Written on August 7th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 11:08 pm by Darren Rowse
Dave’s State of the Blogosphere
Dave Sifry has posted another State of the Blogosphere post based upon the stats that Technorati is tracking. Highlights this time around include:
- They are now tracking over 50 million blogs
- What they are tracking is now 100 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
- It’s doubling in size every 200 days (a slow down - but considering the numbers not really)
- 175,000 blogs are created each day (the old 1 blog starting per second stat is out dated - it’s now 2 per second)
- 70% of pings that Technorati gets are from spam blogs
- Daily posting levels are at about 1.6 million posts per day (18.6 per second)
- English has retaken the lead as the most spoken language (Japanese is only 1% behind)
Written on August 7th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 07:08 pm by Darren Rowse
Topix Adds News Trend Tracker
Topix.net has launched a new design and a few nice new features.
The look is a little cleaner than it’s previous incarnation but of more interest to me is it’s new graphing feature that lets you look back over a year’s indexing of news sources to see how many times a keyword has been mentioned.
Plug in the term ‘blogging’ and you get the following graph (click to enlarge):
Click on the blue bars to narrow your search for the term to that period of time (so you can see what might have caused a leap or lull in citations).
found via Steve Rubel
update: After playing with it for a little while I’ve come to the same conclusion as Steve - it would be much more useful if you could compare one term with another (either that of it they gave numbers of citations per day so you could manually compare).
Something like what Google Trends does in allowing comparisons would be handy like the following comparison of the amount of people searching Google for ‘podcasting’ (red) and ‘blogging’ (blue):
I know they are tracking different things (ie Topix tracks citations in news sources and Google Trends tracks searches in Google - but if Topix were to take a similar approach it’d be very useful data.
Written on August 7th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:08 am by Darren Rowse
Ten Tips for Becoming a Top Digg User
Marketallica has an interesting article by a top 100 Digg user who shares his tips for being successful on Digg (as a user). The english isn’t great (but then again neither is mine at times) but the tips give insight into Digg userland.
1. Recognize Big Stories
2. Track Pulse of Internet
3. Interesting Headlines
4. Humanized Story Description
5. Trackback Your Submission
6. Comment First
7. Timing
8. Make Friends
9. Digg Your Friends News:
10. Finally, Enjoy
While not exactly the same I’m interested to see that similar principles apply to becoming a top blogger (for example his tip on headlines, humanizing stories, timing, making friends etc).
Read the full article at Top 10 Actionable Tips (Rules) That Make Me Top Digg User
Written on August 7th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 03:08 am by Darren Rowse
Speedlinking - 7 August 2006
Just a couple of quick WordPress related links today:
- Michael Pollock shows us how to set up a video blog (or How to add Flash video to your WordPress Site)
- Max Limpag shows us how to use WordPress to run a magazine news website
Written on August 6th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:08 pm by Darren Rowse
FeedBurner Testing ‘Networks’
Just stumbled upon a post from Brad Feld who is blogging about a new “networks” approach that Feedburner seems to be beta testing.
Brad is coordinating a Venture Capital network and defines networks as:
“a collection of blogs that fit within a particular topic. The goal is to create high quality collections of similar types of publishers…. A FeedBurner Network is managed by a coordinator. At this stage the coordinator is the gatekeeper for the network, although it will evolve so that all members of a network can promote other potential members. As a result, the content is “filtered and selected” by the network coordinator (and ultimately members) so that there aren’t “fake” Venture Capital blogs as part of the network. The result should be a higher quality network and a quick and easy way to find ‘Venture Capital bloggers.’”
It’s interesting to see that this new feature has been announced in this way and with no official word from Feedburner but it’s an interesting development and I’ll be watching on to see how it rolls out.
My initial impression is that it’s success could hinge upon the quality of their coordinators and their ability to keep the high quality of participants up.
update: more on this at Techcrunch who points to another of Feedburner’s investors (aparently Brad is an investor too) who is also writing about this new feature here.
