slamboard

IZEARANKS.com is new. I took a quick visit to the ranking page for my blog and then I made this graph comparing it to a semi-random selection of blogs. These blogs belong to people that are on the periphery of my networking efforts. I don’t visit these blogs everyday, but I know that the authors take their blogging seriously.

I think that this graph illustrates what you can expect from a ranking system that tracks a relatively small number of blogs. There are several thousand blogs that contain the coding tools from IZEA, but it is small when you compare it to a ranking system like Alexa. A have a virtually abandoned blog that I looked at recently and its Alexa rank is in the tens of millions. Slamboard spent a few days this month in the top 100 with IZEA.

Here are the urls for the blogs that I included on my graph:

http://slamboard.com

http://simplekindoflife.com

http://www.macewan.org

http://www.u-g-h.com

I was checking out a contest at some random girl’s blog and I discovered an interesting web tool at Random.org.

If you have a list that you want to put in random order, you can just paste it into this box and click on randomize to have your items put in a truly random order. I think this would be a cool way to organize polls for your blog.

The creator of the website warns against entering sensitive, private information into this tool because there is no encryption. Third parties could intercept the data.

I just finished reading a lengthy and thought provoking post on the blog at WhyDoWork.com that highlights some of the flaws and limitations of blogs. The criticisms are from the point of view of someone who is looking for relevant information about making money online. John Chow is used an example of a popular blogger. If you go to JohnChow.com and spend a portion of your free time reading his advice and opinions, you may not be seeing the big picture on a given topic. If you find an active forum thread that relates to the same topic, you will find more opinions and you may find some information that is more useful. Another minus for blogs is the possibility that critical responses may be deleted.

I don’t delete critical comments, but I think the approval process itself discourages people from commenting. I went to full moderation during a critical period of the Kimkins stuff because people were making comments that started with ‘Please don’t post.’

I think that I will remove the moderation soon, allowing any post that is not caught by the spam catcher to be published immediately.[edit: I am presently not moderating comments, anyone who is not in Akismet’s bad books and does not have more than two outgoing links will have their comment instantly posted.]

I think one disadvantage with forums is the volume of information/chat that can eat up your free time while you wade through it looking for information that is of value. The best example that I can think of in this regard is the Why the fascination with Kimmer? thread(s) on the Low Carb Friends board. This forum has been a valuable source of information for the Kimkins story, but I do not read it. I wait for other people to read it and quote the interesting stuff in blogs. For the uninitiated who might want to read these threads, be warned, there are 12 threads totaling 42,675 replies and counting.

I am way late in making any kind of commentary about John Chow getting manually punished by Google for his not not evil ways, so I won’t bother. I will focus instead on page two of the Google search query for John Chow. It contains an entry for John Chow’s MyBlogLog page and the text blurb is written by John Chow. It is the highest ranking page over which he has any editorial control. His holiday wishes are expressed on this page at this time. I suspect that JohnCow.com is getting more Google traffic than MyBlogLog.com/buzz/community/JohnChow/, but every little bit helps.

The URL for my full name is taken, but I really need to make a point of getting domains for my kids. Having a your name as a URL is a tremendous asset if you don’t blow it by ticking Google off.

I was a bit dismayed when I saw a blogger telling a bald faced lie on the official Google blog. If you read the official Google blog and you truly believe that NORAD tracks Santa with Google, I have some news for you. There is no Santa Claus. Your parent or legal guardian wrote that letter from Santa apologizing for not being able to get a Wii

An estimated 114 million internet users made purchases online last holiday season. I had pretty obvious motivation for making references to Christmas when I was reviewing products over the last few months. I was surprised to see a recent surge in people finding my blog through a Google search for tasers for women. Is this because I am one of a very small number of people who wrote about this product, or is it actually a popular Christmas gift this year?

I don’t know.

I took a look back at my post about the sleek and stylish Tasers for Women and I did not mention Christmas. I was also very critical of the product.

I have to apologize to all the old friends, dear relatives and tangential acquaintances that are on my list of friends on Facebook. I do not participate to any appreciable amount in this social website. I actually kinda HATE it. My hatred of Facebook is actually a profound enough reaction that I am looking for a way to channel it into something useful.

This blog is not my Facebook. I am thinking of formally proclaiming another blog as MyFacebook.

Blogging during a long flight may soon be commonplace. Several airlines are looking into the idea of offering wireless service to its passengers. At the moment it will be limited to email, instant messaging and Blackberry services. If the level of service that they are talking about becomes an industry standard, I would expect developers to create applications that piggyback on the enabled services and allow you to do more. You can already send blog posts through email with some services. I have never done that because I have never needed to do it.

Most comment spammers don’t even try that hard to fool the smart people. This one does a stellar job of exploiting a common human foible known as vanity.

If there are any 8 year olds reading my blog, I would like to get in touch. I am going on vacation soon and it would be cool to have a guest blogger for a few days. I can’t pay much.

The Blogger’s Choice Awards was a success for its creator. It was a small ego boost for the winners. I nominated myself for a handful of categories hoping that it would attract a few readers. I didn’t get very many votes.

A big part of the success of the site is owed to the celebrity bloggers that took notice.

There was a fraught competition between supporters of Rosie O’Donnell and Will Wheaton. Will was initially flattered, but he became very critical of the site when he found out that it was affiliated with PayPurrPost. Rosie was more positive about the nomination and expressed the desire to win. Rosie has her detractors as well as her supporters and her page on the BCA site has over 8000 comments. Rosie won.

A very bad man initially had a huge lead in the Worst Blog of All Time category. When he tipped everyone off to the fact that he was happy about all the attention and traffic, things tailed off for him. Unfortunately for him all the attention was ultimately bad for business because his more questionable practices came under the scrutiny of people that were in a position to dam up some of his revenue streams. In the end Perez Hilton was proclaimed the worst. I think that is inaccurate, he is simply the most popular bad blogger.

The BCA’s were not a good traffic generation tool for the everyday blogger, in my opinion. If you were one of the few that got in before the unmoderated nominee lists became huge, you may have gotten a few clicks from people who were not already familiar with your blog. I did not see any sustained traffic benefit from participating in this silly exercise in self promotion and ego fluffing.