Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

The Blog Herald: Flying Cars Are Unlikely

Filed Under SOB Business, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 6 Comments

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Did They Promise You Flying Cars Too?

When I first got to the Internet, I unconsciously tried to give everything a place, north, south, east, west. Being visual, I still find myself, thinking about people’s blogs and websites on a map of the world in my head. But that’s only half of the story.

Like any 3-D company — building and people — that I might drive to, the Internet is a place, but it’s also the people that live, work, and play every day here.

However, we have to remember that the two Internets — the place and the people — don’t sit on a world map or follow 3-D rules as the two companies in the physical world we are used to. Doc Searls says it well in his notes on the wrap up summary by Karim Lekhani at the Internet & Society 2007 Conference.

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

The Blog Herald

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Liz Strauss at The Blog Herald, The Blogging Times, and Who’s One in a Million?

Congratulations on the Tag Page at Technorati! Is it Our Turn Now?

Filed Under Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 49 Comments

The Exciting New Tag Pages Go Live Today!

When you go to Technorati this morning — oh you’re one who’s stopped going? — well go on over. They have exciting news! David Sifry has announced the new and updated Tag Pages in honor of the second anniversary of Technorati tags. At the Technorati weblog, where he makes the announcement, David explains the beauty of both the tag pages and the value of tags.

Technorati Tag Pages

And, with the launch of our new Tag Pages, we’ve improved the way that you can check out the Live Web, too. A Technorati Tag Page shows you everything in the known universe (blogs, videos, photos, podcasts, music, people) tagged with your topic or interests, all in one place. [ . . . ]

The beauty of tags is that they’re metadata: data about data. What does that mean? Tags actually describe their subject, as opposed to, say, keywords, which just occur within them.

Is It Our Turn Now?

I’m delighted with your new Tag Pages, Dave. Seems every time I turn around there’s another new feature or an improved whistle to one. I bet it feels grand to be growing and winning technology awards. I just wonder how many customers asked for this one, because the Technorati users that I know have more basic things at the top of their wishlist.

Every morning and throughout the day, I play a game I call Technorati Roulette. I get links on posts, and I check in. There’s no predictability to whether my link count will go up, go down, or even change. I might have the fun of seeing my archive chronology suddenly rearrange time in some alien fashion.

Every time Technorati does a reset, upgrade, or anything new, I lose 20 or more links, just like that! I’ve learned to expect it every weekend. It’s a fact of Technorati life.

You might say that’s because Technorati only tracks 6 months of links. That argument doesn’t work. That might work if my archives went back 6 months but they only go back 60 days!! And there was no weekend in the history of this blog that I took on as many links as I’ve been losing in one fell swoop. So that math doesn’t work.

Things at Technorati I have been broken since five months before I wrote Dear Niall Kennedy and David Sifry at Technorati. That would be about 16 months now.

Here are my problems today:
Janice does her best to address what’s going on. The engineers look. The issues remain. There are plenty of emails with screenshots about the problems. Sorry to do this out loud, but behind the scenes hasn’t worked. Maybe this way some folks reading will feel they are not alone.

That’s just me though. What about the folks I know who haven’t been indexed for over 100 days? What about the folks who can’t get indexed at all? What about the folks who can’t claim their blogs? How important is an improved Tag Page to them?

David, I’m sorry to rain on your parade. But c’mon. Where are you looking? It’s our content that you’re indexing. We’re stakeholders in what you do.

Sooner or later, someone like Blog Pulse is going to provide a service that works and folks will go there. We’ll go there because it’s more reliable than Technorati roulette and because it’s more fun than writing this kind of post to a guy that I really like.

When is it our turn? When is our wishlist important enough?

– ME “Liz” Strauss

UPDATE: WHEN I PUBLISHED THIS POST I DROPPED 10 MORE LINKS. I CAN’T QUIT LAUGHING ABOUT THE TIMING OF THAT.

UPDATE: THANKS DAVID, JANICE, AND THE ENGINEERING TEAM FOR RESTORING MY LINK COUNT. I APPRECIATE IT. :p

Related articles
Put Your 2Cents In–What’s Technorati Worth–Without Janice?
Technorati Has a NEW Home Page–My Blogs Are Stuck Again

Metrics: Who Are We and How Are We Feeling?

Filed Under Audience, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 4 Comments

Information as Art: A New Look at Stats

In August of 2005, the We Feel Fine project began harvesting data from weblogs. In this metrics of feelings, the system scans the Internet every few minutes for new blog posts sentences that include the phrases, I feel and I am feeling. Whenever possible it also gathers from the blog additional identifying data: the age, gender, and geographical location of the blogger who wrote the sentence.

