The Daily Dotventures' Blogger Birthday Blowout

Because it's someone's birthday today (I wonder who?), Daily Dotventures is inviting all to post here your birthdate along with your blog or website address (no emails please) and your blogname a.k.a. pen name. You don't have to put your birth year if that's your fancy.

Your Ads Love It Here!

Then, on your birthday, we will feature your blog or website here at Daily Dotventures.
No purchase necessary.
No linkbacks required.

How's that for a birthday treat?

This is our way of thanking you our dear readers and fellow netizens for being part of Daily Dotventures. Let's celebrate your birthday online!

Blog Action Day: Building The Case For An Urban Recycling Co-operative

Earlier this year my son's preschool began a fund-raising program meant to help the school create a buffer fund for the construction of a new school building. Unlike other fund-raisers where parents were asked to sell cake raffle tickets or some other mundane offer, this time - the school began to think green for a change.

And it is certainly a change for the better.

What was different about this initiative is the advocacy towards recycling. Families were asked to donate recyclable materials to the school which would in turn earn them points equivalent to votes in support of their candidate for the school's "Mr. and Ms." event - sort of like a homecoming king and queen for preschool. The idea at the forefront is undeniably cheesy. These are preschool kids for crying out loud!

Nonetheless, the idea of recycling to raise funds was certainly welcomed by most parents. There are those who cower at the idea - perhaps because of pride, perhaps due to fear of the new. Be that as it may, amounts running to tens of thousands were raised from the program - a clear sign that recycling fund-raisers can create a positive impact in Philippine urban communities. Not only is there economic potential in such projects but the desirable environmental effect is there as well.

In the Philippines there is a saying, "May pera sa basura" (roughly it means, "There is money in trash"). The expression speaks at several levels but it is certainly apt for the business potential of waste management especially in urbanized areas which is the primary source of waste matter in landfills. Unfortunately, many people look down on anything involving trash because its something mostly left in the realm of vagrants and the "dirt-poor" of the population.

But there have been exemplary cases of local co-operatives engaging in recycling as part of its awareness and fund-raising programs. One such group is the Batangas Bay Region Environment Multi-Purpose Co-operative (BBREC) which was formed primarily to advocate for sound recycling practices in their community.

Imagine however if many in the metropolis are participants in recycling co-operatives. Imagine the reduction of throw-away waste. Imagine the savings the community will generate. Imagine its sustainability in the long term. Imagine the cleaner, greener, eco-friendly urban landscape.

In commemoration of today's "Blog Action Day", let us take things one step further. Take part in your community's recycling program in the coming days. If your community doesn't have one, then start one.

By this time next year, we will be blogging again about the effects of this one day - when fifteen thousand blogs all talked about the environment, and acted towards a better future.

Happy Blog Action Day to one and all.


Technorati tags: Blog Action Day

Freshen Up Your Blog: Making Sure Your Readers See Your Latest Post

"Is it number 1, 2 or F5?"

When I started this blog back in August putting up posts was a breeze. Grab a topic, do some research, write up the piece then just click on "publish post". That was it. My blog article is up and running for the whole world to see.

However, a few weeks ago I started noticing delays. Upon publishing, it takes quite a while (something like six crazy hours!) for my latest posts to show up. The same issue crops up when I perform some changes on the layout of the blog.

Pardon to those eating their meals in front of the computer, but it seemed that my blog is rather constipated.

Seeking Relief

Now I thought this was just a problem with Blogger and it was reinforced by a recent slew of support request at the Blogger Help Groups. Take this particular case in point - "Latest Post Not Showing Up At First Pages".

The symptoms would be that your latest posts won't appear at your blog's front page, however the entry exists at the archives or at the "Dashboard>Posting>Edit Posts" lists. Or, in the case of updating layouts or when adding a new widget or page element, the layout changes appear on the "Template" tab but only your old blog layout shows up when you go to your blog's URL (aka web address).

Furthermore, if you try a simple refresh, deleting your browser cache (read: Temporary Internet Files) or a complete reboot of your pc, the problem would still persist. Then after waiting it out for at least 30 minutes, all of a sudden your changes appear to your relief. Often times however, the updates will not come up for hours.

Languishing in Long Lines

The culprit is not Blogger (although it has its other faults... other many faults) nor is it your browser (though they may have other faults as well). Most likely the problem lies with your ISP.

With the growing demand for broadband, an ISPs primary problem is network congestion. Competition is fierce, broadband costs are going down, bloggers and virtual world populations are going up. These are the signs that bandwidth is taking a beating - the pipes are about to burst and your Internet Service Provider is probably already turning blue from holding it in.

