me.Blog

Want a Free Graphic Redesign? Review TheThinking Blog!

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 08:16:00 +0000

If you are thinking of revamping graphic design of your website. Here is a good opportunity for you. The Thinking Blog is having a review contest ; the best review winner will be getting a free blog re-design worth $2000 ($2000!) and a backlink. A free favicon design worth $20 is for the second best review and everybody else gets a linkback from his blogger buzz featured blog.

You might be asking why I should get the redesign from him! How good is he? Well a picture tells a thousand words. His blog will tell a million words. Just visit his blog and see how he has improved the looks and feels of his blog in terms of drawing readers attention and its readers friendliness. And don't forget that just by reviewing you will get a link back from a blog featured in blogger buzz.

Isn't it amazing? So what are you waiting for. Give him the best review and get your re-design done.

No to "nofollow"

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:52:00 +0000

I've decided to remove rel="nofollow" attribute from my comment section as well as from backlinks section of me.Blog. From now on, everybody who commented on me.Blog as well as these who cited any of me.Blog posts will receive a free linkback that will help them increase their Technorati ranking and Google PageRank.

A little about No Follow

Google started using nofollow attribute in 2005 to discourage comment spammers from spamming with useless comments. Now most major search engines agree on nofollow attribute.

Why did I remove nofollow?

But since me.Blog has enable a test feature only a human could pass, there should not be any reasons to continue to use nofollow attribute. Anyway me.Blog is still very young blog and I feel honoured whenever somebody leave a comment or links to me. So this is my way of showing my appreciating.

Sat No to nofollow, share your link love

Below is a no-to-nofollow logo I found at Search Engine Journal. If you support this no-to-nofollow movement, please download the logo and display it on your blog so that your visitors will know how you value their comments and trackbacks/linkbacks.

Let me know if you are also a support of no-to-nofollow, I'll link you up in me.Blog. You don't even need to return the favour.

You just need to share your link love with others..

Thanks everybody!

Update: Other Blogs that Says No-to-nofollow

Monday, April 23, 2007

Necessary Skills

me.Blog 1st Month Report

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:06:00 +0000

me.Blog is a month old with its first post on March 9, 2007. Since than I've posted a total of 23 posts including this and more than 500 unique visitors have visited me.Blog according Google Analytics.

Evern since I started blogging, looking at the number of visitors and location became one of my daily job. I feel happy when the number of visitors is up, feel sad when the number is down.

For tracking visitors, I've installed scripts form Google Analytics and StatCounter. (Mybloglog is also tracking visitors and outclicks too.)

What I like very much about StatCounter is that I'm able view recent visitor location maps in details. StatCounter has utilized Google Maps to produce this nice feature. Since my current visitor number is low, I can spend my time to see where each and all of my visitors are from.

Another reason I like StatCounter is that it doesn't send spyware cookies to visitors. Please read StatCounter said NO!. But since its free account has a very small log size, I can't store my data for long.

Top Performing Posts

Okay, below are me.Blog top performing posts for this month in terms of bringing traffic to the blog.

1. Google Maps Removed links to Yelp.com
In this post, I reported that Google has removed link to user generated review site Yelp.com after an anti-Microsoft logo from Yelp was display on Google Maps search result for Microsoft.

2. How to Autodiscover Your FeedBurnner Feed
This is an important post for bloggers who want to count the no. feed subscribers. This post teach you how to make your FeedBurner feed the only feed for your blog so that FeedBurner is able to gather all the stats.

3. How to Add Google AJAX Search API
A tutorial on how to add Google AJAX Search API to your blogger blog.

4. Six Reasons Why You Should Love MyBlogLog
The title says it all.

5. A Dot Com Mogul Who Knows How to Engage the Readers
My blog review for John Chow.

Among them this post has collected a total of 9 diggs.

And I noticed that some of my visitors come form Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple network. They came to read my post: Google Maps Removed Link to Yelp.com.

Analytics GeoMap Overlay showing me.Blog visitors

Layout Improvements

1. me.Blog removed default navigation bar from its layout. Credit should be given to Kumiko for her post on how to remove it.

