(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
(WARNING: you really should read, at least, #3 - valid HTML and #4 - making your blog search engine-friendly before you do this one)
Now, the fun begins. Your blog is already interesting, you love doing it, its HTML is valid, and its ready for search engines. So, let them come!
Continue reading ‘Blogging tips #5: Adding your blog to search engines and directories’
(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
When your blog is live - which may happen in the near future, or may have happened months or years ago -, your blog will certainly be crawled by search engines like Google. After it happens, people may see your blog, or particular pages from it, as results when they search for words or phrases in the aforementioned search engines.
It follows from that that it is desirable for your blog - all of it - to be correctly indexed. And there are some basic things you can do to help.
Continue reading ‘Blogging tips #4: Making your blog search engine-friendly’
(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
I’m sure a lot of people won’t think this one is relevant, but my experience says it is.
You know what HTML is, right? Most of you probably do. You don’t have to know it to have a blog, though, especially if you use a service like Blogger or LiveJournal - they mostly take care of the hard work. That’s why blogging is for everyone, not just “computer people”.
Still, it won’t take a lot of time or work to ensure your blog - every part of it - is made of valid HTML. I’ll talk about the advantages of it in a moment.
It’s the first time something like this happens to one of my sites. Asa Dotzler of the Mozilla Foundation linked to a certain post of mine and, if that was not enough, this site also linked to it. The result? More than 1500 hits. Not bad for a site which is still less than 48 hours old…
The power of being linked from a popular site is indeed impressive. Let’s see if it happens again in the future.
Ironically, that particular article had been in my wiki for more than 6 months…
I don’t want to turn this site into a “look at this cool link!” list, but I couldn’t resist this one:
Step-by-Step Instructions for Installing the Firefox Browser Program on Windows
Really, really easy, with lots of pictures and non-technical instructions. “Your mother could follow it” easy. 
I love gadgets. I love games. I love new “toys”. And this is/has all of those.
Unfortunately, I am far from rich, so I won’t be able to buy it this month. Maybe only for Christmas. Also, since I live in Europe, I get every game months later than the U.S. or Japan, but Nintendogs, Advance Wars and others should be available by then.
But, yes, I have already decided that the DS will be my next console. Nobody makes games like Nintendo. And, as far as I’m concerned, the PSP is a joke.
(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
So, let’s assume that you really want your blog to be visited by many people. Where to start?
Well, first things first. Your blog should be interesting. Most blogging tips lists forget this one.
Now, by “interesting”, I don’t mean that you should be necessarily writing for other people. There are many kinds of blogs, including many sites that people don’t think of as “blogs”. Whatever you are writing, it’s supposed to be a pleasure for you - if it’s not, if you’re only doing it for the money, there are probably better ways to get rich. And if you’re not enjoying it, it will certainly show.
But enjoying your blogging and being interesting to others aren’t mutually exclusive, you can have both.
(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
No, seriously. Why? Most “blogging tips” sites assume one answer - to be popular, and possibly to make money, which is dependent on the first -, which makes sense, in a way, since if your goal is the other “obvious” one - to have fun, because you’re doing it for yourself and maybe a couple of friends or relatives -, you really don’t need any tips at all, do you?
But if you belong to the second group, don’t go away yet! Think about it for a second. Sure, maybe you don’t want to turn into a “professional blogger”, and quit your job to do it full time. Maybe you don’t care about having thousands of hits a day. Maybe you’re not interested in adding some ads to your blog and earn a little extra money. It’s OK. But you can still, with almost no effort, have many more regular readers. Have readers who post interesting comments, who give feedback on what you post. Who have blogs on their own, that you can discover. Maybe you can even learn something new.
To put it in another way: doing it for fun and being “read” by others aren’t mutually exclusive.
(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
This is the beginning of a series of blog optimization tips that I’m planning to do here.
I’ve been blogging for more than two years, but I’ve only been doing it “for real” (as in “post more than once a day instead of less than once a week, have more than one “catch-all” blog, etc.) for a couple of weeks. And not only I’m enjoying it a lot, but I’ve also learned a few things about blogging - not just the act of writing (which is mostly up to the writer, but I like to think that I’ve improved) but about other stuff - optimization, promotion, some technical stuff, and even eventually earning a bit of money (though I haven’t earned anything yet, but then again, it’s only been a couple of weeks). And I want to share it.
Now, there are sites which are much better and more specialized about this subject, like Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger, but I hope that this series will be useful precisely because it doesn’t come from an expert, but from someone who’s learned about this quite recently, and who’s still learning more as he goes.
Why a series? Because there’s much to tell. Besides, if the format is good enough for Darren…
The Nokia 6630 is my current cell phone. It was, I believe, Nokia’s first “3G” phone. It’s basically a Series 60 phone, but much faster than all the ones before (my previous one was the N-Gage QD (a very underrated phone, BTW) and the 6630 is more than twice as fast).
The 1.3 Mpixel camera is very good (for a 1.3 Mpixel camera, that is), and it was certainly useful in my last holidays. It finally has a usable web browser, although I still prefer (and bought) Opera. Many people (less gadget-inclined) will disagree, but Opera 8.0 on this phone is usable for normal operation, not just a gimmick (”look, I can see web pages in my phone!”) - for instance, I approved comments and posted in one of my other blogs during the last weekend… near the mountains, 300 km from home, and far away from any computer.
What don’t I like about it? It sucks for action games. After about a year using the N-Gage’s great D-pad, the 6630’s is a joke - well, it’s certainly not a gaming phone, I understand, but the hardware is there, and other newer phones like the Nokia 6680 have better directional pads, so why did Nokia ruin the 6630 as a gaming platform like this? Especially when it’s much faster than the N-Gage, and games run much smoother (and look better on the brighter, clear screen)? Oh well, there’s still strategy games like Ancient Empires…
As everyone should know, Internet Explorer is a very insecure browser, and daily use can quickly turn a Microsoft Windows PC into a spyware-ridden, spam-sending slow, unstable abomination.
I don’t use IE at home, because Mozilla Firefox is infinitely better and more secure, but I’ve found that many people, even those otherwise educated and intelligent, think of “the Internet” as “the blue E”, and, when wanting to open a site, open IE without thinking.
So I had to do something about it.
Now, while I think that (as of mid-2005) it is still to early to implement this as official policy in a company (many bad sites or incompetently-designed intranet applications only work with IE - and sometimes only with a particular version), it can be useful in many home / small office networks.
Continue reading ‘Limiting Internet Explorer to Windows Update’
Spyware is a big problem these days. Most Windows PCs have a lot of it, without the user’s knowledge; many crashes, slowdown, popups and browser hijacking (for instance, changing the home page without your consent, and you can’t set it back to what you want) are symptoms of a spyware infestation.
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