Holiday Break Ciaos

It's been a challenge to keep blogging while my kids have been home from school over this holiday break...when is school back in session? Just kidding. I really enjoy my kids being home all day, but the balance gets way off and by the time you find new balance they go back to school again. I guess it's one of the fun challenges and the enjoyment of being a parent.

A site called Social Media Trader.com has some great information regarding social, news, and bookmark sites, statistical analysis of Digg "top" lists, and other networking information that I found informative and helpful.

Here is the link.

Click Here



I like this site because they include a link to each of the networking sites, as well as $ value. They are listed in order and it can never hurt to check each of them out.

I have a blog set-up in www.newsvine.com to test the waters there and enjoy those networking contacts.

I also use www.digg.com religiously.

I check into www.technorati.com weekly and my "authority" there is rising steadily...I have no idea how or why...I think it is due to the "ping" factor.

I check into del.icio.us and www.stumbleupon.com weekly as I find that my efforts to do more than that don't pay off for traffic to my sites like it does with Digg.

Regarding the other networking sites, it can be all-consuming to network, however I think that I may try out a couple of other sites in the next couple of weeks to see if the formats they use are conducive to my content and interest.

Here is a page with some interesting statistics regarding the "Top Diggers" from July on seomoz.org.

Click Here

I learn something more about the networking sites all of the time.

One more item for this post...

I ran across a great article about the top women in blogging that I thought I'd share. It starts with "A little while back someone said to me that blogging is a “man’s game”...I then made it my mission to compile a list of some absolutely amazing women in blogging."

Because I feel it's important that blogging is a level playing field for all sexes, I love this article at eXtra For Every Publisher(xfep.com)and include the link here.

Click Here

Keep blogging, even when the balance gets off, and the consistency will eventually pay-off and you will reach your goal(s).

Happy blogging!

"Digital Review Blog" Site...Great Find!

Here is a great location for up-to-date "Intelligent Analysis On Internet and Emerging Technologies"

Digital Review Blog

This is a great place to find out about the top tech blog sites and the top tech news.



The blogs that are listed are

*TechCrunch
*cjnet
*Digg
*Business 2.0
*ZDnet
*GigaOM
*EWeek

Take a look. I really like this site for the up-to-date info.

Happy Blogging.

Google Analytics

I have decided that I enjoy the method that Google Analytics tracks my blog data better than FeedBurner, thus far.

Some of you may have varying opinions on the subject, so please comment.

Google Analytics

The things that I like about it are that you have a complete analytical dashboard.

This dashboard is interactive and complete with line graphs showing dates and visit numbers for your blog, the number of visitors, a map overlay of the locations of your visitors, a pie chart showing where your visitors are coming from, and a content overview section so that you can evaluate what content to continue writing about based on the number of visits.

Within these areas you can get really detailed reports.

We'll just take one example of the detail reports that I happen to enjoy..."Visitors".

I click on visitors for any of my blogs and it give another dashboard with stats for the site.

I can click on "Visitor Trending" and see anything from "Pageviews" to "Time On Site".

Clicking on "Visitor Loyalty", I can find out how many are return visitors versus how many are new.

If you want to know something about your readers it is on Google Analytics.

Don't forget to use the Ping locations that I mentioned in my December 10th article. Unless you network and ping your site, the traffic is not just going to come knocking automatically.

Sunday Post, December 23, 2007

Please refer to

Issues On Call

for Sunday's post.

Please refer to

Column @ Newsvine

for issues regarding national and international politics, issues, agendas of the government, etc.

Thank you for your readership!

For Serious Articles Only...

Here is updated information regarding the Newsvine.com site that I previously mentioned...

Click Here

I've progressed from "The Greenhouse" to "The Vine" now because of articles I've written, networking, clipping, and "seeding" the vine.

News I promised regarding earnings...

"Advertising Payments

Advertising Revenue. Our services may permit registered users to post User Content to a portion of our Site that is identifiable by a third level domain name selected by the user (username.newsvine.com) called a "Subdomain". As with other areas of our Site, we may post advertisements in the Subdomain ("Ads"). In the event that we post Ads of a third party to a user's Subdomain, we will pay users as follows:

*ninety percent (90%) of the Net Advertising Revenue derived from a Subdomain that we receive from third parties (the "User Earnings") will be paid to the registered user of that Subdomain;

*ten percent (10%) of the Net Advertising Revenue (the "Referral Earnings") will be paid to the registered user (if any) that the Subdomain's user listed at registration or that we have otherwise identified as the party that referred the Subdomain's user when the account was set up with Newsvine."

