Fredrik at corporateblogging.info has created a Corporate Blogging Primer, in which he has organized much of his sites content into a single PDF document that can be easily read and used for, well, whatvever you need it for. I think it's kind of funny to consense a blogging primer into a PDF file, but I can see the purpose in the corporate world - it's just not quite a dogfood thing to do is all.

His definition of a corporate blog?

It's pretty well done. The contents include:

It was so cool to see the Northern Lights for the first time. Like fast waves of light rolling and tumbling  from the horizon, up over your head. The light went well past straight overhead from where it started in the north. There were some light clouds near the horizon, but the greenish glow reached far above them. I took these 20-second exposures with my Nikon D70, propped carefully on the hood of my car and rested on my arm, since I didn't have a tripod with me. The location is near my house in Deer Island, Oregon.

I'm seeing something right now that I have never seen before in my life. Coronal Mass Ejections are lighting up the night sky with these incredible rolling waves of Northern Lights. It's amazing. One more reason for my list of why its good to live out in the sticks. Trying to get pictures, too. Wow, so cool...

From spaceweather.com:

More auroras are possible on Nov. 8th and 9th when a pair of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are due to hit Earth's magnetic field. The CMEs were hurled in our direction by weekend explosions near sunspot 696: an M7-class solar flare on Nov. 6th (0030 UT) and an X1-flare on Nov. 7th (1605 UT).

This is so great - I have always wanted to see these!

And this from NOAA:

This plot shows the current extent and position of the auroral oval in the northern hemisphere, extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite.

Thanks to Doc Searls for the links, and unabashedly to Art Bell on the radio who made me stop and look while I was driving home with a very brief mention on the radio.

I got a couple pictures - going to see how they turned out.

This post is for the brain-dead and hermits among us.

Just in case you missed it, Halo 2 is coming out this week on Tuesday Noveber 9th. Thousands of stores are opening at midnight+1 to sell the game, so find the stores closest to you, choose one, and go get in line.

Meanwhile, here are a few new and nifty items to tide you over until Tuesday at 12:01 am:

• Halo 2 skin for Windows Media Player
• First cut from the Halo 2 soundtrack (“Blow me Away” by Breaking Benjamin)
• The Xbox.com Halo 2 web site&amp;nbsp;(lots of cool stuff)<BR>
• Bungie's Halo 2&amp;nbsp;web site
• Xbox TV - trailers, interviews, other videos (very good documentary, too)

So - is anyone actually taking vacation from work to beat the game? Heh.

Here is what Microsoft says you'll need - go to the xbox.com readiness guide page for more details...

The Essentials

• A copy of the most anticipated game of 2004: Halo® 2. (Obviously!)
• An active subscription to Xbox Live™.
• An Xbox®-compatible router.
• A Friends List full of potential opponents and teammates.
• A linked Gamertag.
• A TV and sound system to take in the whole experience. (HDTV and Surround Sound optional, but recommended.)
• At least one day completely set aside for nothin’ but gaming bliss.
• Supplies (food, refreshments, toilet paper, etc.).

Who's planning on getting in line and buying their copy at midnight? I'm game if someone else is going along, but I won't be skipping work, I'm not that hard-core, heh.

I discovered Microsoft PhotoStory 3 last night via a link from Sean Alexander's blog. By the way - Sean has one of the best weblogs on my subscription list - If you are in any way interested in digital media, do yourself the favor of checking out his blog often, or subscribe to his feed here:

One free download later (5 megs), I was up and running with a very cool app that let me go through a whole slew of digital photos I took while on my vacation recently. I was able to edit, tweak and arrange the images and create packages of images, with narration and music and titles. It works, and in fact it pretty much rocks. I kicked out a few windows media video files with sound and everything to send people who have asked for such a thing. None of the ones I created last night are geared for this web site, but I will likely put together a few to post along with my vacation pics a little later on.

Clean up and edit your photos. Add transitions, motion, music, narration, and other effects, then publish it to a movie-like format that others can view. Put it on a web site, in an email, on a CD or DVD, or even on a mobile device that will play Win Media video.

If you're looking for an easy but classy way to package up photos to tell a story and/or to send to people in a way they can easily view, this is for you - recommended.

Coming November 7th? That's tomorrow...

Rumor is more will be revealed Sunday during ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and ESPN's Sunday Night Football. Sean's teasing us!

Ahhh - here we go... Info from the Seattle Times.

Microsoft is using the campaign to pitch Media Center Edition, a version of Windows that has digital TV, scheduling and recording capabilities and a TVlike remote control. It's installed on PCs with TV tuners that start at about $1,000.

Also new this fall is a companion device called Media Center Extender. It's basically a small box with a radio antenna that sits on a TV. It lets users wirelessly get digital media from a PC — including recorded movies and TV shows — to sets elsewhere in the home.

Intel is pitching its Pentium 4 chips with hyperthreading, a technology that boosts PC performance during data-intensive tasks such as digital-media processing.