13:59 by FoxTwo Back in 2007, a new blog traffic tool appeared on the Internet - Blogrush.
1 year later, I received an email saying that Blogrush is shutting down. That would of course, include the shutdown of Traffic Jam too.
Now, I've written about how mis-named the 2 sites are. Blogrush didn't, it crawled. Traffic Jam wasn't, too. An avalanche of traffic poured in instead. Now, both are shut down.
I wouldn't really say that I miss them though. Blogrush was a nice idea but it didn't work that well. There are a ton of other traffic-exchange sites out there to help you with your blog (and mine). Right now, though, all I am doing is just to remove the Blogrush code from my blog. I'll eventually get around to looking for another traffic-exchange site but not right now.
In any case, I haven't really been updating my blog here anywhere near a "consistent" basis. Lately it's been pretty ad-hoc. In the past I'd update once every couple of days at least. Now, a week can go by before I find time to write something down.
Goodbye Blogrush! It was good having you around!
13:48 by FoxTwo Ok I'm really late to do this. Seems like everybody has hopped on the bandwagon and joined a relatively new "blogging network" place called SocialSpark except me. Well I finally got around to doing it and signed an account up on SocialSpark.
At first glance, Social Spark seems like a revamped "Pay Per Post", but that's only the first impression. If you actually browse the "marketplace", which is the new name for the "open opportunities" section, you can see several types of "opportunities".
The first available is "Sponsored Posts". This is the usual type that is normally available. That means, you write about a service or a product, submit it for the sponsor to review, and then the sponsor pays you. Something like an advert.
The second type, which is new, is a "Blog sponsorship". Personally I find this category the most irritating of all, and I never will take part in this. What happens is that a blog/website/company will "sponsor" your blog for a time period. To have the sponsorship, you have to install a small piece of code into your blog, which (to me) is irritating and pops up whenever someone visits your blog. If the code contains animation and sound and video, you can imagine how much it'll slow the loading time down! Plus if it's annoying music or video, the visitor has to hurriedly close/cancel/stop the music or video.
Fortunately, you are free not to utilise this portion of the functions if you don't want to.
The third (and final) type of sponsoships available to you is just called a "Spark". Essentially these don't pay you in monetary terms, but in traffic exchange. It really depends on what is offered. Some might review your blog in return, some might link your blog for a month. You have to read the terms before you accept the offer. Some don't even offer anything in return, but to rally support for a specific cause, or for promotional awareness efforts.
Well since I'm still relatively new to Socialspark, I need to explore it much more before I can give a more complete run-down of it.
Labels: blog, internet, socialspark
17:39 by FoxTwo Sometimes, being indifferent does indeed have its advantages.
For example, I'm in mybloglog and blogcatalog. You do see people there making friends, talking to each other at the shoutboxes of each other, talking to each other at the forums, but I never did any of these. They are both supposed to be "communities", yes, but I never really "got into" them.
In Facebook, for a while, I was actively engaged in buying and selling, having fun and so on, with my friends, pingsters and non-pingsters alike. Slowly but surely, Facebook burnout got to me and I started to log in to Facebook less and less. In fact I hardly log in to Facebook nowadays and my friends have to SMS me to chase me to log in so I can hep them do some stuff or give them money to buy their pets etc.
When I joined Entrecard, I see similar levels of activity there. People there frequent the forums. They drop cards, they make friends. I did almost none of these, except for dropping cards and SELECTIVELY making friends by leaving comments on their blogs (I made some great friends this way, such as Aronil, Jasmine and Jade).
In all cases, the "community" was there, but I didn't really actively take part in it, since they are based so far away - in the USA. The selective people I befriended slowly via the means mentioned above usually are Singaporeans or based in Singapore, or at the furthest, Malaysia (Aronil).
I only decided to become more active in ping.sg, a local organisation, based in Singapore, with Singaporeans, or people living in Singapore, forming the core members. I thought it was be preferable to interact in this kind of environment compared to the others mentioned above.
