‘Disruptive Technologies’ – Blog Review

This blog started in May 2007 and [phew. . . took a lot of my time to read it all] sure has a lot of blog entries to its credit. ’Disruptive Technologies‘ is mostly a technical and a web related blog. It usually has blog entries, related to technical encounters and observations on the web along with a few movies reviews. There are quite a few blogs on the web which post on technical matter which might make the visitor not so frequent to this blog. What impressed me about Kenney Jacob was the amount of technical knowledge he possesses for his age. The blog entries are short and simple with make your stay on the blog a pleasure. It also has a few personal thoughts in the blogs which I quite frankly liked more than the technical articles on it, especially Falling in Love Vs Jumping into Love and Language is for communicating, not for complicating. The technical entries in the blog are also informative like How SMS Works. The author has allowed a few guest blog entries as well.

A plain white theme compliments the simple way of the author’s writing. The search box, recent posts, categories, links, polls and sitemap are all lined up on the right hand side panel, help in browsing the blog easier. The sitemap of the blog surely helps the readers to navigate easily when the blog has so many entries.  The regular entries to the blog suggest the author is very active on the blog. Kenney’s concept of Live Blogging appealed to me, I think I would be doing the same. This blog definitely recieves a 4/5 even after being a simple technical blog, because it obeys all the unsaid laws of blogging.  I would offer a few suggestions to the author of the blog:

  • Review your blog entries before posting them, there are a few writing mistakes which can be avoided.
  • This blog deserves to be seen, promote your blog using technorati, orkut, yahoo groups, google groups.

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“The Reluctant Writer” – Blog Review

You can rarely find a blog with such immense feeling and supernatural ability to be thoughful, I can’t remember the last time I came across such a wonderful blog. The Reluctant Writer wins my heart just by the standard of writing present in the blog. This twenty year old genius, Abhinav Maurya from Mumbai brings to life the best of his thoughts in his blog. The entries include delicate poetry and creative prose. I found his story ‘The Tale Of Two Cities‘ to be absolute mesmerising. His love for writing can be seen in each blog entry. The blog is very new with the first entry on 4th November 2007.

The navigation of the blog is very simple with blog archive list and about me sections on the right panel. The theme is plain white with scenic picture on the top of it. With absolute no ads whatsoever, the blog looks with the intent of making the visitors focus only on the blog entries. The entries are pretty regular and has 15 blog entries for this month. I give this masterpiece 4/5 for his writing and sole purpose of entertainment of the readers. I would offer a few suggestions to the author of the blog:

  • be regular with your blog updates.
  • register your blog with technorati.com and promote using orkut, yahoo groups, google groups.

Last words, with regular updates and such influential writing skills, this is one blog to watch out for.

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Page Rank – Complexity And Importance To Blogging

Definition:

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E). In a simple way, it is number assigned to each page on world wide web, the more the number, the more chances of the page to appear in the Google search.

Google describes PageRank:

“ PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”. ”

History:

PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page and later Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine. While just one of many factors which determine the ranking of Google search results, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google’s web search tools. The name PageRank is a trademark of Google.

Impact on Blogging:

The more the pages refer to your blog, the greater is your PageRank and more are chances to be picked up by the visitors. If you want to be well known in blog town, your PageRank is the quickest way someone will be able to tell if what you’re saying is worth their reading. It has now become a global criteria to judge you blogs by PageRank. The higher the PageRank, the popular your blog is.

Tips to improve your PageRank:

  • The easiest way is to increase your PageRank is to get as many links from quality websites.
  • If you have multiple blogs, refer each blog in your other blogs.
  • Always have niche topic, the lesser the pages on that topic, the better your PageRank.
  • Allow trackbacks from your site.
  • The better the blog, the more the referrals to your blog.

