Baedon's Curious Web

Info for the masses…

Six Sources for Blogging Ideas

You have had a good run on your blog of ideas for quite some time but, as it happens to everyone, you have run into a creative brick wall. So, you decide to search the internet for ideas and come up empty. How do you find fresh materials for your blog? Here are just a few of the ways I come up with ideas for new posts.

By far my biggest source for blogging fodder is paying attention to the news. For some reason some of the most successful blogs are commentary and editorial in nature, so you really cannot go wrong with this type of material. There is bound to be someone out there that agrees with your assessments of a news item. Better yet, those who disagree.
Over the past year, the popularity of Twitter has grown with leaps and bounds, as such, you can harvest this wealth of chatter through searching the “hash tags” (those words preceded by the # symbol) on any given topic. Keep your attention on a narrow focus because it is easy to become distracted with the flow of the conversations.
Social tagging sites like StumbleUpon and Digg are also a great resource for finding ideas. Again, like Twitter, it is easy to become distracted, so try and stay focused on your topic.
One of the oldest and apparently falling into disuse ways of getting ideas is in the form of Memes. These are usually some sort of question another blogger poses on his or her blog and invites their fellow bloggers to respond either in comments or, and this is where it can help you out, on the respondent’s blog. Either way, some link love can occur and benefit both parties in that respect. Another form of Meme is a theme of the day such as “Wordless Wednesday” where bloggers are encouraged to post an image that reflects a given theme; original images are more desirable than snagging them from the net.
A place I find a treasure trove of idea for “From My Armchair” is Yahoo! Answers. If your blog has a very narrow focus, you can find all sorts of blogging fodder just by browsing through the questions that are posted in neatly segregated categories. You can also establish a little bit of traffic by posting links to your blog that might be useful in answering someone’s question. The fun on this site is finding the good questions amongst the fluff.
Question of the Day sites are useful as well. One such site is Plinky. They have some great questions and you can post your answers on the community site as well as your blog. Another source for this type of material is LiveJournal. I keep an account on there just to look at the Question of Day which can be found in the administration panel.

There are many other places to discover topics for your blog; these are just a few that I use. I hope this has helped you discover new topics for your blog.

What I Have Learned in One Year of Blogging (tipsblogger.com)
How can I generate clicks? (startups.com)
9 Things to Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your Mom (stevensreeves.posterous.com)
5 Ways To Bring The Social Media To Your Blog (bloggingot.com)
How To Get Website Traffic From Yahoo Answers (tlmarketing.net)

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How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

The Internet has changed the way I think by allowing me to get information faster than opening an encyclopedia or other book and delving into the answer to a given question. For me, it has not really changed the way I reason things out. I have always used whatever relevant materials I could get my hands on to answer those deep, burning questions.

Question Mark in Esbjerg by Alexander Drachmann

Now, understandably, the Internet has led to some modes of learning deflating. I mean, if you want to know who won the 100 Days War, just Google it. Who was the monarch in England during the Potato Famine in Ireland, again all you have to do is Google. In coming generations, I do not think that fact retention will be as high as it once was. Already, most adults in the United States cannot tell you who was president during the Korean Conflict.

As the Internet becomes more integrated in our every day lives, it will dramatically affect the way we think. I see this in myself when it comes to being in a discussion forum, my first instinct now is to search the web for relevant info on the topic. Instead of thinking for myself in an argument, I tend to see if I can find some great stinger to use on the Net. Yes, it is changing the way I think and prolly is doing the same to others.

The Edge Annual Question — 2010

Google loses domain dispute to Canadian startup (cbc.ca)
S Korea suggests war dead search (news.bbc.co.uk)

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New Media: The Death of the Fourth Estate?

: Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

What is New Media

New Media is a generic term applied to the many differing forms of electronic communications made possible through the use of personal computer technology. It is also an expression of how this technology relates to traditional forms of media, such as “dead tree” newspapers and magazines. The biggest difference there is that the “old” media is static; whereas the new media is capable of changing as fast as a story evelopes.

Some examples of new media:

Web sites
chat rooms
blogs
instant messaging

As the technology improves and permeates our homes, we see traditional media falling to the wayside. Most do not see the advantage of subscribing to the daily newspaper or a weekly magazine when the info described between their pages is already digested and processed before it even hit the press. Over the past few years the number of papers that have ceased publishing has risen due to lack of circulation and growth. The same can be said of the magazine industry. With the spread of amature journalism and more of the population going online tog et their news, this trend will continue to accelerate.

