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Here is a little olive branch for the guys at ePerks, an unbiased resource that could be used to present 2 sides of the current Vlad vs ePerks legal kerfuffle.

I am not going to portray Mahalo as some kind of "sacred ground", and I have been a little negative about Mahalo in the past, but it does offer ePerks the opportunity to submit links, hopefully not from anonymous sources, of people happy with their service.

Mahalo I am sure will validate links, and if they seem to be from an anonymous shill blog on WordPress.com, my hope is that they will

WordPress.com has added XML sitemaps so I thought I would take a glance at their implementation. My immediate though was to take a look at Lorelle's sitemap.xml

• Homepage daily priority
• Every other page updated on a weekly basis?

That seems like a good way to tell the spiders to index your site less often than they currently do. With Lorelle you would certainly want spiders checking the home page hourly as she is sometimes the source of breaking news.

Could social news aggregators such as Digg, Techmeme & Technorati be sued for copyright infringement because the frequently used lead for a story often encompasses the core story? Larger concerns will no doubt have their own team of lawyers, but do bloggers need Blogging Insurance? The idea of specific insurance policies for bloggers, as a form of liability insurance to cover defamation cases has been around for some time. It seems even Jason Calacanis at one time was thinking of entering the market

Optin Accelerator is a massive security risk for your customers - rather than fix the security problems, the new version just adds fluff without addressing core issues.

Anyone can make a mistake, release a product without considering all the possible ramifications, but to release Opt-in Accelerator again without major changes is irresponsible.

The Irresponsible Viral Tell-A-Friend Trio

So far there have been 3 such scripts I have written about, and there is a 4th "coming soon"

• My first coverage of Opt-in Accelerator
• Then there was Viral Optin Generator which may well have been a private label or resale rights product
• Viral Inviter is

Fake Steve Jobs is an internet phenomenen and now we have fake Jerry Yang which I am sure will be a huge success, and add valuable perspective to the internet tech news scene. John Cow was a revelation, a wonderful parody of the (in)famous John Chow, and the legend continues with new owners of the parody site maybe providing better quality content than the original, and in a heated competition with Garry Conn. I have known who the new "John Cow" is almost from the start, it was fairly easy for someone on a fair number of email lists to work out, and that is why they have managed to leverage so many great prizes.

I tend to leave newbie internet marketing tutorials to experts, but often I say that a little tongue in cheek - the people writing the newbie tutorials are often writing them because they couldn't do advanced stuff. (the "Advanced Whitehat SEO Debate?" ) In the case of Minisite Secrets Exposed, Michael Rasmussen does a great job of covering all the basics, and there are some quite advanced tip in there as well. This is a great alternative for bloggers who are struggling making any real money online.

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Technorati have now officially announced their new blog advertising platform surprisingly called Technorati Media. It is a significant step, though not as many seem to think unusual. Afterall, Google started as a search engine, then monetized search, and finally introduced their own publisher program Adsense. Lots of discussion related to the often reappearing Microsoft Yahoo deal mention that display advertising is highly lucrative, and Technorati are in a prime position to serve advertising to a very specific demographic of publishers - bloggers. Technorati know exacty what bloggers are talking about on a day to day basis, so in aggregate they can offer publishers targeted display advertising, at least in theory. Also it is important to understand that instead of selling the vast amount of data they have, they are using it to provide an added value service. From the official announcement:-

Michael Arrington in his boycott of Associated Press seemed to suggest that paid content is a dying business model. I must admit I am not a huge fan of linking to articles from Associated Press, simply because it is extremely difficult to determine the original source when these stories "go over the wire". A great example of the reasons why is when I reported about the appropriated story last year from the Museum of Hoaxes - that was Associated Free Press to blame, a different organization. Readers might also remember my run-in with The Guardian where I was a major source for an article, but didn't receive a link. The author and editor of The Guardian explained their viewpoint in the comments, but it still wrankles a little. That being said, there is a huge amount of PROFIT being made online in the form of online membership sites which is a paid content business model. Highly successful examples include:-

Twitter has been criticized for being unreliable and misinforming when it comes to the swine flu. The truth is that it depends on who you follow. On any subject and topic you will find people on Twitter spreading both reliable and unreliable information. People do this in the real world too - they spread rumors, theories and sometimes people even share things that they know are not true. That's just how people are. Try a Twitter search for swine flu and you will find retweets of swine flu news, confusion about whether it is safe to eat pork (it is safe), jokes, people saying they are afraid and even conspiracy theories.

Most people try and share the truth with one another and most people are doing that on Twitter. A lot of people are also theorizing and worrying and they are expressing their thoughts on Twitter. There's not anything wrong with that. It's just human nature.

If you want reliable information then you need to follow reliable news sources. The most reliable is likely CDC's Emergency twitter, located at @CDCemergency. There's also @health, @Pandemicflu, @birdflu, @SwineFlu2009, @WHOnews and @swine_flu. The @breakingnews has been covering the swine flu frequently as well. There are also numerous local news twitters that people can follow. Visit the website of your local tv news website and it likely has a Twitter. You can also try searching for it using the Find People tool.

You can also find a growing list of swine flu resources here on HealthNewsBlog.com.