2. No. post to display was set to two posts. Previously, It was set to one.

3. Added Feedburner Feed Subscription button and moved Add This Blog to My Technorati Favorites button to header.

4. Removed default RSS autodiscovery and replaced with Feedburner feed autodiscovery making Feedburner feed the only available feed for me.Blog.

5. Added recent comments and Recent Posts widgets to sidebar.

6. Added target='_blank' tag to most of my links so that target link will open in a new window when a user click on that link.

I hope you like all the improvements I did to me.Blog. If you have anything to say about my blog layout and color, just send an email or leave a comment.

I value all feedbacks. I want to improve on me.Blog based on your comments.

Overall, last month is a good month for me.Blog! Thanks..

More SEO Books, Articles and SEO Forums

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:28:00 +0000

Chris posted a link to SEO Made Easy free ebook that he found searching in Internet.

I followed up with searching for free SEO ebooks and articles and found a few more.
You can download them from my Google page. Here is the list:

1. Generic DIY SEO
2. Traditional Seo PPC
3. Best and Worst Practices for SEO

There are also numerous numbers of forums where you can interact and learn from other like minded individuals and gurus.

Below are some of recommanded forums:

1. HighRankings Forum
2. DigitalPoint Forums
3. Search Engine Watch Forums
4. Webmaster World Forums
5. Search Engine Forums
6. Search Engine Roundtable Forums
7. WebProWorld Forums
8. Search Engine Optimization Forum

Thanks guy!

OS X runs on Apple TV!

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 14:23:00 +0000

Wow.. Apple TV was released two weeks ago. Now hackers have sucessfully installed OS X on it turning it into the cheapest Mac.

Semthex hacked his way through to bypass the hardware restrictions to install OS X. Read the 13-steps on procedure here.

But be warned, it's not for fainthearted.

How to Add Recent Comments Widget to Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:58:00 +0000

Recent comments widget on me.Blog is just making use of "Feed" page element in new Blogger.

In the feed URL input box of feed configuration window, type "http://YourBlogName.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default" to configure recent comments widget. "YourBlogName" must be replaced with your blog name. After clicking "CONTINUE", you can customize your recent comments widget. You can choose the number of comments you want to display, and choose to add or not to add item date and item sources.

If you want to display recent posts, just replace /comments/ with /posts/.

That's all. Its easy..

Happy blogging!

Blog Review for JakelDaily.com

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:42:00 +0000

Jason Neuman left a comment on one of my previous blog review and invited me to give him a review for his review-me-for-a-link. He is giving back a short review and a linkback for every full review he received.

JakelDaily writes about "investing, cars, family, the net, technology,current events, and basically anything else" to make money online. He is on right track to become a dot com mogul and already received a total of seven batches for his review campaign. That's a good number considering that some review campaigns can only draw ten reviews after a few months running.

If you are wondering how much he is getting from his blog monthly, you will be disappointed to know that he won't be revealing his earnings until his blog is six months old. So until then we can only guess his income.

Well, I got a very good idea for Jason. He could create to a contest to correctly guess his blog sixth month revenue.

Hi Jason, if you decided to do that, don't forget to write a full review for me... thanx.. ;D.

Google will Send Adsense Optimzation Tips to You

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:29:00 +0000

Are you looking for Adsense optimization tips? Look no further! Google will send you optimization tips directly into newly created 'Recent messages' section in your Adsense account monthly.

Google has created a system to analyze your Adsense settings. Optimization tips based on analysed findings will be sent out if the system detect a need for optimization in your website.

Click here to read Google blog post on this.

I believe these optimization tips will benefit lots of bloggers who inspire to make money online.

But, so far I haven't received any messages yet.

Make Money with Kontera ContentLink

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:15:00 +0000

ContentLink ads from Kontera is now up and running on me.Blog starting today.

I didn't expect Kontera to approve me.Blog's application since ContentLink is supposedly only for websites with high traffic.

But I decided to try my luck and applied through this link, which is a usual sign-up link provided by Kontera. To apply, it required me to fill in me.Blog's monthly page views which I chose as "Less than 500,000". This is the smallest number I was allowed to choose. Frankly speaking, me.Blog is barley a month old and its last month page view is less than 5000.

