Not every weblog will be found easily, and every author is advised to think widely about how much effort will be placed into the blog’s promotion. Several good ideas for Weblog-Promotion can be found in an older article of Blogger Knowledge written by the google-employee Biz Stone. I specialized his issues for Blogspirit in order to find more suggestions and advancements for this service:
Technical Issues
These ideas concern the technical department of Blogspirit mostly. I believe Philippe and Thomas will surely become entertained…
– Set your blog to ping Directories
Its highly advisable to add the functionality to ping other weblogs. Any update will be notified by the readers of the weblogs automatically. At this time, Blogspirit pings technorati.com, blo.gs and weblog.com. So far as they told me, they are indeed working on a new feature to insert an indivual URL to ping any directory you want.
– Advance the Navbar
As each blog displays the navigation bar with the Blogspirit logo on top, an optional search function might help to integrate a higher community usability for every author.
– Install Email This Post
Not just to comment or permalink an enty, but to actively promote an email function will enable the readers to forward any post to friends, co-workers, family members, etc.
– Turn on your site feed
Never forget to implement the buttons for the RSS and Atom feeds. Many readers use different programs to browse blogs and other news media faster than using bookmarks and manual url editing to grab our daily digits.
Content and Quality Issues
Since these are mandatory to keep readers instead of scaring them away, the sublines shall suffice for everybody to understand. There’s a number of authors on Blogspirit who apparently forget a few of these important factors:
– Write quality content and do it well
– Publish regular updates
– Think of your audience
– Keep search engines in mind
– Keep your posts and paragraphs short
Marketing Action Issues
Certain of these ideas help to advertise your work while they reduce the interest in your site as much once you invalidate the above ideas concerning content and quality.
– Put your blog URL in your email signature
– Sumbit your address to blog search sites and directories
– Participate in meme games
– Advertise!
– Link to other blogs
– Install a blogroll
– Be an active commenter
– Pitch your posts via email to other bloggers
– Print your blog URL on cards, stickers, etc
In the end, there’s alot of more input to be found in a few other of my issues. Have fun blogging!
– Bandwidth Limitation for Robots
– E-Mail Address shown in RSS2/ATOM Feeds
– Lifeless Reasons for Blogging
– Against Comment Spam
Mournful Morning
Unicum AkademieCurrently, Andreas and myself reside in the Cafeteria and ponder on how to cut our video material. A few coffees have been passed by in our struggle to seek for what we’re looking. Nevertheless, the whole project turns out to be more complicated than expected. The information published the newspaper hinted we’ve already finished our project. The quite truth is we haven’t really begun to complete any movie, advertisement or radio jingle yet. Its time to push ourselves to the limit, but will we find resolve in the environmental stress and pain derived from our work?
How to promote your Weblog?
BlogkulturNot every weblog will be found easily, and every author is advised to think widely about how much effort will be placed into the blog’s promotion. Several good ideas for Weblog-Promotion can be found in an older article of Blogger Knowledge written by the google-employee Biz Stone. I specialized his issues for Blogspirit in order to find more suggestions and advancements for this service:
Technical Issues
These ideas concern the technical department of Blogspirit mostly. I believe Philippe and Thomas will surely become entertained…
– Set your blog to ping Directories
Its highly advisable to add the functionality to ping other weblogs. Any update will be notified by the readers of the weblogs automatically. At this time, Blogspirit pings technorati.com, blo.gs and weblog.com. So far as they told me, they are indeed working on a new feature to insert an indivual URL to ping any directory you want.
– Advance the Navbar
As each blog displays the navigation bar with the Blogspirit logo on top, an optional search function might help to integrate a higher community usability for every author.
– Install Email This Post
Not just to comment or permalink an enty, but to actively promote an email function will enable the readers to forward any post to friends, co-workers, family members, etc.
– Turn on your site feed
Never forget to implement the buttons for the RSS and Atom feeds. Many readers use different programs to browse blogs and other news media faster than using bookmarks and manual url editing to grab our daily digits.
Content and Quality Issues
Since these are mandatory to keep readers instead of scaring them away, the sublines shall suffice for everybody to understand. There’s a number of authors on Blogspirit who apparently forget a few of these important factors:
– Write quality content and do it well
– Publish regular updates
– Think of your audience
– Keep search engines in mind
– Keep your posts and paragraphs short
Marketing Action Issues
Certain of these ideas help to advertise your work while they reduce the interest in your site as much once you invalidate the above ideas concerning content and quality.
– Put your blog URL in your email signature
– Sumbit your address to blog search sites and directories
– Participate in meme games
– Advertise!
– Link to other blogs
– Install a blogroll
– Be an active commenter
– Pitch your posts via email to other bloggers
– Print your blog URL on cards, stickers, etc
In the end, there’s alot of more input to be found in a few other of my issues. Have fun blogging!
– Bandwidth Limitation for Robots
– E-Mail Address shown in RSS2/ATOM Feeds
– Lifeless Reasons for Blogging
– Against Comment Spam
Planetopia: How a TV magazine kills Bloggers off…
MedienLast night, the TV magazine „Planetopia“ spent a few minutes to report about the medial hype of blogging. Their report focussed on the authors of a few blogs and the possible reasons of the phenomenon of utilizing blogs for private and corporate uses. „Der Schockwellenreiter“ and „Spreeblick“ were previously interviewed, but apparently the entire episode caused an uproar in the German Blogosphere. The general message created by Planetopia can be roughly interpreted as: „Weblogs are evil! Trust nobody, because nobody controls them as you are used to it at our traditional media formats.“ Immediately this morning, each author published an account from their opposing point of view. But by reflecting the Blogosphere in a negative light, Planetopia only pokes the fire by fitting into their own teaser – „Planetopia about the blogger’s underestimated power.“
Felix’s Birthdayparty
LebenThe aftermath of a Feuerzangenbowle can be seen in Katharina’s Gallery in her Blog. I will add the pictures sooner or later to my own Shots’n’Pics gallery. We re-celebrated Felix’s birthday and the joyful pleasures of the Feuerzangenbowle, a red wine punch translated into „Flaming Fire Tongs Punch“ containing rum which has been set alight. I decided to add a recipe from german.about.com below the pictures for all those readers who’re interested to have a Feuerzangenbowle it on their own.
