I seem to have started a few posts saying I can’t believe it is ……. since I posted to my blog and here I go again. Wow haven’t done anything since December ‘07 . I came to have a look at the many many spam comments that have come into my blog and delete them, because of this I have set comments to approval before they are seen. Then I thought I would have a look at what new themes were available and selected one.

After doing this I thought I had better not be so slack and actually create a post so ……. here it is.

I have been so busy over the past term, I have taken on some extra work at TAFE and most of my classes have kids between 16 - 18 who would normally be in the school system but due to one thing or another school has not worked for them. In Western Australia we have a policy where students need to be in full time education or work until the end of the year they turn 17. So if school doesn’t fit they have come to TAFE. Having these kids for 13 hours over three days is full on and this combined with my software development business has not left me much time and as such almost all of my online activities have suffered, until now - school holidays the following images sums things up nicely especially with my recent train trips to Perth and my lack of internet access on my ancient nokia phone.

Geek and Poke Sounds of Silence

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Geek and Poke Twitter Abstinence Syndrome

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I have met some really great people on twitter and facebook and my friends and followers continue to grow. Having these online contacts is good especially when working from home as it stops me feeling isolated. So if you haven’t yet used twitter or facebook have a go and see what you think. As with most things on a computer if you have a use for it whether it is software, online communities or even surfing the internet you will pursue with it if not you may view these things as time wasters but you wont know unless you try them yourself. Anyway enough chat for one night and with lots more thoughts rattling around in my head I will be coming a back a bit more often, hopefully someone will still be reading this.

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After an exhausting month of continual blogging challenges from Darren Rowse from Pro Blogger and his 31 Days to a Better Blog project we have finally come to the end. The winners have been announced and it was a unanimous decision to award the miniLegends a class of year 3 students (8 & 9 year olds) from Glenelg in South Australia as not only the blogger’s who have gained the most from the project but also the best commenter’s.

It has been an exhausting month and I still have days 23- 31 to post about. I have met a wonderful group of people through the Chocolate Challenge part of the project and wish to thank Marion from The Chocolate Box for their support and offer of a $25 voucher for Chocolate and also James Farmer from Edublogs who also came to the party with a similar offer of a voucher. Please pay them both a visit.

Now I am just trying to organise the delivery of the chocolate to the kids, as you can imagine they would be looking forward to its arrival.

Even though this challenge has finished we have decided to keep challenging ourselves and Michele set up a community at Ning, Betterblog.ning.com. This will mean that we can continue to help one another and learn from each other. Members welcome come and have a look whether you are an old hand at blogging or new to all of this.

Visit my Chocolate Challenge page to find out all about the project

Running really late now!

One thing is for sure I will not be getting all the tasks done by the end of August. I will still keep plugging away at the tasks that are relevant to my blog but have really got behind mainly due to work and coming down with the flu.

Back on board now and back into it so away we go. Looking at the list of tasks for Days 15 to 22 seems kind of ironic that they have titles like Make Your Most Popular Posts Sticky , Create a Heatmap, Run a StumbleUpon Campaign, and last but not least Create a Sneeze Page and Propel Readers Deep Within Your Blog. Here I am feeling about 90% after a bout of the flu and all the tasks seems to point to stumbling around making things sticky and spreading germs.

Not really but I thought it was funny to have that collection of tasks all together. The Heatmap task would be cool to try but not an option with edublogs. So can’t do that one. StumbleUpon I have a plugin for Firefox for StumbleUpon but don’t intend to run a StumbleUpon Campaign in relation to my blog. That wasn’t too hard two down six to go.

Make Your Most Popular Posts Sticky and Create a Sneeze Page and Propel Readers Deep Within Your Blog will both have to be works in progress I think. I want to find a theme for my Sneeze page and need to investigate which post as popular. I could even add another page and have a changing list of popular posts there, what do you think?

Respond to Comments on Your Blog I have been doing this with almost all the comments that have been added to my blog - (maybe a little behind over past week) especially since starting the 31 Day Challenge. I have found that it has created a continuing conversation with the comments rather than static comments. It makes the reader feel more “real” to me and I have found that most commenter’s are then coming back to read and comment again. Its always a thrill when a comment is added, the fact that someone has taken the time to visit and then leave a comment is really appreciated. Thanks to you all .

Catch New Readers Up on the Basics of your Blog I added a new page What is that? a while ago that hopefully will help new visitors to the blog and visitors who are new to the blog concept. I also changed some of the terms used on the side links after Day 2 task of Run a First Time Reader Audit. I found that just because I knew what a Blogroll was this did not mean that one of my readers did.

This then leads into the next task to Run a Reader Survey. I am going to take the simple option here and not so much as run a survey but ask for feedback or comments. I have changed the theme and layout of the blog since starting the 31 Days to a Better Blog Chocolate Challenge and have added pages to help visitors. I have tried to name links with out using “geek speak” . I have added information to my A little about me page, and removed many of the links “widgets” from the blog. So my survey question is do you find it easy to move around the current design of the blog. Is it easy to read and leave comments? Please leave comments to answer these questions then I will have completed another task.