‘My Ebooks Collection’ – Blog Review

My Ebooks Collection is a blog of collection of ebooks uploaded on Rapishare.  The author of the blog maintains a few other blogs as well, but My Ebooks Collection is better than her other blogs. The blog contains e-books on different topics ranging from technical to health, from motivation to money-making. I was unable to assess the number of the ebooks uploaded, but has more than a single man can read, for sure. Each blog entry has a brief description of the books uploaded, which is pretty useful for the visitors to know an overview of the book before downloading it. Pictures of book covers on each blog entry helps readers recognise the books. The problem with this kind of blogs is , the uploads are deleted after a specific time period if nobody downloads the content. This leads to blog entries referring nowhere.

 The navigation of the blog is very straigh-forward and the blog entries are appropriately labelled and the labels are neatly arranged. The theme consists of black template and creme shaded background for black written blog entries with rounded edges. The blog does not have an archive list to browse through the previous entries. And it is covered all over by ‘Adsense Google Ads’.  Left, right, top and bottom. Except for the 6 inch strip where blog entries are made, the rest of the area is immersed in ads. Make a click by mistake and it takes you to some other site.  There is no activity for the past one month on the blog. The last entry was on 29th Oct when I reviewed the blog. I give it 3/5 for Priya’s effort. I would offer a few suggestions to the author of the blog:

  • add a blog archive list for easy browsing of your blog, also move the labels panel to the top.
  • lot of ads on your blogs spoils the appearance of the blog and repels the visitors, place ads only at appropriate places.

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‘Thought Process’ Needs To Process Few Thoughts – Blog Review

The only thing that would attract me to the site is the number of puzzles and brain teasers in this blog Thought Process – Good To Know It, but the fact that it is very poorly maintained restricts me from coming on to this piece of collection again. It has the looks of temple of knowledge in ruins. Started in April 2007, the blog offers a lot of puzzles, numerical teasers and internet forwards. This author Sunil Kumar from Delhi is an inspiring person, which is depicted by his other creations, but this blog doesn’t recieve justice from him. The blog seems more to the fact that it is made for the sole purpose of making money. Well, nothing wrong with making money from the blog, but it needs to be entertaining as well. The blog does nothing.

The navigation of the blog is poorly maintained by the numerous ads below the header and on the side panel. The theme is not so attractive but fulfills its purpose. Dark coloured blog entries on the bland white theme it is. The labels are neatly arranged and look very relevant and precise. It has now increasingly become a trend to route for having redundant content from the web on your blog and this blogs follows the same. The author regularly updates the blog, and has a lot of entries in the past few months but very few unique entries. I give the blog 2.5/5. It lost most of its points in its content and its appearance. I would offer a few suggestions to the author of the blog:

  • the blog needs to be attractive. Looks do matter in blogging, ‘people see more, think less’.
  • make it easy for people to navigate through your blog by using themes with better navigation and placing ads only at appropriate places.
  • do not post internet forwards on the blogs, people do not prefer to see the same things on the blog, which they see in their inbox

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24X7 Interesting Facts – Blog Review

A good collection of facts included in this interesting blog, 24X7interestingfacts. The author of the blog is a computer science engineering student. The facts in the blog are interesting but not so unique. The blog has a lot of entries taken from different sources. But, I would apprecite the time from the young author to collect the facts and put it in a single place. It usually has information about gadgets and technical perspective. There are a few entries which are genuinely unique and useful like ‘Opening multiple Yahoo Messenger’.

The navigation of the blog is fairly simple and easy to navigate. The blog entries are in different colours on the black background left marginalised. The links, archive and feeds are on the left side. The blog has pictures with each entry, making the blog attractive. It also has a few games and chat box on the left panel to add fun to the blog. The author has good knowledge of internet and uses it to perfection in his blog. The blog was started in October 2007, but already has 75 entries to its credit. The author regularly updates the blogs. I would not mind giving a 4/5 for this blog, only because of the effort put in the blog to make is attractive and regularly updated. I would offer a few suggestions to the author of the blog:

  • the blog has a lot of entries from other sources, try to be unique.
  • have a unique style of writing to attract visitors, remember in blogs ‘content gets, but writing begets’

Last words, if uniquely maintained, as a techie I would be a frequent visitor of this blog.