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Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine. First off, I want to thank everybody who has contacted me on this. You've all had some great questions. I'm happy to report that I've been able to find answers for most of them. Hopefully, this information is useful--or, at least, educational for y'all. Second, real quick, I want to clarify that, despite my fascination with viruses, I am not on their side. My heart goes out to the people in Mexico who have lost loved ones to this illness. I also sympathize with people here in the U.S. who are experiencing varying degrees of fear over this thing. I would much rather be talking about the science of viruses as a complete non-sequitur with no news hook at all. But, as the situation stands, I find that information (and, yes, a bit of humor) is the best way to tackle fear. Now, without further ado, let's get on to the questions... 1. Various Inquiries About Cytokine Storm and Whether It's Going to Kill Us All The name "cytokine storm" basically describes an over-reaction of a healthy immune system, that causes the body to attack itself. It can be triggered by many things, including viruses, although it's not common for human influenza A virus strains to cause it. Researchers suspect the cytokine storm effect played a roll in the 1918 flu pandemic, and may account for why that flu killed so many young adults, when normally, flu kills people with weak or underdeveloped immune systems: The very young, the old, the sick. Based on the ages of many of the people dying in Mexico, there's been a lot of concern that the H1N1 swine flu virus is also killing via a cytokine storm effect, with the implication that this flu virus will be as deadly as the 1918 version. But, according to Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, it doesn't look like H1N1 swine flu is causing cytokine storms in its victims. The most pressing concern with swine H1N1 is not its ability to cause more severe disease, it is its ability to infect large numbers of humans because we don't possess any immunity to this particular novel virus strain. With respect to Mexico, I don't know...nor does anyone as far as I can tell...how many mild disease cases can be attributed to swine H1N1. I suspect there are a lot, in which case the number of deaths (as a percentage of total number of infected people) would be comparable to what we see with seasonal flu. I have no doubt that people have died of respiratory disease in Mexico, but I think we need much more information about how many total cases there are before we can say how virulent the virus is. In other words, unless information gathering later tells us otherwise, you probably don't need to worry about cytokine storm with this flu virus. 2. Concerning Those Little Surgical Masks...And Other Forms of Prevention Surgical masks can aid prevention, but only to a point. Viruses can pass through standard surgical masks. You're better off using a specialty mask with the designation N-95 or N-99. Those are available online or at pharmacies. But even that's not perfect. The virus can live for up to 2 hours outside the human body and it's likely to be on any surface an infected person might touch after sneezing, or sneeze on directly. Desks, doorknobs, computers...lots of things. Hand-washing and keeping your hands away from your eyes and face (and, if you have the flu, staying away from everybody else) are still the best ways to prevent transmission. And, about antiviral medications like tamiflu. Those drugs could, theoretically, work as a preventative measure. But, according to Christine Layton, a public health policy analyst with the North Carolina-based non-profit research institute RTI International, that would be a REALLY bad idea. She says: Influenza (like other viruses) can become resistant to antiviral medication. When this occurs, antiviral medications are no longer effective. The best way to prevent the development of resistant viruses (or bacteria) is to use antiviral (or antibiotic) medications only when infected with a virus which will respond to the medication." Another great way to keep from getting swine flu: Don't got to Mexico. The State Department has said that all unessential travel to the area should be avoided. Do what they say, here. Even if it ends up costing you some money on airline tickets, the risk of picking something up---and, perhaps worse, spreading it to family, friends, and everyone you share an airplane with---just isn't worth it. You don't want to be responsible for that. 3. What About the Symptoms and Which are Deadly? You know how everything seems to start off feeling like the flu? This, too. In fact, the cases in the US have been, essentially, no different from a seasonal bout of flu, like those many of us have already had this year. You get a fever. Your nose runs. You feel like a truck hit you. Then you sleep for a couple of days, eat some saltines, drink some pickle juice*, and you're good. Obviously, though, this scenario is going down differently south of the border. Some of you wanted to know what, exactly, the flu was doing to kill those people. I'm not having much luck tracking down specifics to these cases, but most likely, the H1N1 swine flu kills people in Mexico the same ways seasonal flu kills 36,000-odd Americans every year. Flu can interact with chronic illnesses (such as asthma or heart disease) to make the symptoms of those chronic diseases worse--sometimes fatally worse. A flu infection can also lead to pneumonia, which inflames the lining of the lungs and fills them up with fluid--making it difficult to breathe, and sometimes causing death. Dehydration from diarrhea, and brain damage from sustained very high fevers, can also kill flu victims. Even if you do have flu symptoms, the chances of you having swine flu are pretty low, unless you've recently been to Mexico or spend a lot of time around someone who has. In that case, you should call your doctor, rather than going to the hospital or to her office. The best way to keep swine flu from spreading is to keep it away from the public. And, finally, remember that it's allergy season. I've got a runny nose right now, but if there's no fever and you've still got the energy to go about your regular life, it's probably not the flu at all. *Or is that just my family? 4. Will There Be a Vaccine? Apparently, yes. But not anytime soon. Christine Layton tells me that there are companies working on a vaccine for H1N1 swine flu, but the lag time on vaccine production is pretty gnarly. We're talking 3-to-6 months before anything can get out the door, and that's with development and production being fast-tracked. Because flu viruses tend to pretty quick on the mutation draw, the "wild" virus will likely be different from the one the vaccine is modeled on by the time it comes out. That doesn't mean a vaccine won't work, though. Flu vaccines often work on a "close enough" principal. Basically, if the virus the vaccine is based on is similar enough to the wild virus, the vaccine can still help your body mount a defense. It may not prevent illness altogether, but the illness you get might be more mild that what you'd have come down with otherwise. That said, there's also a distinct possibility that, by the time a vaccine is out, H1N1 swine flu won't be a problem anymore. 5. The $64,000 Question Many people emailed to ask why a virus that appears to be killing people in Mexico is producing illness that barely warrants a trip to the doctor here. Baby, if I could answer that, my pay grade would be a LOT higher. This is really the big, central mystery right now. And while there is no shortage of speculation, the fact is that (as of this writing) nobody has any frackin' clue. There is, however, a World Health Organization science briefing scheduled for tomorrow. Maybe we'll get some preliminary answers then. But I wouldn't bet on it. 6. "I Have Taken The Amino Acid Sequence of H1N1 Swine Flu and Turned It Into a Piece of Ambient Music. Does This Interest You?" Yes, Stephan Zielinski. Yes, it does. You can listen to Stephan's appropriately haunting, sad and beautiful composition on his Web site. Finally, a quote to bear in mind, from Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, as reported by the (hopefully) immortal Canadian Press medical journalist Helen Branswell: "Anybody who thinks they know what this virus is going to do weeks, months or years from now really doesn't have a clue what they're talking about." It's possible to take this quote several ways. I choose to look at it hopefully. Let's take worst-case-scenarios--and the people promoting them--with a grain of salt for now....

