Blogging Sueblimely

I have succumbed to curiosity and temptation to become a Nuffnanger. I don’t think I need explain Nuffnang - the rather large ad in my sidebar says it all. Blogging Sueblimely has become monetized; at least until I come to the conclusion that I am not making any money from it or the size of the ad block is too intrusive for me to stand any longer.

You may be wondering why I have Nuffnanged after I have so far resisted urges to join other ad networks; this blog has not previously been blemished, (or should that be embellished) by even the tiniest adsense block. So am I - if anyone has any idea I would be pleased if you let me know

Maybe the name Nuffnag appeals to me or the fact that it is the first all Australian ad network I have come across or maybe that ad content is meant to be matched to a blog’s content and readers - all three of these combined perhaps. I have never been keen on advertising products or services that either have nothing to do with what I write about or would be of little interest to readers.

Then again it is probably pure avarice - I want the money, as the lure of visiting family in England again is getting stronger - seems to be a kind of 7 year itch with me. Nuffnang bloggers will also be able to enjoy exclusive discounts for various goods and services. If I resist buying products I don’t need I may even be able to add some more cents to the piggy bank.

The company has been doing well in Malaysia and Singapore and its advertisers, to date, include Nike, Citibank, Nokia, F&N, Walls, AirAsia and Honda. Prizes are to be awarded too - perhaps for blogging about Nuffnang? Maybe I should delay this post until there is a prize within reach - no I don’t win them anyway.

As I write this I have been trying to answer my own question. Why did I join Nuffnang. What was it that that tipped the scales in its favor? The answer is Community - I am a sucker for sites that aim to develop a social community. Nuffnang is going to either fully pay for or substantially subsidize blogger outings, get togethers and events. Some movie nights are already in the pipeline. I likely won’t attend but the idea appeals to me.

Nearly forgot to mention - if you have no ads from any other Asia Pacific ad network you automatically become part of the Nuffnang Glitterati. This is appealing to me not only because Glitterati Nuffnangerswill earn more and be eligible for preferential treatment but because I have never been part of any “rati” before.

I will be curious to see what ads start appearing in my sidebar and, if nothing is forthcoming, I will choose the option to show charity ads as a placemarker, rather than the current default ad for Nuffnang.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Apologies if you have been visiting here in the last week looking for new posts. A website I am working on has been taking up a fair bit of time. The site is powered by Wordpress but I have had to create a theme with quite a few tweaks to turn it into a CMS system that does what I want it to do. It has been a good learning experience and I am now getting my head around PHP - the simpler Wordpress sort at least. However much I have enjoyed this, it has not stopped me getting regularly sidetracked and wandering around the web looking for things of interest. Here are a few things I thought you too may find of interest.

Reading

• 20 Myths About Blogging That Many New Bloggers Actually Believe
• Windows Live Search Tricks You May Not Know Aboutby digital inspiration. What interested me most in this was the ability to subscribe to searches via RSS. I use Google alerts which sends me results by email but wanted to display a feed of specific search results for a website that I am building. I am going to compare the results for a particular search term from Windows Live Search RSS feed with Google Alerts.
• Learn Illustrator CS3 in 30 Days
  - Vectordiary has just finished posting 30 days of tutorials teaching beginners the basics of Illustrator. If you would like to learn how to create your own illustrations, design your own logos and create special effects these will be very useful to you.

News

• Google’s own browser. Chrome, not an unexpected addition to their suite of services has just been released. I will likely write about this further once I have had chance to look more closely at its features and had longer to try it out. The fact that each tab is isolated to prevent one tab from crashing another appeals to this multi tab browsing person. Multi tab bars in Firefox 3 do tend to keep me in check though - when I get to the third I realize it is time to start closing some tabs. Google’s cartoon announcement is a good place to start to find out about Chrome. My son read this yesterday and reckons it was really effective as he was able to remember and reel off its contents to me hours later. Even if you do not want to use the browser it is wise to view your blog in it as the Tech Herald reports that there is at present an issue with some fonts not displaying correctly.
• Yahoo Buzz - has just been opened to all publishers, six months after initially launching. Buzz, with its wider subject areas, will produce serious competition for Digg which still appeals more to those interested in technology. I am working on a tutorial, which I will publish soon, giving you more information and details on the various methods of adding Buzz buttons to your blog.
• Something For Your Time - Monetizing Video Phil Butler reviews Zadby on Online Public Relations . Zadby is an "online marketplace where advertisers, marketers, and brand managers can connect with freelance video producers to create innovative product placement videos tailored for sites like YouTube, AOL, and MySpace". If you already create videos for your blog perhaps you may consider taking more advantage of your talent.
• HowToBlog has come up with an innovative idea for members of its site to promote their own sites - a Review Exchange System. Add your website to the review directory and review other blogs. Those that review the most appear higher in the directory, giving more prominence to their own website.
• The HowToBlog also alerted me to news for those using Google Adwords that Landing page load time now affects keywords’ Quality Scores- This may be old news for some but, not using Adwords myself I was not aware of this.
• What’s new in Picasa & Picasa Web Albums For those who use Picasa for your photo albums or because you use blogspot you may wish to check out the new Picasa interface and features, which include adding name tags to photos and adding photos via email. Picasa Web Albums (the desktop image managing tool) has a new etouching tool and new Sync functionality.

Blogging Tools

• Mozilla’s Snowl — A Unified Messaging Interface - rj3sp from ClipsToNote reviews an experimental firefox extension that gathers all your inbound communications from email, RSS, Twitter, social network updates ….
• If you use IE, Opera or Safari and would like some of the editing features allowed by the Firefox Firebug exension then the new Firebug Lite is for you.
• Text Link Checker Tool by Bad Neighbourhood scans the links on your website, and on the pages that your website is linking to, alerting you to possible problem areas which may affect your standing with search engines. The scan will bring up some sites that you do not need to worry about because of keywords it discovers and the number of links to blogs etc so please read the Bad Neighborhood Clarification post in conjunction with the first search you do to set your mind at rest.

Blogger

• Followers is a new graphical Blogger Widget that is being rolled out to all users as from the end of August. It allows people to follow your blog and for you to see who is following you. A new "Blogs I’m following" tab on your Dashboard allows you to read the posts of those you follow. I will be looking out for it on the blogspot blogs I visit and will add them to my follow list. I will start off with blogspot users who comment here - hopefully a bit of encouragement for you to talk to me:-) Thanks to Tech Flaps, who wrote a post which alerted me to this new feature.

Wordpress

• Yoast Breadcrumbs pluginConstructs customisable breadcrumb navigation for single posts and pages. This allows “ease of navigation for your readers as well as providing an additional way for search engines to determine the structure of your site”. Yoast also has an extensive guide on Wordpress SEO Tested up to Wordpress 2.6. Review on Blogging Tips

A couple of question for you - do you think I should date these news posts or give them a number? Do you think having multiple posts with the same words in the title could be bad for search engine purposes? Would Google bot get all confused and think it was spammy?

Popularity: 14% [?]