Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Writing about stuff on your blog

Finding interesting content to write about is part of being a newsmaster.
People come back to your site if you give them a reason to come back. For example you came back here for who knows only why but you did. (Did that even make sense?)

Anyway as an example of finding some interesting contect here is a link explaining about our earths new third moon (you mean you didn't know we already had two?)

And here are some photos of creative uses for recycling PCs.

So keep finding the bizarre, the wonderful and amazing or the just plain weird stuff and linking to it. Your readers will either love it or hate it.

So tell me - did you love it or hate it?


Posted by: Jethro | 1:37 AM |

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Google releases Picasa 2.0

In October I wrote that "Picasa is unintuitive." Now Google has introduced an upgrade to Picasa.

Google has introduced an upgrade to its Picasa photo editing and organizing software, offering users advanced capabilities such as adding new lighting and color effects, and burning CDs. ... Picasa 2 scans stored images and sorts them by date, allows users to add labels and star ratings to favorites, and lets them keep pictures in multiple albums.

Features noted by Google on their feature tour:
Picasa 2 is available as a free download. I have not reviewed it yet but hope that they have made great strides beyond the first version.
djuggler's personal blog is Reality Me


Posted by: djuggler | 9:23 PM |

Limit your blogging

Blogging can be very addictive. You can find yourself writing enough words to publish books. You can find yourself marketing your blog relentlessly through cross-posting and linking back to your site in other's comments. With tools like BlogExplosion you can read for hours and hours on end.

Give yourself a limit for how much time you will spend each day reading and posting. Create multiple blogs but be reasonable in the number you intend to maintain. Stick to it else like other addictions (games, television, alcohol) your personal life or job may suffer. Remember you can post in advance so in a couple of hours on the weekend you can give your blog the appearance of having multiple posts every day of the week.


Posted by: djuggler | 1:46 AM |

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Blogging Demographics and Statistics

A study by market research firm Perseus Development Corp. called The Blogging Iceberg -
Of 4.12 Million Hosted Weblogs, Most Little Seen, Quickly Abandoned is packed with interesting numbers like:

...66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned...The average duration of the remaining 1.63 million abandoned blogs was 126 days (almost four months).
Other revelations include:
Blogs are updated much less often than generally thought. Active blogs were updated on average every 14 days.
The article also has some nice charts listed under demographics to show who is blogging and the growth rate of blogging.


djuggler's personal blog is Reality Me.


Posted by: djuggler | 9:35 PM |

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Blog Basics: Learn How To Keep An Online Journal

Microsoft has published an article called Blog basics: Learn how to keep an online journal which reiterates many of the points you've read on Spy Journal Blog Tips. It further mentions:

A study by market research firm Perseus Development Corp. says more women than men start blogs, and women are more likely to maintain them.

This very nice article by Microsoft even mentions a favorite read of mine, Bacon and Eh's.
djuggler's personal blog is Reality Me.


Posted by: djuggler | 9:26 PM |

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Drawing a tsunami of traffic to your site using keywords

A good way to draw traffic to your blog site is to use specific keywords in your title and text.
All the people blogging about the tsunami will get hits from google searches (as well as other search engines like msn, excite, lycos, ask jeeves etc).
It is good if you can predetermine an event and start blogging about it before it happens, as that gives the search engine spiders time to crawl your site and start indexing it in advance of the anticipated rush of search requests. This will then rank you close to the top.

Obviously you can't guess that cyclone Kerry is going to hit the northeastern seaboard of Australia in the next few days - around about Mackay - causing untold damage and strong winds and floods. However you can think about things that you know are going to happen and maybe discuss the potential results. For example I will talk about how the Australian Tennis Open is happening in 6 days in Melbourne and that I think Roger Federer is going to win it. He has an awesome all round game, serves and volleys brilliantly, hits lots of aces and returns almost as well as Lleyton Hewitt. I think he is a better player however and so as much as I would like Lleyton to win I think Roger is our man.

That sort of article a few days in advance of the event - and then talked up through the actual event will serve up lots of traffic from google and yahoo hits. Try it and see if I am wrong.


Posted by: Jethro | 9:10 AM |

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Blogging either for or about a company

Michael Gartenberg of IDG News Service has written an article about the benefits and dangers of blogging from work, either in a personal capacity or in an authorised one.
Either way you need to be slow to publish until you are sure the correct "spin" has ben placed on what you are publishing. Read the article for full details.


Posted by: Jethro | 1:39 AM |

Blog Catalog Blogosphere NEws

Brad Jasper over at Blog Catalog (a great way of indexing your blog and finding others in similar categories) has launched a blogosphere news website and feed. I have placed the feed on the right hand side bar under the links section.
You also can add this feed to your website. Click the link to his site and then copy and paste the code in your webpage.


Posted by: Jethro | 1:34 AM |

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Expect Your Blog To Be Read

I started my blog as an outlet for sanity at a particular down and stressful time in my life. The walls were crashing in and I needed an outlet to vent. I was writing to myself, or so I thought. I created my blog under a pseudonym for anonymity knowing fully well that the Internet is never truly anonymous as my ip address would be associated with my posts at least in the server logs but I felt to the average Joe that my posts would be fairly anonymous.

My wife at the time was hardcoding a journal on her website. I decided to show her my blog and introduce her to Blogger which was an instant hit for her. And then the anonymity was gone. She took a more public approach not hiding her identity and then made references to my blog.

Publish enough information and someone is likely to put two and two together. Then all it takes is one link to make everyone aware of you. This happened to a girl named Jessica Cutler who wrote "anonymously" but blatantly about her sexual encounters in Washington DC (as reported by the Washington Post) then quickly lost her boyfriend, job and apartment.

Like Jessica and myself, we never expected our blogs to be read. Her's reached enormous numbers. Mine averages about 40 readers a day which is 40 more than I ever expected. That is 40 people per day that I need to be thoughtful toward when considering what posts to publish on my blog, how that post may affect myself or others, and whether or not I truly want the information known.

Blogger has a must read related article called How Not to Get Fired
Because of Your Blog.

People will read what you post. Make sure you post what you want read.


Posted by: djuggler | 9:44 PM |

Using Blogs a a tool for Marketing for Business

There are any number of blogs out there that discuss how to use blogs as part of a marketing strategy in business. There are many more that simply discuss and provide marketing tips and advice, whether network marketing, direct marketing, mass media, electronic or viral.
For a good starting list check out this entry on the Business Blog Consulting site that lists a large number of other marketing blogs.


Posted by: Jethro | 9:27 PM |