WOW Insider has an interview with Noor, a World of Warcraft player who is progressing through the game without resorting to killing. It can’t be much fun playing this way and his chances of reaching level 80 are slim but kudos for trying. Back in November 2007, columnist John Himes took a look at a [...]

CenterNetworks, a great blog for those interested in social networking, Web 2.0, and social media has switched from Drupal to WordPress, and while they had a few problems in their transition, for all intents and purposes it was a success. They are working on releasing details of the conversion soon, but I wanted to cover [...]

I love this story, it is so incredibly “publishing 2.0″ and “blogosphere spirit” to me. A bunch of laid off journalists from Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a now online-online publication, have started a non-profit online news site called Seattle PostGlobe. This from the Seattle Times story: Seattlepostglobe.org has little money â€" about $3,000, with another $3,000 pledged. “We’re [...]

When you build a website â€" what is your goal?  Most of us want to get visitors and provide a product that our readers and visitors will enjoy.  One of the ways you can add some value to your website is to offer downloads.  These downloads an be pretty much anything you want them to

Happy Monday, folks! We have some new Movable Type plugins to tell you about, plus some documentation to help you operate your MT blog better. Comment Author Context — This plugin, from Six Apart employee Brad Choate, allows you to use the various author-related template tags to output information about a commenter. This can be especially [...]

I had a revelation today as I met with Ray Tsuchiyama, the marketing director for Tegit Communications (these are the guys behind the famous T9 predictive text recognition in almost all the phones in the world). I was expecting a regular press interview for their new T9 Nav technology but I was surprised to hear [...]

It is that time of the year again. We will be holding another WordPress Plugin Competition. The Plugin Competitions held in the past years have generated a tremendous amount of interest in WordPress and our entrants have come up with fantastic plugins such as WP Comment Remix, Manageable,  Who Sees Ads and of course OneClick

The other day, I was thinking about how easy it is to make a mess on the web. For example, purchasing a domain that you attach an email address to that is used for a year only to end up wanting to use a different domain. This means you have to go to every site

I remember my first blog website. It was on Geocities. Sad to hear that Yahoo! is pulling the plug. But it is more of the nostalgia that adds to my sentiment. It is finally time to lay GeoCities to rest. Yahoo! does not mention an exact date, but there are always references to the latter [...]

How To Blog Anonymously And Maintain Control Of Your Personal Privacy.: Robin Good puts together a nice writeup on how and why to blog anonymously. If you do not have Robin on your reading list, he should be. I like his general writing style and his visual clues. 10 Exceptional WordPress hacks from Smashing Magazine.: Smashing

It has taken its sweet time, but WordPress MU version 2.7.1 finally sees the light of day. WordPress MU is the multi-user version of WordPress, the one that powers Edublogs, WordPress.com, and other hosted blog solutions that looks like WordPress but offers free hosting. Andrea on WPMU Tutorials’ got a nice overview of the release, [...]

I have some terrific news â€" Jane Wells has been gracious enough to agree to an interview with me about some WordPress related topics. We are going to discuss bug hunts, WordPress 2.8 and what it is like to work on interface and experience design for WordPress. It is possible that if you have ever attended a

The most recent episode of the WPWeekly podcast is one giant interview with Matt Mullenweg covering a wide range of questions and topics such as… What is the process one must go through in order to patch a bug, complete a ticket and get it into the core of WordPress? Can you give use your stance on [...]

ReadWriteWeb isn’t just hiring, they’re expanding too. The most recent “channel”, as they call their overhead sections, is ReadWriteStart, focusing on startups and sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. Our sponsor for this Channel is Microsoft BizSpark. They pay the bills, but they have no say in what we write. Fair enough. Read the launch post and check it [...]

The only proviso seems to be that you review the new web site of UK fast food information portal Just-Eat.co.uk. Most bloggers won’t turn down free stuff, so Just-Eat’s latest promotion could go down pretty well. They’re offering a £15 meal for those who sign up to the service and then blog or write about their [...]

Get someone to read every word? Isn’t that impossible these days? It’s not impossible if you put your mind to it. Really. If you want to get visitors to stop what they’re doing, give you their undivided attention and take the immediate action you desire, then grab the closest pen you can find and start taking notes [...]

As the Internet becomes almost ubiquitous, more and more people are starting to have addiction problems. Some are addicted to YouTube, others to FaceBook, others to Twitter and so on.

KeepMeOut.com: Solve Your Internet Addiction Problem

If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare today (and want to hear a couple of Aussies talking blogging) check out this quick podcast of an interview that I did this week with Clayton Bjelan on the morning show local Melbourne radio station - Light FM. In it I talk a little about my story of going [...]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Quick Podcast Interview on Blogging

Guest post by Harsh One of the biggest advantages of WordPress over blogspot is the power to add functions and modify the settings for better search engine optimization. Search engine optimization in simple words means making your blog/website search engine friendly. This will help your posts to rank high in search engine. Wordpress is already SEO optimized [...]

