bloggers

Performancing Opens Up Nominations

Performancing Blog Awards

Performancing.com has opened up nominations for a number of categories to see who has the best blogs in the business. Each category will have one winner with two runners up and possibly a few that could be honorable mentions. The categories that are opened for nominations include:

  1. The Best Overall Blog
  2. The Most Influential Blogger
  3. The Best Blog Design
  4. The Best Blog Typography
  5. The Best Blog Name
  6. The Best New Blog
  7. The Best Blog Community
  8. The Most Improved Blog of 2007
  9. The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of
  10. The Best Blog Podcast
  11. The Best Use of a Corporate Blog
  12. The Best Video Blog
  13. The Best Writing/Blogging Blog
  14. The Best Science/Technology Blog
  15. The Most Controversial Blog
  16. The Best SEO Blog
  17. The Best Celeb/Style Blog
  18. The Best Business/Money Blogs
  19. The Best Photo Blog
  20. The Best Sports Blog
  21. The Best Blog WebHost
  22. The Best Family and Parenting Blog
  23. The Best Political Blog
  24. The Best Food/Health Blog
  25. The Funniest Blog

Since I don’t have an account on the perfomancing website, I’ve deciding to post my nominations in the form of a blog post.

For Best Writing/Blogging Blog I nominate WinExtra.com. Out of the variety of blogs I read, Steves blog usually generates some sort of response out of me with each one of his posts. He tells it like it is and doesn’t attach any BS to what he has to say. It’s a good read and I keep going back which is why he gets my nomination for that category.

For Best Blog Podcast I nominate TheGlobalGeekPodcast. Dave Grey and his ASSORTMENT of co-hosts :) do a wonderful job producing a top notch, informative show each week. At least they try to do it every week, but sometimes you just can’t control certain situations. Whatever the case, TGGP is still near the top of my lists in terms of awesome podcasts that everyone should be listening to. This is why they get my nomination.

As for Best Blog Webhost, That one is pretty easy and I am nominating AnWebshoting. Not going to go into the details as to why I’m nominating them because I already did that in this post, Time To Pimp Your Webhost

As for the other categories, I don’t think I’ve been involved in the blogosphere long enough to provide other nominations for other categories.

If you have a performancing account, be sure to read this post or if you don’t have an account, you can do as I did and make a post containing your nominations while linking to the original story.

Steve Spaldings 5 Types Of Bloggers

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Steve Spalding has published a post on what he believes are the five different types of bloggers and the roles they play. They are as follows:

  1. Publisher
  2. Editor
  3. Journalist
  4. Tabloid Writers
  5. Forum Moderators

Steve goes on to say that he’s mainly talking about semi-professional and professional bloggers within these 5 points. I can attest to the fact that you don’t need to be professional in order to perform these roles. As a blogger, I’ve discovered on my own that bloggers are like small business owners, they wear many different hats. At the end of the article, Steve asks “What Do You Think A Blogger Is?”

I think a blogger, no matter how you look at it, is part of something larger. A collection of people that as a whole, have a very loud voice. You may know this as the blogosphere. Each person in this blogosphere contributes a little or a lot of information, usually within a defined niche. Bloggers are generally more in touch with reality than your bigger news sites.

When you stop to think about just what exactly a blogger is, it’s too difficult to come to a single conclusion. Thankfully, the word Blogger pretty much sums everything up into one word.

Pimp Your Google Identity

Introducing the un-official G Ring. This is a prototype of a vanity ring designed by Markus Kison. The ring displays how many hits you get when you search for the name of the wearer.

Introducing The G Ring

Here is some information related to the project:

While in earlier times richness and importance were equal to the amount of money or jewels someone possessed, in a post information society it’s the attention you get from the worlds people, that counts. Being in people’s mind means being important, whether they think about you in a positive way our not doesn’t matter. And what people have in their mind is what they read in the media. In the future this will mean, what they read/see on the net. Every content creator that copies and pastes your name will rise the value of your virtual mirrored importance. And there is a hard mechanical algorithm on the net, that extremely objectively measures your appearance, it’s called Google and has already passed the “line of no return” (Bruce Sterling). In most job interviews the personnel manager will already use this machine to check your importance and have a look at the first answers this mirror tells about you. Your mirror identity strikes back on your chances in the real world.

Using specialized software, the name of the wearer is typed into the ring and the number of hits or in this case ‘attention carots‘ is displayed. The ring comes with it’s own docking station where it communicates with Google and updates the hit count overnight.

