However, for some odd reason my hosting company allocated just small amount for my web site and I couldn’t do an auto-upgrade.  I had to do it the old fashion way, and download the TAR.GZ file from WordPress.org.

Anyway, I don’t normally announce upgrades unless it’s an important milestone, or a security concern.  Vladimir Prelovac mentioned the need to upgrade to 2.8.4 due to a security hole in WordPress.

I procrastinated because I felt my blog was small enough (and non-controversial), it would be a bother to hack it.  Plus, I’ve protected the admin pages using IP based access.

Today, I thought since I was already in a clean-up and fix-it sort of mood, I went ahead and upgraded all of my WordPress based web sites.

It also gives me an excuse to write a blog entry about it.

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Upgraded to WordPress 2.8.4

1. Correct pronouncation here

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1. Summize
   It’s becoming de facto search engine for Twitter.  Fast and reliable.  Hat tip to Rachel who pointed this out to me.
2. Twitpic
   Sharing pictures over Twitter has never been easier with it.  The built-in picture post from Twhirl is a nice bonus.
3. Twerpscan
   I sometimes wonder how many people I follow don’t follow me back.  Well, this site will help me figure it out.  What I haven’t figured out is whether I should unfollow them.  I can learn a lot from the “A-List” talking heads.  I must confess that I’ve unfollowed some of the big names, which will remain nameless.
4. Twitter Sync
   A Facebook application that lets me use my Twitter posts as my Facebook status updates.  Fully configurable.  It worked great until Twitter decided to temporarily disable their IM feature, which pretty much broke the app.  Nevertheless, it’s a useful application and I’m anticipating Twitter IM to be re-enabled so I can use it again.  I don’t like changing my Facebook status manually.
5. Everything Twitter
   Not an application, but it’s a blog run by the social media diva, Corvida.  She has everything related to Twitter.

Bonus:

Because people noticed every single thing wrong with Twitter, the company decided to create their own, ever useful, Twitter Status Page.  It’s not always up-to-the minute but it provides useful information on their progress, or lack of it.  Since I’m already a tumblr user, I just simply follow the updates in my dashboard.

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Follow Up on Twitter Stuff

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So I’m wondering, what does it take to be a Twitterati? It depends on these two things:

1. A large number followers (people who subscribe or “listen” to my tweets)
2. My reputation, or notoriety.

One example is Darren Rowse @problogger, who is a popular blogger, has over 3500 followers. Once in a while, he would tweet a question, next thing you know a bunch of people reply. Getting answers from Twitter is a good vehicle for a new blog post. Darren posted the Twitter answers in his blog. Similarly, Brian Clark @copyblogger have posted select Twitter answers in his site.

Speaking of notoriety, check out Wil Wheaton’s reason for liking Twitter.

For someone like me, an unknown in Twitter (and the internet), I can’t expect to stir up conversation at a drop of a tweet. I can’t expect my question answered at a moment’s notice on Twitter. I can’t expect my next blog post to be about the people who tweet back. Well, maybe I can:

And this one:

[Update] Ok, maybe that last one isn’t that exciting, but I’m just trying to show that sometimes people can respond to a trivial tweet.  I sometimes do that.  Just to be friendly, depending on my mood, etc.

My Twitter archive does come in pretty handy to record my life tweets.

Anyway, I’m striving to connect with more people and promote my site as best as I can, and learn from their wisdom. The information is out there. Lately, I’ve found the quickest way to get it is through Twitter.

Anything interesting you’ve read in Twitter, lately?

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

In The Know Using Twitter

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I started off following a handful of people. By checking out who they follow, I get to find more people. There are friendly people out there like @tiddlytwinks, @menwithpens, @ittybiz, @brettlegree, @ageekgal, @emom, @terencechang, @epiblogger, @deege, @conniefoggles, @wpcandy, @epochblue, @melissadonovan, @gorillasushi, @cbahm, @martinbowling, @jfhscribbles, and @saphrym. Following these people will jump start your pleasant Twitter experience!

It’s a little trickier to get people to follow me, let alone respond to me. For those with many followers with 1000+ tweets a day, it’s next to impossible to read all of them. They have limited attention span. Some have more ego than others, so they tend to ignore those with less notoriety. However, there are people who have a huge number of follower that are actually worth following, such as @problogger, @scobleizer, @doshdosh, @copyblogger, and @technosailor. These are the people who see the true value of the Twitter community, and have already built a friendly image.

Let’s build a community! Follow me and I’ll follow you. Let me know who else I should follow.

Photo Credit: Twitter Mosaic

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Following Twitter

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Twitter

Twitter is fundamentally an instant messaging platform. When I started using Yahoo! Instant Messenger five years ago at my work place, my co-workers and I would have these clever “status” messages to indicate what we were thinking, jokes of the day, or our current tasks. We used it a lot. Then Yahoo had a great idea to incorporate URLs we could click directly from the IM client. However, Twitter took this concept of people’s status messages, archived them, made them browse-able via the web, and let Google index them. My Twitter home page is essentially a form of micro-blogging, filled with current and short posts. It’s a lot of fun to use. I’ll follow up in a future post to detail how I use Twitter.

