education & tech

Doug Belshaw has envisioned a unique project which has been aired only once but, as he put it, 'few problems which delayed getting the the first EdTechRoundup Weekly show out until today.'

You read it. They’ve decided as a group that their weekly Sunday meetings contain enough ideas and useful discussion to start getting it out there as podcasts.

Conversations about using tecnology in education are being presented this Sunday at 8pm BST (July 6th, your local time) and the invitations are for everyone in the blogosphere.. Belshaw has promised the rounding up will be about what they’ve found useful in the world of educational technology now, but they also have a special guest, Mike Jones!

If you are able to attend please do it so, If not, at least hear the podcasts.

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

Internet has changed and keep things changing every day. Five years now, I had the opportunity to meet young interesting people worldwide, thanks to the hacks it was possible to introduce to the old Blogspot platform.

All of these talented guys had stop working on the new Blogger platform, although they still keep blogging on particular issues developed by Google people and its Blogger in draft fancy project.

Some remain giving out advice on how to teak Blogspot templates. We used to collect all templates we thought deserved special attention. Lately, however we've also give it a stop. The reason, there are lots of templates out there where you can pick and start running your own blog almost immediately. Great bloggers provide this missed assistance nowadays: BlogU , Beautiful Beta and Bloggerbuster.

It's hard to explain in a single post, all three new features offered since last week in Blogger in Draft, at least we can begin with the explanations from Flisha Fernandez, who's currently finishing her last year of Masters in Computer Science at the Ateneo de Manila University. Random Detoxification is her blog and she's worked out one of the features we've talking about here. How to embed a Comment Box in Blogger.

Head over her blog to learn how to deal with it. Be aware, though, this how-to works only with Blogger in Draft enabled, " If, however, you downloaded a customized Blogger template from another site or made your own changes to the template, doing this won't work", she explains.

What are the blogs you've found useful in order to built your blog on Blogger?

If you want to receive our future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, please Contact Me at anytime.

Steve Rubel is PR guy well respected by us and we trust him when he says, "despite what some think, I am not being paid by Friendfeed to endorse their service."

While some people are flocking to Plurk (rival of Twitter) some others are holding to lifestream.fm However, Friendfeed is also useful if you want to work around social networks. Bloggers are being signaled as journalist by some and as pastimers by others, but at the end, bloggers have voice and are being listened. Let's take Steve word: "People are increasingly turning to their peers for news, information and recommendations. And Friendfeed is more than an aggregation site or a community that's layered on top of others. It's a recommendation engine that surfaces content (both pro and amateur) via your peers - and that's huge. Sure there are things wrong with it, but I believe Friendfeed is incredibly disruptive. It's the next big thing online for consumers. It may even become the next Google."

Well, I am not so sure about his last assertion but Friendfeed has a long way and if you still don't have an account , just try it and feel free to add or subscribe to ours!

This is the second part of a Spanish post we published here. The authorship correspond to John Metzler, head of Fresh Promo; which we reproduced, because TonNet considers many bloggers are still in the first steps to build up credibility and authority with their blogs.

The post in reference can be traslated in the same other Spanish page and it was referred to: How to create Search Engine-Friendly Content and Choosing Your Keywords Wisely.

Get Others to Link to Your Blog

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of ranking well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a mom & pop shop or less reputable page.

If your blog has useful content and is doing something unique, you're already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your blog, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won't be of much use in competitive fields. Buying links, if you haven't heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

>Issuing special event releases with a link back to your site.
>Submitting to reputable business directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com
>Be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas.
>If you have friends with blog sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a "visible" section
>Participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature.
>Write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your bio (Guest posting).
>Get involved and active in social media and bookmarking.

Don't Fall Behind to the Social Media Revolution

The collaboration between Internet users and the development of online communities is at an all-time high. Social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati offer users a way to store their favorite pages and media online, and share it with others. These services also provide a way to promote your own blog or create a buzz over a event or service. Creating a Myspace page or Squidoo "lens" is also a way to network and share information.

