Illinois Earthquake
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I, like many here in Illinois, was awoken by an earthquake. Closet doors were rattling, metal pots were clanging and my mirror was shaking. At about 4:37am today Illinois experienced a 5.4 earthquake. I’m sure many in California are questioning what the big deal is, but for us in the land of corn this is enough to freak some of us out. It has been reported that this tremor was felt from St. Louis to Chicago to Indiana.
Working for an insurance company in central Illinois, I’m curious what if any action they will take in response to the tremor in their “back yard”. If anyone reading this felt the tremor or slept through it but live in the affected area, I urge you to check your house for any structural damage. Check for any cracks in walls or floors that weren’t there yesterday.
Good luck to you all and hopefully you made it through this rare Illinois event unscathed.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted on April 18, 2008 By Jason Spence
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15 Steps to a Useful Blog
-->I’ve posted on How to Start a Successful Blog in 50 steps with some legitimate steps along with some attempts at humor. It is now probably time to give you some vital steps to making a useful blog. Before I begin the list, here are a couple assumptions.
- You know what the blog will be about.
- The blog will utilize WordPress as its blogging engine and WordPress is already installed.
- You would like visitors to your site.
This list is by no means comprehensive and certain steps can be eliminated or modified to fit your preferences. While this list is numbered, it is not sequential and can be completed in any order you like.
- Choose a WordPress Theme that fits your blog topic. (Don’t choose a cartoon theme if you are blogging about brain surgery)
- Create an account on Feedburner and burn the feed for your blog. Whenever you provide a link on your site to subscribe to your feed, use the feedburner link.
- Install and configure the Feedburner FeedSmith plugin. he plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.
- Install and configure the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.
- Register your site within Google Webmaster Tools. Be sure to go to the tools tab and choose “Set preferred domain.” I recommend making your preferred domain be www.domainname.com. Now, Google views http://BlissLogs.com as the exact same site as http://www.blisslogs.com.
- Ensure that you have the latest version of the akismet plugin enabled. You don’t want any comment spam do you?
- Install the All in One SEO Pack plugin and use its features for all your future posts.
- To get some stats on your site, visit Google Analytics to create an account and register your site. When you get to the point of adding code to your site skip to step 9.
- Install the Google Analyticator plugin and add your Google Analytics UID to the options page.
- Now for a couple plugins that will make use of widgets to add content to your sidebar(s). Install the Popularity Contest plugin to rank your posts based on comments, linkbacks, pingbacks, etc.
- To make use of the Popularity Contest plugin in widget form, get the JAW Popular Posts Widget.
- Why not try to make a little money from your site? Create a Google Adsense account and skip to the next step to add the code to your site.
- Use the Adsense Manager plugin to add Google ads to your sidebar as a widget or with a simple tag within a post. This plugin makes adding ads to your site easy enough that anyone can do it.
- Once you get someone to read your post and comment on it, you want a way to get them to come back. The Subscribe to Comments plugin will allow them to subscribe and receive an email when anyone else comments on that same post.
- If a reader likes what they have just read, why not direct them to other related posts. The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin determines like posts and will list them on the bottom of each post. It may take a couple days and quite a few posts for this to become accurate so be patient. I like this plugin because it does not rely on you entering tags to each post but will automatically scan each post to determine their matching threshold.
There it is, 15 steps for making a useful blog. Do you have some steps that you would add, change or remove? Let me know about them so we all learn something new.
Popularity: 31% [?]
Posted on March 16, 2008 By Jason Spence
Filed Under blogging | 2 Comments
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Funny Boating Story
-->I don’t know if this is true, but I could see this happening. Enjoy.
Last summer, down on Lake Isabella, located in the high desert, an hour east of Bakersfield, CA, some folks, new to boating, were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get their brand new 22 foot boat, going. It was very sluggish in almost every maneuver, no matter how much power they applied. After about an hour of trying to make it go, they putted into a nearby marina, thinking someone there may be able to tell them what was wrong. A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the out-drive went up and down, and the propeller was the correct size and pitch. So, one of the marina guys jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard.
