DISQUS

About RSS ...

It's quite odd about RSS and people's attitudes with it. For me, for YEARS ... I was all about my Bloglines. I had blogline folders by topic interest of my blogs, by blog network, by categories for personal like "amusing" or "blogging specific" etc etc. RSS makes things easier - the world comes to you whenever you want and in the way you want.

Then .. social media took its place .. and the dreadful voting of posts and it generates traffic, not just interest. So, every day people (like me I'm sure) want people to notice our posts and pass it along to other people and sites - (push vs pull of the RSS concept) and to be fair and nice .. and be reciprocal, we let people pass along sites and share with us. Then, when you add to the mix sites like Twitter, Friendfeed and other hangouts (even BlogCatalog) .. there is information overload! I'm following people and friends because they are my friends, and their blogs (usually) interest me! So, when they are passing along information to me like their daily posts .. and then multiply that by the number of friends I have, and social sites that I am part of, and even just browsing the links and sites and post of people following me on twitter and those that I follow ... well ! I don't need to be dependant on my Bloglines anymore. It's hard not to get updated on everything with twitter, and even your closest personal IM buddies .. Now, I still go to my Bloglines and open up a tab in Firefox everytime it opens so I don't forget - but, all I ever browse and see is my "Amusing" category - which is jokes, cartoons, mindless amusements, English Russia, Chinglish and sites like that ... everything that doesn't have to make me think (and no cutesie stuff btw)

About Podcasting...

I also thought it would get bigger in 2008 and even myself tried it a few times. I had some issues though, integrating it with Vista and my laptop though .. I'll probably go back to it - once I figure out what to do.

You see - I used to listen to Podcasts myself but I'm finding more and more disinterest for them - because of the advancement they have made, and the sidetrack of the social media sites. I don't listen to .MP3 music more than 3-6 minutes at a time before I get bored and listen to another song (I mean, occasionally I will listen to an album - but only once in a while - I mean -"shuffle play" - why not?) // Anyway, I just don't have time to listen to hour long podcasts anymore or longer, even despite the banter and the pleasantry of the participants. With Sites now adding social media, it's ridiculous - they are turning into Radio Shows - not podcasts .. and advance the promotion of the "call-in show". Although, they still offer downloads - it just seems different or wrong to download something that you "missed". Something that you were "late and didn't catch live" ... You know what? If I don't listen to it at all - I never missed it.

Hope these comments are working now :)

so....... this works now? This comment thingie is new ... Why Disqus? What is Discus?

Hi Lincoln .. you really have a nice advertising page on your own site, so I take great interest in this guest post! Is that a custom Purchase.php script or .. open source :) *g*

Before your automatic refresh deletes my comment for the 3rd time... let me post this fast:

Out of the 150k .. if you deduct your brokering site deals, selling sites that you've developed, and flipping sites .. how much of that was from regular blogging and advertising revenues? *curious*

Unfortunately, at times, when you are behind a big fat bus .. "Being faster and daring" can put you to risk! When my wife drives with me, she gets irritated following a bus and wants me to weave in and out and pass the bus .. but experience always tells me - people who speed up and passes buses usually get stopped at the next traffic light.

Ben .. don't forget the backups of the old template, before you switch. I like to create a directory in my /themes/ for every "version" template that I use, in case I ever wanted to go backwards.

Also .. I use WS_FTP_LE as my FTP .. but, it's available on many other FTP programs. It's a good idea to set a "start" directory when you log in , so when you log on you go directly to the theme directory online and on your harddrive backup copy. But - when you change themes .. don't forget to change this setup, otherwise you might FTP copy the old theme's sidebar overwriting the new sidebar with all the revisions!

However, in that case - you would have a backup as mentioned in the 1st paragraph to re:copy over the overwritten files :)

yup. Soooo .. when do you start promoting your Netwigator blog? or was that the Instigetwork blog? ;p

Creating a blog network is a huge amount of work .. 'Aint that the truth.