Vanity Ring Demo Video


I certainly can’t see my girlfriend wearing one of these however, I can see a number of A-List bloggers wearing one of these rings around their pinky, taking a page out of Dr. Evils book, ONE BILLLLLLION HITS.

WordPress 2.3 Released Codenamed Dexter

Wordpress.org LogoWordPress 2.3 has finally been released to the public. This is a major release and users of WordPress are encouraged to update as soon as possible. Before you do anything, make sure you create a full backup in case things go bad. I’ll be updating this blog throughout the night and hopefully, I’ll still be around when you wake up. If not, you know what happened to this site.

Time to review the change log to find out why we should upgrade.

  • Native Tagging Support: You can now user tags in addition to categories. 2.3 includes a set of tag importers for tag plugins that existed prior to 2.3 These importers include Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins. Matt states that the new tagging system is pretty fast which should please a number of webhosting companies.
  • Update Notifications: WordPress 2.3 introduces a way for users to be notified when a new release of WordPress is available or when an update to a plugin has been released. This feature works by sending your sites URL, plugins, and version information to the wordpress API.ORG service which compares the information to their internal database.
  • Canonical URLs: Canonical URLs enforce no www-preferences, redirect posts with changed slugs, redirect URLS that get cut off in emails similar to the correct post. According to WordPress these new URLs should help users as well as providing more SEO options.
  • Pending Previews: Those who use multi-user blogs or WordPressMU will appreciate this feature. Authors can submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before, they would have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.
  • Advanced WYSIWYG: WordPress has somehow manage to stuff more features into the Visual Text editor. This update now shows off more features that in TinyMCE that were previously hidden. Dave, looks like your secret is no longer a secret.

In addition to these new features, developers will have a host of new things to deal with such as Atom 1.0 support, jQuery, a new taxonomy system, new importers, hooks and filters and much more. The WordPress community has also helped contribute to over 351 trouble tickets that were closed in the Trac.

You can view the Codex for more information about the release and some screenshots. And of course the place to download is always the same. Before you upgrade you may want to check out our Preparing for 2.3 post.

Matt is hosting an upgrade party within the San Francisco area but I figured I would host one of my own on Skype. If you are awake and care to upgrade your WordPress installation along with me and a few other people, be sure to add me jeffr0e to your Skype contact list and let’s get this party started.

Jeffro2pt0.com Wins First Blog Award

Reader Appreciation Project AwardThe gang over at the Reader Appreciation Project has handed out their first batch of Readers First awards. These awards go to those blog or site authors who display exceptional selflessness and devotion to their readers. Jeffro2pt0.com was one of the sites to receive this award.

First off, I want to thank the guys and gals who head the Readers Appreciation Project website. These guys are always creating thought provoking articles which really make the reader think. It’s nice to know that their is a website around that is discussing the issues of reader appreciation. All too often, blog authors are engulfed in their own ME ME ME bubble. These are the types of people that believe everything they say is the right answer, everything they do is correct, and they only do things that benefit themselves or their site. Frankly, that is a piss poor attitude to have.

I think what every blogger has to realize is that, without readers, you have no audience and without an audience, your blog is essentially a waste of space on the internet. Instead of ignoring those that contribute to your site whether it be in the form of comments, email feedback, or linking to an article, be sure to give thanks. In the type of world we live in today, where the words Thank You are rarely heard, these two words can really make a positive impact in someone’s life or within their thought process.

If someone links to me, I visit their site and leave a comment expressing thanks. Sometimes, I link to them on my own blog. Other times, I email the author and express a bit of gratitude for taking the time out of their day to read what I had to say. Whatever the case may be, I always ensure that someone is thanked. This attitude and the way of handling things has allowed me to build relationships with people I most likely wouldn’t of bothered with had I not put in the extra effort.

I’m not going to repeat what the RAP guys had to say about me, but if you would like to view their reasons for rewarding me and this site the award, be sure to read Readers First Awards September 2007 To the folks over at RAP, keep up the good work. The information, conversations and ideas that can be found on their website are like BLOGGING GOLD.

If you are a blogger or a site owner, what are some of the ways you show appreciation to your audience?

Which Internet Celebrity Are You?

Technosailor has put together a self importance test that will analyze how important you think you are. After completing the test, I found out that I am most like Darren Rowse of Problogger.com Imagine that! Here is what the result actually states:

I am most like Darren Rowse

Well, I’ll agree with the fact that I like to help other bloggers when I can. Just the other day, I was participating in the end of a podcast and ended up talking to two other bloggers for an hour, giving them some tips and tricks. I honestly don’t participate in many social networking services and I don’t turn everyone in the world into my friend. So it’s nice that I apparently have some of the same qualities as Darren, but will I ever make as much income as Darren? That’s the question I want to know.

