Apparently I really enjoy making lists, plus it helps me procrastinate a little more before I respond to some lengthy emails (NASA has some “griefing” fanboys mad at my latest piece).
Some news junkies subscribe to dozens of periodicals and buy copious amounts of books in order to stay on top of their industry each year.
Because I am poor and because it exists, I use an RSS reader to fulfill most of the habitual need to stay ahead of the curve. I made the switch from Bloglines to Google Reader this past fall and look forward to the healthy competition in the future. Below is a list of sites I tend to frequent and heartily recommend (the actual list is 100 or so):
Techdirt: despite my disagreements with Mike on some issues, I think Techdirt offers some of the best commentary on the technology news industry bar none. Mike & Co. also have a useful information analysis service called: Corporate Intelligence. Not that he would hire me, but this is certainly an endeavor I would like to be part of. It is the long-tail of tech micro-news (think: a lower-cost Forrester Research or Gartner subscription, but with more frequent updates similar to that of Bloomberg wire reports).
DealBreaker: if you don’t have time to read The Wall Street Journal, or get annoyed by Cramer yelling all the time, yet you need to stay on top of the interesting stories in world finance, this site is for you. As I told founder John Carney, DB is much more interesting and informative than any finance class I took in college… and has a spunky refreshing attitude that makes me look good at cocktail parties. Plus, if a 20×20 grainy jpg is any indication, Muffie is kinda cute. The sometimes Austrian-bent also doesn’t hurt either.
ArsTechnica: I’ve been reading these guys daily for about 8 years now. ArsTechnica is one of the largest sources for original computer news and reviews. Plus, they have two excellent supplements: Journals.ars and Nobel Intent, both of which discuss the latest reports found in numerous scientific journals.
Organizations and Markets: If you have spent much time working for The Man or consider yourself an entrepreneur of any stripe, then you have at some point thought about how firms should be organized: flat, horizontal, vertical, Terry Tate-ish, ad nauseam. I find the academic debate surrounding these issues interesting, though at times, completely Ivory Towerish. However, Peter Klein and his Denmarkian friend make the discourse interesting and germane. Plus I have a soft-spot for their Austrian-esque approach to Bureaucracy.
DamnInteresting: What’s not to like about a site that frequently posts informative, typically historical, articles? Not only is it well-written prose, but they actually cite sources and allow readers to publicly critique and comment on a piece… proto-Open Peer Review?
CoyoteBlog: While one of the few non-tech-centric feeds on my Reader, Warren Meyer posts some interesting cultural brain droppings he finds around the intarweb. If you like him, you will probably find Overlawyered of interest too.
The GMU Four: I have mentioned that I think academic institutions should consider using blogs as a cheap means to advertise departments, recruit passionate students, and keep the public informed of current events (especially research). Over the past several years, numerous economics professors at George Mason University have maintained frequently updated blogs on topics ranging from economics, culture, statism, technology, and just about everything else (even sports). They also happen to be somewhat libertarian-leaning and Austrian-friendly:
- Cafe Hayek (I’ve met Boudreaux, good guy, plus having the legal background adds more flavor)
- Marginal Revolution (a friend in the PhD program says Cowen is as eclectic and informed as his blog posts)
- The Austrian Economists (articulate)
- EconLog (I’ve corresponded with Kling several times, he’s on top of the game)
People that should post more frequently:
Note: despite the fact that I think most of their users are complete morons (RTFA), I still read Digg and Slashdot everyday. And the emo-marxists at BoingBoing can be interesting too.
If I didn’t mention you or your blog, I might start if you happen to be a hot chick or want to fund an empty scholarship. Or both.
Yesterday I visited Lilia Efimova’s klog (she works at a Dutch-based institute for implementing knowledge).
I originally found her link off of the KMpings Trackback list (there are some interesting and worthwhile klogs pinging them). She published a questionnaire to ascertain various aspects of why you as an individual blog.
If you don’t have a blog yet, take a few minutes of your time and explain why on this questionaire.
