Around The Watercooler is a mid-week blog post on links I have found on the Internet that I believe is worth sharing. Some will be absolutely useful and some others are for just plain fun. Check them out and let me know what you think!
Greenwala - A Green Social Network
50 Free Professional Looking Fonts
Woman loses $400,000 To Nigerian Scam
Top Secret SEO Tools via Top Rank Blog
There are 175,000 blogs created each day. That’s about 63.8 million a year. If you’re seriously thinking of running a successful blog, you will need to distinguish your blog from the rest. There are a number of tasks and decisions to make before going public.
Here are 3 major sites you can host your blog on:
This method is used by most new bloggers since they don’t have to worry about technical details involved with maintaining your own site. Just pick what subdomain you want (ex. strobist.blogspot.com) and customize the look using a simple interface.
If you do not prefer the subdomain method, you have the option to add a purchased domain name.
Take a look at other successful blogs out there and take notice of the design they use. They are not plastered with bright yellow font, flashing text everywhere and annoying, non-suer controlled music playing in the background.
Take time to think about what you want your blog to look like because this is how you will brand yourself. If you do not know any web design, you can certainly get free templates out there for Wordpress or purchase a template that has already been made.
Here are some examples of well designed blogs:
The best way to start a blog is to pick a niche market. Concentrate your efforts on writing content for this particular niche to develop a focused blog. It will aim your blog content towards a targeted audience. Readers often search the Internet for something they need such as productivity tips, road cycling, blog tips, etc. By narrowing your content to a niche you will raise the visibility of your blog and will be labeled as an “expert”.
Before making your blog publicly known, it is highly recommended that there be a couple of blog posts ready to be read. By having blog posts live on your new blog, new readers will know that you are a serious blogger. Some readers come to a new blog that only has one post and they never come back.
Take time each day to think about future blog topics. Aim to write 1 to 2 blog posts each day. You don’t necessarily have to post them the same day but it is safe to have a ew blog posts ready for the days you need a break from blogging.
Blogging consistency is key for a blog to survive. Create a blogging scheme where you plan to post to your blog every week, or twice a week, every other day, etc.
When readers notice that you hardly update your blog they will probably never return. Mark it in your calendar to dedicate at least 30 minutes to writing new blog content each day.
Are you looking for more tips on starting your own blog? Check out these sites:
Google just released a new version of the Google Mobile App for the iPhone. What’s new is the voice recognition software. Not sure if searching through your contacts by using your voice is efficient enough to not use the contacts app, unless if you have too many contacts to go through. Ok, I realized I do not have that many friends :[
After using the voice recognition software for the Google Mobile App I quickly realized how faster I can be when searching for particular content. On the top right off the app is the voice button, click it to activate and then speak. For example, I said “xkcd” which quickly brought search results for xkcd.
Another nice feature Google implemented is the search type. Once you’ve performed your search, you can click on the magnifying glass at the top to search your iPhone and the web, Google Maps, Images, News, Shopping and Wikipedia.
Google Mobile Help via Matt Cutts
The voice recognition is very impressive and opens the possibilites to what the Apple iPhone with voice recognition can do.
Have you tried out the new Google Mobile App? What do you think?
Qik is a company on the web aimed at bringing live streaming video media online for everyone to see. All you have to do is install the software and connect it to your account by signing up, for free. Having streaming video capabilities on your phone is very impressive and intriguing to me so I knew I had to try this out, especially if it’s available for the iPhone!
Are you wondering if your phone is supported? Here is Qik’s supported phones list.
There are two things you need to get started:
If you don’t know if your iPhone is jailbroken then you probably don’t have a jailbroken iPhone. To learn more about jailbreaking your iPhone please see my previous article, .
Qik’s website interface is very simple. The home page shows the latest live video from whoever is streaming. You can get a hint of the worldwide spread this site has by looking at other Qik videos. Popular videos are listed at the bottom with a link to more hot videos and on the bottom right are a group of top Qikkers, those who Qik a lot.
Once you sign in, you’ll be forwarded to your profile page where you can see your latest Qik video on the main video screen and a list of previous video’s you’ve made. What I like about this site is that they make it very possible to share your video in every possible way. There’s html code to embed your LIVE Qik channel and embed links for every single video. Can’t forget about the permalink that you can share via email, IM, social network, etc as well.
It’s very similar to Youtube and the likes where you can follow people, tag videos, add video titles and descriptions. It’s very possible to add your social network to your profile such as iTunes, Twitter, Youtube, Blogger, etc.
At first glance, the interface for the iPhone looked simple. After it says connected on the top left, you hit the record button and you’ve already begun streaming. The bottom half of the screen allows you to type out to your fans, sort of like a twitter interface. Tapping on the upper half of the screen will bring up other options such as:
The application is really simple to use and once you’re connected just hit record and when you’re done just hit stop. Your video can be seen live online and after you are done streaming it will save it to your account for later use. It’s as simple as that.
Qik looks very promising in that you can use this however you would like. We’ve been in the world of blogging as a “breaking news” type media but it’s slowly moving its way over to live streaming video with your mobile devices. I have no doubts that Qik will just grow in users and become another mainstream site for everyone to use. I’ll be experimenting with it more and hopefully it can find a permanent place on this site. If you have a Qik account let me know so I can follow you!
Here is a sample video:
It started as a personal challenge to me:
Get one thousand visitors a day to my blog, rowelldionicio.com, in six months
For some bloggers, one thousand is minuscule but for me it’s quite the contrary for a few reasons:
The goal is to reach one thousand visitors a day in six months to my blog, rowelldionicio.com. I will blog about the processes taken to reach that goal and share it to the blogging community looking to enhance site traffic.
I have sympathy for those bloggers when it comes to zero site traffic. Many do not know what steps to take to improve traffic but I plan to uncover each step of the way. A number of key points to begin with come to mind:
I am talking mostly about the Internet here. The possibilities are endless but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. You have to be enthusiastic and passionate to find the material you desire. Once you hit that milestone; capitalize on it.
Follow me on twitter
On behalf of San Diego Tweeps I’d like to give a big thanks to KPBS for hosting a wonderful event. It truly was a great gathering of people engaging in fascinating conversations.
Huge gratitude for our organizers, Jenn Van Grove and Matt Browne for the SD Tweetup Group. There were an estimated attendance of 223 wonderful people which I sadly did not get to talk to all of them!
We had some great sponsors for the even, again KPBS, webwizards.net, Greenwala and iList. Beverages were provided by SDSU Catering and there were some sushi and crackers. The Wii station was very much active and bowling seemed to be the favorite. SD Tweetup also streamed live to ustream.tv which attracted quite a few viewers.
It was my first time going to the SD Tweetup event and it turned out quite a blast. I’m looking forward to future events and would encourage anyone interested to sign up on meetup.com for more updates.
Rowell is a technology evangelist. He grasps and embraces all forms of technology and social media to inform people how to use them to their full advantage. He begun 'The Road To 1k A Day' as a challenge to develop a new successful blog in 6 months with 1000 visitors a day.
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