So you can understand why I didn't expect Kontera to approve me.Blog.

Anyway, now that ContentLink is up and running on me.Blog. I just have to wait and see how it will perform.

If you plan to get ContentLink ads on your website, just go to Kontera.com and apply.

If me.Blog's application can be approved, there is no reason your website won't be approved!

GoogleReseller: A Google Adwords Reseller in Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:58:00 +0000

I stumbled upon a piece of print advertisement for this website www.googlereseller.com.sg in a local newspaper printed today. It was from a local IT media company Hardware Zone Pte Ltd which striked the deal with Google in 2006 to become one of the Google Adwords Authorized Resellers in Singapore.

So now it's easier for local small and medium enterprises in Singapore to tap into powerful and cost effective Cost per Click Internet search marketing from Google.

To start advertising to targeted audience, just fill up this form and wait for the reply.

Or you could just click on the Adwords referral button on my sidebar and do it yourself. It's quite straight forward.

If you want to learn more about Adwords, below is a three-part AdWords Optimization Tips form official Adwords blog.

1. AdWords Optimization Tips: Part 1 - Assessing Your Industry and Audience
2. AdWords Optimization Tips: Part 2 - Assessing Your Website and Goals.html
3. AdWords Optimization Tips: Part 3 - Account Structure

Presidential Suite for John Chow at Singapore Newly Launched IR Hotel

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 10:44:00 +0000

Yesterday John Chow contacted me to book a presidential suite at newly launched Singapore Integrated Resort Hotel.

It’s wonderful.

John Chow has finally decided to pursue his dream to travel around the world with his soul mate, Sarah after sealing the deal with a Toronto based Internet Venture Company which paid his TTZ Media Inc. 7.82968 billions. Such a mega deal!

Newly Launched Singapore IR Hotel

Singapore is his first stop for year-long vocation. From Singapore he'll set off to Vietnam.

John, see you in Singapore tomorrow!

Google Maps Removed Link to Yelp.com

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:01:00 +0000

An anti-Microsoft logo that a user uploaded to yelp.com appeared on no.1 Google Maps search result for "Microsoft". Read my post about this here.

Now Google Maps has removed a link to a review page from yelp.com where negative reviews on Microsoft were posted. Try searching for "Microsoft" again. And see the difference from "Google". You will see info window for "Google" still has a link to Yelp.com.

Apparently Google is doing damage control.

Google vs Microsoft, the Battle continue...

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 07:22:00 +0000

Try looking for "Microsoft" in Google Maps. You'll be surprised with the result. No. 1 search result on Google Maps for "Microsoft" appears with anti-Microsoft logo, reported Garett Rogers from ZDnet.com in his blog.

So I followed the link. And yes it's true. The result appeared with a anti-Microsoft logo. See the screen-shoot below.

But the next moment I refreshed the page, the logo disappeared from the result.
Now the result does not have any logo.

The logo was from yelp.com. You can still see the original logo at this location.

Ok, the battle will continue... ya?

Google PageRank Prediction for Kumiko

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:04:00 +0000

I can't remember how did I stumbled upon Kumiko's blog – Kumiko's Cash Quest. But what I can sure is that after my first visit, I found her blog interesting and continued to visit as a regular visitor.

The first thing you will notice about Kumiko's blog is her pink-themed template. She even displays in her blog a pink colored dollar note with her face and blog name on it! She is quite transparent with her blog's earning and publish weekly and total earning of her blog. In her quest to increase the earning, she is in the middle of a campaign to increase Google PageRank and Technorati ranking. So she opened up a competition for other bloggers to correctly predict her blog PageRank. Click here for her post on the competition. It is said that earning from any given blog is directly proportional to its Google PageRank.

So now she is giving away thirty dollar to anyone who can correctly predict her PageRank. And the winner will have a chance to write a post on her blog too. A good opportunity for any bloggers.

So I'll take a chance and predict Kumiko's PageRank.

Who is Kumiko?

Before going into prediction, let's take a look at who Kumiko is. She is currently staying in Tokyo, Japan. Judging form the fact that her name is Kumiko, I can reasonable presume that she is Japanese girl. Unfortunately I couldn't locate her profile in her blog.

What is a PageRank?

And lets take a look at what a PageRank is -

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. [Source]

Furthermore -

.. a page can have a high PageRank if there are many pages that point to it, .. [Source]

... a page has high rank if the sum of the ranks of its backlinks is high. This covers both the case when a page has many backlinks and when a page has a few highly ranked backlinks. [Source]

The explanation from Google and academic papers from Standford University by Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin show that to get a higher page rank, the number of links pointing to a page is not enough, it must be pointed from pages with higher ranking too.

That means that to predict PageRake of a website, I must be able to know how many other websites are linking to it and the PageRank of the linking website. I can generally know the number of backlinks a blog receive from Technorati.com. To know the quality of the links it receive, presumably I can say that the older a blog is, there are more chances of receiving high quality links.

Kumiko's Technorati Ranking

Enough of PageRank. Let's take a look at her Technorati ranking. It's at 6101 with 770 links from 483 blogs. Taking a clue from this number and looking at the ranking of other similar pages, Qmusings predicted Kumiko's PageRank as 5.

So what number should I pick as Kumiko's PageRank? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6?

Prediction for Kumiko's PageRank

Since Kumiko's blog is a relatively young blog, even though it has 770 links from 483 blogs, I doubt that it has enough number of high PageRank sites pointing to it.

So my prediction is Kumiko' blog will have a PageRank of 3 (three).

me.Blog Update

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:35:00 +0000

I updated me.Blog recently. Nothing fantastic but just my regular update of my blog. Below are what I added to me.Blog.

The first thing you will notice in me.Blog is Google Adsense just beside this paragraph. I've placed Google Adsense at a location that is one of the recommended place for an ad to be placed. Hopefully it will catch my readers attention.

Google Adsense is definately a proven way for bloggers to monetize their blog. If you have a blog and haven't sign up for Google Adsense, you can sign up clicking on Google Adsense referral unit on me.Blog. I'll earn five bucks if you sign up through that link and earn five bucks within 180 days of sign-up.

The second thing is Amazon advertisement in me.Blog. I have joined Amazon Associate Program recently and selected some good blogging books from Amazon and displayed them on me.Blog. They are very useful for those who take blogging seriously. Please take a look. If you are a movie buff, you can also download your favorite TV shows and movies from Amazon through me.Blog to watch it on your PC. Click the link after this sentence to give it a try. Unbox Bestsellers.

You'll also notice a new "Add This Blog to My Technorati Favorites" button at right sidebar. Technorati is a very influential social networking site in bloggers' world. Bloggers and readers alike use Technorati to track their favorite blogs and topics. This button help the readers to add your blog as one of their favorites in Technorati. If a reader click on this button, it will bring the reader to the page where the user can sign up, log on and add your blog as their favorite. Very useful right? If you don't have the button yet, you should add one.

Here is how to do it for Blogger blog. First sign up with Technorati then go to http://technorati.com/account/favbuttons.html. Choose the one you like and copy the code. Then paste it into the Page Element -> Add a Page Element -> HTML/JavaScript box in Blogger. Save it and when you load up your blog again, you will see the button. That's it. Nice and neat!

The second feature I add was Blog Flux Polls. Please take a look at here. My first poll is about making money while blogging. Do you believe that you can make money blogging? I'm really new in this area and have no idea about it. So I need your opinion. Do you think it is possible? What ever your opinion is, please take part in my poll, ok?

Below is some development me.Blog recived.

me.Blog reveived its first link last week as reported by Technorati. It was from a blog called www.myspacerip.com. Click here to see the link. Frankly speaking, I don't know why they link my post for. Really clueless, feel really strange! Check it out.

Last week me.Blog receive its first comment. It was was posted on 18 March from Peter Haslam of Necessary Skills. I've been expecting some comments and luckily, here it is. Thanks, Peter! Here is his comment. If you have anything to say about me.Blog, please feel free to do so. You can always feed back to me via comments or email. See ya!