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Blog Definitions: Common Terms of the Blogosphere

BLOGGING – THE WHAT

These are probably the simplest terms to understand. To garner a full grasp of the terms you should start at the beginning.

Bloggeries: The term used to refer to the posts within a blog. You write bloggeries and post them on your blog. Also commonly called posts or entries.

Blogosphere: The blogging community at large. It is the internets version of a biosphere. (No I am not referring to that movie with Paulie Shore)

Weblog: A journal or sorts or a diary. Dated and filled with stories, events, opinions and other such things.

Blogging: The act thereof.

Blog: Literally a shorter version of a web log. A teaser.

Blogger: A blogger is the term used to describe the person who is actually writing the blog.

BLOGGING – THE HOW

Photoblogging: Pretty straight forward. These are blogs that utilize photos and images to convey a story or intent.

Podcasting: Blogging’s audio cousin; very similar to a blog but in audio format.

Mobblogging: Mobile phone blogging.

Vlogging: The use of video instead of text to blog.

Audioblogging: Think of vlogging but with MP3’s.

Autocasting: This goes hand in hand with podcasting making the task automated.

Blogcasting: The combining of the blog and pod cast into a single web site.

Blogging: can be fun but it can also be very daunting. There are software programs and sites which make this a less annoying and aggravating task.

Blogger: Google has created this free platform to simplify blogging activity.

Blogspot: A web host that specifically hosts blogs. Typical addresses would be blog.blogspot.com and the like.

Livejournal: Livejournal, like MySpace, is a free site where people meet to talk and write blogs.

Movable Type: Paid tool.

Typepad: Another paid tool.

WordPress.org: You can upload to this site easily. Customizing and upgrading your blogs are easy.

WordPress.com: Another free host site.

Radio Userland: Publishing software for bloggers.

BLOGGING – THE GUTS

The innards of a blog are important. What are the things that the majority of blogs consist of? This is where it starts getting technical. Some of these terms will seem familiar to you as some are common place within the confines of the internet or computers in general.

Header: Also the title. Found at the top most portion of the website. A lot of keywords get hidden here as a lot of search engines go from top to bottom and they don’t see as we do so any text that is placed at the top of the site that is the same color as the background will be read and used to generate positioning.

Footer: Typically the very last thing on the web page and will typically list the same things as the header.

Index: The first page we see of any site is the index.

Navbar: Also sometimes called a sidebar. These can be positioned left or right of the main pages contents. This is where the categories and subjects are listed.

Post(s): Also known as entry. These are the individual entries of a blog.

Comments: Readers are able to post comments to a blog, adding onto the popularity and keyword base.

Ping: A standard net term short for Packet Internet Grouper that is used to track IP addresses as well as to notify automatic services of updates.

Trackback: A ping is sent to another blog thru a trackback system to alert a blogger to the mentioning of their blog. This is also sometimes known as a pingback.

Tags: Placing of keywords as a way to collect similar posts.

Tag Cloud: The display of keywords.

Captcha: Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. Captcha�s are small image boxes containing letters, number or words that you have to re-type in order to verify you are a human.

Link: An access point to specific articles.

Blogroll: Links to other blogs and the nav or sidebar.

Sideblog: A mini blog or blurb on the sidebar.

Template: A generic web site where you just have to fill in the information and post.

Blogthis: An added function that allows a blogger to add to an entry.

Plugins: Mini files you download to your computer that works with your browser to give you added features.

Dashboard: Like that of a car it is where your controls are. Editing and moving files etc.

Archives: Like those found in your library but for the internet. It’s a collection of all things blog related and placed in reverse order by date.

Post Summaries: An expandable teaser of a larger blog.

Continue: Also referred to as a jump this is a link to continue on to another section of a blog in order to save space and load times.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. It is also a type of program. All used to upload content.

