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Better Blogging Link Blast for August 24th, 2007

This week’s Better Blogging Link Blast features a lot of SEO-related links (it just sorta happened that way). Also, I’ve got great links this week from Skellie of Skelliewag and someone new! Her name is Becky and her blog is PreBlogger. Check ‘em out.

Better Blogging Link Blast for August 17th, 2007

100 business blogging tools at Bootstrapper, some of which you may not have heard of nor seen collected into one convenient list.
Here’s a link to another list of links! Would that be meta-linking? Anyways, check out Must Read Link Building Posts from Search Engine Land.
This post and blog contains cussing, so if you want [...]

Better Blogging Link Blast for August 10, 2007

UPDATED: Corrected the information on Lorelle’s post about referrer spam (see the comments).

This blog isn’t all about the Benjamins, but I love entrepreneurship and creative capitalism in action, and I loved this mind-expanding post by Shoemoney about online/offline arbitrage.
Skellie over at Skelliewag offers some fantastic and very specific tips for creating signature content. I actually printed [...]

Better Blogging Link Blast for August 3, 2007

SEO is dead.
This is what starting a blog can lead to.
By way of SEO Buzz Box comes some great beginner’s blog SEO information from ex-Googler Vanessa Fox.
Chris Garrett has some excellent tips for surviving the summer blogging slump.
Skellie shows us how to Escape the Echo Chamber. Great new blog that just went into my reader.
Go, [...]

Blogging Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Picture this scene in your mind’s eye: a group of old farmers, diligently at work in the fields. Their heads are down. They’re concentrating on what they’re doing. They don’t even see the marching horde that’s approaching. A force armed with superior technology and youthful strength. These poor hardworking farmers are about to get their [...]

Want More Traffic for Free?

Chris Lodge over at Blog Op has brought to my attention a new site called Fechr (pronouced feature), that uses a frame to display your site and expose it to new people. Sites are displayed on the Fechr start page for an entire 24 hours, and they are chosen randomly. Eventually, this is going to [...]

The Better Blogging Best of July 2007

The best posts and links here on Better Blogging with Michael Martine for July 2007.

Better Blogging Link Blast for July 27, 2007

Another big list of blogging links for the pro blogger and for beginning bloggers!

What’s So Great About Your Blog?

Do you know what’s so great about your blog? You’d better!

Better Blogging Link Blast for July 20, 2007

Better blogging links for the week ending July 20th, 2007. Includes links about Firefox add-ons for blogging, SEO tips, AdSense tips, Microsoft AdCenter, and more!

Better Blogging Link Blast for July 13, 2007

Links about whether social bookmarking buttons are useful to bloggers, what we wish we had known when we started blogging, strategies for AdSense, and how backlinks really work.

Better Blogging Link Blast for July 6, 2007

Weekly link roundup: links to AdSense preview tools, how to manage your blog, how to do your About Me page, and more!

Seven Keys to Better Blogging

Michael Martine lays down the seven key areas of improvement every blogger needs to know.

The Real Problem with Sponsored WordPress Themes

What is the real problem is with sponsored WordPress themes? Find out!

My Take on Sponsored WordPress Themes

Sponsored WordPress themes have stirred people up. Are paid sponsor links built into a free WordPress theme a good idea? Here’s my take.

New Free WordPress Theme: New Territories

New Territories is a free WordPress theme or blog template. Download it for free!

New free WordPress theme coming soon…

I’m nearly done working on it. I can’t wait to make it available.
Update 2: Okay… sometime soon, then.
Update:Looks like this weekend will be when I make the new theme available. It’s called “New Territories.”
Technorati Tags: wordpress, themes, templates, wordpress theme, wordpress template

Google goes after arbitrageurs

Google doesn’t like your business model… if your business model is AdWords/AdSense arbitrage. Recently, Google began cracking down on sites that advertise on the Google AdWords program to attract visitors who come to a website containing Google AdSense ads. The idea is that the site owner makes money from the difference between the cost of [...]

Looking for themes?

I’m not really into that so much, anymore. The pages still exist, but there are no direct links to them in the navigation here. You can get to them by following a link to them from other sites. I’m not going to just deny people who come looking for them by clicking on one of [...]

Seth on the Cheap!

I’ve always liked what Seth Godin has to say about business and marketing, and today he has a great little post about pricing and “cheapness:”
Cheaper is the last refuge of the person who’s not a very good marketer.
I agree. Cheaper isn’t better. Better is better!
Technorati Tags: seth godin, marketing

Who’s Using My Themes? Citizen Journalists in India

I often check the incoming links in my WordPress dashboard to see who’s using my free themes (they all have links back to me in the footers). I like to see what people are doing with them. I especially love to see how people modify them. The other day it occurred to me that if [...]

How to Ban Spammers by IP Address in WordPress

I don’t even get all that much spam (Bad Behavior seems to work pretty well), but of course it’s always annoying when I do. One thing I never understood was that WordPress would only let you ban by IP address if you added that IP to the comments blacklist. Why isn’t there an option when [...]

New Free WordPress Theme: Autumn Street

I know it’s a little out of season, but this one’s the first one I’ve finished from the free themes I’m working on. It’s called Autumn Street. I took the masthead picture myself with my Olympus C-70 6.1 mp and tweaked it in Photoshop.
Download the Autumn Street theme .zip file

Building Blog Traffic the Hard Way

Just stumbled upon this guy, T. L. Pakii Pierce. Great little article about how the social and reputation aspects of blogging help you build traffic moreso than any kind of SEO formula.
This post originally published Feb. 3, 2006 at Blogvein, a metablog I’m folding into this one.

Michael Martine 3.0

Yep, I’m doing it again. I’ve decided to focus on WordPress theme development as a niche. You’ll see a change in post content, plus new free themes and more info on custom theme work. I’ve worn more blog hats than most, but you know, you keep going it until it fits right and looks right.

Thought-Controlled Devices with NeuroSky

NeuroSky is a new company that creates external thought-controlled devices. Another step in the rudimentary beginnings of a NUI, or Neurological User Interface.
Technorati Tags: neuroscience, NUI, user interface

Warbots Becoming Commonplace

The first gun-toting robotic combat soldiers set to be deployed:
Unlike many of it’s flying robotic (UAV) brethren, the weaponised Talon is not autonomous, being under the direct control of a soldier watching from up to a mile away through an array of cameras which can include both night and thermal vision. SWORDS is completely silent, [...]

Theme-a-rific

Just learned that my Sapphire theme is now available for Wordpress.com users. Cool. Thank you, WordPress!

The Future of the User Interface is the Future of Computing, Part 3: Avatar Agents, Therapists and Monitors

Continued from Part 2.
Once we reach the point of the CUI (Conversational User Interface), interacting with computers will more and more like interacting with intelligent beings. Computers will seem to be more personable and will seem to possess intelligence long before they actually reach a point where they could seriously be considered as autonomous self-aware [...]

The Future of the User Interface is the Future of Computing, Part 2

This is a continuation of some ruminations I began in Part 1.
Once the NUI (Neurological User Interface) revolution begins, we may see some strange social trends, unique opportunities, and unique problems emerge, such as:

Avatar therapists and monitors
Processing inequalities
Hyperwealthy and subsistence-level poor classes
Naturals backlash movement
Mind control terrorism & intelligence operations
Cyborg-ization of military forces
Reality hacking for crime, [...]