The future is new media and with that future, those who are writing the news must be held accountable. The speed of the Internet for news is astounding. One example of this was the death of Michael Jackson; thirty minutes before CNN announced that the King of Pop was dead, the news had already hit Twitter. Shortly after his death was verified by television media, accounts of other celebrity deaths ran rampant on Twitter and the blogosphere. It was quickly found that all these rumours were unfounded. This alone showed how the new media is still going through growing pains. In order for us to trust what we read on the Net we often times have to check with several sources to verify what we are reading is true.

In his book “The Vanishing Newspaper”, Philip Meyer calculates that the first quarter of 2043 will be the moment when newsprint dies in America as the last exhausted reader tosses aside the last crumpled edition. With the rate things are going, that could come sooner. With our newspapers either going out of business or totally online, we will see new media become our number one source for what is happening around us. As this happens, let us hope that the integrity of that news will be much improved and will reflect that of the printed press it has replaced.

Where do you get your news? (specialdee.wordpress.com)
A Year of News Tweeting: Lessons Learned (mediabullseye.com)

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Selecting an Affordable Hosting Service

: Image via Wikipedia

It does not matter if you are looking for a place to put your Blog or somewhere to put up a web site, there are still four things to consider when selecting a hosting service.

Do they offer a lot of web space and traffic? Just because they are offering low cost web hosting doesn’t always mean they offer very little service. Sometimes you will find they offer the same amount of bells and whistles the big boys do.
Are they available 24/7? Sometimes web hosting companies offer such low prices because they don’t have the best customer service. Make sure when you are looking for discount web hosting that you test their support before you actually purchase from them.
What is their stated uptime? Sometimes a budget web host provider will cut back on their web server’s uptime. Make sure the host your choose offers at least 99.5% or better uptime. Everyone has different needs, so make sure you take this into account when looking around.
How long has the web hosting company been in business? If they just got established recently you might want to look for one that has been around for several years. While not always true, most newer companies do not last long. If you do choose to go with a newer company, be sure to back up your site often, just in case something happens.

These are just the basics. Just remember to do your research before selecting a provider and you will avoid headaches down the road.

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Google Chrome OS

Yesterday, Google announced on it’s Official Blog that is developing an Operating System to work on netbooks. While this may have surprised some people, it did nothing for me. Ever since they launched the Chrome Browser, I’ve been expecting something like this. If you look under the hood of windows operating system, you can see how IE is tied into the the very roots of the Windows environment.

Some key notes:

Not a full-blown, self-contained OS
They say it will be built on top of a Linux based system, so they are relying on already existing code to have a platform to launch their browser.
Web Apps
One of the driving forces behind this OS is the belief that the future of applications is going to based on the web instead of residing on your desktop. And if this is the case, you can run these apps from any platform that conforms to modern web conventions. And this leads to the question, why another OS?
Affordability
The fact that this puppy is going to be able to run on x86 and ARM chipsets will make the thing really easy to acquire the hardware to run it on. Your average computer geek will prolly have a machine setting in the garage this thing can run on.
Target Users
Right now, Google is targeting those of us who spend most of our time just surfing the internet and how we can take that experience to the next level. They are not looking to bring in people who use their computers for photo editing of playing massive games (although there are quite a few games that will run under the platform, just forget World of Warcraft or Halo.

With that said, it will be interesting to see what the future will bring if they can pull this off. For a blogger, this would be a really cool idea, would make getting the laptop we’ve always wanted that much easier. But for those who need to have the power to edit photos, it is not for you, unless you can get by using something online.

Google’s Chrome OS: what it means, why it matters (arstechnica.com)
Google Chrome OS under development (tuaw.com)

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Some Great Technology Blogs to Check Out

Tribute in Light by laverrue

One of the best ways to stay up with technology trends is to read a few tech blogs, here are a few that I read and get a lot out of.

The top blog for Technology news is, without a doubt, Ars Technica. They mostly deal with the computer industry, but that’s okay, there is enough to read here and you will find something that will grab your attention. Their reporting is also unbiased which is hard to come by in the tech world, check them out and see what you think.

Over the years, it seems that the Fourth Estate has seen the writing on the wall and have embraced the whole blogging idea. The New York Times has a great tech blog called Bits and their team of bloggers have some great content. Bits stands for Business, Innovation, Technology, and Society; and they cover all quite well within the context of each other.

If your thing is gadgets, then Gizmodo is the blog for you. They cover all gadgets from pen cameras to super sized TVs, it’s all here. They are not above making fun of gadgets either, which I find to be a bonus to my reading.

