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Archives for July 2008

An Awesome Time-Saving Tip for Checking Your Blog Posts’ Grammar

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Many operating systems have wonderful text-to-speech features included by default—ironically enough, this entire article revolves around this feature. Long forgotten and unused, it is now an important part of my work flow. I only began exploring this feature around a month and a half ago on my Mac OS X Leopard system, and I have been using it ever since. It has saved me from having many errors that I would not have noticed otherwise. It is exactly like having someone else read your work for you, but the only difference is that it is now a computer doing it for you.

Enabling Text-to-Speech on Mac OS X

There are only a few steps required to enable text-to-speech shortcuts in Mac OS X Leopard:

  1. Open up your system preferences.
  2. Under the “System” subheading, click on the “Speech” option.
  3. Navigate to the “Text to Speech” tab.
  4. Enable the check-box for “Speak selected text when the key is pressed.”
  5. Click on “Set Key” to open up a dialog box that will allow you to set a key combination to set when you want to have your computer read the text. (I have it activate when the Shift key, Option key, Control key, and ‘S’ key are all depressed.)

After you have done all those steps, try selecting any text on your screen, and press the key combination to see if it works. You should know before you attempt this that text-to-speech synthesis requires a decent system to operate correctly. Apparently it uses up a lot of memory and CPU cycles to calculate the process. Keep this in mind.

An Alternative Method

If you want a different way to access this feature, you could try selecting some text, navigate to the “Edit” menu, and then scroll down to the “Speech” item, and, finally, select “Start Speaking”. However, this method only works in applications that display the “Speech” item under the edit menu. For example, Firefox does not have this menu, but you can still press they key combination set (as explained above) to have the computer read the text back to you.

It’s Not Perfect

Now, I will be the first to admit that it is not a flawless solution. There are times when that monotonous voice will put you to sleep, but I have been fairly impressed overall. The default voice, Alex, works the best for me, but you should try the alternative voices to see if they work better for you.

I would really urge any of you who have a Mac computer to utilize this feature. It might sound silly, but it really does work, and I’m not afraid to state that I use it on a regular basis to help me ensure that my posts are of great reading quality.

Using Something Else?

For those of you on Windows and Linux operating systems, you are in luck. Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux have text-to-speech solutions available. I can’t comment on any of these methods for Windows or Linux, but I am sure they work just as well.

Have you tried this before? Are you willing to incorporate this into your work flow? Do the voices sound too weird? Let me know in the comments section!

Weekly Link Dump

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While we strive to give you well researched thoughts, opinions and strategies to help you become a better blogger, we realize there is a ton of noise out their on the internet which is hard to wade through. This post is my weekly link dump which contains links to articles which caught my eye during the week in relation to blogging.

Keywebdata – Google testing Digg Like Interface. Let’s users edit search results If Google really rolls out this social search feature, could this be the end of the line for social media sites?

Onecoolsite – How To Become A better Blogger Part 3 – Ethics And Links In part three of an ongoing series Onecoolsite takes a look at two things all bloggers must face. Ethics and links.

DailyBlogTips – Behind The Scenes: Check Out The Desktop of 30 Bloggers DBT has screenshots of 30 different desktops from 30 different bloggers. What fascinates me is that some of these desktops are filled to the brim with icons. How do these bloggers get anything done with organization like that?

CollegeDegrees – 100 Useful Web Tools For Writers Laura Milligan compiled a list of 100 different tools to keep in mind if you’re a writer. The list covers a variety of topics such as, organization, inspiration and getting writing gigs.

ChrisBrogan – If You Intend To Blog Seriously Just about everything this man writes is link worthy and this post is no exception. After reading this post, you may think twice before hitting that publish button.

Explore Other Niches to Spur Creative Thinking

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Photo by destinelee

In my last blog post, I wrote about unleashing creativity by blending your niche with another niche. In a similar vein, here is a creative exercise from Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future. He writes on pages 150 and 151:

One of my favorite exercises in conceptual blending is the “newstand roundup.” If you’re stymied on how to solve a problem, or just want to freshen your thinking, visit the largest newsstand you can find. Spend twenty minutes browsing – and select ten publications that you’ve never read and would likely never buy. That’s the key: buy magazines you never noticed before. Then take some time to look through them. You don’t have to read every page of every magazine. But get a sense of what the magazine is about and what its readers have on their minds. Then look for connections to your own work or life. For instance, when I did this exercise, I figured out a better way to craft my business cards thanks to something I saw in Cake Decorating – and came up with a new idea for a newsletter because of an article in Hair for You. Warning: your spouse might give you uncomfortable looks when come home toting Trailer Life, Teen Cosmo, and Divorce Magazine.

Alternatively, if you’re lazy like me, you can capture the essence of Pink’s exercise by visiting sites in niches unrelated to your niche.

Creative thinking is out of the box thinking. This means you need to step out of the box, or your comfort zone. Once you’re out of your comfort zone, you’re much more likely to come up with something conceptually unique.

