No such thing as bad publicity, and as long as they spell your name right, etc…I received a comment on my GreaterFalls.com site the other day from the morning DJ on a local station; he wants to do an interview about the site. And one of the local news anchors e-mailed me about doing a 2 or 3-part series on local bloggers. Well, since I’ve already conquered other media outlets, I guess it’s time to expand my media empire even further! Actually, since this is Blogtober, the timing couldn’t be better to talk about blogging and encourage others to get involved with blogging (either reading or writing).

I referenced feed readers a few days ago, and ZenPanda commented that she didn’t know how to use them; I understand, because until I started using Bloglines I didn’t understand feed readers, either, and those little RSS buttons and talk of “syndication” confused me. But now that I do understand, I can’t imagine reading blogs any other way. So although I am far from an expert, here’s what you need to know in order to understand and use a feed reader.

The whole point of blogs - and other websites that are frequently updated, such as news and social sites - is that new content is published regularly. For instance, I publish something on my blog at least once per day (well, try to). Other blogs - such as Instapundit and MetaFilter - publish new material several times every day. And most bloggers read many blogs on a regular basis. So let’s assume that I have a blogroll (a roster of sites that I read daily) that contains 100 different websites. If all of those sites contained a link on my homepage, I would have to click on every single one of those links in order to read the newest content. If you only read a few sites daily, that may not sound like a big deal, but when you’re up into the dozens or scores of sites, it can take a while to click through each and every link just to find out which sites have published new content. And that is where feed readers enter the picture. (more…)

One of the fun things about blogging (and also often annoying) are the never-ending memes (”meemz”). The term “meme” applies to many types of cultural and social phenomena that start small and wind up gaining traction, quickly becoming passed through social circles and “exploding” in popularity. Internet memes are catch-phrases, pictures, quizzes, and such that spread quickly among bloggers, often with each blogger adding their own spin or opinion. Here’s an example of a quiz meme that I found over at Jen’s place; all you have to do follow the directions for each of the examples to come up with some “new” names for yourself:

1. SPY NAME: (middle name + current street):
Andrew Delmar
2. MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/mother + your favorite candy):
Irving Whopper
3. GAMER TAG: (favorite color + favorite animal):
Black Goose
4. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name + birthplace):
Andrew Phoenix
5. PORN STAR NAME: (first pet + street you grew up on):
Dutchie Easthaven
6. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The”, favorite color, car your dad drives):
The Black Grand Marquis
7. ACTION HERO NAME: (name of character in last film you watched, last food you ate):
Bill Croissanwhich

What can I say? I just came from Burger King, and it was either Bill (from Kill Bill) Croissanwhich, or Bill Cini-Mini.

I’ve tried many of the blogging “systems” and tools that are out there…started with Blogger back in 2000, then moved on to GreyMatter, then Movable Type, and have now been with WordPress for over three years. GM and MT are great, in their own ways, but GM was a bit harder to tweak than others, and MT took *forever* to rebuild whenever you made changes. Blogger, however, I still use for some small sites that I tinker with; it’s still a great tool for quick blogging. And besides, you never quite get over your first love, right?
In between all of those, I’ve also established accounts at other hosted services in order to test drive the product: LiveJournal, GeoCities, Vox, Yahoo 360, Typepad, and most recently MySpace. The LJ community is much more “internally” focused than the blogging community at large; Vox is still too new to figure out; Yahoo 360 didn’t seem to go anywhere; TypePad is pretty cool; and MySpace - well, quite simply, I’m baffled about the success of MySpace. Almost without exception, the few MySpace sites that I’ve visited are absolutely painful to look at. The design and layout - ouch! But someone who read one of my other sites asked me if I knew how to design a background incorporating her school mascot, so I gave it a shot, and wound up using it on my own MySpace page. Anyway…it’s great that there are so many options for veteran bloggers, medium bloggers, and newbies.
So now it’s your turn: what blogging services and software have YOU used, and which do you prefer? Any strong feelings about any of them, pro or con?

(reposted in honor of Blogtober) It’s been quite a while, so I figured it was time to re-post my Bloggers Hiearchy of Needs, modeled after the famous pyramid. It is far from perfect, and I’mto suggestions about ways to improve it. Any ideas…? (more…)

Some nifty sites for bloggers; some are tools, some are content, some are tips. Some have been around for quite a while, others are newer; some are home-spun, others are more professional; but they all have some good stuff to offer. If you’re a blogger and haven’t checked them out yet (or lately), Blogtober is a great time to do so!
Blog Herald
Mandarin Design
Blogging Pro
Technorati
A-Z of Blogging
Topix:Blogs
BlogExplosion
How To Blog
Blogger
WordPress Codex
WP Plugins Wiki
WP Plugins
WP Themes
WP Theme Viewer
Stupid WordPress Tricks

And how do we celebrate Blogtober? There are lots of ways!

The important thing is to celebrate being a blogger and take pride in your semi-geeky hobby! All month long, I will be posting some of the things that I have learned about or while blogging, blogs that I particularly enjoy, Deep Thoughts about the meaning of blogging, and so on. So now it’s your turn - take part in Blogtober!