Before this problem of "stale" webpages came up, I often had intermittent disconnections from my ISP. I go online on a wireless broadband network. A few months ago, I often get unplugged from the Web for 2 to 3 days. No use complaining to my ISP as all I get is a recorded message saying that there's "network restoration ongoing".

Then it just passed unnoticed. My connection is a-ok, no disruptions anymore. Business as usual. Only to later succumb to non-updating blogs.

As many join the broadband wave especially households, ISPs scamper to relieve the pressure off their networks. One method apparently being leveraged extensively by ISPs is the use of proxy caches. These are servers that temporarily store the contents of your site so that those seeking your webpages (it works on a per URL basis) along your network can get to your content faster, which in turn frees up bandwidth to be made available for other uses. Unfortunately, the cache may not refresh its stores for an unfavorable amount of time.

Thus the mystery of the unchanging blog sites is solved. However, things remain unresolved. It is sadly a solution that leads to another problem. The question now therefore is, how do we bypass the network cache?

Push, man, push!

There are several ways to clear the cache according to Ron "the Rat" Southern of Most Frequent Blogger Questions (MFBQ). First off, how do you determine if you're behind an ISP proxy cache? Add a question mark to your web address. If you're latest post gets returned, it means you're behind a proxy.

Remember that cache retrieval works on a per URL basis. So if you append a "?" followed by a unique random string (e.g. www.domain.tld/?asdf), the cache will see it as a new URL request on your domain and if there's no match to the string the latest instance of your webpage will show up instead. However, that would be a new webpage stored in the cache for your domain. If you make another update, you would have to supply a new random string. Now that's a very clumsy way of doing things. Effective, yes, but very inconvenient.

Don't despair, there's another way.

Dumping The Load

Now, you might have already performed a browser refresh before but just to again "refresh" us, for Internet Explorer the shortcut is the "F5" button. For Firefox, its "Ctrl-R" (apparently F5 works too... at times anyway). Some say doing refreshes several times in a row works. But to be sure, try a "forced refresh" or "forced reload" instead.

This is done by pressing "Shift" on your keyboard along with the refresh combination. So for IE it's "Shift-F5" or "Shift-Ctrl-F5" (sometimes Ctrl-F5 works by itself). For Firefox, the key combination is "Shift-Ctrl-R". Forced reload effectively sends a command (no-cache or cache-control) along the network to bypass the cached copy and retrieves the webpage directly from the host server.

This knowledge helped me tremendously in seeing how my updated blog shows up on the Web (I hope it works for you too). Unfortunately, not all blog readers know how to do a forced reload. If they're sitting behind a proxy cache (many of them don't even know it) which doesn't refresh properly and sees you're archived blog post instead of your fresh entry, your readership is bound to dip.

Don't Forget To Flush

Only two options are left for "blogists" at this point to make your blog "cache-free". One is to post a conspicous notice for your readers to regularly do a forced reload to get fresh updates to your blog. That's extra work for them but at least they know.

Your Ads Love It Here!

Another one I've come across recently is to use a meta-tag in the headers section of your template. Copy and paste this between the "HEAD" tags on your Blogger template.

<meta equiv="CACHE-CONTROL" content="NO-CACHE">

This in effect would direct cache servers to always have requests directed back to the original web server. Note that these http-equivalent header tags may not always work as not all proxies recognize HTML headers. But since we don't control the Blogger servers (lucky you if you run your own) we can't program the web server to provide http headers to this effect. Any way, I advise you do your own search on the said meta-tag and decide for yourself whether you will implement them on your own blogs.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

According to the blogactionday.org quiz, I'm a "Purist Expert Socialite" blogger. Now I don't know what that means but I've got the badge to prove it!





Click on the badge to know what "kind of blogger" you are and sign-up for Blog Action Day on October 15! No matter what kind of blogger you are, you can help make a difference.

Get involved!

Get Involved! Sign Up for Blog Action Day on October 15

With over 8,000 blogs and a reach of over 5.6 million audiences worldwide (as of writing), Blog Action Day is set to have the world know that the environment is the most important issue in the planet. Come October 15, millions of readers around the globe will read up on their subscribed blogs and, hopefully, come to terms about taking action on the environment towards "a better future".

Blogactionday.org was launched formally last August 16 and it had since grown in sign-ups to more than 7,000 blogs in a span of less than 2 months. With such popular blogs in the line-up such as DailyBlogTips, GigaOm, Copyblogger, and Lifehacker, the RSS readership of blogs registered with Blog Action Day grew from less than a million to 5,671,653 (and counting).

With only 5 days to go until October 15, can the reach of Blog Action Day blogs hit the 6 million mark or more? It's not impossible and it would certainly be a good thing. And you can be a part of it!

Go to blogactionday.org and register your blog. Commit today! On October 15, 2007 post a blog concerning the environment. Here are some websites to help you get some ideas - http://blogactionday.org/resources. Alternatively, you can donate a day's worth of earnings to official Blog Action Day charities which includes Greenpeace and The Nature Conservancy. Or if you want you can give to an environmental charity of your choosing.

Blog Action Day is also holding a contest just for fun (and a small incentive). Whoever can guess closest the number of registered participating blogs come October 15 wins a special prize package from GreenHome.com. My bet - 6,000,101 blogs.

Meanwhile, here's a video on Blog Action Day.


For more information and inspiration read up on Leo Babauta's "Why Bloggers Will Change The World And How You Can Help."

Technorati Tags: Blog Action Day, BlogActionDay

Mad Reporter On The Loose!

This made me smile today from Nick's little blog site at madreporter.blogspot.com.

How God Created Man

On the first day God created the cow. God said, "You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years."

The cow said, "That's a kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty years and I'll give back the other forty." And God agreed.

On the second day, God created the dog. God said, "Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years." The dog said, "That's too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I'll give back the other ten." So God agreed.

On the third day God created the monkey. God said, "Entertain people, do monkey tricks, make them laugh. I'll give you a twenty year life span."
Monkey said, "How boring, monkey tricks for twenty years? I don't think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that's what I'll do too, okay?" And God agreed again.

On the fourth day God created man. God said, "Eat, sleep, play, have sex, enjoy. Do nothing, just enjoy. I'll give you twenty years." Man said, "What? Only twenty years? No way man. Tell you what...

To get to the punchline, visit Mad Reporter.

Nick's blog is pretty much his notebook for jotting down jokes he's found all over the Web. Expect that its full of humor and wit. It's a very simple blog, regularly updated and uncomplicated. Apparently he's got a penchant for Chuck Norris jokes.

So if you need to humor your blues away, hop on over to Mad Reporter. Tell Nick I sent you... then run as fast as you can!

What Me Splog?!?

IN A RATHER LAUGHABLE TURN of events, Blogger's anti-spam technology recently (not to mention mistakenly) identified Daily Dotventures as a splog.

A few days ago I noticed that I was prompted for word verification whenever I made a post to my blog. And here I was thinking all along that I was simply experiencing improved security measures, what with the previous Blogger trojan spam storms.

Out of curiosity, I clicked on that small orange circle "thingy" with a question mark in the middle. I was expecting to see a message heralding the remarkable Blogger security standards but to my bewilderment, I was led to a page stating that my blog was identified by Bloggers' spam prevention measures to be a spam blog.

It was like downing a half-gallon of espresso at 2AM!

Your Ad Here

Personally, I think that word verification or "CAPTCHA" features should be made mandatory across all current social platforms especially blogs. Today's Web - 2.0 and beyond - is all about interactivity and user contribution. So why not implement a challenge-response mechanism to ensure that the contributor is indeed human and not a program? He or she should've been typing away at a computer for several minutes already; why would it be such a bother to exert a couple of more keystrokes?

Security and laziness do not mingle in the same circle of friends. You don't want word verification? You might as well send your email address to spam central.

Unfortunately, Blogger thinks word verification should be the exception and not the rule. So despite my unwillingness, I requested for "unlocking" of my account since I do not want to be identified as a splogger. Thus, I received the following in my email this morning:

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that
it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and
sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your
patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

Well, obviously them spambots are posting "as normal" evidenced by the proliferation of spam blogs within the Blogger community. That there is the greater inconvenience.

To the Blogger Team, apology accepted but really, you won't have to apologize and look like schmucks if only the measure was in place prior and not after the act.

There must be a reason you guys call it spam "PREVENTION". Right?

Stumped At What To Blog? Take Out Your Blogscope

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UPDATE: The Blogscope project is over. According to the notice on their website their products/services are now commercially used by Sysomos.

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You've had your morning coffee, you've fed your pet goldfish, you've scanned today's headlines but still you can't decide on what to blog on. Look a bit farther off your immediate horizon but not with a telescope - use Blogscope.

Blogscope.net (Preview version) is a prototype research tool developed by the fine people at the Computer Science Department of the University of Toronto (wave to the audience and take a bow fellas!). You can use it to analyze and visualize trends in the blogosphere. Currently they are tracking over 12 million blogs and are offering a couple of widgets useful to bloggers young and old alike.


Summary Cloud

Below this site, you will see a live example of Blogscope's Summary Cloud which automatically collects keywords from your blog and displays it in what is more popularly referred to as a "tag cloud". Blogscope's summary cloud widget however does not require tags at all. Instead it crawls your site (fast, very fast!) and posts significant keywords which in turn links to blogscope's search results for that keyword along with its corresponding popularity curve and related terms.


