Blogspot gives a list of templates to the new bloggers and to the existing ones to choose from the best designs for their respective blogs. Blogger templates has screenshots of a couple of blogs as samples and these templates are original and free. Via Blogspot
Wow I am amazed at the enthusiasm, passion and the contribution of the Exploratorium team to cover the total solar eclipse along with the photos of partial to complete eclipse and actually blog about it live. As per the blogger: Live blogging of the total solar eclipse in Turkey has ended with the moon now slowly creeping out of the sun. It has been a great total solar eclipse. Via IZ Reloaded
Nick of the Rough Type blog writes about the seven rules of corporate blogging laid down by Robert Scoble, who has also written a book on Corporate blogging. The author basically criticizes the way the corporate blogs are written and lays down certain rules to go the corporate way. Nick summarizes the rules on Corporate blogging in the following words: People blogging on behalf of their employers don’t need to wear suits, but they should wear clothes. Independent bloggers can afford to blog “naked.” Corporate bloggers can’t. Via Rough Type
The Daily Kos blog presents a letter of a father whose son Pfc. Matthew Deister of the Maine Army National Guard’s 172nd Mountain Co., and is paying for charges and services that should have been taken care of by the Pentagon. Blogger in his appeal for contribution towards the cause says: Can you spare 5 bucks for one hour of internet service for the 172nd? If yes, email me at bipm04103@yahoo.com and I’ll tell you where to send it. Sorry I don’t have a fancy PayPal account or high-tech credit card processing technology. This is an old-fashioned grassroots effort, born out of pride in our troops…and anger at the Republican country club elitist “leaders” who aren’t supporting them. We’ll accept a 5-dollar bill, 5-dollar check, 5-dollar money order or 500 pennies in a coffee can. In return, Pfc. Matthew Deister and his company get to log on and connect to their family, friends and country for an extra hour or two without being forced to pay for it. I’ll start by donating 10 hours worth. Via Daily Kos
The blogging community is terrorised by the world outside. In a recent post a Canadian based blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, was interrogated regarding the writings in his blogs and this is a continuation to a similar treatment done to the Iranian bloggers with respect to their opinions about Iran. Via Canada
Fidelity Assets is the first company to start a blog for the real estate guys. The blog is called as My Client Builder which will deal with people engaged with the buying and selling of real estates. As far as the operation of this blog is concerned the site says: Each agent’s blog in My Client Builder is equipped with an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. When an agent posts a new message, whether it’s a new property listing, article or announcement, it is syndicated in the form of a link to hundreds of other real estate related websites around the Internet, which then display that message as fresh content, creating a “distributed website” effect. When users click these links, they are directed to the agent’s blog, generating free organic web traffic for the agent. When a home buyer or seller arrives on the agent’s blog, lead capture forms and an email subscription form help the real estate agent capture more leads so they can effectively and efficiently build their online community.
Amid the innumerable sites on the web, four new start-ups have made their debut. All the four are bit different and have put tidbits of innovation too. The newly launched sites are 4Marks, OnlyHuman, StyleSpy, and Wine Labels. 4Marks: This social site can be taken as a new MySpace for Catholics. It would be safe to call it a religious network where Christian community can meet and share their views. 4Marks aim to provide the Catholics a platform to intensify their Christian values. The site also allows features photo uploading, forums, polls, folio, and Christian dating via a sister site called CatholicMatch. OnlyHuman: Well, sites like OnlyHuman have ben launched earlier also but God knows where they vanished. Anyway, OnlyHuman is a social network or community where people can post stories about the mistakes they have done and give advice to others. They have employed a very simple format where users can post their mistakes in detail and commentary or bookmarking them as ‘lesson learned’. I appreciate the idea but doubt its future. StyleSpy: The new fashion site made a debut on 15th of this month. The layout is quite simple in the form of modules on the screen. Users just need to click ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ to have their say on the particular product such as cellphones, attire, and fashion accessory. Users can submit their own items manually on the link too and look for the newest and hottest random items. Wine Labels: Now, this is interesting. Wine Labels is a social site launched by WineLibrary a few days back that allows the users to find labels via searching or tags, commenting on them, and post them to MySpace and other blogs with the help of embed code. These tags will help the users to find the forgotten name of wines. It means if the wine had a tag of bike on it, I will just visit the ‘bike’ tag and get the name of the wine. Wine Labels is in talks with wine social networks Cork’d and BottleTalk for possible partnerships. Via: mashable
Om Malik reports about the reported spamming done in the popular bookmarking service of del.icio.us. The fact that spamming can be alluded to ‘decent hacking’ and is increasing over the past few years in the blogging and media arena is made quite clear, especially after the spamming done in the most dependable and resourceful area surveyed by the bloggers. Via: GigaOM
Taking some sort of inspiration from Digg, Dell has launched a customer relations site by the name of Ideastorm. The site allows the users to submit product and feature requests, policy changes or any other things that they want to discuss with the Dell community. Other than IdeaStorm, Dell also introduced a video sharing site dubbed StudioDell where the users can view company videos as well as the videos submitted by the users. They say ‘Think of Dell IdeaStorm as a combination between a message board and Digg.com.’ Two-way online communication is gaining wider popularity these days and I am pretty sure that we will be witnessing more and more companies following the Dell’s move.
In an effort to strength its video search offerings, Ask.com has reached out an agreement with Blinkx, one of the leading search engines for video and audio content. With this deal, Ask.com will access to Blinkx’s 12 million hours of audio and video content and incorporate them into its own search service. As per the joint agreement, Blinkx will get the fee for the Blinkx’s content search by the Ask.com users. Unsurprisingly, Ask.com is not the first search engine to have association with Blinkx for video search. The search engine giants like MSN, AOL have already tied up with Blinkx to power up their video searches. In a press release, Blinkx CEO, Suranga Chandratillake has expressed, Ask.com’s momentum is impressive and we’re very proud to be powering their new video search offering. This relationship further demonstrates our technology leadership in the video search space and is an exciting development for our 130 or so media partners whose content can now be accessed through Ask.com. Image