Wait for it . . .
Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer! :lol: :grin: :smile: :lol:
Popularity: 24% [?]
Posted on March 2, 2008 By Jason Spence
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Making Money with Pepperjam
-->With Jason being busy to post, I requested to be a guest poster, hoping to pick things up a bit around here. I’ve been reading Blisslogs for a long time and I hope you decide to continue to.
My first article will be about Making Money with Pepperjam. Pepperjam has had a big impact on the blogosphere, many bloggers are promoting them and their affiliates. Through my own promotion I’ve made about $65.
Affiliates for Bloggers
Sometimes affiliate programs forget about us bloggers. Most of us can’t promote certain offers like free stuff with participation offers. Pepperjam hasn’t forgotten us, offering affiliates like ReviewMe, Text-Link-Ads and SEOmoz.
Why Choose Pepperjam?
There are tons of affiliate programs to join and promote, but Pepperjam has done a good job in setting themselves apart.
Their affiliate support is amazing. Several inquiries that I have had were handled within 1-2 days. You can also instant message them directly with their own IM system. They are very receptive to feedback and criticism, I actually enjoyed talking with them.
You can also run “pepperjam ads”. These are similar to Google Adsense, however you are promoting your affiliates. You can add whichever affiliates you want to be rotated. For Blog about your Blog I have several related internet/blogging affiliates on my pepperjam ads.
Maybe the best of all, is that you get paid bi-monthly. On the first and 15th of every month if you have commissions you will get paid! How nice is that?
Have you joined Pepperjam yet?
This was guest posted by Matthew Henrickson from Blog about your Blog. For more posts about blogging and making money online please subscribe to our rss feed.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Posted on February 27, 2008 By Matthew
Filed Under blogging | 3 Comments
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Yahoo! buzz
-->Now you can influence what news is displayed on the Yahoo! homepage. If you like a story, create some buzz. Who better to explain what the service is other than the horses mouth. This quote was taken directly from the Yahoo! site.
The best of the best - chosen by people like you.
- The buzz can be about anything - a great story on a major news site, an extraordinary bit from an obscure site, an intriguing video, or a fantastic blog that shouldn’t be missed.
- Instead of editors, people like you determine the top-rated stories.
How does Buzz work?
- A story is ranked based on its Buzz Score. The score is derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives.
- Stories with the highest Buzz Scores may be published on the Yahoo! home page - you can impact what millions will see on Yahoo!
Doesn’t that sound familiar? Think back a couple years with the launch of Digg and basically the same concept. Now we know why Yahoo! has gotten into the troubles they’re in. (Google zoomed past them as far as the number 1 search engine and Microsoft is attempting a company takeover.) Yahoo! always seems to be a couple years behind the competition when it comes to innovation. The only thing that will save Buzz from becoming just another player in the game is if the compatibility with other Yahoo! offerings makes it stand out from the crowd. Only time will tell if Buzz is a success, but if I had to make a wager, I’d put my money on it becoming lost in the already crowded field of social news sites.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Posted on February 26, 2008 By Jason Spence
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Blue-ray has won the battle
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Now that Blue-ray has won the battle with Toshiba and their rival product HD-DVD, what’s next? Now its time to gear up for the war. Blue-ray won’t be lucky enough to enjoy a decade as the format of choice for consumers around the world. In fact, they’ll be lucky to make it 1 year.
The big winner in the format was, surprisingly is Microsoft. Did you wonder why Microsoft never made HD-DVD standard in their XBox 360’s? They new that Blue-ray would win the battle with Toshiba. They also new that digital downloads would be the successor to blue-ray.
Netflix, a purveyor of rental discs, obviously saw the writing on the wall, instituting its Watch It Now feature last year. Amazon.com, which sells plenty of packaged media, has its own Unbox video download service.
Perhaps most importantly, consumers will continue to get more and more comfortable with the idea of their library being digital. We’re already there with music and family pictures, and it’s a relatively easy transition to make to one’s movie collection.
