My Technology Addictions

Conduct an About Page Audit

The fact that I have been a few days behind doing my tasks has meant that I have been able to see what tasks are coming up. This task of Conducting an About Page Audit has been looming for a while and something I have been putting off even before the 31 day project.

Evidently the About page is one that is regularly visited by new readers and I must admit that I do have a look when visiting a new blog to find who is behind it all.

So this is what I have so far and I will just keep building on it as I go through the rest of the 31 days. I will also have to dig out a photo to add.

Hi my name is Frances McLean  and I write My Technology Addictions. This is just a place where I can write about the things that I am interested in in the wide realm of technology.

I’m am Australian and live in Western Australia. I am married and have 3 teenage children. I work as a Information Technology lecturer at TAFE in Western Australia where I teach a wide range of subjects and levels. I also deliver PD(Professional Development) for staff members and have recently been involved in developing Assessment tools for staff to use on PDA’s(Portable Digital Assistants)

I have always dabbled in things related to IT from web development in the late 1990’s to software development. Over the past few years I have started developing software for mobile devices, specifically Windows based PDA’s (Portable Digital Assistants). This has lead to delivering this content to programming students at Diploma level at TAFE.

One of the best things that I have found with being involved in a blog is the feeling of community and the people you meet as I keep posting different articles. I decided early on that I was not going to try and post every day as it would be too much but on occasions you will see that I have done this. it is all a matter of when it suits I will post, if family or work commitments get in the way then so be it.

I have started a What’s That? page to help new visitors and people who are new to blogs. At the moment it has a few videos but will be building on this.

Interlinking Post

Day 4 and still about 4 day’s behind but catching up slowly. Today I had to go back through some of my older posts , (which aren’t really that old as I haven’t been doing this long) and interlink posts. The idea is that as I add more content to my blog there will be more opportunity to link posts together. I already do this with new posts link back to previous articles but hadn’t thought of doing it the other way around. I can go to older posts and link to newer articles. This gives the reader updated information about the article they are reading. As I have changed my theme over the past few days when working through the changes that I made after the First Time Reader Audit it was a good exercise to look at older posts and make sure that all images still fitted and that all looked ok.

So I have been and added new links to the following posts:

Windows Mobile 6 Phone Launched

Googleless = the act of not using Google for a day

Challenged in more ways than one

Sponsors come on board for Chocolate Challenge

We have passed the 1st week of the 31 Days to a Better Blog even if all of us are not quiet up to date and we have some great news. We have two sponsors who have come on board to offer chocolate vouchers for the best comment and the blog that has benefited the most from the exercise. You can vote for the best blog and we will look at all comments and vote for that prize.

So make sure you visit all the Members of the Chocolate Challenge – the list is growing and growing Cammy Bean Tim Davies Eklavya Kate Foy Michelle Martin Alex Miller Kate Quinn Sue Waters Laura Whitehead

Just to recap how we ended up with the added chocolate challenge. My girlfriend Sue challenged me to take part in Darren Rowse’s 31 days to a Better Blog project. I thought it would be fun to had the wager of the loser had to buy the winner 1kg of chocolate. Then Sue opened the Chocolate challenge to the world, and the more we talked and marveled over all our new visitors and comments we thought we would also like to offer a prize to the reader with the best comments. As more people came on board we started to wonder about having to send chocolate overseas, so I checked out online chocolate stores.

Sponsors – Chocolate Box & edublogs

I found the Chocolate Box and fired off an email to Marion Adler Bishop. I gave her a bit of back ground on what was going on and links to our blogs. She called me the next day and said that she would like to offer $25.00 voucher to the reader with the best comments. So now all the readers to all the above blogs can be in the running for a prize for your comments.

James Farmer from edublogs as also come on board to help us with the 1kg wager and has offered a $25.00 voucher from the Chocolate Box. This is for the blog that the readers think has gained the most from the challenge,. voted for by the readers.  Any short fall in the 1kg will be met by Sue and myself.

You can still join in to be part of the Chocolate challenge just contact me Frances (f.mclean[at]gmail[dot]com) or Sue (suewater [at] gmail [dot] com). And make sure you visit our sponsors please.

You can see all the rules set out on Sues post How Our Readers Can Win Chocolate in 31 Days Challenge!