Take a Peak
Welcome to my window.
The web is full of awe inspiring, interesting, and plain fun stuff.
Even more, since the web 2.0 revolution, the web is full of awe inspiring, interesting, and fun people.
This blog is my love letter to everything wonderful on the web.
Feel free to leave a recommendation of something you love from the web.
To learn more about the author, please visit my personal blog The Creative Nerd.
Syndicate
Window in the Web
Widgets: Toys for Bloggers
I have assembled for your blogging pleasure a list of widgets that are fun, informative and useful.
Before we begin, one caveat: While widgets can add much to our blogs, we must alway use with care. Too many widgets can slow loading time and add unnecessary clutter.
With that in mind, here are some widgets to play with:
1. Blogcatalog - See who has visited your blog. Another feature is the social networking like ability to send broadcasts and messages as well as start conversations with your contacts. Beware of spammy sites "friending" your blog. See my sidebar for example.
2. MyBlogLog - Same concept as Blogcatalog without as much social networking. It does offer a unique feature to allow you to join a blog's community automatically upon a preset number of visits. Much less useful for those looking to use the system for spam because it doesn't have as many social networking features. Also on my sidebar.
3. Entrecard - A newer concept, this widget allows bloggers to drop their "card" - a 125X125 image linking to their blog - when they visit other blogs that use Entrecard. Widgets are designed to advertise approved cards at the discretion of the blog owner. Bloggers earn advertising credits by visiting other blogs and dropping their cards. At publication date, it is not possible to have more than one blog registered in an account, but updates to the system have been promised to make it possible soon. Bloggers who wish to register multiple blogs at this time must use multiple email addresses to sign up. I'm currently using it only on my personal blog.
4. Blogrush - This widget offers up titles and blog names of four post at a time from a similar category as you pick for your blog. The idea is that you appear on other bloggers widgets in exchange for page impressions and click through on your widget. While plenty of bloggers are still using it, I jumped ship after several months of poor results.
5. Amazon.com - The original affiliate program for web masters offers a myriad of widgets to link your posts to products in their catalog. If you blog about books as often as I do, you'll find them invaluable. It doesn't hurt to know if your review inspires your reader to get whatever you talked about, you'll be rewarded with a cut of the profit. For an example, check out my post about Stephen King's short story collection Skeleton Crew.
6. Scoreboard by SpringWidgets - This scoreboard is powered by Fox Sports and offers scores for games across the the major US sports leagues. SpringWidgets has thousands of widgets, but this is the one I have experience with is sports scores. My husband Chris has it on his blog. My favorite thing is that the widget sizes can be customized to fit any blog perfectly. Even if sports isn't your thing, SpringWidgets likely has some useful babble for your blog.
7. Spock.com - Half people search engine, half social networking, Spock.com provides widgets to highlight search results. Here is one with the result when you search for little old me:
8. Yahoo! Answers - My personal guilty pleasure of a social networking and forum combo offers a widget to display your personal questions and answers. As you can see, I answer more often than I question.
9. Twitter - Twitter gives users a place to send short text message type update to be viewed by your group of friends. You can actually Twitter from your cell phone via text message. It's a great way to keep your online crew updated from when away from the computer. Allow me to admit, I do not Twitter or text message. Rest assured, I've found an example at Simple Kind of Life (scroll down a bit).
11. Hit Counter by quadium32 - If letting your visitors know they are not alone is important to you, this little widget is perfect. I have one on my personal blog. Quadium32 has plenty of other goodies for webmasters to play with. Check them out.
12. Clock by ClockLink - We bloggers span the globe. It is easy to forget the pesky time difference when visiting one's blogroll. My friend Skeet blogs from Hawaii, a full five hours time difference, displays one.
13. AccuWeather - Displaying the local weather on your sidebar is fun on a personal blog. Again, Skeet is my example. In the winter, I don't look at it because I don't want to know how beautiful it may be in Waianae, HI.
