When you hover over any of the main images on the home screen the title and lead info to the blog post are displayed as is left and right navigation arrows to jump to the next image.  Each of the images on the Home base are linked to Posts and not every post needs to appear on the Home page.

Because Jeff had more then two years worth of content, as did I when I upgraded, I knew I’d have to do some shuffling around to make it all work, but it turned out to be far easier then I thought.

On the home page you’ll see a large 950 pixel wide photo and thumbnails across the bottom, all which you choose as you post and can even control the duration spent on each thumbnail as it transitions to the next frame.  The transitions and resizing are all handled server side by jQuery and work flawlessly.  For Jeff, this was a great way to present both recent and his best work right on the front of the site.

The header of the site is clean and straightforward, the logo can be uploaded through the admin panel of WordPress and the main color of the site can even be changed there.  A thick underlining bar indicates what page you’re currently on, in this case the Home screen.  What was different about this theme compared to his previous was how pages and categories are setup.  The arrows to the right of Portfolio and Blog indicate a drop down box by hovering them, but due to the limited vertical space, I opted to stuff some of Jeff’s pages into child pages of the parent page, Portfolio, as shown in the screenshot below.

The ability to use drop downs and then further drop downs allowed Jeff to retain all the pages he had created within his previous theme but have them more organized and in a neater, easier to digest package. For his site, I created the Parent category of Portfolio and then stuffed everything under it.  All pages are as creative as you need them to be, but require setup on each and every one.

The Blog section in Phototastic is very similar, it relies on one main category, in this case named Blog, and then child categories under it.  When you hover over the Blog word on the theme the categories are displayed and thumbnails from the most recent photos in posts associated with those categories are displayed, this I thought was pretty amazing and a very slick addition to the theme.  From a user perspective, you can either click any of the specific categories or the word Blog itself to display all recent posts, this is where more of the Phototastic magic happens.

The default view is to show the 45 most recent posts, yes, 45!  All in auto-magically created thumbnails, again done server side.  As a photography, I truly appreciate the ability to show off a vast array of my photos without the clutter of words, but as a viewer, this is like utopia.  The vast array of colors and snippets of photos is wonderfully enticing and makes me want to dive in, but that’s not all Phototastic brings to the table.  In the top right corner you’ll see Switch View, clicking the middle icon switches to list view and shows the 10 most recent articles in a slightly different light.

Again, the thumbnails are all generated server side and it gives the viewer a different way of viewing the same content.

Individual blog postings feature the highlighted photo large at the top, the same one rendered for the front page and thumbnails, then whatever content displayed below it.  The screenshot below is only small sample, to view the entire post click here.

The contact page uses a fairly standard Contact Form 7 Plugin to handle the form new customers fill out.

Overall, Jeff is very pleased with his new site and visitors to it, new and old clients couldn’t be happier.  Installing it was really straight forward and the directions are very well documented.  There was a slight bump for me, as I needed to upgrade the hosting plan Jeff had to run PHP5 instead of the older and slightly out dated PHP4, which wasn’t in the documentation.  Because I was converting an existing site into this new theme, a little more work needed to be done too.  If you are purchasing this theme to start from a fresh site I’d strongly suggest having at least 15-20 posts ready to go before your public launch date.

Because Jeff already had a steady flow of site visitors and the theme upgrade was going to take me at least an hour to do (turned out being longer due to the PHP speed bump, not Phototastic’s fault), I installed the Maintenance Mode plugin and customized it to allow visitors to still get to the About and Contact pages of Jeff’s site and an outbound link to his Facebook Fan page.

One thing to be aware of with Phototastic, image optimization for the web is crucial because your web server will be rendering all the thumbnails for the various ways of viewing the site.  If you don’t optimize them in Photoshop or similar editing program, you could really bog down your server and slow the speed your site loads for customers.  Additionally, while the thumbnails are loading you may occasionally see the following screen.

The little icon in the middle is animated and I don’t think this distracts at all from the site and I’ve only managed to see it a few times even on slower connections.

The logo should be saved as a transparent PNG file, this isn’t mentioned in the instructions but I’d assume for most all applications this would be the best way to display it because of the gradients.  The footer is customizable via the admin panel for left and right side and accepts plain text and HTML.  The only thing I feel the site lacks is a proper integration of social media icons / placement and RSS button.  Because so many people use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, RSS feeds and other things, having this integration should be standard.  I manually placed a Facebook icon in the footer as Jeff wanted his visitors to be able to fan and follow him there in addition to the site.  We’re still undecided about adding Twitter and RSS icons at this time.

