blogging: May 2007 Archives

First off, allow me to correct myself. Yesterday I said I would be doing "LinkTos" and I compared them to "Blog Drive-Bys". My mistake . . . actually these are just going to be links to pretty much anything I find and decide to post here.

They may very well be blogs, but they may be other things that I find and want to share with anyone who visits or reads. So I am going to, more appropriately name them, "Things I found" until ( or if ) I come up with something else.

Got a problem with a shoplifting teen? I don't. Well I don't have any teenagers yet. But if I did, I might find this article a helpful resource.

Tired of using your regular email address for things you may ( or may not ) wish to continue receiving? This service allows you to set a temporary email address that is good for 15 minutes.

Born before 1980? Me too. If you watch the evening news you'd wonder how we all survived. Reminisce about some of the wonders of being born before 1980.

101 of George Carlin's greatest quotes.

Need to lose some weight fast. I'm a bit skeptical, but here's a guide to losing 20 pounds of fat in 30 days.

OK, maybe I've understated a little . . . When I started this blog I had a little idea and the means to follow through with it. In looking back at the last four months or so, I'm not particularly satisfied. The idea was alright, I just think that my implementation could have been better.

What could I have done better?

1. More follow through on scheduling - Lately it's been hit-or-miss as far as when I'll post on any given day.
2. Better definition of topics - Here again, it's hard to tell what I'll post when I do.
3. Better planning and preparation - I rarely write posts ahead of time. I often try to research topics for lengthy posts, but time prevents me from doing good research.
4. My blogroll needs work - I link to a lot of stuff, but I'm not sure how well it's paying off. It could also better represent my interests.
5. Better marketing, promotion and networking - I sometimes do make a good effort of visiting and commenting on others' blogs. That has served me well, I need to do more of it.
6. Too few posts? - I'm not sure about this one. I know that posting too much can drive people away. I've omitted feeds from my reader because I never have the time to read all of a feed's posts in one day. These are few and far between, however. But I do think I could manage more than one post per day if I tried, and specifically for certain topics and days.

How to fix it

1. Pick a scheduled time that each post will be posted by.
2. Refine topics and coordinate with my schedule.
3. Get ahead of schedule and stay there.
4. Refine my blogroll and better coordinate with topics.
5. Visit a wider array of blogs and utilize more networking opportunities.
6. Post more frequently

I'll elaborate more on this as time goes by since Wednesdays are going to be set aside for blogging topics. However, after looking at the way the traffic for this blog tends to go and some of the topics that I think will be productive, I've decided ( tentatively ) that my schedule will be:

• Monday - DVD or TV
• Tuesday - Web 2.0 / Tech
• Wednesday - Blogging
• Thursday - LinkTo's ( My version of the blog drive-by )
• Friday - Anything humorous
• Saturday - Random Photos ( perhaps videos, too )
• Sunday - An open day. Anything goes.

As any regular visitor to this blog knows I am in the process right now of choosing a business idea that I think not only fits me and my interests, but also is good enough to provide a perfect replacement for a regular job and the income it provides.

So far I've taken a look at building a social networking site and a social bookmarking/ ranking site. They're both fairly good ideas that are fairly popular right now. Either of them would probably fit into my interests well and provide a decent return on the investment of my own time and money provided they are successful and competitive with other offerings.

However, I still have a few other ideas I'd like to look at before I make a final decision. As for now, and the reason for this post, I want to take an opportunity to look at an entirely different view of this decision. I'd like to address the whole question of "Should I do it?" as opposed to "What should I do?"

The main motivation for this is a few articles that have popped up on my radar over the last week or so suggesting that I'm way past the prime age that could be indicative of whether or not I'll be successful at this little venture into the uncharted waters of entrepreneurship.

Tomorrow is the kids' last day of school. Unfortunately my son has the virus that was kicking the crap out of me last week. We kept him home today and most likely he'll be home tomorrow. I feel really bad for him. As a kid I know that the last day of school is always one that is almost as highly anticipated day as Christmas day. The thought that you have the whole summer ahead of you with nothing more to worry about than what time after 9 or 10 you might just roll out of bed is pretty cool. The kids won't be doing that, however. We've signed them up for a summer-long sports camp. Yes, it's kind of a "day care" solution to the fact that my wife work during the day now. But it's better than what they did last summer.

Ultimately, unless their friends are around ( which isn't always the case ) they spend the day whining about how hot it is or how boring it is or . . . insert random complaint here. So they'll spend the summer with kids their age staying fit and busy.