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As a Performancing reader, you probably blog. You probably have social networking profiles, too, with several friends and groups. Most likely, you are on Twitter, and you exchange short messages with friends and contacts. What are these web apps anyway? They're social media, right? But what's underneath social media?

I'd say we have social networks as the foundation of social media. By a social "network" I don't mean Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. Those are actually just the mediums that facilitate social networking. Social networks are actual people who know each other, and who talk to each other. In the olden days, people networked by writing letters, posting on bulletin boards, and calling on the telephone. People even met face to face (imagine that!). Later on, we had online services, email, IRC, forums, and the like. Of course, email is a staple, and has become a de facto standard in communicating online.

This is a realization I just had quite recently. Maybe as someone whose job involves social media, I get engrossed in using these online applications everyday that I don't realize the foundations that are more important. I only see skin-deep. I usually become so focused on using the application rather than connecting with the other people who use the app. I'm no longer socially networking. But I'm just using the social networking app.

This is important, as I've also looked into social media apps I've used before, but have changed and evolved through the years. Take for instance ICQ. It was the first ever IM client and network I used, back in the '90s. Now it's evolved into some sort of social networking, blogging and online dating site. This makes me wonder what of Twitter? What of WordPress? What Facebook and MySpace? Five years down the road, we would probably see a different social media landscape.

But still the social networks would remain the same. People you know would still be people you know. Friends should still be friends (unless, of course, they are only friends by convenience, meaning you are friends because of shared social media apps). By then, perhaps the most basic social mediums would be those that survive the test of time. Like the good old telephone call. Or postcards. Or email.

And maybe one day, we would all get to meet face to face. How's that for social media?

I had an interesting discussion with a client last week about when and how to implement a new blog design. She wanted to warn her readers that a change was coming, and take a few months to implement the changes step by step. We talked about the process and created a timeline for the slow [...]

1. Because you should help the poor in all you do. 2. Because customers like to know that you care about people in need. 3. Because you work better when you feel better, and you feel better when you serve others. 4. Because you can learn many blogging lessons from the poor. 5. Because it’s the right thing to [...]

A few minutes ago I followed a trackback to a lovely blog post about one of my blog posts. It was quite complementary and made some good points. I was in the middle of composing a reply when I glanced over to the sidebar and saw the listing of the most recent blog posts featuring [...]

Big time Oprah fan MG Siegler on TechCrunch noticed that Oprah will start twittering today (being Friday). He puts it together with Evan Williams’ tweet yesterday and the fact that Ashton “1 Million Followers” Kutcher is her guest. She’ll most likely send her first tweet on the air, and then the failwhale will haunt us [...]

For a while blogging became just my job. My last hobby blog had been sold, my personal blog down and broken. It seemed the fun had gone out of blogging for me. So to fix that, a friend and I just launched a purely fun blog, all about Formula 1. In doing so I learned a [...]

When Twitter broke the mainstream, Eric Weaver from the Brand Dialogue made a valid observation. When there is finally a chance to interact with their fans in ways unimagined before, celebs in general still don’t want to listen. If you look at the chart of followers vs. following ratio, most hard hitting celebs are following [...]

AOL is bringing in top-tier political writers to provide in-depth and informed reporting, analysis and opinion of the US political landscape with the launch of PoliticsDaily.com. The site is led by former New York Times Washington correspondent Melinda Henneberger, who serves as Editor in Chief. PoliticsDaily.com dubs itself as different from other political sites [...]

Today’s task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge is another writing oriented one - it’s to write a post that contains some kind of a ‘Call to Action’. While this type of post might not be one that you’ll use all of the time it is a handy style of post to [...]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Call Your Readers to ACTION [Day 23: 31DBBB]

by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh On Friday we wondered if we would get to swim in the sea. Following a week or more of fierce storms with a consequent build up of debris, the sea was so murky. The locals including ourselves were reluctant to swim. Thursday we stood on the beach discussing [...]

Now this is a huge feather in the already pretty feather-heavy WordPress hat: Wired switches from TypePad to WordPress. We’ve switched content platforms to Wordpress, which should allow for all kinds of widgety fun and games as we move our stuff into the new place and figure out where to hang things. While at it, the Wired [...]

Popular, and sometimes breaking, videogame blog MTV Multiplayer has put itself on hiatus as lead writer Stephen Totilo is no longer working with it. He explains the decision like this: Because April 24 is my last day, and because our search for the best team to continue Multiplayer is underway but not yet complete, we’re putting [...]

How to use the WordPress image uploader to create thumbnails.: Brian explains how to automatically generate thumbnails (and resize images into various sizes) for your pictures using the WordPress image uploader. How to embed WordPress functions outside of WordPress.: WP Engineer explains how to embed WordPress functions into code that is outside of WordPress. This can

Social Media is gaining popular attention. It might be because of Ashton and Oprah, it could be because of the economy, but more and more companies and non-profits are enquiring about the subject. The same question comes up in each discussion … “Does social media work?” The problem with this question is you first have to decide [...]

Automattic has always been very proud of its WordPress.com VIP service, but now it seems that some people can outgrow the limitations of the more liberal WordPress.com VIP service as Robert Scoble looks to move his blog to the self-hosted WordPress.org software. Though it looks like moving from WordPress.com VIP to Wordpress.org isn’t as easy [...]

