Gadgetopolis

Published by Eric on October 3, 2008 in General. 0 Comments

Hello friends, Eric here. I recently inherited the gadget beat here at BlogBurst. It’s a good fit for me — I had an iPhone on Day 2, I have Wiis and Zooms and Cameras, Bluetooth is my buddy, WiFi is my friend. I’ve gone to CES twice. I went to the Gadgetopia that is Japan this summer (with my band!). Heck, I even have (and love) a Kindle.

Ah, but the gadget beat is cruel. I have a perfectly wonderful bicycle - strong enough to hop a curb, light enough to get me all over town. Why oh why should i suddenly be coveting a Mountain Bike made of Bamboo? I have fought and clawed to erase the last decade of questionable fiscal policy from my monthly credit card statement, only to start filling my delicious account with links to USB hollywood film kits and Wii Light sabres? My crock pot works just fine thank you, but this one is so much cooler.

Alas alack, there is nothing for me to do but do my best to not fall in love and continue plugging away through all of the excellent gadget reviews BlogBurst members generate every day. Of course I’m not sure if I can afford to not buy my very own indepenedent power station. I will save so much money!!!

What about you guys — has anyone noticed any great gadgets that I can’t live without?

BlogBurst Bloggers Provide Hurricane Ike Coverage

Published by Daysha on September 17, 2008 in BlogBurst Success Stories. 2 Comments

Hurricane Ike swooped in to the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend and forced millions to evacuate their homes for safety. Those that were not directly impacted by high winds and rain were forced to flee for higher ground, as the storm surge submerged many coastal towns and communities. For the first time in hurricane history, the term “certain death” was used as a warning by government officials who feared that they could not help those who remained in Ike’s path. Days after Ike’s departure, many communities are still without power; some are without homes.

ikeonchron.JPG   ikeonusatoday.JPG

Publishers including USAToday and the Houston Chronicle utilized posts from BlogBurst network members to provide active coverage before, during, and after Ike’s landfall. Thanks to our BlogBurst members in the area that blogged during the storm and offered valuable insight to readers that were seeking information.

To our BlogBurst network members located in communities along the Gulf Coast, we hope that you and your families are safe. For those that would like to contribute to relief efforts, please visit the American Red Cross to learn more.

2008 Blog Action Day

Published by Daysha on September 11, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 7 Comments

Since 2007, coordinators for the non-profit event Blog Action Day choose a topic of global significance and challenged bloggers to dedicate one post to the subject on a particular day.

The 2008 Blog Action Day will be held on October 15, 2008 with a call for posts on the issue of poverty. As of 1:00pm CST on September 11th, there were more than 3,900 blogs and more than seven million RSS readers committed to the endeavor.

Blogburst network members participating in the 2008 Blog Action Day include Techcrunch, Mashable, Teeth Maestro, Dave Lucas’ Notes, White African, RotorBlog.com, Everything and Nothing, PROFY, Ari Herzog, Quick Online Times, Serge the Concierge, eHub, The Savvy Entrepreneur, Interactive Agency Malaysia, Gather Little By Little, Constitutionally Right and Urban Workbench. Did I leave you out? Let me know in the comments section below!

From the organizers:

In 2008, the Blog Action Day theme is Poverty. Bloggers are free to interpret this as they see fit. We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.

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Last year’s focus on the environment resulted in the creation of more than 23,327 articles authored by 20,603 blogs. Not only did the event attract support from organizations such as United Nations Environmental Programme, the European Union Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas,  but it also resulted in topic coverage on mainstream media sites like Reuters, Fox, BBC, and Star Tribune.

Interested in contributing? Visit www.BlogActionDay.org for more information.

Parties Reach out to Bloggers for Convention Coverage

Published by Daysha on September 5, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 1 Comment

Image Courtesy of Flickr: jurvetsonAccording to the list found on the Democratic National Convention Web site, of about 400 applicants, more than 120 bloggers were credentialed to cover the 2008 DNC in Denver. For the 2004 convention in Boston, the DNC credentialed only 30 bloggers. Once dismissed as just an “echo-chamber” for the latest news and commentary surrounding hot topic stories, blogs have emerged as an important cornerstone of community journalism, as well as an important media resource to rally support and spread a political messages within and across political party lines.