Overall the theme installation went really smoothly, when I did need to contact support about the problem that ended up being a server side PHP error they responded promptly and explained immediately how and what needed to be done to resolve the situation.  Phototastic is coded brilliantly with plenty of options to keep everyone happy.  It’s professional, easy to navigate and displays photographs wonderfully, any photographer should be proud to use this as their theme.  Future plans include filling the right sidebar with marketing material, both on blog posts and pages, as they are separated within this theme, a really nice touch.

Phototastic WordPress theme can be purchased from ThemeSnack.com for $49, a small price to pay for the full versatility of this amazing theme.Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Review: Gallerific WordPress Theme | The Relaunch of MikePanic.com
• Randomn3ss Refreshed
• How do I get in contact with you?
• Gmail is dead in the water
• Welcome all the new staff at Randomn3ss

Having such great results with the premium theme from Theme Forrest, I searched around and found what looked to be the perfect theme, fitting all the needs I had without me even knowing what I needed when I started.  Before this review goes further, I’m going to be as specific as I can with regards to the theme itself, this is not intended to be how-to install WordPress or Themes.  You can hire me to install WordPress and the theme of your choice / customize it though.

Why a premium theme? Like I mentioned, I had great results with my previous client’s site.  Most of these results were because of a well documented install directions, PSD files of the entire site and solid code.  There are thousands of free themes out there, but for the $15-35 for a premium theme from Theme Forrest, the value seems overwhelmingly worth it for me.  They are half or a quarter of what other premium sites charge for themes and some of the best looking one’s I’ve found.  The other reason for me choosing a premium theme is that I know it will limit the chances of seeing another person using the same one as me.  As it stands now, only 50 people have downloaded the theme I chose, who knows if they all got installed yet.  Compared with the average downloads of free themes, I like my odds more of having a somewhat unique theme.

Gallerific.  The theme I chose is called Gallerific and was created by Justin Scheetz, who through a little research also happens to live less than 20 miles from me.  Even though it’s the internet, I like to support local artists.  It instantly appealed to me because of the large images used for the home page navigation, it comes with two different color schemes and utilizes some creative and unique image handling techniques.  It also has a drop down menu system for the header navigation for a super simple and clean look and feel.  I’ve always felt that photography portfolios should be focused on making the images look good, not be so overly complicated that it takes away from the photographs featured.  This meets my needs.  Here’s what my site currently looks like.

Gallerific was a simple install, following the instructions included.  There were however some speed bumps along the way that I needed to iron out, which I’ll cover later in the article.  Because I already had content, most of the initial tweaks were minor ones to properly display the home page.  If you are installing this for the first time, plan on having at least seven unique blog postings ready or this won’t work for you.

Breaking down the home page and all the features.

The header navigation is powered by a combination of both Pages and Categories.  In my case, the Home button takes you obviously to home and is hard coded into the theme.  Blog and Galleries are actually categories for posts, Archives and Contact are Pages.  During setup of Gallerific, you specify which comes first (left to right), pages or categories.

For my site, every post is labeled with the Blog category, this gets everything to show up nicely in one spot and because I sometimes need to post non-photographic updates, like site updates or to promote an art show.  The Gallery category is the Parent and utilizes ten Child categories, all neatly displayed in the roll-over drop down menu system. While the theme comes widget ready, I didn’t like the idea of storing my archives in the sidebar and wanted a specifc page for them.  I created the Archive page and installed the Clean Archives Reloaded plugin that I feel serves as a better overall archive and site map than one in the sidebar.  Lastly is a rather standard Contact page with another plugin for the form used.

Included with Gallerific is a PSD file to customize your logo, I made a minor color tweak to my existing one and uploaded it.  The directions do not specify the file format and I’m thinking it needs to be a PNG, as the JPG I used is slightly off in color.  Search is well integrated and, well searches.  The default install of Gallerific includes a section in the admin panel to easily put your name, address and phone number below the search box.  Because I’m not a studio photographer, I don’t really have a need for those fields and have a specific Contact page for such information.  I edited the theme file header to include some social networking links and an RSS icon.  The only design flaw I found for this theme was the lack of an integrated RSS button, something I hope makes it into the next version release of the theme.  For the time being, I’ve installed the overly trendy Web 2.0 style buttons, these happen to closely resemble iPhone icons.  They will more than likely change when I find something that fits in a bit better with the overall theme.