Alas, recent events have shown that it was the wrong thing to do. Indifference which I have shown above in the other "communities" would have insulated me from the impact of recent events. Seriously, if I had been as indifferent in ping.sg as I was in the others, I'd probably be totally unfazed at what's happening within the "community".
Perhaps it's time I backed away and not invest anymore efforts.
Indifference is key, I guess.
Labels: blog, internet, ping.sg
22:01 by FoxTwo ... everything's quiet on the western front.
Not a mouse peeped.
Not a cat leaped.
And the atmosphere feels strained.
It's kinda like a wake. You know, where everyone knows what everyone else is thinking, but nobody's saying anything. To be polite, to attempt to move on.
I logged into Plurk today, after so many weeks of not logging into it. Why? Well many of the regular people disappeared from the usual place. Exactly what I feared. Exactly what I wrote - the harsh action taken will have an effect, and it may not be the one intended. But, I found them all there on Plurk.
Interestingly though, suddenly one of the Plurks became a mini-shoutbox. Everyone congregated there, and everyone talked.
Talked.
Something which should have happened before The Incident.
I still think it's not too late to Talk.
While I doubt things will return to like what it was "in the good old days", Talking will go a long way to help that process.
For now, the place feels like an empty house. Kids have all left home, and I'm just wandering around the empty halls.
It's a lonely feeling.
Labels: blog, internet, ping.sg
21:48 by FoxTwo
I Am Saddened By Recent Events In Ping.sg
Yes I do know cliques will ALWAYS form in any social environment. Humans are gregarious - we always seek out like-minded people and connect with them. That's how societies develop. That's how villages and towns and cities are built.
Giving a label to a group of people will always happen. The "popular", the "bad", the whatever. In your own email client, or even in hotmail and gmail, you can create your own distribution list. In this list, you normally put the people you connect with regularly on it, so you can share jokes, funny pictures, or anything with your friends, ALL your friends, by just typing a label. It's not a bad thing to get a label. Even among friends, you have "best friend" and just "friend" labels, to denote how close they are to you. Not everybody is your friend, and certainly you should have very little, or just one, "best friend".
I know Daphne meant no harm in her original post about "in-groups". She was just putting a label on something, to better describe a group of people. I mean, it's going to get tedious naming the said individuals time and time again. Was it a mistake? I don't know. I have no opinion on this. I just understand that Daphne was just attempting to describe a group of members.
Then, there is the original ideal of ping.sg - to be a platform for everybody, regardless of your popularity or how "in" you are.
It just appears that some members feel that the original ideal should be upheld - one platform for all, and not to segregate members into various groups. Personally, I think this ideal should be upheld too. Equality for all!
However, the recent debate about the use of the label "in-group" got way out of hand too quickly. I personally have made many friends when I joined ping.sg. For want of better words, I belong to the "lim jiu" group of pingsters (*grin*). Although I seldom join them for their outings and activities, that by no means imply I elevate myself above them or I am an "elite" (or otherwise). I just do not forsee the said activity to be interesting to me, or I could be otherwise engaged during the timing of the said activity. Usually I appear for activities that involve liquor (*grin again*), and one should not be surprised that the same people will turn up for such an activity - not everybody drinks, just as not everybody likes the colour purple.
The sudden ban of dk from ping.sg really will adversely affect the image of ping.sg. To any outsider, a ban of a long-time member of ping.sg without some sort of formal announcements as to the reason why, shakes the confidence of the masses. Right now speculations are rife that the ban was due to the disagreement of ping.sg and dk's opinions. Without some sort of formal clarifications, such rumours and speculations will take on a life of its own, and will, very likely, be counter-productive to ping.sg. As we all know, word-of-mouth rumours spread like wildfire and soemtimes, have a greater impact than any official "advertising" or PR campaign.
For all we know, dk could have been banned for a totally different, and possibly unrelated, reasons. For now, we don't know. From the way it looks now, he got banned for caring. Then in this case, should I start to be more aloof? Should I start not to care, because if I care too much, the same might happen to me.
