Successful Blog

Link Leaking Blog Rally

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A Twisty Road

Mike coined the Link Leak Virus. Easton started Blogtipping. Every Saturday, I get to thank you in the nicest way I can think of, and sometimes this old blog springs leaks at unexpected times.

This past week, Darren introduced the concept of Link Lust with the question, If you could GET 3 links who would you want to get them from? I didn’t really think about it, until I ran into the question on another SOB’s blog. Then I felt like answering the question there. Even more exciting and mystifying . . . within 24 hours one of the three links I lusted after happened. I actually got linked!

So I thought it might be fun to have a contest. [Read more…]

Thanks to Week 29 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

anythingoesmarketing logo

Creating a Better Life logo

Doc Searls logo

QAQNA logo

redbank tv logo

small-business-resources logo

Wintermute's blog

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this badge’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 05-12-2006

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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 screenshot to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Relax over a book, that Hsien Hsien Lei helps us find using Google Book search and what she’s learned that is cool about it.

Are you a last minute Mother’s Day Shopper? LiewCF has an answer for today’s modern mother.

Javier, who I hope will stop by this time, lets us know that the controvesy over whether to use Lorem Ipsum in design samples has been settled to the positive.

If you want to get your Hill Billy PhD. , you need character. Read this lively piece from Rocky about it.

Related ala carte selections include

Cas at Bright Meadow clues us in on how to survive when we find ourselves trapped in a Sci-Fi Film.

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

Introducing the Advice Library

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SOB Hall of Fame Entry: Advice Library by Oystein Lund

The Man with the Answers

Oystein Lund, editor of the Advice Library, is a relentless researcher. He has no fear of finding his way through the labyrinth of Wikipedia. At the Advice Library, you’ll find posts that mash up information from wildly different sources to fuel your idea bank. And he’s happy to answer questions you have about how things work, if you can’t find the answers already posted there. Besides that he’s a great conversationalist, and his writing is actually easy to read.

Notes from Liz: SOB Oystein Lund’s blog is as eclectic, fun, and insightful as the man who writes it. If you’ve been around Successful Blog at all these past few weeks, you’ve had to have caught the depth of his knowledge and his willingness to search out the answers. If not, check his comments on the Wikipedia post (this one is just the start read on down a while), and you’ll see in a flash that he’s the “go to” guy for information — especially when you’re easily overwhelmed or don’t know where to start.

While I was the kid in kindergarten helping other kids zip up their jackets and untie knots in shoelaces, Oystein was showing the other kids all of the cool things in and out of the library that every kid would find fascinating.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Has your SOB Blog Been Introduced to US?
Blog Promotion: May I Introduce You?

Net Neutrality 5-09-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

COPE Telecom Bill Affects Net Neutrality, Local Cable Franchises and Funding for Public Access
[via Cause we all know how well it worked with radio…]

AMY GOODMAN: Is this a reprise of what happened when Michael Powell, the son of Colin Powell, who used to head the F.C.C., tried to push through the media consolidation rules, the changes in them?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: I really think it is, because I think what we’re seeing is this across-the-board outrage at the corruption of the process in which powerful special interests sneak through these privileges that benefit only them. And their public relations, when it’s subject to scrutiny, is laughable. It doesn’t hold up. And that’s why they have do it secretly, because they know if once the public hears about this and they go to the websites like savetheinternet.com, which is the intersect that all this coalition, right and left, has come together, where all of the information is collected. Once people hear about this, they absolutely are outraged, and the big guys can’t win, and that’s their main worry now, because we have to stop these bills this summer. We can’t let this go through and force Congress to go through an election cycle this fall and have to answer for this before the voters of this country and then come back next year.

Information Toll Road

Who is in favor of network neutrality, Microsoft, Yahoo, ACLU, Amazon, Guns Owners of America just to name a few. Who is against it, AT&T, TimeWarner, Comcast, and Verizon.

This is not a blue state or red state issue, nor is it a capitalist vs. Socialist, it is the battle of who controls information. As of right now, the information superhighway is open to anyone who wants to pay a small fee for service or to a company to host a site, if this bill passes congress and the senate, the superhighway will turn into a slow toll road.


John Carroll On Net Neutrality by Broadband Issues

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. John Carroll of ZDNet:

The Internet is not threatened by access tiers. In fact, it can be enhanced by making new bandwidth-heavy services more economical and reliable in ways that would be impossible given a naive enforcement of “net neutrality” rules.

I could not have said it better myself. I am terrified of this becoming a large, politically charged issue, in which all rational technical discussion is thrown aside because the Technorati love Google and whatever Google wants, Google gets. I just can’t possibly see how the government can do a better job regulating this problem than the market.

Let’s say, for example, that Comcast decides to degrade all VOIP services except their own. Do you have any idea how loud the outcry would be from their customers? Would they really shoot themselves in the foot like that? Are we all so naive as to think that large businesses truly hate their customers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 5-08-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Mike McCurry — Hurting The Internet, Hurting His Admirers
[via Misinformation in defense of net neutrality ]

The Online Reporter carried this headline, “Telcos freed from FCC broadband regulations.” The article began:

The FCC said that phone companies such as Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, Qwest and other local telcos will no longer be regulated by traditional telephone rules when it comes to their DSL broadband services. The FCC agreed unanimously to classify DSL broadband as an “information service” rather than a telephone service. Phone companies will no longer be required to open their broadband networks to access by third-party ISPs.

After a one-year transition period, the phone companies can arbitrarily end any agreements they were forced to make with independent ISPs.

In other words, the FCC re-wrote the definitions to exclude telecom companies from our nation’s telecom laws! And we are now 9 months into a 12-month period, at the end of which a radical shakeup of the Internet will take place. Mike McCurry knows that the free and open Internet most Americans think is the “status quo” is actually GONE in 3 months. [emphasis L. Strauss]

So it’s more than a little bit deceptive when McCurry asks, “What service is being degraded? What is not right with the Internet that you are trying to cure?” McCurry is implying the exact opposite of what he knows to be true. That’s a lie, and it’s a genuinely sad sight for those who once admired him.

Academics for net neutrality by Open Access News

Many college presidents find themselves caught in the middle of the debate, confides a college lobbyist who asked not to be identified. On the one hand, they want to maintain good ties with AT&T, Verizon, and other broadband carriers because in many cases, they provide communication services to campuses. Some college presidents may even serve on the companies’ boards. On the other hand, the presidents do not want their distance-learning and research programs to suffer because of a tiered Internet that would cause their institutions to pay more than they can afford for reliable, fast Internet service.

Reporters Without Borders: Introduction Internet – Annual Report 2006

Everyone’s interested in the Internet – especially dictators

The Internet has revolutionised the world’s media. Personal websites, blogs and discussion groups have given a voice to men and women who were once only passive consumers of information. It has made many newspaper readers and TV viewers into fairly successful amateur journalists. Dictators would seem powerless faced with this explosion of online material. How could they monitor the e-mails of China’s 130 million users or censor the messages posted by Iran’s 70,000 bloggers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE