Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It’s our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn’t attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There’s a big difference between that and censorship.

Is this story dead now?

Kudos to BoingBoing, however, to inviting journalists to participate in a conference call about the situation. Smart move.

My name is Jarkko and I am a total plane grazy. I started to turn my head up in the sky about 20 years ago and after many neck pains :) I ended up here.

Among the things covered so far are pilotless airliners, the PiperJet, and today’s airports.

Having long been unhappy with the sort of news highlighted by TechMeme, Dave writes of the new site:

I created the site because I wasn’t getting enough news about products. It’s that simple. I’m interested in the other stuff too, the finance, trends, parties, puppets — but that’s adequately covered on TechMeme. What wasn’t getting through is the stuff I, as a product developer, care the most about — news about products. And the interesting new products I’d find wouldn’t make it onto the bus. If it got bought by Google or Microsoft, that would likely show up on TM, or if a VC invested a lot of money in it. But I like to find out when things are small, before other people invest. Permalink to this paragraph

It’s important to note that the Tech NewsJunk, like the political one, does not have original content, it just points to the sites that are producing the relevant stories.

I’ve been reading tech.newsjunk.com since it’s launch on July 4th and have noticed a number of stories and links that would likely have never drifted onto my TechMeme radar screen - it may do the same for you.

Duncan writes:

The site launches with three pages, a front page that offers a summary to some of the best news blogs in the 2.0 space (and the Inquisitr of course, but I’m allowed to put my own link in). The second page offers a summary of the best news in the blogging world, an early passion of mine. The third page is a summary of all the major meme trackers, so users can quickly glance at what’s hot across the web.

The original idea was to do more pages, and in future weeks and months I will roll out more.

The site is inspired, of course, by tools like Popurls - but Duncan’s has a nice look & feel - and the selection of sites is much more inspired than those of his competitor.

His efforts, using the lessons learned from founding and running Facebook, have paid off for Senator Obama in ways many could only imagine…

The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries.

The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages. “If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now,” Mr. Hughes said.

Mr. Obama, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, credits the Internet’s social networking tools with a “big part” of his primary season success.

Their current challenge? How to extend beyond their base of internet-savvy supporters and engage a broader audience through social media tools like my.barackobama.com in order to draw more supporters into a deeper level of engagement and awareness of the Senator’s campaign.

The article is also interesting for what it doesn’t say — in the last Presidential election, in 2004, candidate Howard Dean, now the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, used the internet in highly effective ways to engage his supporters and raise vast sums of money for his campaign.

His use of the internet was a precursor for the sort of operation that Chris Hughes and others have put together for Senator Obama - what might 2012 bring us in the way of politically based social media tools?

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), American writer

Have you lost your common sense with all the information attacking your head every day? While the normal person going about their daily work and life is bombarded by information, bloggers actually seek even more - making their brains resemble overstuffed furniture with wadding leaking out through the cracks in the Naugahyde.

I have over 350 feeds in my feed reader. I have 97 tabs open in my FireFox web browser. I have the radio tuned to National Public Radio, and podcasts are downloading onto my Zune right now as I work so I can listen to them when I work out tomorrow morning. I get hundreds of emails a day. Tons of blog comments across numerous blogs - I’m overwhelmed with information and input and I’m losing control.

Are you?

How are you managing all the input a blogger needs to stay in touch, keep up with the news in your blogging industry, tracking down story ideas, researching stories and articles, reading through comments, researching the answers, and responding back…and all the things we do every day to keep our blog life alive? How do you do it?

What are the tricks of the trade you’ve learned along your blogging path? Want to share? Share your time saving, information overload prevention tips with your blogging pals and I’ll write up a summary, and maybe even honor the best offerings with my book, Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.

Which begs the question. What is it that bloggers won’t tell you about blogging that we need to know in order to prevent blog burn-out?

What keeps you blogging on? What inspires you to keep publishing content on your blog? What keeps you coming back for more?

Is it the blog traffic? Do you hover over your blog stats stressing out when the numbers go down and researching all the different ways you can keep pushing those numbers higher? Do you play with landing pages, blog carnivals, guest blogging, advertising, blog networks, and other ways of making the traffic keep coming in your blogging door?

Is it the writing? Is it the act of researching and finding things to write about that rocks your bloggy world? Does the magic of language enthrall you as you come up with new ways of conveying your message, twisting the words around, playing with the poetry of your vocabulary?

Is it the blog comments, the door to feedback on your blog, that keeps your blogging motor running? Do you love starting a conversation and watching it continue in the comments as people consider what you said and have their say?

Is it the communal nature of blogs, the social if you will, of blogging that works like a magnet on your spirit, bringing you back over and over again to greet old friends and meet new ones through your blog? Do you use all the different social network media that revolves around your blog so you can develop friends and contacts across a wide spectrum or narrow bridge of interests?