I’m interested to know what others have to say, as this directly affects the line of work I’m in (I too would like to know what makes you tick).
Let me know what you think.
By now all of you are familiar with Google and most of you probably use it as your primary tool for researching. Back in college I migrated over to it entirely (history major) as I had little need to purchase books when I could simply access libraries of primary sources via my computer.
Now you’ve been pondering how you can popularize your blog and would like to increase your traffic in some way. Below is one technique that Robert Loch stumbled upon when using the terms “Anna Kournikova” and “Penthouse” together in the same post. I found this when I came across a post by Richard Giles who adds his commentary to Loch’s:
Loch: “Google sends me 1000 Anna Kournikova fans in the space of 4 hours
One post about Anna Kournikova and Penthouse, and my site gets flooded. Somehow, my timely post got to no. 1 under the search term ‘anna kournikova penthouse.’ Since then my visitor profile has somewhat changed ;-) Still, from a marketing perspective, this does demonstrate the potential for opportunistically using news events to bring users to your site.”.
Giles: Loch took it one step further and changed his Blog Title to include the words, “Anna Kournikova Penthouse - Marketing Blog - Anna Kournikova Penthouse”, because Google’s search results list the title of web pages, this is the first thing a Google searcher will see. He also made sure that he mentioned Anna’s name, nude pictures, and Penthouse throughout his site for a good month after the first post.
Loch: “For 15 days I held the no.1 spot on Google for the term ‘Anna Kournikova Penthouse,’ the 3rd most popular search term. Obviously Google traffic is many times large that Overtures. Whilst that traffic was useless to me, imagine what a site selling Anna Kournikova posters could have done with my 40,000 plus Anna Kournikova Penthouse related visitors. Using a blog to jump on news stories, and then redirect traffic, does appear to me to be a feasible net marketing tactic. Bloggers will hate me saying that, but hey, I didn’t invent the technology, or decide how Google rates weblogs.”.
Giles: Although this is an extreme example, because anything to do with naked pictures of Anna is likely to generate a large amount of traffic, it does demonstrate what can be done using topical information and Google structured Blogs.
This is certainly one technique that you could deploy to bring in short-term traffic. This Slashdot-effect (as Mr. Giles discusses as well) will most probably bring you both 43 and 14 year old single males, but unless you plan on maintaining a Porn-based blog (they do exist) you should keep doing what you do best and what you enjoy. If it is traffic you want, just goto my main page (for those reading this in the archive) and look at the Syndication list. Currently I have over 40 different sites that will happily syndicate your blog (freely, no money involved) in some manner and I find more each week (feel free to email me if you have one not on the list).
For those of you who would like to get their hands dirty in an effort to make your blog the creme de la creme I recommend visiting WebmasterWorld.com and SitePointForums.com (I visit SPF personally, but WW has some excellent resources, in addition an engineer that works at Google posts there).
If you visit SPF, here is their section on search engines in general along with their Google specific one. here. And if you really want to do some research, just look up Search Engine Optimization on Google and you’ll be set for an undisclosed amount of time (until something better than Google comes out).
Moving along, Mark Pilgrim wrote a book discussing simple tweaks you can do to make your website and weblog more accessible. It’s called: Dive Into Accessibility - 30 days to a more accessible web site and from what I’ve read, it looks like a winner (it’s “free” too). One particular techinque he describes is useful for anyone that uses javascript to link users from point A to point B. Here he states that:
“The scourge of web design is the “javascript:” link, a pseudo-link that executes a piece of Javascript code when you click on it. The most common place this problem occurs in weblogs is in the link to display comments in a separate window. Why is it a problem? Because 11% of Internet users don’t use Javascript for one reason or another, including many disabled users whose browsers simply don’t support it. These pseudo-links won’t work for them; use real links instead.
