Blogging information!
I think I’ve read this before, but its still funny all the same. I used to work for AOL myself in a past life and if nobody reads my blog then its because I haven’t recently sold them my company for $25 million. Of course, when I do that, people might start posting here 😉
Thats one of the reasons given as to why nobody reads your blog and if you’re ever worried about your blog traffic then give it a quick onceover, even if its just to brighten up your Tuesday evening.
Having been speaking about Google PageRank last week, I came across this paper which should be of interest to those of you worried about how your site or blog is performing. It is a quite detailed breakdown of how the PageRank algorithm works and what it does. The paper was written by Ian Rogers and is certainly worth reading for anyone with an interest in the workings of that elaborate ranking scheme.
Speaking from a designer’s point of view, its nice to hear people’s thoughts on a product from the other side of the fence, the side that matters most to be honest. What I’m talking about is usability, and Keith Bohanna has just set up a new blog focussing on matters of usability or “what makes the internet easy or difficult to use for end users of all levels”, all the while concentrating on Irish websites.
Looking forward to some new and interesting posts on the matter.
Thats how the tagline goes anyway. Friend and colleague (great being able to call the two!), John Butler, has this week launched his new blog John Butler Live and covers a great post on holophonics.
For those of you unaware of the term I would suggest a read of this post armed with a set of working headphones for the sheer experience of surreal 3D sound. Not only does it move left to right, it goes up your right arm, down your left side, around your feet…. I was quite literally blown away by it to be honest. Well worth checking out!
I was lucky enough to get in on Google Analytics before it shut everyone else out (can you call yourself lucky?), but anyway, I’ve been tracking my blog with both Analytics and StatCounter, as I mentioned yesterday. On yesterday’s performance alone (for an average day so far, keeping in mind that I’m picking yesterday as the stats would be available in Analytics), I noticed almost a 100% difference between the two, with Analytics reporting over twice as many unique hits and total pageviews for the day than StatCounter.
Anyone else noticing this?
I mentioned earlier in the week that I had launched NFLView.com, a blog catering for the NFL (or at least people with an interest in the NFL, American Football). Interesting statistic that 48.5% of the visitors in its first week (launched on December 31st) were from the US, the remainder made up of Canadian, Irish and UK, technorati providing some good assistance in driving folks into the site.
It’s as much a test for myself and blogging combined as it is a chance for me to rattle on about the NFL seen as nobody around here is interested, hmmm?
Want to show people photos from your blog, or website, but don’t want to go with popping up windows, trying to dodge popup blockers, avoid iFrames, standalone pages… and do it all in a way thats still snazzy?
Check out Lightbox JS, which does all that, placing images above your current page, not within which in turn frees you from the constraints of the layout, particularly column widths.
It also keeps users on the same page as “clicking to view an image and then having to click the back button to return to your site is bad for continuity (and no fun!)”. Looks pretty sweet to me…
Further on the whole issue about me redesigning the theme for my blog, I came across this article by Darren Rowse this morning in relation to how you design a theme for your blog and what you want to achieve from the design.
Is it to
1. To generate income from advertising streams
2. Reader loyalty
3. Personal satisfaction
Makes for a worthy read on your Saturday morning!
Edit: the article was written from Dave over at PSPCulture.co.uk
Let the games begin! Picked up this post today announcing that nominations are now open for the Irish Blog Awards and will remain open for a few weeks. There’s a good number of categories on offer including best blogger, best blog post, best personal blog etc. You can nominate yourself or anyone of your preference (Irish) so why not pop on over to the Irish Blog Awards and see what all the fuss is about!
Over the weekend I mentioned that Yahoo picked up del.icio.us.
Now it seems that they’ve partnered with Six Apart, the creators of Moveable Type / Typepad and are now going to offer users the ability to create blogs with MT for hosting on the Yahoo Small Business hosting service. Not a bad move for Six Apart seen as they’ve just announced their own partnership with VideoEgg (see my earlier post).
