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Is This BlogRush All Over Again?

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The Blog Traffic Exchange website released a WordPress plugin back on March 15th called Related Websites. The plugin taps into membership sites, that is those who have signed up to the Related Websites service who have been approved and uses a specially crafted algorithm to display links from those member sites to articles deemed to be related. It didn’t take long for me to think of BlogRush when reading the description of how this plugin/service works. However, unlike BlogRush, their are no credits and it seems like everyone has an equal shot at having their links displayed as long as you play by the rules.

BlogTrafficExchange explains how the plugin works here:

Links are randomly rotated both locally per page load and globally every 24 hours. A proprietary traffic balancing algorithm rewards blogs that send diverse traffic into the exchange more frequent placement. Relevancy is never compromised.

While a lot of people are raving about how well the plugin is working for them so far, I hate the fact that I have no control over who shows up in my related content box. I love the idea on how Related Websites work, I said the same thing when BlogRush was launched, but instead of showing websites from across your internal database of URLs, I’d rather be the one adding specific URL’s to my own internal database. Then, through a contextual algorithm, it determines from those URL’s to show related content. I believe this would make the related websites 10 times more relevant than what BlogTrafficExchange or any other traffic exchange system does. You know, algorithms can’t solve every problem and this is one of them. I as a human being know which specific sites are most related/relevant to the content I publish, I only need the algorithm to scan the content of those sites.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Sphere, or any other related content network which displays ‘relevant‘ content from across a wide spectrum of sites is useless. But, if you’re looking to really open the flood gates in terms of coverage or visibility, only then do I see these types of systems being valuable to a blogger. While you could make the argument that being part of a related content network which is used by big name sites such as CNN provides the opportunity for a link from your blog to show up on their site, don’t kid yourself. It’s happened to a few people but it’s not an everyday occurrence. Just about anytime I’ve read the CNN tech section and reviewed the related content section, a little blog called TechCrunch always seems to be featured their.

If a traffic exchange network works for you, great. It’s just my opinion that you represent the minority.

Two Teen Blogging Networks Merge Into One

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The Teens In Tech blogging network which is operated by CEO Daniel Brusilovsky who only happens to be 16 years of age has merged with the Youth Bloggers Network. According to a post written on the Teens In Tech blog the two networks should compliment each other nicely:

We figured that YBN and TinT complement each other very nicely. TinT offers a place where teens can get set up with a free blog, while YBN offers a community for young bloggers to collaborate, communicate, and grow their blogs and projects.

Teens In Tech is currently still in private beta while Youth Bloggers has over 150 members. YBN looks like it will be used as a means of turning the entire company into a center point for teen bloggers to use not only for publishing content, but for establishing the site as their social network. I’m impressed by what Daniel has been able to accomplish with regards to running a company at just 16 years old. It wasn’t too long ago when Daniel was on stage at his own Teens In Tech conference discussing teen trends and basically, all things teen. This kid has a bright future ahead of him.

Perfcast Episode 29 – Our Last Hoorah

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Episode 29 marks the last episode of Perfcast that I produce. In this episode, David and I as well as special guest Brad LeClerc discussed the news of the week while also giving props and thanks to all who have downloaded and listened to the show since it rebounded back on August 28th, 2008. If you were one of these people, David and I sincerely thank you for sticking through the thick and thin and hope you’ll follow us on our future endeavors. What will become of Perfcast? I’m not sure, but I won’t be steering the boat.

AD COPY: This episode of Perfcast is brought to you by, the Performancing Copyright Management Service. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. Prices start at $300 and for more information please visit services.performancing.com/blog

STORIES DISCUSSED:
The most reliable blog service
How to conduct a great interview
EarnersTalk.com Launches
Is Dad Blogs The Next Best Thing?
Twitter Paid Accounts On The Way?
When do you stop commenting on blogs?

LAST WEEKS POLL QUESTION: Is Social Media An Overused Buzzword?

Out of a total of 51 votes, 33 of you said Yes, 13 of you said No while 5 of you don’t even know what the term really means.

PICKS OF THE WEEK
Jeff – DeviantArt.com – Simply the best site on the web dedicated to awesome art of all flavors. Also, a great site to browse when looking for a new desktop wallpaper.

David – IO9.com – My favorite science fiction/fantasy related blog, run by Gawker media. The blog I’d buy/run if I could afford it.

JOB OF THE WEEK Duncan Riley’s Inqusitr looking for a few more bloggers.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 6 Minutes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode29.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 29 OF PERFCAST:

MarsEdit Now Supports Tumblr

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Those who use Windows based PCs have a ton of options as their disposal when it comes to third party blog editors. For example, Scribefire, Windows Live Writer, etc. If you’re on a Mac however, there is an interesting application which is proving to be a powerhouse for third party blog editing called MarsEdit.

MarsEdit which is developed and maintained by Red Sweater Software recently released version 2.3 of the software. The latest release now contains support for Tumblr.com which is another microblogging type service. Also new in this release is an overhauled media manager that opens much faster when using lots of photos. Technorati tags editing has been revised, and MarsEdit 2.3 sports improved weblog Favicon detection.

I don’t own a Mac so I can’t give this piece of software a trial run but based on everything I’ve read, it’s worth the $30.00.