Let me know which internet celebrity you turn out to be.

What Is Your Blogging WorkSpace?

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One thing I find interesting is that every bloggers workspace is different. Each blogger has his or her own method to their madness. The color of the room they blog in, the room asthetics, room lighting all seem to play a major role in a bloggers workspace. Using Probloggers, workspace post as evidence, sometimes, a house doesn’t make for the best environment for blogging. The first user on Darren’s post uses a boat for their blogging HQ.

So, I ask those of you who blog, to please leave a comment on this blog post with a link to a photo that shows off your blogging headquarters. To start things off, I’ll show you my own Blogging HQ.

Click on the photos to see a larger version.

WorkSpace Without FlashWorkSpace With Flash

ProBlogger Interviews SEObook Author

Problogger.com LogoDarren Rowse of Problogger.com has published the first of a two part interview he conducted with Aaron Wall, author of the eBook, SEObook. In this interview, Aaron answers questions pertaining to link building strategies. Below is a sample of the interview.

When it comes to building links to a blog – do you recommend bloggers buy links, ‘use’ social media sites, trade links, linkbait, something else…. or some combination of the above?

I say try everything and see what works best for you. You might come across a trick that I haven’t used much that works well for you given your personality and your market.

One other thing I would probably add is that for most people it is probably not going to be worth it to spend tons and tons of time building up a social media account on a large generalist website. If you only have a few hours a day to spend online then you should spend most of that reading and participating on sites specifically about your topic, or writing your site.

Be sure to check out part one of the interview as it contains quite a few helpful tips.

New Month Means New Poll

Jeffro2pt0 Banner For Site Updates

During the month of August, I asked readers if they would like me to produce a podcast based on the content that has been featured on this site. The results are in:

Should I Produce A Podcast For This Site?

  • Yes (57%, 13 Votes)
  • No (43%, 10 Votes)

Total Voters: 23

It was close, but it looks like I better put my podcast hat on. So with that in mind, I’d like to present to you my idea for the podcast. I was thinking of calling the podcast, AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE. The podcast would be produced LIVE every Friday Evening at 9PM EST on Talkshoe and would last anywhere from a half hour to 60 minutes. The interviews will be open to discussion on various topics such as what the blog author covers on his or her own blog, blogging in general, their thoughts and opinions on various subjects, tips and tricks for other bloggers, discussion of topics in the news, and anything else that comes to mind. It won’t be a tightly arranged format. I want guests who appear on the show to feel like they are entering a relaxed environment without all of the stress or expectations that may accompany other shows.

If you are a blog author and want to appear on the show, please contact me and tell me which Friday you would be available. As it stands, all slots are empty, but I’d love to fill them up. I’m looking to produce the first show on Friday September 21st, 2007. Who is going to be the first guest on the show?

With that out of the way, it’s time for a new poll question. I’ve been thinking about adding forums to this site, but I’m still not sure if they would be productive or counter productive to the web site. The decision is now in your hands. Vote yes if you would like to see forums attached to this site, or vote no if you could care less.

My Experience With 10Links

My first shot at using 10Links happened on Friday evening. While I was participating in a late night podcast on Talkshoe called Techbytes, I opened up a browser window and loaded up the 10Links submission page. I told others in the podcast about the opportunity to self promote their site and or blog by getting their link on the front page and as midnight continued to get closer, I began to feel a bit of excitement because I knew other people that were going to participate at the same time.

While waiting on the submission page, 10Links provides a nifty counter which tells you the amount of time left before midnight. A weird anomaly happened to me when I refreshed the page with a little less than three minutes remaining. The page reloaded and the timer shaved off 10-15 seconds. I’m not sure why it did that but it only occurred once.

Timer Counting Down To Midnight

I wasnt sure how the submission button would appear, so I filled out the form to make sure that all I would have to do is press enter. When I refreshed the page with 15 seconds left till midnight, the submission form entries were erased and the submit button appeared. I’m still not sure why the Submit button appeared 15 seconds before midnight but when it did, I had to quickly re-type my information into the submission form.

As it turns out, my link made it through, but because I had to retype my information into the form, I ended up making a typo or two in my link. After emailing the 10Links folks about the error to see if it could be corrected, I ended up not receiving a reply back. My advice, make sure your information is correct before you press that button.

All in all, it was a decent experience minus those possible glitches. I did receive about 20-30 hits from the front page link while getting a few more hits once the link showed up in their archives. For you bloggers that are trying to get your site out their, give this service a try. Every link counts and the best part about 10Links is that its free.