Exploring other niches forces you out of the status quo. It makes you look at things from different perspectives.

I tried this exercise on the net. I realized I should add more pictures on my gaming blog by seeing the myriad of pictures on a fashion blog. A wedding blog post reminded me that telling a story about my life helps me connect to my audience. This dating article gave me an idea for a gaming blog post tentatively titled “How Picky Should You Be When Recruiting New Team Members?” A holiday site inspired me to create a editorial calendar to take advantage of important seasonal events in my niche.

Try this exercise and let me know what you come up with.

Pros And Cons Of Site Registration

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As I was having a conversation with Ryan the other day, he brought up the subject of user registration and highlighted a few websites which forced users to register if they were to be part of that community. While that is fine and dandy, there are numerous pros and cons with regards to user registration which I’ll try to highlight in this post.

Pros:

Sense Of Belonging – When a user registers an account for a website, that typically gives them a sense of belonging. They no longer have this sense of just passing through the neighborhood but instead, have become part of the larger collective.

Weeding The Garden – Those who register for a website are more inclined to participate and make use of that membership. After all, if someone has to go through a series of steps to become part of your community, chances are high that they will make their membership worth the effort.

Internal Affairs – Unlike those who browse to your blog, leave a comment, and then disappear as fast as lightning, registration enables you to keep things in house such as communication, participation, etc.

Promotion – If someone registers an account to let’s say your WordPress powered site and you notice that they are contributing by way of excellent comments, you could easily promote the individual through user roles/permissions to become a content producer for the site.

Incentives – In order to build your community, you can offer incentives to those who register an account. These incentives could be increased profile configuration, more authority, etc.

Cons:

Barrier To Entry – More times than not, forcing a user to register with a website is like putting up a sign that says do not disturb. What is the most common method of solving this problem? Moving on to another site which provides the same information with no need to register.

Administrative Headaches – While having a vibrant community of serious people would make any webmasters day, this has the potential to turn into an administrative nightmare. You not only have to care for the site, the sites content, and whatever else may be attached to the site, but you now have to ensure that the registered user information within the database is never damaged. You may also be opening yourself up to performing more than necessary administrative tasks such as assigning user roles/permissions, fixing broken user accounts, changing nicknames around, etc.

More Spam – It doesn’t matter if your user registration form has a CAPTCHA image on it. Spam bots always find a way into your site. The user registration system is one more opening for them to get through. You can almost file this under the administrative headaches category.

More Things To Migrate- This one is also borderline Admin. headache but think about how much easier it would be to migrate data if 10,000 registered user’s weren’t involved. The less things to migrate, the more portable your data is.

These are not all of the pros and cons associated with this topic, but it’s time to delve into some serious discussion. First off, I’m of the opinion that if there will only be 1-10 people associated with a blog or a website which will handle administrative tasks such as content management, content publishing, etc, user registrations should be turned off. Why add the extra overhead if you don’t need it? Secondly, if you are a blogger who enjoys comments, forcing visitors to register an account on your site is a great way to kill the social interaction. If you don’t believe me, check out Kyle Eslicks post on what I feel is a disturbing trend (Blogging Discussion: Registration Required to Comment?)

Conclusion:

So, we’ve covered SOME of the pros and cons related to user registration. It’s time for you to share your thoughts and opinions. For instance, what is your normal reaction when you come across a post in which you would love to comment on but instead of accessing the comment form, you are greeted with a big fat registration page? Do you force users to register an account on your own blog? Has this helped or hurt your blogs ability to grow?

Looking forward to this conversation.

Guided Tour Of The WordPress Theme Directory

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The guys behind the WordPress project announced on July 18th that the new theme repository was online and operational. This brings a sigh of relief towards theme developers as they now have a central location to manage all of their themes.

I’ve been looking for a reason to publish my first screencast and the new theme repository fit the bill. I’ve embedded my first ever screencast which was produced within Camtasia Studio 5 exported as a .m4v file. As for the video host, I’ve chosen Viddler as they have in video comments as well as a nice upload/encode feature. I realize that I’m not the most articulate person and there are indeed a couple of points in the video where I screwed up, but I finally broke my video/screencasting cherry and it feels pretty good.

Please let me know what you think of this first screencast and let me know if you would like to see more of these in the future here on Performancing.

A Guided Tour Of The WordPress Theme Repository.

Three Newest Members To Join Hive

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Back on July 9th, I asked the Performancing audience to answer three questions in order to provide feedback for the future of Performancing. In return for your time and your valuable feedback, three hive accounts were up for grabs. Today, I’d like to congratulate the following contributors as they have become the three newest members of the Hive.

  1. Recruitment Nick
  2. Karen
  3. Missy

These three individuals will be contacted within 24 to 72 hours in order to get your accounts setup. So please keep an eye on your inbox.

Thanks again goes out to everyone who took the time to provide us with some valuable feedback which will be used as part of our plan to revamp Performancing.