Is it the trackbacks and incoming links that get your juices flowing as you feel honored and recognized through the linking process for your work and your expertise?

Possibly, it’s the creative expression that is so inherent to blogging. You are a publisher, editor, director, producer, writer, photographer, videographer, sound artist, DJ, master of all the publishing arts on your blog. Is the artistry involved in blogging what keeps your enthusiasm going?

Is a blog none of those things to you? What is it that keeps your blog going day after day, week after week, month after month? What makes you come back to blog?

WordPress News

Scanning for WordPress Exploits: WordPress Exploit Scanner WordPress Plugin by Donncha O’Caoimh searches the files and database of your WordPress blog for signs of suspicious activity. It won’t prevent attacks but will help you find them if they do occur.

WordPress 2.6 News: There have been two beta releases of WordPress 2.6, the most recent one is WordPress 2.6 Beta 2. Improvements and changes include tag auto-suggest, Visual Text Editor, Media Library fixes and changes, SSL and i18n localization fixes, inline documentation, and more.

More news and commentary on WordPress 2.6 include:

• What Plugin Coders Must Know About WordPress 2.6 by Ozh of PlanetOzh.
• Weblog Tools Collecton - What You Need To Know About WordPress 2.6 covers post revisioning, improvements in the Press-It (now called “Press This”) bookmarklet, faster WordPress Administration Panels, incorporation of Google Gears to enhance speed improvements, XML-RPC requires Administrator Permissions to enable, ability to activate multiple Plugins at once and delete them, ease of deleting Plugins you no longer use, the ability to move the config file to different directory, moving the content directory, image previewing, and customizable default avatars.
• Dougal Campbell - Update on WordPress blog APIs covers the issues around changes to the XML-RPC and Atom blog APIs being disabled by default in WordPress 2.6.
• Aaron Brazell - 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 covered Shift Click selection of multiple check boxes in the WordPress Administration Panels, Google Gears support for pre-caching, avatar options, XML-RPC as an option to enable XML-RPC editing and upgrading, Press This, Theme preview, post versions, Page Templates over XML-RPC, and Plugin mass activation and deletion.
• Shoemoney likes Post Revision, the new feature that allows you to compare the same post in multiple windows, excellent for Internet glitches and multiple authors.
• Dougal Campbell is also jazzed about Post Revisions and Google Gears support, and describes some of the other new features in greater detail including support for the XML-RPC and Atom client APIs being turned off by default for security protection, improved SSL access to Administration Panels, a new version of the “Press This” (formerly Press-It) bookmarklet, avatar options, improved WordPress Plugin management, and more.
• Blog Security explores the security improvements in WordPress 2.6 and reports that a number of XMLRPC features will be deactivated by default, adding more protection, along with improved password and cookie security improvements in past versions. They say it’s on the right track for strong security standards.
• Peter Westwood is excited about the improvements in the security of WordPress 2.6 including support for SSL and disabling remote publishing protocols by default.
• Lester Chan, popular WordPress Plugin author, is excited about the new features including the new link in the top menu called “Speed Up” which connects with Google Gears, the new Dashboard Panel feature “Right Now” which gives a breakdown of your blog’s activity in the moment, the new Word Count feature, and Theme Previews. However, with the some recent changes in WordPress versions which impact WordPress Plugins, Chan is debating whether or not to maintain WordPress 2.5 compatibility for the next wave of WordPress Plugins, especially those impacted by the new features that allow wp-config.php to move up one level from the WordPress root and allowing the wp-content directory to be in a custom location.
• Many are reporting their excitement about the new WordPress Auto-Upgrade feature which will make upgrading WordPress easier, though rumors are flying that this might be pushed back a version.

WordPress Plugin Competition: The Weblog Tools Collection’s WordPress Plugin Competition for WordPress 2.5+ continues to grow with new prizes and Plugins. Here are the Plugin entries listed on the Plugin Competition Blog so far:

• PhotoJAR: Base
• tWPtter ~ Wordpress Microblogging
• New WP Comment Remix Version
• Sidebars
• PostGroups v1.1.0
• WP Easy Uploader
• Upgrade and backup *all* your WordPress blogs with one click!
• Current tags
• PostGroups
• Manageable
• ZdMultilang
• Post Tabs
• MailPress
• Great Real Estate
• WPMU Plugin Commander
• SEO Smart Links
• Adminimize
• DL-MENU Tab generation and dynamic colorschemes
• Content By Country
• Automatic Timezone Plugin
• Simple Flash Video WordPress Plugin
• Sermon management WordPress Plugin for churches
• Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin
• Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin

Why Not Use WordPress? The Best Already Are: BloggingPro looks at who is using WordPress and asks that if the big names like CNN, Yahoo, Sony, The New York Times, People, Ebay, and b5Media are using WordPress, is there anything else that is better they could be using? After all, these groups have the money, expertise, technology, and access to the research information that helped them make their decision. They must know what their options are. So what are the options besides WordPress?

