there were some good points being made.

1. Follow your passions and do what you love.
2. Figure out how to monetize your passion.

Basically, The Second Glass covers my love for wine and this blog will satisfy my obsession with entrepreneurship.