This is a fantatic book for women everywhere to buy. Got my latest raise from reading this book.
Malcolm Gladwell has a blog! Malcolm Gladwell's a blogger, too!
Check it out here: http://gladwell.typepad.com/
I bought and read both books. Very interesting reads.
Welcome to the blogosphere!
I hope TypePad can handle all your traffic!
As you probably already know, Gladwell wrote the fascinating book, "Blink" in 2005. He also wrote "The Tipping Point" in 2000.
Tags: Malcolm Gladwell
It's 2006 and time for reflection. It's hard to for me to fathom all the changes that have happened in my life over the past year. I think that I will remember 2005 as one of the best years of my life, despite the downs that periodically occurred. Overall, the highs over the last year outweighed the negatives.
I started this blog on February 12, 2005 and I'm coming up on 200 posts (which may not seem a lot to many people, but I think it's a lot of writing and reading). I've learned so much over the last year. I hope you have, too.
In looking over the last year, I've selected what I feel is the best post or two from each month. Best as in what I enjoyed writing or felt that was perhaps overlooked.
February 2005 : Our Unique Gift
March 2005: One Minute Millionaire, Part II and Small Acts of Revenge
April 2005: Perception is Reality and Winning the Lottery
May 2005: Mapping Crimes in Chicago
June 2005: Expect Help and Pay Attention
July 2005: Commencement Speech by Steve Jobs and Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
August 2005: Orson Scott Card, Ender's Saga, and Advent Rising
September 2005: Google Earth and National Geographic and Taking Advantage of NOW and Blog Q&A
October 2005: Increasing Rudeness! and Viva Las Vegas!
November 2005: Canadian Historic Sites and Maps and Yes, Yes, Yes Saying Yes More
December 2005: Great Canadian Places
Stay tuned for another great year of blogging!
Time has come out with their 2005 list of the coolest web sites.
A sampling of their top sites in each category includes:
As a bonus they have also provided a primer on blogging: So You Want To Be a Blogger?
Go to the Time site for the complete list of top coolest sites for 2005. I was pleasantly surprised to recognize a lot of the sites, and have even posted about some of them. It's also great to have discovered some new sites that are worth exploring.
It's that time again - here's a mixed collection of items that caught my eye this week that I thought were either interesting or cool.
This article caught my eye today: Blogs Finally Get Business Savy by Greg Lindsay.
"It can't be said anymore that blogging isn't a business. The problem now may be that blogging has too many business models to choose from. "
The various business models include the following:
Greg states that "Yes, blogging is a business. But what kind?" Good question! Anyone have the answer?
Mathew Ingram of the Globe and Mail asks: Is the Bubble Back? Another good question! It appears that despite the frenzy of the latest round of buyouts, takeovers and Internet mergers "the interest in new Web-based business is far from being as manic as the sky-high dreams of Internet dominance were back in the late 1990s."
I, for one, would love to have those old days back. It was great being in IT during the dotcom years. Well, then again, after the boom came the bust, so maybe we're better off not repeating history.
Because I've been thinking about my career a lot lately, here's an interesting article from Fast Company: Cracking Your Next Company's Culture
"...there are other stealth (and very legal) ways to get beyond the glossy surface and make sure any potential employer's sales pitch matches up with reality" including these great tips:
Final advice: "Remember, an organization has no obligation to make things work for you. You have to make things work for you." Excellent advice!
Another interesting article from Fast Company regarding future trends: The Future's So Bright
What kind of technology is making the Future So Bright?
My gamer friends would certainly agree with the video-game advertising business model.
Is the Digg social-networking site going to bury Slashdot? Maybe, according to this article on Wired.
"Digg is quite different from (older) sites," said founder Kevin Rose. "Slashdot is put together by an editorial board. Digg uses the collective wisdom of the masses and, consequently, news breaks faster."
Don't know what Digg is? Check it out here: http://www.digg.com/ It's definitely worth checking out if you haven't already as the articles are submitted by bloggers and voted on by bloggers rather than a board of editors like at Slashdot. I don't think Digg will busy Slashdot as Slashdot has a different audience than those at Digg. There's enough room in the blogosphere for both sites.
Really interesting article about the demise? of Google over at Slate: The Great Google Wipeout Chronicle of a corporate death foretold by Jack Shafer. Only the future will know if Google's future spirals as Jack believes.
