One could ask “what makes you think anyone cares about what you think are blogs people should read.” The response would be “my blog, my opinion, case closed.” In actuality, I think that it’s a nice thing to recognize people when you enjoy things they do. And people like being mentioned, even if they may miss it. I’m going to say that I doubt everyone I name will notice that their blog has been mentioned here, and that’s okay. It’s just another list post; studies show that people love list posts. And if you’d like, copy the little badge I created and add it to your website, then wait for people to ask you if you’ve lost your mind.

Actually, August 31st was Blog Day, where bloggers are supposed to name 5 blogs they recommend for others to read. But I had something else on my mind for that day, so I decided to go my own way and do it today.

First, did I have any real criteria for what I was going to look for? Absolutely not! In this list are some friends of mine, some big time names, and some folks whose blogs I just have to make sure I check out as often as I can. I don’t always comment on all of these blogs, but I do from time to time. But I always make sure I read them, and I think that’s what makes them important to me. And two of the blogs on this list were on last year’s Blog Day list as well.

I put them in alphabetical order so I didn’t have to rank them. They are what they are; here we go:

Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online – As you probably know, I really respect Marelisa’s blog, and the interview I did with her should prove that. It’s just a quality blog, very deep, and one of the few blogs that I actually have to slow down to read. This blog was on last year’s Blog Day post.

Beautiful Summer Morning – Nick Grimshawe has a beautiful blog, very calming and motivational, and I actually have to give him credit for introducing me to Josh Groban, who I’d never heard of until Nick posted one of his videos on his blog. Nick also has the distinction of being on my 2008 and 2007 Blog Day list.

Click Newz – It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about Lynn Terry, but I still make sure I read her blog all the time. I ever wrote a post about her and how she makes money, as she’s one of the top internet marketers in the country. Lynn’s blog was also on my 2008 Blog Day list.

Kikolani.com – How could anyone not list Kristi’s blog as one of their favorites? I always make sure to go through her Fetching Friday blog, as she puts up a lot of blog posts she’s read through the week and is recommending others view. At one point I thought of stealing that idea, but man, that’s a lot of work! So young and so accomplished; great work!

Mostly Bright Ideas – This is actually a very new blog written by Charles Gulotta, and if y’all haven’t visited it by looking at some of his blog titles then you don’t know what you’re missing. He’s very funny and insightful, and his images are funny as well. To think, I convinced him to think about writing a blog, and look what he’s done with it; great job!

Problogger – Okay, a top guru who was also on my 2008 Blog Day list, but who can truthfully deny that Darren Rowse isn’t on his game? I like it best when he’s writing instead of the guest posts, but I sometimes learn from those as well. This is one of those blogs where if you’re looking to learn a lot more about blogging I suggest you go through his archives.

Solo Business Marketing – Shirley George Frazier’s blog on marketing is a great one, so much so that her blog was one of only two that made my 2006 Blog Day list. I must have been mad not to mention her again before today. I learn a lot by reading her blog, and I think it deserves a heck of a lot more attention that it gets.

Twist Image – Mitch Joel recently wrote Six Pixels of Separation, and it was through a conversation he was having with a friend of mine that I discovered his blog. He talks about marketing and communications in the social media age, and something interesting that he has are podcast interviews, which are pretty fascinating. I guess you could call him a guru.

View Infinitum – This is my friend Scott’s blog, and I have to say that he’s found quite the following over the past year. It’s a photography blog, and though I’m not anywhere close to a photographer, I will say that he gives a lot of great information on the craft, and I think I’ve even seen Sire popping in there from time to time.

Wassupblog – Speaking of Sire, his blog took a major jump over the past year, getting an Alexa rank as high as 65,000 at one point and still sitting in a pretty nice place. He covers internet marketing, blogging, and a host of irreverent issues that are funny from that quirky Australian point of view. I think if he were British his blog would probably be an even bigger deal; yeah, I said it! lol His blog was also on my 2009 Blog Day list, and I keep telling him that when I grow up I want my blog to be as big as his. Then again, it means I have to grow up.

There you go, my top ten list of blogs I hope you check out. Congrats winners!

Gomadic Universal Charging Station

I tend to visit a lot of blogs. I’ve talked about it before on this blog, how I used to subscribe to nearly 250 other blogs, but at some point I got it down to around 104. Of course me being me I have added some more blogs to my reader since that time, and I’m given some of those an opportunity to show that they at least have something interesting to say on a consistent basis before I start whittling my list down again.

by Beverly & Pack

One thing that helps me determine I’m going to eliminate a blog from my reader is whether or not I ever get any responses from those blogs that I tend to leave comments on. Those of you who have seen me leave a comment on your blog know that I’m not one of those people who often leaves just one line responses. Sure, sometimes it may only be two lines, but you know those two lines are going to mean something and have something to do with the topic, and sometimes those lines are kind of long.

Sometimes you get the feeling you’re being ignored, and nobody likes that. I certainly don’t, especially if I’ve taken time to make a comment on your post. After all, as I’ve written many times on this blog, and many of you have written on your blogs, what’s the point in accepting comments if you’re never going to respond to anybody? If you’re going to do that you might as well just turn off comments, become Seth Godin, and move on with your life.