The key to using social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage is to not be shy. Network with other users, bookmark and share useful content, create eye-catching titles for your entries, and tell your friends and co-workers to vote on content you have on these sites.

These points are a general guideline to follow for SEO. If you want to perform a profesional search engine optimization, experts are a good outsourcing option in competitive blogosphere, while the DIY attitude can yield great results for blog owners with small income budgets. So, if you're in the latter group, hopefully this post will help you to get started.

Tags: SEO, blogging, 101

Two posts of fellow bloggers had been in our spotlight, not the one about selling a Twitter account which bids in eBay over pass the one thousand dollars and going up!

One of these post was written by Sumesh and he claims that most bloggers are only echoing the blogosphere, in fact, he says "Blogs like TechCrunch and ArsTechnica often get inside scoops of upcoming events, and post them to their blogs." but justify at the same time, that echoing for large blogs as the well know TechCrunch.

This assertion comes in had with that one written a while now by Rubel and that we commented here. Certainly we have to agree with both Sumesh and Rubel about the laziness and the echo chambered situation; unfortunately, as the same Steve wrote on these days about how the blogosphere was plagued by marketers which of course damages the quality of what's been said in the blogosphere, because those persons are interested not in info and freshness of content but hits and advertisement. Some had make prognosis of the over saturation of Internet into ten years. How this spam blogs and mirrors and the best cases are helping to this phenomena? I invite you to scratch an answer.

Now, if blogosphere is being affected by unimportant blogs, what will happen with those who decide to migrate platform, erase a blog or simply open an account, but after a few days or months decide it is not worth to keep writing on their respective pages? The answer is being elaborated by a prestigious Spanish network, the Spanish Blogger Union (UBH), the editor of this mega blog thinks nobody should erase a blog and her post is addressed particularly to free hosting blogs such as Blogger and Wordpress. Carmen, the editor suggests, she'd found many cases where old domains were re-owned for people who are not doing a good use of the Internet. When people erase a blog in Blogspot, somebody else can get the subdomain, a matter that it's not an issue in Worpress because they don't allow new users to take over old subdomains.

From our personal experience, we can add not only you shouldn't erase your blog but when editing content don't just change it, write o note that explains you had introduced some change either, the post or title of a post. Why? Because it will be prejuicial of other bloggers who already wrote a link back to you.

Have a wonderful weekend and please, head over lifestream and follow our conversations there.

Technorati: micropersusion, techzilo, ubh, blogger, wordpress, tips

This is our gratitude for the person who's made this blog not only look nice but very professional (not money down). eBlogTemplates is holding a contest from now until March 16th, 2008. As the post says, all bloggers are in call just make sure your Wordpress selection are under Open Source and it is a in a blog-style format.

After finding what you think is the winning template, paste the template name and url where it can be demoed and downloaded from in the comments box below. Make sure there’s not already the same template suggested otherwise the person who first submitted it will only be considered. If you’ve designed your own template feel free to suggest it as well. Just make sure it’s really cool and high quality otherwise it might be removed from the list

So, join in David W Cowhill and help him help others to get a nice Wordpress theme converted into Blogger code. We have plenty of time to participate and choose among those thousands of nice looking Wordpress designs.

Technorati: wordpress, themes, blogger, blogspot, blogger+templates

You will find many bloggers who write and promote business and adverstisement in serious way and with lawful procedures but what's happening with a innumerable Spanish weblogs is tough and the law needs to intervene and work to sanction these kind of attacks, these always heated 'fishing' affecting our normal lives and properly established business.

The original post hung in Genbeta.com was: "Do you want to know by who you've been not admitted to the MSN, so don't give out your password to strangers". The post was written in Spanish and because of the attacks Genbeta is down but you still can see it in Google cached page.

Our concern has geared because the note we've got it from a well established blogger and professor in Spain, Enrique Edans. As right now, his page is not accessible and in his last post he's reporting the same issue with weblogssl.com where he claims to have some small shares. This is an excerpt of his post:

Recently, the entry began to be well positioned in Google, and the company received a number of threaten e-mails, asking them the withdrawal of the content under the threat of a DDoS attack. The threat has proved to be true, as of last Sunday, Genbeta began to suffer attacks of this kind which have been rising in intensity to affect every part of the data center, owned by NTT Communications Europe. The analysis of this attacks has already allowed to get enough information that I can not provide in order not to jeopardize investigations on the matter, this is a matter related to the lumpen stratum and the most nasty and dirty part on the web.