Popularity Curve

The Popularity Curve can visualize to you how often the keyword was used within the blogging community over time. Red graph bars indicate "information bursts" which means something significant happened during that period related to the keyword. Clicking on the bars will give you a listing of blog entries specific to the keyword.

For example if you clicked on the red area at the Blogscope site to find out why there was a spike for blogging sometime during the end of August, you'd see that some nutcase repeatedly created a post over and over again - clearly a splog attack. It was also around this time that the Blogger trojan-spam was discovered.



Comparison Curve

The Comparison Curve is similar to the Popularity Curve except that, well... it compares trends between two keywords. Note below that the graph for the keyword "blogging" is above the graph for "sex". This means that blogging is more popular than sex and.. good lord, what is the world coming to?!

Information provided at Blogscope is limited to within 30 results (blog posts) for each keyword queried. Furthermore, Blogscope.net states that this public preview of their technology is just the tip of the iceberg for what Blogscope can provide for the blogging community.

If you want you can also check out their Demo screencast, because I sure didn't. It was loading too slow so I passed. Let me know if you guys think its Oscar material or just another home movie.

So the next time you need a push in the right direction on what's hot and what's not in the blogosphere, send your mouse a-clickin' over at Blogscope.net.

Summary Cloud

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Creating a "Topics List" - Setting Up Bloggers' Labels Page Element

Our friend Roberto of The Silver People Chronicle asks: "Could you share with me how you got your "topics list" to look like that on your sidebar"?

Yes I can!

This site's "Topics List" is nothing more than Bloggers' Labels feature listed via "Page Elements" using the new Blogger templates. Labeling posts is the way to go with blogs nowadays as it is easier to organize your posts and helps in tracking and site optimization. So be sure to add and update your posts' labels regularly.

If you're using the classic template, you're going to have to do a bit more reading and contend with manually creating the links. You can start with this resource for details.

For those using the new templates, do the following:

1. Log in to your Blogger account.
2. Go to Layout (or Template), then Page Elements.
3. Click on "Add a Page Element". A window will open giving you choices.
4. Click on "Add to Blog" for the Labels Page Element.
5. At Configure Labels, you can change the title to anything you want.
6. You can also choose to sort your list alphabetically or by frequency of posts.
7. After "Save Changes" the new page element will show up on your Edit Layout (Add and Arrange Page Elements) screen, with the title that you entered.
8. Click and drag the element to your preferred position on your layout.
9. Click "Save".
10. Head over to my site and post a thank you comment. :)

That's it. You should have a fully functional topics list on your blog so that your audience can easily get to the topics that interest them.

One more tip. Use the labels as "Sections" for your blogs. Copy the URL (link address) of the label for your section (i.e. News, Site Updates, Sponsored Posts, etc.) and use that for a separate links list page element dedicated for your site's sections.

Happy Blog Day!

August 31 is Blog Day 2007 according to the good folks at BlogDday.org. So Happy Blog Day to all!

And here's my Blog-Day-Five:
Slice-of-life - interesting posts on stuff you may never have known existed.
A little piece of me - a personal blog from an endearing "struggler".
Gaje Master Blogging - this blogger knows her blogging stuff!
RockStories - a rocker, a writer and a blogger.
Anne-thology - best performance in a dramatic blog - a very sincere writer

3l08 on people!
BlogDay2007

Flag the Splogs! Flog the Sploggers!

I am referencing this blog post from "The Real Blogger Status" which is very timely especially for Blogger accounts and the emerging Storm Worm issue.

I've always advocated flagging of spam blogs. Not that its a sure way to push Google/Blogger to take down the offending blog. In fact, some Blogger users complain that Blogger seldom, if at all, act on flags and reports.

Still, I believe that with enough flags, Blogger would take notice and act accordingly. Otherwise, they may as well just run a splog farm themselves while real bloggers migrate to a better blogging platform that cares. So I say, when you encounter a spam blog go ahead and flag it!

How do you know its a spam blog?
Most spam blogs resemble spam email. The title and text body is just gibberish. Many times the text is empty or contains wide spaces that lead to, are sandwiched, or that trails from unintelligible text. These spaces actually contain scripts which can automatically trigger a popup, a redirect or a download. Worst, it can be a harvesting script that can recover sensitive data already on the browser and even your entire PC.

The FLAG BLOG button is on the Blogger Navbar (located on top of Blogger blog sites). When you find a splog, just click the button ONCE. Then alert your blogging circle to do the same. The more flags the better the chances Blogger would actually do something about it. When you can't find a Navbar follow the directions on the link of the Full Post below.