It’s not just blogging that sometimes leaves me feeling ignored. There many times on Twitter where I reach out to both people I know and people I don’t know and comment on some of the things they share. Most of the time you never hear anything back from those people, which once again leaves me wondering why I’m even bothering to try. At this point I pretty much know that almost nobody who’s using Twitter on a consistent basis is going to the website to post their comments or to read posts from other people. Everybody is using some kind of platform to check out their Twitter messages, which means pretty much everyone has created some kind of filter so that they see messages from people who write comments to them. If they haven’t done that then they’re idiots, and I doubt that people who are participating a lot on Twitter are idiots.

In my mind, people who do the two things I mentioned above are missing the point of social media networking. They don’t call it social “seminaring” or social “sharing whatever I have to say because I’m important and you’re not”. If they did then the word “social” wouldn’t be a part of it at all. I don’t like it when it’s people I don’t know, and I certainly don’t like it when it’s people I do know. There are a few people I have eliminated from my Twitter stream because I felt ignored, even if I’ve talked to them in the past. I don’t expect people to respond to everything I say to them, because sometimes there’s just nothing to say in response to a previous message. But I do expect some give and take every once in a while, and if I’m the only one giving then I’m getting out.

The one thing almost everyone knows if they visit this blog is that I’m going to respond to their comments as long as they’re more than one line. Of course, if we’re doing a back and forth at some point one of us has to end, and it could be me. Beyond that, I get to everybody at some point, and even if I don’t always respond to your comments, I always respond to a comment made by a new visitor, in hopes that they will return again and again. If anybody ever feels ignored by comments they leave on this blog, just let me know; but I don’t see it happening.

Are you feeling ignored by some of the blogs you visit? Are you taking care not to ignore people who visit your blog?

Something that’s hard for a lot of people is self critique. We’re either too easy on ourselves or too hard on ourselves.

I’m no different, although my parameters change depending on what it is. When it comes to this blog, I know that there are a few throwaway posts, where the post isn’t necessarily important to anyone but was entertaining to write. That’s part of my quest to give visitors something different to look at.

However, there are times when I write something that, in my mind, didn’t get enough attention or enough visitors for whatever reason. Every once in awhile, I like to go back to some of those posts and share them in one specific post, hoping that maybe newer visitors will see those titles and say “hey, I must have missed that one”. At least that’s what I hope. So, here are 10 posts of mine over the last 2 months of 2009 and first 6 months of 2010 that didn’t get many visitors that I feel deserve more attention.

5 Ways Poker Is Like Blogging – This was my attempt at being creative by comparing two of the things I love doing most, one of which is playing poker.

An Interview With Marelisa Fabrega – Marelisa is one of the top bloggers in the world, and I was able to secure an interview with her. This needs to be read by everyone.

Twitter Marketing – Do You Have A Plan? – I found myself again some days ago explaining to someone what Twitter was about and how it could be used for business, and this wasn’t at my workshop either.

How Can You Prosper Through Publicity? – Everyone who has a blog needs to understand just how much more prosperous they could be, either monetarily or personally, by figuring out how to handle their publicity better.

What Do We Expect For Free? – We all like free stuff, but are we taking it to the extreme for some things?

Are Writers Taken For Granted? – As someone who’s been writing to make a living for the last year, it seems that people devalue just how much of a commitment it is, even when they can’t do it themselves.

Content Is An Electronic Emperor – This was my response to a comment made by Rupert Murdoch, partially one of the most hated men in the world.

Web Courtesy – Don’t We Deserve That Much? – With so much hate that people spew in blogs and especially when responding to news stories, I question whether there is any courtesy anymore.

Are You Using Social Media For Promotion? – I wrote this last year, way before I ever started thinking about doing workshops on the subject.

My 10 Favorite Blog Posts Of 2009 – Okay, this isn’t quite fair, but at the end of the year I posted 10 blogs posts I liked that I wrote in 2009; so now you have 10 more to check out if you’re interested.

Golf Bag Caddy Two Bag Holder

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

Following up on my post yesterday titled The Quest For Legitimate Images, I was able to convince my friend Scott Thomas to write this post explaining his position on the topic as well as giving us some insight into the issue.

Used by permission of Scott Thomas Photography

Mitch and I were discussing the use of photos on this blog a couple of weeks ago. I told him he should find the person who took any photo he uses on his blogs to ask permission to use it. What he said disturbed me and I find it is a prevalent attitude found around blogs, websites and even in advertising and other media. He said if he can not find the person who created the photo and sees it in other locations, he saw no reason not to use it.

As an amateur photographer with aspirations to sell my work on a regular basis, I find such statements very upsetting. I countered saying if someone took one of his articles or published works and posted it or republished it under their name without asking permission, giving credit or payment, what would be his reaction? What would be yours?

Copyright infringement is rampant on the Internet. People feel if it is found on the Internet, it must be free to use. It hurts established professional artists, photographers, writers, musicians and other creative artists who are trying or are making a living from their hard work, investment in education and equipment and talent. Yes, things are changing. Are they changing for the good?

