The Power of Retail

Did you know that there was a program that allowed website owners and bloggers to run their own advertising network? I didn’t, and was excited to read about AdQuick a PHP script that is an AdBrite Clone PHP Script and lets you run an advertising network for your sites. How it works is that once you install the system on your sites, potential advertisers can look though the AdQuick website to find which website they would like to place an ad on. Website owners have complete control over which ads they want to display and for how long. It looks like a great system and I think I’m going to look into it for myself.

As bloggers, we all set out to share our view with the world, right? Whether it is a certain knowledge that we have or just general musings, we all have something to say. And having a platform to have something to say is very important, even though we know that there might not be too many people listening or reading, but having a voice is important. On the flip side, is the need to get comments, for some it is the most important reason to blog, to be appreciated, to be validated, while for others it is just another byproduct of the blogging game. I’ve seen lots of bloggers who never respond to comments, and those who reply meticulously to each and every one. I’m neither actually, comments are fine but they are certainly not the reason for blogging for me. If you have something interesting to say, only then say it, else just enjoy the reading!

I don’t blog half as much as I used to earlier, mostly due to my concentrating on my freelance work. In the past I usually had some dedicated blogging time, but I have had to cut down on that, since I’ve been giving priority to assignments that I get for work. A lot of people think of blogging as work too, but I try to keep it fun and light, else it’s not much of a relaxer is it?

Interestingly, the crescendo of blogging seems to be quietening down a bit lately. The buzz about it is a lot less, the number of new blogs being started per day has also come down and the ones being abandoned is going up as it always has been. So, is the blog party all over? Or is it going to come back in a new form? It will definitely be interesting to watch.

There is so much new technology and terminology that a lot of people are just pretending to understand it all, while actually they are thoroughly confused. They will never admit it of course. As usual, bLaugh has found a fun way to highlight this situation by making a comic about it. It is one of their older ones, but is good nevertheless. This one is really funny!

Enjoy!

Another cool cartoon from bLaugh.com! This one is pretty funny, but there will be a time that everyone and their dog knows everything about blogs and blogging. So we might as well have fun laughing about this right now. There will of course be newer things that the older generations will have trouble keeping up with, but that’s a prerequisite of sorts.

Enjoy!

It’s just over a year since I started this blog. I can’t believe just how fast the time has flown. I have close to 600 posts now and and catching up with my posts on my other blogs, since I’m posting a bit moreregularly here. My first and oldest blog is also quite active, since I write about travel and fun stuff there, all of which I seem to have lots of stuff to write about. When blogging first started, it was just associated with a few tech-savvy people, but the trend has really caught on and become quite mainstream now, to the extent that many are getting tired of it and abandoning their blogs. I don’t post as often as I used to, but still enjoy the concept of writing things and sharing them here.

Browsing through some of the old cartoons on bLaugh, I found this delicious one. It is simply superb and is a wonderful commentary of how popular culture invades our lives and especially those of children. Considering that blogging has been around as a mainstream activity only for the past 5 years or so, it has reached far and wide and caught the fancy of everyone young and old. As a blogger, I love seeing cartoons on the subject of blogging and this is definitely one of the best I’ve seen so far.

Enjoy!

Well, this is probably my last post for 2007 and it’s time to reflect on the year gone by. It’s certainly been an eventful year, with lots going on in our lives with our move to a new city and country as well as getting used to doing things differently here. While the year has been ‘eventful’, we’re hoping 2008 will be ‘better’, more stable and bring us good tidings. We didn’t get to travel quite a much in 2007 as we did in 2006, where I was on vacation for 72 days of the year. In 2007, my vacation time came to around 30 odd days, but due to the move, I was not able to work for another two months of the year. So, work wise it has been a slow year for me and I am hopping the new year will change that.

I spent some time this morning downloading and adding some plugins to my blog. I am amazed at how simple all this stuff has become now, where at one time it was only for the tech-savvy among us, now pretty much anyone can figure out how it’s done. I have added a Share This plugin at the bottom of my posts, making it all the more easier for readers to share the post via social bookmarking sites or your mail. I have also downloaded the related posts plugin as well as the popularity contest plugin, as a way to track my most popular posts. For more plugins, Alex King’s site is an invaluable resource. Here’s a link to his Wordpress Plugins page. Enjoy!

Edited to add: Well, I spoke too soon as I have been having problems getting the Related Posts plugin to start working. The link for the index table setup is not working and I haven’t figured out how to set it up manually. So, until then, no related posts will show up below my posts.

Another great comic strip from the folks at bLaugh.com. This one was quite old, but is one of the best ones they have. As usual they have manged to get to the depths of a blogger and come up with something both funny and mad. I just can’t get enough of their cartoons and hope they start publishing on a daily basis, so us bloggers can get our daily fix.