OS9 User News has launched a contest to promote security on the internet. The starting point is a screenshot of your desktop followed by a few tips on secure software.



The picture on my Mac desktop is a gnarly old tree stump. Sadly it's appeal is spoiled by endless files accumulated during a weekend of blogging. What you see is a bucket-load of material, mainly images in Photoshop, that needs to be sorted away or deleted. Tomorrow may never come, but if it does, I will try to be a tidy boy and do the right thing.

Secure from the desktop to the internet and back again

Let's talk security! Without wishing to trash Windows, if you are scared to surf the internet, scared of viruses and scared to click on emails, consider a Mac. There are no viruses to worry about and there are only a few simple steps to secure the computer and protect yourself from casual attack.

A Mac is still vulnerable to human engineering, ie no operating system on earth is going to protect people who respond to dodgy dialog boxes! "Click here on a file you have never asked for. It was just delivered to your desktop by sender unknown and we want you to look at it." These folks will likely be victims of on-line nastiness, but in general, with the inbuilt firewall running, and not using the admin account on-line, I have found surfing and blogging to be totally secure and fun on a Mac.

Ed's blogging suite

From left to right, Safari browser, Subethaedit editor, Rapidweaver blogging software, Cyberduck FTP software and Photoshop - these are the tools I use to keep the Pisstakers going.

Rapidweaver and Photoshop are fun to use, and the fun browser, editor and ftp software have extra security features, which I will talk about briefly.

Secure ftp with Cyberduck

I upload The Pisstakers to the server via Cyberduck, freeware ftp software from a guy into ducks.

Without boring you rigid, ftp is how you upload stuff from your desktop to a server. With Cyberduck, it is easy to take security to a new level with the sftp protocol which prevents all but the most determined prying eyes from taking a look at files en route.



Other Mac ftp software does the same sort of job. Some are free, some you have to pay for.

Secure browsing on Safari

I expect I will get flamed by Windows users who have found Safari security flaws, but by and large, for years Safari on the Mac has been safe for browsing. It is easy to prevent any downloaded files from opening without your knowledge.

There are exploits in the Mac Operating System that can originate from Safari, but only if you are really really unlucky. And as long as you don't surf as an administrator, you would be the unluckiest surfer on earth to be crippled from internet related exploits when using a Mac.

(The big secret to Mac OSX is that you are warned of any software that tries to install itself. Only the administrator can give software the go-ahead to install itself. Simple security, but very effective if you aren't click happy.)

Subethaedit

This is a basic text editor with a twist. You can collaborate with other users on-line using Rendezvous and everyone can make alterations to text on the fly. Pretty clever. And really secure if you follow this advice to set up a SSH tunnel!!

(I have done it, but only as an experiment. Email is good enough for someone like me, but more determined writers may find this option rather interesting.)

Conclusion

The Internet is taking over computing. Surfing and on-line social interaction is on the rise and we are getting used to downloading everything from images to bank statements to software. Bottom line, the issue of security isn't going to go away, so just make sure you deal with trusted sources only. and don't just say Yes willy Nilly to every request to install plug-ins and so-on on your computer.

And remember, don't buy anything online or enter very personal info on a site unless you can see that lock in the browser bar!

Join the contest and publish your desktop screenshot and let the world know about some cool secure software you use.

RT at Untwisted Vortex has noticed a trend in blog comments - a downward trend. He is not referring necessarily to his own blog, but in general, there seems to be less and less commenting going on. He calls for a change in habits, especially bloggers' habits. I'll also stir it up a bit more and say that blog fans need to take a look at themselves too!

The commenting issue

Someone like me would broach the dropping comments situation with a rant - and get absolutely nowhere. If you read the epilogue to this post you will see why!

RT's plan for a more chatty blogosphere

RT has a constructive and rather cunning plan to put the commenting world to rights.

Be warned, he is a big guy, so you better do as he says, otherwise...

First off, every man, woman and child should start making the effort to comment more. Remember, if nothing else, comments are subliminal messages telling your fave bloggers they are doing great, crap or otherwise. Engaged bloggers are good bloggers, which makes for a better blog gene pool - win, win.

If humanitarian efforts aren't your thing, maybe a bit of an arm twist from an ex-Marine will help.

For those of you who are willing to participate, I'm starting a comment contest as of right now.

Make a comment on a blog you read ... and (also) let the blogger know about the contest.

If you run a blog, you can also feed the comment contest frenzy...

You, as the blog author of your own blog, need to count how many comments per commenter you receive. Every week, ending in Saturday, send me the name, URL, and comment count of the person who commented on your blog the most (ties are okay). I will pick a weekly winner from all the submissions.

So, tell your readers to comment, tell your workmates to comment, comment yourselves. Comments mean prizes!!

My constructive comments tip to bloggers

Take a look at what your articles look like in various RSS feed readers and email subscription format. If there is a lack of comment links, (readers often strip out javascript) then start adding in a comment here link manually within your posts.

My veiled threat to blog fans

[In a hushed spooky voice] "Beware the double-edged side of RSS. Cut down on the number of fave blogs you set yourself to get through. Don't cave into the need to read a gazillion posts a day. Think, ponder, respond."

Epilogue: Ed's initial (censored) idea to raise the level of commenting

Get an education, and learn to comment, you lazy bastard visitors. Tell us what is going on in that thick skull of yours so we can write stuff you want to read.

I know, I know, surfing the 'net is done in a blur these days, no time to ponder, just click, speed scan and move on, but it doesn't have to be that way. Recall the happy days before addiction, when there was time to visit the bathroom between Stumbles. Remember when you enjoyed the hassle of contributing to a conversation! Comment, comment, comment."

Less comments? What the bloody hell do you expect when it is so inconvenient to add your 2 cents direct from those fricking RSS feeds and subscription emails that have no comments links!! We have to do an extra click to comment on those sites. Ridiculous!)

