Starting over

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.netI knew the day would come eventually. I should have been prepared for it. But the announcement in my inbox this morning caught me off-guard.

The note was from Robert French, the PR expert behind PRblogs.org, which in partnership with EduBlogs  has provided free hosting for my higher ed marketing website since I set up that blog in, um, I think 2006. (At least I think 2006 was the year I started that blog, but I can’t be certain of that because at the moment I can’t access or view the higher ed marketing blog to confirm the date. More about that in a bit.)

Anyway, Robert wrote to deliver some sad news: EduBlogs is very likely discontinuing their free hosting of PRblogs.org.

So, it’s time for me to move on. I’ve been considering it for several months now and should have acted on it sooner.

Here is my new home: andrewcareaga.wordpress.com. I’ve contacted EduBlogs to send me the files and archives of my former blog and hope to populate this site with those archives soon. And the blogroll, etc. In the meantime, you’ll find a sparse, new blog. I ask for your patience as I restart my blogging adventure.

The higher ed blogging community has been a vital part of my professional development over the past, um, six (?) years. I want to continue to be a part of that community.

But I’d be lying if I said it’s going to be tough starting a blog somewhat from scratch. I feel like such a n00b right now. So I’ll look to John Lennon for some inspiration.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Toying with TweetCharts

Have you heard about TweetCharts.com? It’s the latest analytical tool for Twitter to come from the mind of Dan Zarrella. Dan introduced it on his blog April 30.

Here’s how it works:

Enter a keyword, hashtag, Twitter username, or just about any other word or phrase you want to analyze, and TweetCharts churns out chunks of data related to that specific information, including data on reply, retweet, and link percentages as well as the most common words, most mentioned users and most used hashtags. It’s all presented in pie charts, line graphs and bar graphs in dashboard fashion.

Here’s a report on my Twitter username (@andrewcareaga) from April 30 through May 8:

http://tweetcharts.com/widget.php?q=@andrewcareaga

Have you played around with TweetCharts yet? If so, how? And what are your thoughts about it?