Ok.. That's all for this week! I will continue my blog updating. So keep in tuning..

AGLOCO makes money online!

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:35:00 +0000

Ever heard of AGLOCO? AGLOCO is the company that claims they'll pay you while you surfing Internet. Too good to be true? Yes, some say so. No, some claim. So what is your take? To find out, I have listed a few import things you should know.

What is AGLOCO?
AGLOCO is a web2.0 start-up company based in US. AGLOCO stands for “A Global Community”. AGLOCO was launched a few months ago and its popularity among web2.0 users is ever increasing.

Why is AGLOCO so popular?
AGLOCO is popular because it pays members for surfing Internet. It pay members for helping AGLOCO grows by referring members to AGLOCO too.

How does AGLOCO earn money?
To describe in a simplest description, AGLOCO earns money from their affiliates programs. AGLOCO website lists several sources of their revenue – earning from search engine for members using Viewbar to search Internet, earning from advertising displayed by Viewbar, earning commissions from customers referral to businesses, earning from distribution activities such as software distribution, service distribution and product distribution.

Why does AGLOCO pay you?
Since you can generate money while surfing Internet, AGLOCO will pay you a share of the the earning back to you. AGLOCO will also pay you if you refer members to AGLOCO.

What do you need to do to start earning money from AGLOCO?
Its really simple. You just need to sign up for the service, download AGLOCO Viewbar and surf the Internet for minimum five hours per month with Viewbar. Once five hours limit is up, you can turn off the Viewbar. You can also earn more money by referring people to them. What I like about view bar is that it features privacy, spyware and phishing protection, instant messaging, voice communications and many other functions.

How does AGLOCO address your Privacy Policy concern?
I believe AGLOCO have an excellent Privacy Policy. Below are the excerpts from their privacy policy page.

“AGLOCO's Privacy Policy and information practices are based upon the eight principles of Fair Information Practices first issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1980.”

“We do not give, sell, rent, share, or trade any identifiable personal information regarding our members to any third party, with the exception of third-party contractors and service providers who work with AGLOCO to provide the Viewbar and other services, and who are strictly prohibited from later use of the information that they may have access to. We will disclose personal information to local, state, or federal law enforcement officials when we believe in good faith that the law requires it.”

“AGLOCO.com adheres to the principle that the collection of personal information should be limited to that obtained through fair and lawful means and only with the knowledge and consent of the data subject.”

Furthermore, AGLOCO's Chief Privacy Officer Ray Everett-Church is one of the co-authors of “Internet Privacy for Dummies” too.

Is AGLOCO a scam?
The rumours about AGLOCO scam is definately wrong.Previous version of AGLOCO had helped millions of users if not billions of users to earn money. Here comes AGLOCO again, for you.

Enough of AGLOCO for now. Now it's time for you to decide whether to join AGLOCO.

Whatever your decision is, always remember AGLOCO, a Global Community that is owned by its members.

Antique Blogs form the bottom of the Web

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 11:22:00 +0000

They are antique blogs deep under the Web buried by thousands and thousands of newly created pages. No body know they exits except their owners - even search engines don't. The fate of their owners are also unknown. Their owner just created the blogs and never came back, never looked back. They are left by themselves deep under the darken World Wide Web where no search engines could reach and no humans could discover them. How pitiful they are.

And yet, one of them was accidentally discovered by me.

Here it is, please welcome the antique blog: http://inthebox.blogspot.com!

Its first and last post was dated May 20, 2002. This blog still features prominent blogspot logo and a check with source code reveals that it's a must to display “I Power Blogger” button on the blog page according to the terms of service. Below is the screen shot.

If you are the owner of this blog, please contact me. If you know other "antique" blogs, please let me know. I would like to feature them in my blog.

Six Reasons Why You Should Love MyBlogLog

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 07:59:00 +0000

Recently I joined MyBlogLog - a wonderful blog community which let you connect with other MyBlogLog users. You'll notice that there is a widget box labeled "Recent Readers" which is full of avatars in my side bar. This is the face wall from MyBlogLog whereby you can see all the MyBlogLog users who visited your blog. It's a very cool feature!