I’m not the least surprised to see Facebook coming short of the 60 million votes needed in the Terms of Service pseudo-democracy stunt. Because they did, and both AllFacebook and Inside Facebook confirms it. So how many people did in fact vote? 650,000 according to said two sites. They needed 60 million. I would’ve expected a bigger [...]

Choire Sicha and Alex Balk, two former Gawker editors, have decided to venture out on their own. The Awl is their creation, a not so pretty blog at the moment. The welcome post is nothing to get excited about, but the about page tells the story a bit more thorough: It was birthed from the following [...]

With the recent fears of a pandemic with the Mexico Swine Flu and an earthquake today in Mexico City, there is a lot to be nervous about. Add to it the continued spread of the conflickr/downadup virus online…with all the manmade and natural disasters and our obsessive interest in them, you would think that there [...]

Those of us who use WordPress know well the power of its plugin system. WordPress plugins can help you do everything from spell WordPress correctly to adding a full-fledged message board. However, everyone has a collection of Wordpress plugins that they feel are essential. They’re the plugins that, when you set up a new blog, you [...]

Scrivs talks about the Forever : Pimp ebook and branding.

In this week's Movable Type Monday, we have three new plugins: Reblog, UnrecognizedTags, and Custom CSS.

New Plugins Expandable Dashboard Recent Comments Adds the ability to do an in-place expansion of comment excerpts on the admin dashboard ‘Recent Comments’ widget. Ads for Old Posts The Ads For Old Posts plugin will automatically insert an ad block in your posts once they reach a certain age. The idea is to not bother your regular readers with

Yahoo! Geocities is closing down and webmasters hosting sites on Geocities need to find an alternate free hosting solution soon to move their websites. Dreamhost is offering Geocities users 2 years of free web hosting! What is the deal? Free 2 years unlimited hosting. Free domain name! What is required? They need to verify you are an [...]

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The most effective onpage SEO strategy is to insert relevant keywords in the title tags of your posts.

Digg may have caused a great deal of controversy with its new DiggBar service, but it is not the first. Here are five other sites that frame at least some of their outgoing links.

The stories on the top of Google Blog Search Business aren’t optimistic. They haven’t been for a while. Yet the predictions for social media, mobile and the growth of online advertising are huge. New jobs are being invented, described and defined, and invested in. New people are learning new skills to do them. What happens [...]

SmashingMagazine.com, one of the leading WordPress theme development sites (including a LOT of great free stuff), is currently running a poll to let the community decide what sort of theme they should build next. There’s one day left to vote, so head over there and give your say as to which type of theme you’d [...]

The LG Canadian Texting Championship pits the fastest text messengers against each other to see who can SMS in the shortest time with the most accuracy. The Canada wide competition offers $25,000 in cash and prizes plus a $1,000 media…

Popular blog ReadWriteWeb announced the addition of one Jolie O’Dell to its rooster. While O’Dell’s own website scares me a little, her blog does look a lot more promising. Naturally, she blogged about the RWW gig as well. Now for something less internal… Possibly Related PostsTechCrunch Passes 10,000 Posts, Celebrates by Killing the EmbargoFacebook Reaps Mobile [...]

First off, please allow me to thank John Chow for offering this opportunity to his readers and to help launch MyMicroFund.com. As a result of this contest, three recipients from three different countries will receive total funding o…

There can be a certain level of mystique surrounding the running of an advertising network. While so many publishers make use of Google AdSense on their websites, they really don’t know the revenue share, among other finer det…

Dreams Two column, widget ready, gravatar ready theme Acosmintech Two sidebar, widget, gravatar and tag ready theme with SIFR for headings and an included PSD file Corp Corp is a free WordPress theme, with a double-column right sidebar and a business style - a riot of black and grays in other words… except that link and hover colors are fully

In my post on how I got 5,000 new Twitter followers in six days, I said the easiest way to get new followers is to follow them first. The hope is the person you’re following will follow you back. However, this doesn’t always h…

Attention spans have never been shorter it seems. But what can you do? In order for people to value your content, they’ve got to extract the value that’s there in the first place. The problem is, no one’s going to wait around for you to explain at length. You’ve got to get the point across as quickly [...]

Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better blog is to Make a Reader Famous. The Task - Choose one (or more than one) of your current readers and do something out of the blue that acknowledges them, shows them that you see them as valuable and highlights them to your other readers. Why [...]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Pay Special Attention to a Reader [Day 22: 31DBBB]

“Leave comments on other blogs.” If there’s one piece of advice for building traffic to a blog that is given to new bloggers more than any other it is about leaving comments on other blogs. Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better blog is to do just that - spend 10-15 minutes reading [...]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Leave Comments on Other Blogs [Day 20 - 31DBBB]

I had a few of my readers asking me how to make money with mailing lists, because everyone is preaching to get one, but no one would provide a step-by-step on how to make bank on it. I decided to pick up the glove and dive into this matter head…

We’re at Day 20 (almost 21) in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge and at two thirds of the way through the project I thought I’d give a quick update with a few random highlights, updates and thoughts: 1. We’ve got over 12,000 people signed up and at different stages of the process. [...]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog - Two Thirds Through Update

Let me be a little presumptuous and blunt - not every post in the archives of your blog is up to scratch. I know this because the statement is true of my own blogs. No matter how hard we work on our blogging there are always things in the posts that we’ve previously written that can be [...]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Breathe Life Into an Old Post [Day 21 - 31DBBB]

On Friday I posted about that a great free 72 page report by Yaro Starack called Membership Site Masterplan was about to be released. Yaro’s just old me that it’s now available for you to download. The report contains some great information on how Yaro uses membership sites to build significant community sites and a six figure [...]