BlogSecurity’s Next Generation Security Tester: BlogSecurity announces the launch of BlogSecurity Next Generation, the new modular, expanded version of the WP-scanner WordPress Plugin which tests your blog for security issues and vulnerabilities.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Your Own Song in the Plugin Competition, WordPress 2.6 Beta and First Looks, WordCamp UK New Location, Batcache, Naked Themes, and More.

WordPress Podcasts

WordPress Podcast: The WordPress Podcast: Episode 43: Out Of Date Blogs Hacked, All-In-One Seo Gets Dropped, Then Picked Up covered those topics and the development of the Crazy Horse new WordPress Administration Panels interface, Batcache, HyperDB, WordPress Plugins, WordPress 2.6, and security issues.

WP Weekly Podcast: WordPress Weekly Episode 21 Round 2 with Jeffro included WordPress 2.6 news, hacked blogs, Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition, and more.

WordCast Podcast: WordCast 19: Irreverelevant covered new Theme releases, the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin competition, Underrated WordPress Plugins, WordPress 2.6, and more WordPress news.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordCamp Announcements: WordCamp Australia has been officially announced and will be December 6-7, 2008, in Sydney. Oct 24, 2008, is the date for a PodCamp and WordCamp in Hawaii, so get out your surf boards and sun lotion, folks!

WordCamp UK Changes Locations: Only a few weeks away, WordCamp UK has had a last minute change of venue to The Studio in Birmingham. Check out WordCamp UK for more details and maps.

WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.

Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the WordPress Roadmap and the WordPress Meetup Group Listings (subject to change).

• Huntsville WordPress Meetup, Alabama - June 28, 2008
• Nashville WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008
• Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008
• The New York City WordPress - July 19, 2008
• WordCamp UK - July 19-20, 2008, Birmingham, UK VENUE CHANGE
• Boston WordPress July Meetup - July 24, 2008
• The Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress July Meetup - July 26, 2008
• WordCamp San Francisco 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF - Aug 16, 2008
• WordPress 2.6 - July 7, 2008
• WordCamp Philippines - September 6, 2008
• Blog World Expo, Vegas - September 20-21, 2008
• South by Deep South WordCamp - Birmingham, Alabama - September 26-28
• WordCamp Portland, Oregon - September 27, 2008
• WordCamp Toronto 2008 at Centennial College, Progress Campus, Toronto - October 4, 2008
• Podcamp and Wordcamp Hawaii - Oct 24, 2008
• MinneWordCamp - Minneapolis - November 15, 2008
• WordCamp Australia - Sydney, December 6-7, 2008

WordCamp San Francisco August 16: August 16, 2008 is the next WordCamp San Francisco, considered by many to be the premier WordCamp event. This year, it appears it will be only one day instead of two, but details are still coming. It will be at the Mission Bay Conference Center this year.

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, as many track WordPress event announcements there.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

Do You Say “WordPress Plugin” on Your Plugin Page? I’m finding a lot of WordPress Plugin authors are not using the word “WordPress Plugin” in their Plugin’s official page, nor within the text. Remember that “WordPress Plugin” is a popular keyword search term and if you aren’t using it, your chances of being found drops. Avoid separating the two words like “WordPress Blah Blah Plugin” and keep them together such as “Blah Blah WordPress Plugin” as the closer the terms are to each other, the more important they are. Most people search for “how to do blah WordPress Plugin” when they search, so help them find you by using the words and keeping them together.

What WordPress Plugin Authors Need to Know About WordPress 2.6: While there will be little change for WordPress Themes, template tags, and functions, a few of the changes in WordPress 2.6 may make or break your WordPress Plugins. What Plugin Coders Must Know About WordPress 2.6 by Ozh takes you in detail through these such as the changes in how the wp-config.php will work in the future, and more. Ozh also offers some WordPress Plugin Coding Tips to help write better WordPress Plugins, as a complement to a series on WordPress Plugin code tips by Nerdaphernalia. If you have or are writing WordPress Plugins, check out these tips to help improve your WordPress Plugins and the user’s experience.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: Here are some interesting and unusual Plugins I stumbled on recently:

• Page Excerpt WordPress Plugin adds a meta box to the Write Post Panel for use as a Page Excerpt.
• Inline Google Docs WordPress Plugin allows embedding of Google documents into WordPress.
• Inline Google Docs WordPress Plugin allows the blog administrator to embed Google Docs and Spreadsheets as content in posts and Pages with a shortcode.
• WordPress Themed Categories Plugin assigns different WordPress Themes for specific categories, great for review sites.
• Authenticate WordPress Plugin enabled universal or targetted inclusion of custom content in feeds and posts for including copyright information, policies, special offers and more. It can be added before, after, or within the post content.

Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.

WordPress.com News

Google Gears for WordPress.com Blogs: WordPress.com users now have Google Gears for their blogs. In the upper right corner of the Administration Panels is a link called Turbo. You will be taken to a Google Gears installation. Google Gears is a browser extension for FireFox and Internet Explorer and allows the browser to use web-based applications like Google Docs and Remember the Milk. It can create a local database and file storage on your computer and run JavaScript in the background of your computer without slowing down the web browser as you work. For WordPress.com users, it will store all your images and other web page components from the WordPress Administration Panels to your computer, speeding up the process and reducing your web bandwidth and traffic.

The question most people are asking is if this will be available for full versions of WordPress. According to the development news, it will be included in WordPress 2.6.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Can’t Find Your Category ID Numbers? How To: Finding Category Numbers in WordPress 2.5 by HackWordPress helps you find those “missing” category ID numbers for links to your categories by ID, selecting a specific category for the front page of your blog and magazine WordPress Themes, and other usages.

Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:

• WordPress Hacks: Using Custom Fields to Auto-Embed YouTube Videos
• Working with widgets at the new WordPress.com
• JJ and the Kids Podcast - Episode 5 - Create a Database for WordPress
• ZEPREZ WordPress Video Guides - How to Save An Edited Post Or A Draft In WordPress 2.0

Want to Write a WordPress Tip and See It Here? If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.

WordPress Community News

Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug and shared my love with a lot of people recently. Go get yours at the WordPress Shop along with t-shirts and hoodies.

Give Something Back to WordPress: Jeff Chandler of Weblog Tools Collection has written “24 Ways To Contribute To WordPress” with suggestions on how to get involved in helping WordPress development. If you would like to help with the WordPress Codex, the official online user manual for WordPress users, we need you. If you would like to contribute to WordPress as a volunteer in the WordPress Support Forums, testing, coding, and more, see Contributing to WordPress. If you would like to help improve WordPress by reporting bugs, please report them via the WordPress Bug Report form. Your help is needed to ensure WordPress works.

Vote for WordPress Ideas: There is still time to get your vote in for ideas on upcoming versions of WordPress in the The WordPress Ideas section. Why not take advantage of it and add your voice to the vote.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? If you are looking for a WordPress expert, try the WordPress Consultants list from Automattic, the WordPress Jobs listings, and the WP-Pro mailing list.

WordPress Installed For Free: Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress) is a free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.

Don’t Use WordPress in Your Blog’s Name: It’s about respect. Please use WordPress names right because WordPress is a trademark and you are not allowed to use WordPress in your blog’s domain name or URL unless you have permission of Automattic and WordPress. Also, remember, it’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).

Found a Bug in WordPress? If you find a bug in WordPress, report it by following the instructions in Reporting Bugs on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users.

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

• WordPress Wednesday News: Your Own Song in the Plugin Competition, WordPress 2.6 Beta and First Looks, WordCamp UK New Location, Batcache, Naked Themes, and More
• WordPress Wednesday New: Planet WordPress Canada, WordPress Plugins Contest, Crazyhorse, BuddyPress Default Theme, Blog Hacked, Sitemaps, and More
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Blogs Hacked, Plugin Competition is Hot, BuddyPress, WordPress Sayings, and Lots of WordPress Plugin News
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress at 50, WordPress Tweeters, Tracking WordPress 2.6, WordPress.com Stats, and Hot WordPress Plugins
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 5 Years Old, WordCamps International, WordPress 2.6 On Track, Plugin Competition is Hot, Genko Updated
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps Everywhere, Apache Patch for Securer Passwords, WordPress Plugin Contest, and More WordPress News

WordPress News Sources

• WordPress Planet
• WordPress Development Blog
• WordPress.com Blog
• Weblog Tools Collection
• The WordPress Podcast
• Lorelle on WordPress
• Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
• WordPress Publisher Blog
• WordPress Weekly live show with Jeffro2pt0
• Planet WordPress Canada

If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.

Each Wednesday on Blog Herald is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

Its director, Gareth Thomas, said that, “Most people don’t know about this law,” adding, “there is a misconception that these devices are clever, but they can backfire.”

The new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations legislation came into effect at the end of May 2008.

Drew Benvie, director at Hotwire, said, “This law change affects everyone in PR. If customers have any presence online, it’s definitely their business to know about it.”

(Via PR Week)

While it’s not the complete answer to managing the stress of blogging, a tube of Berocca and a nice glass to drink it in is welcome, and the quirky stress toys are amusing enough.

I must make it clear that I’m not on any kind of commission here, though if the Blog Herald makes it onto the “featured blogs” section as a result, so much the better.

