RSS FeedsSikcness again and other things
Jan 15, 2005 No Comments »
I guess these are my “not feeling well” days. First, two weeks ago I fell sick for almost a week that left me totally zonked. It took another week to gather the broken pieces and re-assemble my work. Today, again I woke up feeling queasy and I think it was something I ate yesterday. But except for my normal food I had nothing yesterday. Perhaps the combination of cheese and spinach fried together did something nasty to my stomach.
Currently I’m doing some interesting work. I’m writing product reviews for http://www.justdiscounted.com. Have a look at this review. The owner of the website wrote a testimonial for my website but strangely didn’t want his name mentioned (although he let me link back to his website). Anyway, I’ll hopefully write lots of reviews for him. This also inspires me to write such articles for local tech magazines like DIGIT and PC Quest.
I’ll also be writing articles for a lawyers’ firm that represents automobile accident victims. Besides that I’m currently working on the main page of an “alternative healing” website. Their problem is that they don’t have funds and there are no agencies or individuals ready to provide the required funding. I need to write the content in such a manner that it should be convincing enough to make people give funds. These will be small funds in exchange of some alternative healing. This work is quite challenging and is taking up lots of time.
Amidst all these I’m trying to create my professional blogging website. I want to create a totally table-less layout using CSS and since I’m still learning the ropes, I have had to re-write the code many times.
More later.
How blogs play an important part
Jan 12, 2005 No Comments »
It is true that many people haven’t heard to “blogs” or “weblogs”. On the other hand, 23,000 blogs are created every week. It’s amazing how vast this world is and how numbers make living and working so damn fascinating. A few posts ago I talked about offering my blog writing services professionally — I’m working on the website that will be managed with the help of WordPress. There is a section of specialist writers (I don’t know if I’m a specialist writer but I certainly am, presently, a niche writer) and media managers who understand the promotional significance of corporate and PR blogs.
You must be a troglodyte if you are unaware of the role the bloggers played in the wake of recent tsunami disaster. Even during US elections blogging was an integral part of campaigning. More and more companies are encouraging their employees to maintain regular blogs so that they can touch base with their clients with regular and prompt updates.
I just came across this interesting interview with John S. Rhodes. He talks about how his blog has helped him establish himself as a usability expert. The following questions have been discussed in the interview:
Why there are still very few businesses that maintain active blogs?
How do blogs help businesses and what are the tangible, measurable results?
How a blog is better than an article or an FAQ page?
What are the guidelines companies should stick to? (my take: guidelines are ok but if you are lucid about what you want to say you don’t exactly need to follow “guidelines”)
Is the importance of blogging going to grow in 2005?
In fact while writing these heading, I’m being bombarded by my own thoughts on these subjects and I’ll very soon write them down for a future post or an article.
Work or grind…well, what the heck!
Jan 11, 2005 No Comments »
I was recently pondering over how we all have to work in order to earn a living. I haven’t slept for two days and I’ve been doing some work that is, although related to my work, not exactly the sort of work I mostly do. I took up this work because most of it has to do something with content writing. Besides, I’m being paid for this work
Well, the crux of the matter is, I hate doing work that I don’t like doing.
I have put my AdWords and Overture campaigns on a hiatus because even without them, as I’m anyway appearing on the first pages of the search engines, I’m getting steady amount of business.
The Unstoppable Blogging Juggernaught
Jan 07, 2005 No Comments »
According to Technorati 23,000 new weblogs are created every week. This shows how eager people are to express themselves given a choice. Blogging is democratization in its true sense. As usual, Microsoft has been a late starter. It has launched a new blogging service called MSN Spaces and as usual, it is full of its boring self. There was a time I used to like this company but now they seem more like an innovation parasite. Whenever there is some new technology or trend, Microsoft pokes its nose, destroys the original innovation and replaces it with a mediocre alternative. By the first look I know I’m not going to use MSN Spaces, neither for myself, nor for my clients.
Blogging statistics
Jan 06, 2005 No Comments »
Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere:
8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.
View the PDF report
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