Joining MyBlogLog is free and easy involving just a few steps. If you haven't heard of MyBlogLog before, I advice you to join it. I promise you that you will be better off joining. Your visitors count will definitely increase!

Here is the six reasons why you should love MyBlogLog.

1. If you want to know who visited your blog, MyBlogLog is a good place to start with. You just need to register, cut and paste MyBlogLog widget. Every MyBlogLog users' avatar who visited your site will registered and shown up on your page, even if they don't have a blog or they are using other blogging service different form you. If you think that some avatars are offensive, you can prevent them form appearing on your blog too.

2. It can help you in maintaining the relationship with your blog visitors. Maintaining the relationship with your visitors is the most important part in getting your royal readers. When a reader visit your blog, you can always visit their blog in return of their favor and do a simple thing such as leaving messages for them. This kind of interaction can help grow bonds between your blog and your readers.

3. MyBlogLog is a social networking service for bloggers just as MySpace and Friendster. You can create communities so that other like minded users can join yours. Other users can send private as well as private messages to you. You can make friends with them, get admired or become an admirer. In your profile page, you can display various IM IDs. It gives you another way of communicating with your readers other than on the Blog pages or through MyWebLog communities.

4. MyBlogLog provides useful analytics which can track your inbound and outbound links, referrers URL, most visited pages and etc. Tracking outbound link which can server as independent tool to verify data provided by other tracking services especially from advertisement providers.

5. MyBlogLog has recently tweaked the rules for MyBlogLog communities. You are not allowed to join more than 15 communities, add more than 15 new contacts and send more than 5 co-author requests in a day. MyBlogLog also patched a security holes in cookies which let some users impersonate as other users. So you won't face such abuses anymore.

6. As a future plan, MyBlogLog hinted that they may disallow users form using r-rated avatars. Currently some users are using such avatars to trick other users into visiting and becoming a member of their communities. Hopefully MyBlogLog will become a better place for simple users like you and me.

A Dot-com Mogul who Knows How to Engage the Readers

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 04:58:00 +0000

“Engage the readers” is a true mantra for all bloggers. All successful bloggers understand the important of this mantra and worship it during their entire life. They are experts in this field: engaging the readers. Successful bloggers ask questions, answer questions, show that they care for the readers and reward them.

John Chow is a successful blogger. He is a self-proclaimed dot-com mogul who runs a technology review website and a personal blog JohnChow.com. And yes, you don't have to guess, he is an expert in engaging readers too!

John Chow engages the readers by asking intriguing, appropriate and effective questions and rewarding them. A few months back, he posted a question on how much his readers thought he would earn form his blog for the month of February and offered a reward for a reader whose estimation is nearest to his February earning. Everybody wanted to know about how much John earned. What a good way to engage the readers! Want to guess how much he earned in February? I'll give you a tip. It is more than seven thousands US dollar.

In his recent post “China doesn't like me!”, he revealed that China too has banned his IP according to GreatFireWallOfChina.org and asked for the responses from China. Just as the previous questions, this question arosed my curiosity too. But unlike the previous ones, many questions hover my mind as dark clouds. Why did he have to ask this questions? Is it necessary to ask? Didn't he running the famous Google Analytics to track the visitors and analyses them?

He also came out with this idea of giving a free link back to anyone who post a review of JohnChow.com in their blog. He received an awesome amount of reviews. After receiving more than thirty reviews with each reviews containing ten reviews, he made a change in his review-me-for-a-link rules in a bid to increase page rank for the search term “make money online”. His idea was wildly popular among the bloggers and being copied that he even had to claim, “I’m being imitated but I’ll never be duplicated.”

Unless I can fully understand his method of engaging reading and arousing their interests, I can forget about becoming a dot-com mogul just like him.

Submitting me.Blog to Search Engines

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:15:00 +0000

Last week I submitted my me.Blog to three most used search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search. Submitting to search engines is the next logical step for me to do after I have successfully created this me.blog.

You can shorten waiting time of your blog before search engines index it by submitting your blog to search engines. Getting indexed by search engines is the most important factor for getting traffic. Search engines crawl through the Web for pages to index following links after links. Internet users use search engines to search for information they want. If your blog is not listed in search engines, Web user's won't have a chance to know that your blog exists, thus there will be no traffic from search engines.

