03.06.07
Posted in Blogs / Sites, Tools & Resources at 1:55 pm by jon yang
There’s a lot of sites out there designed to help your blog achieve success. One of the best? Copyblogger. Don’t take it from me, Copyblogger was named the “best blog for writers” and I’d agree. Brian Clark is an Internet marketing strategist and his words of advice are essential for enhancing your current blog’s ability to gain traffic, subscribers, and links. Here’s Brian’s “Why Copywriting is the Key to Successful Online Marketing.”
Copyblogger has great titles for its posts — “The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging,” “Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well,” “The Ultimate Guide to Attracting Links and Increasing Web Traffic” — so even at the very worst, follow Brian’s example and make a clean site with catchy titles, well executed content, and watch your hits grow!
Permalink
02.13.07
Posted in Blogs / Sites, Tools & Resources at 4:13 pm by jon yang
Hey, what were you doing at 12-years old? Were you blogging for a worldwide audience? Were you simultaneously balancing growing up and a blogging career? Didn’t think so. David Wilkinson is doing it all over at Techzi.net and making us all look bad with his dedication and focus.
Young David is guest-blogging today over at ProBlogger about driving traffic to your blog. Follow along with his “3 C’s Plan” — Community, Communication, and Consideration.
Now there are officially no excuses not to blog. If a child can do it, so you can you!
And on a related (but un-related) note: Here’s an article from New York Magazine on “The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids” by Po Bronson.
Permalink
02.05.07
Posted in Tools & Resources at 11:41 pm by jon yang
Don’t have Photoshop but need to crop that image for your blog entry? Why not try one of these online photo editors? When you need to just crop or resize a picture quickly, this is the way to go. I checked out all of them and really enjoyed Snipshot for its simplicity and ease of use.
Permalink
01.29.07
Posted in Tools & Resources at 3:12 pm by jon yang
I have this problem: I know how to use words in context but I can’t define them. Yes, that leaves me bad at Balderdash but good at Scrabble. Because of this weakness, I’m always looking up the exact meaning of words so that I don’t sound (more) stupid when I’m asked exactly what something means. For example, define “ironic.” Can’t do it right?
I have a whole blog (written with a co-author) dedicated to the task of learning, and defining, curious and interesting words — Define Irony. It’s amazing how often previously unfamiliar words pop up in your normal every day life once you’re aware of them.
Here’s a list of words and phrases that students of English should know. Know’em all? Suuuure…….
Here are 1065 useful words and phrases in modern American business English. Clicking on the highlighted words in the text will display their definition in this window. These words have been chosen with two classes of students in mind: (1) those wishing to improve their SAT verbal score, and (2) adult students of English as a second language, who would prefer a serious and classic text and convenient definitions. Studying the words in context, and examining the brief definitions and examples provided in this list, will add significantly to the student’s real understanding of proper usage.
-e-classics.com-
Permalink
01.04.07
Posted in Articles, Tools & Resources at 12:18 pm by jon yang
I’ve noticed, as I read though my daily lineup of blogs, that many people had New Year’s resolutions related to their blogs. Of course, this may be a biased sample since these people are clearly blogging about their resolutions already, so clearly, they’ve got blogs on the mind. Most people are saying that they want to blog more. A few burnt out (fanatical) bloggers say that they want to blog less. It’s quite possible to spend three hours a day surfing from blog to blog. Trust me, it’s addicting. Maybe not quite as addicting as MySpace or Wikipedia, but the sheer number of blogs (all inter-linked in some way or another) makes it a virtual panacea for boredom.
Some other blog related New Year’s resolutions you could make:
(1) Re-design your blog. Nothing is more boring than staring at the same old thing day after day — but don’t tell your significant other that. Muddle around with some simple HTML, pop in a picture or two, switch up your sidebars and clean up and re-organize your blogroll. Change that template!
(2) Commit to putting up a picture per post. Words are nice and all, but sometimes the combination of a picture plus a written post can make your entry stand out. Even better if those photos are taken by you. All those megapixels on your new Christmas present has to be used somehow right?
