“Yahoo! is a terrific ally of CC and has amazing tools that publishers can use to find Creative Commons-licensed content to add to your site:

Yahoo! Search: Creative Commons Search

Add Creative Commons photos from Flickr to your site

Technorati Tags: yahoo, content, creative commons, search, flickr

This morning, I like many others, am trying to follow the Apple announcements which are being covered by some of the bigger blog networks. As of 10:31am, I am unable to get reliable connections to:

Engadget — “Connection timed out”

Gizmodo — “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable”

The Unofficial Apple Weblog — Alternates between slow connection and timing out

Even Valleywag is down at this point.

I think live-blogging is a good thing but is the software being used to run these sites designed for this type of abuse. Would it make sense to setup a low-res blog on a subdomain for just this purpose, maybe using a static html output?

Hopefully someone else follows this and gets it right for the Christmas shopping season. Im sure more announcements will come then.

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, apple event, blogging software, load-balancing, liveblogging, engadget, gizmodo, tuaw

Good money made dirt cheap:
Blogging over here at Casta Greg has become very successful thanks in part to PayPerPost blog advertising that will see me happily making healthy tripple figures. And the nice thing is I’m not having to anything special to make the …

Technorati Tags: payperpost, blog marketing, advertising, linking

Brad over at Brad’s Blog is feeling the pain of dealing with tons of submissions. If you get behind by a couple of days it can feel overwhelming.

“When I went into the admin area of my Blog Directory, I about fell over. 257 links waiting for approval! JEEZ!”

But he learned pretty quick what matters:

“Featured and reciprocol links get approved fast. Then I go to the links that have good titles and descriptions, that make them look like real blogs and not splogs, or ad sites.”

I don’t need another hobby - Brads Blog

Technorati Tags: blog directory, directories, blog marketing, blog traffic, linking, links, adsense

I’ve recently opened a dialog with some of the top blog directories and have had a good response from their maintainers. A common thread which we’ve all dealt with is the evergrowing problem with splogs and faded sites.

On some days, 80% of the sites which are being submitted are not typical splogs but more sites which serve no purpose other than advertising a product or Adsense fodder. Im not adverse to people wanting to make money but do you really think that someone looking for advice really needs to see the same car repair article which has been posted on 200-300 article database sites and re-posted hundreds/thousdands of times on other sites?

Some of the directories have come up with some guidelines to help prevent these types of submissions. And with the new update of our software we were able to increase the quality of our average referral. As I get more info, I’ll post it to the site so that you get an idea as to what the other owners are looking for, but Im pretty sure that if you’re site has been around for a while (six months plus), has good original content and an active author, you’re probably going to get added.

Technorati Tags: blog marketing, directory, directories, blog directories, linking, splogs, adsense

Terapad, a unified blogging platform, came out of private beta and launched today.

“What we’re offering is truly game-changing” says Stephan Tual, CEO. “Blogging has been technologically very active recently, but feature-wise it’s been completely stagnant. We’ve capitalized on this and added all the features of major corporate websites to the blogging equation.” Indeed the feature list of the London-based ‘do it yourself’ service appears never-ending: online shop, discussion forums, image gallery, job search, and even integration with a host of big-name third party services, such as Google Analytics and Paypal. This certainly isn’t your average blog.

The service is offered for a flat monthly fee. Individuals or companies select the features they wish to use (or not) on their site, at no extra cost. Each site or blog requires no technical knowledge to setup, as Terapad.com hosts and monitors everything at their datacenter, 24/7. Providing a wealth of features while staying simple to use has been the number one priority of the service - all the latest buzzword technologies are present, yet you’ll be hard pressed to find any acronym soup on the friendly control panel.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, web 2.0, blogging, blog tools, blog platform, terapad, startup

The Web Photo Sharing Site Faceoff:

In this post we profile the red hot photo sharing space, where the blogosphere darling Flickr is actually trailing in the mass market. Back in June, Hitwise posted their online photo market statistics - which showed Photobucket with a huge market lead at #1 and Flickr at #6. A lot of Photobucket’s lead is due to its high
usage in MySpace pages - 56% of Photobucket’s traffic is from MySpace, according to Hitwise.

Richard MacManus at Read Write Web does a nice job of showing the differences between all the major photo sharing sites. While he proclaims Photobucket the best combo of photosharing and social web features, I continue to prefer those sites which have decided to put social sharing first - Flickr and Zooomr.

Technorati Tags: readwriteweb, social 2.0, photosharing, flickr, zooomr, photobucket, myspace

Things I have been able to do Because Of my blog - Confused of Calcutta

JP Rangaswami who writes at Confused Of Calcutta writes about the benefits he’s received by blogging. Not monetary or financial - instead utilitarian and personal benefits.

What hit me as wow about his post was item 6:

“6. Learn more about vulnerability and humility

You make yourself vulnerable when you blog, you can’t hide behind titles and walls and what-have-you. Occasionally you get active feedback, through conversation, comments and e-mail. But most of the time you don’t know, and you’re baring your mind. It may not be the case for everyone, but for sure I feel vulnerable when I blog.”

Writing and putting yourself out there for others to comment about makes you feel alive.

Technorati Tags: blogging, benefits, writing

21 Tactics To Increase Blog Traffic - SEOmoz Blog

The good stuff just keeps coming at you and here is another great post on generating more traffic for your blog/podcast/videoblog. And I may even put some of these tips into use!

The turning off comments to prevent your site from looking dead is a new one. Actually this may have affected this blog as well so off with the comments.

Technorati Tags: blogging, promotion, blog marketing, traffic, lists, links, seomoz, tagging, linking, guestblogging

Just discovered this and am wowed by the work that went into setting up the links and the nice clean look of the site. A tremondous resource for any web hacker or developer and blogger looking to change/invigor their sites.

Vitaly Friedman’s Web Developer’s Handbook

Technorati Tags: developer, css, bookmarks, links, web design, webdesign, handbook, websites