The Copyright Law of the United States protects a creator from others using his creations without his permission. It goes on to say, at the time of creation, the creator copyrights his creations. Be it a shutter click on a camera or keystrokes on to a screen, the photograph or text is copyrighted and given all the protection of the Copyright Law, whether it is published publicly or not. If people are to use something created by another, they must ask and receive permission before doing so. Permission may be just a simple verbal agreement or a written contact which may or may not include the exchange of funds. For photographs, people agree to a use of a photo and scope of that use. Usually it is for a one-time use. If its for advertising, the money can be substantial and the rights to the photo may be purchased outright. In essence, the photographer gives up his copyright “rights” to the buyer. However, he still owns the copyright to the photo.

How does this work in real life? The photo used to illustrate this article is a prime example. At the time I took the photograph and the image was saved to my camera’s memory card, I owned the copyright. My camera even embeds the copyright notice into the photo’s metadata as part of the file. The photo is a creation of mine and is a whole work of art. If someone was to use it without my permission in any way, I could go to court. Would I? That depends on how it was used. Usually, when this happens, I simply inform the person and they either stop using it or we negotiate fair use of the photo.

There are the buzz words you probably have had in the back of your mind while reading thus far. Fair Use is a part of the Copyright Law. It is there not to hinder but to help people wishing to use other’s creative work in exhibiting their own work. A prime example is reviews of books, movies, concerts, and art exhibitions. The reviewer will quote or show examples of the work being reviewed. This is allowed under Fair Use. When I review books on my blog, I will quote the author and use a photo of the book’s cover. I do not replicate word for word long passages of the book and call them my own. That would be against the law. Another part of Fair Use is to give credit to the person or persons who created the work. Again, for my book reviews, I find the author’s blog or website to link to. Fair Use is a win-win if used under the spirit in which the law was written.

If you are familiar with Flickr, the popular Internet photo sharing community website, you will see the term Creative Common license. In short, the photographer who puts a Creative Commons license on a photo is allowing its use under certain conditions without having to directly ask for permission. Those conditions are spelled out in icons under the photo. They range from unconditional use to restrictive use of a photo for only personal use, derivative uses or not and commercial use or not. All Creative Common licenses require a link back to the location of the photo being used. Make sure you understand what you can and can not do under a Creative Commons license. The photographer is being nice enough to allow use of the photo without negotiation or payment, please, don’t abuse it so, like Fair Use, Creative Commons licensing stays a win-win.

Getting back to my photo. What would constitute Fair Use of it? If someone asked me if they could use it on their blog about ice hockey, I would ask for a credit and a link back to my blog or website. My “payment” if you will. That is a common practice among bloggers, photographers and other media outlets. If the photo was part of a book I produced or in my Flickr photostream, someone may use the photo as an example of my work in a review of my photography. Fair Use has been taken many ways in the U. S. courts over the years. For a layman’s explanation, visit Tim Wu’s excellent article on what constitutes Fair Use.

I know it is easy to Google photos and download them for your use. Someone created the photo; it is their photo. Not yours to use, duplicate, render it in another form (crop, print, change, etc.), publish and certainly nothing you can use to sell without permission of the person who created it whether or not you know who that is. You’ll find reports of people finding others using their photos or other artwork and suing them for monetary damages. The law gives fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to people who are found to have infringed on another’s copyright. Sounds silly for a personal blog I know but is no reason to simply ignore it. Just because something is on the Internet, does not mean it is free to use.

I hope this sheds some light on why people should seek out and ask permission to use someone else’s photograph or images on your blogs, websites and other electronic media outlets.

I thank Scott for his article here, and I know it’s an interesting and controversial topic across the board. We’d both welcome hearing from you and your thoughts on the issue. If you’re interested in learning more about photography and seeing some great shots check out Scott’s blog Views Infinitum.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

You know, there are times when you battle with ethical issues, and you’re either ready to give up on them or just move on. I don’t struggle with that issue often, but once I think about something that involves an ethical decision, I just have to work my way through it.

photo by ryancr

This time, the ethical thing concerns images that I’ve been putting into this blog. Truth be told, for me there were two issues out there. One, those images that you knew belonged to someone else, and two, those that you couldn’t confirm.

Of course, there’s been the debates and the discussions I’ve seen online. My friend Scott, who has a photography blog, got me into a discussion one day on the topic. My point to him is that I have papers filed with the government proving my copyright, that I can put a symbol on any of my work (I’ve got music and my first book copywritten), and that by adding that copyright symbol at the end of my stuff (and, these days, that copyright thing you see at the end of most of my posts), show that I own the copyright. However, with images, if there’s no watermark, or no copyright symbol on a website, or no attribution anywhere, that it becomes very difficult to figure out whether an image has a copyright or not. His belief is that one can always find it; mine is that at times it’s literally impossible.

Regardless, the issue is still out there. Now, I’m not saying that I’m going to do this for every image, because I sometimes get an image from Imagekind, which I’m an affiliate for, and of course there are times when you know someone put together a mashup of sorts that, if there’s a copyright that’s been violated, so be it, but there is a way to help get around this type of thing.

If you notice, today’s image and yesterday’s image has attribution. It turns out that you can get images from Flickr, a site I’d never gone to unless someone sent me a picture they wanted me to send and it was there, and find images you can use. Seems there’s this search function you can select that will find photos based on a description you put in and, most of the time, they allow you to use the image if you give them attribution and link back to their Flickr page with the image.