Another interesting article from the Globe and Mail about Freshdaily - "Toronto-based Freshdaily Inc. has announced the launch of Canada's first national blog network including city blogs in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Mississauga, Ont. Each blog reports on local culture and happenings including coverage of music, film, the arts, fashion, food and urban issues."
It's certainly one to keep an eye on.
Here's one for the annals of Life's Little Annoyances and how one retired fellow got his revenge on VISA by making multiple payments in pennies.
Speaking of Life's Little Annoyances and Revenge and Rudeness, did you see this book by the author of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves? (Which I bought and thought was pretty interesting). Now, the author Lynne Truss is fed up with rudeness and is telling everyone to "Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Homeand Bolt the Door" Right on!
You've read Malcom Gladwell's book Blink, right? Well, pretty soon you can also watch the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Let's hope the movie is as good as the book.
What did you find interesting this week?
Just a quick post for you to check out the recent TEDblog.
What is TED? TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and is an annual event that brings together more than 800 thought-leaders, movers and shakers to talk about anything to do with science, technology, entertainment, design and any other cool topic. As the site states: "TED is an annual event where America's leading thinkers and doers gather for inspiration." If you haven't heard of TED before, then you should definitely check the site and blog out.
For those of you in Toronto, TED is very similar to ideaCity which is also an huge annual event with over 500 attendees, 50 speakers from around the world, and is billed as a "Meeting of Minds" and a "Mecca for Lateral Thinking". I've always wanted to go to an ideaCity event. It looks like it would be so much fun and motivational. One day...
I know that Google Blog Search has been out for a week or so, but for those of you who didn't know, Google has come out with a search page that will retrieve only blog references.
I tried my name in the search box and, low and behold, every single search result linked back to my blog! I'm lucky if I get on the first results page on the regular Google search page, so this is a vast improvement.
This just goes to show you how far Blogging has come. Now, we have our own Google search engine. Cool. And very, very useful. Check it out.
Here are a couple of new (to me) sites that I discovered over the weekend.
TTLB Ecosystem
You may have noticed that I have a new item on my sidebar:
I'm a
Insignificant Microbe
in the
TTLB Ecosystem
What's the TTLB Ecosystem, you ask? What's an Insignificant Microbe? It all has to do with blog ranking, of course.
Further to my recent Blog Q&A post where my friend asked about the top blogs, this weekend I discovered another ranking site, 'The Truth Laid Bear' (or TTLB) which ranks blogs according to links and groups blogs in the following hierarchy:
Just another meaningless (but definitely amusing) blog ranking system. Check out the 'Higher Beings' to see who is most popular (i.e. most linked to). It's a good way to discover new blogs and different viewpoints. Just keep in mind that not always the most popular or A-Lister blog is the best. Just the most linked to.
[Update 09/20/05: I just noticed today that I've been upgraded 5 levels to a "Slimy Molluscs". Cool!]
Clusty.com
Another unique site I discovered over the weekend was Clusty.com. This is a beta search engine site which I thought was pretty cool because it 'clustered' the search engine results into clusters or groups. There is an algorithm used that creates the clusters as you search, so the groups are not static, and are dependent on your search term. For instance, I did a search for 'Katrina' and the "Top 216 results of at least results 2,833,000 retrieved for the query Katrina" (as of 09/06/05) yielded the following clusters or groups:
Clusty doesn't assume that you are searching for Hurricane Katrina, after all, there are a wide variety of 'Katrina' related items on the internet. I did a comparison with Google and typed in 'Katrina' - there were 104,000,000 results. Just to be fair, I tried with Yahoo! and it returned 182,000,000 results. Neither one of these search engines yielded the same result in the #1 spot.
Clusty also features the ability to have your search results clustered, in addition to the Web, by News, Images, Shopping, Wikipedia, Blogs, Jobs, and to Customize your search. So, if I click on the Blogs tab on my search results page, these are the cluster results for the search term 'Katrina':
Doesn't this make it a lot easier to find the results you want? I'm definitely bookmarking and using this site. Check it out. Tell me what you think.
I had lunch with a friend of mine yesterday and she had lots of questions and comments about my blog so I thought I would provide the same answers that I gave her, for those of you who may have similar questions and are just too afraid (for whatever reason) to post a comment/question here. I know that there are other people out there, like my friend, who read my blog but don't comment...lurking is totally okay. It's easy to assume people know the same thing you do about what a blog is, how it works, how you get visitors, etc. so here is a Q&A for those of you.
Question: How do people find you? How do people know you have a blog?
Answer: There are a couple of ways that people find my blog. Some people know me personally and know that I have a blog but they may not know its URL. So, they usually do a Google search on my name such as "Karen Ruby" + blog, and depending how the Google gods feel that day, my blog will pop up either as #1 or one of my posts will be retrieved on the first page results. My close friends all know that I have a blog, so most of them already have the address and read my blog. I also have a website and some people find me by searching for it. Since I have my own domain and my website/blog are named the same, I'm not that hard to find.
Another way people find my blog is through a search term on one of the search engines and one of my posts contains the search term. A lot of people perform really weird searches and for some reason, I get really weird referrers (sometimes). More on referrers in another Answer. When Google Mapping came out, I did a post about the Satellite images in Toronto, which was/is very popular and a lot of people came to read that post. (See Popular Posts on the sidebar for the posts that drive most of my traffic).
When I first started blogging, I would read lots of other people's blogs and comment on their blogs. They would reciprocate on what they found interesting on my blog, which would sometimes drive people from/to their blog. A few very generous people have included my blog on their own Blogroll. I sometimes only found that I was on other blogger's Blogroll by doing some ego-surfing. I then included my own Blogroll of those blogs I frequently read and some people have linked to me.
Question: What are the Top Blogs and where do you rank?
Answer: Del.ici.us, Technorati, Feedster, etc. all have lists of the top and most popular blogs.
Some of those lists are:
Regarding my rank: What rank? 
I'm not ranked, although you can find my links on Del.icio.us and Technorati. What does rank matter anyway?
Question: Why don't you post anything personal about yourself or post your picture? I (my friend) was expecting to see some pictures and to see what you wrote about a shared event that we went to.
Answer: I don't have a picture posted on my blog of me (nor do I intend to ever post one) because I am all too aware of the power of the internet and that things like pictures/words last forever. I don't want my picture "out there" due to a variety of reasons, not just for identify theft reasons. I don't believe in listing very personal items on my blog so I try to keep my personal details to a minimum. I'm not that interested in reading about very personal details in other people's blogs, either. I also think that because my name is my blog, I have to think about my own personal brand. I'm basically marketing myself and have to keep in mind what I post about, link to, display on my blog - for future considerations. I try not to obsess too much, but if there are topics that are iffy and I know may be taken out of context in the future, then I usually don't post about them. I will talk to my friends, email them, and discuss sensitive topics face-to-face, rather than in my blog. I guess if I had a blog that was Anonymous and named something different, then maybe I wouldn't be so conscious of what I write about. So, the short answer is, don't expect me to write about too many things that I do in my real life and don't take it personally if I don't write about things that I do with my friends. Those who know me personally always get the story eventually anyways - you don't have to read it here.
Question: Why don't you have a donate button or PayPal button on your blog? I didn't know what a TipJar was until I read your post.
Answer: I wrote about what I think about TipJars and donate buttons on personal blogs on this post: http://karenruby.typepad.com/weblog/2005/06/blegging_blog_b.html. I do reserve the right to change my mind in the future, but right now, I don't think they are a good idea in general. I have not been convinced to add a donate button or include ads on my blog. Perhaps, if I had thousands of hits a day and earned lots of money by having them, I would change my mind.
Question: How many visitors do you get to your blog and where do they come from?
Answer: I started posting Feb 12, 2005 (read some of my early posts here) and my stats say that the total number of page views for my blog is 4830. I have written 145 posts since then and there are 145 comments on my blog. It may not sound like a lot, but can you imagine if I devoted more time to this blog and really went after visitors? I'm okay with those numbers.
Comment: I like that you post about different topics, I never know what to expect when I read your blog.
