Blogging Sueblimely

Welcome to Blogging Sueblimely. To keep up with my posts you can subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

News

• Adobe PhotoShop has released a free online version Adobe PhotoShop Express. It is only available to the US as yet, which peeves me, so all I can tell you is that it is a cut down and simpler to use version of Photoshop. As you are given your own URL I presume you can share your creations with others. Perhaps one of the privileged could let us know if it is any good although Profy thinks so Photoshop Express - An Excellent Web-based Photo Editor
• Andy Beard has been noticing a trend in his blog and other which leads him to ask Alexa Rating Changes? Have you noticed any changes in your rating?

Reading

• 7 must-read Webmaster Central blog posts - Google Webmaster Central
• 25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog - Skelliwag
• The Fragmentation of Identity and Discussion - Internet Duct Tape
• 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider - Darren Rowse
• Blog Marketing Tips Even the Professional Bloggers Won’t Share - Tip #1 - Andy Beal.
• 50 Thoughtful, Funny and Polemic Blogging Quotes - Daily Blog Tips
• How to Help Immunize Your Site Against Scraping - Blog Herald

Blogging Tools

• Social Scan is an online tool for checking a website link popularity among well known social sites.
• Test different font types, styles and spacing at Font Tester or Typesetter
• LinkBunch lets you put multiple links into one small link which you can share over IM, Twitter, email - or even via blogs as you can see by the blogging blogs I have bunched together here: http://linkbun.ch/76r

Social Networking

• Alltop, a news aggregator, now has a section for dads - Dads.Alltop.com
• Profile aggregator Tabber has been completely redesigned. You can read a review by Profy at Tabber’s Complete Makeover: Looks Like FriendFeed
• Colin of Life warns us about Social Networks Targeted With Trojan At present this uses the Orkut social network to spread. I hope this is not just the tip of the iceberg! Thanks for keeping track of such nasties Colin.
• Facebook has introduced a new feature that suggests “people you may know.”
• Social Media and Simplicity, Part 1: Reduce by Muhammad Saleem writing on Freelance Switch. Wise strategies to reduce our blogging workload.
• The Common is a new site aimed at bringing people who wish to know how do do something together with those who do know. Profy has a post that explains more - The Common: Helping Each Other 2.0 Style

Blogger

• How to Install a Blogger XML Template - includes an excellent idea for saving all your current widgets if you do not want to lose them in a template change over.
• Blogger has recently created a Blogger Help YoutTube channel for those who prefer their tutorials in video form.
• 8 steps to a more professional Blogspot blog - from the Download Squad
• A directory of Blogger Templates - BTemplates

Wordpress

• An easily browsed visual index of free Wordpress themes - Fresheezy!
• Wordpress 2.5 has some significant changes that will need learning. Here are a few posts introducing you to WP 2.5:
  • WordPress 2.5: A Thorough Analysis
  • WordPress Upgrade Preparation Checklist

Popularity: 5% [?]

News

• Join in Conversation Week 2008, March 24-30 discussing the Top 10 Questions in the World Today…
• Pop Culture Heroines is a new multi author site dedicated to the promotion of strong female characters in popular culture. Writers from all backgrounds are invited to submit a request to write articles for the site. A forum is being considered too, so if the subject interests you, you can vote in the poll currently taking place.
• Alltop, a news aggregation site that provides “all the top” stories for forty of the most popular topics on the Web. Review by Guy Kawasaki - Announcing (Formally) Alltop
• On Imaginif blog - WIN $50.00 cash. Write a blog post about Child Safety by April 3rd to coincide with:
• Blog Against Sexual Violence Day April 3rd
• Snoskred has created another set of feed icons for free download - Introducing The Green Collection- Thanks Snos, they are great.
• From Znet -In-flight Internet cleared for take-off and AOL acquires Bebo for $850 million; Social networking field narrows
• NOTCOT Inc is a growing network of design sites currently including NOTCOT.com, NOTCOT.org, TasteSpotting.com, NotCouture.com - "a visual filtration of ideas + aesthetics + amusements". Definitely a site for sore eyes