Meanwhile, Twitter has sparked some really creative writing. I am referring to the clever analogy by Ted Rheingold or the stereotypical male metaphor by Michael Martine. If you have, or know a post about Twitter, do let me know by leaving a comment. I’ll check it out and link to it.

Here’s a short and informative video from Lee Lefever on “What is Twitter in Plain English”:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Twitter: Familiar Communication

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How has the EC system worked for me?

• It’s a way to connect with other potential readers, at all levels.
• It’s a way for me to find other blogs: the good, the bad, or the ugly. “Beauty is on the eye of the beholder“.
• It brings traffic to my site, just like all of the search engines, StumbleUpon, or SiteHopping sites.
• It offers a community of bloggers that actively discuss the system and each other’s blogs.
• It’s a free service.
• Some of blogs in the system are actually quite good and up-to-date.

What makes EC that bad, anyway?  I’ll use James’ points:

1. High bounce-rate.
2. Irrelevant ad request with ugly design.
3. Not a significant traffic increase.
4. Deceptive quality of blogs in EC system.

My observation and opinion on the dislikes:

• High Bounce Rate.
  The system is not forcing me to go around like a mad man and drop cards everywhere (aka. “chain drop”). But the system encourages it by giving an EC credit for a drop. It has been suggested before, it should be repeated: there should be NO credit for a card drop. This will discourage the chain dropping activity.  Another way to discourage chain dropping is to force blog owners to put the EC widget at the bottom.  It makes it painful for chain droppers to keep scrolling down.  They will not come back to my site.  I don’t need them anyway.
• Effort is required to screen irrelevant and ugly ads, on a regular basis.
  This is actually not that big of a deal.  It’s similar to moderating the comments on my WordPress environment to weed out spam and junk comments. It’s part of my daily maintenance, anyway.   In fact, I monitor my EC ad queue weekly, not daily.  It’s certainly not a total time waster.
• No increase in traffic.
  My traffic has definitely increased.   In fact, most of my traffic is from EC sites and EC users.  I can’t dislike it, except maybe the high bounce rate, which I have no problem with.
• Ad price does not reflect quality.
  EC seems to have a new pricing adjustment to reflect the fair value of my EC ad.  I always thought the value of my EC ad should be based on the # of ads I have in the queue.  They seem to agree in this case.

In his summary, James doesn’t want to waste time using EC if he doesn’t get quality traffic back. That’s a fair expectation. But then again, which social media site, or any web site for that matter, can deliver that? If there is one, let me know so I can take advantage of it.  In the past, Graham and his admins, have been good at detecting those who are trying to game the EC system.  They’re still tweaking the system.  Once they fix the issue with chain droppers, the system will be fair to use again.

All in all, EC is just another tool to use promote my blog.  The EC widget has no magical power to increase conversion rate on my site.   Good content brings quality visitors.  Contributing in close-knit communities bring quality visitors.  Hard (and smart) work will bring quality visitors.   My expectations have to be proportional to the amount of work I put into building my blog and my community.   James has done that exceptionally well with Men With Pens, without the help of EC.  He expects the same return on investment from EC.  He shouldn’t have that expectation in the first place.

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

EntreCard: Managing Expectations

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Here’s the latest example that I found via The Beacon.

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven. You aren’t concerned much with theories or dreams… only what’s true or untrue. You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched. You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren’t subject to whim or emotions. Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!) You excel in: Leadership positions You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Punctuation

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The first thing my visitors have to see is the information on what to expect when they read the rest of my content. I have to direct them, either using graphics or words, to see more below. So it’s important to make everything “above the fold” the most interesting. Some folks put large graphic banners to tell us their sites are nice. Some put unique descriptions to make us want to read more.

Unfortunately, there are bloggers who put too many ads in the beginning. Like most people, I will promptly click away. It’s like watching TV and have to sit through 3 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes. Similarly, when I read a magazine I have to figure out the section within the page containing the real article. Very annoying. I just don’t need anyone to tell me what I need to buy. If I want to buy something, I’ll look for it in Amazon or Ben’s Bargains. As a side note, I do appreciate a product review. That’s probably the only time that I will tolerate (sometimes appreciate) advertising – when it is related to the content. I will also mildly tolerate product placement. Who wouldn’t want to wear Nike products when Tiger Woods use them?

Anyway, having enough space to play around with is a Good Thing™. Do you give your blog more space above the fold?

Photo credit: spidermonk

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Space…

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When I first started using the system in late November 2007, the traffic to my site has increased by at least four fold. It wasn’t a phenomenal number like 10,000 visitors per day. But coming from 20 unique hits per day, it was a huge improvement. Now, my blog has been exposed to a community that would not have known if I never joined EntreCard system. It has a pretty good community support. Most of the people I interact with on a regular basis, reciprocate by visiting each other’s site. They may not comment all the time, but at least I’ve been given the chance with a visit. What matters are the few who takes the time to read my blog, and say “hello” (sometimes the occasional “thanks”).