Berocca’s welcome letter says that “this is just the start of what we’ll be doing with bloggers and we have exciting plans for the future. If we’re doing something that’s cool, worth blogging about and relevant to you we’ll be in touch, but we promise we won’t spam you needlessly.”

Freebie toys and gadgets from companies are nothing new, and it’s fun to get a few perks for blogging now and again. Companies wanting to get their products in front of more niche influencers (rather than mainstream journalists and other media people) isn’t new either. I just hope that they keep it as real and as fresh as possible.

Oh, and any other companies who want to send me free food, drink, and iPhones gadgets, feel free!

You may recall that not too long ago, Gawker Media moved to a model where their bloggers were tied to the traffc on their individual blog posts - along with a system of traffic bonuses and other incentives.

The declining economy may have had an impact on Gawker Media, thus driving down the payrates…

Radar writes:

Who ever said the future of media was going to feel great? With the current traffic success of Gawker—70+ posts a day, amazing SEO results, and relentlessly hammered-home top stories to maximize numbers—comes a downside. The company, which hands out blogger pay on the traffic for each writer’s own blog posts, has been paying out bonuses each quarter to nearly all the regular editorial staff of Gawker. “We’ve broken the site budget,” Gawker Media owner Nick Denton told the staff in an email yesterday. The only answer, from the company’s perspective? To keep getting more traffic—but to pay the producers of that traffic less for each pageview. So for the second and now, according to a new memo regarding the pay rate for the quarter that began this week, third quarters of 2008, the company has reduced the rate of pay per pageview. Other Gawker Media sites, including Jezebel, also had their pageview rate cut.

Silicon Valley Insider has more.

Lately I have been asked if it is really essential, are there cases where it might not be a good idea?

Here are the cases for and against:

In Favor of Photographs

• One of the reasons people will visit your site will be to find out about you
• It creates a greater opportunity for a connection between you and your reader
• Use consistent imagery across social media to help build your brand and recognition
• Smiling faces are welcoming and approachable
• Can (probably not in my case) show you off as a professional without having to say so

Against photographs

• Lots of us don’t like having our picture taken, photographs make some people uncomfortable
• Blogging anonymously
• “It’s about the content, not me”
• “People will judge me/make fun because of how I look”
• Haven’t got a suitable image
• Yours is a multi-author blog or a great deal of the content is from guests

I would say having your photograph visible is still a good thing, and the one time I would recommend against it very strongly is if you are getting the wrong sort of attention because of your photograph, which I hear does happen occasionally.

What do you think about photographs on blogs? For, or against?

For the past 20 years or so my family has lived without the assistance of commercial medicines or doctors, except for things like broken arms and emergency surgeries on retro-pharyngeal abscesses. You know, the stuff I can’t butterfly bandage, make a tea for, or put a poultice on! Six of our eight children have been born at home. My nickname around here is Dr.Mom, Medicine Woman.

In the b5media post, Marye Audet is described/hyped like this:

I’ve often joked that Marye is Martha Stewart meets MacGyver.

I’ve personally called on Marye for a few tips and am 100% sold after seeing the quick successes of her suggestions.

The other blog is Canadian Music News, which surprisingly enough isn’t all Celine Dion and Bryan Adams, if you believed it would be. Jeanne Dupuis edits.

Most bloggers would love their content to hit the front page of Digg. Unfortunately, most of those bloggers are never able to experience the huge spike of traffic and the feelings of accomplishment this brings.

In this post, I want to argue that success with Digg is an odds game. You can never guarantee it, but you can give yourself the best possible odds. I’ll be describing how to do this, right down to what kind of post you should create, and how to get it moving up the ranks on Digg.

There are many who swear by promoting their blogs via Digg or sites like Reddit - particularly if they have viral content that is fresh and interesting…

BSPCN outlines the 30 “Must Have” Firefox Extensions, including del.icio.us toolbar, Foxmarks, and Greasemonkey.

PC World looks at the “12 Quick Hacks” for Firefox 3, including ways to make Gmail and Yahoo! Mail work with “mailto:” links, and other tidbits.

And don’t forget about using “about:robots” in the address bar.

What hacks / plugins do you use?

On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s PC, speeding up access and reducing unnecessary web traffic.

That’s from the launch post.

Upcoming WordPress 2.6, now in beta 2, will have the same kind of support for Google Gears.

Among some of the content currently on the homepage:

Everything I Learned About Personal Finance I Learned From WALL-E

White Collar Steroids

5 Terrible Life Lessons Hollywood Loves to Teach You

Sure, you could visit Digg or any other wisdom of crowds Website, but the new Blogged design is highly readable with content being hand-picked by a team of editors.

Submit your blog here.

Another step to further improve the site will be taken shortly. We’re working on the new design, giving better focus on the content, and in other ways make your stay with us here better. More on that later.