It is no secret that millions of people are plagued with laziness. Others are non-opinionated and wouldn't comment even if you paid them. Others suffer from surf saturation, (too much to read, too little time to respond).

Overall, most blog visitors are barely able to turn on a computer. Even if you made a general announcement on the front page of MSN, offering a million dollars per new visitor to your site, they still wouldn't be able to find you, so of course there aren't many comments.

As you can see, it is better to tackle this issue the RT way.

What do you think of commenting? Does your heart race when you see a new comment? Does your heart stop when you leave a comment and you realise you missed the point of the article? Do you not comment on principle?

Share, and comment oh beloved, smart fan :)

After a roasting from the money-grabbing money-making blog community, Blogrush went ballistic behind the scenes and addressed many issues.

According to an email, they manually removed 10,000 dodgy blog / splogs that were sallying their reputation. After re-aligning their crossed eyes, they also re-jigged a dash board that outlines all their stats in crystal clear fashion. ie After being accused of blowing chunks, they moved mountains in order to blow hot.

But looking at my dashboard results, are the BlogRush team actually still blowing chunks?

The BlogRush stats

From left to right, you have:

"Blog title" (obvious)

"Syndicated" (ie number of appearances on other blogs' BlogRush widgets)

"Readers" (how many times a post has been clicked on and read)

"Buzz" (no idea about that metric.)

"Readers" is the vital column for me! Ouch!

Is Blogrush widgetry worth the real estate for 2 leads?

If I were paying a fortune per pixel squared, no, BlogRush would have been an expensive waste of space, but thanks to A Small Orange, The Pisstakers is a cheap operation to run, so, hosting the widget isn't a financial issue for me.

Is Blogrush a good idea badly executed?

In theory, content is king, so, BlogRush is a good idea, displaying 5 random humor posts from around the internet. (The content should be pretty hot and relevant, especially after the weeding out they just did to eliminate the crud content.) Positive execution of a good idea.

The dashboard is fairly clear, the widget script is simple and seems to load fast. Technically, BlogRush can boast positive execution.

Their marketable name and service seem to generate media interest on a big scale (for right and wrong reasons!)

So all round, the widget and the viral potential are on the ball.

Why is it only generating a handful of traffic?

I think the poor execution in the equation is on the side of the bloggers like me! I certainly haven't placed the widget in a prime position. In fact, it has been located so far down my right sidebar it may as well have been in the dark.

In terms of visitor numbers, it is a wash between Blog catalog near the top and BlogRush at the bottom. Both are crap for business (the way I have used them!)

So what is the Pisstakers' strategy? I am going to give the BlogRush widget a month in pride of place and see what happens. If it doesn't buck up, then it will get demoted till a better content-rich widget comes along.

What about you guys? Is it handy to quickly reference other humor posts from the side bar widget, or is your RSS reader already full enough with blogs you like and there isn't enough time in the day to read any more?

Swicki, a cross between a search engine and wikipedia, has been developing apace. As well as a source of encyclopedic information, Swicki is also a directory, directing you to useful web sites, making it a good alternative to my favorite people at Technorati.

Quick, what's a Swicki again?

This example of the Pisstakers Swicki search tag cloud is to be found on my Search page, no less. The terms you see displayed reflect what visitors to this site want to find out about, not what I want to push down visitors' throats.

How democratic, you may say. I say, democracy is good, but is not a pre-requisite for efficiency, and Swicki is a perfect anarchical mix of "ease of use" for searchers and "productive laziness" on my part.

Ease of use - From the tag cloud, either click on an existing search term, or input your own search term and get a Google style results page. The "S" in Swicki is not exactly ground-breaking, but the Wicki part ain't half bad! If the search results are a little hazy, and you know a thing or two about the topic, go right ahead and alter or add to the text accompanying the Swicki search result.



Productive laziness
I am not lazy, but I like things that work smart with minimal input from me. Swicki is one of those zero-input from-me dynamic content providers that also has everything necessary for me to tailor search results to the Pisstakers. From a control panel, I can see a list of recent search terms and I can block the irrelevant ones, so I don't get caught up in subjects I haven't written about. I can also add info to the Wiki style results to kick start a meaningful source of info for topics covered in The Pisstakers.

A Technorati killer?

Many people, myself included, get hung up on rankings and overlook the main function of Technorati, which is to organise and promote all those blogs out there. Swicki does the same job, making sense of the morass of sites vying for our attention, but it does it in quite a simple, democratic and powerful way.



This is the list of Recent and Top Swickis by search numbers, plus Videos. And below this list is a simple layout of blogs by topic.

The Top Swicki guys have some credibility, if you put any value in Technorati A-lister, TechCrunch, but the whole search and wiki scene is less controllable by the few. This is because Swicki's system allows surfers (not just bloggers) to select AND contribute to what they think is worth while on the internet. A long way from the blogger-manipulated rankings on Technorati.

Without the manic emphasis on rankings, I think Swicki is a cool environment compared to Technorati. Not so busy either, with about 100,000 blogs to plough through. Worth a thought, at least.

Now I will crawl under a rock and watch my Technorati "usefulness to society" rank continue to fall.

The Blog Rush concept arrived in a huge wave of viral marketing, but it appears to have been quickly anesthetized by the making money online blogging community. Oh well!

There has been plenty of BS BR conversation from disenchanted bloggers who didn't earn enough for their first Porsche in the first week. Fortunately, more mature people like Jack Design eloquently explain why the money-hungry blogs out there may view it is a scam, a pyramid scheme, a good idea gone horribly wrong. The guys at Blog Rush have also been quick to step up to the plate and admit to their flaws too. Plenty of people are singing loud from the same hymn sheet - except me?

Ed got it wrong?

Reading around the issues with Blog Rush, I felt momentarily inadequate when I realised that my review of Blog Rush contained almost no mention of the flaws! I actually gave it a thumbs up. The only issue that got me annoyed with Blog Rush, is the rigid format of their widget. How superficial am I! Otherwise, I liked it - a minority position, as usual!