PRECAUTIONS
1. When blog surfing, use Firefox and enable the built-in popup blocker. Otherwise, install a reputable popup blocker.
2. Ensure your system has adequate security - anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit and formidable firewall are essential.

As for flogging the sploggers, maybe that's a bit medieval. But with the way splogs are taking over the blogosphere it may not be long before we do get thrown back to the dark ages.

Read the Full Post:
The Real Blogger Status: Get To The Root Of The Problem - Blame The Spammers

Also check out the following:
Storm Worm Hits Blogger
Warnings Active

Blogger.com Targeted by Trojan Spam

This report got my attention, being a Blogger.com user. Its such a pity since Blogger is quite an excellent blogging platform. Unfortunately the feature-filled and user-friendly facilities of Blogger has become the workshop, or perhaps even a playground, for malicious hackers out to leverage the rich information resources provided by the exponential growth of the global blogging community.

It is said that the main point of delivery for these trojan splogs exists with Bloggers' Mail-to-Blogger feature allowing users to e-mail their posts without having the need to log into the Blogger Dashboard.

Therefore, it would be advisable for Blogger.com users to disable this feature in their respective accounts. Otherwise remove the supplied email address from the address books of email clients (e.g. Outlook Express) so that trojan infected PCs will not inadvertently send a virus-laden spam message and post it onto your Blogger account.

As "webizens", it is our responsibilty to protect the integrity of our respective blogs and the blogosphere as a whole. Some measures we can take to safeguard the blogging experience include:

1. Reporting/Flagging errant blogs.
2. Ensure that links and scripts pasted on your blog come from reputable sites and organizations.
3. Regularly inform your audience to take security measures when going online.

Share your experience and tips on safe blogging. What other ways can we contribute to a safer cyberspace?

Bloggers Unite! - Blog Against Abuse on 9-27

On September 27, 2007, the blogging community at BlogCatalog.com is spearheading an initiative as part of its ongoing blogging challenge. Its called "Blog Against Abuse".

For the entire 24 hours of that Thursday, 9-27-07, bloggers worldwide are encouraged to blog about an important cause relating to an abuse issue. Its up to the blog author to determine which issue he or she would like to write about.

The goal of the originator is to rally the largest number of bloggers who will post about important issues for one day. While the exercise is certainly not unique, it has already merited the commitment of a few hundred BlogCatalog members.

Organizing a blog-about-something day has been done perhaps since the early days of blogging. Doing a specific search for the term "Blog Day" will yield over a million webpages off Google. There's a "Blogosphere Day" on July 19, another "Blog Day" on August 31, and a "Blog Action Day" on October 15.

Whether or not "Blog Against Abuse" Day becomes a continuing tradition is yet to be seen. Some comments on the related thread at Blog Catalog already shows some sentiments of taking the initiative as a joke or otherwise something that is to be taken lightly. Others have questioned whether the exercise would actually yield any discernible change. Still a few are willing to participate with the simple thought "what's in it for me?"

For me personally, it would be interesting to know what would be the relevant issues common among bloggers come September 27. Would it be domestic violence, child trafficking, unfair labor practices, drugs, environment? Or do blogists even care about any cause at all?

Mark it on your calendars, September 27, Blog Against Abuse Day.
Read about abuse, Blog about abuse, Stop all the abuse.

Settings for Blogger Comments

As discussed in my "Writer's Blog Series" comments are integral to the performance of a blog. The downside of the equation however is the propensity for this facility to be abused i.e. spam comments. This is one of those instances that prove there is no such thing as a "free lunch".

Its a toss-up between 'allowing good comments' and 'easy administration' of a blog. If you allow fully functional comments, chances are you'd have to contend with a few spam comments now and again. If you opt to limit comments in favor of administration in cruise mode, most likely your audience would be dissuaded to post their inputs at your blog site.

The decision would boil down to the primary purpose of your blog. Ask yourself, "how much audience do I want browsing or subscribing to my blog? How much interactivity do I desire with my guests." If your blog is more of an internal channel for expression, then you probably wouldn't mind a trickle of traffic. If however, you blog for a cause or for some profit, you want your comments at full throttle to attract an active following.

Generally, a good rule-of-thumb for comments settings would be to allow us much audience to view and post comments, while employing comments moderation to limit which comments actually get posted.

For other blogging platforms, refer to your sites' documentation on how to achieve this balance. For Blogger (blogspot.com) sites, Comments Settings allow you to ramp up your guest's access to the comment facility. There are three important settings that must be enabled as follows:

• At your Blogger Dasboard, click on Settings > Comments.


• At Who Can Comment?, select "Anyone". This would allow everybody to post comments, including other web surfers without Blogger accounts.