Ben .. you've got some really good ideas, that are almost like the "why didn't I think of that" type of ideas (you're great at that!) However, it basically boils down to the community and relationship of the bloggers in the network. Just creating the environment is not always the key.

oh .. and I am also impressed with John Wesley's network! Good stuff :) And, new feeds in my Bloglines!

We've got freezing cold temperatures and two months of summer .. but us Winnipeg'ers usually say .."At least we don't get as much snow as they do in Buffalo" ~~ well .. sometimes we do.

Aaron .. I've been reading all of your posts at the BlogHerald. I did tried to follow all the Flickr links that was posted. You took nice pictures of the city while you were biking .. I don't know the people in the ones from Wordcamp.

As for the Technorati links .. well, I guess I am guilty and do hide under a rock .. because I refuse to use technorati anymore - since they called me a spammer and banned all of my blogs in March 2006. If it wasn't for content thieves hacking my RSS feed but giving me source credit, nothing I do would show up in their site. Yes I'm very bitter about it. I pretty much rely on google search and Bloglines now.

What you did was a great effort for trying to describe what was going on down there .. I guess my expectations were quite different from what I was reading (by everybody as a whole, not just you). I might have to drive down there one year and see for myself - if my wife will let me.

[sarcasm on]
The fact of the matter is .. that only those bloggers with the most traffic and readership numbers should be called the TRUE journalists of this world ....
[/sarcasm off]

[rant on]
Honestly .. I was curious to know what Wordcamp was all about .. I was quite aware that it was happening and where it was happening and pretty much either know or can find out who was there ... including the people who went drinking with other bloggers, trying to getting laid, taking pictures of chicks, and other aspects of a good convention holiday trip ... but - I have yet to read anything about what really happened out there on the West Coast - at Wordcamp itself.

You'd think with my 1048 RSS feeds that I'm following in my Bloglines that I would find SOMETHING about what happened .. about blogging - about Wordcamp .. but I don't think so.

Was it about Wordpress? was it about blogging?

I sure wish there were reporters there .. Maybe someone can find time to summarize the facts and explain it to me (to quote Denzel Washington character) .. Like I was a two-year old.

Before this Wordcamp, I personally thought it was some type of grass roots blogging convetions, like those early Star Trek conventions (from a handful auditorium to wide membership and shows around the world), that gets bloggers out behind the computer and meeting face to face to discuss the future of blogging .. Well, maybe that's true .. the elite bloggers will getting together and making the rest seem less elite and in years to come we will pay to shake hands with the elite bloggers and get their autographs and picture head shots or something.
[/rant off]

Besides this one terribly wrong statement that Om Malik said .. how was the rest of his presentation? How long did he present? Did he have slides? Visual presentations? Is this a summary of Wordcamp?

I've been slowly upgrading all my sites. The ones with the most plugins takes the longest. PS.. can you edit the code for URL #2 on the 12:39 post for Jonic? Needs

Hi Jonic - while I'm here... the top is still a little weird when the window is NOT maximized (IEv7b3). The right box is all blue with no text, the RSS graphic is below it where the large ad box is ... and if you put the mouse over it the orange mouseover shows next to it .. and, the sidebar is moved to below the last entry on the page. I took pictures. 1 2.

It's nice. Maybe by the time I upgrade that petlvr blog from v1.5.2 to a version that supports widgets it will be publicly available. // thanks.

I like that "Because Akismet Cares.." graphic. Is that publicly available or unique to this blog? I know my PetLvr blog is up to almost 38000 now .. I think that's neat - but, couldn't find it on Akismet's pages.

Oh.. I didn't get the nautical "current" reference.. D'oh! But, while you are at it .. why not think of other terms for the other boxes? e.g. The Conversation could be .. the Starboard (almost like two meanings there) .. The Best could be .. The Round Up? The Bridge? The Rudder? .. (my mind is pretty much blank on that one).

and speaking of nautical terms ... it would be nice if you "Anchor"ed your name in the header title - so we see the name Technosailer in the tabs/top of page. It currently just says "[post title] - Technology, Blogging and New Media". It's nice when you have many windows opened in addition to tabs, and see them stacked up on your task bar - with a name for easy reference.

Nice overhaul and some great concepts. It's hard to tell that the "BEST" section is your handpicking, as currently it seems to be in order of most comments.

I should note four things (not because I'm anal .. because I think you would want to see some feedback!)

1) While my screen is minimum 1152x864 .. I often read in my bloglines, then click on a headline and up pops a window .. not full screen image view. In Here, your top search field and input button right aligns to the size of window. When that happens, despite scroll bar to see the full screen and right columns .. the top "Subscribe to Technosailor" block disappears. I guess that's because of the fluid width over the two sidebar columns. It wouldn't work i.m.o. having the fluid width over the text because it's nice centered below the 3 images - Maybe you don't need fluid width with a 1024×768 view?

2) Unless "The Current" has great significance to you personally .. just having that as "HOME" would work just as well and maintain some normality!

3) Is it possible to increase the pixel size of the main text column words? It's too small for me - I normally just go straight to View/Text Size/ from my IEv7 window and just increase the text size for readability - all the other text looks too big with that orange and distracts you from the reading.

4) And finally .. the top "Your Opinion" right-aligned image on the posts cover the text of the second line of words .. perhaps adding some type of "hspace" to your CSS for boxes and images?

Oh - Bonus suggestion .. with the advent of Photoshop .. I would like to see AARON in a "Pretty Little Box" graphic somewhere ... maybe you standing in a Pirate's treasure chest? Hmm. Some box. Maybe. Maybe not.

I've been getting a lot of hits with that "timecapsule" plugin .. on some days that had interesting posts a year ago. It would be nice if that would work for 1-year ago from the date of a post, and not just today's date (at http://PetLvr.com/blog/)

I've got three sites screaming for a redesign and 4 more in progress of being setup/created .. I'll be watching here to see what you do :)

Congrats. It came off as a good read. I enjoyed it.

Aaron. You really ought to promote this more. I might have dropped by and said something like ... By the Way .. I like the look of your sidebar with b5 code .. or something like that!

Nice and clean. My bloglines still shows 1235 feeds, but I've been using it for searches as well .. they are not all blogs but news feeds .. For instance, for my Schizophrenia blog .. I have about a dozen search terms and derivatives related to being schizophrenic. For my PetLvr blog I have about 40. Despite that, it's all organized by blog network or by general topic. If I were to organize it by "dailies, weeklies" or "A-List, B-List" it would never get organized and I would definately lose myself in the forest reading the trees.

If I may ask .. when people post their bloglines publicly, do readers UNsubscribe you because now they know you are not reading their blog? (don't worry about me though, I rarely unsubscribe and my blogs are unexciting anyway)

Will you still call yourself TechnoSailer? Or, will you also change your name to ..TechoLover? Isn't that the slogan over there?

Or .. TechnoLvr as we PetLvr's are known to refer it ... :)

Hi .. I've left comments (in moderation now) on Jeremy's blog .. basically it's the same for this blog, except the addition to the other stuff, IE just shows "T - Technosa" in the top (left) graphic.

Hi. This is neat. I set this up and can see stuff I copy from my local drive to the gmail drive. But - Do you know a way to get the existing stuff in gmail (previous backups) to show up on the gmail drive local view? Also, I haven't tried the backups yet. I use wp-dbbackup etc and email directly to gmail .. will it show up on my gmail drive local view? Thanks in advance. // HART

That was interesting. But .. How can you tell that Dreamhost is a 'shared hosting' service? I couldn't see that anywhere on their website ..

I'm using two different host providers .. Blacksun.ca definately dedicated hosting, but I'm also using a "pro" Reseller Account at Ace-Host.net .. As far as I believe .. it's not shared, except among myself and my sites. Even then, I set quite finite packages of bandwidth, space, etc and there is no sharing. I wish it was all under a blanket space and bandwidth package. My renewal comes up this 28th and I'm extending it for a year in advance though .. I've been month to month since January testing them out.