echoes of the ego

Beginners guide to blogging July 29, 2006

Jane Foster

Setting Up Your Blog

Blogging is a lucrative source of profit and blogs are easy to set up
and maintain. Imagine a life where you are paid to write on stuff that
interests you, whenever you want, wherever you are. The mere
flexibility of blogging makes it easy for you to just kick back, relax
and go on a vacation whenever you feel like it.

In this article, we are going to look into the profitability of a blog
and set up a blog of our own at no cost! Interested? Read on!

First, we need to obtain a blog. There are several options – host a
blog on your own domain or get a free blog. For starters, let’s talk
about the free blogs. You can obtain a free blog at www.blogger.com or the newer (and better!) www.wordpress.com. If you are a techie, you must have heard of WordPress, a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.

Blogger.com is actually owned by Google, so it will be detected on
Google’s radar faster and you will be indexed faster. WordPress.com,
however, is a relatively new option so I have no comparison on the
speed of getting indexed by search engines. However, WordPress is
better in the sense that it has more advanced features such as
Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more
efficiently (more about this later).

Now familiarize yourself by posting your first post on your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.

Here are a few common “blog-related” words to help you out:

1) Permalink – Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL
(uniform resource locator) that leads to an individual post that you
make in your blog.
2) Trackback – When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere,
your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature,
however, is not available with a Blogger.com account.
3) Pinging – Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time
either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where
a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that
the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website.
This is a useful way to gaining traffic, which we shall discuss later.

For now, I shall leave you testing out your new blog and the features
that come included with it. In the next articles, we shall discuss the
many ways we can gain profit from a blog, as well as tips on how to
write posts that keep visitors glued and keep coming back for more!

Blog Content

Now we’re going to discuss the type of content that is suitable for
your blog in order to make it profitable. First off, I want you to
understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have,
which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in.

However, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable
blog is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, would you prefer to
read your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by
your favourite author?

You may prefer to read the novel because it appeals more to your
interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by
your professor. However, the most important point is people like to
read “light” stuff most of the time. You see, when people log on to
your blog, they are not only looking for information – they are also
looking for information they can obtain easily, and better still in a
relaxed manner.

So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current visitors
coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your
blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining you’re talking about a
certain topic with your personal friend. An extra bonus for your
readers would be a great sense of humour, so try to add funny comments
in your articles where they are suitable.

Another important key point is to avoid addressing your reader as a
plural unit. What I really mean is you should not write as if you’re
preparing a speech. Instead, you should write as if you’re having a
conversation to a single person because this will make your visitor
think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher
authority.

Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality
through your words. Human beings are very curious creatures, so
naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the
information you’re offering them.

Having a distinctive personality in your blog would make a world’s
difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs
about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand
name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need
to find out information about gadgets, just like how people immediately
think of McDonald’s for fastfood or Nike for sportswear.

So, the lesson for today is to simply write as an equal friend to your
visitors, write to them as if you’re talking to a single person and
establish your own personality on your blog.

Human rights and the web July 29, 2006

Stoney G deGeyter

Since Google has agreed to censor their search results in order to
enter the Chinese market, much hoopla has been made about American
corporations and their responsibility to human rights. Is it right for
American companies to acquiesce to foreign governments who have a
history of human rights abuses, just to enter their markets and gain a
profit? Is it okay to cave to the demands of another country’s
government but not to the less restrictive demands of your own? Do
companies have an obligation to ensure that all of their customers,
regardless of nationality, are treated the same. These are all
questions that I have no intention of answering in this article.
Rather, I would like to offer my discourse on a most basic human right
that too many in this country are currently being denied: free
high-speed internet access.

Millions of individuals in every corner of this great nation simply do
not have free access to high (or even low!) -speed internet. These are
our neighbors, living in a hidden and repressed society, unable to gain
access to the most fundamental basics for a happy existence:

[*]shopping for their $120 Nike’s online
[*]downloading $0.99 songs or $1.99 TV shows to their iPods
[*]accessing online porn
[*]contributing to their favorite candidates political campaign
[*]creating a website for their dogs and cats
[*]blogging about how much they love Britney Spears
[*]ordering their sandwiches online

The list goes on.

When will this abuse end? When will our government step in and restore
the freedoms all Americans deserve? The good news is that this Iron
Curtain barring free high-speed internet access is beginning to
crumble. The city of San Francisco has recently announced that it will
begin providing
” affordable
wireless broadband” to city residents. Don’t be discouraged by the
word “Affordable”. San Fran’s Department of Telecommunications and
Information Services’ (DTIS) Executive Director, Chris Vein, means this:

“San Francisco has undertaken
a thorough, innovative, and transparent process to reach an audacious
goal: free wifi for our residents.”

My understanding is that SF explored the idea of offering free dial-up
access, but felt that as a human rights issue, this was equivalent to
letting women vote, but not actually letting their votes count.
Providing slow-speed internet access is nothing more than pouring lemon
juice on the wounds of the oppressed masses.

There is a dark side to this announcement; “Big Business” will actually
receive money in order to make this service available. But the gains
far outweigh such negatives. All other “Big Business” and possibly even
some small business will find themselves unable to compete against the
deep pocket, government monopoly offering a service for free. These
companies will be shut out and many will even have to close down or
leave the SF area in favor of cities that continue to abuse citizens.

In addition to driving greedy businesses under, another bonus is that
these services will ultimately be paid with government money, provided
by the same taxpayers who will receive this “free” service. This
simplifies the process of paying bills each month, as taxes are already
taken out from your paycheck (if you get one) or added at the cash
register when you buy your food and household supplies. No more having
to write a check to an ISP, licking envelopes or digging around for a
postage stamp.

With the relief this free high-speed internet access provides to the
abused, it won’t be long before other abusive “Iron Curtains” begin to
tumble. Do we really need a separate company to provide our heat and
electricity? Should Safeway, Raley’s, Albertson’s, and Super-Wal-Mart
be allowed to control how much food we can bring home to our families,
based on some arbitrary monetary units made available to us? Do Target,
Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Ikea and Sears have a right to demand separate
payments for the clothing, furnishings and home improvement tools we
require to live? Should Taco Bell really have a right to deny me access
to free and unlimited food?

I say NO! It’s time for the oppressed rabble of nameless masses to rise
up and demand more from out government. It’s time to put a stop to the
abuses suffered daily by those that must pay or go without internet
access. It’s time to make this country free again! God bless San
Francisco for standing up for what is right, telling the world they
will, “tear down these walls” that have kept us in bondage for far too
many years.