• At Enable Comment Moderation, select "Yes". A box will appear for you to optionally fill out an email address for receiving notifications of new comments.
  


• At Show word verification for comments, select "Yes". This would implement a captcha-like test that requires comment posters to enter a random set of letters shown in a graphics format. Automated scripts and text-based browsers used by some spammers naturally cannot see the letters thus reducing submission of spam comments.
  

The above settings have thus been enabled here on Dotventures. Everyone is welcome to be part of the discussions. We hope that Blogger.com users will benefit from this short guide.

Healthy Alternative for Bloggers

Two reports (see "Pot Belly..." and "Even Light Exercise...") made me bow my head and seriously think today. Particularly, the first one entitled "Pot Belly Linked to Heart Disease" was even cited as the most emailed article for at the BBC News site.

I admit, I do have a pot belly and therefore the article made my heart beat a tad faster than usual. Basically, the study states that while being overweight is a definitive factor to developing a heart disease, the concentration of that weight in the abdominal area poses increased risk for atherosclerosis - the narrowing and hardening of the arteries.

Ardent bloggers have a tendency to lead sedentary lifestyles due to the fact that they spend considerable time sitting down, uploading their various blogcasts in front of the computer. Couple that with a viscious amount of coffee and chips throughout the day and there then is a picture of a future medical bill that by itself can cause a heart attack.

Don't be deceived by video bloggers who look healthy from the chest up. Notice they won't show their waistline on webcam because in most certain terms there are probably love handles brimming down there.

Kidding aside, there is hope for bloggers to remain healthy come Web 3.0 and beyond. The second report encouraged light exercise (i.e. brisk walking) for 30 minutes 3 times a week. That is apparently enough to achieve certain health benefits. Although the minimum exercise regimen to achieve truly significant gains is 30 minutes for 5 times weekly, the 3 times a week program should push borderline couch potatoes off to performing some level of healthy activity.

So when you're stuck in a writing rut or presented with the option of blogging about a pop star in rehab, take your 30 minutes and just walk it off. The world won't miss it and you'll probably be a healthier blogger to boot!

Making Sense of Adsense for Blogs

One of the advantages I mentioned in "Writer's Blog: A Newbies Primer on Blogging" is the opportunity to earn money through your blog site. Most likely this is the reason that best resonates for many, motivating them to start and maintain a blogging account.

Over the years, the proven way to generate income for blogs is through legitimate implementation of advertising or sponsorship programs. One such advertising program is Google Adsense.

Adsense became Google's main advertising program after its purchase of a then up and coming search engine company known as Applied Semantics in 2003. Since then, it has become the ad server system of choice for many who wish to monetize their respective sites, blog sites included.

If you were to run your own industry standard online advertising program, you will have to figure out which of your website pages would most likely be read by the appropriate audience targeted by your advertisers. You would then have to encode the ad in full layout on the webpage.

In addition, you will have to monitor your ad impressions - defined as a measure of the the visibility of the ads as determined by its size and placement on the page as well as the number of times the webpage has been accessed. Take note that ad impressions is not the same as page impressions or page hits.

You will also have to take into account your click-throughs which essentially is what will make money for you. Your CTR or Click-Through Rate is the percentage of clicks made by your visitors on the ads on your site for each one hundred ad impressions.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more to deal with in online advertising than this article would allow. Unless you really want to be an e-marketing professional knowing all these complex terminologies, as an alternative you can just simply link up with a number of establishments and introduce a monthly or annual site sponsorship program in exchange for ad spots and being featured on your blog.

Nevertheless, Google Adsense simplifies the ad process with a packaged system for website owners. Whether with a full-fledged commercial website or a personal blog, Adsense participants are referred to collectively as web publishers or simply "Publishers". It's free to join the Adsense program.

Incidentally, if you have a Google account via Gmail, Blogger or its other services, you can easily tie up your Adsense account with your existing Google account for easy single-sign-on access.

Adsense will provide you with a backend site accessible at http://www.google.com/adsense. Here you can setup which Adsense ad units you can place in your blog. There are numerous layouts to choose from, the techniques to determining which we will reserve for another time. You can select among three existing programs namely, Adsense for Content, Adsense for Search, and recently their Referrals program.

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This is the first part of a series. Part 2 of "Making Sense of Adsense for Blogs" will follow shortly.

Writer's Blog: A Newbie's Primer on Blogging (Part 3)

Blogging Advantages

Despite the disadvantages on being one with the global bloggers' pool, millions of netizens worldwide are doing it. The following are just some of the reasons people may have for becoming and remaining as a blogger.

