Written on January 6th, 2007 at 11:01 am by Darren Rowse
WordPress 2.0.6 Upgrade Available
If you’re a WordPress blogger you’ll want to take a look at this post over at WP’s Development blog announcing an upgrade to WordPress 2.0.6. It’s a security upgrade and therefore something to pay attention to.
They also note that this is the last update before the release of WP 2.1 which is now in it’s beta phase.
I’ve had a glimpse of 2.1 and it has some nice features - looking forward to getting it here at PB.
Written on January 6th, 2007 at 07:01 am by Darren Rowse
Lifehacker - An Example of what Helpful and Positive Blogging Can Do
The Wall Street Journal had a nice piece on Gina Trapani’s Lifehacker yesterday at Lifehacker Draws Visitors With Time-Saving Tech Tips.
Lifehacker is a standout blog in my opinion and a prime example of how blogs can be more than just creating noise and clutter on the web by actually providing useful content to their readers. The quote of the article that sums it all up for me was from Robert Scoble:
“”She focuses on information that’ll make her readers’ lives more productive,” said Robert Scoble, author of the Scobleizer blog and a former Microsoft Corp. blogger. “That’s quite different from other bloggers who share gossip, give opinions or break news.”"
I think news blogs have a place and can be quite successful - but if I were starting a new blog today I’d be focussing more upon a style of blogging that is ‘helpful’ in nature as it’s the type of blog that not only draws people in, but that develops loyalty among it’s readership.
It’s also a much easier style of blog to monetize in some ways either through the development of products to sell readers (loyal readers are much more likely to buy something than one off readers) and also through affiliate products of other people’s quality resources.
The other great quote from the article was:
“Ms. Trapani, who manages a staff of three writers, is something of an anomaly among bloggers. She avoids writing about herself and her posts are free of the sarcasm and snarky attitude that other blogs — particularly those on technology — use as calling cards. The former software programmer says she prefers to stay out of the limelight. Any publicity about herself, instead of the site, “makes me want to climb under my desk and hide,” she said. “But that’s just my inner geek.”"
Perhaps this is more of a personal preference than anything but the other reason I am drawn to Lifehacker is the voice that it is written in. It’s a remarkably positive blog and I often come away from it in a slightly better mood than I was in when I got to it. As a result there’s a lot of goodwill towards Lifehacker in it’s readership (and in the wider blogosphere). Also - despite it’s size - it’s one of those few large techie blogs that usually has a positive vibe i it’s comments - this has a lot to do with the way it’s written in my humble opinion as that has a lot to do with the type of reader interaction it attracts.
It’s no wonder that they’ve tripled their readership in the last year.
Written on January 6th, 2007 at 01:01 am by Darren Rowse
Speedlinking - 6 January 2007
- Aaron has started a series of posts titled Podcasting Essentials where he’s going to be unpacking some of the lessons from starting his own podcast.
- Do you have a Bad Back or Sore neck from all those hours in front of the computer? Web Worker Daily has some exercises that all good enternetuserss need to learn.
- Graywolf takes a cynical look at Google reader and wonders out loud how much of the data they’re collecting there is impacting their Search algorithms. I have to say I’ve been thinking similar things lately - its just one more reason to work on your RSS subscriber levels.
- TechCrunch announced the addition of forums today - seems to be something in the air with blogs and forums at the moment.
Written on January 5th, 2007 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
2007 Bloggies Open for Nominations
The Seventh Annual Weblog Awards is now open for nominations for it’s 2007 awards.
This is one of the bigger annual blog awards with a fairly broad selection of categories so head over and start nominating - but before you do - how about taking a few minutes to run through your RSS feed and nominate a few blogs that are not the ‘usual suspects’. Hopefully in doing so this year’s nominations list will be a touch broader and multi dimensional than in previous years.
Written on January 5th, 2007 at 11:01 am by Darren Rowse
Email Newsletter Services - What do You Use?
I’m looking for a new email newsletter solution - does anyone have any recommendations?
I’m looking for a service that will handle multiple newsletters with 15,000 or more subscribers on a weekly basis, that will be reliable, that’s not too expensive (I don’t mind paying something), that is easy to use and that has a nice array of features and tracking capabilities.
Please hit me with your recommendations and experiences!
Written on January 5th, 2007 at 10:01 am by Darren Rowse
Performancing and PayPerPost Deal is Off
In news that I suspect will please many Performancing users Nick Wilson is just about to announce that their deal to sell some of their assets to PayPerPost is off.
Nick writes:
“After much discussion, we’ve decided that the deal proposed by PayPerPost just isnt right for us or our community. It’s regrettable that we should part ways as I still feel that Dan and Ted are stand up guys breaking new ground, but in the end, the deal was just not right for them or us.”
Instead - their metrics package will become Open Source which means it will end but become available to the developer community to do with as they please.
While it’s sad that their metrics program will close I think it’s a smart move not to sell to PPP as there have been many bloggers complaining about the deal since it was announced and some have already cancelled their metrics accounts.
Nick suggests that those lookign for a good metrics service try out Feedburners package which has just been launched.