BLOGGING – THE FEEDING

In order get your information out to the general public you need to make it so that it can be seen by them. This is called feeding or web feeds. This is how a blog is seen by a user.

Web Feed: Subscriptions. Typically you join a site to read a blog.

RSS: A series of web feeds for syndication purposes.

XML: A sort of HTML but meaning Extensible Markup Language making it a more advanced form of what we know to be HTML. It is usually used to help syndicate a site.

Photofeed: A feed like the others but using images.

OPML: This is an XML format specifically used for outlines. You can easily import multiple subscriptions.

ATOM: Very blog specific feed and most blogs are of this type.

BLOGGER – WHO

There are as many kinds of blogs as there are bloggers. Bloggers usually fit into one subset of the culture as a whole.

Problogger: Someone who spends hours a day just posting blogs. They’re paid and usually work for ad companies.

Blognoscenti: Or blog snob. Someone who is incredibly knowledgeable about blogs and their inner workings.

Blogebrity: Someone who everyone else knows. Could be a real celebrity who blogs or someone who’s a pro who everyone knows to blog.

Blogerati: The paparazzi of blogging.

Commentariat: This is someone who leaves comments to blogs on a regular basis.

Dooced: Getting dooced or to dooce. This is someone who was fired for blogging excessively during work hours.

Blogther: Someone else who blogs.

A-List: Another type of Blogebrity.

Blogstar: Popular blogger.

BLOGGING – THE HABIT

Bloggers have their own idiosyncrasies while blogging. The method in which an individual blogs helps set them apart.

Metablogging: Blogs and articles about blogging.

Blogstipation: Blog block.

Blogathy: The act of loathing blogging and thusly taking a break from it.

Blogopotamus: A rambling blog that continues, seemingly without end.

Blogorrhea: Someone who posts often and usually has been dooced.

Bleg: A self pandering blog to beg.

Hitnosis: The act of repeatedly refreshing your blog to see if anything has changed.

Blogroach: Someone who enjoys flaming a blogger.

Blogaholic: A person who can’t enough writing or reading blogs.

Blogorific: A word used to describe a blog as terrific.

Blogvert: The act of advertising within a blog.

Blogger Bash: A party where bloggers get together online and comment back and forth in real time.

Blogathon: Blogging every thirty minutes for an entire day.

Blogsnob: Someone who refuses to comment to someone who is not a friend.

Blogostorm: Controversy drives revenue. This can also be known as a Blog Swarm.

Doppelblog: Copying some other bloggers work and reposting as your own.

BLOGGING – TYPES

For every type of blogger and blog there is a certain niche of where that particular item will fit. Professional bloggers wouldn’t do dark posts, for example as they want to be seen.

The types of blogs you post define, sometimes, who you are in the blogosphere. And that determines your strengths and weaknesses.

Celebriblog: A blog that is run by a celebrity.

Kittyblogger: This is someone who spends time writing about their cats.

Celeblog: The act of blogging about celebrities.

Group Blog: Multiple contributions to multiple blogs.

Event Blog: Blogs used to talk about one event on one date.

Clog Blog: The Dutch do a tremendous amount of blogging and this term is used to set them apart from others.

Movlogs: Video blogs on the mobile.

Metablog: The act of writing blogs about blogging.

CEOBlog: A blog that is run by a corporate executive.

Splog: Spreading spam through blogs.

Tech Blog: Blogs about technical items.

Anonoblog: These are blogs where the poster remains anonymous.

Plog: A blog about a project.

Milblog: Blogging by our men and women in the military.

Blawg: Usually written by lawyers these blogs cover topics of law.

Edublog: Educating the masses using blogs.

Shockblog: The Stern version of blogging.

Progblog: Something that is written in a progressive manner.

Dark Blog: A blog that is private.

Photocast: Photoblogging that updates as soon as you add new photos to it.

As many definitions and translations as listed here there are many, many more but these are enough to keep you from guessing and to make your forward into blogging all that much better.