What they're doing is called an attack DDoS and for those not familiar with this terminology it's a way to attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users by generating an overload of traffic which on time prevents the site from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Microsoft is taking actions and for more of this thread , please visit the Spanish blogosphere or keep track of events through Technorati.

It may sound hilarious but it's truth. We are open for feed exchange, just leave a note or email us your interest. I've found quite interesting what Kumowai has posted today and I think you might be interested in some exchange, as far as your content is good, related, and traffic are alike ours. Why not give it a try.

If you re-post it, please mention the name of the blog where you've found it. Let's make it viral. Yes, I know, nothing to be with education and technology but what about if we don't have readers? We don't collect money, our only single satisfactions id to be read or to be seen. Don't you?

Here, the transcription of Toast & Egg & Me:

Would you like to exchange feed?
Exchange feed please.
Do you want to exchange feed?
Come and exchange feed.
You subscribe my feed, I subscribe your feed.
Please exchange feed with me.
I hope to exchange feed with you.
Can you please subscribe to my feed?
Feel free to subscribe to my feed.
Subscribe to my feed if you like the post.
Let us exchange feed.

Small bloggers can also have a descent readership!! Don't just pile feeds as you can see in the right corner of this post. Share it, spread it, enjoy it.

A few days now, I was reading some posts about a new term that it's becoming viral in the Internet: The Micro celebrities. At least, that's how Scoble define a blogger with a deep knowledge in particular field of expertise. You all know, we have millions and millions of blogs and in all different languages, but how is it possible to become a celebrity just being a blogger?

First of all you need to have guts to keep up with your writings and the process of searching new and updated information. Not the info you can get from the very first blog but trusted sources that respect privacy and copyrights where is necessary. No wonder your reader don't leave comments, they will leave them after you show expertise or authority. Watch out the Lazysphere.

First thing you need to do is host a blog. Yes, that's easy you might say. What it's hard to find is the name and the field you're going to cover. You don't want a simple personal blog for such a celebrity. So, consider Kyle Eslick, as to how find a good domain name. Look for these topics: The Domain length, Memorable, Easily Spelled, Includes Keywords and Avoid Plurals. Then, if you still need help, subscribe to a wide community bloggers where you are going to get support for keep going. A good resource is Bloggst.

Make yourself noticed online, but most importantly, don't get discouraged if someone comes to tell you that your writings 'stink', that they disagree with you in many points or in the worst case scenario they steal your postings. Muhammad Saleem, gives a good sample of what's going on with Bloggers exposure:

"...the problem you start having is that if there is a relatively young and insightful blogger who is going up against an already established blogger with an extensive audience, it’s incredibly difficult for the younger blogger to break through."

It's terrible hard to become a millonaire but it's as hard as a blogger can be a celebrity, knowing the millions of millions are better than you and similar quantities are worst than you. YOU are the best blogger, ever! Keep that in mind.

Update:
Aditya Mukherjee also writes about two different things bloggers should be watching in the blogosphere: "It’s about time we differentiated between popularity and quality."

I've reading a post related to RSS optimization written by Joost de Valk and himself already has created a scrapper for WP blogs. I don't know yet about this plug in for Blogspot hosted blogs but I obviously think will be great to have it.

Patrick Altoft, explains what are the problems with scrappers and why we should have one in our blogs in order to make sure search engines know the source of the post and guide your readers to find an extra place to click to visit your site.

...Having internal links within the post as well as maybe a link to your homepage in your feed footer isn’t going to be the best solution. What you really need is a link to your blog post from within the feed content. Obviously your feed will already have a link to your post anyway but most scrapers tend to remove those links and just keep the title and the content.

Is anyone from Blogger Draft reading our blog?

