another wonderful photo on flickr

On March 13, 2007 By Rick McIn blogs, photos, product endorsementsLeave a comment

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Show case tree, originally uploaded by katmere.

One of the main reasons I updated the theme of this blog was to PERFECT the interface with flickr.

Now I can search all photos on flickr that have an “attribution creative commons licence”, then post directly to this site without moving or resizing the image.

Very convenient.

Flickr is by far the best social networking site on the internet.

what does Google pay bloggers?

On January 12, 2007 By Rick McIn blogs, economics, Google, internetLeave a comment

Not enough.

Unfortunately Google has very little competition from Yahoo, Microsoft … or anyone else.

An interesting tidbit from Guy Kawasaki’s wrap-up of his first full year blogging. … Note that his blog has been consistently between the 35th and 45th most popular in the world, according to Technorati. Here are some of his stats:

* 2,436,117 page views for an average of approximately 6,200/day. 21,000 people receive RSS feeds via Feedburner and 1,457 receive emails via FeedBlitz.

So just to review, that’s:

A best-selling author and genuine tech celebrity writing a thoughtful essay nearly every workday on a top-50 blog for an audience of around 30,000 people/day.

And the pay for that is about $280 a month. If Guy can get Google to write a check at all.

The Long Tail: Don’t quit your day job

testing ScribeFire – blogging software

On January 7, 2007 By Rick McIn blogsLeave a comment

Just testing another blogging tool called ScribeFire.

It is a free Firefox plugin.

Will let you know how it goes.

weird, adult-oriented Raymi blog

On January 4, 2007 By Rick McIn blogsLeave a comment

This thing is very popular.

Very mangled.

Perhaps a glimpse of the future of personal blogs.

It’s like a MySpace page. But with brains and quality content.

About Raymi blog – raymi lauren from Toronto

New Year’s predictions

On January 1, 2007 By Rick McIn blogs, internet, photosLeave a comment

In the future people without blogs will be as rare as people who don’t use email today.

Consider RSS, for example. This is a fantastic resource brings virtually any kind of information you can think of to your desktop. Nevertheless, recent research shows that only 1 in 10 people have even heard of the term and a mere two percent actually use it.

OK, RSS is geeky you say? Fair enough. But consider that several studies conducted by the Pew Internet Center for American Life reveal that millions lurk but don’t publish. For example, only 35% of Americans post their photos online and only eight percent have ever published a blog.

Micro Persuasion: America’s New Digital Divide

Of course by then spammy email, as we know it now, will be gone. Replaced by some variation of instant messaging.

advice from Samuel Langhorne Clemens

On December 29, 2006 By Rick McIn blogs, philosophyLeave a comment

200px-MarkTwain.LOC.jpg

“Whenever you find you’re on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.”

“The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession.”

“Great people make us feel we can become great.”

“The difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

“When in doubt, tell the truth.”

The Mark Twain Guide to Better Blogging | Copyblogger

Mark Twain – Wikipedia

new – “share this” button on blog posts

On December 28, 2006 By Rick McIn blogsLeave a comment

It is easy now to email a link to any post via a simple button at the bottom of each.

For the geeky who use social bookmarking sites, many of those are supported too.

holiday words of reflection

On December 26, 2006 By Rick McIn blogs, hiking, philosophyLeave a comment

A new friend, Tom Mangan from California, I met through the network of outdoor bloggers. I check his websites every day.

This holiday post got me assessing my place in this biosphere:

Christmas reminds me that I could be a more giving person, that I could spend more time with the aged, the young, the hungry, the suffering. Not in my nature to be that kind of person.

Yet if you were to ask me “So Tom, how do I start me a blog,” I could give till you’re blue in the face. If you were to ask how to hike off a few extra pounds, how to pick the best of 100 shots from your vacation, how to get a newspaper section to the press on time, you might find me generous to a fault.

I take a lot from the world … I use more fossil fuels than I have any hope of replacing. I eat food irrigated from precious natural water sources; I use products manufactured in distant nations where forests and rivers are being fouled so somebody can turn a buck selling me this stuff at “affordable” prices (which are merely a discount against the cost of repairing the damage down the road).

None of us give back as much as we could, or even what we should. But we should be giving back something. And just as the weight of everything you put in a backpack adds up, the weight of everything we do adds up too.

I don’t think I’m entirely self-deluded to believe that I’ve been doing at least a little bit of good in the world by posting pictures from the outdoors and writing about walking in the woods. At the very least I’m distracting people from further degrading the earth, and at best I’m encouraging them to get out in their own woods and maybe come to realize why we need these wild places.

Want to give something worth having? How about a down payment on giving your great-great-great-great granddaughter a planet as good as the one we’ve got now? You don’t need to be a tree-spiking enviro-terrorist to believe future generations have as much right to a livable planet as we do.

Call that my Christmas wish: that folks wake up and realize we’re not merely taking what’s here today for ourselves, we’re stealing it from those who come after us.

Busy being born: December 2006 Archives

Google blog search

On December 24, 2006 By Rick McIn blogs, Google, product endorsementsLeave a comment

People search blogs only (rather than all of Google) when they are looking for information more personal, up-to-the-minute and sometimes more relevant.

The BIG blog search engine is Technorati.

A number of competitors are closing the gap. Actually — all simultaneously trying to solve the problem of SPAM blogs appearing in their results.

I got interested when Google first announced a blog search engine. But it was terrible.

But I’m hearing buzz on the blogosphere that Google is improving quickly. After all, they are the best in search, you’d think they’d be the best in blog search.

Give it a try. Look for something very specific, like an unusual name or place or product.

Google Blog Search