They also have a great "Code of Honor"...

"1. Above all else, respect others. If you see disrespectful behavior, report it, rather than further inflaming the situation.

2. Before you write, seed, or comment, ask yourself if your contribution increases the strength and virtue of the community.

3. Newsvine is for collaborative discovery and discussion of the news, not self-promotion. Posting full articles which also appear on your blog is acceptable but seeding your own stuff is not.

4. Keep your headlines accurate and free of sensationalistic language. For instance, if you're writing a satirical piece, please follow the form: "Satire: [Headline]"; if you're seeding a story about a rumor, "Rumor: Yahoo to Buy ___" is appropriate whereas "Yahoo Buys ___" or "WTF! Oh my God!" are not.

5. Although full internationalization is important to Newsvine, please keep all articles and seeds in English until the system can properly sort multiple languages.

6. Keep Newsvine tidy by tagging for accuracy rather than for readership, editing headlines and lead-ins to be compact and descriptive, and seeding as close to the original source as possible."

I know that this seems Spammish, but this is a great site for serious article writing and serious considering of other's websites only...not just a popularity site.

It remains to be seen how much different my earnings become at Newsvine versus AdSense, but there is no insurance in any ad campaign that I have explored, thus far.

Happy blogging!

New Stuff, New Tweaks

As you can see, I've decided to change to a different template.

I hope that it is agreeable with my readers.

The reasoning behind the change is my disappointment with the inability of the previous template's flexibility with regards to widget size and placement. Additionally, the previous template caused my blog archive list to stretch extremely far down the sidebar, as well as any other text that I added to that area of the template.

I'm not sure that I love this template because there is not as clear a division between posts, however, I do feel it is an improvement from the past template.

I may change my template at Issues On Call as well, as I am not extremely pleased with its appearance. However, I have been working with the colors and layout over the past week, as well as the ad layout.

I feel that learning, based on the option of these templates, gives me a greater understanding of the details I will desire to develop on my own web domain, when the time comes.

I hope that viewing my learning process helps others in their blogging journey and that it doesn't annoy those who subscribe to my blog.

Thank you for your patience.

With regard to Feedburner...I have been able to integrate AdSense with Feedburner and that allows for additional ads to appear at the end of each "newest" post. This location is supposedly a prime location for readers to view and curiously click, however, my results have still been minimal, which is frustrating.

If you look at my Issues On Call site, at the end of each post, Feedburner has placed the ads there as well, however, with the FeedFlare option (where the ad option was first located), there is an option to include things such as, technorati, sphere, digg, etc. This shows up on my Issues On Call site but somehow doesn't show up on my Max Your Ping site. So, this will be something that I'll need to troubleshoot...Ahhh the frustration of inconsistency...probably something I did or didn't do correctly.

Additionally, my Headline Animator from Feedburner continues to circulate the titles and dates of my posts, which in turn interests my viewers in clicking on the widget. From clicking on the widget the viewer can subscribe to my post...an additional subscription option. Within the Headline Animator section, you can choose to advertise your site through Headline Animator, however, the budgets begin at $25 per month...something most bloggers are not in the blogging business for. Certainly, right now, I'd love to see my $25.00 in a check to me...lol

I have added my name to another location as well...Newsvine.com. I'm just getting the hang of it, but it seems to be a pretty serious site...not one made for match-making, but for serious article writing...right up my alley (not that you can tell from the tidbits I write here).

Here is my link so that you can see what it begins to look like
Click Here

I am still getting to know the ropes. They are pretty strict. I'm trying to find out if I can actually add any ads to my articles through Google Analytics or Feedburner, as Newsvine uses different rules which include the longevity of the user and the amount and quality of your articles and interaction.

It is an interesting site. I suggest reading up on it as another option in networking, however...let me tell you that these are serious WORK, serious ARTICLE, serious EVERYTHING networking groups and it isn't like Digg. You really have to work hard to get people into your networking group.

My StumbleUpon Tool Bar doesn't seem to work half the time, so I have a hard time integrating with that site. Plus, it seems that it is not quite the serious networking site that I'd like to be involved with, however, from time to time I still visit it and check on my friends there and network a bit. It is somewhat between Digg and MySpace. You can have some people that want you to see their work and others that want you to SEE their work...if you know what I mean. So...just an FYI.