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Membership Site Masterplan Report is now Ready for Download

Sony’s semi-official PlayStation blog focusing on UK primarily, but being a source of information relevant for most of Europe, Three Speech is shutting down on April 17, leaving room for an official blog much like the US one. The regular readers will obviously miss Three Speech, but personally I think it is the right way [...]

Yaro Starak, one of the Internet marketers that I most respect, has just launched a new report, called Membership Site Masterplan (click to visit the download page). The good thing about his reports is that they are a) free and b) packed with useful information (as opposed to being a sales pitch packed into an ebook...). Anyway what is Membership Site Masterplan about? As you might have guessed from the name, it is a step by step guide for launching a profitable membership site. Yaro made over $250,000 with his Blog Mastermind course, and on this report he is revealing pretty much all the strategies and tools that he used to achieve that.

Download The Membership Site Masterplan Free

Tweetminster, the web service that tracks British politicians’ use of Twitter, has announced a beta version of its Adobe Air-based Tweetminster Wire desktop application. The service is designed to make it easier to track conversations about UK politics, including live streams on MPs and PPCs (prospective parliamentary candidates) who use Twitter, tweets from all major parties, [...]

It has been panned by site owners, but Digg are sticking to their DiggBar. This means we have to add workarounds to break out of their URL-stealing frameset. Thankfully, this problem was fixed back in the 1990’s, the last time spammy sites tried to do this. Lots of code is out there but here are the [...]

Google recently announced that the Google Analytics Data Export API which was in beta is now currently available to all developers. The API provides read-only access to your analytics data. On top of that, any data which is available through the standard analytics interface is available through this API meaning you could create your own desktop application to monitor your site versus using your browser. Now that the API is available to all, it will be interesting to see various widgets, gadgets, and applications spring up which allow you to easily keep tabs on your data in not so traditional ways.

For more information check out the official analytics blog post.

With only 140 characters to get your point across on Twitter, thank goodness for services that create TinyURLs. However, I'm starting to notice at least on my blog that commenter's are linking to things using these types of links. While TinyURL.com does allow you to create a special URL which contains the ability to preview where the link is going to go before you arrive their, all it takes these days to have your PC compromised is one click. I've started to remove those URLs from the comments made on my blog. Have you noticed the same trend? If so, are you allowing TinyURLs to be published on your blog or are you removing them?

How did I miss this over the weekend? No one sent me a twit about this. I’m talking about the different worm attacks on Twitter that started Saturday and until Sunday. Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney, the 17-year-old creator of StalkDaily, has admitted creating the worms that exploited a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the Twitter service to [...]

There is a vote underway on wether or not Wikimedia should adapt the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license or not. The reason is that there are some possible issues with the current GNU Free Documentation License, which would be retained as well. Naturally, Creative Commons are thrilled about the prospect: This migration would be a huge boost [...]

Everyone has used the smiley face at one point or another, but do you know how its use started? Twenty-five years ago a Carnegie Mellon University professor named Scott E. Fahlman sent a message proposing the use of a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis as a joke marker. It is the earliest [...]

USA Today is making a selection of its blogs and online communities available for Amazon Kindle. Would you pay for it though? The blogs and online communities from USA Today featured on the Kindle include: Cruise Log, with the latest news and trends in the world of cruising; Game Hunters, an online community with a focus [...]

LectureFox is a cool resource if you have an interest in academic subjects and want to kill some time. The LectureFox site contains a growing catalogue of links to lecture materials (video, audio, and notes) from distinguished universities such as Harvard, Yale and Oxford. The lectures are skewed towards the sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Math, and [...]

If you still use WordPress search on your blog and have not tried out the improved AdSense for search, here are seven reasons why you should: 1. send traffic to lower traffic sites: AdSense for Search lets you specify a list of sites to search across.  Using this option you can send some traffic to your [...]

My formal education didn’t progress very far but I do remember one thing from data processing. Programmers have a saying about inputs and outputs they call “GIGO”, and this applies to many areas of life, especially social media … GIGO stands for “Garbage In - Garbage Out”. Essentially this means the quality of what you get [...]

Here’s my first video post. Its on how you can replace your WordPress blogs search with the better AdSense for Search. Why is it better? Read my ‘7 reasons to use AdSense for Search‘ post. Since this is my first screencast, do not expect the video to be perfect Note: You can watch the above [...]

Over at the Philippine blogosphere, a certain John Candare has been labeled as a “serial cat killer” with his post on his Multiply site (in the PH, Multiply is one of the more popular social networks in conjunction with Facebook and Friendster). The original post was deleted, but for posterity’s sake, Rico from Technogra has [...]

During the early days of your website, you will find that most of the traffic you see on Google Analytics for your site is from your own visits. To prevent this, you can try excluding your own visits in Analytics. You could do this  by IP or maybe even cookies.  The best method I find [...]

Committee to Protect Bloggers reports that TinyURL has been blocked in Saudi Arabia. The URL shortener service is not the only option out there for your shortened URLs, but it is the default one for Twitter, so if you want to reach the Saudi followers you’d better use another service. I should also link the [...]

If you sell ads directly on your blog using block advertising (125×125 ads),  then you will be knowing on how time consuming it can be to add ads from advertisers on your blog and then remove them when they expire. You may have also wanted to rotate your ads to give your advertisers equal exposure. Here [...]

It seems as if microblogging service Plurk is blocked in China, at least according to Amir Salihefendic who works on the project. TechCrunch seemingly confirms. Bad news for Chinese Plurk lovers, and users who in any way like to communicate with people in China. Does this mean that Twitter is next? Possibly Related PostsTinyURL Blocked In Saudi [...]