Since search engine crawlers crawls through the web following links, theoretically you don't need to submit your blog to search engines. One day search engines will find out your blog and index it. But notice the time period “one day”. You don't know when will your blog be indexed. So it's a better idea take the matter in your own hand and do the manual submission. In this way, my blog has a better chance of getting indexed than waiting for that “one day”.

But bear in mind that getting indexed is not enough for you to get traffic for your blog. Getting indexed means that search engines knows that your blog exists and will be listed in the search result if user's search query match your site. But your blog may be listed in the 100th page of the search result for that particular term and there is no chance that any users will click your blog to get the information they want. To avoid this kind of situation, blog must have a good search engine ranking. But improving search engine ranking is a different matter from search engine submission all together. I'm not going into this for now.

Even though submitting the blog is such a crucial task, performing the task is relatively simple.

Submitting to Google

To submit to Google, just go to http://www.google.com/addurl.html. After submitting your blog at Google Add URL, your can make use of its Webmaster Tools at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ to improve or verify your blog's indexing status by Google. You can also use Google's advanced search operator “site:” to verify if your blog is in Google's index. Just type in site:yoururl into the Google's search box.

Submitting to Yahoo

Submitting to Yahoo Search is free and easy too. Just go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and follow the instructions. You can add a META tag provided by Yahoo to authenticate your blog and to get faster indexing. To verify your blog indexing status, type in your blog URL into the search box at https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and make a search.

Submitting to MSN

To submit to MSN so that MSNbot can index your blog, go to http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx? and submit your blog URL. Using MSN's search operator “site:”, you can verify your blog's indexing status by MSN too.

Generally, it'll take a few weeks for a website to get indexed after submitting to search engines. Since my submission was just a week ago, I don't expect any crawlers to visit me.Blog yet.

After a few month, if visit this post again and click the links below, you could witness how search engines have indexed me.Blog.

To see me.Blog indexing status by Google, click http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:medotblog.blogspot.com.

Click http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http://medotblog.blogspot.com to see how me.Blog is being indexed by Yahoo.

To search me.Blog indexing status by MSN, click http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=site:medotblog.blogspot.com

Do you believe in making money blogging?

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 15:40:00 +0000

This blog is about blogging and making money. But I just started this blog and I've no idea how other people think about making money form blogging. So I created this poll using Blog Flux Polls service.

What I like about this Blog Flux Polls feature is that Blog Flux has incorporated Google Map feature into the results so I can see where my poll participants are coming form.

Please participate in the poll and tell me what you think.

Take the poll

Free Poll by Blog Flux

How to add Google AJAX Search API

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:21:00 +0000

I just finished adding was Google AJAX Search feature. Currently, I have used Web Search, Blog Search, News Search and Site-restricted Search services from Google. In the future, I might include Google Book Search service too.

Google has well-documented guide for AJAX Search API at http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/. If you are interested in Google AJAX Search API, you can always go there and read it up. Here explain you how to add the Google AJAX Search feature exactly as in my blog - no more, no less.

I added a small feature into Google AJAX Search. If you clicked on the hyper-link just now, you'll notice that no new window was opened to display the search results. Instead, the clicked link appeared in the Google AJAX search box above with the result sections stacked atop of each other. You can open up the closed sections and see the results.

The first thing you need to do is to sign up to sign up for a Google API key at http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/signup.html. Copy the key and save it in a text file for future use.

Now in Blogger Dashboard, go to "Page Elements" (Template -> Page Elements) and create a "HTML/JavaScript" widget. Write something meaningful in the title and content so that when you go to "Edit HTML" (Template -> Edit HTML), the location of the widget is easily identified.

Switch to "Edit HTML" mode (Template -> Edit HTML). You have to add "<link href='http://www.google.com/uds/css/gsearch.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>" into the anywhere in-between <head> </head>. I recommend you to past it just below below <head> or just above </head>.

It is time to edit your newly created widget. Your widget will be something like this.