The Yahoo networking site is one that I have not figured out AT ALL yet. It is still in Beta and I think it has a long way to go. However, I have to say that I have given the others a better try so I will cut it some slack...for now.

Digg seems to be good sometimes, and then sometimes it seems to be too much work. I get Digg burn out. I feel that there is a lot of junk that gets "shouts" to my login, mixed in with some selectively "real" news, tech, interest, etc. type stuff. However, the catch is that if you don't respond to most of the people sending you shouts in some way, you may not get the response that you want when you want something publicized. Kind of crazy. I guess it is representative of the globe, however, and I take the interesting ideas that come over as, just that...interesting.

I had one day following the writing of an article Issues On Call - Article
where I suddenly earned $13.00 on adsense from a bunch of clicks and have no idea how they came about, since I have been doing the same procedure of sending out my pings and promoting my articles this whole time. That is the most I have earned.

The earning is becoming a great deal of frustration, as I am sure it is for many bloggers. I ask myself what I am doing wrong, what I am doing right, if my articles are good enough, if my articles are the right topic, if my production is sufficient, etc.

What else can I do? If someone who is reading this has suggestions and has seen my other sites, please let me know. I am in this for the long-haul and would love some tidbits of advice on earning.

I did receive some emails tonight from affiliate groups who I sent applications to showing that I am approved, however, it may take me a couple of days to go through all of their information to make sure they are legit. I will update you and let you know the sources once I find out the results.

I find myself staying up until all hours of the night (actually into the morning) working on this investment into mine and my family's future and so, since it is now close to 1am I must sign off, hoping that this is good feedback, based on my recent experiences and frustrations.

Let me tell you something about the frustrations...they only drive me more, knowing that I can succeed because I have the drive, ambition, and best of all the TECHNOLOGY :-)

Happy Blogging!

A Bit of Humor for the Day...

This is why I sit here blogging...at home...

A Cubicle Conundrum: The Downside of Working in a Cube
Author: The Idiot Aug 13, 2007

* Being told to "Think Outside the Box" when I'm in the darn box all day!

* Not being able to check E-mail attachments without first seeing who is behind me.

* Fabric cubicle walls do not offer much protection from any kind of gun fire.

* That nagging feeling that if I just press the right button, I will get a piece of cheese.

* Lack of roof rafters for the noose.

* My walls are too close together for my hammock to work right.

* 23 power cords, 1 outlet.

* Prison cells are not only bigger, they have beds.

* When tours come through, I get lots of peanuts thrown at me.

* Can't slam the door when you quit and walk out.

* If you talk to yourself it causes all the surrounding cubicle inhabitants to pop their heads over the wall and say "What? I didn't hear you."

* If your boss calls you and asks you to come into his office for a minute the walk there is like a funeral march... people hand you tissues as you pass and refuse to make eye contact.

* You always have the feeling that someone is watching you, but by the time you turn to look they're gone.


For more humor click here

Sunday Post, December 16, 2007

For Sunday posts, please click on

Issues On Call

Thank you for your readership!

Favorite Articles, Follow-up Regarding Affiliates

Here are some of my favorite articles for today about ideas to help me with my blogging.

A No Click Necessary Alternative to Adsense
"And because it costs you absolutely nothing to sign up and benefit from the system, Pay Per Play gets our 5 star recommendation this time around."

Google Profiles
"They're coming and it will be difficult to get away without having one. Google Profiles will be integrated in most Google services so you have a coherent identity and a simple way to manage your contacts."

Now, I'm not having any luck with any of the four affiliate programs that I have attempted to sign up for thus far. They all want me to have my own domain and webpage and of course, they are willing to take care of it for a fee. All of these were affiliates that did not say that upfront in their information. I'll keep trying.

I think I'm burning myself out, trying to network like crazy. It all goes back again to managing that time. I just need to set better boundaries for myself.

Regarding affiliates...
The dish affiliate that I had ads on my site with for a few days would not let me log in after a few days and quite a few hits. They only left me a message on my gmail account with a link to their web page development department. Again, they did not have that information on their site when I first signed up. You just gotta love resources that seem to be a bit misleading, eh?...not!

I want to keep blogger as long as I can, however, I see that I may have to create my own pages sooner than I thought if I wish to make any money blogging.

Have a good Saturday Night.

Friday's Post

For today's post, please see ...

Issues On Call

Thanks for your readership.

Affiliate Directories & Interesting Articles

Well, it seems that my networking is taking much of my time these days. The more contacts I have and the more time I spend on my blog articles, the more I find that I spend on networking.