Congrats to the following BlogBurst network members who were credentialed for coverage by the DNC:

All Spin Zone

African American Political Pundit

BAGnewsNotes

Beliefnet’s God-o-Meter: God, Faith and Politics

Casting Stones: A spirited conclave on politics

Blue Jersey

Burnt Orange Report

Calitics

culturekitchen - fresh dissent served daily

DALLAS SOUTH

Fired Up! Missouri

Georgia Politics Unfiltered

goodCRIMETHINK: Baratunde’s blog

 

HispanicTips

MichiganLiberal

MOMocrats

Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Scholars & Rogues

TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime

Democrat Taylor Marsh blogs politics

Iowa Independent

The Seminal

The Utah Amicus

Think Youth

Towleroad

VivirLatino

According to the National Journal:

Four years ago, Republicans credentialed about a dozen bloggers, and Democrats registered a little over 30. In 2008, Republicans expect to host as many as 200 bloggers in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Image Courtesy of Flickr: Dan PattersonUnfortunately, the Republican National Convention coordinators have not released the full list of credentialed bloggers for this year’s convention. Research indicates that RedState.com, Hot Air, TownHall.com, TechRepublican, GrizzlyGroundswell.com, TheNextRight, JoshuaTrevino.com, JohnFeehery.com. NewsBusters, Arkansas GOP Wing, The American Mind, Wonkette, Bearing Drift, and The Dead Pelican were among the many selected to provide active coverage.

If you were credentialed for the 2008 RNC, give us a shout in the comments section below.

Blogging and Beijing

Published by Tina on August 20, 2008 in General. 3 Comments

I don’t watch much television but I really enjoy the Olympics! Okay, yeah…enough with the beach volleyball. It’s good but come on. And yes, some of the up close and personal features are way overboard, but the competitions themselves are facinating and often inspiring . I joined the local YMCA after the 2004 Olympics because I got so intrigued with the swimming events, and while Michael Phelps probably wouldn’t be impressed, I can do “the turn” and trust me, it’s cool.

Work and TV schedules often interfere with my Olympic intake so I turn to the blogosphere for help.

Some BlogBurst bloggers have provided some amazing coverage:

Beijing Olympic Games 2008

The Olympics

Fourth-Place Medal, Yahoo! Sports Olympics blog

I also found an article listing some of the olympic athlete’s blogs. Anybody know of any others?

Some nice words about Blogburst

Published by Dock on August 8, 2008 in Blog Industry News, General, Placement Opportunities and Promoting Your Blog. 2 Comments

Howdy folks-

Looks like we got a nice write-up about Blogburst from impNERD.  It is always nice to be appreciated, and in particular I truly think that the piece places the correct emphasis on the value of Blogburst.

Indirectly, the SEO value is amazing. The more eyes that view a post the better. If your post is picked up, you have the potential of tens-of-thousands of eye balls glaring at your post. A few of them might own blogs. They might also click-through to your website and link to it.

The true objective of Blogburst is to get exposure for the everyday blogger. There are certainly some nice knock-on effects, and it never hurts to get some extra quarterly cash if you’re a top performer in our system, but the core purpose for Blogburst is to get a blogger out in front of as many people as possible.

Having this purpose recognized, and reinforced, is a pleasant event. Furthermore, we are always looking for new publishing partners and methods with which we can syndicate and distribute the content within Blogburst - content that we believe to be of high quality, and worthy of distribution.

Kudos to impNERD!

Blogger’s Influence on Print Media

Published by Daysha on July 30, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 6 Comments

According to study conducted by media research analysis firm Cision, the mention of blogs in national magazine and newspaper publication has increased more than 16-fold over the last five years. Of the top 20 publications reviewed, blogs and bloggers were mentioned more than 13,000 times during a one-year period ending June 2008.

Image courtesy of Cision

From Cision’s press release:

“This stunning growth in blogger influence magnifies the importance of employing common sense when contacting bloggers,” said Peter Granat, Cision Executive Vice President. “Knowing the blogger and his/her focus is the critical element in a successful blog relations campaign. While many blogs are highly visible in their own right, the growing influence with the mainstream media elevates their importance.”

A recent survey conducted by public relations firm Brodeur Partners found that 57% of 178 journalists contacted read blogs at least 2-3 per week. 18% read blogs on a daily basis.

The PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey revealed that nearly 40 percent of the participating journalists employ blogs to find topics for stories, 30 percent use them to find experts, and nearly 58 percent use them to measure sentiment.

Click here to read the full article.

Leaderboard Update

Published by Daysha on July 19, 2008 in General. 8 Comments

Dear BlogBurst blogger,

We wanted to update you on upcoming changes we are making to the BlogBurst Leaderboard compensation model. Based on your feedback, we will be changing the measurement used for placement on the Leaderboard headline impressions only, effective July 19, 2008 .

When we originally rolled out the Leaderboard in 2006, it was based solely on headline impressions. In 2007 we experimented with a Leaderboard algorithm that used both headline impressions and click-through rates. Based on the questions we received, many of you found this calculation confusing and preferred the previous method of measurement. So, we’re changing it back to better reflect what our members have told us is the preferable system.