<b:widget id='HTML1' locked='false' title='GSearch' type='HTML'>
<b:includable id='main'>

<b:if cond='data:title != ""'>
<h2 class='title'><data:title/></h2>
</b:if>
<div class='widget-content'>
<data:content/>
</div>
<b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

In my blog, I have deleted -


<b:if cond='data:title != ""'>
<h2 class='title'><data:title/></h2>
</b:if>

and

<b:include name='quickedit'/>

from my widget. If you wish to do so, you can do that too. You can play around and see the difference of deleting and not deleting them.

After deleting, you will be left with -

<div class='widget-content'>
<data:content/>
</div>

Now replace "<data:content/>" with this code -

<div id='searchcontrol'>Loading .....</div>
<script src='http://www.google.com/uds/api?file=uds.js&v=1.0&key=ABQIAAAAFVw3lX3cHLy0e4AwpzfzMBSXGN3x931nVT4J9oAxaqW1A-guqxS6dvU4EGG51sdz92P2g6brGsGpIg' type='text/javascript'/>

<script type='text/javascript'>

// Create a search control
var searchControl = new GSearchControl();
var controlRoot = document.getElementById("searchControl");

// create a searcher options object
// set up for open expansion mode
// load a searcher with these options
var options = new GsearcherOptions();
options.setExpandMode(GSearchControl.EXPAND_MODE_CLOSED);

// Web Search
searchControl.addSearcher(new GwebSearch(), options);

// News search
searchControl.addSearcher(new GnewsSearch(), options);

// Blog Search
blogSearch = new GblogSearch();
blogSearch.setUserDefinedLabel("Blogsphere");
searchControl.addSearcher(blogSearch, options);

//Site Search - www.wikipedia.com
siteSearch = new GwebSearch();
siteSearch.setSiteRestriction("http://en.wikipedia.org");
siteSearch.setUserDefinedLabel("Wikipedia");
searchControl.addSearcher(siteSearch, options);

//Site Search - finance.google.com
siteSearch = new GwebSearch();
siteSearch.setSiteRestriction("http://finance.google.com/finance");
siteSearch.setUserDefinedLabel("Google Finance");
searchControl.addSearcher(siteSearch, options);

//Site Search - medotblog.blogspot.com
siteSearch = new GwebSearch();
siteSearch.setSiteRestriction("http://medotblog.blogspot.com");
siteSearch.setUserDefinedLabel("This Blog");
searchControl.addSearcher(siteSearch, options);

// tell the searcher to draw itself and tell it where to attach
searchControl.draw(controlRoot);
function doSearch(x) {
searchControl.execute(x);
}
</script>
</div>

Don't forget to replace my API key with your own API key that you obtained in the first step. If you don't do that, invalid API key message will appear.

You also need to create JavaScript URL to enable "Link-search" feature. In my blog doSearch('term') method is called when a user click on a hyper-link.

To make the term "AJAX" a JavaScript URL, in Blogger "Edit HTML" mode of "Edit Posts", you have to add "<a href="javascript:doSearch('AJAX');">AJAX</a>" into the post. The example is here - AJAX. Look for the search result below.

Now time to test-drive your search feature. Have fun!

Introducing me.Blog...

noreply@blogger.com (me.Blog) — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:16:00 +0000

This post is my first post at me.Blog.

Being the first post, I’ll introduce myself and tell you what kind of posts you’ll be reading in this blog in the future.

I'm a blogger form Myanmar currently based in Singapore, simple minded with a liking to learn new things. And now blogging is a new thing for me. Although I have a blogger account since November 2005, I was not able to blog frequently. It was only in February 2007 that I decided to take blogging seriously and created this me.Blog. To improve my blogging experience, I'm also learning JavaScript, XML, CSS, JSON, AJAX and etc.

Essentially, this blog is just another me which exists in parallel universe of World Wide Web. It will be about me and anything which interests me, with topics ranging from blogging, blogging tips and tricks, CSS, AJAX, JSON, search engine optimization to politics, making money.

Even though this me and this blog exit in different universes, we have a very strong interaction between each other.

This will be all about me.Blog for now. Enjoy!