Far from regretting my position, though, I am glad now that I took the intuitive stance, and displayed the widget, despite my ignorance of the dodgy behind-the-scenes credits.

Blog Rush rocks

Maybe Blog Rush is flawed as get rich quick scheme, but so what?! I don't see the problem - because the basic front-end service works, and the entertainment value for me is worth a lot more in the long term than a flawed and arcane system of credits that fails to deliver quick money-making traffic.

I do want to make money one day, but it will be off the back of readers interested in good content. Therefore, in my case, Blog Rush is a great service that offers content and links that should make my readers' visits all the more interesting.Call me old-fashioned, but as long as there are 5 new links to humor related posts looping through my sidebar with every page refresh, carry on, Blog Rush. That is good enough for me.

For now, I couldn't give a rat's testicle about the flawed credit scheme. The John Chows can use false RSS feeds to game the numbers as much as they like. Blog Rush can be as unprofitable as a Sirius, as far as I am concerned. If I was a fanatic about monetizing every square pixelated inch of my blog, my attitude would of course be different, but I am not that short termist.

The future of Blog Rush

If Blog Rush folks were clever enough to invent and market the service, I presume they are smart enough to make the service sustainable. Personally, I would say that if they can't think of a way to earn big bucks and win back credibility from the Making Money On-line community, drop the John Chows like a hot potato and focus on wooing the rest of the (arguably more interesting) sectors of blogging. What do you think?

RSS subscriber numbers is one way to demonstrate the popularity of a blog, and a healthy number makes new visitors feel half way confident that they aren't the only ones at the party. Unfortunately, The Pisstakers is set up as a series of blogs within a blog and the homepage, tech, news and entertainment blogs have their own individual RSS feeds. Traffic is growing, but, the growing RSS subscriber stats for the whole Pisstakers site were split between several feeds, which wasn't great.

To overcome this slight inconvenience, xFruits have come to the rescue and aggregated all RSS feeds together under one feed. Today I can announce the most daily visitors to this site via RSS is:

Thanks.

xFruits RSS feed contest

To celebrate this landmark, I have a contest going on! If you want the chance to win a $39 Kingston memory card for your camera, GPS, MP3 player, or PDA etc, follow these simple steps.

There is so much to do when you blog. Anything from a touch of writing now and again to developing a network, innovating, categorising, designing,... and worst of all, you have to tag everything you damn well produce so the world and his web2.0 wife can you find you every which way.

All you bloggers fed up with tagging, it could be time to thank a bunch of bright north Londoners for an intervention called Jiglu.

Sign up and see what they can do auto-magically for your tagging.

It looks so easy even I could do it. Sign up, they scrape your site, take ownership of everything you ever wrote and in return you get a set of auto-generated tags so folks can find content on your blog from Jiglu. Kushti.

The Jiglu Terms of Service mention the Billy Bragg 1984 apocalyptic material ownership fear. In true Brit style, they say the apocalyptic reference is only slightly over-blown, ie they don't really own your stuff, but they do have permission to use your material however they can.

To be fair, if you want Jiglu, or anyone else for that matter, to promote your material, I guess you have to compromise somewhere! And anyway, whenever you publish an article, as long as you always include an internal link to an article you wrote, or link back to your homepage, it should be OK to let people use your material as much as possible.

Conconclusion

This free tagging service has to be worthy of consideration, methinks. And the Terms of Service are entertaining! I will keep you posted on what happens.

Thanks to Celebrity Insider Photos for having the Jiglu ad in their sidebar and giving me the idea.

In the world of blogging, there is always the next big networking idea to stir it all up. First MyBlogLog, then BlogCatalog, Wavumi, and now, Blogrush. Never slow to jump on bandwagons, I am there, bottom right sidebar, with my cut-off Blog Rush widget. I will just lean back now and wait to become famous!

I jest, of course, because networking success and fame take time to generate - unless you decide to kidnap the opposition and / or steal back your own material.

Blogrush

We all know that things come in 4's! Sure enough, BlogRush is blogger networking paradigm number 4, a variation on a glorified RSS feed. When I see that Blog rush displays relevant "conversations" in the form of fresh and relevant blog posts, I am thinking, "Thank you. Perfect." Instead of smiley, creative, bizarre avatarial faces in a widget like MyBlogLog, you see titles to blog posts that are related to your own blog genre. Now that makes sense.

100% of visitors get a few random but relevant posts handed to them on a plate. Oi loike that idea and the other MBL clones are in trouble.

Rush to Blog rush

I am adding Blog rush to the side bar mix, adding their widget to my right side bar. I am cool with that extra code because it is a widget that adds content of interest to readers with or without a blog.

Admittedly Blog Rush will not appear too high up the sidebar, because I don't want to drive visitors way from The Pisstakers immediately. But, hey, if you scroll down my home page, pick a few posts here and there, and then zoom off to a post or three on another blog via Blog Rush, I can live with that.

It isn't all rosy. What I can't abide right now with Blog Rush is the lack of adjustments to the widget size. I am sure this will be addressed because the big competitiors,. MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog and Wavumi, already let you twist and manipulate your widgets to your heart's content, so Blog Rush will have to keep up. Otherwise, despite lack of hard evidence of where it is going, Blog Rush seems the best idea to hit the blog network scene in a while.

Sign up

Roll on. And sign up to Blog Rush... apparently if you sign up via me, I get something out of it. I am not quite sure what, where, when or how I benefit, but I just thought I should disclose the upside of joining a Pisstakers band wagon! What do you think?

301 redirects, oh no, that sounds geeky. Indeed, it is, but 301 s, as we call them in the game, are a part of blogmeistery that you need to be aware of.

301 a moved post

The simplest scenario is using a 301 to keep the traffic going to posts that you have re-named or moved.

