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20
Dec
Happy Holidays To You & Yours
Barbara Swafford

Happy Holidays to you and yours

Category: Archives  84 Comments
15
Dec
The Shortest Lesson Ever
Barbara Swafford

meditate The Shortest Lesson Ever

~Haiku Lesson~

Inspiration rains

At any time, any place

Share your source today

Today’s Assignment

When and/or where does inspiration for blog posts strike you?

Feeling creative? Share your answer in the form of a Haiku

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P.S. The inspiration for this lesson came from the post “Imagine Slowing Down and Getting More Done” written by Melinda of WAHM Biz Builder as it reminded me of how when I’m in the shower, ideas for blog posts emerge.

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Category: Archives, Blogging Lessons  81 Comments
11
Dec
Sexy Bookmarks, Toolbars & Time Savers
Barbara Swafford

61006514 eff5ecbcd5 Sexy Bookmarks, Toolbars & Time SaversSince I call this “your blogging classroom on the web”, I decided it was time we talk about homework; or that behind the scenes stuff we often put off.

Today’s Lesson

As many of you have noticed, I decorated my blog for the holidays.

Since I use a theme which has the “custom header feature”, adding the photo was simple. For the RSS widgets I searched for “holiday icons” and then recoded my widgets.

Listed below are a few new (to me) plugins I am testing.

  1. First is Sexy Bookmarks by Josh Jones and Norman Yung which is visible at the bottom of each post.

    The Sexy Bookmarks plugin is easily customizable, looks good, doesn’t take up too much space and is positioned so readers will be reminded to Tweet, Digg, or use StumbleUpon, etc. to share a post.

  2. The “Follow Me” plugin by WP Burn.com can be seen on the right of the page.

    This plugin is to remind our readers they can follow us on Twitter. The customization includes using different colors as well as different Twitter birds images.

  3. The Wibiya toolbar can be seen at the bottom of the page.

    What I like about this toolbar is if you don’t want to clutter up your sidebars with an RSS feed, recent posts, etc., you can include them in the toolbar.This isn’t a plugin, but more of an add-on which requires an invitation. Just go to the Wibiya site and follow the instructions. In a matter of days you should receive an email from them and at that time you can set up an account and customize your toolbar.

  4. Thanks to the suggestions from both Internet Strategist @ GrowMap and Betsy at Passing Thru I added Zemanta and Apture.

    In a nutshell, these two applications which work for all blogging platforms* make blogging easier and faster by suggesting photos, links, related articles, etc. for our posts. (Disclaimer: I’ve only tested them on WordPress.)

    Zemanta adds a interface to your dashboard from which you can drag and drop photos and/or links into your post as you’re writing it.

    Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...
    Image via CrunchBase

    Apture adds icons which when clicked on, does the same.

    Zemanta also adds a “reblog” feature at the bottom of the post which makes cutting and pasting quotes much easier, plus and an option to add links to other posts which may be beneficial to our readers.

Thus far, the only downside I see to using some of the above applications is they do slow down the page load time.

Today’s Assignment

What are your favorite plugins or applications?

Care to share?

signature for blog post.

Footnote: When using Zemanta on a self hosted blog, the Zemanta plugin must be used. For WordPress, the plugin can be downloaded here.

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Category: Archives, Blog Maintenance, Blogging, Blogging Lessons, Linking, Plugins and Widgets, Save Time  Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  59 Comments
08
Dec
Requesting Two Minutes Of Your Time
Barbara Swafford
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Image via Wikipedia

The title “Is Google Making Us Stupid” intrigued me.

Nicolas Carr authored this post which implies we may be dealing with a population of people whose reading habits, both online and off, are changing.

Our audience might be so preoccupied, comprehension of what is written on the page could elude them.

Nicolas admits it’s happening to him,

…Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy….

He then goes on to add,

The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

Today’s Lesson

To reinforce what he’s saying, Nicolas references a study conducted by the University College, London which published an article titled, Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future.

Part of their findings state,

The picture that emerges from internet research is that most visitors to scholarly sites view only a few pages, many of which do not even contain real content, and in any case do not stop long enough to do any real reading. This is either a symptom of a really worrying malaise – failure at the library terminal – or maybe a sign that a whole new form of online reading behaviour is beginning to emerge, one based on skimming titles, contents pages and abstracts: we call this `power browsing’. We urgently need to understand the root causes of this phenomenon.

Although the University College, London is wanting to understand the “why” of this phenomenon, as bloggers we should be asking, “Will this, or should this, change the way we blog?”

I’m thinking it might.

If we’re aware our visitors may not be stopping long enough to read our posts, finding a way to capture their attention should be of utmost concern.

What say you?

Today’s Assignment

Do you find the internet has changed the way you read?

Thinking abut your surfing habits, what captures your attention long enough to actually read a post?

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Category: Archives, Blogging, Blogging Lessons, Comments, Lessons Learned, New Blog Of The Week, Writing Tips  70 Comments
04
Dec
If I Said It First, Is It Mine
Barbara Swafford

first place ribbon icon

Millions of people go online each day and share their brilliance.

We see it in blogs and comments alike.

With the click of a button, those ideas are ours for the taking.

But who do those ideas belong to?

Today’s Lesson

Suzen of Erasing The Board brought up a good point in the comment section of the Save Time – Copy and Paste A Post article. She said, in part,

I just ran across a blogger that used my comment in their very next post, no attribution either.

Suzen went on to say,

Whenever I’ve used so much as a phrase from another, I always mention where the idea came from. I think it’s only fair, don’t you?

Although most bloggers do try to link back to where they got an idea from, in many cases we won’t see that happening as we’re dealing with blogs; a medium which has no rules.

Depending on how a blogger learned to blog, proper blog etiquette may not have entered their mind.

And then we have to ask, “What came first, the comment or the exact same idea that was swirling in our mind?”.

Suzen re-commented and said she “let it go”.

Today’s Assignment

What would you have done?

When we leave a comment on another site, who do those words belong to?

Raise your hand and share what you think.

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Category: Blogging, Blogging Lessons, Comments, Linking  75 Comments
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