Working on my latest articles from my two blogs that I've submitted to my networking sites, I find that I am making great contacts by following-up with people (who have left their information, instead of anonymous) who have left comments.

Regardless of the comment, unless there was something extremely offensive involved, I give a simple thank you and try to look at their interests or submitted articles to see if I may add them to one of my networks to help them out. I like this more personal contact and it seems to be creating some great relationships where I have obtained regular subscribers and have subscribed to some of their blogs.

With networking, there always needs to be give and take. If you expect it all to come your direction without giving any back, expect to fail.

Additionally, I was wondering if any of you have tried Amazon.com and their "Partners" affiliate program? I have been giving it a good long try on both my sites and seem to be having zero success. Over twenty-thousand impressions on one of ad widgets, and thousands on others, but no orders, no referral fees paid, etc. I was looking over their discussion board and others seem to be complaining about the same thing, with others commenting that Amazon is just using bloggers to gather their customers for them without paying them.

I don't know if that is true. However, I am looking into other programs to try. I have found two great directories for affiliate-type companies. Be careful, however, because they will seem to be free and then you will be required to pay them to build a web-page and give you a domain, or you'll be required to purchase their tracking/reporting software, etc. Just a word of caution because it seems that every Tom-Dick-and-Harry want to offer an affiliate program.

Here are the two directories. I can't say much about them yet, since I am still exploring them myself. I will give my results once I've played around with it a bit.

Affiliate Scout

Commission Junction


Here are some interesting articles that I found that I thought I'd share regarding blogging, technology, etc. as it is important to always stay on top of the latest news if you want your blog to succeed...which you do, or you wouldn't be putting in the work in the first place.

The Next Social Network: WordPress
"Could open-source blogging platform WordPress serve as your next social networking profile? Chris Messina, co-founder of Citizen Agency, thinks so. He’s started a project called DiSo, for distributed social networking, that aims to “build a social network with its skin inside out.” DiSo will first look to WordPress as its foundation."

SEO Spammers: Leave Social Media Sites Alone!
"They always submit. They never vote/Digg/upmod anyone else’s submissions. Their submissions get 1 or fewer votes (unless they are a MASS - a Multi-Account-SEO-Spammer, in which case they will have more than one, but it will always be the same amount and always voted by the same “people”)."

Increase Earnings By Upto 30% With Google Coop & Adsense
"Here is a way that would allow you to earn higher and even turn a portion of first time visitors who come from search engine and after reading the content just close your site up."

I hope, as always, that this information is helpful and contributes to your blog's success.

Happy Blogging.

Wednesday's Post

For Wednesday's Post, please see my blog at

issuesoncall.blogspot.com

Thanks for your readership!

New Social Media Submitter Tool, YouTube Partner Program

New SEO - Social Media Submitter Tool Doesn't Perform...

Submit Your Site To Social Media!
This tool is supposed to link you to the following sites.
Blinklist
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Mixx
Newsvine
Reddit
You fill in the URL of the Site/Story, Title, Description, etc. and Submit and it is supposed to just get it out to all of them.

Unfortunately, this tool does not work. It would be great if it did, so that we all didn't have to take so much time networking and could use more time writing our blogs. Not so.

However, this does enable you to have a link to each of these sites to try them out for networking, if you wish. Let's look on the positive.

----------------------

On the positive side of news and news of opportunity...

YouTube is offering an expanded YouTube Partner Program.

Earlier in the year they launched a pilot to enable some of the most popular creators in their YouTube community a way to receive a portion of the revenue generated from the ads that run next to their videos.

Since it was so successful, they have expanded it to anyone living in the U.S. or Canada. To apply to become a partner, click on the following link and read the information and click to apply.

YouTube Partner Program Expands

Have a great Tuesday!

Optimize Your Ping Time

Optimize Your Ping Time...

Here are the sites that Ping-O-Matic will "ping" for you each time you post.

Weblogs.com
Weblogalot.com
Technorati.com
Feedburner.com
PubSub.com
Blogdigger.com
Moreover.com
Icerocket.com
Blogrolling.com
Bloglines.com (just added)

You can also choose to "ping" specialized services (see list on link)
Ping-O-Matic...Click Here

The advantage to this is your site gets more coverage faster than going to each of these locations separately. It helps to have an account set-up (free) at each of these locations to maximize your "ping" coverage potential.

Other "ping" coverage options are as follows.

Google Ping Service
"What is the Google Blog Search Pinging Service?