We hope you’ll find monitoring your progress both on the Leaderboard and your reports easier to understand as a result of this change. Your performance from July 1 until July 19, 2008 will be measured using the old system and will be blended into your overall results for Q3 so that you don’t lose out on any placements during that time period.

Thanks for helping us make BlogBurst the best it can be for Publishers, Bloggers, and Internet users. As always, we’d appreciate any additional feedback or suggestions you might have to make BlogBurst a more fulfilling and valuable service.

For more detailed information on the Q3 Leaderboard formula change, please visit our FAQ at blogburst.com.

Be a BlogStar

Published by Tim on July 11, 2008 in Blog Writing. 19 Comments

We just came across this post So You Want to Be a Blogging Star on NYTimes.com, which serves as an excellent primer on how to write and keep a successful blog.

Here at BlogBurst central we look at blogs all day, of course, and these points are spot on:

  • Don’t do it to get rich (but blog passionately and rewards will follow)
  • Blog about your passions, and in your own voice
  • Fit blogging into your daily schedule
  • Join the community
  • Plug yourself

The best thing about the suggestions above are that they’re geared toward fitting your blog into your life and building it slowly over time. We see scores of blogs that are well written and fit a niche, but which don’t last more than a couple of months. The truth is, it’s hard to sustain an extracurricular activity like a blog, especially when blogs don’t make you money unless / until they get popular (which usually takes a long time).

If you have other recommendations for blogbuilding, leave them in the comments below!

Casey Jones, you better… watch your feed

Published by Dock on June 21, 2008 in Blog Tools & Technology, BlogBurst Nuts & Bolts and Troubleshooting. 2 Comments

The modern world giveth, and the modern world taketh away. We clearly live in an era where the ubiquity of computers brings new experiences to a greater and broader base of people all over the world. Unfortunately, not all of these experiences are good ones. A disturbing new trend involves hacking feeds, and appending a thoroughly un-subtle collection of less-than-savory links to someone’s feed. Perhaps the most unpleasant aspect of this is that unless the blogger in question is looking at his or her feed output, this can go entirely unnoticed.   

So, yes - go ahead and look at your feed’s output. Now. 

If you spot the problem, my advice would be to start de-activating any plug-ins or add ons one at a time, and see if that changes the feed. (You’ll want to save any changes you make, and then refresh the page with which you’re viewing the feed each time. Yes, it is somewhat annoying - but so is getting hacked!) 

If that doesn’t rectify the situation, you’ll almost certainly want to talk to your blog platform’s support folks. If you’re an intrepid sole proprietor, responsible for all aspects of your blog and web hosting, well… you may have your work cut out for you. 

Did I mention that it’s always a good idea to make regular back-ups? If your blog gets so deeply hacked that you have to start fresh, you’ll be very glad you have backups. You’ll be equally sorry if you do not. 

While I’m talking about feeds, I would like to mention Feedvalidator, and specifically its use alongside Blogburst. When looking at your feed, there are a few methods by which you can have a gander at it. You can generally open it in a new browser window (and I think all browsers now will format it for you such that it doesn’t look like XML, but is readable) or you can use an RSS aggregator such as Google Reader. 

For general purposes (like seeing if the feed is broadcasting at all) either method is fine, but for discovering whether your feed is Blogburst-compatible or not, those methods are lacking a bit.   Browsers may or may not show you the full feed (Firefox seems to enjoy truncating the articles in its own way) and RSS readers are specifically built to digest the widest variety of feeds - feeds that can vary wildly in quality.

Google Reader in particular is incredibly forgiving and omnivorous in that regard - good for reading feeds of questionable quality, but very bad for diagnosing problems, as it masks problems - by design.  Blogburst syndicates feeds out to major publishing sites - so we really cannot afford to take in feeds that may not be well formed.

Blogburst is therefore rather unforgiving as RSS syndicators go; this is to prevent a feed of questionable structure from, say, taking down a major web site by displaying a malformed feed. (Believe me when I say that this scenario is very “exciting” in a bad, bad way.) 

Feedvalidator is a tool that’s just as strict as Blogburst is. If it passes muster at Feedvalidator, it is almost certain to work in Blogburst. It is very easy to use - pop your feed URL in the single text box, hit one button, and there you have it.  My favorite thing about Feedvalidator is that not only will it show you any problems that it finds, but it also will (via links, line by line!) give you suggestions as to how to fix the problems. 

Feedvalidator really is one-stop shopping for feeds, and I rely on it rather heavily. If your feed ever becomes problematic, I highly recommend Feedvalidator - it is very likely to show you the way to fix it. Give it a shot! I know you want to…