I love ping.sg. I love the virbancy of the whole thing, the people, the good times (and the bad). I identify with the ideal too - to be a platform for everyone. I really hope to see some form of clarifications, because I truly want to know where I (and everyone else) stand.
Labels: blog, internet, ping.sg
17:28 by FoxTwo
Increase Your Traffic with Scoutle
As an aside - yeah I'm plunging headlog into work. The new place wasn't really what I expected when I went to be interviewed. It was MORE. In other words, better.
Anyway, during my random surfing and stumbling around, I came across yet another Increase-Your-Blog-Traffic website called Scoutle. To describe it, it's similar to Blogrush in that you install a widget and then the traffic is supposed to start coming in.
However, that's where the similarity ends. In Scoutle, you create a robot, a web-crawler called a "scout". You program your scout to start scouring the web and "connect" to sites which you programmed it to. The scout then will trawl the web and hit websites with the widget installed, and "make contact". They call the widget "a stage". The different versions offered at the Scoutle website offers differing levels of traffic when installed, and it's up to you to select the levels of traffic you would want.
I think of this as a sort of "robot social networking" where the bots talk to one another, and then shows the URL and links up in your dashboard on the Scoutle site. What you do is to visit the Scoutle dashboard every couple of days and check up on the new "connections" made, to discover new blogs and interesting websites.
I'm still new in Scoutle, so my connections aren't alot right now. It's been just a couple of days and I can't really tell if Scoutle's worth the hype right now. I will post again a couple of weeks later to see how it goes with Scoutle.
Labels: blog, internet, scoutle
13:32 by FoxTwo
The Big Hoo-Haa In Ping.sg Recently
I read through some posts, notably Endoh's and Krisandro's (and Krisandro's again). It's sad to see things like this actually happening. However, one must bear in mind, it's human nature to have differing opinions. Otherwise there'd be no wars on the planet, and everybody will be living in utopia (or like the Borg in Star Trek, one collective hive mind). Who the protagonists or antagonists are, is actually kind of irrelevant. You don't need to know who they are to resolve the issue at hand, if any.
Personally I have no problems with "shallow" or "deep" posts. I read both types at my whim. If I don't feel like exercising my brains on that particular day, I'd probably read those light-hearted, shallow posts. If I want something deep and meaningful to chew on, I'll read some really though-provoking posts. The only trouble is, thought-provoking posts are hard to come by. Even harder are thought-provoking ones not lashing out at the government or presenting some form of government conspiracy theories. Yeah I'm politically agnostic.
What does that say? To me it means Singaporeans are more concerned with mundane stuff than what makes the universe tick. Besides, some of these bloggers might be doing just the right thing - write shallow stuff to cater to the majority of the audience. It's every blogger's aim to get more readers, is it not? It's kinda like Hollywood, which kept producing those "doomsday movies" at one time back before 2000. Armageddon was a hit, and soon other movies followed in similar vein because audiences at the time were perceived to be hooked on doomsday movies (Day After Tomorrow, The Core etc).
So when a blog post about a topic suddenly gets a lot of hits, other bloggers will jump on the bandwagon to try to get hits too, it's only natural. Just look at the Mas Selamat escape, it's a very good example. Blog after blog kept writing about it so much so that it seemed like the whole Singapore blogosphere was clogged up with just Mas Selamat and his escape. I was sick of seeing "yet another Mas Selamat post" at the time, and didn't bother to read anymore. After all, everyone was just be regurgitating what was given in the official statements. Hardly anyone offered their own opinions.
I was originally going to write about the Phoenix Mars Lander mission in this post, but I guess that's too "deep" for most Singaporeans. After all, Mars is so far away. Success or failure of the mission has no bearing on their cost of living, their salary, their bills and so on. They are detached. If the Pheonix doesn't tell them where to get the next meal, they're not interested. Such is the Singapore mentality. Exploring another planet doesn't excite them. We are now ON ANOTHER PLANET, you see? We're not on Earth anymore. Do Singaporeans care? Hardly. Did life exist on Mars at one time? Singaporeans don't care.