Most would not think of Lifehacker as a tech site, but they do help you with “tips and downloads for getting things done”. They gie you tips from the mundane to the unexpected. Check it out, you will enjoy your read.

My last blog to recomend is Geeks Are Sexy, just the name sounds cool. Well, the whole blog is cool. The topics covered here are science, technology and other things that makes geeks go weak in the knees. This is also a great place to find out what should be the next youTube viral video.

Well that wraps it up for me and what is cool and sweet for Technology Blogs. Check them out, you won’t be disappointed.

Engadget founders launch new crowdsourced site, Gdgt (digital.venturebeat.com)
Which Bloggers Generate the Most Buzz and Which Bloggers are the Most Paranoid? (newcommbiz.com)
Pirate Bay SOLD, goes the social media route (blogherald.com)

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TweetDeck

By now, most of us have started using Twitter for one reason or another. But, logging into theTwitter Website can be a pain, especially if all you want to do is send a “tweet” or read from your favorite “tweeps”. Maybe you also want to keep up with what all your pals on FaceBook are up to. I have the solution for you: TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is an excellent Adobe Air application that allows you to follow all your favorite tweeps and keep tabs on your FaceBook pals while allowing you to send updates to both Twitter and FaceBook. It further lets you organize your feeds into seperate columns for general feeds, FaceBook updates, and even lets you add your own categories to follow, including hashmarked tags. And when it comes to sharing what your doing with the world, it even allows for shortened, Twitter friendly, URLs.

If you have an iPhone, there is even a version for you.

Even though this product is still in beta, you will find that it is feature rich and pretty much intuitive in use. I encourage you to go out and try this app and see for yourself how much it makes your tweeting easier.

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Recomended Freeware

Quite possibly one of the greatest things to be found on the Internet is Freeware. It has been the boon to all those of us who can’t afford to pay through the nose for software. To that end, I offer you some of the Freeware that I enjoy. Please keep in mind that I use Windows, so most of the freeware listed below is for that Operating System.

Productivity

OpenOffice – Extremely great for the home. You could run into small compatibility issues (formatting) when sending documents to Microsoft Office users. It isn’t Microsoft Office, but it gets the job done. I’ve also noticed that if you are used to using the MS product, you’ll have little difficulty in adapting to this one.

Foxit Reader – ”a free PDF document viewer, with incredible small size, breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set.”

Paint.Net – Image editor. This product is not bad for those who just want to tweak an image or two. If you need more advanced tools, you might want to consider Corel’s PaintShop Pro (commercial product).

Picasa – “Picasa is a software download from Google that helps you organize, edit, and share your photos. It’s free, and easy to use.”

Security

The best security you can have is you. Here are the basic steps for security:

1 -DON’T EVER CLICK a link in an email from a source you do not know. For emails from people you do know, if you put your cursor over the link, the actual address should show.
2 – Keep your Operating System and applications up to date.
3 – Firewall. Both a hardware (router) and software firewall.
4 – Use anti-virus and anti-spyware.
5 – Use a pop-up blocker in your browser Most modern browsers have this ability built in, use it.

Some of the freeware available to you to help with security are:

Anti-Virus
Free anti-virus licenses state that you may use it on ONE computer.

Avira AntiVir Personal – This one has won a few awards and is pretty good. It is a scaled down version of the Pay-Version.

AVG Free Antivirus – Consistently rated high by Virus Bulletin. With it’s low resource usage and unobtrusiveness, this is one that I most recommend to people.

Anti-Spyware
Most pay-for anti-virus programs include this. But, if you are going with freeware, use these to help protect yourself.

Windows Defender – Included with Vista.

Ad-Aware (free) – The free version of this software is not at all bad, but you might want to use Spybot S&D along side it.

Spybot S&D – This one catches a lot of the stuff that the other two miss. It also provides a good dump option to share with geeks to help you.

Browsers

To me, there is only one good freeware browser and that is Firefox. Don’t ask me why, but I like the thing. Might be the scalability of it, I don’t know.

Firefox – I am not one of those people who preach that Firefox is more secure than IE 7, especially after I add all my plugins. But, in practice, if you strip it down and use noscript then it could be very secure.

Google Chrome – Google’s new browser. (One draw back, for Windows anyway, is that this only works on Vista or higher.)

This is just a few of the freeware products that I recommend. I’ll most likely write a few more posts on niche topics in the future.