The biggest roadblock for the move to digital movies is available bandwidth, but that too is becoming less of an obstacle. Companies such as Verizon and Comcast seem to be improving bandwidth to consumers on a daily basis.
With all this in mind, don’t jump too quickly on the Blue-ray bandwagon as you could save some money by waiting for a fully functional download option.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Posted on February 24, 2008 By Jason Spence
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Hilary Clinton Changes Her Name
-->Hilary Clinton dropped the Rodham from her name. Now if only we could get her to drop the “Presidential Nominee” from her name. :razz:
Popularity: 36% [?]
Posted on February 11, 2008 By Jason Spence
Filed Under Politics | 1 Comment
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Clinton Dumps Campaign Manager
-->Hilary Clinton changes campaign managers on the heels of getting swept in yesterdays primaries/caucuses. They are trying to convey that this will be a seamless transition, but conventional wisdom points to further troubles down the road for the Clinton campaign. It’s one thing to go through the struggles that Clinton is going through early in the race, like McCain did, but to do it with only half the states remaining to vote is a major setback.
Barack Obama has been building momentum for months now and finally appears to be over-taking Clinton on the national level. While Obama must have looked like a formidable foe in her rear-view mirror as the underdog, he must look down-right dangerous as the front-runner he is turning in to.
The race for the Democratic candidate for the Presidency is far from over. Especially since Clinton still appears to have a majority of the much coveted Super Delegates that threaten to rip the Democratic party apart. How can the Super Delegates continue to back Clinton while it becomes obvious that the Nation is begging for Obama? Lets see if these politicians can shock us all by listening to the nation and changing their vote to back Obama.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Posted on February 10, 2008 By Jason Spence
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YES WE CAN
-->I’m tired of an America that elects leaders that can’t lead. There have been 7 Presidents in my lifetime and not one of them with the ability to lead our nation to the greatness that it claims. Each of them elected to the position to run this nation. Instead, we should have elected them to lead this nation.
I have participated in 4 presidential elections; and in each of them I voted for what I saw as the best choice. This year, when I decided who I wanted to vote for, I realized that my decision making process changed. I no longer made my decision based on who I thought would be the best choice for the position of President of the United States of America but rather who was the right choice.
will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas was inspired enough to make this video.
Popularity: 30% [?]
Posted on February 9, 2008 By Jason Spence
Filed Under Politics | 1 Comment
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When a blogger disappears
-->When a blogger disappears. . .
There are no pictures on milk cartons, no search parties formed to find them (a nice posse would’ve been nice :lol: ), no rewards offered for information leading to their re-emergence. Simply a couple comments on posts asking where they went. Ah. . . the life of a lonely blogger. :cry:
Many things have contributed to my decision to cut back on blogging. My blogging frequency went down the toilet shortly after getting my current job. This job increased my daily commute from 10 minutes each way to 1 hour each way. That 1 1/2 to 2 hours each day is what I was spending on my blogging habit. I still sit in front of a computer all day, but now I don’t enjoy what I do there. Now my mind has associated all time in front of a computer with the mind numbing work I do for my career, making blogging less appealing. I also noticed that the niche of blogging about blogging was getting quite crowded. I may try to re-energize myself and get back into the swing-of-things again or I may take this blog in a completely new direction. I’m trying to come up with some ideas and welcome any feedback or requests.
For those of you that are interested in what happened to my stats during my 2 1/2 months of practical inactivity. . . Funny thing is, my stats didn’t drop off any. Thanks to a handful of posts that get daily hits from the major search engines. My daily visitors and page views dropped slightly, but nothing too major. My blog feed subscribers actually increased during the last 3 months. Not the monthly increase I was noticing when I was posting frequently, but any little increase would be unexpected considering the lack of new posts. Now that I say this, I’m sure many of you will be unsubscribing. I don’t want you to, but I would blame you if you did.
Popularity: 35% [?]
Posted on December 14, 2007 By Jason Spence
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