Soicialnetworking will keep growing and advertiser are glad things are coming this way. According to Suzzane Vranica from The Wall Street Journal this year firms will be spending over the traditional 5% of their online marketing budgets, so as she mentions with the growth of online video and social networking, ad experts expect that 5-10% percentage to jump significantly this year.

Economists had already predicted a recession for the American economy around first quarter and living in New York will more expensive than before now that the gasoline is overpriced as ever before in the States. This will get thing worse when neighbor states as New Jersey are experiencing a constant demographic outflows. Not that new jerseans are coming to NY but, people are increasingly leaving the high-cost Northeast and economically-challenged Midwest regions for destinations primarily in the lower-cost South, and secondarily to the Mountain states of the West.(James W. Huges).

In the big revolution approaching around music and wireless services, its being said Jay-Z is partnering with S. Jobs to start a Record label (http://www.profy.com/2008/01/03/jay-z-and-apple-ceo-steve-jobs-to-start-record-label).
The wireless services providers need to watch what's going to happen at the Sony CES 2008 and the predicted alliance to provide calls services between Skype and Sony. Any other partnerships to get afloat the Sony blue ray?

Users trying to take advantage of Facebook need to think twice, not even authorities in the A-list bloggers can get away with the policies violations. Scoble got suspended and after clarification, reinstalled, his account because he was trying to test a Plaxo script to pull and match e-mail addresses. Is Robert Scoble a corporate spy?

It came to my attention after reading my today subscriptions a great wiki that it's being managed by someone very well know in the educational field. We are talking about the Digital Dialog (http://digitaldialog.ning.com/) which aims to be a social network created to "provide parents, educators, and other care-givers with resources, ideas and links related to encouraging regular communication between younger and older learners about safe, appropriate, and fun uses of digital technologies."

Related:
The Scoble mess and data portability.

It seems the next year will be quite interesting again in the blogtech field, not the right now isn't but because having back a bloggers such as Avatar, Aditya, sure you remember other names but as for now I am congratulated to have Bloggeratto back in business and interested in Blogger platform. Go and persuade him to start writing soon. Of course, in order to read his post you better complete the poll he hang up in Bloggeratto.

Now you can make public what we will expect for the next year in the tech world Avatar. In the mean time you can keep reading his documents in Widgets Lab.

Hey! Blogosphere starts to heating up.

The notice was given by Aaron and all his colleagues are posting about the fatal decease of Marc Orchant.

Rest in Peace. Your work will prevail when others think internet is making us dumb!

Trying to catch with Kirk and Improbulus. Thank you!

Nobody was expecting Verizon's decision. It would allow customers to use any compatible device or software on its networks. The question is when American users will be able to start using Verizon networks? The announcement says it will be by the end of next year, users of such wireless products will be able to connect to its network using any device that meets the 'minimal technical standard', and they're compatible with its technology.

Analysts think this may be either a response to Google’s Android mobile operating system or an attempt to satisfy the FCC press for the upcoming 700 Mhz spectrum auctions(They want to be open). What will it be those devices then? This means pretty much any CDMA device or application, even those ones that are not officially offered by Verizon. It's not like you're going to walk into a Verizon store and see a bazaar of new products but it's a good sign that the glacier of mobile control is starting to melt!

What it really smacks Google plans is the vision of Pieter Knook, senior vice president of Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business saying " Microsoft is very excited to see Verizon Wireless make such a bold move to satisfy the demands of wireless consumers". Android must be paying attention, even iPhone designers because it looks like Verizon announcement is an early Christmas present for Microsoft. Timing will be super interesting to follow. Verizon's network should be opening up about the same time Android platform handsets become available, in late 2008. What are then , your predictions for the 2008? Is Scoble wrong?

Microsoft and Google are playing hard in order to catch users and customers. I didn't know for example until yesterday about Windows Live Translator, neither the last Google updates on Google Mobile Maps. Once again, what are your predictions about Mobile Media for the 2008?

And before I go, I want to congratulate Hackosphere for being back, surely many of us are anxious to know what you have to say. Welcome back!