Reading

• Top 10 Personal Health Blogs
• 11 Ways To Create Your Own Traffic Jams by Blogtrepreneur
• The Sisterhood of the travelling Bra - follow the Bra’s progress as it travels around Australia courtesy of All for Women
• 16 Top Social Media Strategies for Success
• 99 Free Online Classes on Business and Entrepreneurship
  
• The Top 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs

Blogging Tools

• Round II - 50 Directories With Good Google Page Rank To Submit Your Website (No Reciprocal Link Required!) from Blogging Tips

Social Networking

• Trusera is the place to tap into real world experience about people and their health. Stay awhile and tell us your story.
• I have been using Friendfeed for a week or so now, since it opened up to the public. The name describes the service nicely - a kind of social networking aggregator. Add your friends/friends of friends and receive an online feed of their activity from their blog’s RSS feed, on twitter, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, flickr, picasa, vimeo, netflix, jaiku, last.fm, pownce, reddit, tumblr, zooomr, ilike, status updates from GoogleTalk. Once I am able to find more of my friends on their it will be very useful. Here is my pageif you want to find me. More info from
  SheGeeks FriendFeed is THE Next Big Thing 10 Ways to Get More Out of Friendfeed
• Kill Them With Kindness - guest post by Saphrym on CK Marketing Blog

Wordpress

• How to Setup Gravatars for your Blog - Plugin Free!
• Free WordPress Icon Pack

Search Engine News

• Topicle is a new search engine community.
  Every Topicle search engine only searches handpicked URLs, instead of the whole Web.
  Members can create new Topicle search engines and maintain all existing ones.
• 10 Tips to use sitemap file for faster crawling and indexing of your site pages
• Installing WordPress Locally Under Windows XP
  

Popularity: 4% [?]

Adimade
- is a user created advertising video site launched at the end of January this year; co-founded by Jake Lawton and Nat Graf of Nudge Marketing, who also produce the Gen Y Marketing Podcast. Jake who, like many of us, turns to the laptop when TV ads come on, says “It dawned on us that if the ads on TV were half as funny as what we were watching on YouTube, then we probably wouldn’t feel the need to stop watching”.

If you have talents at video creation you could try your hand at creating ads for one of the Adimade project partners which include businesses, charities and causes. Viewers can vote on the submitted ads and at the end of the project the top 10 are selected, Ann overall winner is then chosen for a "Grand Prize" by the project partners.

If you are not interested in creating your own ads you may prefer to view or submit one of your favourite add or commercials to the Ad Hall of Fame

One of the current project partners is My Planet Ads . The following link takes you to one of the entries in this category Choose Sides

The site is in its early days still and I look forward to seeing more ads being submitted. You can keep up to date with the site via the Adimade Blog. It is interesting to note that all their blogs are on blogspot.

Adimade is one of the entrants in the Australian Start Ups Carnival 2008 . I am now going off to have a look at some of the other carnival entrants. Oh dear, more sites for me to join up with no doubt.

I was right, even before I posted this I had joined up with one of the start ups: The Fame Experiment. I will tell you more about this once I have had more time to explore.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I publish my Blogosphere News post on an almost weekly basis and although some may see this as an easy post option, a fill in, I do spend a lot of time looking for items that I think may be of interest to try and keep you up-to-date. I do not just look in my feedreader for news in feeds I subscribe to but try to find information from various sources. This is a wonderful way of finding some excellent blogs that I have not come across before.

Here are the subject areas I am covering:

News

Reading

Blogging Tools

Social Networking

Blogger

Wordpress

Search Engine News

Despite my attempts to scour every newly updated page on the internet and join up with anything that smacks of Web 2.0. I cannot quite achieve that. So I am ever so humbly asking for your help.

