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I love a deal!

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I mentioned on my other site that I was out shopping on Tuesday. I completely forgot that along with all the clothes that I ended up purchasing I also got some kids bedding. It’s my nieces birthday in a week and we wanted to get her a nice gift. She’s a real girly girl so we got her some bedding that is of course pink and extremely feminine.

She’s gonna love it.

The best thing about buying the bedding was that it was on sale! We got it for more than 50% off the regular price. I just love a bargain.




Web Conferencing and it’s future developments

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More and more companies are starting to use web conferencing technology as a way to conduct business meetings with clients, or other branches of their company. They’ve also been using web conferencing to conduct seminars, both for employees as in in educational sessions, and for customers too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the online colleges started using web conferencing to begin teaching some of their classes. Wouldn’t that be a great idea. Take a course from home – but attend class on the web?

My husband was watching a documentary the other day about future technology. I believe the documentary was created in the late 80’s or very early 90’s. One of the “Future” technologies that they discussed was the ability for everyone to be able to partake in virtual conversations.

So instead of just talking on the phone you could sit yourself down in front of a screen, perhaps select a background for yourself and call up your family, friends or business associates and talk to them face to face in real time. Very much like what video conferencing is today – but with a little bit of extra flare added in.

I think we’re almost there.

Want more comments – make it easier!

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There was a discussion going on, on one of the forums that I visit regularly about sites that only allow registered visitors/members to comment. I’m certain that at least 90% of the people that responded to the thread stated that if they encountered a site where they had to register just to leave a comment they closed the site and didn’t bother leaving a comment.


Oh, sometimes they’ll still visit the site and read the posts. It’s not that the posts aren’t good reads, it’s just that they don’t want to jump through hoops just to leave a simple comment.

I mean, with all the social networking going on, and different lists to join – just how many sites are you registered with already? Do we really need to sign up at even more sites and have to remember login info for all the different blogs we visit just so that we can leave a comment?

I have registered an account with the major free blogging sites like Blogspot, Xanga, WordPress.com, live Journal and Typepad, but I really didn’t want to get a membership to any of them. After all, I don’t have any of my blogs on those sites – why do I need a membership just to leave a comment?

The same goes for private blogs on their own domains. I’ve encountered several lately where you must register to leave a comment. At least with the larger blogging sites if you register you can leave comments at all the blogs within that service. With private blogs you have to register for each one separately.

If I really like a blog or a particular post I sometimes will sign up and leave a comment but I don’t like having to do so, and most people will not do this. It’s no wonder that the sites that only allow registered commenters have so few comments on their sites.

Here’s an example of a site I encountered the other day – One of the sites that registered for the do follow blogroll the other day didn’t have any comments that I could find, just a few trackbacks. People had to register to comment so when I spoke with the site owner I mentioned the registration for comments and he clued in and said “ah maybe that’s why no one leaves me comments”.

Perhaps you have a blog that requires registration and you’ve been wondering why you don’t get many if any comments? Well – it’s probably not that your blog is boring, it’s just that people don’t like jumping through hoops. Make it easier for them – open up your comments to all.

By all means put all your comments on moderation if you’d like – I don’t mind that at all, but don’t make it too hard to leave a comment or you’ll get far fewer than your site deserves.

If and when sites that have been registered members only do open up their comments I strongly advise that you either moderate your comments or get some kind of spam control for your comments – otherwise you’ll be dealing with a lot of spammers and that’s not pleasant either.

Getting organized

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Like many of you, I have a small area of my home devoted to my computer area and I suppose office if you could call it that. In this area I spend the majority of time working directly on the computer – working on my sites, other peoples sites, checking out forums, answering email and paying bills.

I have a scanner and printer in this “office” area too. I don’t use my printer all that often, but I find it such a pain to have to go to one of the big box stores to buy printer ink, regular or photo paper. I find them much too pricey and I’d love to find a great place to get some discount office supplies. While I’m at it, I want to get some kind of file system to keep bills that need to be paid, and ones that have been paid in, as well as other important papers.

I think I could be even more productive if I was able to organize my work area better.

Speaking of which .. what does your computer area look like? Is it a cluttered mess or very tidy?

Remove the no follow tag and become an I follow Blog

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I’ve always had some form of linkage on my sites that allowed my commenters to get a real link. By this I mean the links did not have the awful nofollow tag. Instead, the search engines were able to follow the link and index it.


Now, I’ve discovered that there’s a whole movement out there called the I follow movement. It’s caught on like wild lately and I actually started a blogroll on one of my other blogs for people who have removed the nofollow tags from their sites comment area. The blogroll is called the “Do follow blogroll” and anyone with a blog (not a website!) can join if they have removed the nofollow tags from their site, added the blogroll which I will supply the code for once I hear from interested parties, and preferably do not have their comments set to registered members only.

If you want to get rid of the nofollow tags from your blog you can use this WordPress plugin if you have a wordpress blog or this other do follow plugin. If your site is on blogger you can follow these easy step by step directions to remove the nofollow tags from your comment area.

Once you’ve removed those tags, and or comment on a site that has the nofollow tags removed you’ll find that the comment links left get indexed in the search engines, added to technorati thus raising the sites Technorati rank, and once all those links are counted by google as backlinks to your site you might even get higher PR.

Become a follower.

Wear this MP3 player on your wrist

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watch06_wenn1252489_0_0.jpg This MP3 Sports Wristband is one of the latest concepts in active media wear.