Shopzilla is an ad network (currently in beta) that pays per click (CPC). I have been using it since last month and it has done really well on my product related site - DigitGeek. I have tried many ad networks on DigitGeek like AdSense, Kontera, Amazon, TTZ Media, Chitika and WidgetBucks and none have done [...]

This Social Thing Has Been Around for a While We act like social networking is a new thing or that social media hasn’t been around since the first cave paintings. Who are we convincing? We learn the rules of relationships before we learn to read. Then we get into business and progressively learn how [...]

What would you say if I can show you a way to make 36% return on your money with zero risk? Sounds impossible, right? Well it can be done, as I will explain. Whenever someone comes to me for advice on how to invest money, the first question I a…

Yesterday, Justin Shattuck sent out his first e-mail newsletter in a very long time, to let everyone know that an updated version of his popular Comment Relish plugin was out. The plugin allows you to set up an automated e-mail that gets sent out to first time commenters on your blog, enticing them to come [...]

FLO TV Incorporated is collaborating with Amanda Congdon (remember her?) to create original made-for-mobile content and broadcast segments of her video blog “Sometimes Daily” on FLO TV. Through this partnership, Congdon’s “Sometimes Daily” segments will be shown on FLO TV, along with original, made-for-mobile reports. FLO TV is available to AT&T subscribers as AT&T [...]

A survey on 10,000 of the “top websites on the Internet” (according to Alexa) done by Pingdom reveals that a whopping 40% of the Google Analytics users still use the old tracking code, known as urchin.js. This script still works, but it might not in the near future. “The information we are getting from Google is [...]

I am at the ADSPACE conference where Brad Bender from Google is giving his opening keynote.  And as I suspected, they did announce something new for publishers.  AdSense has announced some new category filters for publishers. Brad didn’t go into too much detail, but it will allow publishers to filter out ads by categories.  I am [...]

Mark Zuckerberg announced today that Facebook hit the 200 million user base. Growing rapidly to 200 million users is a really good start, but we’ve always known that in order for Facebook to help people represent everything that is happening in their world, everyone needs to have a voice. This is why we are working hard [...]

Recently an email subscriber complained that I had sent out a newsletter containing links shortened via a URL shortner service. There are a couple of reasons I did this. First if a URL is too long email programs break the links by wrapping. This means I get a lot of people saying the links don’t work. [...]

As you might know, I’m a huge fan of Moleskine notebooks. A tipster told me about their Facebook group, and there I found a forum for discussing which cities should be added to the City Notebook line of Moleskines. This is a nice example of putting Facebook to good use, while empowering a brand. Pitch in [...]

What is Post Templates? If you find yourself writing posts and pages on a regular basis which have the same structure, then this plugin would be a great addition to your WordPress plugin arsenal. Written by Vincent Prat, Post Templates plugin helps you save time blogging by letting you save and recall templates for writing

Google uncloaks once-secret server: For those of us that geek out on servers, data centers, hardware design and cool computers, Google recently revealed their server design and provided some insight into their shipping container data centers. I really like their distributed UPS design with 12V batteries to increase efficiency and reduce waste in capacity. Some

We knew it would mean a surge of new visitors and users on Twitter when Oprah joined up. After all, the Oprah effect (originally coined for the power of her book club) is something of a phenomenon in itself, and a few days ago, Twitter got its share. So what’s the verdict? Hitwise knows: Share of [...]

Late to the game, are we? Maybe it was the Royal Pingdom report on top tech brands on Twitter that sparked the move, either way, b5media now pushes their own Twitter account, promising retweets and whatnot in a blog post. They also ask who they should follow: @blogherald of course! Possibly Related PostsInterview: Darren Rowse on [...]

Windows Live Writer and All in One SEO Pack are two really good pieces of softwares available for WordPress users. Windows Live Writer allows users to write and publish blog posts from their desktop, on the other hand All in One SEO pack gives users the ability to optimize the post title for Search engines,

Hello everyone.  My name is Rich Hay and I want to start off by thanking Mark for inviting me to write for Weblog Tools Collection.  I have been a long time reader of this site so it is both exciting and humbling to be given the opportunity to write about WordPress on here. I look

David Hauslib has decided to put Jossip on hold since there obviously wasn’t any takers when the site went on sale in March last year. The New York Post even reported the rumor that Condé Nast, owning Wired and a ton of other media properties, was interested. But then there was nothing, and ASSME reports that [...]

I’m one of those people who think that a recession should be viewed as an opportunity to build, rather than being dreaded and met with downsizing. When times are hard, build on a budget. I’m happy to learn that Instablogs are doing just that, and CEO Ankit Maheshwari is open about it in a blog [...]

A neat way to spice up your WordPress search page is to highlight search terms within your search results. I’ve seen some tutorials on the net on how to do this, but I haven’t found one that highlights both title and post content and is a drop-in modification for WordPress. Today I will

Over on the Blogger Buzz, Google provided a quick explanation regarding its Monetize tab which mysteriously appeared late last month upon many Blogger blogs. (Blogger Buzz) You may have noticed that about a week ago a new tab showed up in Blogger for your blog. The tab is called Monetize, and in case it isn’t clear [...]

If you live inside your e-mail inbox, then this idea might really appeal to you: replying to comments via e-mail. No more logging into your WordPress.com dashboard, instead, you can now reply directly to a comment notification through your e-mail and it will be posted live on your blog. It requires a few settings to [...]

