Archive for October, 2008
What does your office say about you?
Posted by: admin in Blog Ideas on October 31st, 2008
If you’re looking for something to blog about, have a look at the room around you. If you’re sitting in a den or office, try to step outside yourself for a moment. What does this room say about you? My den has Babylon 5 (a sci-fi TV series) posters, a book shelf full of sci-fi and computer books, a rack full of sci-fi and comedy DVDs, and it’s a mess. This tells you I’m no neat freak, but I am into science fiction and comedy. What might surprise people is that although I’m a technology geek, I have a complete collection of the Marx Brothers’ old black and white movies. To me, they’re some of the best comedies ever produced. What does your workspace say about the person you are? If someone you knew was in the room with you looking around, what might they see that surprises them?
Become a better writer in a few minutes a day
Posted by: admin in Blogging Resources on October 31st, 2008
I’ve often been told that I’m a good writer. Personally, I think I’m probably slightly above average, but I’m no Hemingway. I found a great resource on improving your writing over at Copyblogger. Their “Copywriting 101” series provides a series of articles, each of which can be read in a few minutes, that should help you write better than you do now. If you’re serious about blogging, I recommend checking it out.
Eliminate These Common Grammatical Mistakes
Posted by: admin in Blogging Resources on October 30th, 2008
We’re probably all guilty of some grammar errors in our writing. For example, I prefer putting my punctuation marks outside of quotation marks unless they’re part of the actual quote. I prefer “to boldly go” over “to go boldly” in the Star Trek theme. But as lax as my own writing may be with some rules, there are a few that really irritate me when I see them in print. If I start reading a blog and bump into more than a couple, I’m out of there.
The folks over at Copyblogger have compiled their “Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb” and it’s a great start. If you make more than two of those mistakes in a paragraph, I’m going to have a hard time reading the rest of that paragraph. I’ll tune out, and move on. So will many other readers.
Below are a few of my own “grammar nazi” rules to add to theirs:
- No text-message abbreviations in your blog entries unless you’re quoting a texting conversation. Don’t use “ur” instead of “your”, “2″ instead of “to”, “4″ instead of “for”, “rly” instead of “really”, or a “z” where there should be an “s”. It works for text messages because the idea is to keep them short. These conventions have no business in your blog unless your audience consists only of heavy text messagers.
- No “leet speak”. That is, no “kewl”, “dudez”, and “miScaPitAliZed” words. Those are cool the first time you see them, maybe. After that, they’re annoying.
- Know the difference between “loose” and “lose”. If you don’t win a game, you “lose”, not “loose”. If you haven’t tightened up a screw, it’s “loose”.
- Know the difference between “then” and “than”. For example, it’s “I like this more THAN that” not “I like this more then that”. It’s not “this is more important then anything” but “this is more important than anything”.
- “Could of”, “would of”, and “should of” are wrong. It sounds like those are the words someone is saying when they are speaking, “could’ve”, “would’ve”, or “should’ve”. But those contractions are not good English, either. Instead, use “could have”, “would have” and “should have”.
When I see these mistakes in a blog entry, I have a hard time taking anything else the writer says seriously, and subconsciously estimate their IQ to be just above a turnip…
What do people ask your advice about?
Posted by: admin in Blog Ideas on October 29th, 2008
Because my day job involves maintaining and troubleshooting computers, people who know me will ask for my advice about technical matters. They’ll ask about video cards, laptops, cheap alternatives for expensive software, and a variety of other things related to computers. Chances are there’s some area that your friends and co-workers view you as knowledgeable about. What kinds of questions do they ask you? These could be good topics to cover on your blog.
Brainstorming for Bloggers - The Magazine Trick
Posted by: admin in Blogging Resources on October 29th, 2008
Chances are that for whatever subject you blog about, there’s a magazine on newsstands. In fact, if it’s something you care a lot about, you probably subscribe to related magazines, mailing lists, etc. Why not use those publications to help you find a topic for blogging?
Pick up the magazine and flip through it. If an ad or article catches your eye, stop and examine it in more detail. If it’s an article, analyze what you’ve just read with an eye toward your blog. Did the author miss some key points that you can expand on? Is the article too superficial, and can you give a “meatier” treatment in your blog? Would people like a list of useful resources on that subject (a list you could research and post on your blog)?
Web Design and Usability for Bloggers
Posted by: admin in Blogging Resources on October 28th, 2008
Following are some articles I’ve accumulated on web design, usability, and web page layout.
10 Ways to Increase Blog Usability
This Performancing.com article talks about how to use your site’s design to improve the usability of your blog.