Video blogging, vlogging, v-logs… whatever you want to call them – just got a step closer for some users as SixApart have announced a partnership with VideoEgg & Serious Magic
VideoEgg has been kind enough to make a preview version of VideoEgg Publisher available to TypePad users free of charge, at typepad.videoegg.com. From their site you can log in to your TypePad account and use VideoEgg to post a short video to your blog.
Doesn’t leave anything for us WordPress users… but nice to see VideoEgg raising its head again
After years of battling against online adverts, popup windows and the likes, we now litter our blogs with adverts stemming from the likes of Google AdSense, Commission Junction, TradeDoubler etc. – but it is accepted. We now, more than ever, realise that we can make money off our blogs – a few clicks here, a few clicks there and next thing you know you’re getting a little cheque for $25 in the post, or whatever your preferred currency is.
So for those of you aiming big… I direct you to Rick over at FeedBuzzard.com with his recent entry “The Car That Blogging Bought“.
After reading his post, I realised I missed one of the old ProBlogger posts from back in March…. “The House That Blogging Bought”
So is this what everyone is aiming for? Or are you just blogging for pleasure?
Doing my lunchtime drive through blogs that I subscribe to, I came across this interesting article on MacManX.com which raises the issue of handles (internet nicknames / alter ego’s) vs real names.
I’ve got to agree, handles are a pain, you’ve no idea who you’re dealing with – sure, it gives you that anonymous factor but where do you distinguish the handle from the person behind it.
Anyway, go check it out, take a look, worth the read and the insight!
So I’ve been doing a little reading on how best to promote your blog. I’ve recently set up another blog for Young Irish Film Makers, which should hopefully generate more traffic for their site and organisation – once its promoted properly.
But how do you go about promoting a blog? What does your reader want? Do you actually have any readers at all? Its more and more the way to go (blogging that is…) so where’s best to start? I found two places this week that are helping millions of other blog users so I thought I’d try them out and see if they can help me at all!
First off is Technorati. If you take a look at the end of the page (way down at the end) you’ll notice a new Technorati link. They’re busy pushing themselves as the authority on blogging.
The Pew Internet study estimates that about 11%, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers. A new weblog is created every 7.4 seconds, which means there are about 12,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers — people who write weblogs — update their weblogs regularly; there are about 275,000 posts daily, or about 10,800 blog updates an hour.
Technorati displays what’s important in the blogosphere — which bloggers are commanding attention, what ideas are rising in prominence, and the speed at which these conversations are taking place. Technorati makes it possible for you to find out what people on the Internet are saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics, or other areas of interest — all in real-time. All this activity is monitored and indexed within minutes of posting. Technorati provides a live view of the global conversation of the web.
Second is FeedBurner. This little ditty I only found this morning (shows how much attention I’m paying to the blog…). FeedBurner are bringing it all together and will most likely turn out like the Firefox of the browser revolution. No more worrying about XML, RSS2.0, RSS.92, Atom etc. Feedburner makes your blog feeds user and browser friendly, while also providing great ways to promote and publish your blog. Want to podcast with your blog? Make it available as a mobile edition? Improve pings? Email subscriptions and general reader usage? No problem…
Enter FeedBurner. We offer a full range of services to help you build awareness, track circulation, and implement revenue-generating programs in your feed(s). A slew of publishers (90,000 and counting) currently take advantage of FeedBurner’s services, many of which are free and have been called “awesome†by these same customers
Well well well! Seen as I keep a journal through DeviantART (for those of you familiar with my photography), and I’m responsible for the daily runnings of various websites…. and I’m online almost 24 hours of the day – I figured I may as well start a blog.
Its a good way to keep in constant communication with friends, the business, and let you know everything thats going on! Feel free to post your comments, keep in touch and the likes. Some of you know me, some of you don’t, hopefully more of you will and you’ll enjoy what you find here down the lines.
Anyone who wants to get in touch with me can contact me directly through the blog or by emailing me at this address
Ken