General

This is weekend, and if you are still glued to your computer pretending that the world around you does not exist, here are some great articles to keep you busy.

Blogging and misc

Using Trends In Google Reader To Manage RSS Overload by Abhijeet

To Tweet or Not to Tweet? 50+ Links & Tools by Tad

How Social Proof Can Kill or Fill Your Blog by Jonathon

8 Ways To Add Value With Link Roundup Posts by Tay

How to Show You Care About Your Customers by James

Design

19 Visual Effects That Entertain And Amuse by Brian

A Comparative Study of Logo Design between the 70s and 90s. by Jacob Cass

A Plea From 16 Most Overused Fonts by Vivien

10 tips for writing graphic design briefs by David Airey

45 Photo Editing Tutorials for Photoshop by Steven Snell

Shock! Horror! I suddenly stopped ranking for many keywords in Google SERPs.

I noticed yesterday that Google, that had been sending me 200+ visitors daily, started pretending as though I didn’t even exist. I can’t figure out why it happened. Maybe it’s just some algorithmic change and I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill, but it’s equally possible that Google thinks I’m selling text link ads.

I’ve been creating web sites for four years, and I know if a site all of a sudden drops from all its rankings, there’s definitely something wrong.

Continue Reading →

And it feels great!

OK, so if it sounds too preposterous, I’m not really having sex. But according to Michael Martine (aka Remarkablogger) tweeting is as fun and as unexplainable as having sex.

Last night when I read Michael’s unique view about Twitter, I said to myself, what the heck, why not give Twitter a try and find out if it’s really so addictive? So now, I’m officially joining Twitter.

If you are on Twitter, please follow my tweets.

I’ll write a detailed post about my experience on Twitter when I’ve familiarized myself with how things work on Twitter. In the mean time, if you have good or bad things to say about Twitter, please cough ‘em up in the comments!

And our life as bloggers, my friends, is about to become a lot easier.

Here are some of the exciting new features as told by Matt:

A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting to you? Then WordPress 2.5 might be the release for you.

What’s even cooler is that Jeffery Zeldman is the man behind the dashboard redesign. This explains the way-too-cool new interface WordPress developers couldn’t have put together all by themselves.

More info and download WordPress 2.5 RC1 here.

OK, I usually don’t post about software updates and stuff on Blogging Bits, but WP 2.5 got me so excited I couldn’t resist.

Currently playing with WordPress 2.5 on my local machine.

Boy - that sounds sweet to the ears. 17 K visitors in two days!

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Getting your information from social media ensures that you never think about the dreaded information overload again.

So there is this thing called information overload that threatens to engulf our brains and rob us of our ability to make sound judgments. And there is this internet that helps this giant get even bigger.

If you ask me, this is all bull. Information never comes in such huge quantities that it becomes impossible for us to assimilate it all.

But yes, there is a lot of noise that accompanies the real information and gives us an impression as though it were all endless streams of information.

Continue Reading →

Shana discovers how everything is suddenly becoming 2.0 and how web 2.0 has changed education, outlining differences between education and education 2.0. Must read.

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Jacob Cass is giving away $5000+ worth of prizes in a graphic design group writing project. Be sure to participate in it.

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Brian Clark and Jon Morrow release a keyword research guide for bloggers. It’s not just another guide from SEO perspective. Brian goes into detail as to why keyword research holds tremendous value for bloggers and helps them choose profitable blog subjects, identify content topics that are in high demand, and spot monetization methods that work.

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Looking for a new web host? Matt has a guide that will help you find your dream host (not Dreamhost).

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Steven Snell launches a new blog about internet marketing and social media that is already chock full of great content. Subscribe to it right away!

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Naomi Dunford shares her strategy for pricing her freelance services and the reasoning behind it. Really well done as always.