Express yourself. Whether we admit to it or not, human beings have an inherent need to communicate. We will not last a day without expressing what is inside us - whether through voice, writing, or by simple body language. Blogging provides an effective alternative outlet to share what we know, what interests us, indeed even our very souls to the rest of the world. Do you have a cause? A blog can be your advocacy platform. Are you an artist? Your weblog is your own public gallery. Building a career? Document your career milestones through your blog and impress your next employer. Your blog is your own channel, your own time-slot on the World Wide Web. Go ahead and shine!

Widen your network. By blogging on your interests and concerns, you are bound to connect with others who share the same interests and concerns. Many have met project collaborators, business partners, friends and even people who end up becoming more than friends (wink, wink) through their respective blog networks. Do link-up with other blogs. Be generous with your comments to other's posts. Create posts about the cares of your circle and soon enough your audience and blog network will grow. Build you blog and they will come!

Earn additional revenue. You can monetize your blog in several ways but the most common is by providing advertising spots on your blog site. Some blog networks, for instance Blogger (ahem!) have integrated advertising programs, in this case Google AdSense, for those using their blog infrastructure. Without going into hard sell mode, it is advisable for beginning bloggers to seek ways to generate revenue with your blog site. After all, you will spend several hours to do your write-ups, not to mention the cost of the Internet connection you would use up when updating your blog. Many blogs die off simply because their would-be bloggers failed to maintain the unforeseen costs of running a blog. So, be creative in raising funds for your blog. For example, you can ask your local shops to donate some amount to your blog in exchange for featuring their latest product line. You figure out the ways, and then do the math. Later on, you would see that it actually pays to blog.

Develop your talents. Borrowing once more from the words of that old English bard - "All the world's a stage". A blog is a perfect way to showoff your talents to the rest of the cyber world. You can be sure that others will comment on your work and that will serve as feedback for you and basis for further improvement. Nowadays, with the multimedia facilities built-in with most blogging software you can broadcast yourself and your wares on the Internet whether as a writer, photographer, musician, designer, filmmaker or whatever else it is that you do.

Contribute to the online community. The blogging phenomenon has also contributed largely to the rise of "citizen journalism". The Web has become a new media "by-the-people" with each blog as the citizen-reporter's own online column. Most blogs do not attempt to provide objective reportage, while many that try to do so end up being perceived as completely amateurish and snubbed by mainstream mass media. At any rate, exceptional blogs have become sources for some primetime news reports and a few themselves have become seeds for further inquiry by investigative journalists. In the same manner, some news blogs provide secondary coverage for events and issues that otherwise would not see the light of day through major news channels. Your best-effort participation as a blogger can provide invaluable knowledge and insight for the rest of the community.

There is so much to say regarding the whys and wherefores of blogging than this particular blog entry can cover. In future posts the author will endeavor to delve into other aspects of blogging.

For now, we can wrap up this series and I hope that this piece will indeed serve as a simple primer to guide those looking into joining the great blogging bandwagon or perhaps provide a slight nudge for those seeking validation to what they have already begun as blog authors and enthusiasts.

Blog on!

Writer's Blog: A Newbie's Primer on Blogging (Part 2)

To Blog or Not To Blog

The popularity of the blog is undeniable. As of April 2007, Technorati's David Sifry through the State of the Blogosphere report estimates over 70 million blogs in existence today. As you are reading this, at least one new blog site is being created per second and more than one thousand blog entries are being posted every minute.

If you are already part of the 70 million, good for you - for as long as you do not operate a "splog" (i.e. spam blog; if you do, shame on you!). For those who have not taken the blog plunge, perhaps you are asking yourself, "Why should I?" Indeed this is a valid question now more than ever before.

Blogging benefits and disadvantages vary from blogger to blogger due to the highly personal nature of the medium. The following is essentially non-exhaustive but serves as a starting point for checking one's motives for becoming a blog author.

Let us start with the drawbacks.


Blogging Disadvantages

Everybody is a critic. If you are a very sensitive individual, you probably should just keep your writings to yourself. As they say, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." The Internet is one hell of a hot kitchen with critics and bigots and flamers of all sorts and sizes, each claiming authority and monopoly for the right kind of knowledge or viewpoint. Indeed, the Internet is a bastion of freedom but there are people who cannot stand the fact that others are also free to think, act and say things differently. In all likelihood, they will take you on a veritable war of words. On the other hand, if you can manage to be tolerant of opposing views then there is room for you to share on this otherwise limitless web-publishing frontier, despite the critics.