Moving down is the Featured section of the home page.  Photos in this section appear when posts are in the Featured Category and the photo must be set to a specific width to work properly.  The screen shot above shows what happens when you roll the mouse over it.  Note that it shows the post name, categories it’s filed under, number of comments and the first few words associated with the post.  Clicking the post title or View Details will take you to the specific post.  The arrow to the right will take you to the next Featured posting. This is way cool and a great way to spotlight specific files and a very creative use of WordPress.

Directly below the featured header box are square boxes numbered, in my site’s case, 1 through 3.  When you hover over them a small thumbnail will appear of the other featured posts that can be displayed in the header if clicked.  From the overall size, I’d guess two dozen or so images could be utilized as Featured and gives the viewer another way to access and see images used.

The main body features cropped images from the last six blog postings made and text, customizable from the back end of WordPress.  I really like the fact that every blog post means fresh content on the front page utilizing these lower six boxes, always giving visitors something new and fresh to look at, while the featured box at the top can remain a little more static.  The text to the right is where I’m displaying what would normally be on an About page, which I usually hate on portfolio websites.

The six images also hide one more secret, they are not just links to the blog posts associated with them.  Hover over and you will be given two options.  The first is View Details which will take you to the blog post, the second is View Larger Image.  When the second option is clicks, the uncropped photo opens up and gives the viewer a better idea of what could be seen in the rest of the article.   Once again, giving the visitor to the site more to do while remaining super clean with design.

The footer is clean and utilizes the same header navigation, sans the drop down menu system.  Copyright info is displayed to the right, I’ve chose to leave the credits in the footer and added in text for my RSS feed, which again was lacking, and a little icon for stats tracking.  One design element I find missing here is an Up or Back to Top button, often usefull so the user doesn’t have to manually scroll.

Looking at more details.

One setting that is kind of unique for Gallerific is how Categories are displayed.  Each Category can be displayed as a blog or as a gallery.  For the Blog category, I’ve chose to display it as a blog, same is true if you click on the word Gallery.  This shows one highlighted image that I specify for each post (same as used on the front of the site or for the featured section) and about 40 words followed by a Continue Reading that takes the reader to the rest of the individual post.  This keeps the page neat and clean, which is why I like it.  For each of the child Categories under Gallery, I’ve set them to gallery view, as seen below.

This displays 10 posts that are in the People category in the same fashion as the front page, looking like a nice gallery with the options to roll over images and view one larger or be taken directly to the post.  Text indicating older entries takes the reader to the second page and so on. You’ll note the two images / articles featuring cars in the screen shot above and may wonder why they are showing up in the People gallery.  Because I’ve associated each of those posts with more than one category, including People, they show up under different galleries.  Because you can only specify one image for the display square, it’s hard to be exactly perfect.  Each of those posts also feature photos of people, clicking the View Details button reveals that in the full post.

As I’ve said, the install went really smoothly and once I wrapped my head around how the categories section worked, I’m more than thrilled to use this as the theme to power my site.  Making images Featured on the front page and creating the thumbnails for the gallery view is very straight forward and well documented.  I do have plans to utilize Parent / Child categories more for an upcoming wallpaper section of the site which I hope to launch in a few months, as well as a page to sell prints from.  The only main problem I had with the theme during install and configuration was that I had existing posts, more than 150 to be exact.  Each post was in a category but didn’t utilize the parent / child sections because, well I had no need to.  Gallerific almost requires that and relies heavily on categories to function to its fullest potential.  Because I wanted every post I’ve published to show up under Blog and needed to move every post in an existing category under the parent category of Gallery, some time was going to need to be invested.  WordPress does not feature a bulk or mass edit categories option, and I spent two full days searching google with different search strings, asking on Twitter and Facebook for a plugin that would simply let me bulk edit categories with no luck.  The plugins I found weren’t supported by the newest version of WP and I was left high and dry.  A week after giving up I tried a new search query and found exactly what I needed and compliant with the newest version of WP, Manageable.  This plugin should be included with the theme as it’s almost essential to anyone looking to use Gallerific on a site with existing content.

