Is a technology ubiquitous when it drops below $10.00?
Just got this offer (amongst others) from TigerDirect.com. Does anyone else remember when DVD players were over $1000? Geesh!
Get paid for blogging?
Are you crazy? Am I to believe that I can actually get paid to blog like I normally do for free? Apparently so!
I came across a post from someone talking about this site called Smorty.com and the post was written well enough for me to want to open it up in a new tab and learn more. Now please understand I don’t usually do that. If I see a post that makes it clear it’s talking about blog advertising, I’ll tend to click on to the next post. I mean, I need to be up to date (to the second(?) ) about what’s happening in the blogosphere. Right 
?
Smorty.com made me want to check it out and see if it was real or just some blog advertising gimmick of the moment.
I do feel inclined to disclose that this is (potentially) a paid post, and most of you who read me on a regular basis know that I’ll speak my mind about the post topics I choose. And those of you I see at other sites also know that my comments tend not to sugar coat, nor hold back my opinions of ideas, products or services.
Regardless of what a site might be offering, if I have to sign up for it the experience should be a simple, straight forward one. There is plenty of clean, clear documentation about the service that Smorty.com provides to both advertisers as well as bloggers and in just a few short moments, I was able get a high level overview about how their system was set up and how it allowed me to earn a bit of money doing what I normally do.
FAQ’s, pages regarding the processes involved, and the rules one is expected to abide by were straight forward and understandable. I really didn’t have any questions regarding what Smorty.com was or what might be expected of me. That is a definite plus for me when exploring a new service. The terms page has a font size that is a bit smaller than the rest, but that’s due to the “legalese” nature of that content. I did read through it pretty thoroughly, and my eyes didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No red flags. Again, a good thing.
And to be completely honest, the only real challenge there came when I chose my country and the page refreshed itself (for some reason) and apparently the form thought it was being submitted. I got several red error messages about fields I’d not yet filled in, but I understood why that happened and finished the affiliate sign up with out a hitch. You’ll likely see Smorty.com banners rotating in on the bottom of my pages very soon as I like what I’ve seen thus far.
My application was accepted within a few short hours, and now this morning, I’ve decided that my first “assignment” would be to write about how to get paid for blogging and share my thoughts and opinions on Smorty. Please share your experiences here if you do go and check them out soon. I’d love to hear how things have gone for you.
Who uses feed aggregator services?
Is there anyone out there that actually uses the services supplied by online companies intending to provide products that allow you to “mashup and personalize RSS feeds”? Read/WriteWeb 
today talks about the mSpoke launch of FeedHub and how it creates “individualized RSS Feeds that aim to filter relevant posts from a set of feed sources.
Now my question here is why would you add the feed from a source and then subjectively filter out all but (I’m assuming) tag related posts that you are interested in? If you decided that Acme.com is an interesting site and you’d like to get regularly updated on what they have to say, why would you filter out all but their posts on goobers? (Or whatever, you get the drift, yes?)
I’ve tried using the Google reader shared RSS feeds, and find that hard to keep up with, though I am very appreciative of Robert Scoble for the shared feed that he maintains. Just wondering if anyone actually uses these other personalized services and if your feed reading experience is better or worse as a result.
Thomas Hawk must be a photographic genius!
In case you haven’t seen his work, you must visit Thomas Hawks photo archive and blog. This breathtakingly stunning image of the Golden Gate Bridge was just one image he had “lying around”! Can you imagine?
You’ll want to subscribe to his feed as well. I promise you there’s nothing nicer to see in your feed reader from time to time than some wonderfully composed little bits of art. Think I’ll have to find out if I can make this image into a poster and have it framed! It is definitely one of my personal goals to be able to take shots that are as good as this. Thanks Thomas.
OpenAds post for Ad in feed footer
It has been a long, long time since I’ve actually seen OpenAds, the free, open source ad server 
actually work (for me, anyways). Joseph had it functional about a year ago when we were still using its predecessor, phpAdsNew.
The bg server has probably seen no less than 4 installs of OpenAds since it took over. I won’t speak for my friend, Joe, but I know I have personally been extremely agitated in my attempts in the past to make it do what it is supposed to do. And that is to take nothing away from the software nor the community supporting it. More than likely, we were unable to get it to work because of all the other experimental stuff we do on our own server box. That’s cool, right? No reason to rail against the system, if we are maligning our portion of it.
As you’ll see on the site now, the banners at the bottom of the pages are currently being served out via our OpenAds install. With this post, I’m attempting to inject a banner into the footer of our RSS feeds (and according to whatever campaign we are employing within that “zone”.)
Will keep you informed!
SnagIt Capture
The journey of this image:
- Installed the flickr accessory plugin for my SnagIt program
- Took a screen grab from the SnagIt.com page.
- Manipulated the image in the SnagIt editor
- Finished in SnagIt and sent the image up to my flickr photos online
- Surfed to flickr and am now using the ajax, greasemonkey extension to create this post right on flickr.com
- Will now push the send button, and have this post automatically sent to BoldlyGoing.com
Note: not checking the “include description” box on the post edit interface
mikeNcandy
Sending a test post from the flickr.com site using a grease monkey plugin created by CK.
I was finally able to get it to work from flickr to my self hosted WordPress install. The trick? One needs to allow yuan’s script to run (easily one via noScripts FireFox extension!).
Yearning to be a part of the conference scene
TechCrunch40 news continues its flow through my reader, I realize that one of my less than conscious goals is to become a part of those conference hallway conversations that Scoble is always railing on and on about. Wondering if there might not also be a secondary conference admission level that doesn’t allow you into the presentations, but just to hangout in the common areas. Make the name tag a different color, post people at the door (”Sorry, Mr. Kirk, you only paid the cheapy rate. You’ll have to stay out in the hallways. Thank you!”)
While I may not have the desire to be the face and voice of a Scoble or a Calacanis (in the 2.0 social, community world) I do have those desires in the fight world. And being a part of the social infrastructure is always going to be a boon to making progress in any aspect of online operations.
So, what does it come down to? What does it take to get into this sort of position? Well, I’ll gladly discuss this with anyone whom decides to leave comments here. As well, as a part of the new BoldlyGoing.com and how I envision doing things, I’ll be creating comments related to this specific concept at other sites. To better create threads that are followable (and maybe help create more of a “process” for helping readers follow the entire conversation), I am planning on setting up a “series” tracker on this site, which should make it easier to follow the thread as well.
So do stay tuned to participate. Heck, you could even subscribe to our feed in order to not miss a single post or comment!
