05.27.06

rules for smart web development

Posted in General at 5:17 am by Paloma Cruz

20 Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-development from Vitaly Friedman’s Notebook (read the article for details):

  1. Respect your visitors.
  2. Bad advertisement is evil.
  3. Inform and teach your visitors.
  4. Develop your own style.
  5. Respect the standards.
  6. Be clear. Use a clear markup.
  7. Hate Internet Explorer if you like, but don’t ignore its users.
  8. Care about your content.
  9. Don’t be concerned about web-crawlers and SEO optimization.
    9a. Avoid wrong SEO and bad PR.
  10. Contact, but don’t spam.
  11. Write, publish, feel free to ask.
  12. Answer your e-mails immediately.
  13. Use the advantages of Semantic Web. Tagging, tagging, tagging.
  14. Make connections.
  15. Think in global terms.
  16. Never compromise your principles.
  17. Stay in touch. Keep being informed about what is happening on the Net.
  18. Learn to handle the creativity block.
  19. Make Web prettier. CSS, clear, readable and intelligent design are beautiful.
  20. Be aware of the Power of the Web.

Found via ProBlogger.

05.26.06

learn from others: two years of blogging

Posted in General at 5:54 am by Paloma Cruz

I like to learn from others. “20 insights from 2 years of blogging” is a nice post that will give you the lifecycle of a blog. Worth a read.

05.25.06

why new media is growing

Posted in General at 6:55 am by Paloma Cruz

Darren Rowse gives us 8 Reasons Why New Media is Growing:

  1. Participation
  2. Suspicion of Institution
  3. Playfulness
  4. Relationality
  5. Holism
  6. Juxtaposition
  7. DIY
  8. Immediacy

Want to know what these mean? Read his post! :-)

05.24.06

the power of blogs

Posted in General, News at 4:24 pm by Paloma Cruz

Why you should Harness the Marketing Power of Blogs:

  • Humanize your business.
  • Improve your customer service.
  • Give your target market the information they’re looking for.
  • Drive traffic to your sales website.
  • Build your credibility and establish yourself as an industry expert.
  • Promote your products or services.
  • Generate extra income.

But what does it take to become a really successful blogger?

  1. Great content
  2. Regular updating
  3. Your own distinct voice

Found via Library Marketing.

05.23.06

the two most important words in blogging

Posted in General at 4:19 pm by Paloma Cruz

If you are trying to attract readers you need to know what The Two Most Important Words in Blogging are:

  1. you
  2. because

Why?

[snip]

When it comes to writing engaging content, “you” is the most powerful word in the English language, because people are ultimately interested in fulfilling their own needs. It may sound harsh, but the fact is your readers won’t start to actually care about you at all until you’ve repeatedly offered them exceptional value with your blog.

[snip]

One of the most important characteristics of compelling, persuasive content is specificity. The more specific you are, the more credible your points, arguments or sales pitch.

[snip]

05.22.06

MySpace legislation

Posted in News at 3:56 pm by Paloma Cruz

House Bill Would Force Libraries to Block Social Websites
– found at the American Library Association Web site

Legislation introduced May 9 by Reps. Michael G. Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) seeks to prohibit minors from accessing chat rooms and such popular social-networking websites as MySpace and Facebook on school or library computers. The Deleting Online Predators Act, H.R. 5319, would require schools and libraries to block access to a broad selection of web content including commercial websites that “allow users to create web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves” or offer “communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, e-mail, or instant messenger.”

“Sites like MySpace and Facebook have opened the door to a new online community of social networks between friends, students, and colleagues,” Fitzpatrick stated on his website. “However, this new technology has become a feeding ground for child predators that use these sites as just another way to do our children harm.”

[snip]

I can’t be the only person who remembers the media frenzy around chat rooms and instant messaging just a few years ago? It centered around the same concept: children’s accessibility to online predators.

Why don’t we try something new: hold parents responsible for knowing what their children are doing? I know that that’s a really “out there” idea, but it just might work.

what can blogging cost you?

Posted in General at 6:25 am by Paloma Cruz

From “Busted for Blogging, Revisited“:

I haven’t blogged for a while about people getting in trouble because of blogging, primarily because it’s getting to be too distressingly common. There are two basic kinds of these stories:

  1. People (especially young folks) who blog about their illegal activities (either past or planned), and subsequently get arrested for it.
  2. People who lose their jobs or otherwise get in trouble at work because of what they write in their blogs

Careful, or you could get “dooced.”

05.21.06

How to lose blog readers (once you actually get them)

Posted in General at 3:15 pm by Paloma Cruz

from Chris Garrett, via Darren Rowse:

  1. Hardly post and when you do it is to apologise for not posting
  2. Re-post boingboing or some other popular blog, or copy and paste press releases
  3. Only ever write when in a bad mood, drunk or have nothing to say
  4. Constant unrelenting negativity
  5. Bang on about the same old gripe day after day
  6. Talk down to your audience like they are idiots
  7. Be incomprehensible
  8. Be elitist
  9. Be needy
  10. Constant irrelevance

I think I may be guilty of at least one of these… I’ll let you guess which.

05.13.06

getting started with Bloglines

Posted in General at 4:43 pm by Paloma Cruz

I love my Bloglines account. I can’t remember what it was like to keep up with online resources before it. However, it you’re new to the service, you might want to check out the Bloglines Tutorial. It’s easy to follow and very effective. (Found via Library TechBytes.)

05.12.06

blog reference

Posted in General at 4:57 pm by Paloma Cruz

Do you know what Blaudience means? What about Milblog? How about Vorage?

If you do, congratulations! For the rest of us there’s Wikipedia’s blogging reference list. This is everything you wanted to know about the blogging lingo, and then some.

Found via Micro Persuasion.

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