I’m not going to portray myself as any kind of genius for figuring this out, however. I got the information from Hubspot’s story titled How To Use Creative Commons To Add Images To Your Blog. There’s a video there, and I’m really glad because I wouldn’t have figured it out without that. And there’s one other thing. Something they tell you that you can do in the video is actually something you can only do if you have a Flickr account, which I won’t because I don’t have any photos that I’m ever going to pop up on any site like that. So, I have to do it the long way, write my code and add the image in a much different way. But no matter; at least I’ve found a place where, if I use those images, I know I’m in the clear.

Powers Collectibles Willie Mays and Willie McCovey Autographed NL Baseball

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

I’ve seen this often enough, and I decided it was time to say something about it.

When you add images to your WordPress blog, do they show up like this:

Notice, it’s sitting out there in its own netherland, not quite falling into place with the rest of my text? That has to be somewhat irritating, because it takes up space and, well, it just doesn’t look all that good. No matter the size of the image, having it pop out like this makes it seem like it’s not a part of the post. WordPress seems to do this as a default for many blogs. There are certain themes that will render the images properly, but for the most part I don’t see that happening with a lot of people.

You’ll notice that when I post images, they’re part of my content. it wraps around the image, and is under some kind of control. It’s integrated into things, and I can move it left, right, or in the center if I so chose, although I’ve never wanted to have an image in the middle as far as I can remember.

How do I do it? I add a little bit of HTML code to my posts, and whether or not you like doing it or understand it, I think by showing you what I do that you might like how it looks in your blog posts. And then if you can’t remember it, or even if you do, all you have to do is remember to go back to posts where you’ve used the code, copy and paste it into your new post, and then just change the image link. Having said that, I decided it was easier to show it to you as an image, and this time it’s intentionally in the middle so you can see the code without it disappearing:

As you can see, at least I hope as you can see, it’s not difficult code, but it’ll wrap your text around your image and thus blend things in better; at least that’s how I see it. I hope it’s a helpful tip; any questions, just ask.

Seiko Automatic Rolex Style Ladies Gold Tone Black Dial

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

In my continuing quest to work on spreading my influence, I figured I may as well add another thing to help figure out just what kind of influence I have, at least through this blog.

Back in June, before really thinking much about this project, I added Topsy, which allows people to retweet my blog posts if they like them without having to sign up for a service like TweetMeMe. This time I’ve installed the plugin called fbLikeButton. You have to put it in just like that, because there are a lot of plugins for the like button for Facebook. However, this one was the highest rated by people who have tried others, and I know why. It was the only one that didn’t require me to go to Facebook and set up a script to use it.

You’ll notice at the end of the post that the “like” button shows up just under my copyright notice. You have the choice of having it at the top or bottom or in both places, but I chose the bottom because it interfered with my “listen” button, and I figured having it at the end of the post make it easier for anyone who liked it and didn’t want to go back to the top. Of course, it would be nice if my Topsy allowed me to do that as well, but I think I like it just the same. You can also make it wider or thicker, so to speak, and you can select “recommend” instead of “like”; I stuck with the regular one. And if people click on it, their names and image will show at the end of your post as well; you get to determine if you want faces to show, and I decided to go that route for now.

What the like button does… heck, let’s just show what Facebook says it does:

“When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your website.”

And there you are. I hope you “like” this post.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

Suffice it to say, I’ve been writing a lot lately about influence, especially influence online. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that there are ways of tracking how one’s blog is working online. Now that I think about it, I’m not so sure that most of these are all that effective.

I’m not sure if y’all remember my post talking about Technorati’s new ranking system some time ago. Before they made the change, you knew that if you could get your blog into the top 100,000 that you were doing pretty well. Then they changed it and, at least for me, it became impossible to know what was good. However, at the time they made the change, this blog was ranked at 491, and since the high was 993, I figured I was at least in the top half. It’s been awhile since I took a look at Technorati, and where am I now? I’m at 128; what the hey?

I don’t know how Technorati works, but I can’t believe this blog has fallen in influence that far. A look at my Analytics stats says my traffic has drastically increased over the last six months, and my ranking fell? My Alexa rank has improved and my ranking fell? Now, comments have stayed the same, but do comments actually drive Technorati that much?

It’s reminded me of other blog ranking systems that at one time or another I’ve belonged to, including Sire’s Cool Blog Links, where out of not so many sites I’m ranked down in 6th place. What’s even weirder is that his blog is ranked 10th on that site, and his Alexa ranking is 30,000 points better than mine. Strange, right?

There have been other blog ranking sites that I’ve joined and unjoined over the years, mainly because the rankings seemed, well, arbitrary. On one I was in the top 50 out of 250 while in another I was sitting around 315 out of 400, and one other I was around 275 out of 500. What did any of them mean? I didn’t have a clue.

There’s also always the question as to whether the measure of a blog is the amount of comments it gets. I even debated another blogger through my blog when he stated he believed that people’s content stank if they weren’t getting a lot of comments. I love comments, as I feel it means I’ve connected with someone on a particular post, but Seth Godin gets people quoting him all the time and he doesn’t even allow comments; I’m thinking that’s proof that comments aren’t a measure of influence at all.

