I Think I Got Slapped

I’ve not been updating the site for a while because I have been caught up in lots of stuff in the offline world. Moving house, turning forty, blah blah blah, all meant I didn’t have a lot of time for Rambling procrastination.

I am aiming to change that soon though and get back to both rambling and procrastinating large about many a different happenings that are going on in London, the UK and in our global village. [Read more]

Hackers Bring Down Popular BloggingZoom

I was in the process of writing a post about BloggingZoom, the ‘Digg’ for bloggers when I got wind from Internet Marketing champion Courtney Tuttle that the site has been hacked. Courtney is one of the founder/owners of BloggingZoom alongside Vic of BloggerUnleashed who’s site coincidentally is also down.

BloggingZoom is a fast growing site for bloggers who want to promote and publicize their sites. The team there positively encourage bloggers to submit their own content and the BloggingZoom community support this in a big way.

Let’s hope the site get’s back up soon.

Use images to give your posts extra zing

Since changing the layout of The Ramblings of a Longtime Procrastinator to a more magazine type format on the front page, I have had to source many more images for my blog. I’m a good weather photographer so I haven’t been taking much new photos for a while and the ones that are in the my photo collection aren’t always suitable for use wth the posts I create, so this leaves me having to source images.

There are some obvious places to look for usable images such as Google images or Flickr. Images on Google are not necessarily available for use as they are most often subject to copyright restrictions. If you use Flickr, you are able to search for images under the Creative Commons License. Creative Commons images often allow users to freely use them on their websites or personally as long as the creator of the work is attributed.

Though these major resources are free to use, they do have some drawbacks. Amongst the drawbacks are the quality of images and also the quantity you have to sift through in order to find one that fits, even with their advanced search features.

Using Stock Photography

Stock photography used to be know only to those in the advertising trade or graphics departments in major firms. The rise and rise of digital photography and of course the digital world of the Internet has brought more and more stock photography sites to more and more markets.

I won’t go into all the ins and outs of using stock photography, but the major factor that increased the use of stock images was the ability to purchase Royalty Free images.

Royalty Free images were lower in cost, and gave purchasers the freedom re-use them for any purpose, providing the licence you bought covered it. Still later developments, including micro stock photography sites brought the prices down even further. With these sites you can download images for pennies.

A number of Micro stock agencies as well as traditional stock photography sites are now attempting to compete with popular image sharing sites by offering a selection of their images for free. They realize that digital photography has increased the sheer number of available images that can be used, especially for online purposes. Where once companies or ad agencies would purchase images for thousands, large multi-nationals are picking up quality images for nothing on photo-sharing sites like Flickr.

Use images to give your posts extra zing

Why should you use images to give your posts that little bit extra? Well, images help to do the following

• capture your readers attention (or even re-focus it).
• break up large areas of text giving the eyes and brain more stimulation
• illustrate a point, concept or headline, add extra emphasis

Magazines and newspapers and lots of other printed media use them in articles, it worked for them, why not you? Additionally, and this may be because I am a photographer, but photographs or images can actually help you create more blog posts.

Public Domain / Free Stock Photography

Wikipedia has a large list of public domain or free image resources (see external links below) and there are quite a few sites that offer free to use (ie little or no restrictions on usage) photographs, images and visuals for your blog. I regularly use the following sites

• Open Photo Project
• Stock Xchng
• Flickr (search Creative commons images)
• Public Domain Pictures

Public domain images require no attribution and are usually out of copyright, however always check this. As with Free stock photography, always check the license to ensure you comply with any restricts. It is always good practice as well, where possible to attribute the photo to it’s creator.

I am Two

I have just realised that my blog is 2 years old and like a very errant parent, I forgot it’s birthday. Doh! The first post is dated 3rd Nov 2005 and is here. I remember, now that I have glanced at that post, the blog started as a way of keep a daily journal of my thoughts and research for my studies.

What’s happened since then ?

Well I have posted a total of 93 posts in 25 categories over the period. In the last year I have had 1,817 visitors come to my blog and read my words. Now in the world of blogging that may not be a lot, but to me this is a big deal. You see frustrated writers have a hard time letting other people see their work, let alone have them read it, so thanks to all of you who have taken time out to read, and comment on the ramblings here.

What next ?

Like any two year old I am going to throw a big tantrum. Currently I am stewing over a post that is entitled “You’re not the boss of me”. It may turn out to be a rant, it may end up being funny I don’t know yet. In it, I aim to look hard and long at whether the it is possible for someone with such a bad work ethic (i.e. someone who hates getting up, getting dressed, the commute, lunch time, home time, the commute, their colleagues, their boss, the list can continue for a long time), can really make a break for it and bolt for the freedom of freelancing.

If you read this blog often, or have taken a note of the title, you’ll know that this post may or may not appear, after all, I am a Long time procrastinator, the ideas are there, but the implementation lacks a certain commitment.

Ta Ta For Now

Who’s buzzing about your blog?

Is this something that you want to know, how about your visitors, do they want to know how well thought of or referenced you are in OPB (that’s Other People’s Blogs). I’ve found this widget that seems to do the trick. [Read more]

BlogCatalog Bloggers for Good Fundraising Challenge

BlogCatalog the lively social networking community for bloggers has lanched a community fundraising event which aims to raise funds, via DonorsChoose.org, for public schools in the United States. DonorsChoose provides a simple way of connecting students with donors. Teachers submit ideas for projects or materials needed by the students at their school, and visitors to the site can choose the project to which they wish to donate funds. [Read more]

Spread the link love

Why not do as Jonathan over at SmartWealthyRich suggests and spread the love to other bloggers who comment on your blog by downloading and installing the DoFollow plugin to your wordpress blog?

By default links posted on your blog comments section have a “rel=nofollow tag” which tells the search engine not to follow the links on the page. This means despite your efforts you won’t get a link back from the site to yours.
[Read more]

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