New ShareThis Widget On The Way

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I know many of you in the Performancing crowd utilize the Sharethis widget on your blog to make it as easy as 1,2,3 to share content across a wide spectrum of sites and services. Starting later this week, you should notice a new sleek design to the widget as well as a slew of new features such as:

No tabs! – The widget will be tab-free. They have merged the Social Web and Post tabs into one section, making the experience more intuitive and manageable for the user.

Smarter Widget – Whenever registered ShareThis users share content to their contacts, they will display the last three addresses used. Reducing time searching for most used contacts encourages users to share more frequently.

ShareBox v2.0 – Users can now save content directly to their ShareBox through a link in the widget.

Contact Manager – ShareThis users will now be able to access and import their contacts from within the widget. This allows your users to gain access to their address books without leaving your site.

According to the recent newsletter that was released, you will not need to make any changes to the existing widget code. Your current customization such as links, colors, order/selection will remain in tact. The new release will be pushed out across all publishers later this week and all data will also remain in tact through the ShareThis Reporting Dashboard. Once the new design is in place and you don’t like it, you’ll be able to use a new ShareThis Widget Configurator to use when the new widget is on your site. Last but not least, if you use offset settings, those will also migrate over to the new widget.

Who Is The Most Reliable Blogging Service?

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Royal Pingdom which is a site that specializes in covering the internet, technology, or anything uptime related has released their report on who the most reliable and unreliable blog hosting services are. The report was based on a period of four months between November 10th 2008 to March 10th 2009, so keep that in mind when reviewing the numbers. The services monitored were as follows:

  • Typepad
  • Blogger
  • WordPress.com
  • Blogster
  • Blog.com
  • Vox
  • Squarespace
  • Windows Live Spaces
  • LiveJournal

Here are the results:

As expected, WordPress.com, TypePad and Blogger were the three dominant hosting services although TypePad beat out the other two by six minutes more uptime. Considering the size and scope of both WordPress.com and TypePad with Blogger having Google powering its service, it’s no wonder these top three providers are able to stand above the crowd. However, Microsoft is a big behemoth in and of itself yet their Windows Live Spaces had 4 hours and 10 minutes of downtime.

So what do you make of these results?

Figuring Out Those Pesky File Extensions

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Have you ever come across a file that you didn’t know how to open? There are thousands of file extensions in use today with the same amount of programs to open them. However, all of those programs are not loaded on your PC so when it comes time to open up an unknown file, how will you do it? If you’re using Windows, the operating system will ask you if you would like to browse the Web through Microsoft’s database to see if you can find a program to open up the unknown file extension. While you may find the information you need, Microsoft will not suggest free programs for you to use to open the file. This is where OpenWith.org comes into play.

OpenWith.org provides detailed information about most file extension and links to free programs that can open and create each type of file. Extensions are viewable on the site by their first letter, by search, or by category. If the extension doesn’t exist, you can easily submit the extension with the details you know to the site where the administrators will take over.

The best thing OpenWith has to offer is the links to free programs which will open the extension in question. For example, I checked out the .HED extension which is for Hi-Eddi Images. I’ve never heard of these types of images but thankfully, OpenWith has. According to them, Hi-Eddi Images can be opened with a piece of software called XnView 1.91.6. I can either visit the official website for XnView or I can download the software straight from the OpenWith website. Plus one on the convenience factor.

OpenWith.org should certainly be added to your list of resourceful bookmarks. You’ll never know when your friends will send you that awesome movie or picture in a format you’ve never heard of.

How To Conduct A Great Interview

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The other day, someone got in touch with me and told me I should do a post on how to conduct a good interview. The reason? This person has just been interviewed and the questions they received were so bad, they told the interviewer to redo them and try again. The questions were better the second time around but still lackluster.

I’ve already performed my fair share of interviews both by audio and text. I’ve found that written interviews are much easier to produce than audio. I believe it’s because you don’t need to be on top of your game in front of a live audience. I conduct my shows live and off the cuff which means I better have some sort of clue as to what I’m talking about or I’ll look like an idiot.

This leads me to the short and sweet point that RESEARCH is your number one key to victory for producing a quality interview. The best interviews I have ever conducted have been with people or on topics which I know quite a bit about. There are a couple of reasons on why research is so valuable to an interview. For starters, it builds confidence. Secondly, it helps to generate natural conversation. Interviews sound so much better when they don’t appear to be manufactured or based on a script. Being well researched enables you to ask questions that are somewhat related to the topic at hand without sticking to one talking point. Last but not least, the more research you do, the more interesting and informing your questions SHOULD be. All of the easy to answer questions which are just a Google search away should never be asked during an interview.

In fact, there are quite a few questions you need to stay away from when conducting an interview. Here are just a few.

  • How much money do you make?
  • Personal questions.
  • Questions which require no thought.
  • If the interviewee does not want to answer a specific question, let it go. Don’t continue to harp on them until they answer.

These are general rules and observations I’ve made with all of the interviews I have conducted. Now of course, these don’t apply across the board as some people exist to play hardball with others, asking the tough and not easy to answer questions. That’s ok if the topic/person leans towards that type of interview.

So in the end, the best thing you can do when it comes to interviewing or being interviewed is research. Knowledge is power and if you have the knowledge, everything else becomes gravy!