I’ve quietly launched this, now 4th version of MikePanic.com over the last two weeks while tweaking and making minor customizations to it, and adjusting all the categories to fit my needs.  Today marks the unofficial relaunch, in this review, and the best my site’s looked since buying the domain name 9+ years ago.  I can’t thank the coder / developer Justin enough for making such an amazing, low cost theme.  Justin currently has six super high quality, amazing themes available for WordPress here, some as low as $15.00.Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Review: Phototastic WordPress Theme | The Relaunch of SabottaImagery.com
• Randomn3ss Refreshed
• eBay’s Hidden Categories: Weird Stuff, Slightly Unusual, Really Weird & Totally Bizarre
• Another forum trying to do it all
• Problogger.net birthday bash and my lame attempt to get free stuff

What I really have the problem with?  This sentence:

“[Don Rickles] made Perez Hilton look like a sycophant.”

Well – no shit.  Perez Hilton is a sycophant.  A sycophany who happens to be wildly popular (a phenomenon whose logic escapes me).  Panic – don’t EVEN think of linking to him – I don’t want to give him the traffic.  Also, Hilton’s so three years ago – there are so many other gossip blogs that are legitimately humorous and don’t get off on drawing jizz on the faces of celebrities.  Clearly, Mayer doesn’t read them (or maybe doesn’t want to admit that they’re actually… gulp… funny).

Yeah, Don Rickles is great, I get it.  But lauding him at the expense of the people who write gossip blogs puts you in the same realm of the people you bash.  Oh, and while you’re an incredibly accomplished guitar player, your first album sucks.

Read the whole article here.Similar articles that might also interest you:

• My Guilty Pleasures
• Give John Mayer a Guitar & Tell Him to Shut Up
• New to the blogosphere
• Is This Funny or Awkward or Both?
• Paris Hilton goes to jail; millions renew faith in God, humanity in general.

is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!

Now, I don’t sign up for every Web 2.0 social networking / bookmarking site out there, and I haven’t signed up for this one yet, but I have subscribed to their RSS feed and been somewhat hooked on it all weekend.  It’s photos, graphic designs, marketing material, basically anything that is found that someone thinks is worth sharing, all in one blog.  Because of FFFFOUND I found some really cool photo blogs along with some inspiration for design concepts.

They are currently on an invite only basis, which I’m sure is fueling the fire and making people even more curious as to what the back-end offers users, but I’ll just continue to lurk for now.  If you are into cool imagery, FFFFOUND might be for you, just wait till you get out of work to view it since occasionally there is a fine art nude photograph on the front of the site.Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Share, Bookmark, Email & Print Randomn3ss articles
• Problogger.net birthday bash and my lame attempt to get free stuff
• How relevant and effective is email?
• MySpace won’t play nice with Photobucket
• Republish any RSS feed on your site

Joe waits anxiously for the shiba inu puppies to wake up from their nap and start playing again.

The quote above is in reference to the new internet sensation, Live streaming Shiba Inu puppy cam that everyone seems so addicted to.  Don’t take Sad Guys on Trading Floors too seriously, see it for what it is, a bit of the funny.Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Google stock hits record high, again
• How addicted to Apple are you?
• The beginning of the Internet
• Netflix Admits Mistake, Offers 1-time Credit
• My Guilty Pleasures

• Freelance Switch – A great site for anyone who does freelance work, either full or part time, or who wants to get into it.  I totally forgot that I was subscribe to it until I saw it buried at the bottom of my Blogging tab in iGoogle.  Last night I spent some time getting caught up on all the articles I’ve been missing out on.
• WebUrbanist – This site loves lists and nearly every article is a Top XX of something or other, but they are all really well put together and usually having to do with urban street art or design in function.  Take a look at the site before you redesign your home next time.
• Dezeen – A design and architecture site that just has amazing articles.  Amazing homes and interiors are covered in this blog.

Additionally, Brad from the DSLRBLOG left me a comment yesterday shortly after the article was published.  He apparently took over the reigns over there and promised the site would be updated and looked after.  I believe him, read and commented on his last two articles and have added his site back to my RSS reader.Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Time to say goodbye, I’m cleaning house
• Where do all these article ideas come from?
• Productivity tips for freelancers
• Instapaper to read stuff later
• Leave a comment, please?