In a story so short it could fit into a handful of tweets, notorious British tabloid The Sun reports that Beyonce Knowles is planning legal action against those who are pretending to be her on Twitter. Apparently, her sister Solange said that she was being pestered by someone pretending to be the singer. Whether this is a [...]

Why Does He Care So Much about THAT?!! Life is going. Things are urgent, important, and vibrant. I’m in the zone, making things happen, feeling the vibe. Then it happens. Someone points out a tiny crack. Even worse, he’s worried about it, fretting about it, suggesting extreme precautions for fixing. And I can’t [...]

The guys from VideoEgg have recently unveiled Twig, a form of video advertising that combines pop up vids with a sticky toolbar that hovers like a “twig” above or below your browser’s frame. Twig looks like the familiar hovering bar we see in several media sites like Digg and Facebook when we click on external links. [...]

New Plugins Synected Synected enables shortened URL creation on your own blog. Synected lets you easily create and use short links based off your own domain. This releases you from dependence on a third party â€" a server error on tinyurl no longer prevents visitors from reaching your site. In addition, it strengthens your brand, keeping your

I just wanted to point a link to Tom and Kerrie Everett in Vancouver, Canada.  They’re real estate agents in the Vancouver market and started doing short, simple and fun videos on their real estate website.  Over the course of less than 6 months, they’ve grown their business and audience by setting themselves apart from [...]

In my article, “What Changes Your Mind About Leaving a Blog Comment,” I talked about some of the issues around debating where and when to leave a blog comment on a blog that hosts information or opinions you don’t support, or is filled with blog clutter, a clue that something isn’t right. About how your [...]

Apple (#103 on the 2008 Fortune 500 list) has no blogs. The closest thing it's ever had to an officlal company blog like the Google blog or the Dell blog is its PR-speak Hot News page and a long-defunct student blog. So … Apple, what gives? Why is there no Apple blog? Some argue that Apple is simply too [...]

Google has announced that several new features have been added to the Blogger Dashboard to make it easier to post blog entries from mobile devices. At least for users in the US, the mobile service supports SMS, MMS and email posting from a registered mobile phone. It’s also possible to set up a new blog from [...]

From Rock Cookie Bottom. (Via Andrew Sullivan)...

Happy Blogtipping Day everyone! Here are my three surprise victims (beneficiaries) for October 2008, selected randomly from commenters here and at Visionary Blogging in September. 1. Blogopreneur - Tan Kian Ann shares all kinds of Web marketing insights. More than anything, I love Kian Ann’s enthusiasm and verve that he puts into all his blog posts and [...]

I found this pretty amusing. Kim Jong-Il has told delegates at the recent inter-Korean summit that he is an Internet expert. Apparently he doesn’t like what he sees on the net because he’s reluctant to allow people further access. Sounds to me like he just wants to keep all the porn to himself. Kim [...]

The Electric Outlet has outlined how the shift in followers to favored tweets determines influence. And the best part is, there is a way to measure this through Google searches. Type the following in Google search: site:twitter.com/*/favourites USERNAME (note the U in favourites) You might need to click “repeat and include the omitted results” at [...]

I blogged earlier about the new Google AdSense category targeting that was announced earlier today.  So, I asked the AdSense team plenty of questions while they were on the ADSPACE panel. First, this is in a limited beta, meaning if you haven’t already been asked to participate, you won’t be in the initial wave of beta [...]

We have seen some ‘pay to Digg‘ sites in the past which promised to get our stories on the frontpage for some fee. Here’s a similar but better service called Social Elves. They say they are the first organic manual Digg service. I found the site when one of their team members contacted me to [...]

AllFacebook noticed a poll asking users if they would pay for a vanity URL on the service. Some select few have already gotten vanity URLs, like AllFacebook for one (facebook.com/allfacebook - compare to your own profile URL), but it is no a feature open to the public. What would it mean if Facebook started charging for [...]

Do You Dream a Dream? We unconsciously believe “What you see is what you get.” When I started this quest for visible authenticity, I didn’t realize how important it would be. I didn’t know how hard I’d been working to get past what people assumed about me. I thought it was just my [...]

It’s Not About Finding Customers Either When new clients ask questions about marketing with social media, it’s getting easier to determine who’s going to be successful. It’s not their goals that identify them as understanding the social business culture. It’s the way they view their product and the people who use [...]

The Google Adsense Blog helps you to get started with Google Ad Manager, Google’s hosted solution for managing your ads. Ad Manager is free to use, but if you grow big you might have to pay up, be sure to read the terms of service so that you know what you’re getting into. Here’s part 1 [...]

If you are looking to grow your e-mail list, stop using pop-ups, and start getting your commenters subscribed. WP OptIn is a Wordpress plugin that allows your commenters to subscribe to your email newsletter or auto-responder simply by checking a box automatically placed in your comment forms. The plugin integrates with Aweber, ConstantContact, or MailChimp to [...]

The nominees for the 2009 Webby’s are out, and so is the People’s Voice voting site where you can pitch in until April 30th (registration required). This is the 13th annual Webby Awards, and as always there are a ton (or 70-ish) nominees in a wide variety of categories. Possibly Related PostsCellphones.Org Announces Blogger Appreciation ContestThe [...]

Often, an item comes up in the development mailing list, or elsewhere that should be addressed, but is told in a simple way that it won’t be changed. A great example of this is the post revisions issue. Many people, including myself, would like a simple user interface added to WordPress that allowed us to [...]

Twitter is fast becoming a place where you can let your fictional characters (and brands) come to life, with minimal effort should be noted. The latest to join in is Shamu, the killer whale of SeaWorld fame. Bio I live at SeaWorld. I’m a large, athletic, black and white marine mammal. I’m not THE star of [...]