Michael Arrington’s thoughts on Feedburners networks are much more articulate than mine above - he writes:
“The biggest issue around this will be what rules are used to determine which blogs are included in a given topic. It isn’t clear if there will be any real quality control - in his post Brad says each network will have a gatekeeper to make sure only blogs on topic are included, but there doesn’t appear to be any hurdle as to what constitutes a quality blog in a topic. That could work out badly. And if the bloggers and/or the network coordinator are making subjective decisions on which blogs can be included in a given network, this will end in tears. The politics around who’s in and who’s out of a blog network are impossible.”
Written on August 6th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 05:08 pm by Darren Rowse
Bloglines Problems
Numerous bloggers are reporting issues with Bloglines again today. I’ve been noticing it for at least 24 hours here - folders that say they have unread items that when you click on them have nothing in them as well as other folders that seem to be empty but which actually do have items in them.
I can’t see any notifications from Bloglines that explain it but something is definitely wrong from what I can see. I just hope I’m not losing the unread items that it’s missing when they do fix the problem.
Others noticing problems - here, here and here.
Update: It seems that Bloglines have written something about their problem but those of us with it probably didn’t get the message - as our Bloglines isn’t working! The explanation is:
“We are aware that some users have been seeing inaccurate counts on their subscription lists. This is related to the maintanance we performed Wednesday, August 3rd which included upgrades to our databases. Unfortunately, due to the massive amount of data we store, many of the systems are taking a few days to catch up with work. There is no loss of data or functionality, but the sheer size of the synchronization is causing the inaccuracies in count to occur. We are working to speed up the synchronization and remove this bottleneck from the system in the future. In the meantime, we apologize for this inconvenience and disruption to your Bloglines reading rituals.”
I’m not sure if this is the issue that I’m having but it does seem to be taking quite a while to fix. I’m seeing quite bizarre results - one minute folders seem to have unread items, the next they don’t. Hopefully things will be back to normal shortly.
Written on August 6th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:08 am by Darren Rowse
Finding a New Rhythm as a Daddy Blogger
It’s been one month today since enternetusers Junior came out of Beta and to say that life will never be the same again is something of an understatement.
One of the common questions I’m asked by friends, family and readers is ‘how has the work/family life balance been going?’ Another is ‘have you got any work done at all?’
It’s a difficult question to ask and perhaps I need another month before I can fully answer it but here’s five observations a month into my first month of balancing being a Dad and being a full time Blogger.
1. Paternity Leave was a great idea - the idea of taking two weeks off from blogging is something I’d highly recommend. A lot of my friends took a couple of weeks off to stay at home with their wives and children when they had babies and I thought it was a nice idea. I know V appreciated it and I valued the time too in many ways.
2. New Rhythms - I guess much of the last month has been about adjusting to new rhythms and routines. This has ranged from new sleeping patterns to new working ones. Whereas I previously worked until 1am in the morning and got up at 8-9am I’m not finding that I’m working from 7am and going to bed at 11pm. We’re going to experiment with a few different ways of structuring our day but my old routine is definitely out the window.
3. Short Sharp Bursts of Blogging - I’ve noticed that instead of blogging for hours on end without a break that I’ve moved to a much more segmented blogging pattern and am working in shorter blocks. Perhaps this is partly due to a little sleep depravation (and a shorter attention span) or perhaps it’s because I like to be there when little X-man is awake. I suspect this will change a little as I get used to my new life.
4. Getting Out of the House - Once or twice I’ve packed up my laptop and taken off for a morning to my local cafe to write. It’s not that I want to leave V and X but it’s because I need to. Both V and I have found it invaluable to get out for a few hours alone every day or two - just to get some fresh air, have some coffee and to be by ourselves. I can see that this will become invaluable time both on a personal level but also for my blogging as it is in these times that I write my pillar articles for the week which I then advance post over the next few days.