I add a lot of sites to iGoogle, mostly ones that I quickly want to scan over and read on a regular basis, some because one main article got me interested and I want to continue to follow and a few get added because I’m getting into a new hobby or want to learn more.  So why would I remove these sites?  A few reasons, but lack of content, lack of engaging content or lack of updates are the top three reasons.  Sometimes a blog has gone so far in a completely different direction from when I originally subscribed that it’s simply no longer relevant and I have no interest in reading it.  Rather than just remove them and move on with my life, I figured I’d share with you which one’s I’m removing, maybe someone will find a use for them.  So here we go, broken down by the tabs I have for them in iGoogle:

Home

• Uncrate – They had some cool stuff but most of it really has no interest to me anymore
• TvRSS.net – Search Based – this was the add-on I had for one specific TV show, which I still watch just don’t have a need for in my Home tab anymore.  I still use and really appreciate TvRSS though.
• Born Rich – For a while this had some really cool stuff that no one should be able to afford, but the content just isn’t all that appealing to me anymore.

Blogging & Shit

• BlogOnExpo – I can’t even tell you why I subscribed to this feed in the first place.
• Performancing.com – Originally I was using one of their WordPress plugins, but that lasted only about 24 hours until I realized it didn’t do what I wanted it to.
• A List Apart – I really wanted to get into reading this blog, it has well written, solid articles.  No matter how much I try though, I just could never get into it. It’s probably the most well established blog I’m deleting today.
• muhammad saleem – Muhammad is one of the top diggers of all time and knows his way around a blog.  I started to follow his blog after he dugg an article here on Randomn3ss but none of his headlines ever caught my attention enough to make me want to click and read an article.  Sorry.
• Copyblogger – Another blog about blogging that I started to follow in hopes of further developing my writing skills.  Only read a few articles, the content is there, my attention span for the subject matter isn’t though.
• Life Rocks 2.0 – Another blog I don’t recall why I started to subscribe to.
• Dawud Miracle – Another blog I don’t recall why I started to subscribe to.
• 45n5′s blog – Great content, but I have enough blogs on blogging.
• we make money not art – I know there is a reason I subscribe, I just can’t recall.
• PluginZilla – This is a pretty new subscription for me but the feed but it takes days to update properly.  It’s a blog focused on showcasing WordPress plugins, of which I use a lot, but the feed not updating fast enough and not enough updates to the blog itself made me loose all interest.
• i help you blog – Hasn’t been updated since June 2008.  That alone is enough of a reason.
• How to Change the World – yet another blog I don’t recall why I started to subscribe to.

Celebrity Shit

• Attuworld.com – NSFW site, but the RSS feed hasn’t worked properly in months

Photography / Art

• Zoom In – Great content, but most of it doesn’t interest me anymore.
• N.Design Studio – I originally subscribed to follow the tutorials but two updates in 6 months isn’t enough to warrent a subscription in my RSS reader.
• Photopreneur – This site is about making money selling and marketing your photos, all the articles are really well written and I sell my photos, but I’ve never been able to make use of anything.
• Sawse – Cool design blog but I can’t even tell you the last time I read it.
• Confessions of a Photo Blogger – I know there is a reason I started to follow this blog but I don’t know why now.
• DSLRBLOG – Content comes here and there but the site is down currently, so it’s getting the axe.
• The F Stop – Interviews with people in the photography industry, sadly I never know who they are and don’t bother to read.  Still really well done with solid content.
• PSDTUTS – As the name implies, it’s a blog featuring Photoshop tutorials.  As much as I want to learn and follow them, I rarely do.
• StockPhotoTalk – Covers breaking news in the stock photography industry but it’s so watered down and contains such little content aside from links to other news outlets I rarely read it anymore.
• Annual Report Photographer David Tejada “The f-Stops Here” – David is an amazing photographer, his work stands on it’s on, but the blog has very little to keep me coming backand is built on Blogspot, so visually it’s not real appealing.  Sorry David.
• Feed Your Wall – FYW was a great art blog focusing on screen print artists, but after putting up a Back Soon… blog post in June, the site has been vacant.

The only tab I’m not covering now is my Gadgets / Tech tab because I honestly very rarely click on it, so the whole thing might get the axe.  This cleaning was long over-due and I feel that removing nearly 50% of all my feeds will make me a better reader for the sites I do have and make room for some new ones!