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Juuust a Bit Outside Moves to it's Own Domain
My husband Chris began blogging on a blogger domain around six months ago. Much like his life, the blog is about sports.
After much consideration, we have purchased juuustabitoutside.com. As with my blogs, it is hosted on Go Daddy and constructed with Go Daddy's Quick Blogcast. While it does not offer as much flexibility as Wordpress, it's simplicity is why it works for us.
Chris and I both work with companies that connect advertisers with bloggers to have their products featured in blog entries. One reason for the move is that blogs on Blogger and other free blogging platforms are not considered as valuable to advertisers.
Along with the assumption that bloggers who use free hosting are less serious about blogging (not always true), a real possibility that sponsored posts could be banned by the service provider at any time. It happened with Wordpress' free subdomains some time ago.
With Google owning Blogger, there is a real treat that terms of service with change to disallow any paid advertising. Google has come down hard on blogs around the blogosphere for "selling links" which is what they consider any work for PayPerPost or any other company. Not to beat the dead horse of this topic, but Google removed PageRank from thousands of blogs for going about their business, stating publicly that those blogs are worthless in their eyes.
My reason for sharing this here is that I would encourage any blogger who has a goal of making any income on their blog to make the transition to paid hosting on their own domain. It is not expensive or difficult. You have compete assurance that no one can tell you what you can or cannot publish on your site.
For sports fans, check out Juuust a Bit Outside. Without bias, I can say that Chris is knowledgeable and entertaining when it comes to the arena of sports.
Behind Every Blog
Do you ever get the feeling with some blogs that although you read what the blogger writes nearly every day, you don't know them at all? In topical blogs, this is a common feeling, because those blogs are not about a person. It can be jarring to have too much personal info in a blog about tech or something with the occasional post about the blogger's personal life.
On the other hand, I suspect a blog devoid of all personal information will not be widely read for long. After all, blogging is part writing and part conversation. It's hard to have a conversation when you know nothing about the person you are interacting with.
One blogger has addressed this problem in a novel way. It's called Behind Every Blog. There is a set of questions each blogger answers via email to be featured in daily posts. Can you say: Link love? I sent my answers today.
The blogger behind the fun is Jenn. Her answers are the first entry. I'm nosy. I had to look.
My fellow bloggers, now it's your turn.
Kisseo E-cards
With Christmas quickly approaching, time is running out for sending greeting cards through the mail. As usual, I haven't sent out any cards yet. I have a box of cards that I am going to take to work tomorrow to prepare to be mailed on Tuesday. I don't have a large list of friends and family to send cards to - less than a dozen - so I like to write a personal note in each one.
I'll also be spending some time sending out FREE online greeting cards to my friends in the online world. Some services for e-cards charge a yearly fee, but when I can choose from over a 1000 unique digital cards? Many are animated and all are beautifully designed.
You can bet there will be someone who will send me a Christmas card via snail mail that I didn't expect. It happens most years with at least one person from my off-line life. (Contrary to popular belief, I do have one.) I hope whoever it is this year assumes I'm out to save trees when I email them their last minute Christmas card from Kisseo.
Touch Type Refresher
The most useful class I ever took in school was keyboarding. I took it my junior year of high school.
Around that same time, my family got our first internet connection. It was 1996, so we had the coolest of service providers at the time - America Online. Yes, someday I'll be able to tell my children that I remember when AOL was the ISP of savvy surfers.
My goal in class was always accuracy first. At home, my goal was keeping up with a chat room plus a dozen IM windows. I attribute these dual typing goals to my comfort at the keyboard. The mere fact that I can type as fast as I compose is certainly an accomplishment.
All these years later, my typing is not entirely 'touch type.' I consider it a modified touch type that has me looking at the keyboard more the more tired I am. I'm on a computer all day at work, then come home to blog and network so my sore fingers and brain sometime need some visual help.