5. New Priorities - A friend who recently became a Dad told me that the thing he noticed the most was how his priorities and goals as a person changed once he met his child. He found it difficult to go back to his number crunching job after a couple of weeks paternity leave because he felt that what he was doing at home was so much more valuable than what he was doing at work. His words were something like ‘At home I’m helping to shape a human’s life’. His previous career aspirations and workaholic tendencies took on a new shape through the filter of being a Dad. I’m still passionate about blogging but can relate to my friend as I’m noticing a shift in some of my thinking about my blogging. I don’t foresee any major changes as a result but wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few more adjustments ahead as I ponder what it’s all about.
I’m certain that there are more changes and adjustments ahead. The first month has been a wonderful ride so far and I’m amazed by the rate of change that I’m seeing in his little body and personality. I guess my attitude has been to attempt to take things as they come.
While I’m on the topic I’d like to thank readers for their patience over the last month. While I’ve kept up a reasonably high posting rate since coming back to blogging I’m aware things have been a little different to normal as a result of the above. Your understanding and support has been much appreciated - as have your emails, cards and even presents that have been arriving in the mail. I really value you as a community and look forward to continuing to share the journey with you in the months and years ahead.
Written on August 5th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:08 pm by Darren Rowse
WordCamp Kicks Off
I’d love to be heading to WordCamp this weekend but due to the quick way it was organized and the fact that V would rip my head off if I even raised the idea of leaving the country a month after our little one was born I wasn’t able to get there.
The schedule looks pretty interesting with a good range of topics under discussion including one on Monetizing your Blog by Yobie Benjamin and Pat McCarthy (two guys I’m not sure I’ve come across before but who I’ve added to my ever growing RSS watch list).
Pat has written a post in the lead up to the session called 10 Ways to Monetize Your Blog which is a good introduction to the basics and similar to my own post on How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs.
I’m looking forward to reading about this and other WordCamp sessions. Let me know in comments if you’re there and if you’re live blogging the camp.
Written on August 5th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 03:08 am by Darren Rowse
The Cost of High Quantities of Posts
Does the quantity of content that you post to your blog add value to or devalue your blog?
I suspect that there are many bloggers who think that by adding large quantities of content to their blog that they are adding value to it however in many cases constantly pouring new posts into their blog and increasing the size of their archives can actually devaluing it by forcing readers to wade through vast quantities of posts to find the ‘gold’ that they are looking for.
There are of course some examples of blogs that seem to thrive on large amounts of posts each day and massive archives (in fact some of the largest blogs on the web use this strategy very well) however I suspect that for the majority of us that we’d do better to write a smaller number of top quality, highly focused and useful posts each week than going for a high posting frequency rate.
The ideal posting frequency will vary from blog to blog but I think many bloggers would do well to consider the question at the top of this post and make changes according to the answer they come up with.
Written on August 4th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:08 pm by Darren Rowse
WordPress.com adds Private Blogs and Custom CSS Upgrades
WordPress.com has had two new features offered to users in the last few hours.
Private Blogs - the ability for publishers to request your blog be unlisted in search engines and the ability to only enable other WordPress.com members to have access to it.
Custom CSS - this is something that I’ve heard many WP.com publishers asking for - the ability to tweak your blog’s design. Before you rush off to change your templates you should know that this is a paid upgrade option. To buy the upgrade you need to add 15 ‘credits’ (credits costs $1 each). Credits can be purchased via Paypal.
Looking at the ‘upgrades’ page it seems like this is probably the first of numerous upgrades that will be made available to users.
I think this is a pretty good way to go for WP in attempting to find a way to monetize WP.
Many of us have used their platform for free for a long time and hopefully some of their 287,000 blogs will purchase the upgrade and help inject some money back into the system so that they can continue to develop this great product.
Found via Matt
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enternetusers Sponsors
Team Blogs
Blogs from b5media management and staff members.-
internetusers
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- buena park sales tax
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- making money online
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enternetusers
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Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video
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b5media Mobile RSS
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