If anyone finds these newly deleted from my RSS reader sites worth following, drop a comment as to why, I’m curious to see what you like about that particular site.  For the authors of the blogs, it’s nothing personal, just trying to keep my focus in the vast sea of sites I read daily.Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Hidden gems found during yesterday’s house cleaning
• Problogger.net birthday bash and my lame attempt to get free stuff
• Republish any RSS feed on your site
• Where do all these article ideas come from?
• I will not Kill My Blog

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago.

Mr. Boutin goes on to say that the web is full of cut-rate writers and underground marketing campaigns who all but drown real writers.  Ok, so I’m not supposed to write because I don’t have a degree in it and because it’s not cool anymore?  Not as cool as four years ago, so I should stop now?  He goes on to say,

It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers.

Sorry, not a valid reason for me to kill my blog.  People write for many different reasons, my boss’s wife started a blog for her then unborn child, who is now nearly 3, and it’s always being updated.  It was intended to be read by friends and family, and so her daughter can look back at her childhood at a later date.  I started Randomn3ss because I wanted a way to write rebuttals for other blog articles I read that might not have comments enabled, to share knowledge on topics that interest me and to have a public place to rant.  Take a quick Google search for How to list an eBay auction and Randomn3ss is in the first slot, followed by nearly the same article that I submitted to J.D. Roth of GetRichSlowly for republishing on his site.  Another such Google search for Make money selling digital photos shows Randomn3ss is first again.  Proof that I did get noticed and not by just hecklers, by people searching for things that I’ve written about that they want to read about.

On with the article Paul runs down a list of the top 100 blogs according to Technorati and points out how impersonal they are, how they are nothing more than online magazines and one single blogger could never compete with the power of a full time blog team cranking out 30+ articles per day.  Again, that’s assuming everyone wants to be in the top 100 of Technorati, a site that most people who aren’t bloggers have no clue about.  Likewise, I’m OK with the fact that these online sites are where they are, they write, for the most part, quality content that has a loyal following.

Paul brings Google back into the article, saying,

Today, a search for, say, Barack Obama’s latest speech will deliver a Wikipedia page, a Fox News article, and a few entries from professionally run sites like Politico.com. The odds of your clever entry appearing high on the list? Basically zero.

But I’ve already showed that it is indeed possible for a non-professional to write an article that people will read and that does well in Google.  In fact, I’m writing this article during my lunch break at work right now.  Not a valid point in my eyes.

Another generalization Paul makes is that only the scum of the internet will find your articles and leave comments on them.  Again, this has not been my experience.  While it is true I’ve taken a beating for my spelling mistakes, I’ve admitted I’m no pro at it and put my tail between my legs and corrected them.  Spam isn’t much of an issue thanks to a back-end method of controlling those types of comments.  On the positive note, commenter’s have left some really great suggestions, ideas and feedback and I’ve met some amazing people who in turn, blog as well.  Imagine that, nice people on the internet.

Further, text-based Web sites aren’t where the buzz is anymore. The reason blogs took off is that they made publishing easy for non-techies. Part of that simplicity was a lack of support for pictures, audio, and videoclips.

I know that you are 18 years older than me Paul, but I’ve been on the internet since the early 90′s and feel pretty comfortable with saying that even by 1995, photos and music, albeit horrible midi sounds were every bit apart of the net.  I can’t even recall the last full text-based site I used. Since your article refers to 2004, did you live in a different part of 2004 than I?

Social multimedia sites like YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook have since made publishing pics and video as easy as typing text.

I agree!  But, none of them are a replacement for running a blog.  Facebook is the new MySpace, MySpace was the new Friendster.  How many people do you know that are still on Friendster?  What happens when one of these social networking and media sites deletes you from their system or no longer keeps an archive of your content?  At least buying my own server space gives me the control over backing up my content and keeping it online for as long as I choose.  Social networking and media sites are going to be here for a while, but they are not a replacement for ones own site.

Twitter — which limits each text-only post to 140 characters — is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004.

