I need to make a few things clear(er).
Although I discuss my comment policy briefly on the Contact Me page of this site, allow me to expand on what’s there in this post.
This site allows comments on blog posts (often referred to as “articles” here). To enter a comment, fill in the comment form at the bottom of the post. If the form doesn’t appear, click the Comment link at the bottom of the post to display it. Registration is not required.
The name, e-mail, and comment fields of the form are required. If any are left blank or if the e-mail field is an obvious fake, the comment will be deleted.
First names only or handles are fine for the Name field, as long as they don’t use words that are in poor taste.
If you enter a company name or Web site name in the Name field, there’s a pretty good chance your comment will be deleted as spam.
Speaking of spam, if your comment was posted solely to advertise a product, service, or Web site, it’s likely to be deleted as spam. I have zero tolerance for spam or spam-like postings.
Because of the problem with comment spam on frequently-visited blogs, this site uses two types of comment moderation:
Please don’t expect your comment, no matter how appropriate, to appear immediately or even within a day or two. I’m a busy person and try to moderate comments daily, but that doesn’t always happen. Don’t post the same comment repeatedly; I’ll just have to delete the extras.
I’m always interested in reading the opinions of others, as long as they’re presented in a reasonable and friendly way. Rudely bashing me or other commenters is a good way to get your comment deleted — or, worse yet, marked as spam so I never see one of your comments again. I’ll allow comments with differences of opinion if those differences are presented in the spirit of friendly debate.
I also reserve the right to edit comments. I don’t modify content, but I might delete something I think is offensive or overly commercial if the rest of the comment is something other readers might benefit from.
I do want to remind all visitors that I am responsible for this site’s content — including comments. I simply won’t let the site be used for anything other than a place to share information and ideas. The site maintains a PG-13 rating in both content and language.
If you believe I’ve deleted your comment because I didn’t think it was appropriate, you will be wasting your time if you attempt to repost it or e-mail me about it. Your comment will not appear and I will ignore your e-mail. It takes only seconds to delete either one, so you’re not wasting my time at all. There are a lot of small minded, nasty people out there and I’m not about to waste my time dealing with any of them.
While I realize that this policy might be harsher than the policies in place on other sites, this isn’t one of those sites. It’s my site. You’re my guest, and I don’t expect my guests to abuse my hospitality. If you have a problem with this policy, then you have a problem with me and my site and I don’t expect you to waste your time here.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Your comments are appreciated — really! You know where to put them.
Let Google tell you.
We all know that Google’s bots index our sites regularly. They collect all kinds of information for Google’s excellent search features. But while they’re indexing, they also collect information about links. And while they’re checking my site, they’re also checking other sites — and building a database of the sites that link to mine.
All this information is available to Webmasters in Google’s Webmaster tools. I gave it a try today and discovered, to my pleasure and surprise, that there are currently over 4,300 links to pages on aneclecticmind.com. Not too shabby.
To use this and other Webmaster Tools features, you need a Google account. Oddly enough, it can’t be the same as your AdSense account (if you have one) — at least I couldn’t use mine for that. My AdWords account info did work, however, so I used that. If you don’t have a Google or Gmail account, you’ll have to create one. You’ll be prompted to do so if you need to.
Once on the main Webmaster Tools page, you’ll be prompted to specify a URL for your site. You can enter as many Home Page URLS as you like, one at a time.
But before you can see information about links to your Web site, you’ll need to go through a verification process to prove that it’s yours. There are two ways to do this: insert a META tag on your site’s home page or upload an HTML file to your site. I choose the META tag method, inserted the tag, saved the modified home page file, and clicked a verify button. In seconds, Google checked the page and completed the verification process. I could then view the stats for my site.
The Webmaster tools stats include a wealth of information about your site, links to it, and how Google indexes it. Although I think there’s room for improvement, this free tool from a search engine giant is plenty useful. If you’re a Webmaster or blogger, I highly recommend checking it out.
You can learn more about the links feature of Google’s Webmaster tools in “Discover Your Links” on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.
Yeah. Right.
Today I had my last correspondence with the folks at yet another blog-for-money Web site.
It’s a new trend. Someone with a server and bandwidth and a Google Adsense account starts a multi-blog site. They lure in bloggers who’d like to be paid for their blogging efforts. They get these people to contribute original content to the blogs, which are just jam-packed with Google Adsense ads, and sit back to collect the revenue, giving a portion of the proceeds to these bloggers.
They tell you up front that you’re paid based on the ad revenue earned by your blog or topic or “channel.” They even admit that you won’t get 100% of the money. Sometimes they hint at how much you could earn. They always tell you how little work you’ll have to do.
You sign up and go at it, meeting your obligations. But because the blog is poorly promoted, no one visits except your fellow bloggers. And they don’t click ad links. And let’s face it: blog readers have lots of blogs to read. Launching a new blog by yourself is no small feat, especially when the blog’s format is set in stone and obviously created to display the maximum number of ads.
So there’ s no revenue on the 50-100 hits you can expect each week.
The end result: a complete waste of your time.
I know this firsthand. I bought into one of these schemes and almost bought into another. Fortunately, the first one taught me a lesson. (Too bad I came up with such a nice domain name for these folks to register.) The one I worked for had more window real estate dedicated to ads than content. That should have been a good hint at what it was all about. I’ll be clearing out all my content later this week. They can find some other sucker to add fresh content to the site.
Have you been tempted or even lured in by one of these schemes? If so, I’d like to hear from you. Use the Comments link to tell your tale. You don’t need to get specific with domain names or other details. But you can if you like. Just let the rest of us know what’s out there.
I discover a new, abbreviated form of blogging.
One of the things I’ve noticed about my blog is that a high percentage of the entries are extremely wordy, full of stories or opinions or information that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, compiling, formatting, and publishing. And it seems that most serious blogs are the same.
Enter, the tumblelog, which has apparently been around since 2005. This short-form blog is ideal for quick and dirty entry posting. In fact, that’s what it’s supposed to be for.
From Wikipedia:
A tumblelog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.
I first heard of tumblelogs on either the TWIT or MacBreak Weekly podcast. Leo Laporte and other members of those two podcast teams use Tumblr to create and publish their tumblelogs. Curious, I went to check it out for myself. And, on the FAQs page there, I got a the analogy that sold me on trying it for myself:
If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.
It might be nice to have an online scrapbook, I thought. I decided to sign up for a free Tumblr account and give it a try. The result is the unimaginatively named Maria’s TumbleLog, which can be found at tumblelog.aneclecticmind.com. (And yes, you can host a tumblelog on Tumblr’s site; I just got fancy and set mine up with my own custom domain name.) Since then, I’ve added entries that include photos and quotes. I’ve also set up my account to automatically create links to new articles in a number of feeds — including the one for this WebLog.
Although I like the ease at which entries can be added to my tumblelog, I don’t like the fact that there’s no offline composition tool. But I think that’s because I’m worried about composition — a task that simply doesn’t apply to tumblelog entries. Entries are extremely short and to the point: a photo with a caption, a quote with the name of the person being quoted, a link all by itself. While it is possible to create a standard text entry, I’m going to try hard not to — unless I can keep it to 100 words or less. That’s not an easy task for me — writing more has always been easier than writing less.
Will anyone read my tumblelog? I don’t know. Do I care? I don’t know that, either.
Right now, the idea is too new to me. I’m more interested in experimenting with this form of expression and seeing whether I can stick to it.
I’ve been blogging for 3-1/2 years now; it’ll be tough to branch some of that energy off to a similar yet very different form.
In the meantime, I’d be very interested in hearing from others with tumblelogs. Use the comments link. And be sure to include a link to your tumblelog in the form so other readers and I can check it out.