I believe blog ranking systems are fairly arbitrary in what they mean to bloggers in general. If there was one standard that all the systems agreed with, then it might mean something. I get locked into Alexa because it’s not a blog ranking, but a website ranking, and at least it gives you a real tool of comparison to use. Don’t get caught up in blog ranking systems as a true measure; use them for entertainment purposes only, and you won’t get caught up trying to rank for things you can’t control.

Iron Man 2 (Blu-ray+DVD+Digital Copy)

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

Have you noticed that there’s a new and more sophisticated spam that’s out lately? It’s interesting because it’s actually related to the topic in some fashion, to the degree in which you just might leave it alone because it looks like the real thing.

Only it’s not the real thing. You know it for a couple of reasons. One, it’s mostly a one line item, although I did get one that actually had 3 lines strung together. Second, there’s the little squiggly at the end of the message, which I just figured out where it is. Here’s an example:

my grandfather is also a baby boomer and he is also a war veteran~`”

Here’s another one that was actually on a post of mine on writing articles:

sometimes article writing too much time and effort, specially when you are writing lots of stuff~–

Anyway, all of this stuff is spam, and you need to be leery of it. Sometimes it comes with a link in the message, though neither of these did. They do come with some interesting links as the home domain name, though. The first message came from a site that I assume sells USB related items. The second came from something related to male reproductive systems; hey, that’s actually what it said! lol

I’m also starting to see this on a lot of other blogs, and people are responding to this stuff. Yes, it’s tricky. Sometimes it even comes with an image. But let’s be realistic folks If the picture is of a pretty girl but the name says “David”, it’s fake. Also, if the email address and the domain name don’t quite match up, there’s the strong possibility that it’s fake as well. The first one above for the USB stuff was sent from an email address with “brownies” as the domain name. The reproductive system one was sent from something called “kimber.”

I put it out there in case y’all have been receiving the same sort of stuff and either letting it pass or wondering about it just a bit. It’s spam; kill it.

Champion Men’s Mesh Shorts;
click on image

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

A couple of days ago I came across a post that kind of intrigued me and kind of bothered me at the same time. Actually, my mind said it was fulfilling one of the points of the author, and in that case it probably worked as he expected. In another, however, I’m in almost full rebuttal mode, hence I’m writing about it on my site instead of his.

The post is titled 10 Signs That Says Your Content Sucks (a phrase that I’ve never liked, so I’ve never said it, but I did have to quote the title), written by Chris Peterson of Blogging With Chris. Actually, though it says 10 signs, only 9 of them actually ask you a question for you to determine if your content stinks. And I have to say that I disagree that if these points apply in some fashion that it means your content stinks. I want you to read his post so I’m not going into full details with it, but I will at least mention what I’m countering. This means I won’t hit all his points; no need.

First point, journal entries. In essence, he says no one is interested in our lives. Actually, since I decided to be more personal on this blog, I’ve had way more traffic and received a heck of a lot more comments. Beforehand, I think many folks had no clue who I was or what I was about. You can play it too close to the vest in not divulging any personality sometimes. Remember what my most visited post is all about; it was personal and social commentary, and I doubt anyone learned much from it.

Second point, number of comments. The reality is that some of the best stuff written on the internet is not only never seen, but never commented on. Blogging turns out to be a community, and if you don’t give yourself to trying to reach out to others, unless you’re famous for some other reason, you’re going to get neither visitors or comments. Judging your content based on only comments is useless.

Third point, if time were the great predictor of how many comments people were going to get we’d all take a week putting together our posts. Every post isn’t a home run, just like every song on an album (or CD; I still like to refer to them as albums) isn’t a top 10 hit. If you’re looking for that kind of perfection you’re never going to attain it, and you risk alienating your audience because they have no idea when something new is coming.

Fourth point, fan mail. Yes, I get some fan mail. But I receive a heck of a lot more comments than fan mail. Truthfully, I didn’t start getting fan mail until probably the middle of last year; it threw me off initially. I tend to view it as some people wishing to express a point of view, but not wanting to be “outed” on the blog itself. On my business blog, I get a lot of email responses whenever I write on topics of racism and diversity instead of comments on the blog. Are those posts better, or are they scary enough for some folks to not want to put their name on it in the blogosphere?

Fifth point, hate mail. Why would I intentionally want to put out a post to receive hate mail? Who am I supposed to be, Rush Limbaugh? I don’t ever want hate mail; I’d rather be ignored if someone didn’t have the guts to post their rebuttal on my blog. However, I have received a version of hate mail twice ever; didn’t like it one bit, especially since one was on a tribute to my dad, thus it was way out of place.

A Specious Origin

Sixth point, is it my responsibility to educate or expect someone to learn something from every post? It’s an interesting point, and one that I believe is what finally makes some people give up blogging. If you don’t diversify, you’re going to stagnate and want to go away. Did anyone learn anything from my cleavage post, easily the most popular post ever on this blog? What about my story about losing and finding my keys? Were people entertained? Yup! Is there anything wrong with entertaining? Nope. Charles Barkley once said “I am not a role model”; well, he got that one wrong, but what’s not wrong is that “I am not everyone’s educator”. I’ll educate when I want to, like my recent post on PHP 5, but otherwise, as Wanda Sykes like to say, “I’m a be me.”