All I can say is - don't dwell on this. Life goes on. The people who do not like shallow posts won't read them. People will not write "deep" stuff if there isn't an audience (or perceived to be no audience) for them. It's just the law of economics at work here.
If I ever get disillusioned like some people already have, I'll leave on my own, and I doubt anyone will miss me and my little blog here. For now though, I'm staying.
21:32 by FoxTwo I saw the first mention of it here, at Lisa C Writes. Then a few weeks later, I saw another mention of it here, at Bloggerfocus.com. What am I talking about?
It's about a new commenting system for the Blogger.com platform. (edit - oops, it is not just for Blogger platform. It is also available for Wordpress, Typepad etc too). Yes I know, stuff like Haloscan has been around for quite a while. However, this new comment system, called Intense Debate, appears to be much better than plain old Haloscan.
So is this going to work on this blog?
I hope so. I have, like a typical kiasu Singaporean, made backups of my original templates before slotting in the new codes for the new commenting system. I have also decided NOT to retro-fit this "upgrade" to all older entries. That means I won't lose all the old, precious comments that are currently stuck in the (old) Blogger.com system.
It would have been better if I could have made a complete switch - that means, importing everything from Blogger.com into IntenseDebate and then do a one-time complete template overhaul. Since it couldn't be done, I have to be VERY mindful about not "republishing entire blog" from now on inside Blogger.com.
Henceforth, until such time that this system shows itself to be unstable, this blog will be on the new, Intense Debate commenting system!
11:27 by FoxTwo
A Lot Of Women Read My Blog...
If your blog is on Pay Per Post or you have joined Social Spark, the piece of code they tell you to put into your blog helps them to rank your blog using their own "Realrank". So far, their stats seem ok, no weird flukes like "Nigeria" listed in my stats (for those sensitive to the word "Nigerians" and "Scam", read my post PROPERLY. I have nothing against Nigeria, but I hate the scams. And this post is NOT about Nigerian scams, got it?)
As seen in the picture above, the stats are pretty standard. All counters (except Alexa) say the same thing - majority of my visitors are from Singapore and USA. The percentages vary, but essentially saying the same thing.
The thing about Izea's Realrank code is - I'm curious just how Izea's code manages to differentiate between male and female visitors. Not only am I impressed that they can differentiate between genders, I am even more impressed they can separate them by age!
If I really get 48% female visitors, then dangit I need to change my content slightly to cater for the female population! Perhaps more pink? Talk about lacey lingerie? Latest makeup and fashion maybe? Or how about boy-girl relationships?
If I continue to prattle on about techy geeky stuff like HTML and codes and what-nots, I'm gonna bore them all to tears... So, come on, tell me what you wanna see! :)
21:30 by FoxTwo
What Made Me Get Into Blogging?
It's a question you should ask yourself too, once in a while anyway. This question was asked of me a couple of times by people in ping.sg though.
How did YOU get started in blogging?
For some people, they're just "jumping on the bandwagon", because they hear that you can make oodles of money from blogging.
For other people, it's a way to vent their frustrations, be it against the world, the govt, or even their own husbands/wives.
So how did I get started? What made me do it?
Well, for the answer, we must now visit the pages of ancient history (ancient history in computer terms means more than 10 yrs ago). I belong to the age of dinosaurs. Pre-1990's we were connected via modems at slow-poke speeds of 300bps, 1200bps, 2400bps etc. We chatted via Bulletin Boards, which many people in Singapore run, out of the goodness of their hearts. Nothing was commercialised. No money was involved. Files uploaded and downloaded via BBSes were all compressed with .ARC at first, then later on a better one called .LZH appeared. Soon after, the author of .ARC made a new compression algorithm, and called it .ZIP (recognise it now?) and it became wildly popular, in part due to the reputation of his original work on .ARC.
When Internet started to become prevalent, the gahmen decided that BBSes were a threat to Singnet, and started to require all BBS operators to "register" with them to get a "license". Notice how suddenly this only became a requirement when Singnet started? Naturally, almost every single BBS in Singapore closed almost overnight.
It was back around 1994 or so, that I first got "connected" to the Internet via Singnet's Kermit technology. Yeah back then I was on a text-based interface connection to the Internet. So were many people. Netscape (affectionately known as "Mozilla") was king, IE was an unknown browser that Microsoft was trying to promote, and people who wanted to know if their friends were online FINGERed them.
So, being an ex-owner of a BBS, I needed my own "space" on the Internet. Hence, I did my first webpage and uploaded it to my free space that Singnet offered... an incredible 1MB of space! The webpage was simple, no graphics, just text.
Soon I found many of my old BBS friends had their own homepages too. But, there was something missing. We needed to write stuff, to vent. Back on our old BBS systems we could always write "articles" and post them up on the BBS, and people who logged in can read them. So, I created a "soapbox" area on my homepage. A place to read my hand-crafted HTML page about stuff I wanted to write about. Yeah, "blogs" used to be known as "soapboxes" back then. Why a "soapbox"? Because in western countries, if you had a problem with something, you took a soapbox (ie a small crate) out to a street corner, stand on it, and start speaking. People will stop walking and listen to you.
As the years rolled on, I jumped from Singnet to Pacific Internet (and now currently on Starhub). As I jumped, my "free web space" address changed too, and lost readers. Registering our own domain was unthinkable - it was US$50.00 (damn I wish I had registered google.com back then!). Eventually I found a FREE webhost that is independent of my ISP and I had a whopping 10MB of space! Beat that, Singnet/Pacnet! However my joy was short-lived. The free homepage provider closed down and I had to move my pages AGAIN.
By now, a new phenomenon had started to sweep the Internet world. There was this new thing called a "web log", or a "blog". People could actually write stuff and have it put up onto the Internet, without knowing a lick of HTML. I wanted one of those!
I didn't find one till about 2003 or 2004, called Blogger.com. Even after locating it, and thinking it was a perfect way to continually update my site without me hand-crafting HTML pages, I still didn't really use it much. Notice that Blogger had been around a couple of years prior to me discovering it - I just didn't really look for one till it found me one day :)
So, slowly I started to backdate all my old soapbox entries onto the blogger platform till about 2001 (I gave up on those before 2001). As you can see from my Blogger profile, I joined Blogger in 2004, but I have entries starting at 2001 and very sparse entries between 2001 and 2004. Reason being, it was hard work hand-crafting HTML pages just to post my thoughts, so I didn't do it regularly. In fact if I remember right, I didn't post anything at all in 2002.
So, fast forward a few years. In 2006 I slowly started to pick up on my "blogging", but I have left my homepage alone too long. It looked dated, using HTML technologies from pre-2000. Traffic to my "blog" or even my "homepage" was practically nil. Usually all I see are just Google and Yahoo search hits. I needed a revamp, but never found the energy to do it.
By this time I was slowly but surely starting to read blogs, and discovering RSS. Making money from my blog was the furthest thing from my mind (I still don't depend on my blog to make money now). What I needed were readers. I started to hang out in forums, giving links to my homepage and blog. I started to write comments in other people's blogs. That only helped my traffic situation a little. From under 10 hits a day, it increased to just under 20. Almost 100% increase, not bad huh?
Then in 2007, on one of the more obscure blogs I happen to stumble into, featured a prominent ping.sg button. Clicking on it, I registered.
And the rest, as they say, is history :)
16:54 by FoxTwo
I have noticed that my blogs, especially this one, seem to load slower lately. Even if it doesn't "load slower", it'll seem to be "stuck" at loading something and it'll never finish, hence my blog doesn't get "fully loaded".
