Lightening's Blogworld

Beginning the Problogger 31 Day Challenge

Posted by lightening

at April 2, 2009

Well, it would seem the “31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge” has been delayed for a week.

However, Darren has indicated some “pre challenge” tasks to be done so I’m going to work my way through those this week.

They are:

1. Install a metrics program

Done although I’m sure I could do much more with Analytics than I am so far. I really should learn to use it better.

2. Invite a friend to join you

If you’re interested in joining in the challenge or have already joined, I’d love to hear from you so we can encourage one another.

3. Run a SWOT analysis on your blog (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)

I’ll work on that in the next day or so and include it in my next post.

It’s kind of like “pre season” training isn’t it?

blogging

Probloggers “31 Days To Build a Better Blog” Challenge

Posted by lightening

at March 28, 2009

Image by BenSpark via Flickr

Darren Rowse from Problogger has decided to run his “31 Days To Build A Better Blog” Challenge again and this time I’ve decided to give it a go.

For THIS blog.

This poor blog often lacks attention, coming in at second fiddle to my personal blog, Lightening Online.

It’s not that I don’t love this blog dearly. It’s just that there are only so many hours in the day.

So, for 1 tiny little month, starting April 1st, I’m going to focus on this blog as my first priority.

And see what happens.

Be warned, my posting frequency may increase.

Anyone else want to join me?

You can sign up here.

blogging

TweetDeck

Posted by lightening

at March 26, 2009

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve been an intermittent Twitter user at best. I started off with the greatest of intentions. Then I got into Plurk which was fun for a while but really no match for Twitter. Somewhere along the way, I dropped using both of them.

Recently, I’ve decided to give Twitter another go. So many top bloggers and internet marketters make great use of Twitter and I really want to learn more about using it.

At the moment I am trialling TweetDeck for using Twitter. My other computer has Twhirl installed but when I needed to add something to this computer, I decided to try an alternative for comparison.

So far, I have to say that I’m impressed.

TweetDeck gives me a much larger screen with 3 windows side by side. As soon as I open it, I can see at a glance any direct messages or @lightening messages that have arrived in my absence.

So far, I’m finding TweetDeck a great resource for using Twitter.

Do you find Twitter a helpful application and what do you use to make your Twitter usage simpler?

P.S. You can follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/lightening

(Please also either leave a comment or send me a message letting me know you’re a Blogworld reader so I can return your follow - I’m getting quite a lot of new follows at the moment and picking and choosing who I return follow).

blogging

Resizing Images: QuickSize

Posted by lightening

at March 19, 2009

One of the challenges when you buy a new computer is getting it fully set up to do all the things you want it to do. This is particularly a challenge for those us who are technologically challenged.

I’ve been working on mine gradually (as time permits) and feel that I’m finally making headway.

My latest challenge has been a lack of software to resize my photographs.

I have Microsoft Office Picture Manager on my other laptop (installed by the person who originally sold us the computer) which works well. However, I’ve been trying to avoid having to pay for anything so I went in search of possible solutions online.

While there are plenty of resizers which operate solely online, this posed something of a dilemma for me. While we’re travelling, I want to be able to prewrite posts ready to publish at the click of a button. I really don’t want to have to wait until we have internet connection to be able to resize my photographs ready for publishing (which you generally need to do if you’re using Wordpress software).

So, my searching lead me to QuickSize.

It was simple to download and so far I am finding it extremely FAST.

If you’re looking for a quick, simple way to resize images for blogging, facebook, emailing etc, I can highly recommend it.

Oh, and it’s FREE! Yah for FREE! (although they do kindly request a donation if you are able to).

blogging

Spammers Boosting Your Ego

Posted by lightening

at March 13, 2009

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Don’t you love the way Spammers go out of their way to give compliments to the blog writer they’re spamming? I’m thinking reading spam comments could be the secret to building up my ailing self esteem.

Especially comments like this:

Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again - taking you feeds also, Thanks.

And:

This is great post,I’m surely bookmark this page and keep reading every post you made, thx!

Or This:

Wow, great post, I’ll Digg this, and share it to my friend, thx!

Perhaps this one:

Wow, great post, I’ll Digg this, and share it to my friend, thx!

One might even be mistaken for thinking these were genuine comments really.

Different names. Different email addresses. Mostly nice comments - wouldn’t you love to read stuff like this from REAL blog readers?

Problem with these?

All linked to the same site!!!

Different names and email addresses but linked to the same site.

Gotta love those stupid spammers don’t you?

blogging

Beginning the Problogger 31 Day Challenge