I couldn’t disagree more!  Twitter is a cluster right now.  It’s being used by people who seem to have a need to let everyone know that they can’t fall asleep at 2am and by major news outlets to spew links to their newest articles to get published.  I’ve been trying to use Twitter for a year now, I have a love / hate relationship with it but it is in no way anywhere near being a killer app.  Again, most people outside of the tech world don’t know what it is and even trying to explain it to a stranger is hard.  Your only reason for seeming to like Twitter is that it can be searched instantly without waiting for Google to index it. Have you published an article online and then searched the title in Google 15 minutes later?  Chances are pretty good it will show up.  What is an acceptable amount of time for an article to get indexed?

Bloggers today are expected to write clever, insightful, witty prose to compete with Huffington and The New York Times. Twitter’s character limit puts everyone back on equal footing. It lets amateurs quit agonizing over their writing and cut to the chase.

So because someone can’t write a clever, insightful, witty article they should instead just go to Twitter?  That makes no sense.  All the NYT does is post links to their articles, which is automated.  They don’t have someone sitting in their office [that I know of] who is responding to peoples comments on articles.  There is no conversation or long term archiving for it.  And who says I want to compete with any of those sites.  I don’t compete, therefor I can’t lose.

Ironically, the title of the article is what drew me into reading it in the paper magazine.  I wanted to know why I should Kill My Blog and a few lines into the article, I started to chuckle.  Here I am reading an article about blogging and why it sucks and I’m reading it in a 20th century fashion, a printed on paper magazine.  Who reads magazines anymore?

Paul Boutin makes his living as Senior Writer for Valleyway, a Tech Gossip Blog.  A blogger telling me to stop blogging.  Interesting…Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Problogger.net birthday bash and my lame attempt to get free stuff
• Professional blogging
• Hidden gems found during yesterday’s house cleaning
• Where do all these article ideas come from?
• Time to say goodbye, I’m cleaning house

This year’s topic is poverty, hopefully bringing awareness to this global epidemic will help open more eyes to this problem and we can all work towards a resolution.  I’m excited for the 15th to come, there should be some great articles.  I’m also looking for some guest writers for that day.  If you want your voice heard but don’t have your own blog, please contact me and let me know your ideas.  Articles can range from 150 words to well over 2,000 as long as they are on the topic of poverty.  Additionally, if anyone is making a video blog, I’d be interested in publishing those as well.

This is the offical video for Blog Action Day, lots more info is found on their official site.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Get involved, let your voice be heard, let’s start a global discussion on this!

Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Blog Action Day: Poverty in Photos
• Blog Action Day 2007 was a huge success
• Blog Action Day 2007
• Where do all these article ideas come from?
• Blog Action Day, the visual experience

—-

Tonight I plan on making a Pepto-Bismol milkshake. 2 tablespoons of Pepto-Bismol. 1 scoop of vanilla ice cream. Blend. Drink. I’m feeling nauseous. I suspect it has something to do with this grating voice I keep hearing in my head. The voice keeps repeating the word “maverick” in this God-awful accent that I can only describe as maybe the sound made by the offspring of a dyed-in-the-wool Minnesotan and a retarded polar bear. The voice stops every few minutes only to be replaced by the same irritating voice repeating “NUKECULEAR”.

Doggone it!! I would like to think that anyone with above average intelligence or even just the basic ability to think logically would have seen that her mannerisms and regurgitated talking points were obviously rehearsed ad-nauseam to a captive audience of elk and moose before ever stepping foot in St. Louis. I would like to think this. I can dream can’t I?

Ah shucks, folks… Say it ain’t so Joe, but hasn’t that down-home bullshit already embarrassed this country enough over the last 8 years? Oh, and please quit trying to convince me you’re just another “middle class” gal! I know middle class, Governor, and you my friend are not middle class. Dump the tanning bed that’s in your house, sell the airplane you own and release your tax returns and then we’ll talk. I’m sorry, but you give intelligent women in politics a bad name. I’m surprised that they are not all trying to sell their vaginas on eBay this very moment just to distance themselves from you.

P.S. I get it!! You’re trying to show me that you’re just another all-American hockey mom by passing your baby around on stage, but it’s 11:30 at night…. shouldn’t that child be in bed?Similar articles that might also interest you:

• Girl Scouts peddling cookies on MySpace
• 58% of Americans want the Bush presidency over
• Writers – 1; Musicians – 0.
• The pen is mightier than the camera?
• eBay oddity – advertise on someone’s forehead