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As you know, in addition to educating clients and possible clients as to what blogs are, how they are useful and which software meets their needs, I spend a great deal of time perusing blogs themselves. Primarily to mine for potential blog syndication sites that help in blog promotion.

This brings me to something I haven’t said before, there is an extremely large amount of terribly designed/colored blogs. I’m not an artsy-fartsy type, but I do have an idea as to what clashes. What’s worse, is that some of them use MovableType, Pivot, b2 and Nucleus. Its one thing for a LiveJournal to look terrible (they just are) or even a Blogger powered ones (though, the default template is decent enough), but to have a un-Feng Shui, un-aesthetically pleasing MT-based blog built, maintained and linked to… there should be a law (heh).

Anyways, someone needs to register UglyBlogs.com or FatBlogsInPartyHats.com or BlogAwful.com — some definitive site that can keep track of the ugliness, so we can avoid them — BlackListedBlogs.com sounds more like it.

Now you’re wondering what I dug up today. Actually, I have to process another 20 or so links that I found useful enough to talk about, in addition to the ones below. So here we go.

Blogdex - I’ve seen this site listed all over the place, but the link would always time out on me. It worked this time and I added my site successfully (you receive a verification email). Go for it.

Bloginality - This is a site that analyzes your personality and gives you a 4-letter output as to what you are. I took it quickly and am an ISTP — don’t lose sleep over what you get though, they aren’t quite definitive… like the ink blots : )

Technorati - Another site I continue to see all over the Blogosphere. I don’t care much for building watch lists though. This is somewhat similar in concept to FreshBlogs and NewisFree. But if watching lists is your thing (and paying money to do so), then have at it.

A couple of dead links on the Google Blog Directory: Euroblogs, it has been inactive since May 2001. GBlogs - this I found on a blog (either Radio or at one of the Jacobsens sites), it’s dead and I think it was one for the UK.

BloggerLinks.com - Not a very extensive list of blog resources, but give it time. You can submit your blog too, not sure how long it takes them to process it though.

Birmingham blogs - For those that live in Birmingham UK, not exactly much of a list (I think more people have read my blog than are listed there), but the more the merrier (syndication that is).

Blogs of India - If you’re reading my blog and you’re from India, submit your blog to that site to be included in the coolest thing since Bollywood.

Toronto Area Bloggers - To my friends up in the great unarmed North, add your blog to that ever growing list. I actually have a friend that lives and works up there, but he is too afraid to blog (get a blog Cailean).

London Bloggers - So it’s not just Birmingham that gets represented today, Londoners can rejoice as they too have their own blog portal (blortal). I should add that the format for adding your blog on that site is pretty cool, check it out even if you don’t live there.

NYC Bloggers - To make Yankee friends up north (not just Canuks), here is a portal for your blogging needs.

DFW Bloggers - I actually sent them an email about a week ago to get added to their list and they still haven’t gotten back to me. Anywho, this is for the Dallas/Fort Worth area based bloggers.

San Diego Bloggers - Yup, for the San Diego-ites-arians-istans-etc.

Blogs for Xians - Yea, god-fearing members of the blogosphere (or at least ‘Christians’) now have a place of their own.

Photoblogs - This was really cool. Photoblogs have become their own subculture (I guess I’ll give them the stamp of their own real culture once I make one). Snazy.

Pitas - This is only useful if you use Pitas (which most don’t). If you are using Pitas and are for some reason not on Jennifers list, get on it.

The Octopus Files - If the owner got a real domain and got rid of the popup, I’d add this to the syndication sites column. Not a huge list of blogs, but it’s better than nothing.

Lastly is Get-Linked - They appear to be similar to Eatonweb and Blogarama — another collection of blogs. But at least they get to use the creative name: Fried-Spaghetti as the domain.

All of these have been added to the column on the right, bringing the list of syndication sites to over 40. Feel free to email me if you know of one I should add or check out.

So I was over at Gnome-Girl.com, paying a visit to Ms. Cheyenne as she commented on a couple of my posts [if she reads this Swanson is with an 'o' -- 'e' is just as good though : ) ]

One of the other goals I have with this blog (other than proving that anyone can blog) is to acquire the best list of blog syndication sites out there, or at least die trying (if you know of some, please shoot me an email). So I clicked on Cheyenne’s link called ‘The girlie matters MT tips n tricks.’ The Girlie put together some good resources that I’ll have to look into at a later date (nothing too pertinent I hope).

I also bumped into Blogstreet.com which allows you to add your blog to their list.

Now somewhere in all of this, I bumped into Blogstickers.com which is a repository for Blog bumper stickers. Hehe, I was inspired and decided to create a few myself, so here is another story.

I’m not the most proficient artist in meatspace let alone with a sophisticated piece of software like Illustrator. But I went ahead and gave it a whirl. For the life of me, I couldn’t get the text to look quite right, there was always itty bitty specks of pixel dust (unwanted colors floating inside the text) that I simply could not remove. So I went back to the time-tested and extremely simple MS Paint. Oddly enough, the ‘Text’ button wouldn’t work at all. So I loaded up The Gimp. For some reason it also had a problem executing a file and it flaked up on me (yea, I went ahead and installed the .gif converter that is “patented” — go ahead and deport me). I still tried but couldn’t get the right color palette (all this work for a simple text-based bumper sticker).

While this was going on, Jason suggested that I try out Paint Shop Pro. I haven’t used PSP for years, all the way back in highschool, but I gave it a shot anyways and within no time at all, I got it to work.

So without further ado blogmeisters and blogmeisteresses, here is what I concocted (please wait to the end for any applause):

Feel free to use any and all of them. They’re already yours as images have been copied to your cache and occipital lobe (remember, I’m one of those guys that says ‘intellectual property’ is a sham).