Now, don't tell me to switch to Wordpress, because that is definitely NOT the solution. Even if I go the self-hosted way with Wordpress (like I am doing with Blogger. It's self-hosted), it won't solve the problem of slow-loading.
I know many bloggers out there have similar problems too - their blogs load up slow. Many have fallen for the "switch to Wordpress" myth. It still doesn't solve their slow-loading problem. With Wordpress, you now have yet another piece to add to the puzzle - the MySQL Database. Data needs to be called from yet-another-server to display on the blog.
No, I am not saying Wordpress sucks. I'm saying that changing to Wordpress (or any other blogging platform) doesn't solve the slow-loading problem.
The problem of slow-loading happens is due to the numerous off-site widgets we place on the blogs. The Pay-Per-Post badge, the MyBloglog widget, the Entrecard, etc. Every single one of these widgets makes an off-site call to their respective home servers before they will load and show up on your blog. MyBloglog and Blogcatalog widgets are worse because the more "rows" you want to show (to show how many people visit your site), the SLOWER your load time will be, because each picture on the widget, regardless of whether it's tiny or large size, is a separate call to their home servers. Yes, each picture is 1 "transaction".
Remember the Advertlets fiasco in January? And the recent Nuffnang incident in March? Yes, ads are off-site "widgets" too. They need to refer back to their host servers to retrieve data to display on your blog, and in the meantime, your blog is "on hold" till their widgets display. Up till now I still haven't re-installed Advertlets.
I actually observed how my site loaded, and it appears to be "stuck" more often than not, at 2 particular places - loading the widget from Technorati, and loading the widget from Postreach.com.
I've decided to remove the ClickComments thing from Postreach.com, and immediately I could see a significant improvement of my load times. If my blog slows down again I'll take a look at possibly removing the Technorati widget too.
Labels: blog
08:55 by FoxTwo
I Don't Like The New Entrecard Pricings
I don't know how many of you noticed, but Entrecard just rolled out a new pricing structure for people to advertise on your blog. You can read the details here at their official blog.
On the surface, the structure looks good. It "reflects the popularity" of the blog by having a higher price to advertise on it if it's popular, and a low price if it's unpopular. All very capitalist-like, ie high demand, high price. Just like how an economy would work normally.
However, the issue here is HOW the price is calculated. Like a computer, the price works exponentially in binary - 2 raised to the power of X, where X = number of ads you have waiting to be run.
So, if you have no ads running, the price to advertise on your blog is 2 credits. If you have 6 ads in your queue, the price to advertise on your blog is 2x2x2x2x2x2 = 64 credits (2^6). Since each ad runs for a full 24 hours, the example above means you're sold out of ad space for the next 6 days. Unlike in the old system, Entrecard now doesn't have a "max cap". Previously you could only have like 7 or 10 ads in your queue at maximum. Now that limit has been removed.
And I have seen some crazy prices at some blogs now. A few more "popular" ones are sporting figures like 131,072 credits to advertise on their blog, as shown in the picture above. Notice that he has his ad space sold for the next 2 weeks!
Now, even if you're a super addict, dropping 300 cards per day, it will take you more than a YEAR (4 days to earn 1,200 credits just by dropping cards) to earn that amount to advertise on that blog!
Now, someone please tell me I'm wrong in my calculations, because I sure would like to be pointed out that I'm in error.
While I may agree that IN PRINCIPLE it is a good indicator of how popular a blog is by having a higher price to advertise on it, it is a bad idea to double the price for every ad placed on the blog.
00:59 by FoxTwo
It's been a while since I got tagged heh. This time it's from a blog I visit fairly often via Entrecard, called "A Quest For Happiness".
Rules:
1. Copy all the links below and replace your blog beside the appropriate letter. For example if your blog name starts with the letter "D" then replace the link beside "D" with yours, and put the replaced link at the bottom of the list. Also add the person who tagged you at the bottom of the list.
2. Tag at least 5 people and encourage them to take part of the game - tag blogs only and only those without bad rated material like pornographic, violence, racism etc.
