Just in case you were wondering…. (even though I know you weren’t)
Archive for the 'Netsua.com' Category
I tested out Netsua.com at websitegrader.com (thanks Blogg-Buzz) and got (I think) pretty good results…
- In terms of “marketing effectiveness,” Netsua scores higher than 71% compared to the 35,000 other websites that have been submitted.
- Alexa.com thinks that this site is the “7,151,297th most trafficked site on the web.”
- The readability level is 4th grade… um, yeah that’s not great but I’m not exactly writing Shakespeare here.
Website Grader is a really cool tool that allows you to get information about your website that doesn’t really say anything, but that sounds cool and easily gets gobbled up by bloggers.
Have you noticed that I’ve had a post every single day for the past month? Well, I have.
Unfortunately, starting this week I’m going to take a break from the daily posts to focus on school. There’s only 1 week of real school left for me, but then I have a week and a half of PBAs (Performance Based Assessments) which are basically a combination of final tests and big projects.
So I’ll be working on a bunch of projects and studying a lot for the next 3 weeks, so I probably won’t be able to post very often. And then, we’re going to Colorado for another week, so I won’t be back until June 27th. But after all of that it’ll be summer and I will be able to resume my regular postings.
I won’t completely stop posting during June, I just won’t be able to post every day like I have this past month. So I’ll probably have 2 to 5 posts a week. I’m very sorry!
I’ve been trying to post (approximately) every day for the past month. Looking at the calendar at the left (and clicking on April) shows that I did… almost. I didn’t post on 3 days, but I posted more than once on a bunch of days, making the grand total of posts be 38. Which is a bit more than once a day.
I’m actually a little surprised myself that I was able to post this much. But I’m glad I have and hope to continue it. One of my techniques is making a bunch of posts on the weekend when I have free time and “releasing” one or two a day over the week. But sometimes it won’t work too well, especially with timely things like recent TV episodes. Still, it generally keeps the flow even.
I’m very glad, and hope I can continue on like this.
Scribd (yes, I spelled it right) is a new web service very similar to Digg. But while Digg is a social network focused on rating websites and blog posts, Scribd is a social network focused on rating documents and writing.
It’s just starting out, and doesn’t seem to be that popular yet, but it really has a lot of potential. It overall runs much faster than Digg and even lets you upload documents without logging in!
Uploading a document to Scribd (.doc, .pdf, .ppt, .xls, etc.) is easy and fast. Then, it has a page where you can either view as simple HTML text or in a pdf-style flash window that’s available to be embeded into websites. And it’s not like the Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer, it’s just simple. It doesn’t take forever to load, and it’s only got the controls you need.
You can rate documents (which range from essays to online magazines to a collection of pictures) just like Digg, and even download it, no matter how you uploaded it, as a .doc, .pdf, .txt, and even an MP3 (using a computer voice, it reads out your document.) So in a way, you can use Scribd as a conversion service for files also!
Some of my favorite documents: They Didn’t Study, 10 Random Questions You’ve Never Thought of Asking, How to Succeed in Business.
I’ve been uploading some of my writing to Sribd and posting it on the writing page - so now you don’t have to download the word document, but just view it in-browser in the Scribd pdf-style document reader.
I’ve cleaned up some of the pages of the site. Games is gone, and may appear as a subpage of the More page in the future. Reviews is now a subpage of Writing. Also, there’s a new page called “Web” which basically just links to different websites that I’ve worked on/for.
Also, a lot of Movies and Writing download links were broken, so I’ve fixed them. And finally I’ve added 3 new essays to the Writing page, and one short story. They’re all from this year (9th grade) and available for download as .doc files.
I’ve also (SORRY!!!) changed the link of the blog AGAIN to Netsua.com/blog, which FINALLY gets rid of /index.php in the links for pages and posts. So change your bookmarks. I’m really truly sorry! Oh - and the 20 pixels of whitespace above the header are gone!
My friend Aaron has this to say about his almost dead blog:
So, the point is, why should I be blogging now, with a teeny-weeny audience. Forget the lack of payment, who even is going to read this? I guess this is the realization that all bloggers avoid, because it causes their entire world to self-destruct in on them. In the end, why do I or anyone else have a blog, a tumblelog, a Twitter, etc? What’s the point of it all? To put my existence on every corner of the web? Make my ego bigger? I honestly do not know.
When I originally started blogging on Blogger in 2004, 2 people read it: My mom and my dad. But then my grandparents started reading it. Then my aunts and uncles, and more of my family. Then, when Aaron and I created the Teen Tech Buzz a couple of other readers caught on. But I’m not sure how regurally they read it. Sure, not everyone who reads this posts a comment, but I’d be surprised if I have more than 10 regular readers of this blog. So really my audience is small. But enough people read it for me to keep blogging.
If I were blogging for money it would take some the fun away. I would start posting just to have posts, and I wouldn’t be having fun anymore. Sure, it’s fun to get paid - but it’s not always a good thing for your overall blog quality.
Yes, to some extent I agree with Aaron. Blogging for a small (more like nonexistent) audience is tough. If you’re not paid, half the motive is gone. And if you don’t have a large audience, then some may say that that’s the other half. But I don’t think so. I continue to blog because I enjoy it. I enjoy posting about my interests, and I enjoy the occasinal feedback that I get in the comments.
And I like to think that in 30 years I’ll be able to look back at an archive of my life and my intrests as time goes by. And that’s cool enough for me to set aside 15 minutes a night to make a blog post.
Remember Shutdown Day? The day when you’re supposed to shut off your computer? Yeah, um… bad luck sort of made my huge website revamp just HAPPEN to be on Shutdown Day.
But in my defense I had forgotten until about 2:00, and then it was already too late. Also, I never said I’d do it. I said that I would try.