Spam comments. Comments on blog postings are at the cornerstone of the medium's popularity. Blogs ought to be interactive. You are sharing your thoughts to the world; might as well have a share of what the world thinks of you. While interactivity should otherwise be an advantage, with the proliferation of unsolicited commercial laden comments on blogs it has somewhat turned into a disadvantage for blog operators. Hence, it has become best-practice policy to moderate comments to filter out spams. (Incidentally, comment moderation can also inhibit flaming posts but watch out. This act treads closely to censorship, which is also a looming issue on the Internet nowadays.)

Spam Blogs. In contrast to spam comments, "splogs" are entire blog sites of keyword gibberish designed to veer search engine attention to their keyword-laden sites instead of indexing your legitimate blog. A Wired article cited that in May 2006 some 56% of active English-language blogs are actually splogs. Now, either that can tick you off as undue competition or you can make it a benevolent mission to contribute valid blogs to the blogosphere, before it goes the way of the dodo because of spam.

High Maintenance. Writing a blog is definitely time-consuming. Most blogs lay idle for weeks or even months at a time, while others simply are forgotten altogether. A truly informative article might take at least a day or two to complete, while a simple trip to the countryside story will take up a minimum of thirty minutes to blurt out. Blogging requires commitment. Your audience expects you to respond to comments and provide regular updates on your blog. You have to commit to rid spam comments from moderation so it will not ever be published. In addition, just like getting into a weight-loss program, you have to make a commitment to a blogging regimen to keep your grey-matter juices flowing. If you can post an entry on a daily basis, well and good. Others can maintain 2 to 3 posts a day, while others post 2 to 3 write-ups on a weekly basis. Remember that while your blog site may be free of charge it consumes disk space and bandwidth, and like other idle assets it becomes more of a liability overall. So make the most of your free blog site and post as often as you can.

Private Information and Security Matters. Personal information is always at risk when you go online. Be aware that whatever you share on your blog is made available to every webizen from Abkhazia to Zimbabwe. Many people use their blogs as virtual bartenders, spilling out all kinds of ranting, backbiting and foul mouthing on anything and anyone. Unfortunately, these blog attacks have been used against their respective bloggers resulting in defamation cases, being fired, and even being imprisoned for treason. As in all freedoms, blogging necessarily carries with it some degree of accountability. Many organizations go to the Internet to check just how much the people they interact with have been responsible to themselves and to the people or things that they write about. Take care of what you blog on, as you would not want it to whiplash against you later on when you are trying to close a deal or pursuing a job.


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(This is the second part of a series. Part 3 of "Writer's Blog: A Newbie's Primer on Blogging" follows next.)

Writers' Blog: A Newbie's Primer on Blogging (Part 1)

Introduction

This post's title is obviously a word play on an all-common excuse for ditching a writing assignment, that is a "writers' block". However, this particular text is primarily about blogging and not about making excuses not to.

Perhaps in a future post we will directly tackle how to overcome writer's block. Heaven knows that the vast multitude of bloggers (or blogists) on the World Wide Web have a need for a tip or two on that subject every once so often.

For now, let us ponder on the pros and cons of blogging. To borrow from a certain English bard's famous quote - to blog or not to blog? That is the question of this Web 2.0 era.

Blog Defined

A blog is a personal story, report, essay, commentary, article, or similar content that is contained in a website usually made available to the general Internet audience. Early blogs were mostly text documents posted on personal homepages. Nowadays blogs can also feature scanned photographs, audio clips and even recorded or live video feeds.

The word "blog" refers to the content, the act of publishing online such content, and the type of website that holds the content. Blog sites, as per its common form, should post the blog in chronological order only (meaning you cannot insert a blog entry between the order of existing posts). At the same time, any entry must be readily accessible through a history or archive list.

The origin of the term blog stems from "weblog", which according to Wikipedia (see Wikipedia entry on "Blog") was coined by Jorn Barger circa 1997. Subsequently, the concatenation "blog" came from the paronomasia "We Blog" attributed to Peter Merholz as published at his own site Peterme.com. Sadly, this bit of blogging history no longer exists at Mr. Merholz's current blog site.

To simplify, a blog is:
- a personal account, narrative or opinion;
- may be in the form of text, images, and/or audio-video materials;
- published chronologically on the Web usually via blog websites;

That said, should we exclude sites that do not follow the above description from the category of blogs? I would not be that strict. After all, the form and function of the blog have evolved as quickly as available web technology has developed in the past years.

Take for instance blogs that exists only on community or corporate Intranets. They serve the function of the modern blog within the limited scope of their domain however; these are not accessible to the rest of the World Wide Web. Another exception would be mobile blogs (also called "moblogs") which are published and accessible primarily through mobile devices.

Who knows in what form would the modern blog transform to in the future? Can you say holoblog?
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(This is the first part of a series. Part 2 of "Writer's Blog: A Newbie's Primer on Blogging" follows next.)