On the Way Home from Kazakhstan – Eagles and the Gobi Desert

I’m done with my training sessions for journalists in Kazakhstan, and this trip really stretched the boundaries of my knowledge. These are the issues that I was asked to address: 1. DDoS attacks that rival anything else in the world, taking down any journalist...

A Test of TypePad’s E-mail Blogging Functionality

It seems that more and more  blogging services are turning on to the fact that most blogging input templates are pretty damn annoying. I say this as an advocate for the medium. I also speak as one who has seen hours of work evaporate as the interface crashed, or...

Happy Students in Astana, Kazakhstan

This is the last class I taught in Astana – they were very engaged with the idea of moving from traditional media to “New Media,” particularly with blogging.  The main question on everyone’s mind was “How do I drive more traffic to my...

The Endless Sub-Siberian Steppes of Kazakhstan

I got a real lesson in why the Huns, Tatars & Golden Horde were both nomads & ferocious warriors today.  The plane flight from Astana the Gleaming to Almaty the Ancient took me over an incredible stretch of flat, brown steppe. I looked down on this from the...