For now, we apologize for the inconvenience our technical issues might have caused you, and thank you for your patience.

• More posts equals more traffic
• Lots of updates equals more favor from search
• Posts make page views, which earns ad dollars
• Etc

Is quantity all it takes? How important is quality?

Just recently I received this story from CanadaIT.com (via Perry Marshall)

A record $160-million VC investment. A rich Web strategy. A quirky founder. For a few weeks last spring, Guelph, Ont.’s Geosign had it all. Then mighty Google stirred. And it was over

It turns out this company had raised a fortune from VCs based on cranking out junk articles, pumping the traffic using low-cost adwords and earning revenue from high-value Adsense.

The classic Made for Adsense Arbitrage Trick.

Don’t get me wrong, there are people making millions using pump-and-dump arbitrage. Buy low, sell high works, it doesn’t matter if you are talking about stocks or traffic. Just don’t expect Google to turn a blind eye for too long.

If they were willing to lose millions in Adwords dollars, what do you think they would care about your little blog?

Long term you are better creating a loyal audience, then it doesn’t matter what Google does. Quality is a prime factor and we should never forget it.

Some blog posts take only a few minutes from idea to finished product. A few minutes to edit and clean it up, making sure I’ve got all the bits and pieces in the right places before hitting the publish button.

Other blog posts were started in 1994 and I haven’t finished them yet. The ideas are good, the research is fine, but it’s just not ready for publishing. Something isn’t right. When it’s ready, I’ll publish it. Until then, if the idea isn’t out-of-date, it sits and ferments, waiting to ripen into a fine wine in the future.

Those are two dramatic extremes, but why are people asking the question?

They want to know how much time and effort goes into the work of blogging.

Do you have an answer for them?

How Long Does It Take to Think of an Idea for a Blog Post?

For many bloggers, writing the post takes the least amount of time. Finding something to write about takes much longer.

Ideas can come from anywhere or anything at any time. Many get their best ideas in the shower or bathroom, when their mind drifts off into that “space” where we just don’t spend enough time brainstorming and doing free association, finding linking around corners and under furniture in our brains where we rarely look when we’re paying attention. According to the Science News (March 22, 2008, Vol. 173, “Eureka!”), these sudden bursts of insight can come with little warning but recent research shows that they come more often when your brain is “off” - wandering around thinking little or nothing at all, and definitely not thinking about work.

According to neuroscientist Joydeep Bhattacharya of Goldsmiths, University of London, England:

“The ‘Aha!’ experience mainly occurs because you’re minimally aware of what you’re thinking as you try to solve a problem.”

The article went on to explain:

The road to “Eureka!” may start even before he mental preparation period, as a person sits quietly and does nothing at all, Kounios [of Drexel University in Philadelphia] suggests. In a recent Neuropsyhchologia, he and his coworkers report that the brains of people who later use insight to solve word problems already display “resting-sate” electrical activity associated with a broadening of attention. This activity appears in the right=brain areas that identify distant connections among words and verbal concepts.

Their study shows that the harder you work at solving a problem, the longer it takes, but once you relax and “take your mind off the subject” the answer may come in a flash of insight.

It’s the time spent waiting for insight that can make finding something to blog about a time consuming task. The most successful bloggers expose themselves to a lot of input from reading other blogs, their feeds, going to conferences, meeting other bloggers, and enjoying a healthy family, work, and social life, surrounded by stimulation which generates ideas. But the creative process requires some quiet time for the mind to roll all the thoughts together to generate the ideas for blog posts.

How long that process is depends upon the individual. Professional writers train themselves to “write on command” and be there waiting for the muse to appear. In other words: practice, practice, practice.

How Long Does It Take to Write a Blog Post?

Once the idea is hatched, how long does it take to write a blog post?

For some, it takes a few minutes to jot down the idea, concept, and spell out the whole post. For others, like me, I like to write the whole thing down in my head before my fingers hit the keyboard.

I’m constantly writing and editing in my head, working through the concept, the points I want to make, revising and sorting. Which is why so many people think it takes me so little time to write a blog post as they only see the phsycial activity not the mental processing.

Once the concept is set in the head, it flows out through the keyboard onto your computer. I use a text editor for writing and editing my blog posts, but most people just type right into their blog editor. Once the plot is written out, the editing process begins.

From comments made recently about how often most bloggers preview their post before publishing, a lot more bloggers edit their work than most people assume, taking care that the writing is good, grammar solid, and spelling the best they can. For those determined to publish their best work, understanding that their blog content is their online resume and reputation inspected by future employers, friends, and partners, it takes a lot longer to edit and prepare the post for publishing. For those who publishing only a few sentences or don’t care, it takes only a few moments.

If you follow the mythology that an unrelated or semi-related image on your blog post helps improve your blog traffic, then you now have to search for an image or two to add to your blog post.