When I came across the 10-Fast-Fingers Speedtest, I was inspired to see if I still had any real touch type skill remaining. Not only do I allow my eyes to slip down to the keyboard, I seldom type something that I am reading like you do in keyboarding classes.
As for my score (drum roll please), I typed around 163 characters in a minute with reasonable accuracy of 21 correct words to 1 incorrect. It certainly is poor compared to the 65 or 70 words per minutes I scored back in keyboarding. On the other hand, that score is with honest no-look typing which I haven't practiced in nearly a decade.
For the beginning typist, 10-Fast-Fingers offers free online touch type lessons. We all know I love free. I'll be recommending this program to my newbie friends for years to come. Certainly, it is easier to enjoy a computer when one can input information in a timely manner. Can you imagine hunt and pecking a blog?
Even a long time computer user can benefit from a refresher course. I'll be practicing now that a realize how rusty I've gotten over the years. Maybe I'll actually get back to the practice of touch typing rather slacker typing.
Blogging for Readability
I am not, nor have I ever been, impressed with pseudointellectual snobbery. I've always thought that when a person is truly smart, they do not have to tell you ahead of time. Rather, people will notice as time goes on. I doubt Stephen Hawking ever has made a big deal of telling how smart he is, because when he communicates it's obvious that he is a genius.
Have you seen The Blog Readability Test? It's a neat little program where you plug in your URL. I am not sure exactly what the script measures. It bills itself as testing the level of education necessary to read the blog or website.
Both this blog and my personal blog score a junior high school level:
Every blog I have seen this widget displayed on has scored something lofty like post-graduate degree needed to understand the blog.
Is that something to be proud of?
I remember learning when I took journalism that when writing for a general audience it is important to use everyday language. A newspaper or magazine article should be simple to read for any literate American. Uncommon words and jargon should be banned if a writer wants to be read and understood.
Based on that understanding of journalism, I am pleased to find that my blogs are simple to read. It is not my goal to have readers toggle between my site and dictionary.com in an effort to understand what I am trying to say.
My goal as a blogger is to communicate.
I am a poor communicator if the average reader must struggle to make sense of what I have written. I would hope that my intelligence with show in what I say, rather than big words and complicated sentence structure that I could choose to say it with.
Jason's FanaticSpace
I love the tag line for Jason Wigley's FanaticSpace: Everyone Loves Something.
Jason, who goes by the screen name 2xKnight, is a veteran webmaster and programmer. In FanaticSpace, he has created a place for fans as of things as varied as Anime and Star Trek.
While the FanaticSpace Forums have yet to take off, Jason shows his knowledge and passion for pop culture cult worthy topics on the FanaticSpace Blog. I'd love to see the forums filled with all manor of passionate geeks of every strip, from hard core Harry Potter fans to those people who dress up as Storm Troopers every chance they get. There is, after all, a certain joy in that over-the-edge passionate fan.
One reason to visit is the in depth analysis on the differences between the British and American versions of The Office.
On a personal level, I'm happy to met any online or in real life that takes Star Trek as serious as I do. Since both of my parents are old school Trekkie and the show spawned my life long love affair with science fiction, not to mention that Trek was one of the first things I had in common with my best friend Kate.
As I am always impressed with bloggers that maintain multiple blogs, I must mention that Jason also maintains Anime Fans Online and a personal self titled Jason Wigley. I somehow escaped Anime fandom despite several high school friends who where big Anime junkies. I have one in mind that will get an email of this article, because I know she'd love more Anime obsessed friends.
I do, however, read the personal blog frequently. His take on blogging and the online world is always clever and well written. The one thing I would like to see is a more personal "About" page and more personal posts. Maybe not so many as it becomes over whelming, just enough to tell us who you are rather than just what you like. Don't be so shy.
On the whole, the biggest thing I'd like to see on FanaticSpace is more participants. It'll take time, but as more fans join in, it could be a truly fun place to connect with other people who love what I love.