A report from Nielsen Online shows the following results for social networking sites and blogs among which Facebook, LinkedIn and Club Penguin are with the most significant growing. Between 2006 and 2007, Facebook jumped from 8,682 to 19,519 users; LinkedIn went from 1,705 to 4,919 both with an average of 157% of increase.

Why Am I pointing this out? Because the number of online users who are looking to engage in social networks are on the move. Despite the numbers of blogger that are using Blogger as hosting for their free blogs, the company with the best results has been Wordpress.com, they were from 2,10 to 411,440 which represents the 444% of incorparated new users.

In this frame Ecuador after a few hours will start testing the output of its new Citizen Journalism oriented newspaper: Ultimas Noticias. This new project, according to Christian Espinosa, one of the most read online jornalists, is owned by the El Comercio Group. Let's keep track of this launching by 9:00 PM (Eastern Time), follow the links trend using the Microsoft Link Command, +linkdomain:http://www.ultimasnoticias.ec/.

Even tough, citizen journalism is not a new concept, it is for Ecuador. A good example is being set by Global Voices Online. They're at the same time looking for a correspondent in this country. Cobertura Digital brings the note, as well.

Have you all a great weekend and I hope you read this post with the great Firefox, latest version.

Looking forward to know what it will be the trend results for the next year!

I did. That's why after spending some time reading my suscriptions and filtering all the bunch of information today I would love to tell you many things are going on. Last night for example I was talking with Applelens' webmaster and what I've realized was he didn't know about the Open Social event by Google today which by the way still is in hold at this time (13:25 PM). I did receive a heads up this morning about this topic by one of our ecuadoran friends , Inforc Ecuador. Before I even had a clue of what was going on around technolgy field and being this blog about those business I consider a responsability to share with my readers our most relevant findings.

I really admire the confort to make and publish video from Scoble who has the privilege of record his videos while driving. Amen! He's being at the top of the media bloggers who's being investigating about the evolution of RSS agregators. What for example what's happening with Bloglines now.




Did you ever thought about buying a new laptop or replacing that old one you are using right now? Just keep reading and get online or nerby Walmart. Anyway in order to save money you will have to sacrifice some useful features as those presented by Amit Agarwal.

Now, I don't want you get tired of reading the same thing in different blogs but at least allow to point out three more aspects of our hot findings today. Yahoo has released a very interesting update for Yahoo Messenger, now you will be able to see YouTube videos embed in the Messenger. Kool. I also get in touch with the new iPhone Paul Stamatiou just got and I am still thinking and waiting for the w960i but I am not sure anymore if the holding will pay dividends now that the gPhone is in its way!

Hold on, please see what's happening with Technorati, isn't that kool? Second by second it shows the changes in the blogosphere. Here the technology topic.

Tips and workarounds are placed in two post and whether you are a teacher or student, you better pay attention to these unblocking hacks if you allow me:

Getting around shool site blocks - Scobleizer.


Access blocked websites at school or work - Amit Agarwal.

Free Web Proxy Unblocker -SiteUnblocked.info

A few days a ago I've seen a post from Library Clips where he tries to explain the importance and usability of the social filtering. "When I research a social web topic, I don’t surf the web I consult the blogs on my Reading List, I search these blogs, and I get lots of useful insight and pointers to other blog posts…I check out the blogs on the blogroll and search these blogs, etc…I save so much time searching my social filter and social graph (dare I say it), and I get fresh, quality content." Library clips even is tagging other bloggers to do it so.

It might help to take advantage of Yahoo! openness and start using for example a combined feed throughout Pipes. Once you've selected your prefered sources you can have them in one shot and it will save a lot of time browsing around or jumping from one page to another.

Rubel shows you how to data mine with Google reader but do not sell yourself out. If you downloaded Google Toolbar, enabled PageRank or have Web History on, then Google is spying on you! You know, nothing comes free!

Is then a good time to filter the Internet (not as Google is doing it, thought) but in a smart way that will work only for yourself. Million and millions of sources everyday show up, content is duplicated, garbage still is collected and you have to deal with it, is time to start off with the science of blog reading.