• If you find an excellent article on blogging or social networking, come across something new and of interest to bloggers or use a blogging tool you value, please let me know. I will thank you with a link and a mention in the post.
• I am going to make an effort to publish my news post on a regular basis. What day do you think best?
• As always I am keen to write about exactly what you want to read. If there is a topic you want to learn more about please let me know.

Popularity: 2% [?]

News

• Ad Lib Group Writing Project on Essential Strokes
• wowOwow (The Women of The Web) site is launching today 8th March - no idea what it is about but the current front page intrigued me - “If you could choose any women in the world, living or dead, which four faces would you put on Mount Rushmore?”
• UN Data gives free online access to the United Nations Data Access System database; an integrated information resource with current, relevant and reliable statistics. If you are interested in stats - there are currently 55 million records to search.
• Andy Beard Exclusive: Activity SocialStream Goes Portable With Blogcatalog. Andy describes the BlogCatalog’s new social network widget and feeds.

Reading

• Bending the Web: Become Popular in 2 Monthsfrom Super Blogging Tips
• Top 10 Worst Capthas by John Willis
• How can you tell if a site is a link farm?from about.com
• How to Easily Boost Your Technorati Rankby Chris Garrett
• GreenDev: 50 Environmentally Friendly Apps, Hosts and Resourcesby Virtual Hosting.
• Procrastination: Procrastination Killers Part 4 of a series by Gaetano Caruanaon Liz Strauss’ Successful Blogger. Gaetano also has a free book Stop Procrastination Now available at Fruitful Blogger. I downloaded this but will read it tomorrow.
• Vincent the Wright Hand Blogger gives6,500 Reasons Why You Should Join My Wright Hand Power Forum on Linkedin Groups

Blogging Tools

• Use Snipping Tool to capture screen shots with Windows Vista - Create an image of a rectangular area, an irregular shaped area, a whole window or whole screen with this tool that is built into Vista. Thanks to Michael, who visited me via Entrecard,for this information.
• To easily see which sites are linking to you add the code given to you on the Who links to mesite.
• PicMarkr lets you to add custom watermark (image or text) to your images online and free.It is useful when you need to protect your copyrights or if you want to add comments to your photos.
• Aviary is a suite of web-based applications (RIAs) for ” people who create” - includes image editing, typography, music, 3D and video tools. Currently in beta for trialing.
• MyLiveSignature.com Online tool to create a personalized signature image. Choose from 120 fonts and a selection of colors, sizes, and degrees of slant.
• 100+ Resources for Web Developers by Blog Well
• Blog Headers For Free Download on Smashing Magazine.

Social Networking

• Reddit - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About It Not an applications I have used much although I have read reports on its usefulness.
• BricaBox some social networking tools into the personalized homepage niche. We’ve taken the best of blogs and social networks, added some amazing new tools and features, and created a platform for you to create your own version of your favorite social content website. Choose from our one–click selection of BricaBoxes below to get started.
• Blogged.com is a new interactive blog directory launched this week. One interesting difference between this and other directories such as BlogCatalog is that most of the blogs have been reviewed and rated by professional editors hopefully filtering out spam blogs and keeping quality high. You can read a review at Will Blogged be More Than a Typical Blog Directory?
• 30,000 weblogs. One Day. One Voice Have you ever wanted to shout to the world? Here’s your chance.
• Jaanix is a new social news website - submit stories or click, rate, tag, comment or save posts submitted by others. Find stories of interest using a slider system which weights the topics you wish to search for or just view recent or popular posts. Over time Jannix learns your preferences, feeding you stories accordingly. Your saved posts can be exported to del.icio.us and Twitter. More information and reviews can be seen on my own Jaanix page

Wordpress

• 48 Unique Ways To Use WordPress
• Project Files - Is That Really WordPress?
• BuddyPress will “transform a vanilla installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform” - More info at from the Download Squad at Automattic acquires BuddyPress social networking plugins (MU=Multiuser)

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 3% [?]

