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May 23, 2012

Tag: Blog

September 18, 2009

Milestones and New Reading

Abandoned grindstones
Image by Earthwatcher via Flickr

You know, I realized way too late that these were grindstones pictured, and not milestones. D’oh! Oh well – Zemanta can’t deliver all the time, right?

A couple of statistical things of note, just to pump up my little, fragile, optimistic ego:

-I passed the 50 reader subscription mark yesterday, which was quite a sudden jump. Welcome to all the new subscribers! You’ll find nothing but bright, sunny optimism and happy-go-lucky posting here, and the way I write, if I don’t give you tooth decay with how sweet I am, then I haven’t done my job. Be sure to comment and leave some thoughts so I can be disarmingly friendly and annoyingly exuberent at being told I suck!

-I went past the 500 comment mark just this morning. You guys and gals have gotten pretty chatty these past few months since I’ve started to write actively again, and the support is well and rightly appreciated. It’s nice to know that there is a place for optimism on the Internet and that so many people enjoy it enough to comment on it. Keep it comin.

Aside from that, now that I sort of have, er, readers or something, I’d like to see about finding some new material to check out. My Reader is feeling a bit empty lately and I could use some good blogs to check out. They don’t have to be sunny paragons of happy fluffy, they just have to be decent and updated regularly. So leave a comment with some suggestions, or if you run a blog and you want to trade links, let me know!

Thanks again to my small and faithful readership that appreciates what I write day in and day out.

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September 16, 2009

Bruce vs. The Army of Evony

Army of Darkness
Image via Wikipedia

Ah, Bruce Campbell. I still enjoy you in Burn Notice, but to be honest, in the movies you were at your best in Army of Darkness. Nostalgia! But we’re not talking about this Bruce today, sadly.

Game Politics as well as Cuppytalk are reporting on this, but blogger Bruce Everiss of Bruce on Games is being sued by the company behind Evony, most famous for using provocative ads in order to draw eyes and get click-throughs. Bruce’s posts regarding Evony have consisted in part of posts that the game might be illegal in the US and that it could have malware. Evony LLC has responded following a failed attempt to have the posts taken down with a libel suit, purporting that Bruce’s posts are damaging to the millions of players who play Evony.

As always, I like to find the bright side of this unfortunate legal equation, and perhaps the biggest plus in that column is simply that if bloggers have gotten to the point where they are actually getting sued, it means that companies and developers are standing up and noticing the blogosphere. Blogs have been largely ignored in the past couple years as gratuitous OP-ED pieces written by people who never really styled themselves journalists as they did people with something to say. But since then, they’ve risen slowly to prominence as a news alternative, with many blogs commanding readership that rivals that of any newspaper. While it totally sucks that Bruce has to face court dates, lawyers, and other such nonsense to navigate the legal waters, the mere exposure of this is a victory for bloggers everywhere – that our word counts, that it is significant, and that even thogh we just have something to say, that it is powerful. I like that.

There’s also the notion that developers might come under greater scrutiny as well, especially as it relates to the way they advertise their game. In any lawsuit story that comes to light both sides of the coin are put under a fierce magnifying glass, and this will be no different. If you take a look at Evony’s ad style you’ll notice a certain….curious trend in some of their ads. I do have to say, while there are companies out there that use subtle manipulations using the same sort of techniques in an Erin Brockovich-movie-style way, you have to hand it to Evony for not being shy about how they are driving their traffic. At the very least, models get a little bit more work, right?

Still, if Evony is prepared to engage in a legal battle with a blogger who they feel is powerful enough to libel them, then I also hope that they will be ready for the onslought of other folks who have opined or have yet to offer any thoughts about the issue itself. I’m an optimist, and the glass is half-full no matter what for me. But I’m pretty much easy-mode compared to others on the Internet. I look forward to seeing how this turns out, and what it’ll mean for silly little writers like myself. Good luck, everyone!

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August 27, 2009

Overly Positive Thoughts – Blogwhoring Is Best

SXSW 2007 -2 Naked Cowboy
Image by kallao via Flickr

Someone must have put something into the water supply today, because it sure seems that bloggers everywhere along my blogroll are looking to score some extra comments and grab some attention. Syncaine talks about becoming big time. Ysharros talks about cheese.  Ardua follows it up with American pie hate. Syp just wants fun ways to get comments. Riv whores it up. And Ferrel is clearly king.

Guys and gals, this kind of faux attention-grabbing warms the cockles of my online, pure heart, but c’mon guys – let’s be serious. Bloggers should stop worrying about things like “content” or that ugly “quality” word. Those are just, frankly, boring as hell to me. Nah, what we should be doing is looking to grab as many linkbacks, comments, and by-the-second updates as possible, even if they are on things like pie, mexican food, and toilet habits. It’s simply more fun – I mean, look at all the great comments that are appearing on the blogs above.

I must seriously be doing it wrong with my 26 feedburner readers, instead of following these great tips to pimping out my own blog:

Short posts with big  fluffy words: In today’s McDonald’s-like, “too long, didn’t read” generation, you just have to stop wasting people’s time. People have Facebook pages to check and Twitter statuses to update, so we should definitely be brief. Two paragraphs, or even one with a couple short sentences is clearly best. But said content needs to be meaningful too, and meaningful in the sense that it draws as much commentwhoring as possible. “World of Warcraft sucks donkey balls” works just as well, for example, which brings me to my next point…

Controversy Leads to Profit: Sure, I could waste my time being nice and all, but hell, maybe I need to start throwing in some blanket statements with strong verbs combined with SEO-laced goldmine subjects. For example, “Harry Potter” and “blows”. “Republicans” and “whining”. “Pie” and “is ten million times better than cake”. Maybe Google will mine my posts a little bit better and put them near the top instead of burying them near the bottom with links like “Positive ways to live life without Xanax”.

Masquerade as Someone Hot: Clearly, us geeks need a little bit of help in the looks department, so why not get people to read us more by using our nefarious Photoshop skills to great effect? A little bit of cutting and snipping and we could have an About page that makes us look like Brad Pitt or Jessica Alba in no time. The rest of the Internet, in a desperate attempt to score with us or at least get a winkie smiley to drool over, will rush to comment on anything we write, even if it’s what we had for breakfast.

And finally…

Use Helpful Visual Aids:

Girls Kissing
Image by Capt. Tim via Flickr

…because images like this, that belong on the blog of the greatest attention-whoring hero of all time, clearly raise the quality of posts.

I hope you’ve all been enlightened by these amazingly serious and meaningful tips on becoming a better blogger. Now get out there and seek those comments.

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