E Every Think and Anything Blog
R ringtailsquealer.blogspot.com
I didn't replace anybody. "F" was unused :)
Ok now I tag the following
Ehm, no.. no April Fool's joke from me. And this ain't one either!
09:45 by FoxTwo
Blogrush and TrafficJam Need To Be Renamed
After seeing just 1 day of statistics, I have come to a conclusion.
Blogrush should have been named "TrafficJam", and TrafficJam should be renamed as "Blogrush". Honestly, the results these sites deliver are in total opposite of what their names imply. When I first joined Blogrush, I was expecting a flood of incoming traffic. That never happened. In fact, a couple of blogger friends of mine even thought about removing the Blogrush widget.
Then, seeing the statistics from just yesterday alone, Traffic Jam sent close to 400 hits to my LOWEST-TRAFFIC blog (I'm Such A Loser - my fitness blog). Normally that blog gets between 10 to 20 hits a day at most.
The only other service that even comes close to sending this much traffic is Entrecard, but unfortunately that blog isn't on Entrecard because I haven't figured out if I can add additional blogs to Entrecard.
The only downside I can see to the TrafficJam service is this - your blog entries must get listed in their "top 10". If it's not visible, you won't get any traffic. My fitness blog had an entry listed at number 5 across the whole network, and all hits to my fitness blog was headed for that #5 ranked entry.
I am forseeing that what happened on the old ping.sg will happen on Traffic Jam, ie a lot of people will be trying to come up with catchy, racy, raunchy etc titles to get people to click on it. Blogrush works like how the old ping.sg worked - as soon as someone clicked on your link, it's counted. Get enough clicks, your entry shows up in the top 10 list of Traffic Jam. When it shows up in the top 10 list, you get even more clicks.
16:22 by FoxTwo
Traffic Jam On The Blogosphere
It's weird, if you think about it. First, they tell you that your blogs will "rush" around. Now they tell you that your blogs will get caught in a "jam". Kinda extreme.
It's similar to Technorati or ping.sg, but this time the website is pulling data from across the Blogrush network. That means that if you want your blog to be featured, you need to join Blogrush first.
Here's a screenshot of the new website.
What actually surprised me was that I actually saw one of my blog entries listed in their Top 20 blog entries. I'm flattered that it's ranked #5 in the entire Blogrush network!
That entry is taken from my other blog, a very LOW-TRAFFIC one at that. Man, I never knew the people on Blogrush were reading my fitness blog....
Again, as a reminder, if you want to get in on the action, you need to join Blogrush.
16:00 by FoxTwo
Will Anybody Even Be Interested In These?
Ok, first off, the usual ramblings and rules.
- # Link to the person who tagged you
- # Post the rules on your blog.
- # Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
- # Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
- # Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged.
Now, with that out of the way, here goes....
- I love animals... they're yummy
- Hamsters especially
- 90% of the time I don't use condiments on my food. That means, no chilli, no ketchup etc. If the food comes with them already inside, I don't add more.
- I cook without using oil. Purely "roasting over the fire" type, or steaming, or boiling (cuz I'm lazy ok?)
- I prefer solitude to partying
- I'm a first generation gamer - I was there when "graphics" meant square blocky pixels in black and white (or green, if you're using a green monitor).
- I hang out at the ping.sg shoutbox all day cuz my (current) company blocked all IM applications
Now, I spread this misery to the following people:
- xizor2000
- xinyun
- Hello Kitty
- Wishbone
- The Sexy Maths 'Cher
- Merdurian
- Horny Ang Moh (yeah he seriously is!)
17:18 by FoxTwo
Win US$500.00 In A Blog Contest!
The blog Business+Directory, is organising this contest. They are doing this as part of their launch and promotion efforts.
The rules to join are very simple:
- Link to this contest page so that others will know how to join.
- Link to Business+Directory telling your readers about the February promotion.
