Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

The Age Of User-Generated Content

Dec 31, 2006 No Comments »

Aside from my remarks on the negative connotation of the “user-generated” content expression this is in fact the age of mass-generated content as far as the Internet is concerned and this article in the Guardian aptly traces the slow evolution of this trend. The article talks about how the old media is reluctantly giving-in to the new-age definition of content.

But why such content is more acceptable to consumers? I think it’s not just the content on the social media websites that draws so many eye-balls, it’s also the ability to directly participate that makes them so hot realms. Most of the content for example on YouTube is lousy and you wouldn’t consider re-watching it more than once. But the strength of the website is, you can not only comment on the feeds and rate them, you can also respond by posting your own video feeds with no extra cost and hardware. For instance recently I recorded my 15-month-old daughter dancing to my whistling using my Canon digital camera and uploaded the video to YouTube so that my relatives scattered all over the world could watch it. Traditional media could have never empowered me in such a manner.

Technorati Tags: youtube, user-generated content, content publishing, videos

Microsoft is Sending Free Laptops To Some Bloggers

Dec 30, 2006 2 Comments »

Here I am, working my ass off to make up for the money I spent on purchasing a new laptop, and Microsoft is sending free laptops to some bloggers, pre-loaded with Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. And some of these bloggers don’t even intend to keep the cool Ferrari laptops. What a dream position to be in! No, I don’t envy them, they have all worked hard to be where they are today.

Microsoft is trying to proselytize the Mac users — most of these bloggers are die-hard Mac users.

I think the campaign could have been more effective if they had sent the laptops to lesser-known bloggers too because then it would have created more sensation. Every company sends its products, usually free, to people who can spread around a word or two about their product, so most say, well, it’s no big deal. But had they sent the laptops to a few smaller (smaller in terms of reach, not physical measurement) bloggers the smaller bloggers would have not only talked about the move with greater vigor, even the established bloggers would have covered the event more widely.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, ferrari laptops, free laptops, windows vista, ms office 2007, free laptops for bloggers

Blogging Tips and Tricks and other cool stuff

Dec 30, 2006 No Comments »

Avinash on his blog has posted his comprehensive blogging experience and have listed down all the blogging tools and methodologies he has used and implemented to create quite a successful blog. Blogging is a collection of multiple exercises. It just doesn’t mean writing cool stuff; you have to use the right tools to publish your cool stuff and you have to promote your blog at the right places. In order to optimize your blogging experience, he suggests you to go through the following steps:

• “Try before you buy” [Experiment before you jump in.]
• Your Own Domain?
• Blogger Websites or Your Own ISP?
• What Blog Software to Use?
• Best way to Write and Edit Your Blog Posts?
• Best WordPress Plugins [if you have a wordpress blog this will save you hours of searching and help give your blog a power boost quickly]
• The story of six months in numbers [What can you do in six months of blogging?]

Go to his blog to read the comprehensive post.

My 6 Predictions for 2007

Dec 30, 2006 4 Comments »

OK, I’m going to take a plunge into this ongoing next-year-predictions-mania and enlighten you with my own take on this, although I cannot usually predict what’s going to happen even next week. In the end of the post I’ll see if I’d like to turn it into a tag game. I don’t know many bloggers right now (and they don’t know me) but somewhere one has to make a start. So here I go:

Read the rest of this entry »

Problems That Try To Get You Down

Dec 30, 2006 No Comments »

When you work on your own there are scores of things, demons-like things, that always keep popping up and pulling you backward. Take for instance my slow connection speed. Sometimes it loads pages (blogs) so slow that I abandon the idea of reading that blog mid-way. This is especially harmful when I read the post in my RSS reader and am moved to leave a comment. I must have missed commenting more than 30 times this way. May be this is affecting my traffic. For months the trackbacks didn’t work (they are notifications that appear on other blogs when you publish their links on your blog) and eventually when I figured out the problem, my IP-address got branded as spam-risk and hence both my comments and trackbacks stopped appearing on other blogs. Miraculously, the problem is solved now.

Then, I don’t know what has happened, my new HP laptop has become a bit slow too. I’ve checked for viruses (there came up none), I’ve also emptied the cache. In synch with that, FireFox keeps crashing. I bought this laptop just three months ago.

In fact hardware-related problems have been hindering my overall progress for the past two years and I don’t waste much time while replacing faulty hardware.

And of course there have been various health problems in the family. But then thing is, when you work on your own, you have no choice but to carry on working.