Blogging
Everything I know is Wrong
I read Andrew Keen’s brilliant book The Cult of the Amateur over the weekend. I read it in one sitting.
I’m stunned. I’m shocked. I feel lost.
In short, with a mere 200 pages, Andrew convinced a hardnose like me that I’m wrong. About everything. About a great many things having to do with the internet.
I spent most of Monday in a fog. I felt like deleting my blog, shutting down my business, and going to work on a lawn crew for the next ten years. I’m not joking.
I think I’m starting to recover a bit. But who knows?
Still not getting Twitter. Help me out.
I’ve been on Twitter now for a while (maybe four months?). And this is the second time I’ve joined. And I’m still not fully getting it. It’s extremely time consuming when I use it.
While it might only be little flashes of light throughout the day (using Twirl), it’s still distracting when you are working on a project. Or on the phone with a client.
Ted Murphy of PayPerPost tries Social Networking in Central Florida
Ted Murphy, the founder of controversial Orlando-based PayPerPost, is at it once again.
He has recently founded a social network for Central Florida web workers called Doterati. There’s much wrong with this, but perhaps a few things right with it. I’m all about giving someone a second chance - even when Death Star attack sirens are going off in my head.
When I say he “founded” a social network, I mean to say that he spent an afternoon or two using Ning’s excellent network-creating web application to slap up a few pages to get it going. He did buy the domain name however (in his own name), and he has relegated himself to a “user” as far as any casual visitor to the site would know.
Can I Write a Book?
I’ve had many people suggest over the years that I write a book. It’s always been a goal of mine. I even recently had a published author suggest it, which although very complimentary, made me just more depressed.
Here’s why. I don’t have the time. I certainly have the ideas to communicate. I write well. I edit even better. But as life goes on, you get depressed when you don’t finish the things in life you hope to do. Especially the things that you know you can do. I might not be cycling across America anytime soon, but I can write. Now. Today. In fact, I’m doing it right this second.
Why I Blog
Darren Rowse recently wrote a piece called the 12 Traits of Successful Bloggers. I’m not successful, but I think it underscores a bit of why I blog, and more importantly, why you should consider it. Just try it. You might like it. Didn’t your parents used to say that to you while shoving a plate full of asparagus under your nose? Hey, just because they were wrong doesn’t mean I am. Besides, I like asparagus now, especially with salmon.
A Dozen Dirty Reasons to Get a Gravatar
You don’t know about Gravatar, do you? Of course not. That’s why you’re reading this. See? You’re still reading. Follow me, young padawan learner and let me teach you the ways of the Gravatar.
If you are an English major and hate creative explanations, or if you don’t like being told what is good for you, then you could just jump over to Gravatar.com and read the dry explanation there.
Okay, everyone else. We got rid of the stooges in the class. Let’s get back to the fun.
Blogroll Update
I’ve removed my blogroll from the site. And while I was at it, I removed dozens of blogs from my reading list at Google reader. Why?
I’ll be subscribing to some blogs that I don’t want everyone knowing I’m subscribing to. So, yeah, privacy. And all that jazz.
I could spend a lot of time managing a public list and a private list, but that won’t happen because I’m too busy and nobody cares: two events which guarantee stalls. If something is really good, I’ll share it in a post. If it’s pretty good, I’ll share it in the section to the right (New Posts I’ve Enjoyed). Else, you just won’t know what I’m reading.
No More Ads or Entrecard
The blog here is now ad-free. After hearing a few good responses to my recent change of adding ads and Entrecard, I decided to eliminate (once again) all advertising.
I particularly decided to eliminate Entrecard fairly early on as it was nothing but a time-consuming project that brought no benefits. Yes, I discovered a lot of blogs, but quite frankly, I’d rather do that on my own time without the pressure of trying to inflate an advertising rate.
Help me Stay Healthy by Boosting my Google PageRank
My Google pagerank is a 4. Respectable. But, it once was a 5 a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Then Google did some algorithm adjustment and mine fell. I have my sneaking suspicions why, but I agree when Google makes adjustments. Or corrections.
But, since that was well over a year ago, I’ve been doing some stewing and brewing and I’ve come to the conclusion that I sort of don’t like it. It’s like being a certain age and then having to go back a year. Can you imagine if your parents just said to you, “Well, you’ll just have to go back to the age of 11 instead of staying 12 any longer”. But, why? “Because we said so and we know what’s best for you!”
Subtle Blog Changes
I’ve made a few changes of which you need to be aware. Why? So you can become a better blogger. So you can enjoy my blog more. So you can tell me that I’m wrong to make these changes.
1. Blogroll centralized. The first subtle change is I’ve removed most of the external links from the sidebar that were, in essence, a blogroll. This will undoubtedly irritate those twenty or so folks who were getting some free inbound link love on hundreds of pages of Salberg.Org.
Technorati Top 100 shuffle still needs more work
Photo by The Wandering Angel. Much ado is being made over the Technorati “bug fix” two days ago. However, much more work by Technorati needs to be done.
The fix was to count sub-domains separately from their parent domain. No one but the losers of ranking on the Top 100 have really anything negative to say about that because, in most people’s minds, this is how the ranking should have been done all along.
However, Technorati claims that their blog ranking system is for the purpose of ranking authority of different blogs. Notice I didn’t say “websites”, but “blogs”. But, what constitutes a blog?
Small Business Blogging Won’t Grow in 2008
I’m a proponent of business blogging, and yet, in my experience as a web designer for small businesses, I continue to see major stumbling blocks that will prevent small businesses from creating and utilizing effective business blogs.
Liz Fuller of Business and Blogging recently pointed out that only five percent of small businesses (those with less than 100 employees) have any kind of business blog. That equates to about 1.25 million businesses.
My Best Writing of 2007
Photo by adactioThe year is over. If you’re into the Gregorian calendar, that is. Else, it’s only Dhu-Hijja 21, 1438 (if you’re Muslim), Teveth 22, 5768 (if you’re Hebrew), or Dey 10, 1386 (if you’re Iranian). If you happen to be a Unix machine rather than a person, you can kindly refer to this day as a time() value of 1199059200.
But for those of us who like the western calendar, I suppose it’s somewhat of a milestone since our year changes tomorrow. It’s been 365 days since that happened, so it’s supposed to mean something, according to the people that tell us what things are important in our lives. I believe most of those people work for Hallmark.
Images in WordPress Posts
Photo by ZanastardustFor some time, I’ve been meaning to put a contextual image with each post. I’ve been too busy. Then, I stumbled upon Zen Habits today, because of Leo Babauta’s announcement that he is leaving the Web Worker Daily blog to start an eBook. Fair enough, but I didn’t know he had his own blog anyway, so I happily subscribed.
Then, I noticed his wonderful images from Flickr on each post and I thought, yes, yes… I’d like to do that. Better than creating custom icons for posts as some bloggers do, since I don’t really have time for that. So, I do a little search and find a wonderful guide to using Flickr on blog posts by Skelliewag, to which I also subscribed. (See Part 2 here also).
Vote for my Manifesto
Photo by EsseI have a proposal for a ChangeThis manifesto entitled Create an Unassailable Online Identity. Each month ChangeThis accepts a modest number of proposals for what they call manifestos. If voted high enough, they give the manifesto a green light and publish it at their site. Some of the best author’s on the internet have published ChangeThis manifestos, and I’ve learned a lot through them. Thus, I thought it only appropriate to share something in return.