(3) Make five new blog friends. Reach out to a blogger that you’ve always admired (stalked) and link to them or write an entire post dedicated to why you like their blog so much. Maybe say “Hi” and send them an email. You gotta be friendly to make friends; and blog life is nothing without friends. You can even nominate your favorite blogs for the 2007 Bloggies!
(4) Try out Google Adsense or some other revenue generator on your site. Why not? See if you can turn your hits into your daily cup of coffee. Become a “part-time professional blogger” and see how your social cachet rises. I’d bet you become a big hit at parties once people realize that you make “an undisclosed amount” from your “internet venture.”
(5) Blog more. A daily dose of blogging, eight cups of water, the proper diet, and returning your voice mails and emails in a timely manner (so you can have an offline life) will result in you becoming healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Permalink
12.24.06
Posted in News, Tools & Resources at 4:38 pm by jon yang
Seems like Blogger’s always (fashionably) late to the party nowadays right? The platform largely responsible for launching blogs into the mainstream is now reactionary. Little trinkets like labels, site feeds, and password protected entries are only now entering the Blogger service through its Beta Blogger — which is now open for all.
In an ocean filled with what seems like hundreds of blog providers, Blogger may no longer innovate but when it makes changes, it makes a huge impact. I mean, when Blogger add new features, or requires users to switch to new logins (Beta Blogger requires a Google Login), millions of blogs are impacted. Big ship, that blogger.
I’d been waiting for my own beta Blogger invite to appear on my various Blogger hosted blogs. When I finally got the opportunity, I was delighted. Here were the labels I was looking for, here was drag-and-drop template customization, here was better displays for archives, I loved it.
Then, I tried to take my non-blogspot.com hosted blogs over to beta Blogger. Bad news. If you were trying to FTP to Blogger, there were huge icebergs ahead. I spent a week panicking that my blogs would be no more. Online forums reported users who had lost blogs, users who could no longer publish, users who were stuck in limbo between old Blogger and beta Blogger. I had the same problems, mainly being unable to FTP to the domain of my choice.
Blogger Help was timely and helpful during that hand-wringing week, but I think I learned a valuable lesson here: always create a test blog before converting something over to a new platform. In addition, always save copies of your stuff. But you knew that already, right?
Permalink
12.22.06
Posted in Tools & Resources, Topical at 9:23 am by jon yang
Blogs aren’t just used by (aspiring) writers, successful businesses, and your grandma, they are also being used in a variety of ways as educational resources. How many ways are they being used as educational resources? Good question, you in the back.
The answer to that qustion is “infinite” or “infinite plus one” if you want to get cheeky.
For a sampling of all those brilliant educational blogs, here’s a list of “The Top 100 Education Blogs”. The list focuses the highlight on blogs that are being used in a variety of ways; from sites focused toward the community of teachers, to blogs that ponder the impact and vision of education policies.
I wish they had blogs back when I attended college (not that long ago in my mind but a long time ago as measured by years). I’d throw up a collection of personal journal type blogs from each university. It’ll be like the Real World but told through unaffiliated individuals on each campus. We could even give it a go and try to stereotype them at first, to see how they get along. A blog like this would allow us to see a person progress from freshman to senior year — or more likely, super senior year.
You could have all these first person perspectives of what it’s like to attend a certain university and potential attendees of that particular school could take a look and gain some insight on what the experience might be like. I’ve seen a whole series of books that are thematically similar to this idea. A sort of Cliff Notes or Lonely Planet for colleges; my blog versions would be uncut, unabridged, and unedited. From the mouth of babes as it were.
Students already on campus might gain a bit from these journals as well. I’d weed out all the Xanga-licious “This is my life, omg, I just had a revelation, I want to be a psychology major!” type blogs, but aim for well composed sites that actually try to articulate the college experience as a whole, not just the (melo)drama each college student endures.
Yes, that’s what I’d do to change the world. Create a network of blogs for universities. “I have a dream…”
Permalink
« Previous entries
