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Keep those posts coming! Some of my blogging tricks.

WordPress dashboard showing scheduled posts

I enjoy blogging. I enjoy both the writing side of blogging as well as the reading and interacting side of blogging. I personally think it is more pleasureable to read a blog that has a steady stream of information rather than bursts of quantity followed by silence. I believe that is one aspect of Instapundit that makes Glen Reynolds (and his rumored ghost writers) stand out. Like dead air on the radio, several days or weeks of no posts can cost your blog readership.

I collect links and tidbits as I work. When I’m researching and see something interesting I open a tab in Firefox and hold the link. My goal, of course, is to write something substantial and correlate to other sources and similar tidbits but rather than Pulitzer I often end up with a couple of sentences saying, "check this out!" I also have friends that instant message or email interesting links which go into the pool of possible publishings. And my browser homepage for Firefox is the Geek Crack site http://popurls.com/ while Internet Explorer retains the news portal iWon.

My trick to steady posting is to devote a bit of time each Sunday to making non-time sensitive posts into the future. This was a feature that Blogger lacked. On blogger, posting in the future made the information immediately available but with a future date. As you can see in the picture, WordPress handles future posts correctly! The screenshot shows my recent posts today but also reveals seven scheduled posts already written which will appear whether or not I’m frantically working, or even away from my computer. The next one arrives in 16 hours then another in 20 hours, three post in 2 days, and finally two posts 4 days from now. These non-time sensitive posts come from the links I’ve collected over the week. The scheduled posts may only be a couple of sentences but if time permits over the week, I can improve the information before their scheduled time (and being what a blog is, I can update them at any time but my style is typically to leave a post alone once it publishes).

By using scheduling features of your blog publishing software, you can have posts appear while you are at the office of a business that has a policy against blogging at work. You can keep your readers satisfied with a steady stream of good writing. By spreading your material out over time, you avoid turning your readers into skimmers because of information overload. Write steady!

Update: Swap Blog also offers bloggers some good advice.

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Profiling based on online behavior

My wife is a male under the age of 18 based on her domain name. But based on a query against her real name, she is a female between the ages of 18 and 24.

I’m a male between the ages of 35-49 based on my name. http://blog.siliconholler.com/ is gender neutral and under 18.

Michael Silence is a female under the age of 18–nice pseudonym for a female writer! KristyK is under 18 and split exactly between male and female. Big Orange Michael is a teenage male. And Barry is a female between 25 and 34. Wow! Did I ever have the wrong impression about you guys! Btw, Google happens to be absolutely written by a woman age 25-34.

I don’t have a lot of confidence in Microsoft’s Demographic Predictor.

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Understanding Net Neutrality

I posted a link called Understanding Net Neutrality which presented a video in favor of net neutrality. A commenter pointed to a video against net neutrality. Both videos seemed to leave out critical information in my mind. Tom Maszerowski point us to Larry Lessig who links us to a must watch video by Tim Berners-Lee. The summary:

Net neutrality is this:

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

That’s all. Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.

Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.

Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn’t pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.

Be politically active in your life. There is time for a simple phone call or email. Contact your representative frequently!