Last one for today Make a Reader Famous I would like to make all littlest readers famous and encourage everyone to go and visit their blogs. So Minilegends you are my readers that I wish to make famous. the Minilegends are a class of year 3 - 8 and 9 year olds from Glenelg School in South Australia who have a class blog as well as individual blogs.

So that’s a load of tasks done but not necessarily finished and all out of order. I hope to go and visit all the members of the Chocolate Challenge blogs and leave a comment over the next few days and see how they have all gone with the tasks. We have all struggled to keep on top of the 31 tasks but have learnt so much about the who why and how we blog, it has been an exhausting but very rewarding exercise that has also created a new online community of friends. And its not finished yet…..

More information about our Chocolate Challenge

Go and visit the Chocolate Challenge members:

Cammy Bean Tim Davies Eklavya

Kate Foy Sue Hickton Christine Martell

Michelle Martin Alex Miller Kate Quinn

Sue Waters Laura Whitehead

The Famous MiniLegends

Running out of Time - 1 weeks tasks - Done

Unexpected work commitments has propelled my into a state of feeling like I am chasing my tail and defiantly running out of time to get my blog tasks completed.

A run down of the tasks for days 8 - 14 include a few things that I have already done.

Day 8 - Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented On Before just being part of this challenge has seen me visit lots of different blogs and leave comments. - Done
Day 9 - Run an Advertising Audit On Your Blog Not relevant to this blog - Done

Day 10 - Declutter Your Sidebar As I have worked through the different tasks in this challenge I have been constantly changing the look and functionality of my blog. I made a lot of changes after the First Time Reader Audit and have removed several widgets from my sidebar since then. I like the clean lines of this template, what do you think? should I add more sidebar functions? - Done and continuing.

Day 11 - Dig into Your Blog’s Statistics This has been a fun thing to look at - my statistics. If it wasn’t for you coming to read my blog there wouldn’t be any statistics to look at. As the saying goes a picture paints a thousand words. Unlike Sue I added Google Analytics a few weeks ago and use this along with Sitemeter and Statcounter. They all seem to give a different view of visits and when I get more time will probably cut these down to just two. AS you can see from the image of my stats below, from being involved in the 31 Days to a better blog project I have gone from 0, 1 visits a day to a whopping 95 visits and 200+ page views. This was very exciting, especially with a blog that has only been going for 5 months. So thanks for visiting - Done

Day 12 - Introduce Yourself to another Blogger Over the past 12 days I have introduced myself to many other blogger’s. Both through people involved in the 31 day challenge and also twitter and my del.icio.us links. - Done

Day 13 - Search for an Affiliate Program that Fits Your Blog - Doesn’t fit with my blog type - Done

Day 14 - Analyze Your Blog’s Competition - I looked at this task as a way of finding other blogs that cover a similar field to me. This is an on going process and one of my biggest “Competitors” would have to be Sue - friendly competitors. The wealth of information on Sue’s blog is testament to her dedication in seeking information and passing it onto others. I like using Digg Google Blog Search but most of the time I wander from one article to another on different blogs. I would be interested to hear how you find articles and blog that you are interested in? - Done

Even though some of these task are not relevant to the way that I am using my blog I have added them to this article and provided a link to Darren’s original post in the hope that it may help some visitors and you never know maybe one day I will need this information also.

e-consultation

The Australian Federal Government is preparing itself to enter the blogging realm. An article in the online Australian IT titled Canberra plans citizen sample blog yesterday states “FEDERAL plans to enter the world of blogging are well under way, with a discussion paper due soon on the proposed “rules of engagement”.”  The blog will be up and running by March and will be a place that the public can comment on policy, it wont be a free for all and genuine and constructive comments would be welcomed!

They have concerns that the lobby groups or other anonymous identities may infiltrate and manipulate the blog. Will this just be another place on the web that the government places information for us to read and if we wish to place a  positive/constructive comment then that comment may appear on the blog? Censored comments - that’s an interesting concept, we have the ability to censor, delete and even change comments that are placed on our blogs but most of us would only use these options if we get comments that detail illegal activities, pornographic, spam or are racist and discriminatory.

At the end of the day a blog provides a place for conversation and I would have thought that e-consultation would benefit from conversation not censorship, will we see a spin off of blogs that will continue the conversations? Just by denying it they will in fact make it flourish elsewhere way. I suppose that is just another case of  ”not in my backyard”.

The article states that a spokesman for Special Minister of State Gary Nairn said ….”genuine and constructive comments”,  I could not find another mention of this, a speech delivered by Mr Nairn in August mentions the possible introduction of blogs and talks about the things like the need for  moderation of comments would need to be looked at. I hope they do look at this and not take the Big Brother attitude and take the time to consult with people from the blogging communities both users and readers, not people who “know” about these things about do not “participate” in them.

I have tried to stay pretty much on track with this blog and that hasn’t been too hard as technology is a wide and varied field. I don’t want to get into political discussions (am I now censoring?) but as this does loosely relate to technology I thought I would place it here.