- Original post must come from your blog so that we know who to send the money to. Post should be at least 250 words using your own unique writing style, please don’t cut and paste from this post.
Think about it. 500 smackeroos in US currency is about S$710, going by current exchange rates. Since they said the money will be paid via Paypal, you need to have an account there too. If you want to hold the amount there until the exchange rates are better to cash out, by all means. Me, I don't know what I'll do yet. Maybe cash out, maybe leave it in Paypal.
Er, that is, assuming I win.
Yeah, you can bet that there's going to be alot of blogs joining this contest. They're going to use a randomizer software to pick the winning blog. If Missloi were here, she'll use Probabilities Theory to tell you just how much of a chance you got :)
Incidentally, as of this writing, there's about 70 blogs in the contest, so, 1 in 70 chance of winning :) Much better odds than Toto or 4D, wouldn't you say? Well, unless Missloi smacks me and tell me I suck at math (which I do actually) and my numbers are all wrong...
In any case, I think this is a much better chance than trying to get a Payperpost ad. Most of the time, Asia, let alone Singapore, is usually disqualified from the "opportunities". Most times I go in, all the currently available opportunities are all RED, ie unavailable. As I said, most of the time it's because they wanted only US or Europe territories to write.
Anyway, here's wishing myself luck!
Labels: blog, contest, internet
23:59 by FoxTwo
I Discovered Windows Live Writer
Ok, not really "discovered", but more like "finally got around to it". Yeah, I knew about it even when it was in beta. Then, when it came out of beta, I still didn't get around to installing it. I finally "found time" to install it after my recent reformat.
As proof, I'm actually writing this post via Windows Live Writer. See the screenshot below:
That's the latest version that is available from Microsoft's Live.com. If you get it, you actually just download a "stub" installer file. From there you pick what you want and just wait for it to get the rest from the Internet, which I actually hate. I would really prefer to get the whole thing in one shot, be it a 20MB or even a 100MB file. Why? Simply because if I ever reformat and have to re-install stuff, I'd have to go through the whole "download it all from the Internet" process again, which wastes time.
I did a couple of test posts first, and this is what Windows Live Writer looks like:
It is actually quite impressive that a FREE blog editor supports so many platforms. I don't even have to configure my blogs - it automatically detected all the required settings from just the URL which I typed into the wizards. Naturally you can fine-tune it further if you go into the options panel.
There's built-in support for Blogger's "tags" system, which is picked up by blog services such as Technorati, MyBloglog and Blogcatalog, to name a few. You can see it in the screenshot above, right at the bottom, the line that says "Set Catergories". If your blog is not recognised by Windows Live Writer at setup, you can actually click "Insert Tags" from the right-hand sidebar and select the kind of tags you want. Services like Technorati, Flickr, IceRocket etc are supported.
WLW opens by default into the WYSIWYG interface, or "Web Layout" mode as it's now more commonly known. You can go into the HTML view if you choose, too. As a coder myself, I can tell you that Microsoft never fails to insert bloat-code into their stuff. Frontpage did it, now WLW does it too. Useless <p> tags everywhere, useless non-HTML whitespaces, etc.... sigh!
It takes some getting used to, though. I am actually more comfortable writing my posts from the web interface at Blogger instead of through a blog editor.
If you're hunting for a blog editor, give Windows Live Writer a try. It's pretty neat, and if you're not picky about "clean codes", it'll fill your bill quite nicely.
10:03 by FoxTwo I was just making my usual rounds of pingsters' blogs this morning (hey, people surf news sites, I surf blogs ok?), and guess what? Chillycraps' Department of Crappy Engineering is blocked!
Yeah, for some reason the company has decided to block his blog! Makes you wonder how a humour blog can garner a "Malicious Web Reputation" eh? And, it's not just that post either. Going to the actual URL is also blocked.
No, blogspot.com isn't blocked :) I can go to themuxicbox's blog fine.
I should really go find out who in my company reads his blog and hates it eh? LOL!
Labels: blog, firewall, internet