Answer: Thanks! As I said in my About page, I have a lot of interests and find it difficult to just post about one thing. Another friend has said that I post too much about 'cool' things and wants me to post about certain topics that I don't feel represent who I am. My answer to that is: This is my blog, if you don't like what I write about, don't read it. If you want to read about certain topics, there are tons of other sources out there, go find them. If you want to read about gossip, go start your own blog and write about what you are interested in. I pay good money to have this blog (I have TypePad Plus, which is not free) and it's a forum to write about what I think is "interesting, cool or thoughtful". The posts are what I want to share with my readers. I hope that the majority are helpful, or at least interesting. I figure if I find it interesting, cool, or thoughtful then you will, too.
Comment: Thanks so much for advising us to download Picasa for our pictures. We just love it. It's so easy!
Answer: I told you! Glad that you like it. If I post about something like Picasa or CutePDF or the stuff on my blog, it's because I've downloaded and installed them on my own computer and they've helped me in some way. Or maybe I just thought they were pretty cool, and I wanted to share. Sometimes, it's hard though to know what to post about because I always assume people know what I know and if I know about it, then other people must know and use the tools. That's not the case because there are a lot of people who don't have the time or interest to find the stuff. That's why you visit my blog! I'm doing the work for you. 
Comment: Man, are you ever getting lots of comments on your blog.
Answer: Yeah, I guess so. There are 145 comments so far. You don't have to leave your email address or URL to leave a comment. You don't have to leave your real name either. I try to reply back to all the comments and I do appreciate everyone who leaves a comment. It's nice to know that there are people out there reading my blog.
I get emailed every comment that appears on my blog, so I can delete any that I find offensive. I've only had to do this once, and I have had spam trackback which I've had to delete, too. Spam trackback is what it sounds like: a trackback link or referral on another blog which is spam. Not good, and it should be removed as soon as possible.
I've had a couple of pretty well-known people leave a comment on my blog (I'll let you discover who they are) and am always totally thrilled to recognize their names. It can be pretty exciting to think that people take time to read my posts and comment.
Comment: I checked out some of the blogs you have listed and there is one that is almost all pictures on it. Some of the pictures are pretty personal.
Answer: Yes. Some people like to post personal pictures of themselves, their family, their children and their lives. That's their choice. I personally do not want my picture floating out there and will not post any personal pictures of me, my friends, or family. There are a lot of crazies out there and I don't see the need to post personal pictures or write about personal items about my life. That is why my photo albums are stripped of any live person in them.
Question: How do you keep up with posting every day?
Answer: I don't. I used to post every day, but couldn't keep up. I try to post often so that people have something new to read when they visit, but in order to post every day, you have to post very short posts, read a lot of blogs, have no life, or outside job, or....not be me. I read a lot online and use my RSS reader (see my sidebar post on that if you don't know what it is) and subscribe to different blogs to find interesting topics. I work during the day, so I post at night on a topic I either have planned to write about or write about something that I read online that day. Following through with writing is the hardest part. Trying to write about a topic that someone didn't already write about is hard, too. There are so many blogs out there, finding a topic that people haven't already talked about ad nauseum is tough sometimes.
Comment: I still haven't seen your Matt Dusk pictures, where are they?
Answer: I love his music and have his Two Shots CD on my iPod. The pictures can be found on my post: Matt Dusk at the Bay autograph.
This was a long post, but I hoped I answered some of the questions that you may have had. Feel free to ask other questions by leaving a comment.
Thanks, Y, for the questions and comments.
I came across this site a while ago and sent the link to a friend of mine (this was before I had a blog) and just recently rediscovered the site.
There's something addictive about the PostSecret blog. Reading people's secret confessions can consume a lot of your time. There are a lot of weird people out there. But, surprisingly, there are secrets that aren't really that bad, except to the person holding them. Isn't that always the case - you think you are alone in having a secret, until you realize that we all have something that we want to hide from the world. PostSecret allows you to tell the world your secret anonymously.
"PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." And, boy, do they mail them in!
There are so many pictures of people's dirty little secrets, it's easy to see why this site is listed as #7 on Technorati (August 21, 2005) and #10 on Feedster's August list of Top 500 blogs (link).
Donald Trump now has a blog. "Ideas and opinions from Donald Trump and his circle of experts" is his tagline.
Check it out here: http://donaldtrump.trumpuniversity.com/
Actually, it's kind of interesting to read his views, and even more interesting to read some of the comments. A lot of "Mr. Trump, you are an inspiration to us all" yada, yada, yada stuff.
My blog is worth $5,645.40.
How much is your blog worth?
Recent Comments