Although it’s easy to describe and simple to fix, I can’t stress enough how important this tip is. Some problems, like not having a “skip link” past your navigation bar, reduce usability to varying degrees, but at least your page can be read eventually. On the other hand, this problem actually makes entire chunks of important content completely inaccessible. If your comments are hidden behind a “javascript:” link, they may as well not exist.”
Much of his ebook is written like that, where he explains a problem and then below it, describes a workable solution in easy-to-follow steps.
If you want a few quick pointers on how to attract more ‘useful’ (non-Kournikova-esque) traffic to your weblog, visit this post at the PlasticBag.
And now for some more meat. Anders Jacobsen of Norway (Swanson…) has a great series for Optimizing MovableType to Get More Readers. In fact, I came across several links I’ve mentioned today (and yesterday and probably tomorrow too) thanks to him.
Begin by reading his post about installing MT (he migrated from Blogger), those steps seem to be ‘rock-steady’ — use Collectrix as your host though [shameless plug] — I got a friend to help me with cgiwraps and I recommend trying to secure your site/blog as best as possible (aside from unplugging the server from the network). Part 2, he discusses ‘Google-Juicing’ (just little ways to attract traffic via Google). This statement best describes how everyone can obtain more traffic:
“Finally: The ultimate tip for getting hits from search engines: Make good content that people want to link to. It’s as easy as that. Following all the tips above plus optimizing your archive strategies are only going to get you to a certain point… If you’re not writing interesting things, why should people bother visiting your pages anyway?”
So stop sucking, I mean it.
In his last segment (for now) he lists several syndication techniques to promote your blog (all of the sites are ones I have listed, no need to worry). If you are gearing your blog to klogging (knowledge-based logs… versus unknowledge based logs, heh) visit KMpings. It along with, Robert Loch’s Net Marketing blog (check out his archives, great stuff) can give you the tools, tips and even training on creating a more robust and feature-filled blog (something that can soak up traffic like a sponge). [Extra Special Note: BlogRoots is by far one of the best collections of Blogosphere information as it is updated continually throughout the day. From software to tools to trends, this is a must visit.]
Lastly, if you want to reinvent and/or redesign your blog, visit the 2003 Weblog Awards and peruse the nominee’s and winners to see what the “hip & in” thing is now (note: yes, some of the sites aren’t the best, that’s why judging is called subjective).
Alright, I know all of you (3 readers including myself) want to be confused with more Internet lingo, so here is a new one: Klog. The word apparently comes from the combination of two words: Knowledge + Blog (sorta like me making ‘blortal‘ — ‘blog’ + ‘portal’).
I originally bumped into it after a friend from New York, Bobby Taunton, messaged me in reference to the German/Google translation topic (he sent me my site translated in Russian and oddly enough, it was the same translator I used back in the one semester I took Russian [and bumped into Dave at]). Among the links Bobby sent me was the word “Klog” and after a quick search on Google I found this Radio post (by Spike Hall) with an explanation and definition:
“A K-Log is a personal Web site that contains annotated links to other Web sites, Intranet resources, pictures, multimedia, documents, and other useful material. They are organized by time in a daily format (with the most recent posts first). It is important to remember that K-Logs are living sites that are authored by individuals. They reflect what a person is thinking about and doing during the course of the day. They are archives of experiences, organized in a way that makes it easy for visitors to understand. A K-Log is a tool that runs on your desktop. The interface for a K-Log is your browser. A K-Log combines a weblog publishing tool and news reader. K-Logs are used for knowledge sharing in corporations and nonprofits.”
Now that is from a blog Mr. Hall found on John Robb’s Radio site. Additionally, Mr. Hall thinks that definition can be Slimfasted, stating:
“First, A k-log (knowledge log) is a weblog, meeting the definitional requirements of weblog. Second, a klog also demonstrates/documents a knowledge claim and/or it documents and illustrates the dynamic individual process of a quest for knowledge.”
So I guess my blog can now be called a klog — yet another good buzz word to pat my resume with.
For more information on klogs and klogging, check out Phil Wolff’s site — extensive only begins to describe it.