Sometimes I am so pleased with a post that I forget to give it a Google friendly Permalink ie I stick with the default http://thepisstakers.com/1237y312 hgsdfagkjsdguqoyw.html instead of cool-post.html. Once it is published and people start bookmarking it, you can't just rename it properly and re-publish it. Or rather you can, but bookmarks to the original URL will be broken.

I have a load of naff URLs, and if I were smart I would rename them more usefully, republish and then go to the Control Panel and use a 301 to auto redirect the first wierdy URL to the slick new one.

301 for SEO heaven

The second scenario is consolidating links to one domain. In plain English, I set up this site as http://thepisstakers.com, thinking it is simple for people to type. There are 15000 incoming links to that URL, which is good. However, 30% of people still insist on linking to http://www.thepisstakers.com, so there are 5000 separate links to the www. address too. This is no big deal in terms of keeping posts findable, but for SEO purposes, Google treat each URL as a different website. Bottom line, having two variations of the same domain on the internet dilutes the overall value of The Pisstakers in search engine rankings.

To rectify this common mistake, ordinarily you just go to the Control Panel and fill in the blanks to do a 301 redirect.

.htaccess redirect

Of course nothing is quite so simple for a Pisstaker as filling in the blanks. I created an infinite loop of redirects and no page on the site would open! That is where my web hosts, A Small Orange came to the rescue after midnight last night.

Hello,

I have set this up for you in your .htaccess file with the following:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thepisstakers\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.thepisstakers.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

How cool is that for support?!

This graphic shows the state of the site before the changes.



Now, there are 20,000 incoming links to www.thepisstakers.com regardless of which URL people have used. ie 75% more links have suddenly appeared and that should do this site a little bit of good in the search engine ranking world. And even if the Pisstakers does not move above the top 72% of sites on the internet (hahahahaha) it is nice to know the site is tidy behind the scenes, thanks to a "simple" redirect.

It is no secret that I find busy sidebars a distraction, and I was heading towards hypocrisy with a hotch potch of disparate widgets lurking in my own sidebar. But one day, flash, ahhaaaaaa, more by luck than judgement, I stuck them all together and they ended up adding to, rather than detracting from the basic theme of the site. (All opinions expressed on the Pisstakers are mine!)

Widgets are also a lazy man's way to provide dynamic content, so that every time someone visits it looks like there is something new. To be accurate, I do update the quotes and the contests widgets several times a week, so i guess I am not a total bluffer, but by and large the javascript serves a massive combination of messages and images with little help from me.

Widget warriors

In order to spread the word of The Pisstakers and also give some free entertainment and link love and content to others, I have made the codes available for download. I would like to thank the following folks for giving widgets a try and notching up traffic for everyone with a link onboard.

ABC, installed and wrote a short post too about the contest widget.

DisregardMe blogged about the contests widget, as did the mighty Contests Blogger

ClearSpring have a widgetizing site for all things widgetal

Sha had a contest widget but it dried up?

I Eat Snowman Poop has a cool Humor blogs widget on display

Dating legend, Mimi, has a contest widget for her readers to drool over

I didnt manage to get a forward and back arrow on the contest widget in time for the Win a Wii contest site. Sorry.

Linda has a contest widget despite it clashing with her color scheme.

Sandee spotted a discrepancy in the code for one widget. Thanks for paying attention.

Claire has the funny quotes scrolling through her sidebar. Her own sweaty thigh quote is quintessentially English.

Lord Likely banned me from his sidebar - thankfully along with everyone else with a widget!

The Widgets Lab put the contest widget through its paces. Room for improvement.

The funny quotes widget was dumped on Saturday night. Excellent result.

Larry went Hmmm and installed a funny quotes widget. He never looked back.

There should be a funny quotes widget lurking behind this blogger's doors, but they are closed now.

Celebrity Insider and Mikes MoneyMaking Mission are both busy but still have room for a static button, as do the unrelated Rag Box and the Owen Wilson fan, Shadowscope.

And the guru of the internet, Peter has the Necessary Skills and the room for Funny Quotes.

Callie Ann keeps on blogging and has a Funny Quotes widget with her own quote included - The village called, they want their idiot back!

Howard may be incorrigible like a kitchen gadget, but his funny quote widget is going strong.

Plakkerdeklap visitors had a good chin wag over the quotes widget. Translation anyone?

Paint me a Happy Smile has a sense of humor too, as well as loud music that launches when you land on the site. (Worse than too many widgets, that!)

Funny quotes occupy the top notch themed blog of Terri terri. The widget doesn't even make her place look untidy, so it must be quite well styled!

At last, Last Minute Lyn got a mention for installing the quotes widget.

No widgets but fantastic urban photos!

And finally, The Book project has a little banner of Ed. Awwwwsome.

So there you go, plenty of activity. If you want some action, check out the contest widget here, and the rest here.

When you visit a bog and you need to know fast who is behind the scenes, behind the ideas, or behind the times, you look for an About Page. From a site owner's perspective, the About page is also a great opportunity to market yourself or your company in one big hit.

The About page deserves some attention, but this crucial piece of real estate on a website is often neglected. Blogger profiles for instance, seem to fail miserably most of the time. When I started blogging, it took me a while to even add an About page, let alone try and do something creative with it. However, there are plenty of enlightened folks out there, pushing the envelope, and here are 3 that caught my eye.

About pages that rock

It's Monkey Mamou This About page is a quickfire synopsis of a troubled mind with a stomach prone to heaving. She sets the scene well for what it is to come elsewhere in this quirky witty blog. For the inquisitive, you have to go clicking FYI for an explanation of the origins of the title Monkey Mamou. I was a little disappointed, to be honest, after reading that Mamou is a place, not some sort of goddess. Perhaps some important facts are best left off the About page and left to the imagination.

I get tired of trying to find new creative ways to write an about page.... Since this blog site is mostly about me, my views on just about everything, and what I do, I figured I just fill out one of those online surveys , in order to stop Pisstaker from mentioning that I don't have an about page...

This is an About page with info to a magnitude of ten more indepth than any About page out there. I have read 60 lines down, how many more to go? That will teach me for taking the piss.


Larry is different. He has an About Corner. Dispensing with tradition, he tells us all about his blog from a highly public place in the sidebar. Good tactic, especially as his inimitable face beams out from above to attract your attention. (I think like most famous people he has copyrighted his personal bits and pieces, so I will not risk a lawsuit with a photo here of his bonce.)

About page is an important part of the mix

Bottom line, the About page can draw visitors into your world quicker than any other page. Alternatively, if you want to leave visitors in the dark, add a blank or boring About page. (This could even be number 11 on the list of tips to drive people away from your site.) I know I will be revisiting The Pisstakers About page just to check where it figures on a scale of 1 to 10. Maybe you should too, assuming you have a website!

It doesn't get more fun than this.

Edit

Preview

Published

If reading or writing online snippets of under 140 characters is your thing, you will love the inanane chitter chatter micro-blogging diary-gone-mad phenomenon of Twittering.

Twitter, our savior

Like we couldn't live without another Web 2.0-ism! Thank you Twitter for bridging the gap between manic text messaging on cell phones, (an unbearable and inordinately complex and wasteful pastime), and blogging.

But I jest, of course. Twitter is a new online communication paradigm suitable for instant messaging on phones and PC's and any other device you hold dear. Embrace!

Nowadays, to chuckle at your sister's private smitten kitten ramblings about boys, all mixed in with I hate my nosey brother comments, and every step of her trip for coffee, just find her Twitter name and track the conversation.

Hi all my best friends I saw an hour ago, I am going to the toilet now and then I am off to Starbucks. Aren't you pleased I am sharing that with you in real-time? What else do you need to know? Twitter / Jaiku me, ciao. XOXOX.

Anyone else at Starbucks? Jinx.

If that boy with the earring and weeping blue mole is still serving mocha at Starbucks, who wants me to say hi to him? Be quick, I just opened the door.

Oooh, it is cold in here. I asked them to turn down the a/c. They said, no. What should I reply? Quick.

I borrowed a coat. Mocha tastes like mocha. Is that how it is supposed to taste. Help.

Likewise, there is no need to even wait till tomorrow for words from your favorite blogger. Twitter and micro-blogging enable us to access and read blow-by-blow accounts of the life of any blogging Twit (Or not, in this case of Leo laporte jumping ship to Jaiku! ) It is sooooo cool - also not!

Chris Bailey is equally unimpressed, or is it bamboozled by the whole idea, likening Twitter to stalking! (Unfortunately it is almost impossible to get arrested for stalking, so I doubt Twittering will ever be outlawed.)

The good in twitter

I am cynical and ignorant. However, if internet gurus like Paul Boag or the guys behind MyBlogLog are behind Twitter, there must be a reason they talk it up?

In Mr Boag's case, I heard he doesn't really understand why it is so popular in his world.

My theory is, he met the founder of twitter who probably sounded credible enough to convince him that there must be something unique (and currently intangible) in this micro blogging idea.

One day, oh Web 2.0 warrior, Twitter 11.7 will be of use to the mainstream. One day it will save your life, so why not give it a go.

The satire in twitter

After doing a 180, and looking past Twitter's non-ruby related growing pains, I think the good may well outweigh the bad and bewildering aspects. For instance, how cool that you can pretend to be someone else, like this Condoleeza Rice imposter twittering as if (s)he were at the White House. Thanks to Open for that touch of twitter satire.

Or you can relive historical moments like the Hindenburg disaster!

Sign me up for that sort of creative misuse of a new technology. Rather like back in the 60's, using a trendy typewriter for a doorstop, so wrong, but if needs must...

In conconclusion

Micro-blogging is currently a fairly elitist tech pastime, but one day, it will evolve into the consciousness of every grandmother and aging uncle on earth, somehow, some day. Meanwhile check out another Twitter clone mentioned here, plus Jaiku and Tumblr.

Live a bit - under the microscope.

Sounds like Google are biting the butts of a certain genre of blogger , the ones who run backlink for review features that resemble Googlebombs. This term, according to Google

refers to a prank where people attempt to cause someone else's site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query

Googlebombs projected a certain politician to the top of searches for miserable failure, but it looks like they have evolved into causing failure for smart ass bloggers.

In a new angle on reviews, reviewers had to include links to a site using specific meaningful phrases (proscribed anchor text). Overnight, these terms, like make Money Online became new world googlebombs. The gamers would have got away with it, if they hadn't milked the idea to death to get top of the SERP.

This new algorithm isn't so harsh that it treats every review for links feature as undesirable. Good reviews with content and keywords of value to readers / searchers are what Google encourage. However, the gamers took a decent idea and turned it into a shady content-poor idea - and ultimately wasted the reviewers' time. With no desire to add any content of their own to the conversation, except make a link and ask for more submissions, the gamers banged away at the feature for months, building link networks and adding not a lot else to the value of the internet.

Google has taken a look at their contribution to content and decided enough is enough. The gamers have been knocked down a peg or two and to get back to the top of the search results they are now going to have to add valuable content again. How harsh is that!?

Surely experts know that Google search algorithms are nebulous and constantly in flux. The secrecy surrounding the content of algorithms is tantalizing, but one thing that is no secret is that Google are striving to make sure that when you search for a term, you damn well get a relevant and authoritative set of results. How hard can it be to follow that ethos?

As long as you blog fairly and expansively and don't try to manipulate scenarios (that are only ever going to be temporary flaws due to the ongoing development work of the Googloids), how wrong can most people go on their path to higher SERP and PR?

I suppose it is human nature to game, to cut corners? Certain people have that arrogance that somehow they are cleverer than a multi billion dollar gang of search engine geniuses who have forgotten more than most people ever know about search.

No doubt these gaming characters now languishing on lower pages will be back, but who is going to follow them up another garden path. Not me, at least not till I see evidence that content is king in their plan, and the best content rises to the top.

As my grandfather said, Some people are so clever they are stupid! I don't aim to be stupid, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot. I am going to keep Google happy and keep posting original content and link to relevant sites regularly but in moderation. And choose who I review for carefully. Ades was a good choice, he actually has something real to offer, and doesn't take the piss.

Do you think the new algorithm solves a problem, or opens different doors of abuse?

Not wishing to state the obvious, but apart from comments, and stats, there isn't too much to go on when looking for evidence of effective blogging. Gut feelings are a waste of time, because digital content floating through comcast tubes doesn't give off too many human vibes, at least not the last time I looked. And who can even begin to double guess the world of Digg, or Stumble Upon? Nobody.

However, Awstats, Google Analytics or any other Stat counter worth zip cuts through the basic crap and sets your curious mind straight, at least as far as telling you how many people called by for how long and where they hail from.

Unique visitors

That green bar in May represents 7200 unique visitors ie the number of individuals who visited in May is 10% higher than in April. Excellent. In real life that upward trend equates to a higher Alexa rank, perhaps, which equates to more negotiating power with companies like ReviewMe, who like to see evidence of sustained action.

You could of course just be controversial for one post, and get Dugg. Visitors bookmark you and improve your "authority" in the eyes of Reviewme. But one-off visitors fail to return and then forget you and forget to unsubscribe, leaving you a little more popular overall - and somehow that is good for Reviewme and readers?

(FWIW, Ed's reviews are free and to be honest, building a reputation for interesting reviewing is more important than pocket money just now.)

Pages visited

3 times more pages viewed in May than January. Not bad. In real world terms, that means the 5 sites currently in the ad box under my left side bar get 6000 impressions per month. The freebie, zero money down zero to pay offer is worth anything from $10 to $1.50 depending on where you compare.

Kontera, the adlinks that slow down your website, is another page view oriented deal. They usually ask for evidence of 500,000 pages monthly before they even look at you. Joel Comm will get you in for less however! And no, I am not going to mention the other JC because he makes out that his are the only readers Kontera gives concessions to.

Bandwidth

I smile when bloggers ask for money to cover bandwidth costs. Nothing wrong with generating an income, but if you are so strapped for cash that you need to beg, or more conventionally, fill your site with ads to supplement $5 a month for a web host, maybe you should forget ads and blogging and get a paper round!

I say $5, the current cost of a small ASmallOrange hosting plan, but at current rates, the bandwidth supplied by ASO actually equates to $1 a month. When I get 35000 uniques a month I will have to upgrade to $10 a month. Shoot. But at that stage, if I charge to advertise on The Pisstakers, it won't be because I need $10, but because I will have something to offer advertisers! Funny how it all ties in.

Countries sending visitors

This is interesting to me. I know exactly where my first round of foreign correspondents are going to be located. Anonymity is a shame for the Unknowns, whoever they are. Those dark lurkers will never be famous.

Time spent on site

Doing a meaningless calculation produced the meaningless stat of 1150 hours usage last month!

Search engine referrals

Who says Google aren't important! ? And (Images) is a new twist for many sites. And Powerset is a semantic language search engine for the future.

Conclusion

Thanks to the visitors who call by regularly, much appreciated, and if it continues, I hope your patronage will be rewarded with ever more valuable links from The Pisstakers.

Don't forget that Technorati deletes links over 6 months old, so keep posting about all your fave sites, else their popularity will wane.

And I will be interested to see what happens to traffic next month, because I am about to go all giddy and upgrade my blogging software which as I mentioned, has been super SEO-ed and promises to be a google whore/friend of spectacular dimensions. So, till next month, I'm all statted out.

Just a quickie to convey my immense and over-stimulated nerdy excitement at the new version of Rapidweaver. To me, the advances in this super cool desktop blogging tool represent a huge sigh of relief. Rapidweaver and The Pisstakers are rocking in the right direction.


All I need to do is wait a bit for Bonsai Studio to update some itzy code and we will be in business as follows:.

Rapidweaver is good for Ed

In practical terms, Rapidweaver 3.6 means I can have even better times putting this blog together faster. I know Macs are only toys but what a fun toy! And instead of facing the prospect of transferring hundreds of posts across to Wordpress, the so-called daddy of blogging software. I can spend all that wasted time now being funny!!

A helvetica font walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The barman says, We don't serve your type!

Rapidweaver is good for Google

To Google it will mean search-friendly titles for all my articles. When you search Hunter chimps evolve into Hell's Kitchen chefs, that is what should appear in Google rather than some arcane meaningless reference to The Pisstakers.

Most important, Rapidweaver is good for you

What it means to you, my readers, is better tagging, more categories, maybe even a tag cloud, so you can zip around in style. There may also be more multimedia than ever. Woah, now you are talking.

For The Pisstakers as a whole, and that includes you, Rapidweaver means rosy times ahead.

Are you aware of the madness that sees 120,000 new blogs launched every single bloody day of the week? Cwazy talk. And how do these people keep in touch, network, interact, improve the world of blogging? Via MyBlogLog clones, that is how!

Who are these clones cloned from?

MyBlogLog is the primary Web 2.0 social community site for bloggers. It brings some sort of order and cohesion to a potential 70 million strong army / community of writers.

Where are these MyBlogLog clones?

Once one person provides a service, others follow and improve and become known in this field of endeavor as MyBlogLog clones. Social community sites for bloggers all share a common theme - they are everywhere, but nowhere, baby! The only evidence they exist is via the bloggers' avatars that inhabit sidebar widgets galore.

How do these clone things work?

Handsome authors gurn at blog readers all around the globe from widgets laid out to varying degrees of complexity. Click on an avatar and you go through to a profile page where you see a little community in action. Clickety click keep on discovering new bloggers and communities, leave messages, spam strangers... It is sweet.