I think that’s enough. Chris actually made me think, which is good, even if I disagree with his premise. Darren Rowse’s blog gets plenty of comments, but at least half of his posts these days are written by someone else. Are those posts all great content, or are those people who visit because he’s the Problogger? Sometimes, lousy content gets lots of comments, even more than good content; I see it all the time. It’s about connections and community as much as the content. Without content, nothing moves. With good content, you’re afforded one type of opportunity; with bad content, you’re actually afforded another type of opportunity.

But does your content stink based on the number of comments you get? There’s no real way to affirm that. What say you?

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

The struggle is over, and I have conquered the beast known as PHP 5.0. Actually, the beast seems to be my host, 1&1, though it’s probably not all their fault, and they’re definitely not alone.

Some of you may remember the battle I had in trying to upgrade my business blog to PHP 5.0 back in December. In that case, I knew that blog was on 4.0 because I had created it many years earlier, before PHP 5.0 came about. The same couldn’t be said for this blog and myfinance blog however. According to my MySQL admin area, both were already on 5.0. However, I knew they couldn’t be running that way because I couldn’t automatically update anything, and I was having all sorts of problems with my dashboard and plugins.

It was time to do some research, and I have to say it took awhile for me to figure things out, mainly because I had to go to multiple places to get a full understanding of what the issue might be. See, everything I needed, it turns out, was at the codex area for WordPress.org, but it wasn’t making any sense to me. I eventually found a blog called Gabediaz that gave me everything I needed. Now I’m going to share it here, since the information is in many places, just not easily described everywhere.

The first thing I had to do was create a file and name it “phpinfo.php”. I used Notepad and I had to pop this code into it:

You upload that file to your server. Now, if you have multiple accounts on your server, you upload it into the one where your blog is. Then you type in your domain name and add “/phpinfo.php”. That will tell you the actual version of PHP your site is running on. In my case, it said I was running 4.4.9, which isn’t what it was saying in MySQL.

Then there’s the fix for it, and this is dicey stuff because you don’t want to make a mistake, just in case. First download your .htaccess file to your computer, and make sure you know where it is. Then using Notepad, open that bad boy up. Once you’ve done that, immediately save it using Save As, make sure you’re not saving it as a .txt file, and name it something like .htaccess_original. That will leave you two of those files wherever you saved it. Open the original file you downloaded, go to the top, hit Enter once to bring everything else down, then add this:

Save that file as is, then upload it back to your server, overwriting what you already have there. Then run that domain name thing again, and if you’re lucky you’ll be running something better than 5.0; in my case, I’m running 5.2.13.

I then went to take a look at my dashboard, and everything is there, all notes and the like. I went to my plugins area and added a couple of plugins that I had disabled, just to see what would happen to my dashboard; absolutely nothing. I then took the chance and automatically upgraded to WordPress 3.0; viola! That bad boy worked, my blog is now 3.0, I don’t have to manually upgrade any longer, my dashboard works fine, I can get into all posts and comments fine, and life is great once more.

By the way, the best test to do after upgrading is to see if you can get into your posts. Y’all know I write blog posts for others, and I also manage the blogs. All except one of the blogs upgraded just fine, and the one that didn’t wouldn’t let me into any of the posts. With the manual upgrade it all came back, thank goodness.

Now, I’m not guaranteeing this will work for everyone, but I think I can safely guarantee that if you’re on 1&1 that it will work. And if you’re having problems, heck, it can’t hurt to give it a shot, as long as you remember to save your original .htaccess file somewhere so you can upload it back if necessary. Good luck.

New Wave Rug: NW37 Multi

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

I’m someone who loves getting as much information as possible. Y’all know how I’ve touted that I subscribe to more than 200 blogs, and that, because I speed read, I can get through a heck of a lot of information.

Information Overload

However, I can’t get through it all, and I admit that there are times when I fall behind that I pop open the reader and see well over 500 titles in a category and think “there’s just no way I’m getting through all of that.” Y’all know that’s a bunch of RSS feeds!

What I do then is look for titles that seem intriguing, take a quick look, see what’s compelling, and if nothing is then I move onto the next one. I have no real idea what I might be missing, and my mind doesn’t care. As a matter of fact, sometimes I actually look at a high number of posts and feel like I can’t breathe.

Last night I was going through a large number once again, and came across this one titled Are You Becoming A Fat, Lazy Blogger written by Tom Sinfield of Standout Blogger. As I read the post, I saw myself in it, someone being overwhelmed by information to the point of being paralyzed sometimes. The paralysis for me is deciding I’m not reading at that moment, yet unsure just what I should do next. And that’s not a good way to go.

So, I’ve made an interesting decision. I’ve decided that I’m going to trim my list down to around 100, and that will be that. Now, some of this is pretty easy. I know I’ll be keeping almost every blog that’s in my category of “friends”, and I’ll be keeping almost every blog in the category of “folks I know”; how’s that for category titles? Those will be the first two I’ll go through because some of those folks aren’t blogging anymore, and I’ll know who they are pretty quickly.

The thing is, right now those account for about 55 blogs. I know for sure that 10 will be gone pretty quickly, but I’m hoping to eliminate at least 20 from this group. That will allow me to easier go through the rest to figure out what I want to keep. I know I’m keeping my news feeds, which don’t actually count as blogs, but I’m counting them towards my 100.

