Successful Blog

While You Were Out Having a Life

by

Highlights for Readers

I know that most of you have a real life, and that during this holiday you actually lived it. With that in mind, I’ve collected the recent posts on the most popular topics and brought them together here for you.

Click on the titles of the ones that you want to explore.

6+1 Traits: Sentence Fluence I Got Rhythm

SOB Business Cafe 6 30 2006

Search Engines and People Care About Anchor Text in Links

6+1 1,2, 3,: Save Me from Beginners and Experts NOW!

6+1 How-to Blogging -- Stomp Out Swiss Chees Knowledge

Hope this helps make your life a little easier. I know it’s always hard this first day back to work.

Brand you and me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help with your writing, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related articles
Checked the complete Writing Power for Everyone series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES PAGE.

Net Neutrality 7-5-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.

Google says bill could spark anti-trust complaints

SOFIA (Reuters) – Google warned on Tuesday it will not hesitate to file anti-trust complaints in the United States if high-speed Internet providers abuse the market power they could receive from U.S. legislators. . . .

“If the legislators … insist on neutrality, we will be happy. If they do not put it in, we will be less happy but then we will have to wait and see whether or not there actually is any abuse,” Vint Cerf, a Google vice-president and one of the pioneers of the Internet, told a news conference in Bulgaria.

“If we are not successful in our arguments … then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division,” he said on Tuesday.

On Net Neutrality

Subject: Foe of net neutrality clearly explains his argument

Dr. Pournelle,
Here we see a shill…er… Opponent of net neutrality clearly state why he thinks the government should not enforce net neutrality on the internet, which is by-the-way in large part government subsidized and run by companies kept in business by government regulation.

http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1512499

By his argument, my ISP should chop bandwidth to your site unless you or your ISP coughs up extra money, because ones and zeroes to and from your site should somehow be more expensive than ones and zeros to and from sites on my ISP’s subnets… That is, unless you pay EXTRA. See, paying for bandwidth only ONCE isn’t enough, and to ensure that this senator’s internets (I think he meant email but he could mean pRoN) isn’t held up a few minutes by me browsing your site once or twice a day, ones and zeroes passing along the public funding subsidized internet should pass through various tollbooths, with each carrier charging whatever they can get on top of the network access and bandwidth fees I personally pay.

Most places call this extortion, and the mob made quite a living doing this.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

The Mic is ON in Philadelphia!

by

It’s Like Open Mike Only Different

Here’s how it works.

open mike night

The rules are simple — be nice.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. . . . Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.

Some things we might talk about could include

  • personal declarations of independence.
  • coolest fireworks stories — real and metaphorical.
  • urban legends about fireworks.
  • parades, marching bands, and drum corps.
  • your invisible pet. We know you have one.

AND THE EVER POPULAR,

What are the code-writing donkey and the drinking moose doing tonight?

A link anyone to was a member of the DCI related to one of the points above.

Fireworks

Thanks to gophila.com for this Fourth of July Fireworks over the Philadelphia Museum of Art Photo by G. Widman for GPTMC. Thanks to Joe for finding this great photo of his lovely city.

Enjoy the fireworks!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
The Mic is ON. It’s Thassos Island, Greece!
The Mic in ON in Tuscany!

Open Mic at 7pm Chicago Time

by

4th of July Tuesday Open Comment Night

Personal Branding logo

YES, the mike will be open again tonight. So start collecting your thoughts. Remember, you get to bring what you want to talk about.

The rules are simple — be nice.

We met lots of new friends last week as we always do. If you missed it, stop by this week, and we’ll meet you.

Some things we might talk about could include

  • personal declarations of independence.
  • coolest fireworks stories — real and metaphorical.
  • urban legends about fireworks.
  • parades, marching bands, and drum corps.
  • your invisible pet. We know you have one.

AND THE EVER POPULAR,

What are the code-writing donkey and the drinking moose doing tonight?

A link to anyone was a member of the DCI related to one of the points above.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles

The Mic is ON. It’s Thassos Island, Greece!

Interview 6: Blogging Pro’s David Peralty

by

David Peralty, Blogging Pro

A few days ago I posted about the WordPress Theme and Plugin Challenge set by David Peralty at Blogging Pro. In that post, I promised more information about David and his reasons for posing the challenge. Both are worth a closer look.

Since my post about the challenge, Blogging Pro has added news and articles that include lies that bloggers tell about blogging, how to lead a balanced life as a blogger, other WordPress themes and plugins, trackback bugs, and the great “bug in” on July 4th to rid WordPress of critters. Writing for Blogging Pro keeps a guy busy.

Yet, when we talked by email. David was unstressed, professional, quick and friendly. Here are three question that I asked him with the answers he sent me.

What prompted you to lay down the WordPress challenge?

As I have been working on Blogging Pro for the Bloggy Network, I have been noticing a shift in both the quality and quantity of themes and plugins for WordPress. With the community not inspired by many of the contests that were around, I really started feeling a little bummed at where the community was heading. Blogging Pro, being one of the bigger WordPress information sites, I thought it could be a great platform to entice others to step up and create something new.

Are you a theme designer yourself?

I have attempted to design my own theme called Phoenixtheme (http://www.phoenixrealm.com/2006/02/02/phoenixtheme-v02/). It was relatively simple, but it was picked up pretty well by many people,
who them customized it for their needs. I also did a quick conversion of an open source web design Andreas 07 (http://www.phoenixrealm.com/2006/02/02/wpandreas07-v02/) so that it
could be used for the WordPress platform.

Aren’t there already enough WordPress themes and plugins to go around?

Honestly, I still feel some very important areas have been ignored. How many grunge themes are there? Themes that are more girly in nature? What about good three and four column themes? I still feel that there are also so many ways WordPress themes could go that have not been explored.

Also as the community grows, I have been noticing that there are about a dozen themes that do really well, while all the rest are more or less ignored. I would like to see that upper level increase to a group of two dozen superb themes.

I also think the same of WordPress plugins. You might say “how many plugins do you need to integrate an image gallery into your site?” but honestly I have yet to come across one that does what I need it to do, how I want to do it. With plugins, the different workflow that people have has to be taken into consideration, which is why you can have a dozen plugins that do the same thing, but people will follow the one that works the best for them.

I think that there are still more plugins in the minds of creative people that if given the right incentive, and motivation, will be released and we will all go “Wow!”.

David Peralty thinks the community deserves a “Wow!” David doesn’t just write for Blogging Pro. He is one. Read his posts. You’ll see.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Interview 5 Meet Peter Chen: Blogspot Expert for New Bloggers
Interview 4 Johan Sundkvist Knows Minimalist
Interview 3 Patrick Makes California a Black Hole

Net Neutrality 7-4-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality Update: Dorgan’s Promising a Fight

So far, everyone I’ve spoken to has been very receptive, but many, if not most, of the people I’ve spoken to have been tricked by the misleading TV and print ads. On Saturday, out canvassing for a local congressional candidate, several volunteers had to be convinced that the positions they held were not anti-Net Neutrality, but in fact pro-Net Neutrality. The early publicity and framing are crucial to this fight, and right now the big cable and telecom companies have us beat. Since the Dems can’t do it on their own, please help them out in shaping the debate. No one wants to lose the internet. The battle is in making sure people understand what is at stake.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE