Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
By Garry Conn
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Successful Blogger
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
By Garry Conn
What is a successful blogger? What is successful blogging? Maybe it’s just me… but commonly when I ask people about this, their response is usually a person who makes a lot of money on their blog.
This is true to one point. But not true because a successful blogger can be anyone! Any person who sets a goal on their blog, works hard and finally achieves it is what I consider a successful blogger. To be successful blogging you have to want to work towards something. And I have learned and want to share with you and tell you that isn’t not always about the money.
The paradox of this situation though is funny. Because it is those people that believe in this who are the ones that make money! Successful bloggers who are personally successful by achieving and continuously working toward hitting personal goals and milestones are the ones that make money… and the catch it, the money wasn’t their objective.
- Top
Headline News
Stop Throwing Windows Vista out the Window
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
By Garry Conn
In this week, we had the release of Microsoft Windows Vista. Just about everyone I know talked to me about it. Even people who are not computer savvy. Everyone knows about Windows Vista! You heard it advertised on TV, Radio and received a million emails about it. We have known it was coming, and this week… local television news covered in, and even your grandmother knows about it.
Are people happy with it? I am sure. But there is some turbulence with the software and quick buyers and impulsive shoppers are bringing Windows Vista into their home and unleashing a bomb of anger, disappointment and frustration.
Stop throwing Windows Vista out the window. Really and honestly… The warnings about Windows Vista are known. With a little research about the product, you would have known that the software wasn’t right for you.
Microsoft Windows Vista is a very powerful operating system that requires a very powerful computer. If your computer is older than two years old, you might not be happy with the performance and you might soon discover that Microsoft Windows XP was a lot better.
What is the blogosphere saying about their experience with Microsoft Windows Vista:
- Sully’s Rants: Windows Vista… The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Truth.
- Huntaub’s Blog: Microsoft Vista rants! “Vista which shipped 2 days ago is driving me crazy!”
- Joao Rei: Why is Vista such a catastrophe and how does this affect the Open Source/Free Software community?
- Error Forum: Buying Vista? Is there any guarantee that the software you buy will run as advertised on your PC?
- erommel: Windows Vista (aka Windows FUBAR). Are people really starting to coin the name Windows FUBAR to Windows Vista? I remember watching Tango and Cash and first learning what FUBAR is… and Calling Windows Vista, Windows FUBAR is a bold statement. But articles like this, we can’t ignore the individual’s perception of Windows Vista.
- Nalla Allan: Windows Vista sucks, and here is why…
Does Windows Vista really suck! NO! Microsoft Windows Vista is great! But I hope that you now understand that Windows Vista might not be right for everyone. Do some research first before buying… otherwise I might be reading a blog entry similar to the ones listed above written by you!
Business
Interview With MyBlogLog’s Scott Rafer
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
By Garry Conn
I have been hearing so much about MyBlogLog. I joined about a month ago and I love it! I really enjoying being able to put a face to each and every reader on this site. Amazing! And that’s just the beginning. Being a member of the MyBlogLog community allows you to not only see who visits your site, but you can also track where they go. How important is that? MyBlogLog is a huge network of bloggers who want to discover each other. The simplicity to MyBlogLog is what has delivered its success. As a blogger, I want to know who visits my site. I want to know why? I want to know where they were before they visited, and where did they go after leaving. I want to know my readers as people. Having a display or listing of my recent readers is great! It helps me get to know you better.
On Thursday, I had an interview with Scott Rafer. And what a nice guy. Very down to earth and encouraging person. We chatted together using Yahoo Messenger and I had tons of fun. Here is a copy of our interview:
Interview has been edited and questions / answers have been combined and approved for publication by Scott Rafer.
Garry Conn: I have learned quite a bit MyBlogLog. Can you share how you got started with the company, and what role you have with MyBlogLog.
Scott Rafer: After I’d rested up a bit from Feedster, I started trying to figure out what was next, was doing some consulting for companies that I think are great (iUpload, Dogster, …), etc. Josh Kopelman started pushing me on distributed social nets — he asked, “why are all the networks locked behind one domain?” The problem stuck with me. In my surfing, I noticed the MyBlogLog ClickTags and realized how they might be extended. I found Eric via LinkedIn and off we all went…. My role currently is all about outreach, to third parties who might integrate us and to Y! teams that we think can benefit.
Garry Conn: Where do you see MyBlogLog one year from today? What do you vision being the same, and what will be different?
Scott Rafer: We’re working hard to be every publisher’s start page. If you want the one great place to go to figure out how your sites are doing this morning, we hope it’s us. That will mean integrating with a bunch of other great services, both within Yahoo and outside as well.
Garry Conn: I signed up for MyBlogLog Pro last night and I love it. I like how MyBlogLog presents MyBlogLog Pro to the public. You guys don’t really “push” the issue of buying it. The information that is presented to me is amazing. I am a bean counter and I love traffic stats.
Scott Rafer: Nice. The people who need it will buy it. No sense bugging everyone else.
Garry Conn: What advise can you give to others who are striving to be successful with an online venture? And what would you say was the most key element that got you where you are today? Twenty years ago, did you vision being where you are at today? Could things have been better or worse compared to your vision 20 years ago?
Scott Rafer: Per the advise question: To succeed in the real world (as opposed to Silicon Valley), incrementalism, consistency, and focus are key. Stand on the shoulders of giants instead of rebuilding things, interact with your customers every day, and don’t get distracted by the 80% of things that confront you but are skippable. I’m stubborn. Everyone says “wow, joining MyBlogLog to selling it in 9 months,” but that’s after 15 years of slogging it out in a series of startups. Twenty years ago, I was eighteen and in my freshman year at Penn in their engineering|business double degree program — http://www.upenn.edu/fisher/. I was raised in a tech household; my father was a product manager at Honeywell Computer and later Motorola Internetworking. I’d already decided to go into tech businesses but startups instead of the big company route he took. I didn’t really like the way he was treated and figured that there must be a better way. I had no idea what a startup would actually be like; I probably didn’t understand what a successful one should look like until 10 years ago. If I knew then what I know now, I’d pursue the same path — with a lot less wasted effort due to poor prioritization.
Garry Conn: MyBlogLog is something unique, that is what has captured my interest. What are some additional bells and whistles that you guys are working on providing in the near future? What can the MyBlogLog community expect to see in the future of the widgets?
Scott Rafer: We’re working to get people fascinated with how their sites work in a social web. The goal is to hit a formula that makes your site data more immediately compelling than your email. Check out kentbrewster.com and shoemoney.com. Kent integrated with delicious and ShoeMoney integrated with comment voting. Third party hacks are the best!
Garry Conn: Tell me about maps.mybloglog.com and why it is difficult to find? Same with directory.mybloglog.com Will this section of MyBlogLog still be used? At one time it was linked up very heavily… now it is not.
Scott Rafer: Maps and Directory were our first prototypes. They came before the profiles. It was mainly to prove to ourselves that the aggregated data across the reporting system was useful for public navigation. We believe that they are useful in some form, but 1) we really need to move to Yahoo Maps. 2) Maps for everyone’s individual communities, with some opt-in ability to meet up in real life is the way to make those work linking back into the site. We’re doing our best to open up more, document more, add spam protection — all very straightforward things. There’s nothing radical showing up from the team in the near-term. Other parts of Yahoo are doing a great job putting widgets together, some of which will be launched shortly. They’re bouncing ideas off of us on how to get them adopted. We’ve got our thinking caps on and are doing our best to pitch in.
Garry Conn: Scott, thank you very much for the information and inspiring words.
Scott Rafer: of course. have fun. Focus! Only way to make the world a pleasant place.
Garry Conn: I look forward to continuing to be a part of the MyBlogLog Community and will continue to write and spread the word about the site. Bye.
Scott Rafer: thanks, Hasta.
In search of discovering more about Scott Rafer and MyBlogLog history I found quite a few excellent sources including previous interviews with Scott Rafer. Take a look.
More with MyBlogLog’s Scott Rafer:
- WebProNews.com – Interview W/ MyBlogLog CEO Scott Rafer. 02/01/2007. MyBlogLog is not a recent phenomena, it started out as a blog statistics service by Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson in March of 2005.
- TopRankBlog.com – Interview with MyBlogLog CEO Scott Rafer. 01/31/2007. MyBlogLog has been taking the blogosphere by storm the past few months, even before the acquisition by Yahoo. However, MyBlogLog is not a recent phenomena, it started out as a blog statistics service by Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson in March of 2005.
- Bloxpert.com – Voice Chat Interview with Scott Rafer. 06/12/2006. Learn how statistics and tools help build to bring a smile on your face in this web 2.0 World.
- Andy Beard – MyBlogLog Roundup. 01/19/2007. Three interesting MyBlogLog stories plus links to interviews.
Blog Life
A Blog That Claims To Be About Nothing! Is Something.
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
By Garry Conn
Extending from my article about thinking out of the box, here is a blog site where the author, Leroy Brown, claims to have a blog about nothing. Well as it turns out, Leroy’s blog about random crap is all about stuff that makes the world go round. Leroy knows that talking about nothing is definitely something. And I couldn’t agree more. He titled his site, Green Llama. I wondered why it was named that… it almost bothered me. lol! I have searched around quite a bit and can’t find the story about why he named his site Green Llama. (I am sure that he will chime in soon in the comments! We’ll get the story on that soon!)
So here it is… The Green Llama, a site about nothing!
Leroy Brown, “Hi. Welcome to the Green Llama, my website about nothing. Well, not necessarily about nothing, but more so about random crap than anything. See, random crap is what makes the world go round, and makes life interesting. Hopefully you see things the same way. Me? I go by Leroy Brown. I live here in good ol San Antonio, home of 105 degree summer days, and big ol cowboy hats. I don’t plan on making this a permanent home, but the weather sure is nice. Well anyway, enough yakking. Feel free to leave comments on any post you like. Or don’t. Whatever.”
I would like to know the story behind why this image was found on the server. Leroy will have to enlighten us all and give us some clarification. There were quite a few interesting images I found stored in his images folder. That is what is kind of fun about blogging. You can surf through various blogger’s image folders and wonder to yourself, “What’s THAT doing in this guy’s image folder!”
LOL!!!
That is funny! Based off what I found in his image folders, and what I have read so far… its a weird and cleverly interesting blog. Nothing is something, and Leroy’s crap can become your gold! I like it. Discovering what little I know about The Green Llama makes me want to look into digging for more!
Visit – www.greenllama.net/blog/
Classifieds
- Jobs At Technorati – Technorati is looking for the brightest and most talented employees. We have several world-class challenges in front of us and are looking to hire world-class people to meet these challenges. [Learn More]
- Jobs At MyBlogLog – We’re hiring our first community manager to become a core member of team and a key public face of the service. This person will own customer service, fixing problems where possible and routing more complicated issues to the development team. [Learn More]
- CrunchBoard.com – The Job Board For The Tech Community. The CrunchBoard job board gives you access to millions of technology and business savvy readers of TechCrunch, MobileCrunch, CrunchGear and other top technology blogs. [Learn More]
Entertainment
Animator v.s. Animation
Sports
Superbowl Predictions From Three Bears Fans
Who Do They Think Will Win? You figure it out…
Technology
Apple releases iTunes Repair Tool for Vista 1.0
iTunes 7.0.2 may work with Windows Vista on many typical PCs. Apple recommends, however, that customers wait to upgrade Windows until after the next release of iTunes which will be available in the next few weeks. This document will be updated as more information becomes available. If you are upgrading to Windows Vista or have purchased a new computer with Windows Vista pre-installed, here is some information you may find helpful. [Learn More]
Popularity: 1% [?]
Heya Garry,
The sheep belongs to this wonderful little
post, and the Gaping Void cartoon is hilarious.
As for the name ‘ the Green Llama ‘ , I’m sorry to say there’s no fantastic story, unfortunately. I do like Llamas, as far as animals go, but I don’t have one. And I’ve certainly never met a green one. I think I was just a tad sleep-deprived when I came up with it, but once the domain is purchased, it’s hard to go back!
I think apple is a hypocrite with the iTunes and Vista Thing, Check out this article:
Apple: Monopolies Ruin the Market
I think that Vista is good, but it could be much better. There are several improvements over XP, but there’s a learning curve for use. If you’ve used XP for any sort of time, trying to find things in Vista is almost an exercise in frustration.