What’s my ultimate goal, other than the number? I subscribe to a ton of internet marketing blogs. The thing is, not only are there a lot of those folks, but many of them aren’t offering me anything new or substantial. I almost hate to go there, but few of them are teaching me anything new on how to make money. And, since that’s the focus of those blogs, supposedly, I need to weed through them to get to what I need.

I also subscribe to a lot of SEO blogs, because it’s something I do, but truth be told, these days it’s more about theory than anything ground breaking, and I find myself disagreeing with what I read more often than finding anything new I can use. I think those blogs are great for someone who’s new to it, but I’ve been doing it for almost 4 years now; I’m past a lot of it.

And there are other types of blogs that wouldn’t interest anyone else but me; well, I’ll add “probably”, and leave it at that. In any case, it’s time to reduce and refine.

Anyone else feeling overwhelmed? As Tom said, it might be time for an information diet; who’s with us? By the way, Tom’s wife is close to having a baby, so pop over there and give him some love.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

If you haven’t noticed, there are two new things on my blog that I have yet to talk about, and I owe both of them to two guys and two WordPress plugins.

The first was recommended by our friend Sire who wrote a post titled Wassupblogs Posts Are Copyright Protected With Digiprove. Yeah, long title, but he did bring to my attention this plugin from a company called Digiprove. What it does is adds a copyright to the bottom of each post that proves it’s from you originally. That way, if you have to fuss at someone because they’ve stolen your content, which happens often, and you need backup proof that it’s yours, the digital sign is there.

I’ve noticed most people who steal my content also steal other things of mine that sometimes don’t work for them, such as my ReadSpeaker plugin. This means that my copyright thing will be at the bottom of whatever they steal. Well, at least it’s supposed to be. One, it won’t go back and update it on previous posts, although I’ve found that if you go in and make an update to any older posts that it will add the proof. Two, every once in awhile it will skip an article if you’ve post-dated it, which is irritating but easily correctable. You have to sign up for the service, though it’s free for most of us, and then you’re good to go.

The second plugin was recommended by our friend Dennis while we were talking via instant messaging. He kept asking me why I didn’t have a retweet button on this blog, which I used to have, but the plugin I was using (the name of which escapes me now) kept locking up this blog. I asked him what he was using and he said Topsy. Now you’ll notice that at the top of each post, to the right, is this little box that you’ve probably seen on a host of other blogs. It makes retweeting easier if you choose to share this article. It also makes my friend Scott happy since he’d been copying my full blog links, which didn’t give him any room to add a comment, as this plugin also creates one of those tiny urls that are prevalent all over Twitter.

Anyway, if you’ve been looking for something that can handle this issue for you, there you go; enjoy.

Travelpro Deluxe Tote 8601 in Black Price – $51.90

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

This is a rant post, and I’m naming names. I’m going to try to be fair, but if I’m not, part of me doesn’t care, but the other part almost apologizes up front; almost, that is.

There is a post on a blog called Growmap that’s ranting against Akismet. Okay, Akismet might not be perfect, but I’ve been a major supporter of the program for almost 4 years, and I’m not going against them now. The writer, Gail, has done some testing and supposedly she has seen that some posts end up being killed by Akismet. Not moved to the spam folder, but killed overall. Or so she says; one never really knows if a post was accidentally deleted by someone when they emptied their spam folder or if a post was deemed as being spam by the reviewer. I know many bloggers who say they never check their spam filter; that’s not good, but it’s their blog so life is what it is. I will say that in reading other posts of Gail’s that she tends to be very thorough, as much as one can be.

Anyway, she and a few other people have gone on a crusade against Akismet, even though Gail states that she doesn’t hate it. Okay, that’s fine. I put a comment on her post saying I support Akismet and was a major fan. It wasn’t all that long a comment, and it wasn’t the first. However, the response I got was way out of proportion to my original comment, and other people were skipped; to me, that was intentional and personal, and I didn’t like it one bit. And me being me, well, I don’t demure from certain things, so I commented back, trying to temper my language (I don’t curse, but I can be kind of mean spirited at times when pushed), and I think my response was okay.

Next thing I know, I receive responses on this blog from two of her supporters, one writing from a place called Linda Christas, which is supposed to be an online training organization of some sort. They’re supporting Gail, which is fine, but they wrote these long comments on a post of mine that has nothing to do with the subject matter I wrote about. In my mind, that’s spam, and I don’t appreciate it, and I went to Gail’s blog and said as much. There’s a point at which things cross the line and get truly personal, and I don’t take that kind of mess kindly, especially when the people saying stuff are trying to hide, in their own way, who they are.

One of the people, a woman named Leone, wrote with the email address of this Linda Christas. There’s this woman who either really works there or is a scam of some sort who calls herself Dr. Ann. This person has posted comments on my blog and other blogs. At first the comments seem to match up to the content. Then they go off topic and start this rant against Akismet. It seems Linda Christas is on a crusade against Akismet, and they’re trying hard to pull other people into the process. If you think I’m the only one who sees this and is calling it out, check out this post on TechPatio titled Comment Spam, She’s Back: Dr. Ann Voisin From Linda Christas College. And if you want to see his first post on this person and this college, which was only days earlier, check this one out as well, titled Akismet Blocking Your Blog? No Way, Just a SPAM Trick!.

