Virginia Is For Families

Using this cool little software program I have managed to increase my Technorati Authority about five percent in a couple of days. It really is easy to use and you can automate the process of faving those who have done the same for you.

http://www.blogcatalog.com/group/stumble/discuss/entry/making-technorati-fav-ing-painless-1

We are up to 114 this morning and the top 57K blogs on the web. Last summer we were in the top four million. And how many blogs are started every day? According to Technorati THIS many. . .

Welcome to Technorati

Currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

Technorati is the recognized authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

But it all started with blogs. A blog, or weblog, is a regularly updated journal published on the web. Some blogs are intended for a small audience; others vie for readership with national newspapers. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them.

Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Technorati. Who’s saying what. Right now.

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So blogging is about conversation using other means. Now we can have a conversation with someone on the other side of the world and a minute later be talking to someone across town. It’s all pretty amazing and mostly a lot of fun. When I think about what a miracle blogging has become all of the routine complaints just fly out the window.

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And here’s a guy who has been bringing in lots of traffic while posting irregularly. He really is fascinating to me because I post all the time and have over seven hundred posts in about seven or eight months worth of blogging.

He is a very efficient user of time. I can only imagine what he would be doing if he spent more time with it.
http://mattnutts.com/2008/02/09/getting-traffic-the-nutts-way-part-1/

I guess we are going to have to wait awhile for part 2 because, as I say, he marches to his own drummer.

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Back to 7/Writing About Blogging

http://davidnotes.com/2008/02/16/working-with-youtube-fitting-players-into-posts/

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It is early Saturday morning and I sit here trying to undo some of the mess I have created in the past week. It is not worth getting into the sad details but the whole situation was prompted by the idea of adding YouTube music videos here. And it seemed like many of them would not fit in this three column template. The template is great in most regards so it’s not going anywhere. And then I decided to put the videos over on my other blog. It has only two columns and photos and videos tend to fit better. But going back and forth is not good. It’s just not good. Google would probably wonder what was going on after awhile and start uninviting me to the dance.

So I took a deep breath and went to YouTube prepared to read some instructions and figure out what I could do to fit all these wonderful music videos in Virginia Breeze. And I am happy to say it has worked out pretty well to this point.

It is simply a matter of creating a custom music video player and embedding it in a post. Then (and this is the most important part) I had to change the values for width and height before closing up the post. I quickly learned that once this was done you can never mess around with the post again. If ANYTHING is changed or modified it will blow the thing up. At least that is my experience.

I also was able to create lists of music once I established an account. I now have a list of Andrea Bocelli videos and a list of Jordin Sparks videos for example . And it is fun to add to them and also create new lists. One thing that is really helpful is the fact that you can add music videos to your lists later on and they automatically are added to the custom player in your blog.

So here is the music video I created for Jordin and her new CD. She reports that it has reached platinum status. I have no idea how many copies that would be and maybe will look it up if things ever reach a relaxed status around here. Here is an example of a custom player loaded with music videos. You choose the color and embed it in the Code section of the Write Post section. And then as I said you do everything you need to do. It reminds me of those movies where they set demolition charges and wire everything up. They check it about fifty times and then throw the switch. Except hopefully in this case the explosion does not happen.

If I do make a mistake and need to “Go back in” it’s simple enough to go back to my account and grab the embed code again. Maybe there is a simpler way but I would not know.

So if a word is misspelled and I see it later it’s too bad Jack. Maybe I better make sure right now and then we will try to leave a video player here.

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More Writing About Blogging

http://davidnotes.com/2008/02/18/technorati-authority-how-to-increase-it-increase-traffic-too/

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Lots of things make you happy of course. But what makes you MOST happy on a REGULAR basis in terms of your blogging effort? I have been wrestling with this question the past few days.

I hope that we can share some comments and ideas when this post is published. I really hope we can.

First of all it may help to look at this question in terms of the present moment. In other words if you say that down the road somewhere something will happen (hopefully) with your blogging and that will make you very happy most of the time.

Your happiness comes from imagining that day.

Let’s just toss that one out the window for the purposes of this post and concentrate on the present moment. What is it about blogging today that makes you happy on a regular basis?

There are a relatively small number of bloggers who are making a good income blogging. Do you think this makes them happy most of the time? I suggest that in many cases it does not. Once the novelty wears off there will be other needs to fulfill in order to be happy. Here is a post I read recently that was done by a very successful and brilliant blogger.

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/blog-struggles-surviving-the-when-blogging-goes-bad-blues/

Blogging can be a pain even when you have thousands of readers. I know that thousands of readers would not make me happy for very long. Because being excited and being happy are two different things. And I feel like there is something about blogging that does make a worthwhile activity on a regular basis.

It’s not the excitement of a traffic spike. It’s not the income that it can potentially provide.

It’s the satisfaction that comes from creating something with ideas and photos. And then taking this creation and sharing it with someone. It’s the photo that makes me happy. It’s the idea that I have expressed in writing that makes me happy. And I can do these things on a regular basis.

I am creating something. And this creation may not be great. It may not even be good sometimes. But if it makes me happy then it is worth the time and effort it took to put it together. And when someone looks at it or reads it and has something to say about it, well, that’s just the frosting on the cake.

Cake is really good by itself. But frosting makes it so much better. And we all could live without another dessert for the rest of our lives. But I doubt we would do that unless we were forced to do it. Relationships and conversation are the frosting.

If I ever stop having these good feelings about posting something then it will be time to stop doing it. Even if there is a positive cash flow or lots of positive feedback. It really is that simple for me. I am curious about the notion of having lots of readers or making money here. But I actually don’t think these things will ever happen. And it doesn’t matter because the happiness that comes from creating something is more important. And frosting without cake can only take you so far.

It’s like the guy who loves his job and says only half in jest that he would pay someone just to be able to come to work every day.

Why do you blog? Have you sorted it all out? I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say about the subject.

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I only seem to be interested in man made objects as photo subjects if they are related in some way to nature. Or they are art. The statues of the generals on Monument Ave. are a good example of that. Leaving nature behind and going into the middle of Richmond to take some photos would be very challenging for me. And I’m not sure it is important to do it. It’s all very much up in the air as they say.

Here is a good example of nature redeeming something that many of us would not like to see in our neighborhoods. Bury it underground! Our neighborhood is old and they are still hanging around and often fail due to wind or ice. Squirrels sometimes vaporize themselves trying to investigate transformers.

I probably lost a few gentle readers with that last comment. I’m sorry. But I have this love/hate thing going on with squirrels. I’m trying to learn to love them because Beth would like it if I did.

But I generally find it difficult because they like to sleep in the road. And this causes me to swerve the car to avoid disturbing them.

But we are moving in the wrong direction here. Electricity is a marvelous thing. It allows me to write to you anywhere in the world. It saves lives every day in hospitals across the world. I love electricity. But I do not embrace it. I do not like the way it feels when my hand inadvertently becomes part of an electrical circuit. I prefer that small amounts of various legal chemicals light up my brain.

Look around and you will see all of these tremendous forces that could kill us in a second are under control in one way or another. They are peacefully humming along not five feet from where you sit unless you are out in the wild in South America.

There is an atomic energy plant up the road and it is humming along. There are large Naval ships down the river in Norfolk. They are humming along and creating V shaped wave patterns as they go about their business.

I watched the sun come up yesterday morning. It was very bright and I could not see well for several minutes after it arrived. But it was humming too. Sometimes a sun somewhere in the universe will blow up. But not our sun. It is well behaved.

Every once in awhile nature decides to stand up and stretch. Winds may reach one hundred miles per hour or more. A transformer blows up and a squirrel goes to that great pile of nuts in the sky. A nuclear power plant decides it doesn’t need a roof and would like to commune with the stars. A ship fires a guided missile that lands in a building somewhere and dramatically alters its architecture.

This is why I appreciate this photo so much. Everybody is playing nice here. Mornings like this are to be recorded and treasured. Tomorrow is a new day and one that may be full of explosions.

Ask my friend Chip. Or Dale. I can never figure out who it is waving to me as he (or she) passes from my view and under my car.

And yes I do remember to wave back at them as they happily dance around in my rear view mirror.