Some clones

Yahoo catapaulted MyBlogLog to the top of the tree with its recent buy out and has clocked up well over 100,000 blogger members. Meanwhile, a new kid on the block, Blog Catalog, is making waves because of its clever interface, and then there is Wavumi, a start up with noble intentions, but a long way to go still.

MyBlogLog

This innovative site now backed by an 800lb gorilla may be too simple for some, but I think the basic premise is still intact. I check out the 10 face widget in my sidebar and I go to my MBL home page from time to time to check for messages and the sites of new wannabe contacts. That is pretty much all I need. I guess I should drop the Log part and call it MyBlogPlace? To be honest I have a life that can't incorporate infinitessamal studies of every visitor stat and examine the log of every visitor's manic path to my site. I am too busy reading Google Analytics already!

Having said that the site is pretty simple, I should add that there is some messy stuff in the sidebars sometimes, and recently I also noticed some new clutter, tag options. Oh well, nothing is perfect and I will get used to those oversights one day, I guess.


Of course the greatest aspect of MyBlogLog is the popular MyBlogLog Sunday here at The Pisstakers. It is fast becoming the home of gummi bear addicts and bloggers seeking witty-ish mini reviews. Call by Sunday 10 - 11 am and you may get in on it yourself.

Wavumi

At the other extreme of the development cycle is Wavumi, a MyBlogLog clone created by Patrice, a brilliant Belgian. The idea is simple, I think. An author of a web site is likely to visit the web sites authored by its visitors Looking at the quote every which way, it seems to make sense, but just in case you share my doubts, I will play safe and adopt the MyBlogLog approach, offering their tag line Connect with fellow readers. Phew, that's a lot more straightforward for a non-Belgian mind to grasp.

Over the months since its release, Patrice, the author, has been keeping us informed, via his blog, of progress fine-tuning the code and beefing up the server. As a result, he has acquired 26 members, 4 of whom have installed the widget. It is all very bare bones, but nothing a multi-million cash injection into the marketing and graphics department couldn't solve. Contact Patrice for all investment offers, or the code for his widget.

Blog Catalog

Zooming into sidebars at an alarming rate is the widget from Blog Catalog. They claim it is a few stages advanced on MBL in terms of usability and usefulness. (Less the clone, more the evolution?)Taking a spin through it, you seem to have the same facilities as MyBlogLog, plus a chance to have proper discussions and a neater way to see your latest blog posts.

Whether it is better laid out overall, I am not sure, although I feel the need to repeat that the latest tag box addition in MBL doesn't add to the clarity of that site! So maybe yes, Blog catalog is an improvement. Of course the real benchmark, user numbers, indicates a big gulf between BC and MBL, but time will tell. I suppose it wouldn't kill yahoo! if their MBL project ended up number 2!!

Do these MyBlogLog clone sites work?

The cynic in me says that it is a great system for spreading a warm deluded feeling that real people actually call by other bloggers' site for a long read! I am sure many bloggers use these community network gizmos for a quick show of heads plus inspiration for ideas, but I am only half right there! In its purest form, this is a great networking idea for the power house of the internet, the bloggers. You meet new folks, get new ideas, and bring new material to your own readers. Not too shabby a result.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, as long as the widget loads fast, the rest is detail!!

If you like the safety in numbers of MyBlogLog, go for it, and if you want to do more stuff with it, check out the SoloSeo guru for inspiration.

BlogCatalog is more feature-rich out the box, but if it isn't so popular with bloggers, that makes networking a bit less efficient than it should be.

And Wavumi, let's here it for the small guys and get behind them, mention the site in a blog post, and even install the beta widget somewhere. (It is in the sidebar of my Blogger homepage.)

So, who do you think will rule the roost, or is there room for even more players?

I was just going to hit the sack when I noticed I had been tagged in one of those meme thingies. I tend to look at meme's as "Ideas for people who don't know what to blog about today - pass it on." Well, this is different because it is Larry Hnetka asking why I blog. Hmmm, he is a funny and mature and grounded guy who has been on the end of a few too many sarccy comments from me, so I owe him a reply. And most importantly, the meme is about a topic I actually cover here at ThePisstakers under Blogging and Tech.

So there you are, now you know why I am going to break my vow of memelessness (since the last time at least) and give 5 reasons why I blog. And after reading a tip from Phishie , the motivational blogger, I am going to give this article the subtitle, What motivates me to blog! Oooh, I feel 5000 impressions and a banner on his site coming on!!!

I have a computer, it needs a work out

There is only so much info you can include in emails to family and friends in the real world, so, rather than let the PC seize up in between the bimonthly "Hi all, and bye all" letter to family and friends, I give it a good work-out with a few blog posts.

Also, you can never really say in family correspondence what is going on in the darkest depths of your mind - it will only frighten your nearest and nearest to learn that you ponder search engines and blog interrogation techniques! A blog is therefore a great way to convey my inner techno machinations to imaginary friends in the form of enlightening and amusing articles.

Bring new design paradigms to the world

This is a rather lofty title that means I had this idea for a non-conventional web page but had no idea how to achieve it, so I got a couple of smart guys on the job. My contribution to the over bloated design world is a quirky blog theme with as few rectilinear lines as possible, a stupid iconized grin on my face and acres of white space. Feel free to run with the concept and with your next theme, go mad and save us from yet another Wordpress cookie-cutter template.

To prove that anyone can blog

I didn't know jack about blogging, except it was "hard" to make a go of it. Initially, I got sucked into the small SEO lie perpetrated by experts who want to keep the blogging game shrouded in mystery. They claim that for success you need smart SEO all the way, and that you should only link to PR4 and above sites etc. All I can say is...

If you want to write plenty about things you really enjoy and you play fair with everyone, regardless of their perceived ranking status, and you dabble in SEO and you like to get around forums and network with other bloggers and have fun, the rest comes. (As a caveat, I say this as someone who has a fairly good PR but not as much traffic as many sites with a lower PR!)