Bad Blogger
I admit I've been a bad and neglectful blogger when it comes to this blog. It has been nearly a month since I've updated here despite every intention to keep it up on a regular basis.
It's always sad when a blog is abandoned. I've seen blogs on BlogRush widgets that haven't been updated since BlogRush launched. That's not so much an honest blog, but an attempt at passive income from advertising.
I digress, because I'm not talking about other bloggers. Certainly there are very good reasons some blogs get abandoned. I had no reason for not continuing this blog. I did think of reabsorbing the articles from this blog into my personal blog.
I was not sure I could handle two blogs. Just the investment of time is something I find challenging. It's never been a lack of ideas for this blog. I have around a hundred and fifty blogs and web sites in my delicious account just waiting to be shared.
My other reason for recommiting to Window in the Web is all bundled up in Google's decision a few weeks ago to drop page rank of bloggers who were suspected of "selling links." My blogs and Chris blog were all dropped from Page Rank 2, down to zero. This whole topic has been beaten to death on the PayPerPost Forums and PPP's parent company Izea's blog.
The major problem with Google taking away Page Rank based on those paid links is that advertisers have primarily judged a blog's reach and worth by page rank. If all bloggers that are willing to sell links and write paid content are "N/A" in Google's eyes, how then, can advertisers judge a blogs relative to the rest of the Blogosphere?
The solution from the folks over at Izea is called Real Rank. The revolution in ranking blogs by actual day to day statistical data rather than using ranks assigned in secret by one company cannot be overstated. Where Google's Page Rank is heavy based on incoming links along with other non-public factors, we know exactly what Real Rank is based on:
70% weighted towards visitors per day
20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
10% weighted towards pageviews per day
This means that a blogger knows exactly where they stand and how to go about improving. That's exciting for this blogger. It's also exciting for advertisers, because they'll know how many eyeballs their dollars are getting when they get space on a blog.
What does all this have to do with my renewed dedication to this blog?
Window in the Web has always been about my love of the internet as a whole and blogs specifically. Since active links mean links that people have actually click on, I am inspired to link to keep up my vision for this blog. That vision is that my readers would go enjoy the blogs that inspire me.
Retro-Food
If you are the type of person that gets hungry when they get nostalgic, do not visit Retro-Food. Your diet will be blown with old time delights like Macaroni and Cheese Mousse that you just won't find in today's cook books.
Since kitsch is one of my great loves, I adore the retro public service film footage featured every Friday. There is something otherworldly yet familiar about a sou's educational film about exercise.
A new feature is Wiggle Wednesday - devoted to Jello recipes that may or may not suit the modern palliate. My mom used to make a Jello salad that set up in a can of pineapple rings. It was old fashioned when she made it for baby showers and ladies' Bible studies in the 1980's. To this day, there is nothing that provides the same satisfaction as Jello, the ultimate in jiggly Americana.
Izea Arrives and Arugus Preview
I wrote about PayPerPost's search for a new name to include all the services the company provides. Long time users of PPP were outspoken in their unhappiness about the name change, along with concern of the wisdom of changing such a well known brand. Still, with Blogger's Choice Awards, Blogs in Space, and many other blog centered services calling the company PayPerPost does seem to lack an explanation of it's purpose.
The new site, Izea, launched Halloween night. The event was announced to the world (the blogging world, that is) on Colleen's Simple Kind of Life the very next day.
The new name is exciting, but the real vital news is the new system, codenamed Argus, that CEO Ted Murphy assures will revolutionize blogging and earning as a blogger.
Attendees at PostieCon, only five days away, plus a small number of volunteers will be provided with access to Argus' closed Alpha.
Due to recent developments with Google Page Rank system appearing to punish bloggers providing sponsored content, the promise of Argus measuring blogs by other criteria is more exciting then ever.
Any news of Argus is of interest to this blogger. Ted posted the following video today on the company blog. It was taken during a meeting where he gave some Posties a preview.