The database now contains several million human feelings and grows by 15,000+ daily.

Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar have organized the data into “six movements” — each artful, entrancing, and compelling in it’s presentation of humanity. They describe We Feel Fine in this way.

The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles’ properties – color, size, shape, opacity – indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. . . .

At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what’s on our blogs, what’s in our hearts, what’s in our minds.

Click the image below to go explore how we’re feeling.

We Feel Fine 55

The people who wrote these sentences are our readers. They are also us.

What do you think of how we’re feeling today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 12-22-06

Filed Under Business Book, Strategy, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats | 12 Comments

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are



Presentation Zen knows which books to buy as last minute gifts — the cool and engaging ones.

Presentation Zen Gift Buying Guide



Kickass Webdesign Design knows that our emotional sides still require strong and effective web support that’s well configured.

Usability Is No Sham



Content Done Better clarifies a Google clarification, making sense of adsense.

Adsense Earnings without pictures



Brain Based Business explains why our messages get crossed.

What You Say Is Not What I Hear



99 shades of grey helps us dream of sugar plums more easily.

10 ways to get to sleep quickly

Related ala carte selections include



Orbit Now! has identified what’s worth paying attention to, and he also listes what other folks say on similar subjects.

Ins and Outs

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

After Thanksgiving Link Love — 15 Links that Are Better than Left-Overs

Filed Under Branding, Great Finds, Marketing, SEO, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools, ZZZ-FUN | 8 Comments

Can’t Have You Sitting Home with Left-Overs

I’ve collected 15 links for you to read or add to your tool kit over the weekend. A wealth of interesting stories, toys, and treasures.

News Stories

  • Roundup: Digg’s crisis, Odeo, Amidzad’s touch, Mobio’s movies, HAVA for Christmas


  • Best of the Web 2006 Clicke the categories in the sidebar to see each list.

    • Tools for Developers and Developer Wannabes

  • the web developer’s handbook Subtiopics in this resource include: creativity tools, css showcases, css galleries and showcases, color tools, color schemes and palettes, color patterns, fashion color selections, color theory, royalty free photos, css daily reading, css in German, web design daily reading, css theory, css layout, css navigation menu, css technique, css software and Firefox extensions, css web tools and services, html web tools and services, accessibility checkers, miscellaneous tools, javascript, ajas, DOM, fonts, typography, RSS, CMS and forum software, blogging, specifications, usability and accessibility, add a link (free), seo tools, seo references, how to get things done, freelancers, web 2.0, 2reads this week.


  • Online Generators ascii generators, css generators, color generators, domain name generators, email generators. favicon generators. flash generators. form generators. fun & humor generators. graphic & image generators. htaccess generators. metatag generators. misc. generators. password generators. pdf generators. php & MySQL generators. popup generators. robot.txt generators. rss generators.sitemap generators. text generators.tooltip generators. weblog generators.xmnl generators.


  • Curvy Corners Does what it says.


  • Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites Includes links to The Complete List of Visual Studio Add-Ins and Tools, The Complete List of Ajax Tools, The Complete List of CSS Tools. The Complete List of Great Free TV Web Sites on the Internet. The Complete List of Software Development Events to Attend in 2007, The Complete List of Software Development Frameworks, Process’s, Methods, or Philosophies


  • Full Web Building Tutorials - All Free Too many to list.Includes basic HTML examples and color codes.

    • Buzz, Comments, and Links

  • Web 2.0: Buzz-Monitoring and Tracking Meausre, observe, analyze link popularity, track comments, get links


  • Blogger ForumTopics include Newbies, Template Design, Link Eschange, Coding, Getting Noticed

    • On Jobs

  • Steven R. Covey on Job Security In this pieces at JibberJabber, Steven Covey discusses the employment cycle, career management, branding and building a real network, and adapting to a new career.


  • A Job Candidate’s Bill of Rights 10 Traits to Expect from an Interviewing Process.

    • SEO/Marketing/PR

  • 10 Shortcuts for Successful SEO 10 Steps to follow.


  • Judy’s Book: Word of Mouth Website You Need to Know About


  • 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic from SEOmoz Solid advice.


  • PRWEB Where it is and how it works.


  • Top Seven Ways How Writing Articles Can Explode Your Business


  • Creating a Slogan from Scratch Define your niche. Test adaptablility. Check for Matches.



    • No turkeys in this bunch. That was last Thursday’s deal. :)

    –ME “Liz” Strauss

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