The Google Blog Search Pinging Service is a way to inform Google Blog Search of weblog updates. These updates are then published and shared with other search engines to allow them to discover the changes to your weblogs. In addition, Google Blog Search will add submitted weblogs to the list of blogs it needs to crawl and index."

Google Ping Service...Click Here

Pingoat
Pinging Services
A back-up to use in the case Ping-o-Matic is not available.
Click Here For Link
They "ping" the following, as well as special services listed on the link.

technorati.com
icerocket.com
weblogs.com
newsgator.com
blo.gs
feedburner.com
blogstreet.com
my.yahoo.com
moreover.com
newsisfree.com
syndic8.com
topicexchange.com
blogdigger.com
pubsub.com
coreblog.org
blogpeople.net
blogrolling.com
catapings.com
effbot.org
holycowdude.com
octora.com
veneblogs.com
bitacoras.com
technorati.jp
bakeinu.jp
blog-search.net
cocolog-nifty.com
bloggers.jp
blogoon.net
blogstyle.jp
amagle.com
gpost.info

Note: Some of the above list include foreign blog pings (not a bad thing). Additionally, I did not include in the list those pings which have been showing up as connection incomplete or error in connection.

The more exposure your blog receives, the more your advertising will pay-off.

You must remember that you need to sign up with each of the sites listed above that you would like to see yourself actually "pinged" at. They need to verify that you are, indeed, a true blog site. It is time consuming, but well worth the time.

Happy blogging.

Sunday Post, December 9, 2007

On Sundays I write my blog posts at

Issues On Call

Thank you for reading.

Opportunity Knocks

Here are some interesting opportunities for anyone trying to make money on their sites.

"What is Pay per Play?
PPP is a brief audio advertisement that is purchased by major branding and direct response content advertisers on a "per play" basis. A website owner places the PPP code on any web page where it is appropriate for a visitor to hear audio advertisements and is paid on a per play basis.

There are 2 ways you can get involved and earn:

By placing the PPP code on individual pages of your website you will now share in revenue that was formerly distributed to major television networks across the world.

By referring other website owners to place the PPP code on their website(s) you will earn a percentage of everything they earn on a residual basis.

This is a limited opportunity. Once we create our core marketing group then nobody else will be able to market this opportunity to other webmasters and earn off of their effort. This is a time sensitive offer and it costs nothing to get involved."
Click Here


Pick Bee
"...free icons with quality is sometimes hard to find. Look no more, because now we’ve selected free, quality and well designed icons that scattered on the net especially for you."

"Icon is one of important visual element for web design or application. Appealing icon can easily draw your user attention and telling message in more effective way, therefore by using them properly you can help your user quickly find information that they are looking for. A well designed icons and proper use of them surely will help increasing your website or application value which lead to increase in profits for your product and business."
Click Here


Plug-N-Profit Site
PlugNProfit
a site that is somewhat misleading, seeming that you can choose affiliate options that are free or minimal cost, however, once you get down to the bottom of the form, etc., you find that you must sign up to have them create your webpage and manage it at a cost.


Hope you enjoy these options for opportunities.

Feedburner Tweak Test

This is just a test of my tweaks on Feedburner.

For most of today my internet was down due to heavy storms. My blog that I was able to adequately complete is

Issues On Call

I'll let you know of my newest blog tweak, advertising, networking, widget, etc. findings tomorrow.

Thanks for your readership.

Manage Your Networking Time For Your Blog

Please visit natashacall.blogspot.com for this article.

Thanks for visiting!

Productivity, Analyzing, Editing...

Productivity today solely dealt with revising some of my ad layouts based on analyzing my Feedburner results, AdSense Results and Amazon Results.



Additionally, I networked on Digg, De.li.cious, and StumbleUpon, attempting to drive more traffic to my two blog sites...



http://maxyourping.blogspot.com/

http://issuesoncall.blogspot.com/



Some days become more analytical and developmental than article related.



Apologies go out to my readers for the lack of content in today's post.

However, the following is a link to an interesting new site for video sharing...

http://www.i-newswire.com/pr136188.html

Happy Blogging.

Networking Sites, Ping Sites, What is a "Ping"?

Things learned...

I added the StumbleUpon toolbar today, which makes it easy for me to submit articles and add to my profile (to keep articles on-file) that I have interest in. I found that to be a cool feature. However, word-to-the-wise when you're adding the toolbar...be sure that you don't have any tabs up that you are in need of keeping track of because you'll lose those as your internet will "reboot" (not your complete computer system...just the internet, i.e., Internet Explorer).