Performancing will continue developing their Parters advertising program, their firefox blog editing tool is still being moved to the new brand and domain - ScribeFire.
More details on a post by Nick that will go live on the performancing blog shortly.
Update: PayPerPost has posted of this announcement on their own blog and I’m interested to see that they’re claiming to have walked away from the deal (where Performancing seemed to indicate in Nick’s statement above that they called it off). PPP write:
‘After much discussion and heartache we have decided to walk away from the Performancing deal. We listened to our Posties and other Metrics users, dug into the Metrics platform and regretfully found that it wasn’t what we were looking for right now.’
Seems like an odd way to go about acquiring an asset - announce it, then do the digging. I wonder what the real story is.
Written on January 5th, 2007 at 01:01 am by Darren Rowse
AdBrite InVideo Video Player and Advertising
I just saw the promo page of the new video solution/player that AdBrite are about to launch for bloggers and webmasters who want to use video on their sites and monetize it. It’s called ‘InVideo’ (beta) and it’s got some features that have me interested (if only I used video).
Here’s how they’re promoting it’s features:
- Fully customizable video player, easy-to-use, and 100% free
- Brand your videos with your own custom logo “watermark”
- “Split-screen” ads engage users without interrupting viewing experience
- Sharing features promote your site when your videos get “viral”
- Earn money from your videos, even when they’re embedded into other peoples’ Web sites
There’s no word on what they’ll be paying for the ads but it looks like a service well worth testing if you’re using video on your blog.
found via Monetize Traffic
Written on January 4th, 2007 at 04:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Google Reader adds ‘Reader Trends’
I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader a month ago and I’ve not turned back. While it did take a little getting used to I quickly found a new rhythm of blogging and am not right at home with it.
Today on the Google Reader blog they announced a new feature - Reader Trends which analyses the way you interact with your RSS feeds.
For example on mine it tells me that I have 632 subscriptions and over the last month have read 15,939 items (scary considering I took a week off in the last month).
It also shows me how many I read each day over the last month
Guess who took a week off over Christmas!
I also tracks when I read most of my feeds by time
I bet that graph has changed since having a baby. A year ago there would have been a lot more early morning surfing and then a complete lull until about mid morning.
When I read my feeds by day of the week
Interesting again - Mondays I tend to set aside for writing - Fridays are always a big day for me of blogging as I get ready for a quiet weekend.
Then it goes on to show me which feeds I read most and which were the most frequently updated and the most inActive either as top 10’s, 20’s or 40’s.
It also gives you stats over how many items you ’star’ and ’share’ (items I don’t yet use) as well as on tags.
All in all it’s probably more about fun than function - although it does illustrate just how much I use RSS in my blogging and is definitely going to help me cull some inActive feeds from those I’m ‘following’.
Update: One stat I would like to see is a tracking of which blogs I regularly clicked through to actually visit.
I’ll also be interested to see if they aggregate this information from all users to create some sort of a Digg like ‘hot list’.
Written on January 4th, 2007 at 09:01 am by Darren Rowse
Introducing 12 Year Old enternetusers - David Wilkinson
I love hearing stories of of young entrepreneurs and so today when I came across 12 year old enternetusers David Wilkinson whose Web 2.0 blog is Techzi I was over the moon.
Here’s a young guy who has recruited a couple of friends (one is 12, the other is 11) to help him write his blog and who in a recent interview at Repliqa answered the question of ‘Are you making any money blogging?‘ with:
“Yes, quite a bit actually. I could definitely live off $500 a month until I turn 14, by which time I aim to be earning more, by experimenting in Internet Marketing.”
David and his co-bloggers are currently running a fundraiser to raise enough money to transfer his blog from Blogspot to a hosted WordPress blog and he’s already over the $1200 mark (make a donation below).
David was recently featured on the BBC and sounds like he’s becoming quite the local celebrity.
What I love about his blog is his style of writing. He’s actually a great writer (you’d never know he was 12 most of the time) and that he writes with an authentic voice, humor and having done some good research. While he’s only been blogging for 6 months he does at a standard that is as good (if not better) than a lot of more experienced bloggers twice (or thrice) his age.
I’m looking forward to watching David’s blogging in 2007.
Written on January 4th, 2007 at 06:01 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense Testing Keyword-based Ad Filtering
Brian at Caydel’s SEO Blog has written a post today revealing that Google AdSense is Beta-Testing Keyword-based Ad Filtering that allows publishers to nominate keywords that they don’t want ads about on their sites - a sort of ‘negative’ keyword targeting.
This would help publishers who are getting mis-targeted and irrelevant ads on their sites.
This ‘negative’ keyword targetting has to my knowledge been available to premium publishers for some time now but perhaps this is an indication that it is going to be made available to everyone.
Positive Keyword Targeting
The other type of AdSense keyword targeting that many publishers would like is ‘positive’ targeting where they would be able to submit keywords that their site is about that they would like ads about. Once again this is a feature that I’ve seen AdSense offer to some larger publishers (not just ‘premium’ publishers) who are struggling with ad relevancy however it is not something that I’ve heard they are offering (or planning to offer) other publishers at this point.
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