Blogging Tools

• Alphabetizer Puts lists in alphabetical order - useful for organising blog lists, blogrolls
• Do you use blog editors - programs you install on your PC to write and submit your posts?7 . Windows Live Writer and Qumana seem to come out the winners whenever I have read reviews or recommendations. Here is a good review on a few of the editors available written by my friend Mig - Awesome or Less Awesome Blog Editors. Software, not People
• Headline Analyzer will analyze your headline to determine its Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. Try checking the score of posts from the veryt popular bloggers and compare it to your own.
• Better GReader is a Firefox Greasemonkey script by Lifehacker that rolls three Google Reader user scripts into one -, maximizing the viewing area, skipping Google’s default subscribe mechanism, and adding keyboard shortcuts.

Social Networking

• SiteHoppin’.com is a new Web 2.5 social networking/bookmarking wiki site that let’s you find, bookmark, and share interesting sites by hopping instead of typing. combining such technologies as Wikis, tagging, social networking, and site hopping.
  As with StumbleUpon you can site hop and rate sites but using a “Beer Rating System”, giving from 1 to 5 beers to a site depending on how interesting you think the site is. (and how drunk you are…) Also works on iPhones and iPod Touch so you do not even have to wait till you get home to get your next fix. You list your own site and can submit your own posts.
• Social Media Mom has published The Best In Mom Networking Sites - a great resource.

Wordpress News

• A new Wordpress Plugin : Multipage Toolkit - allows you more customization of long posts, including pagination and individual page titles.
• TagThis is a new wordpress plugin that allows your readers to add tags to your posts via a small textbox below each post. The most popular tags are then displayed under the post itself but you do have control over this. This is useful for tagging pre 2.3 posts and for making your tags more in tune with your readers’ preferences.
• Automattic has released Prologue, a Wordpress theme with a Twitter style interface.
• Wordpress.com has increased its free upload space 60x from 50mb to 3,000mb

Criteo Widget Update

The Criteo Autoroll widget is no more, it is a deceased widget, as I suspected it was nailed to its perch (Monty Python fans will understand this). It was not bringing me much traffic and I have enough on my page to slow it down as it is.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Reading

• Justice Regins: Stumble Troll BANNED by SU - Collective Thoughts

• Zen Habits has declared that the entire site, is now be open source, renouncing copyright. This includes the contents of the bookZen to Done, which is for sale on the site. This came a week before
• Setup OpenID Comments To Follow In Blogger
• FeedJournal Web Service for Bloggers and Content Providers
• 10 Entrecard Traffic Tips for Success
• 51 Favorite SU, Sphinn, Twitter & Facebook Posts of 2007 written by social media and StumbleUpon expert, Shana on Social Desire.com
• Soup To Nuts is a relatively new blog carnival but with a difference. It is presented in five “courses”, each with a different host. Carnival Submission via Blog Carnival
• Would you integrate Forum software into your blog? at On Blogging Australia

Blogging Tools

• Postable - a nifty online tool to very quickly convert html code into code that you can include in posts.



• WPthemez - social bookmarking tool for Wordpress themes with voting tools.
• Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin for Wordpress? As you write your blog post, Shortcuts look for content matching yours - Flickr photos, places, companies, products, people etc.. If Shortcuts finds relevant content, it will let you know. I have just installed this and you can see the resulting images in this post.
• Mig of Top Hosting Center has written a review of JS Kit, some very useful blogging tools that don’t suck.Jazz up your Google homepage with themes or learn to create themes for yourself. I chose a beach scene which dynamically changes according to the time of day.
• There is a Google Talk widget for adding to blogs but I had problems getting it to behave in IE and, as I should have guessed, readers have to have a Google account to be able to use it.

Criteo Update

I changed the category I placed Criteo in to a more general one and instead of no visits it generatedl generated 23 visits on this blog, by 14 unique visitors. This blog link was displayed 29744 times on other blogs using Criteo AutoRoll and was seen by 6779 unique visitors.

Popularity: 1% [?]