EntreCard has many ways to show me new sites to visit. Their campaign categories include recent, popular, recommended, and unseen blogs. I think they have more than 3000 registered sites in there, so there’s quite a few to choose from. It’s actually fun to go in there and discover unique sites, such as The Dambusters (a blog about dam busting only!), My Blog Rules (eclectic 80′s guy), Chexed (the random idea generator), or Saphrym (weight loss blog by the nicest guy you can find on the net).

There is the question of valuable ads real estate on my blog site. In my case, I have the luxury of not running any ads. Ad space is not an issue for me, so a little 125×125 pixels EntreCard widget is not intrusive at all. There’s also the question of an ugly or inappropriate ad that may clutter my site. In this case, I have total control over what ad to approve, so I don’t have to display them if I don’t want to.

As I pointed out earlier, a system is useless without the community support behind it. So far, the EntreCard community has been supportive and has a close-knit feel to it. Maybe they can relate to the small blog experience and know what it’s like to start a blog for the first time. I can certainly relate to them, and help wherever I can. The system makes it easier for me to connect to them.

Thus, EntreCard still works for me. I will not drop it any time soon. Do you have plans to drop EntreCard?

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Is It Time to Drop EntreCard?

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So what the heck is “blego”? Here are what others have tried to define it so far, plus my opinion what it ought to be:

Blego (evilwoobie.com’s definition) – n. an acronym of “blog ego”, which pertains to a blogger’s sense of self in the blogosphere.

Blego (Darkside-Dreamland.com’s definition) – n. a protologism combining blog and ego. Used to define the ego of a blog or blogger. Like personal ego, blego may be good or bad.

Blego (benbarden.com’s definition) – n. a toy for children to build with but with a B in front.

BLEGO (WoganMay.com’s definition) – abbr. Breaking Little Enterprises – Godzilla Organisations.

Blego (Blogosis.com’s definition) – n. An Eggo waffle and a blog mixed together. I don’t know what this would look like, but maybe I can come up with a prototype.

Blego (amid.com’s defintion) – expression. “Bleh, let’s go!” If you’re being forced to go somewhere or do something, by your spouse or friends, just slur those words together and get “blego”. It is usually said after a big sigh. For example, “Do I have to? Hrmph! Blego!”

As any meme, this one has rules.

1. The person tagged must copy the word (”Blego”) and paste the definitions of the word contributed previously by the people who did the meme.
2. Link backs would be nice, but not necessary.
3. The person tagged must then add her own definition in this format ‘yourname.com’s definition’ and place your link. Being creative with the acronym is encouraged.
4. Answer the following questions.
5. Tag 5 other people to do the meme.

For #4, here are the answers to the questions:

1. Do you know what your blog is really about, and you can write a one-sentence promotional material for it in a flash? If yes, write it here.
   
   This blog is my personal diary as a geek learning how to write (blog) properly, and record what I’ve discovered online and off-line.
2. Do you join social networks to promote your blog? If yes, do you hope to find friends in these social networks and in the process get regular readers of your blog?
   
   Yes I do, but not actively. I have used StumbleUpon and Twitter to announce new posts, but that’s about it. I tried submitting my posts to Digg but it didn’t get me any significant traffic. The only one that gets me regular readers for my blog is from EntreCard. That community has been supportive, and the people are generally like me – a small blog site.
3. Do you or do you plan to join ranking sites that put your blog in competition with others for popularity? If yes, do you or do you plan to monitor your stats regularly?
   
   No. I don’t monitor my stats regularly either. I don’t actively market my blog.
4. Do you tweak your blog often in accordance with the tips you get from blogging guides and gurus? If yes, list the bloggers you visit often to obtain these tips.
   
   Sure. There are great blogging tips from Darren Rowse and Seth Godin. Right now I’m concentrating on how to write, because if you can’t understand me, you won’t like what I’ve written.
5. Do you think of your next post even if you have just written a new one? If yes, list your inspirations for posting, and/or some routines that you go through before posting.
   
   All the time. I have at least 5 draft posts ready to go at any time. They’re useful during dry weeks when I’m on vacation, or have nothing to say. My inspirations are from my day-to-day life, conversation with friends, and reading other people’s blogs. My recent routine is to start micro blogging using tumblr. Making quick notes of the things I read/found on the internet is a good way to generate ideas for my next post.

Ok, so now is the fun part. I get to tag 5 more people to follow this meme. I shall now ask:

• Scribbles and Words
  I asked and Jay said OK. He is one writer I’m trying emulate. Good to pick his brain with the 5 questions.
• Life’s Context
  My Canadian College Comrade. He’s also a dentist and an active blogger. This should be interesting.
• Correr Es Mi Destino
  Another one of my favourite Canadian. Juliette has an artist/history/European background, so her thoughts will be valuable.
• GeekMom Mashup
  Heather has written that she normally doesn’t do memes. I might get lucky and have her grace us with her insight.
• Chexed
  David has a random mind that I can relate to. It’ll be very interesting to read his thoughts on this.

There you have it! As Roger Federer always says, “the ball is in your court!”

This article was posted on Rudy Amid's Blog:

Blego? What The Heck is a Blego?

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