If you podcast or do video, you have the same preparation time, creative process of creating the podcast or video, and then the editing time. This is often a much longer time process than writing a blog post. Added to the workload is show notes and/or transcript to meet web accessibility standards and laws. It’s a lot more work and a lot more time.

Is there a right or wrong amount of time to spend publishing a blog post? No. It’s just your way and methodology. Some posts take only a few minutes from conception to publish, and others take hours, days, or weeks - or maybe even more.

How long does the average blog post take you? How do you go about the process of writing and publishing your blog posts?

How Much Work Does It Take to Blog?

So when someone asks you how long it takes to blog, the real question is how much work is there to blogging. It takes time to come up with ideas, and it takes work to find those ideas and let your mind sift through them to generate publishable content. It takes time to write out a blog post, and it’s work to edit and prepare it for publishing.

For some, this isn’t work but fun. For others, it’s work - hard work. So what would be your answer?

Now bloggers, web developers and social networks will be able to remake their sites into “one big eye candy,” without fear on missing out from search engine traffic (aka “Google juice”).

(Adobe Developer Center) Adobe is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable—they can now be confident that it can be found by users around the globe. [...]

Adobe has provided Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! that allows their search spiders to navigate through a live SWF application as if they were virtual users. The Flash Player technology, optimized for search spiders, runs a SWF file similarly to how the file would run in Adobe Flash Player in the browser, yet it returns all of the text and links that occur at any state of the application back to the search spider, which then appears in search results to the end user.

While Google and Yahoo! are really excited about this, one may wonder why Adobe decided to give Microsoft Live Search the cold shoulder (at least regarding the launch of this new feature).

The answer probably lies in the fact that Microsoft has developed a competitor to Flash called Silverlight, which (before today) was more search engine friendly than Flash.

While Microsoft’s apparent from first access will give more power to the guys and girls at Google, Adobe’s assistance may help bloggers seeking fancier layouts via flash, without having to sacrifice invisibility from the never sleeping web crawlers.

(hat tip: TechCrunch)

And that got me thinking…

Ever since I became a prolific blogger, the fiction writer in me has disappeared.

POOF!

The writing styles are clearly different, and blogging, quite honestly, helps me pay the bills (while fiction was only a hobby). Interesting, because as far as I’m concerned, I’ve always found that writing breeds writing.

I’m curious to hear if you’ve experienced anything similar. Answer this question in the comments section below:

SINCE YOU’VE STARTED BLOGGING YOU…

a) Write more fiction
b) Write less fiction
c) You never wrote fiction to begin with

Now that I’m aware that I’ve turned my back on true ‘creative writing,’ I will make a conscious effort to incorporate it back into my life.

Finally I find myself writing for volume the way I always tried to discipline myself to do, yet the format is different than I expected.

However, with Flash being searchable, one thing that strikes me is the possibility of a blogging platform, much like WordPress and Movable Type, but in Flash.

So why would Adobe, or anyone really, want to do a blog platform and compete with the established one, in Flash? Several reasons:

• Visual scalability. With today’s big range of displays, be it iPhones or 24″ screens, the visual scalability of Flash would be a true strength. Sure, you can’t have an iPhone design work well on 1920 pixel resolution, but you can scale. That is something to consider.
• Design and layout freedom. Flash is the #1 choice for ads and media agencies doing promo pages. A blog would suddenly have the same possibilities as these do.
• Rich media. Continuing on that thought, having video and sound as integrated into the blog as the text media would certainly be a strength. There are possibilities here.

Now, there are drawbacks as well. Not all clients have Flash, especially the mobile ones, and the size of the actual pages might not be so big, but still. I hope someone will do this, and I think it would be an interesting project to follow.

Devin is one of the founders of Yopos, a community for young entrepreneurs.

Devin highlights the three lessons in his detailed post:

Existing community must already be strong

When I say strong you need to have an extreme amount of quality or quantity. A little of each will not be sufficient.

Employee Evolution and 9rules attracted people because of the high quality–they both grew very quickly. On the other hand, yopos sought out to do the same and, I admit, consistent quality wasn’t there (and we didn’t have the numbers either).

People always talk about meeting up, rarely do

It must be how we are hard-wired as humans, but no matter what your group is–people will want to meet in person. People will try to organize and coordinate these events but they rarely happen. Even in college, where we met as a group every week, it was challenging to have people commit to anything outside of something we’ve already structured for them.

There are key participants, focus on them

No matter where you go, one will notice the “key” players. Especially in a discussion environment like a forum. Within five minutes of surfing FlyerTalk it was clear who knew what they were talking about and was respected by the group. When I started yopos there were a few guys who were very eager and I didn’t have them time to focus on them and empower them to help with the community. Lesson learned.