Earn loads of money

I am that guy living on easy street who wants a little extra fur lining on the sidewalk outside my palace. Got a problem with that? Wrap a brick up in a $10 bill and throw it through my window, see if I care. The $10 will be added to the donations pile in front of me, and once I have analysed the fingerprints and traced the owner, it will give me something else to blog about too.

Let off steam

Behind closed doors, I am the typical opinionated twat shouting at guests on Dr Phil, telling them to get a life. They can't hear me on the TV, but you can sure as hell read these blogged words. Hey you lazy, violent stupid losers out there, listen to Dr Ed. Start blogging like he did and get a life!

Now if that wasn't enough of a motivational and revealing insight into why I blog, then you need to go over to Blog Interrogation and read other people's revelations. There you will get a different perspective and learn something - and you won't be part of a meme either. Which reminds me, who wants to be tagged and write some more?

As part of a post on traffic stats, I mention keyword phrases that made me sit up and look and wonder, wtf? I will never cease to be amazed by people's imagination, and Google's search algorithms. A match made in satirical heaven, as illustrated by the following wordsets.

Keyword phrases from the depths of disturbed minds

Naked zwinky. How sad that not only do people create life like avatars of themselves, they want to know how to do it in the nude. Shiver shudder barf.

geiko.com Well, I guess I was flattered to appear alongside the greatest insurance company on TV ads today, but then I realised it is one of those instances where a typo throws up a "positive" result and you appear miles up the normal list of search results. The cheeky little gecko and irate cavemen come from from the ads by geico with a C. Maybe the company with a K do insurance against the trauma of reading unfunny blogs?

javascript curry song lyrics. Now this is getting way too surreal for me. And the whacky thing is, it wasn't searched for just once, by mistake. Someone seriously wanted to know about this topic.

What are the most bizarro phrases to come up in your search results?

7 months ago I tentatively hit the blog waves and I have been reading traffic stats ever since. I have noticed a few trends on The Pisstakers in terms of visitors, some good, some eye-brow raising, and one, bad.

The good bits are: increasing traffic, a steady increase in the the time that visitors spend on the site per visit, a drop in the number of visits per reader per day and some really cool commenters.

The bad bits are: some of the keywords people search for! Many are, shall we say, surprising. I have dispensed with a few of those in a post called Keyword phrases to cringe at!

Increasing traffic

After reading this next paragraph, perhaps you will be able to work out how many unique visitors I have had this month (up to 21st of May):

Starting in September, traffic rose from zero to around 600 per month by November. In December that monthly total doubled - despite Christmas spirit that ruins it for the last week opr so!. By March, the monthly traffic doubled again, and with spring in the air, April saw 10 times as many people visiting as had called by in any one of the first three months. (I am running around the stat counter here, so keep up!) So, here in May, I predict I will reach last month's total by the 24th.

The uniques count for May up to today is? Answer at end of article

More time spent on the site

I estimate that if you read this article and then go check out this post from beginning to end, you will increase the average time each visitor spends reading The Pisstakers by at least 10%. And because there is only text on the page, the hit on my bandwidth will be negligible!

Out of interest, how long do you spend on this site on average? If it is more than 2 minutes, welcome to the 6% bracket.

Less visits per visitor per day

I think this is good? Most newcomers can't believe their eyes the first time, and have to return later to confirm that they won't be coming back again. That number is going down and regulars are going up.

A weird stat is that something like 70% of visitors are first timers and about a third of them bookmark the site, but most don't return. I think I need to do a widget for them. The self destruct bookmark. If it isnt used within 7 days, it blows up your computer. What do you think?

It is also quite scary to think some really important people have taken a look at this site, and rolled their eyes never to return. Oh well, when we are famous!!!

More comments, and plenty of cool ones too

As a blogger, there is nothing quite like reading new comments. It is like astronauts finding life on Mars. They revel in the knowledge that there is somebody out there perhaps even bigger than themselves! So, thank you to those kind souls for making a sad blogger happy.

As an aside, I read that if you get 1 comment per 400 visitors, you are doing OK. A round of applause to the trend breakers here, then. And apologies to silent visitors who obviously read stuff here and lose the will to write even a few words in response, in anger, in sympathy. For what it is worth, I try to leave a few words when I call by, because like I said, even a couple of words makes a difference to morale.

A few more trackbacks

I didn't know much about Trackback, all very blog nerdy, but they are a good time saver and a neat way to promote your own posts too!

Say you already covered the same topic as me, and have nothing else to add to my post, just ping through your article to my comments box via trackback. That way, you don't need to dream up any thing new to say, you add to the "conversation" and you can lure people away from The Pisstakers to read your far more entertaining words in their entirety.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

So there are a few hidden insights to the state of blog traffic(king) here. How does it compare to your experience? And for them that care, I have had 5000 unique visitors , and 22000 pages read up to the 21st.

And that just goes to prove that Google page rank is not an indication of popularity! In Google's eyes I am more "valuable" than John Chow dot com's site last month. Yet he earned something like $10000 and had more than 20 times my level of traffic. Just blog and ignore the stats!!!

One thing The Pisstakers can't be accused of is filling humor fans' eyeballs with Adsense. In my opinion, there is no need to be overtly commercial, as there are so many more subliminal ways to skin visitors to a blog . (That is a joke btw, there are no income streams whatsoever on this web site.) However there is a looping display box in the left side bar that could be construed as advertising space. I want to offer a spot on it to 7 humor-related bloggers.

Brohans currently loop through a few thousand times a month, as does number 9 in the imaginary dream team, the designer at Bonsai Studio. They pay not a penny, and apparently do get some traffic from this PR5 site of dubious descent.

If you are serious about blogging in a humorous way and you would be fair-minded enough to post about The Pisstakers from time to time, a free spot is yours for a few months. 28588 page views last month even if divided between 9, amounts to 3000 freebie views each, and in theory that number should rise. Contact Ed.