The Lazy Blogger’s Way to Write a Creative Post

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Photo by gregwestfall

In today’s blogosphere, creativity is a great asset to have. There’s even a book that says right-brainers will rule the future. Great book, by the way.

The internet is getting more and more crowded with webmasters and bloggers looking to make money with their site.

To stand out from the crowd, you’ll need creative ideas. But what about writer’s block? It seems to come a worst times, right? The bloggers in your niche are publishing creative posts while you can only think of stuff to say that bloggers have already said many times over.

You want to come up with something conceptually new. You want to come up with something people don’t expect.

Here is a simple tip for lazy bloggers looking for a creative spark:

Think of another niche that people can relate to and connect it with your niche.

Examples

Have a car blog? Connect your niche with Hollywood and write “The 10 Most Famous Cars in TV and Movies”.

Are you in the saturated metablogging niche? This blogger connected blogging with haikus.

Do you blog about personal finance? Connect finance with travel and you can publish “25 Creative Ways to Save Money for your Next Winter Vacation”.

Got a celebrity blog? Ryan, owner of a celebrity blog, wrote about his most successful linkbait. He connected his niche with sports and The 50 Hottest Women of Sports got over 1.4 million pageviews.

Why This Tip Works

The reason this tip works is because there’s nothing really new under the sun. My theory about creativity is that most things we consider creative are basically connections that weren’t seen before by the general public. Someone came around and said “what if we connected these things?”

Think about the sandwich. There was a time in history when the sandwich didn’t exist. But someone saw the connection between bread, vegetables, and meat. And voila! Something creative that has brought a smile to the world 🙂

The guitar is an amazing instrument. Think about the connections someone had to make to create the first guitar. And then in the 21st century, you add electricity and you’ve got the rock and roll movement.

The Risk in Being Creative

There will always be risk in being creative, in making connections other people don’t see. In your attempt to be creative, some of your posts will fall flat. However, the alternative to not risking out is being boring. Boring gets lost in the blogosphere.

Bonus Benefit

Because you’re targeting another niche, these type of posts can get you links that you would not get otherwise.

Your Turn

What post will you publish that will relate to another niche?

Blood and Laporte Discuss Blogging Ethics: What Happened?

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Earlier, Leo Laporte and Rebecca Blood (I love the name), author of The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, discussed blogging ethics on TWiT Live. The brief discussion primarily focused on what bloggers should do when they need to change their content. Jeff Chandler recently covered part of this story when John C. Dvorak was involved—John frequents the TWiT network—and the conversation has been carried over.

An Overview

Note: my responses are formatted in italics.

Unless under extreme circumstances (e.g., when personal information about someone is disclosed), content should not be removed from a blog. People should utilize the strike formatting and add the alterations after it.

I completely agree with this! If you are going to be completely transparent with your bloggers, you should never attempt to make something magically disappear. What happens if someone links to your post because something you wrote, and it isn’t in that article anymore? You will have upset your readers, those visiting your blog from the linking site, the author of the linking site, and maybe more than you bargained for if your article receives plenty of attention.



Major media and news outlets have recently promoted this practice with their journalists’ blogs.

As the consumption of information I read from news outlets disintegrates, the amount of respect I had for them goes as well. Thanks to the blogosphere, news organizations are, somewhat, more accountable for their own reporting (or at least people know their jobs are on the line), but who really cares about them anymore? Okay, so, we do need these news organizations, but, I rarely pay attention to them anymore.


Correcting typos is okay, and does not require notification to the user, but this is only true if the meaning of the sentence remains the same.

I agree with this as well. Something as little as using a future-tensed word instead of past-tensed word could seriously change the entire meaning of a statement. There are numerous examples, but you just have to be careful.

If you remove an entire post, make it known that the post was deleted, and, if possible, give a straightforward reason for it.

I am of the opinion that a post should never be deleted. Ever! But if it must be deleted, at least let your users know that it was taken down, and have a great reason for it as well. I’d never want to be subscribed to a blogger who did otherwise.

Instead of creating a new article, update the old one instead.

I wrote about this not so long ago. I am of the opinion that if the content must be changed because of a new important development or something similar, a new post should be assigned to it. The previously written post should have a note at the top and/or end of the post linking to your new article with a teaser of what has changed (this could promote more pageviews). However, if it is an extremely popular article, I’d suggest just updating that instead of taking away from its greatness. That is just a personal thing though.

Rebecca Blood says that BoingBoing mishandled the “Violet Blue” issue. The deletions went against what the readers expected. There weren’t as straightforward as they could have been.

Jeff Chandler previously touched on this issue, and I think it was reason enough for people to discredit BoingBoing. Stuff like that should not go unpunished. Incase you didn’t know, an author of the BoingBoing blog was fired, and all her work written on the BoingBoing blog disappeared. Regardless, it was a stupid move by BoingBoing, and I’m disappointed that the blog has, utimately, benefited from all the publicity.

[Update: Leo Laporte has said that the segment might be placed at the end of the upcoming This Week in Tech podcast (#152). I’ll update this post with a link if/when that happens.]