Nathan Davis came up with the idea for this wearable tiny iPod shuffle as a way to solve some of the problems that occur with larger sports model players such as slipping and skipping.

The Sports wristband is made of silicone and you can wear it on your arm or wrist. Music is transmitted via Bluetooth headphones which will eliminated the tangle of wires so common with many of the other conventional headphones.

There’s no word yet as to whether this product will actually go into production. It does seem like it could be a hit. What do you think?

Bought some new domains

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I went on a domain buying spree! No I’m not about to create a bunch of new blogs. I purchased new domains so that I could move some of my existing blogs over to their own domains.

You see, my main blog related domain is feverishthoughts.com. I had originally started the blog that is currently located on that domain on another domain that I own. It was on a sub-directory. Last June I decided that I enjoyed blogging quite a bit and I wanted to start a few more blogs but I really didn’t want them to be on my original domain. The original domain that I was using was one that I’d set up for my reptile care website. A bunch of blogs about different topics on an exotic pet domain just didn’t seem right, so that’s how I began my mini network of blogs on Feverishthoughts.

Now all those new blogs that I started last summer have grown in popularity and since I use some of them to make money and I thought that it might be better to give each of them their own domain.

Unfortunately, for a little while at least, I’m going to have twice the amount of blogging to do. You see, I don’t want to just up and move my current blogs to their new homes. The new domains don’t have any page rank yet, or any links going to them. I haven’t even begun to promote the new sites yet either, let alone installed WordPress on each of them.

What I think I’ll do is spend the next three or so months blogging regularly on the new domains. I’ll make sure that whatever posts I make on the new domain are in keeping with the topic and style of posts that are on the blogs that will be moved over to these new sites. Blogging on each of the new domains as much as twice a week for three or so months, and promoting the sites as I build them should help them gain some page rank. Once they’ve attained some page rank I’ll make the move. Or at least I think I’ll be moving them.

The blogs that I plan to move to their own domains have decent ranks now. They range from PR3 to PR4 and have good Technorati and Alexa ranks as well. They also have rss subscribers. Gee this is getting more and more difficult the more I think about it. Within the next few weeks Google will begin it’s dance and there will be a page rank update. If my current blogs go up in rank it’s going to be really hard for me to move them to their new homes and lose that rank.

I really expect my gardening site, which is currently a PR4, to move up to a PR5 and if I’m lucky it won’t take long for it to become a PR6. It’s a popular niche blog so I think I’m being realistic in that hope and well, expectation.

The new domains don’t have anything on them yet but that will change in the next few days:

As the Garden Grows – homeandgardendiva.com
Celebrity Scoop – celebrityscoop.org
WebStyle – getwebstyle.com

My husbands sites
Guitar Licks – guitarlicksandtips.com
Odd Planet – trulyoddplanet.com

and, ok I lied, there’s one brand new site:
Shopping Maniac – shoppingmaniac.net

What do you think of those domain names? As you can see I had already named the sites in a way that describes what they are about to some degree, and luckily I managed to get domains that are very similar to the original name of the site. Well, As the Garden grows will become Home and Garden Diva, but that’s descriptive too.

Radia Cell phone

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radia_phone.jpg Do you believe that this circular object is actually a cell phone? Yep, it is. It’s a clear circular concept phone designed by Michael Laut. His Radia Cell Phone seems to draw it’s inspiration from coasters doesn’t it?

Almost everyone has a cell phone these days, and since they have become such a common item it’s become important for cellular phone makers to start creating designs that stand out from the crowd. Laut says “The Radia phone concept expresses simplicity in form and sophistication in function and user interface. The outer rim, which is made of brushed aluminum makes both a refined professional statement.”

The touch display is large enough to read and display many types of information. Yet the phone is small enough to easily fit into a pocket or small purse.

What do you think of this new mobile phone design? Would you purchase one? If you would buy one would you buy it just because it’s so unusual?

Top 30 plugins

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There’s a great article over at Staska.net that lists the top 30 WordPress plugins. The list describes each plugin and gives the reason why it made the list. Often it’s place on the list has to do with a poll that was given to readers to find out how many were using each plugin.

I’ve used a number of the plugins that made the list and agree that many should be on the list and should be used by even more WordPress bloggers.

If I were creating this list a few of the plugins that are listed would have been given a much higher spot on the list than they are currently placed.

Go on over and have a peak at the list. I’ll bet that you find a great plugin to use.

Are you looking for a new WordPress Theme?

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I was reading the BloggingPro blog earlier today and found a couple of new wordpress themes that I think I might try with some of our blogs. One that I downloaded – the Blogging Pro theme – will likely be used on this site. I like this theme, but it’s a bit too dark for my taste.

Speaking of themes, I also came across a post that said that HongKiat.com has a list of the 49 most downloaded WordPress themes of all time. Since I’m looking for new themes for three or four of our sites I mossied on over there to have a look.

I’m not sure that I want to use the same themes that everyone else is using. I’ve always prided myself on altering and customizing the themes that I choose to use to give our sites a unique look and feel. Well, I used to do that. I haven’t had time to customize a few of the themes I’ve been using on some of our sites lately and as a result of not customizing them I’ve grown tired of the themes rather quickly.

The list of the 49 most downloaded themes shows an image of each theme, which is nice if you are seriously looking at the list to find a new theme that might suit your site. Some of the themes listed are quite old and possibly might not work with WordPress 2.1.

Go have a look at the themes listed at HongKiat and don’t forget to visit BloggingPro too as it has some great web related information in it’s posts that I’m sure you’ll find useful.

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