Additionally, I've added del.icio.us to my networking group. Their site seems, thus far, to be fairly easy to use. I've not yet had much interaction with my del.icio.us network, as that seems to be the hardest part. However, I have just begun using them and I discover new things as I go and will continue to update you. Posting items on their site is fairly easy. Adding people to your network is fairly easy.

My message regarding these sites is that networking is a necessity in marketing your blog, increasing its traffic and attractiveness to advertisers. Additionally, just because one networking site doesn't work for my blogs does not mean it will not work for your blogs.

A sight for adding "Pings" to your blog is called Weblogs.com. I signed up there to start adding "Pings" each time I add changes/articles to my sight, hoping it will drive traffic in my direction. Here is what they say about their sight...

"Weblogs.com, a VeriSign service, is a ping server that automatically notifies subscribers when new content is posted to a website or blog.

Weblogs.com is the original ping service and receives millions of pings every day from blogs that configure their publishing software to notify Weblogs.com the moment content is published.

The VeriSign-operated Weblogs.com ping server will continue to operate as an openly available service. This benefits the entire blogosphere because:
...Blog publishers can immediately notify the community when new posts are available
...Anyone can openly monitor the updated posts, enabling a wide range of intelligent blog monitoring tools and applications. "

That is the "dish" from them. I'll let you know how this experiment goes.

What is the definition of "Ping (Blogging)"? This comes from Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_blog

"Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post (or updates an old one.) That is, the tool sends an XML-RPC signal to one or more "ping servers," which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material.
Open ping servers, like VeriSign's Weblogs.com and Yahoo!'s blo.gs, let other web-services subscribe to a list of blogs that have recently pinged them.

Blog search engines can provide fresh results very quickly by polling only the newly-updated blogs. Similarly, aggregators use results from ping servers to tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material. A few of the blog aggregators that can be pinged directly include: BulkFeeds, FeedBurner, Google Blog Search, IceRocket, Technorati, and Yahoo

In addition to open ping servers, there are an increasing number of proprietary ping servers that gather information only for their own applications. Most of the major blog search engines operate such ping servers.

There is a conflict of interest here between the blogger--who wants his new post to get the widest possible publicity as fast as possible--and the web-service owner--who wants his search engine or aggregator to have new blog posts long before anyone else. As a result, bloggers have turned to services such as Ping-o-matic, which pings multiple proprietary ping servers. As the blogosphere has grown, other ping "services" have cropped up, such as Pingoat and BlogFlux Pinger."

Thus far, networking is the best tool for bringing traffic to my blog sites. I additionally tried Ping-o-matic this evening. Since I've only recently started utilizing tools for "Pinging" my blogs, I'll update you on the increase of traffice flow once I have accumulated enough data.

I continue to experiment with the different tools available to build and sustain great blogs and I will continue to give you the feedback from my experiences during these experiments, hoping that they help you have great success.

Happy Blogging!

Sunday Post

On Sundays, please refer to my posts on

http://issuesoncall.blogspot.com

Thank you.

The Daily Update..."Where's the Fire?"

I did my daily work on the networking sites and on research regarding marketing and such today. Here are some of my results.

On Technorati, their version of "hot topics" called "Where's the Fire?" has been down for well over a month. This makes the sight less attractive because there are virtually no new topics to vote on or ability to submit hot topics. Therefore, the only functions, as far as I can evaluate, are that of owning a profile, listing your blogs (having them "pinged" each time you post), and adding favorites. Posts from your favorites will flow through your home page and you can see news on the home page of Technorati. As far as favorites, thus far, I don't see that mine are networking on Technorati, due to lack of reciprocal response. I may not really know all of the ins and outs of this site exactly, however, I hope that the functionality of this site becomes more beneficial soon.

I started working in StumbleUpon today. Again, each site takes some getting used to and navigating. I haven't really figured out this one completely, or finished setting up my profile, however I did find an interesting post ( I haven't figured out how to post yet though). This post showed an interesting link

http://labs.google.com/

"Labs.google.com, Google's technology playground. Google labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time. Your feedback can help us improve them. Please play with these prototypes and send your comments directly to the Googlers who developed them."

It looks like a pretty cool link with items like...

...a whole section of great usable stuff that has "graduated from the lab"
...Google Mars (maps of Mars)
...Google Page Creator (Web Page Creator)
...Google Music Trends
...and more

Sounds like a fun playground! Have fun with that!

Until next time, happy blogging.