BlogStyles
This site offers web designs for blogs. They seem to focus mostly on Movable Type and Blogger.
How to Obtain an ISSN for your Blog
An ISSN registers your blog as an official periodical, one that can
appear in libraries and directories. This can boost your readership,
legitimacy, and give your blog a boost.
Professional Grade Blog Design is Easy
This article talks about “branding” and designing your site.
Weblog Usability: Top Ten Design Mistakes
The top ten things you need to do in your blog to make it usable, popular, and well designed.
Webmonkey: The Web Developer’s Resource
This site provides great articles about HTML, web design, cascading
style sheets, and about anything else you’d want to know about web
design and programming.
Optimizing Your Blog for Search Engine Indexing
Posted by: admin in Blogging Resources on October 27th, 2008
If you’re not familiar with the topic of “search engine optimization” you may want to give the following articles a read. It can help readers find your blog more easily in search results.
Even Blogs Need Keyword Research
Discusses what keywords can do to help improve blog usability and search engine ranking.
HighRankings.com SEO FAQ
Some frequently asked questions about search engine optimization and their answers.
How to Boost Your Rankings By Over 350 Positions
This SEOElite article discusses how adding a properly worded TITLE tag,
combining keywords, adding H1 and H2 header tags, bolding, italicizing,
underlining, ALT image tags, and more can boost your search engine
position.
Search Engine Watch
This site is dedicated to the latest news, information, and tips about search engines and search engine optimization.
SEO Chat
This site provides news and information about search engine optimization and related topics.
What’s Your Favorite Recipe?
Posted by: admin in Blog Ideas on October 27th, 2008
My dad’s mother was a great cook. She could make a meal for 30 people and it would taste as good as a meal made for 5. She passed away many years ago, and I really regret that I was never able to ask her for many of her recipes, because I’d love to be able to share some of that great food with my stepchildren and my wife.
My grandmother on my mom’s side makes potato soup. It’s delicious, and it doesn’t taste like the stuff you get in cans or at a restaurant. I know that someday she will no longer be with us, and I didn’t want that recipe to die with her. I had her walk through it with me, and wrote it down as I went so that it would never be lost. Since I thought others might be interested in trying it, I shared it on my web site. Is there a recipe in your family that you share, or wish you had? Why not share it with the rest of us?
Content Management Systems for Blogging
Posted by: admin in Blogging Resources on October 26th, 2008
If you’re looking for a way to get your words to the web, you’ll do well to consider a content management system. These allow you to focus on the words, and let software handle the formatting, comments, trackbacks, and so forth. Below are several popular content management systems for blogging:
Blogger by Google
This is Google’s free content management system for blogs.
BlogWare
Blogware is described as Blog Builder Software for Blogs and Blogging.
LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a journaling system suitable for blogging, networking with friends, and more.
Mambo Open Source
This open source content management system is provided by a number of Internet Service Providers and hosting services. This system is available free of charge, but you need some kind of hosting provider like godaddy.com to house the database and programs.
Movable Type
The Movable Type publishing platform is another very popular blogging content management system. As with Mambo, there is an open source (free) version of Movable Type that you can use on an existing host to run your blog. (I’m using it for this site.)
MySpace.com
One of the many blog hosts out there.
TypePad
A powerful, hosted weblogging service.
WordPress
Free blog tool and weblog platform - one of the more-popular ones.Blog: CMS
This open source content management system bills itself as “the most complete, feature-packed, personal publishing system on the market. It includes state-of-the-art weblog, forum, wiki engine, news aggregator (atom / rss), and photo gallery”.Wikipedia’s List of Content Management Systems
This is a rather comprehensive list of free and commercial content management systems.
There are many good content management tools out there. The key, I’ve found, is to try writing several posts in the ones that look “good” to you and evaluate them along several lines:
- Does the tool make it easy to link to other posts?
- Is it easy to upload images and include them in your posts?
- Can you easily format the text the way you want it, with indentation, alignment, bulleted lists, etc.?
- Does it handle trackbacks, so you can see who’s talking about your blog?
- Does it offer an RSS feed, to make it easy for people to scan your blog on a regular basis to find articles of interest?
- Are you able to categorize your posts (if you want to) or tag them to help readers find posts on a similar subject matter?
- Can you customize the appearance of the blog to suit you?
- If you want readers to be able to comment on your posts, is that option available?
- Can the system provide Google Sitemaps to help get your posts indexed?
- Can it handle scheduled posts (if you want to be able to write your articles in advance and have them appear on a pre-determined day)?
These and other questions are best answered by installing or signing up for a service you’re looking at and spending time with it.