But back to the title . . . I spent this evening getting things going on my son's new website because I have every confidence that he has met ( if not surpassed ) his promise to bring his reading grade up while maintaining his other awesome grades. His hosting package came with something called Community Server. It's a pretty nice ASP.Net application that allows you to create a thriving community complete with blogs, forums, file downloading and photo sharing. He wants to build a community around an online game he plays - Runescape. He envisions selling ads and making buckets of money. Never let it be said that I tried to stifle his entrepreneurial dreams. After all, he earned it. I made sure that it was set up so he could play around with it and mess with this and that tomorrow since he'll be missing his last day of school. Hopefully he'll feel up to it. If not, it'll be ready for him when he's feeling better.

Skipper, at My Life Starts at Forty-Two, anointed me with the coveted Thinking Blogger Award. I'm not sure I really deserve it. I admit I have moments in which words of thoughtful wisdom may flow freely from my fingers and grace the pages of my website. But, by my own admission, they are few and far between.

All too often it is so easy to post something short, funny, or just plain irreverent than it is to compile an essay worthy of the blogger-spotlight. With that being said, however, I do have a short series that will be a little more thoughtful in the future. I'm going to try and pull something together this weekend and be ready for it to start Monday. According to the rules I must list five other bloggers who also are Thinking Bloggers. That would be:

1. RT at Untwisted Vortex. He works really hard at his blog. What's more, he obviously thinks through his decisions about how he implements his blog.
2. Head Coach at Can't Coach That. He makes me laugh. What's more, he puts enough thought into his posts so that I don't have to think too much to enjoy them.
3. Gabrielle at Tech Chick Blog. It's more than just a cute girl blogging about technology. What I think is best about her blog is her dedication and immersion into the social scene that the Internet has become and the passion with which she pursues it.
4. Kassindra at And To Think . . .
5. Misa Gracie at My Life My Opinions My Blog

If you've been tagged for this meme the following guidelines apply:

1. List five people that you wish to award with, "The Thinking Blogger"
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. You may display, The Thinking Blogger award image or the silver version if the gold one does not match your color scheme. This is not mandatory however. The Thinking Blogger Police will not raid your website should you choose not to.

I spewed some cynical, sarcastic stuff about my kids yesterday suggesting they would make the trip here unbearable. I have to hand it to them. They were really good kids. I only had to do, "If you don't cut it out I'll reach back there and . . . " one time.

Since I left my camera at the motel room, we need to make the rounds a little bit and take some pictures of stuff. I'll share them with you as random photos over the next few weeks. My heart goes out to the people in Greensburg, KS. We caught a little bit of that storm on the way here. The drive here was very gray and rainy.

While we haven't yet left, so far it's fairly sunny. I hope it stays that way and we have a nice, safe trip. I would really, really hate to get caught out in the middle of no-man's-land, the entire family stuck in the Jeep, while an intense storm was raging all around us. Not my idea of a fun, family trip.

Looks like there's a meme flying around.

BigSibling has tagged me in his post about, "Five reasons why he blogs." I know I'm probably going to look a bit like a anti-social, pretentious blogger-guy. After all, I've been invited to participate in a couple of memes here and here. However, due to time and changes in my life, I've decided to pass on those opportunities.

The main reason I decided to answer this one is because . . . well . . . I already answered this question back in March. So it's easy enough for me to just throw the link out there and be done with it. I mean, us fortywhat!!?? guys really appreciate things that are nice and quick and easy to do. It gives us a lot more time to ponder the meaning of life and what's on TV and why there's hair growing in places in places that never had hair before and disappearing from the places it should be.

As for the tagging part of this little exercise - if you're reading this post and feel compelled to respond . . . then by all means, contribute. It's a fun thing to do, makes you think, and you'll enjoy the links back to you. It's like having a backyard full of hot cheerleaders jumping on trampolines.

Ok, maybe not that good, but you get the idea.

This evening I stopped by a blog that I tend to visit on a fairly regular basis. I couldn't help but want to comment on the post, Why 15 Million is a Big Number, on many different levels.

The post makes a reference to another post at A VC. Of course, as things tend to go in the blogging world, the post at A VC certainly wasn't the starting point. It appears that the bubble has burst - that bubble being blogs. Evidently, there are somewhere around 15 million blogs. I guess, because some people tend to start up a blog and abandon them entirely, Technorati tracks a much larger number of blogs.

It is this disparity that seems to be driving the controversy. After all, how many people do you know who started a blog but didn't seem to follow through when it came to posting regularly? Personally I don't feel that this indicates that any bubble has burst. There are a multitude of reasons that people may not follow through when starting up a blog. So, while this is clearly a demonstration of conjecture and speculation, I don't mind building on a few examples that began at Virtual Economics and even illustrating a few of my own.