Tag Archives: OUR BLOGS

Article Publishing Summary 23rd May 2011

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This is a summary of my publishing activity during the last week, as well as the status of my lenses on Squidoo and my reviews on Best Reviewer.

I hope you will take a look at them and also hope that you enjoy them.

Yahoo Contributor Network

This is what I have published in the last week, enjoy:

  • The Day We Almost Won the Lottery

    Buying a lottery ticket can be an exciting experience, one that is filled with the anticipation of how your life could change if you won the jackpot. This is a story about how we almost won the lottery.
  • Could These Chinese Villagers Be Descendants of Roman Legionnaires?

    There are stories of a Roman Legion led my Marcus Crassus that was defeated in what is now Iran in 53BC. Is it possible that survivors made their way to China and settled there. People in one village have Caucasian DNA as well as Caucasian features.
  • What Happens when a Cop Steps Out of Bounds

    Police Officers are expected to respect the law like everyone else, and to help prevent crime, but sometimes they misuse their powers when something happens in their personal life. This is one of those stories.
  • Should Having Children Be Something You Earn and Not a Right?

    Society today has created groups of people who have children because they are careless as well as those who have children purely to get additional child benefits. Is our future one where being a parent might be a status that you have to earn.
  • White Tiger on the Loose a Local Offbeat News Story

    Reports that a white tiger has been spotted on the outskirts of the city you live in are not what you want to hear on the news. This is what happened in our city this weekend, but as usual things are not always what they seem in this offbeat news story.

 My traffic on Yahoo Contributor Network has really taken a dive lately, which is one reason why I quit publishing my News From A Weird World series last week.  I hope to restart this if my article popularity picks up, but writing has to be worth the effort in any case, unless it’s just for my benefit to document things of course.

You can also Click Here to see my latest articles up to date, rather than wait for the next summary posting.

Squidoo

These are my Top 5 ranked lenses on Squidoo:

I also recently created the following lenses on Squidoo:

 

Best Reviewer

Best-Reviewer allows you to create review lists and to get paid using Google Adsense Revenue Sharing.

These are the most recent Best Reviews that I have created:

 

If you yould like to create reviews of your own and earn through Google Adsense, it’s very easy, and many reviews only take 5 minutes to create.  Click HERE for more information.

How To Schedule A Post In WordPress

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The ability to be able to schedule a post in any software package that is used for blogging comes in very handy, especially if you want to be able to write posts in advance and then to have them published at a pre-determined date and time.

Just how you schedule a post in WordPress isn’t that obvious to some people though, but this short illustrated tutorial should have you scheduling your posts easily from now on.

How To Schedule A Post In WordPress

When composing a new post, the top right side of the screen should look similar to the image above.

Click on the link that says Edit to the right of Publish Immediately, and the display will change to show the Date and Time that you want your post to be scheduled as below.

How To Schedule A Post In WordPress

All that you need to do in order to schedule your post is to change the date and/or time, click the OK button, and that’s it.  Simples…

One word of advice, if you are going to schedule posts in advance, you should always make sure that your wordpress blog has been set to the correct time zone.

You can do this on the General tab under Settings on the Dashboard.

Article Publishing Summary 25th April 2011

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This is a summary of my publishing activity during the last week, as well as the status of my lenses on Squidoo and my reviews on Best Reviewer. 

Note: This is a regular Monday post on my blog, and not part of the A-Z April Blogging Challenge.

I write on a number of topics, usually it depends on what comes into my head on any given day, so it could be a travel story, memoirs from my life, something from the daily news, or even a poem inspired by something. 

In the last week I have written less than usual on Yahoo, because of the A-Z April Blogging Challenge, and I have instead been busy writing articles on our blog here, as I expect to throughout April, with 26 articles in all, each based on a different letter of the alphabet from A-Z.

I hope you will take a look at them and also enjoy them. 

Yahoo Contributor Network

This is what I have published in the last week, enjoy: 

 

You can also Click Here to see my latest articles up to date, rather than wait for the next summary posting.

Squidoo

These are my Top 5 ranked lenses on Squidoo: 

I also recently created the following lens on Squidoo:

 

Best Reviewer

Best-Reviewer allows you to create review lists and to get paid using Google Adsense Revenue Sharing. 

These are the most recent Best Reviews that I have created: 

 If you yould like to create reviews of your own and earn through Google Adsense, it’s very easy, and many reviews only take 5 minutes to create.  Click HERE for more information.

S Is For Spam Comments

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Spam is just something that we have learned to live with these days, but no matter where you look, whether it’s your email Inbox, Blogs or Blog Posts, or even Comments left on Blog Posts, there it is – spam spam spam!

Learning to deal with Spam is something that all bloggers are having to come to terms with, and for the most part it doesn’t take any effort, however you do not want to approve any spam comments, as this provides the spammers with backlinks to their sites, and adds to their value, rather than taking away from it.

Fortunately if you use blogging software like WordPress, there is an excellent plugin called Akismet, which continually adapts to spam, and does manage to catch 99% of the spam comments.   Unfortunately it also on occasion traps genuine comments, and site owners ought to check their spam comment lists regularly to make sure that there are no genuine ones that add value to the blog showing as spam.

How To Identify Spam Comments? 

This is really very easy 99% of the time.  Comments consist of 3 parts – the senders Email Address, Web Page (optional) and Comment.  Spam comments usually have an odd email address, or a web page that is trying to sell something, or the comment does not relate to the article which the comment is left on.   Often the comment is gibberish or is stuffed with keywords, and sometimes it’s huge, containing 50+ links to a spam website.

This month I have noticed a new trend on this blog, and this is undoubtedly a new tactic that the spammers are using to try and get comments approved.

Look at the image below (you can click on it if necessary to see a larger version.

Spam Comments

Spam filters like Akismet often flag comments from addresses that the blog is not familiar with as Pending, until you have approved several of their comments that is, and then following comments from them will be automatically approved.

These comments in the image are ALL SPAM, however Akismet did not identify them as such, and do you know why?   Look at the web sites that they are linking to… Bing, Yahoo… both well rated web sites.

However, look at the comment text, and every single one is full of mis-spellings, probably deliberate, who knows, and they do not relate to the articles.

If you were to approve comments like these, then the next time a comment arrives from that IP Address or Email Address, it will be automatically approved.  Now that is something that none of us want to happen is it!

Some Spam Comments are actually really funny when you read them, and this inspired me to make a collection of the best, and the result is my Funny Spam Comments lens on Squidoo.

Finally, before I allow you to leave… if you are really fed up with Spam and all the scam websites that these comments are promoting, there are ways that you can Fight Back At Spam. 

Their websites only get traffic and trick people into making purchases, for good that are invariably fake, or just never arrive, if the visitor does not realize that they are accessing a dubious site.

There is an Add-On for all the major browsers (including MSIE) called Web Of Trust (or WOT for short), and this shows a Green Circle against any website that is trustworthy, and a Red Circle against those that are not.   If you try to access a dubious site, it presents you with a warning screen, prior to displaying a dubious page, so that visitors can be warned of potential dangers.

What you can do is to (a) Install the WOT plugin yourself, (b) make sure your friends know about it, and if you come across any dubious sites, Rate Them in WOT to let others know.  This information and more can be found at Fight Back At Spam on Squidoo.

I hope this information proved useful, and helps you in the fight against spam.  The one thing I have found from participating in this April Blogging Challenge is that the number of comments that have been trapped by the spam filtering has increased dramatically. 

If it’s been happening on my blog, it’s likely to be happening on yours too.  I hope that you too will take a stand and join in the fight to battle the spammers.  If so, don’t just delete spam comments, rate their web sites down, or if nothing else, make sure that your friends are equipped with tools like Web Of Trust so that they know to not visit spam web sites.

One Week Later

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frustration out of workWell it’s one week today since I lost my job, and I have been really busy during this time, trying to get so many things sorted out, but not making even half the progress that I would have liked to.

I have a number of priorities for tasks, but so much needs to be attended to immediately and I would prefer it not to wait.

The obvious first task for me was to try to find work, so I updated my resume, posted that to several main job seeker sites that worked for me before, contacted the headhunter who got me my last two jobs, and since last weekend was a holiday weekend, I decided to wait for things to happen and to move on.

A company I worked for three years ago may need some work doing, and there are still people there that I know, so realistically this is my best hope in the short term.  I have an appointment to call the IT manager on Friday, so wish me luck.

My second priority is to get my health taken care of, since I only have insurance until the end of this month.

I desperately need eyeglasses, have done for a good five years, but never took the time to investigate.  Now when there isn’t enough light I struggle to see the computer (let alone what is on the screen – just kidding) so it’s impacting my attempts to work on my web sites and blogs.   I made an appointment yesterday, and the optician said that my eyes were good, the only problem being  my inability to see things clearly close up.  I rarely look good with glasses on, but the pair I chose seem to look ok, they just make me look a bit more serious.

Next is to get registered with a doctor, so I can have a full checkup.  I think it’s been ten years since my last one, and hopefully there is nothing wrong.  By the time you hit your fifties, things start to wear out, but I try to eat well, to exercise more than I have in years, and most of the time I feel pretty good.

The third thing I need to do is to register with a dentist.  I know I need at least two fillings, and I lost the inside of a tooth over two years ago (to a Tootsie Roll that I pinched from my daughter’s Halloween candy bag – serves me right!) so I really need to get a checkup, cleaning, and to sort out what I can.

Having got this out of the way, I need to work on creating a couple of new web sites, updating existing ones, writing more articles, promoting the lot, catching up on my email, comments from Squidoo, correspondence from Stumbleupon and other blogs etc etc.

Then of course it is Tax Season here in the USA and I need to get my tax return completed and sent in.

So while I may be unemployed, I have been really busy the past week.

In addition, rather than spend my whole day inside, getting a sore back and eyes, I have tried to go out twice a day if I can to the pool.  It’s a nice pool, rarely crowded, and if I can do 20 or more lengths at least once a day that’s good exercise, builds up my arms and helps to flatten my stomach (and it needs it too!).    I have also taken the occasional steam, and almost every night the guy I rent with and I walk around the lake here or the golf course, usually doing between 3-5 miles.  It’s nice and quiet, away from the bright lights, the stars are clear, and it helps clear the head, as well as being good exercise.

Well wish me luck please.  If you would like to keep informed as to how things are progressing, please feel free to subscribe to the blog.

Also if you could, any promotion of this blog would be appreciated, whether to Digg, Stumbleupon, or any other site.   Every bit counts…  I did register us with CommentLuv so if you comment on anything here, it will get seen on other blogs that are registered too.

Thanks so much to all of you who have sent good vibes and advice my way.  I really do appreciate it.  At times like this it’s good to know that you have friends.