Feuerzangenbowle – Flaming Fire Tongs Punch
Ingredients:
Bowle/Punch
3 bottles of red wine (2-3 liters total)
2 cinnamon sticks
cardamom
allspice
1-2 oranges
1-2 lemons
5 cloves
a German Zuckerhut (sugar cone)
1-2 bottles of rum
Directions:
1. In a large pot or kettle filled with red wine, add cinnamon sticks, cardamom, and allspice. Cut up the oranges and lemons (optional: make peel spirals), crush fruit to release the juice, and add to the punch along with the cloves. Warm to a steaming mixture. Do not boil! (The cinnamon sticks, cardamom, and allspice are not neccessary to get drunk.)
2. Place a German sugar cone (Zuckerhut, sugar loaf) on a metal rack/screen or clamped in metal tongs above the warm punch. (Substitute sugar cubes if you can’t get a Zuckerhut.) Slowly pour high-proof rum over the Zuckerhut and let soak for a minute. Carefully light the Zuckerhut or sugar cubes and let the flaming sugar carmelize and drip into the punch mix. Add rum as needed to keep the flame going until the Zuckerhut process is done. Serve the punch hot in mugs or hot-tea glasses.
Notes: Traditionally, Feuerzangenbowle was prepared with the Zuckerhut sitting on crossed swords atop the pot. A German sugar cone or sugar loaf (lit. „sugar hat“) is made of compressed Raffinade (refined sugar) in a cone shape. A German description of Raffinade: „Ein Zucker von höchster Reinheit und bester Qualität. Die Raffinade wird aus sehr reinen Zuckerlösungen gewonnen und entspricht hohen Ansprüchen.“ (A sugar of highest purity and best quality. Raffinade is made from very pure sugar solutions and meets high standards.) If you can’t get the real thing, substitute sugar cubes in the recipe above.
Currently Playing: Katharina and her household’s sounds
Current Mood: Being In Love
Bandwidth Limitation for Robots
BlogkulturI noticed the increasing ammount of searchbots trying to spider my blog. Especially „slurp“ and „msn bot“ are reaching a critical stage concerning the already limited bandwith. Already half of the bandwith is wasted to the robots, and the more active and publically aware my blog becomes, the sooner the bandwidth will be reached.
I suggest to allow the users at Blogspirit to create their own robot.txt file to limit, restrict and possibly exclude the robots‘ aggressive behavior. For example, the entry „User-Agent: slurp“ with a „Crawl-Delay: 20“ already helps to delay the robots, while the meta tag invites them to index the complete blog. Here is an example from the „Stats > Detailed Statistics“ page:
Robots (from search engines)
Prince Charles goes berzerk!
MedienLast night Prince Charles was furious over Prince Harry’s decision to dress as a Nazi on a party. Even Prince William must share the blame. Since both William and Harry bought the costumes together, the older brother should have stopped the younger one. Charles ordered both of the minor-monarchs to visit Auschwitz to learn and understand the the atrocities and horrors of the Holocaust. The british newspaper The Guardian communicates slightly different in their blog on „Meanwhile in Germany“ than The Sun – its very interesting to scroll through the comments of this blog…
E-Mail Address shown in RSS2/ATOM Feeds
BlogkulturWhile utilizing a few tools for this blog, I noticed a minor security leak in the RSS2 and Atom Feeds. I already informed Blogspirit’s support staff by using a support ticket. I advise everybody to manually edit their Feed-Templates to secure your email from being spidered by Spambots.
Britain’s Nazi Mess
MedienAnother most interesting and amusing article about Britain’s general problem of historical and cultural awareness. Prince Harry is not the only one who needs to be more educated about both local and global development of the political world. As Der Spiegel reports in Prince Harry Isn’t Alone in Needing a History Lesson:
This here is from an article found on The Jerusalem Post: Ignorance of the Holocaust in response to DJ’s comment.
Medial Death and Racist Devastation
MedienThe german designer Rudolf Moshammer was found dead in his appartment in Munich. Apparently, he was strangled to death with a telephone cable. But some germans already wondered why he wasn’t murdered sooner! Mr. Moshammer was a fat and chubby designer who continously pestered the german media with his endless gayish behaviour, want-to-be-spicey songs for the Grand Prix de la Eurovision Chanson.
Perhaps it was nobody else but Prince Harry who’s been tagged as a Nazi on a recent society party (When Harry Met Hitler). This disgusting little party youngster who freaks out the british high society through his nothingness and troublesome idiotism should be locked away once and for all. How else can we serve the Queen better?
By now, only Sven and Yannic had nothing else to do but to pester and complain about the fact that I’ve been blogging a little. This public soulstriptease is special, and its my priviledge – not theirs. At least my girlfriend seems to like it, too.
Revelation of Statistics
Unicum AkademieWithin the last hour, three students remained in utmost concentration: Sven, Yannic and myself challenged ourselves in the Mensa building with enthusiasm concerning the recent exercises for our Statistik 1 course. The result of our work was simplified by our own curiousity about the wonders and respect for the mathmatical logic found in empiric situations. By now, our thoughts render the life at university in a brighter light. We focus on exchange students and our own exchange semesters. This is all I can think of now as my mind crashed beyond the surface of reality into a realm of numbers and values.