Archives for 2008

A new way to network and promote your sites

August 1, 2008 by Tricia

Yesterday I read a blog post about keeping your Twitter and Plurk accounts functional and it caused me to revisit a site that I’d been to in the past, but dismissed as not being what I needed at the time.

The site that I visited and subsequently signed up for was Ping.Fm. Perhaps you’ve heard of this site?

Ping.Fm allows you to update your social networks quickly and virtually from anywhere. Best of all, you can update all of your social networks at once!

In my last post I talked about how I think Twitter might be a waste of time for people because some of the bloggers I follow seem to always be sending out Tweets. Now add other social networks like Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Facebook, Friendfeed and a multitude of other social network sites and you could literally spend your whole day posting messages on these sites just to network and keep in touch with your friends. There are so many social networks popping out of the woodwork these days that it’s becoming overwhelming! So you can see why the idea of being able to post one message to one site and then have that message delivered to all of your social networks at once might be beneficial.

I think I originally dismissed Ping.Fm when I first came across it because I wasn’t yet a member of Twitter or Plurk or some of the other sites that Ping.Fm interacted with at the time. However now that I’m a member of at least half of the sites that work with Ping.Fm I can really see the advantage!

Ping.Fm is very easy to use. Just sign up and activate your social service. You can post your Ping.Fm messages directly to Blogger and WordPress.com blogs, Social sites such as Bebo, Brightkite, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, kwippy, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga. You can also use Ping.Fm to post message to the following services – AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk (GTalk), Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, iGoogle Gadget, Facebook, iPhone Web App, and Mobile App (WAP).

BTW all the links in the paragraph above are to my social network profile pages if you’d like to visit them and add me as a friend.

Imagine how much time you’ll save by being able to post message to your friends and contacts on several of those sites all at once?

Now, if you happen to have a WordPress blog on it’s own domain there’s a WP Plugin called PingPressFm that will allow you to notify your social network sites about a new blog post. The WP plugin only works with WP 2.5 and higher so if you are a Ping.Fm member and want to use the plugin on your blog make sure your installation is at least WP 2.5 or higher.

Unlike some I don’t post a lot of messages to my social networks, but I do like the idea of being able to notify all of these services of new blog posts. Up until now I’d only been using Twitterfox to post blog post updates to Twitter. If the PingPressFm plugin works well I’ll use that instead.

Ping.Fm is in Beta right now and you need an invite before you can become a member. So consider this your invitation. The invite code is currently pingscompany. Oh and speaking of invites if anyone has an invite for Jaiku I’d love to get one so I can explore that site.

If you know of any other handy services that make it easier to network I’d love to hear about them.

I don’t get twitter?

July 31, 2008 by Tricia

I like Twitter and I can see the benefits of using Twitter both socially and as a way to promote blog posts, websites or special events but I’m puzzled by the people that I see constantly using twitter.

I follow quite a few people on Twitter and I use the TwitterFox extension in my Firefox browser so that I can see all of the most recent tweets as they happen. Some people barely tweet (me), others only tweet a few times a day at most and then there are the constant Tweeters.

I see some people posting Tweets from 5 in the morning until late at night – sometimes as late as 2 or 3 in the morning. Some of these people must do one hundred or more tweets a day.

I just see it as a time waster.

Perhaps that stems from me having so many blogs, websites, blogrolls and mailing lists to manage that I barely have time to answer emails or reply to comments (bad bad blogger!), but I think it also stems from my past experiences with Chat.

Back in the late 90’s when I only had websites and ran mailing lists I got involved with a group of friends. We spent several hours each day chatting online. I’d work all day, getting up at 5:30 in the morning, come home from work and check my email, perhaps check the chat room and try to make dinner as I multitasked. Then when my husband would get home from work we’d have dinner and perhaps watch a TV show or two, but by 9:30 or 10 pm I was back online chatting with my friends as we had a standing talk time. I’d stay online sometimes until 4 in the morning falling into bed to sleep for only an hour and a half.

This went on for months, perhaps even as long as a year. In the end I was exhausted all the time and not very productive at work. Considering that I’m a nurse that’s probably not the greatest thing right?

I realized that spending so much time on line was affecting pretty much all aspects of my life so I shut it all down and stopped chatting. I still ran my website and mailing lists and continued to answer something like 400 emails a day, but I also got my life back – well mostly.

These days I have accounts at all the main I.M. sites – Yahoo, MSN, AIM and so on, but I don’t use my accounts. I never chat. I guess I’m afraid I’ll get hooked on it again and waste too much time – time that I just don’t have anymore.

So as I watch these people Tweet all day I wonder if they are falling into the same trap that I did. I know some of these people have multiple blogs as well as children and jobs. Are they neglecting important aspects of their lives as they send out all those tweets?

So … Do you have a tweet account? If you do, how do you use it? Are you becoming a tweetaholic or do you only tweet occasionally when you have something important to pass on or to promote a new blog post? ( Same question could apply to Plurk I guess.)

Sinking Like a Sunset

July 30, 2008 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

I thought I’d post this photo of the sun setting over Lake Ontario (and Toronto) in tribute to the wonderful musician and band that I finally got to see last Saturday night – Tom Cochrane and Red Rider.

Sinking like a Sunset is the name of one of Tom Cochrane and Red Rider’s songs and it was the third song they played at the concert.

I still have to tell you all about the concert. I’m just in awe still. I can’t believe I finally got to see my favorite musician!

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Are you an organized blogger or do you just blog when the mood strikes you?

July 29, 2008 by Tricia

I’m so proud of myself. I’ve been in a writing mood the last few days and I’ve managed to write up several articles for five of my blogs. In some cases I’ve written a couple of weeks worth of articles!

I’ve set up several of the articles to publish on dates in the future. On some of the blogs the articles will be published daily, on others there will be a new article every second day.

The first year or so that I was blogging I always had a few draft articles stored up. I usually tried to complete the articles so I could publish them whenever I had writers block or felt too ill to write that day although sometimes the stored drafts were only outlines or ideas for posts that I could easily complete when needed.

As I got busier and added more blogs to my little network I fell out of the habit or perhaps lacked the time to prepare articles in advance. For me, this was one of the worst things that could have happened. I enjoy writing, but there’s always that pressure – mostly self pressure – to write something new each day and for the article to hopefully be informative, entertaining or both.

When you are juggling several blogs and perhaps a website or two as I am time management is very important. I feel like I’ve been running in circles the last few months trying to answer email, maintain blogrolls and mailing lists, write new posts and visit other bloggers and all the rest of the stuff that goes along with being a webmaster.

As a result I was beginning to have trouble prioritizing my tasks. I was constantly asking myself – should I be visiting other bloggers and trying to comment on their sites? Should I be spending the next hour or two answering the emails that have built up? Answering blog comments? Adding new blogs to the Do Follow list, my Green Thumb Sunday blogroll or the other blogrolls that I maintain? Look for a new way to monetize my site? Change the theme or layout of one of my blogs? Arghhhhh …. With so many websites I could literally work 24 hours a day maintaining them and networking and still not get everything done that I should be doing to promote my sites.

So I’m sure you can see why I’m so happy that five of my blogs have a number of new articles preset to post on future dates over the next two weeks or so. Maybe I’ll be able to finally write a few articles for some of my very badly neglected blogs!

I think that I would be more organized and not have fallen so behind in my site maintenance if 1. I was healthier and 2. if I didn’t have so many websites. Perhaps it’s time for me to think about shutting down my neglected blogs?

How do you blog?

Are you organized or unorganized?

Do you just write a post when the mood strikes you? Or do you write up articles in advance and set them to publish on future dates?

Do you have one or several blogs?

Whatever your answer, do you schedule time to do certain tasks related to blogging? Networking, promoting, commenting on other blogs, writing posts and so on?

If you do have a blogging schedule I’d love to hear what yours is – how you plan your tasks and how much time you allot to each task daily, weekly or monthly.

If you’ve never done so, I’d highly recommend writing a few draft articles when the mood strikes you. You’ll find they come in handy when you’re not up to writing or have no time to blog. It does take a while to get into the habit of blogging in this manner, but once you start doing it you’ll find that you’re able to do other blogging related tasks and likely that the articles you publish are of a higher quality because you weren’t under pressure to post “something” when you were writing it.

Watching my neighbors become thieves!

July 28, 2008 by Tricia

It amazes me how the lure of something sweet has made so many people in my neighborhood become thieves lately.

Our neighbor across the street has a peach tree.

I remember the first year we moved into our house (June 2001) I could see orange blossoms and then what appeared to be some kind of fruit in the tree. I never did investigate what it was as we were so busy renovating that year that I barely had time to look at my own yard let alone the neighbors. However I did see people walking along the street stopping at the house and reefing on the tree branches to pull off what I thought at the time were pretty flowers.

I think growing Peaches is a little iffy in this area. For most of this decade winters here in Toronto have been fairly cold with little snow. I’ll bet that’s not that great for a lot of fruit producing trees as they likely get a lot of winter damage.

You see, I don’t think my neighbors tree has produced any fruit since that summer of 2001. I know I watched for the tree to bloom the following year or two and I didn’t see anything special, nor did I see people in the neighborhood paying particular attention to that neighbors yard.

This past winter we had a ton of snow. I guess the neighbors peach tree liked it because it’s just covered in fruit this year. So much so that there’s peaches all over the sidewalk and half the street in front of the house!

One reason why there are so many peaches on the ground is because at least 20 people a day seem to be stopping off at the house, walking into the neighbors yard and yanking on the branches of the tree.

Most of the people doing this will knock down a number of peaches yet they’ll only take one or two peaches leaving the rest to rot on the ground.

I have no idea if our neighbors mind these peach stealing intrusions, but considering how rough some of the people are on the tree I think I’d mind if it that tree was in my yard. Plus they have to clean up the mess that the thieving neighbors left behind.

The raccoons are having a great time in the peach tree too. I have to be careful each night when I bring my puppy outside to do her business as the last few days I’ve seen several raccoons prowling around.

Of course when I’ve watched they eventually head over to that peach tree, climb up and then start throwing peaches down onto the neighbors recycling bin. Then the raccoon will climb down and go over to where it’s peaches landed and eat them right by the neighbors back door under their security light. Smart eh? At least the raccoons hand pick their fruit and then eat what they took off the tree unlike their human counterparts!

If you had a neighbor with a fruit tree and you wanted some of the fruit would you just help yourself when the neighbor didn’t seem to be around or would you wait and ask permission to take some of the fruit?

I don’t get twitter?

Sinking Like a Sunset

Watching my neighbors become thieves!

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