Alanz Eyes

Blogging and blog networks

2 comments January 29th, 2006

I’ve just been thinking recently about what I’m doing with this blog, and the others that I’ve created and experimenting with. This blog, Life Through My Eyes, was an extension of my online journal and all those various topics that are of interest to me. Over the past few months, however, I’ve been creating other blogs for other reasons, mainly for more focused content, and exploring the value of those more specialised blogs. Some of the content I’ve been working with on this has been transferred over to their own blogs.

I realised last week that I’ve been creating a ‘blog network’, and now I’m looking at how I can take advantage of that too. Mainly by allowing each blog to focus on its own focused content, and yet each blog promoting the network, allowing people to move around amongst the blogs wherever their interests take them. I’ll be working on that concept over the next few weeks, developing it better than what it currently is.

50 strategies for making yourself write

Add comment January 27th, 2006

4 mistakes to avoid when writing articles

Add comment January 27th, 2006

Poor headline

Straight away you must capture the reader’s attention with the headline, or title of your article. If you’re not sure what to write for the headline, then wait until you’ve finished writing the article. The theme of the article can help you decide what the headline is going to be. Keep it short, but descriptive. Use important keywords.

Poor beginning

Federation’s End (story) - #5

Add comment January 27th, 2006

Reunion

“Freeze!” was the loudly voiced command from the two men that came rushing through the door, pointing large phaser rifles at Duo. They were quickly followed by another 3, all of them wearing Starfleet security uniforms, enhanced with light body armour and tactical helmets.

Duo froze, for a second, then slowly turned to face the security officers. It only took him a few seconds to assess the situation, and it didn’t look good. There was no way he could overpower five armed guards, even if they hadn’t been wearing armor, in his present condition there was just no way.

Title tags and optimising for search engines

Add comment January 27th, 2006

Title tags are those words that you can see at the top of your web browser. They tell search engines what the page is all about.

Search engines love titles. In fact, they love them so much, that they’ll reward you for having a descriptive title by taking more notice of it. The result of this little reward is that you’ll end up near the top of the search list when people are searching for words or phrases that are included in your title, and you’ll get more people visiting your site.

Federation’s End (a story) - #4

2 comments January 26th, 2006

Coming Home

Jupiter loomed large in one of the transport’s many view screens; it’s rings glistening in the radiance of the distant sun. Getting here had taken more than he could have imagined, and help from places he never would have expected.

Friends, he mused silently, looking down at the identity document that had his face, but another name on it. Even friends who he’d long since given up on… he would’ve never gotten this far without them.

Attack of the blogs

3 comments January 26th, 2006

There’s a lot of talk in the ‘blogosphere’ over the past couple of days, but particularly today, about Darren Rowse of ProBlogger having his paid-for-and-copyrighted design stolen and used by Vince Chan of AmBlogger. A number of people have entered the fray, on one side or another, with one of them being ‘chartreuse‘ who suggests that Darren, instead of demanding the design be changed, should have just asked for a link back to his own site as the inspiration for Vince’s blog design.

While I can see the value of the argument that imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and that imitating something is only increasing the exposure (and value) of the original, I can also see the value of the opposite argument, where someone paid a good deal of money to create and copyright what is theirs, and as a result they don’t want that stolen by anyone else.