At TechCrunch, Arrington writes of the deal:

But starting today Verizon Wireless’ 3 million mobile VCast users will have access to Feldman’s video content on their phone, as well as 1 million Fios broadband cable subscribers via video on demand. The deal, which will pay Feldman an undisclosed license fee, puts the 1938Media brand next to YouTube, Break.com and other high profile partners.

Effectively Verizon has created a 1938Media channel and has given Feldman the ability to bring in third party video content as well. To start, Mahalo Daily, Revision3, Ze Frank and Jay Grandin content will be included.

The deal is interesting because it piles on more fuel to the fire that Feldman has used the entire puppet “scandal” in order to secure more traffic for himself and the sites that he produces content for - but also because it continues to show how he’s been able to use this situation to better himself and his firm - as opposed to the puppet “victims” - who clearly have not.

I’m not a Verizon subscriber (I use an iPhone and have cable internet) - so I won’t be able to see Loren’s content in this form factor - but it will be interesting to watch what sort of content he develops exclusively for them - and how that content performs on their network.

On the Inside AdSense blog, the AdSense team writes:

As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.

For more information, see this informative post by Darren Rowse over at Problogger.

Welcome to Movable Type Monday!

Movable Type Community Updates

Seesmic for MT: Seesmic, an innovative “video conversation” service has released a new plugin for Movable Type that allows readers to record and post video comments. The Seesmic Wiki has more information on how to integrate the plugin more closely with your site. It will be interesting to see how popular video comments become!

Yves Luther also followed up and released an action streams plugin for Seesmic.

BrightKite Action Stream: Another plugin from from Yves Luther brings BrightKite actions to Movable Type’s Action Streams plugin. BrightKite is a relatively new location-based network and Yves’ plugin allows you to display your checkins, photos and messages with the service on your blog.

Sporepedia Action Stream: Richard Benson released an action stream plugin for Spore - what appears to be the start of a new creature-based game! Currently, Spore allows you to create a variety of creatures and Richard’s plugin allows you to display them in your action stream! Fascinating!

FriendFeed Comments: Mark Carey, one of the leading plugin developers for Movable Type, released FriendFeed Comments, a new plugin that allows you to display comments from FriendFeed on your entries. Mark not only provides screenshots of the plugin in action but even has a live demo available! The plugin appears to be free but you have to register with Mark’s site first.

Custom Asset Markup: Veteran Movable Type developer, Jay Allen, released two plugins last week. The first was born through discussions in the #movabletype IRC chatroom and the MTOS-dev mailing list and tackles a problem many users faced. When adding an asset (an image, video or any file) to an entry, Movable Type wraps it with markup that is near impossible to customize (this leads to customization problems as Jay elaborates). Jay’s plugin gives users an easy way to customize this inserted markup using Movable Type’s built in templating system!

Log4MT: A plugin that’ll undoubtedly make plugin developers happy, Log4MT brings the powerful Log4Perl framework to Movable Type allowing you to debug your code, handle exceptions and send notifications in a much easier way. As a plugin developer, I’m definitely looking forward to play around with it. Thanks Jay!

MailChimp Signup Form: MailChimp is an email marketing service and their plugin for Movable Type allows you to add the MailChimp signup form to your blog with a simple drag and drop process. A step-by-step guide, with accompanying screenshots, is provided.

Lixtal: A plugin targeted towards Scandinavian bloggers calculates the readability index of your entry to give you an understanding of how well your writing corresponds to your audience. This plugin sounds intriguing, I’d be really interested to see a similar plugin that analyses English!

Bi-Weekly Phone Call

Every two weeks, Six Apart hosts a phone call with, and open to, the entire Movable Type community. Notes and a podcast of last week’s call have been posted for anyone unable to attend. Topics included an update about Movable Type 4.2 with a release in late July being announced (to give the large changes introduced in this release to be better tested). Byrne Reese, product manager for Movable Type, also elaborated on the planning for the next-next version of Movable Type, codenamed Greyhound. Finally, consultant and community member Dave Aiello sparked a good discussion on making the case to clients to upgrade to 4.2 as well as enhancements to template editing.

A tentative agenda for the next call, scheduled for July 9, has been posted and includes

• Improving Transparency
• The process of deprecation
  • IP Banning
  • Template Tags
  • Timelines
  • Notifications

Movable Type 4.2 Beta Test

The third release candidate for Movable Type 4.2 was released last week along public betas for the Professional Pack, which includes the Universal Template Set and Custom Fields functionality, and Community Solution, which, among many things, allows your readers to easily submit entries and even includes a template set to turn your Movable Type blog into forums!

As mentioned in the call, the release of Movable Type 4.2 was pushed back until late July such that the large number of low-level changes (introduced to improve performance) could be better tested. In preparation for the release, documentation is being swiftly improved!