Of course my respect for this college is gone, especially since I just saw a post on their site, unordinarily long, ranting against Akismet, and frankly it parrots the same type of tripe I’ve seen coming from a few other places. At least Gail did a study of some sort, which I applaud her for (see, I’m trying to be fair here). Of course, Gail also called me out on her blog asking if she’d ever written anything that I considered as spam on this blog and I had to tell her yes, the last time she visited, which was June 2009. So, this could color her idea in some way of what spam just might be. Her last response to me, before I got mad because of the other people who came from her blog to post their “threats” about not visiting this blog again, was not in attack mode, and I appreciate that as well.

I need to say this. I have gone on attack mode on other people’s blogs, so I’m not totally innocent here. However, if I do that, I do it for one of two reasons. One, you don’t get to go after any of my friends without a confrontation from me; that’s what loyalty is all about, and if my friends don’t breach the rules of proper decorum in another place, I’ve got their back. Two, you don’t get to get away with racist or misogynist or any other type of hateful speech and think I’m going to let it go. Too many people decide to turn the other way and let that kind of thing go by, and that’s why we end up with some of the problems we have in this world. Sure, I don’t expect the majority to always step in to help fight these things because it’s not in their interest; they have nothing to gain by speaking out for those who they indirectly believe are less than themselves, even if they don’t express it. So, if anyone goes to Gail’s blog and reads my initial post and thinks I attacked her in any way, please explain to me how I did it. If you believe that disagreeing with the host on a blog is attacking, then so be it. Rose and I don’t always agree, but in the end, I hope she doesn’t think I’m ever attacking her, and I know she’s not attacking me either.

So, I have no respect for Linda Christas and the type of people it seems to put out; yes, that’s an attack. If people representing them believe they can come into my house and spit on my rug, it’s not happening. I left the other comment on my previous post, even though it had nothing to do with the topic; believe me, that won’t happen again, and if someone wants to cry censorship, tough. I pay for this space, and there are comment rules; don’t follow them, don’t expect anything extra-special coming your way on my part because you feel you have the right. That mess won’t be tolerated. Now, if it happens on this post, it might be tolerated, since I’m in attack mode, so to speak. But we’ll see. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue using Akismet, and I don’t care who likes it or doesn’t like it. People who use Disqus or Intense Debate know I don’t like those things, and yet they continue using it. Because it’s their right to use it, just as it’s my right to use Akismet. We can debate the merits of it; no problem. But when it goes further, when it gets personal… I’ll stop there.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

You know, I wouldn’t think that most people couldn’t identify spam when they see it. However, I’ve been to enough blogs and seen enough spam even on those blogs where people seem to usually monitor what’s going on in their comments area.

Heck, I know spam is getting pretty sneaky. Sometimes it’s hard to tell a good comment from a spam comment. If you’re not paying attention a new spam comment will show up on an old post, which is why I recently talked about making some posts private.

Still, you must be vigilant in fighting the great spam battle. If you don’t, not only will the spammers win, but those savvy visitors of yours that see you can’t tell spam from the real thing might decide to stay away. So, let’s see if I can help you out in some fashion.

1. Watch out for insulting spam. There are obviously trolls whose job, so they feel, is to make everyone else’s life miserable. Insulting spam is usually pretty easy to determine, though; it’s never on topic.

2. Watch for spam that’s not on topic. Maybe I should have started with this one, but I’m bringing it up now. There is spam that looks pretty good and you might miss it because you don’t read to the end. If a comment starts out intentionally evasive, it’s probably going to continue being so, or else it will introduce something that makes no sense whatsoever.

3. Set your spam filter to move a comment with even one link in it to your spam folder. Sure, every once in awhile you’re going to get a legitimate post in there, but what I’ve seen most often is someone following up a post with a link in it with a second post saying “hey, my post didn’t show up”, or something to that effect. I hope everyone checks their spam folders.

4. One line comments. Unless you know the person, you should probably just delete all of these anyway. Keeping something that says “nice post” is an insult to your blog, and is most probably spam.

5. Check out the email addresses. Most people aren’t using Hotmail anymore, but even if they are, if the name before “@” doesn’t make sense it’s probably spam. If the name you’re given is of one sex but the name in the email address is of another sex, it’s probably spam.

6. It used to be that spam didn’t come with images, but now it does. Make sure you read the comment instead of relying on the fact that there’s now a gravatar attached.

7. Now spam can come in your name. That used to be an easy tell as well, but some of the more sophisticated spam can read who the author of the post is and add it to their comment.

8. If the comment is written to the “webmaster”, it’s spam. Who really uses the term “webmaster” anymore anyway?

9. If the post is in another language and you’ve only ever written in one language, it’s most probably spam. Back in the day I used to copy some of those messages into translation websites to see if it was saying anything pertinent; just scrap it and move on.

10. Finally, if you’re not sure, even with these tips, you can always test the waters by sending an email to the email address. Write a short post saying something like “just seeing if this email is valid before I allow the comment on my blog.” If you get a rejection back, or heck, if you get nothing back, consider it spam and kill it. Even if it’s not really spam, if the person on the other end doesn’t respond, then they probably had no intentions of coming back to your blog, in which case you didn’t need their comment anyway.

I hope that helps. Of course, if you have Askimet on your blog it will help even more.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell