that canadian girl

Getting a new Mac is a great experience; Apple have worked for many years to make the unboxing experience memorable and special. People talk about it, document it in photos or in video. But what happens when you’ve had it for a few weeks, months or years? It gets scratched, damaged or dirty. That “yummy new shiny machine” feeling disappears.

So why bother caring for your aluminium MacBook Pro? If you want to sell it after a year or two to upgrade to a newer model, having a clean and scratch-free laptop allows you to sell it for a bit more (money you can then put towards your new model!) Meanwhile, if you choose to keep it, you can show up to a meeting with a beautiful and fresh-looking computer.

These top tips to keep your Mac from showing age are guaranteed to work an awful lot better than anti-ageing creams!

1. Protect the case

Whichever way you do it, protecting your metal case from scuffs and damage is a great way to keep it from looking rough in the future.

I originally covered mine in stickers to differentiate it from all the other MacBook Pros in the office, using stickers I was given from Digg, Lolcode, Soma FM, Laughing Squid and many more.

Do the same to show some personality or, if you want to be more graceful, you can use one of the many amazing skins now available online:

• Hokusai’s wave (17″)
• Gorgeous colourful bookshelf (15″)
• MC Escher’s drawings (15″)
• Never Mind by Stella im Hultberg (15″)
• Black & White Swan by Si Scott

Alternatively, at least be sensible enough to use a laptop sleeve like the Black LaRobe sleeve to keep it protected when you’re carrying it around.

2. Fix your mistakes

Put tons of stickers on your aluminium MacBook Pro case and changed your mind about them?

In my case, I had to hand the laptop back at work. Everyone sniggered it would look like hell after I destickered it. But fear not, you can very easily remove stickers from the aluminium laptop case with a small dose of WD-40 and a bit of patience.

First, peel off the vinyl stickers that come off in a single piece; they’re the ones that feel rubbery and shiny. Then peel off what you can of the top layer of the paper stickers. These will leave a white paper layer or at least some sticky glue on the laptop. That’s when you get the WD-40 out; close the laptop lid first, spray WD-40 lightly on a white kitchen roll. Rub it in gently onto the paper or sticker glue area and let it “soak” slightly. Once the WD-40 works its magic, it should be very easy to rub off the sticker glue off. Buff the laptop cover gently with a soft cloth when you’re done to bring it back to its original shine!

[If you're worried that you might do damage, start with a small area of the laptop on the underside of it to check that it won't stain or discolour it. This tip worked wonders for me, but comes with no guarantee. If you've done weird stuff to your laptop beforehand, don't hold me responsible!]

3. Take care of your screen

Aside from the obvious care tips like not stabbing your screen with pens and dirty fingers, the best way to keep your screen, glossy or matte, in good condition is to give it a light clean every so often.

As much as possible, I try to use the cloth that came with my latest pair of glasses and warm breath, but to remove oily marks, the best product (and afaik only one endorsed by Apple) is the iKlear screen cleaning spray.

Follow the instructions and be gentle. You need to stare at that screen for days on end, so best take care of it!

4. Don’t squeeze me too tight

I’ve recently noticed a rising number of people who treat their laptops like they’re made out of steel armour plating. It’s still a fairly fragile construction, even the fancy latest unibody machines, so throwing it into a backpack or piling books on top of it can quite easily damage the screen!

5. Get AppleCare

This one is a question of personal preference, but ever since I’ve started buying Macs for myself, I’ve insisted on having AppleCare – Apple’s own protection plan, which covers you for much of the likely problems

It doesn’t replace being careful (eg. dropping your laptop or spilling beer into it won’t get it replaced) but will cover you for most hardware issues. As far as I’m concerned, if your computer ever leaves your desk, it’s worth having insurance on it.

Just be smart!

If you want to have a throw-into-a-bag-and-go laptop, get an ASUS Eee PC or similar netbook, Hackintosh it if you must. Or use the tips above to keep your aluminium MacBook Pro in the best condition possible to resell later!

Tonight, in over 170 cities across the world, people are getting together for an evening of fun and to raise money for charity:water. After a first successful event in London back in September 2008, brave organiser and fellow Canadian gal Amanda Rose decided to take on the world. Rather than a single event in a single city, over 170 Twestivals have cropped up in cities worldwide, from Vienna to Sydney and Doha to Rio de Janeiro, like mushrooms after the rain!

But who are all these volunteer organisers and attendees?! They’re all active Twitter users.

We’re talking about hundreds of self-organised volunteers who found a venue, sourced musicians, announced and promoted the event. Having organised the first SocialMediaCamp London, with a second one in the works, I’m amazed at the communal effort put towards this event which is expected to raise over $1 million USD for charity:water.

One of the aspects I love most is the contributions from artists; Over 160 tracks donated by artists have been uploaded to Twestival.fm for people to download under a ‘pay what you want’ scheme reminiscent of Radiohead’s In Rainbows album.

British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap (who I could listen to for days on end!) chose to donate an unfinished song, “The Song That Never Was”, for artists to remix and edit in their own way. It’s taking Creative Commons to a new level, and I simply can’t wait to see what creative minds make of it.

Once considered to be a bizarre service used only by geeks, Twitter is now not only a mainstream tool, but it’s a communication tool that is underpinning powerful social events. Might it be worth considering signing up for it now?

Most of us spend at least an hour a day travelling; commuting to work by car, train, bus or flying somewhere for business. It’s time that’s often spent looking out of the window, texting mates or eyeing the cute guy/girl sitting across from you on the train. (Or if you’re travelling to London, wondering whether the leaves on the track are going to delay the train again…)

It’s an hour or more that you should recuperate and use for your own benefits so here are a few suggestions for arriving smarter. [Credit to Christopher S. Penn for the "Arrive Smarter" theme & Tarek for pointing me to it originally.]

Listen to an audio or video podcast

Podcasts vary in quality, style, length and topics, so whatever you want to listen to, you should be able to find it. I tend to opt for a more focused podcast on the journey in; it wakes up the brain, gives some interesting ideas and motivation for the day. On the way home, I prefer the freestyle and slightly silly podcasts, which are sometimes informative, but always lighthearted.

• TEDTalks video podcasts: TED offers some great food for thoughts from some fascinating people all over the world. Pick a topic you feel has little to do with your day job or industry and just listen. Some notable speakers for me have been Jill Bolte Taylor, Ze Frank and a number of people who spoke about creativity, imagination & education. [TEDTalks iTunes link]
• BBC Radio 4 World of Business podcast
• Heidi Miller’s Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter: Brits tend to be much too self-deprecating and rubbish at self-promotion, so this one’s for you, my lovely limeys! Heidi’s podcasts cover a range of topics relating to promoting your business, yourself, and smart networking. [DSSP iTunes link]
• Look for audio readings of Cory Doctorow’s books, it’s always good to listen to.
• Poke around the Podcasts section in the iTunes store and let me know what discoveries you make!

Tip: If you’re an iPhone/iPod user, set it to automatically sync a few “most recent unplayed” podcasts through the options in the “Podcasts” tab in iTunes. That way, you’ll always have fresh stuff to listen to even if you haven’t had the time to pick podcasts manually before travelling.

Pick a book that will help you towards your goals this year

If you’ve picked a themeword for 2009, to help you drive your year forward, browse the web for a list of a few books, ebooks or research papers that will get you closer to your objectives. Or just pick a book to make you think, laugh or cry!

Here are some of mine, to accompany my themeword “Impact” for 2009.

• Tara Hunt’s The Whuffie Factor, which will be published soon is on my must-read list
• Cory Doctorow’s Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom is half holiday fiction, half social critique. I’ve already read it but definitely recommend it.
• Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is proving to be a good read on why and how we take certain actions, and how we may think we’re rational, we’re in fact predictably working on emotions or subconscious cues.
• If you’re a productivity buff, you’ll know this guy, but if you’re new to it, you might enjoy Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week. Or Leo Babauta’s The Power of Less (which will be available soon in the UK)
• Sitting on my bookshelf for far too long is Charlene Li’s Groundswell is much overdue to be read.

Keep offline reading material handy on your computer

If you’re the type who uses a laptop on the commute in, you may not always have the luxury of an Internet connection so when you find interesting PDF ebooks, stick them in a “To read” folder on your desktop to dig into when you’ve next got some spare time.

Alternatively, if you’re into that dead tree printing stuff,  carry a hard copy if you really must, but use the reverse side of paper you used before, or recycle the paper later by either giving it to someone else you feel would benefit or by chucking it in the recycling bin.

A few great ebooks:

• Leo Babauta from Zen Habits (same guy as above) recently published an ebook called Thriving on Less, which is rather appropriate in this year where much of our usual habits need to be re-examined to avoid excessive spending and keep us afloat through tough times.
• 37 Signals’ Getting Real: While I don’t really go for the 37S Koolaid, I must admit it contains some great tips for working with small teams and producing quality apps.
• Seth Godin’s Flipping the Funnel may be nearly 3 years old but it remains very relevant. Seth has created a number of ebooks over the years, so why not browse his site and download a few?
• Chris Brogan wrote Using the Social Web to Find Work is highly relevant in this era of job uncertainty. A worthwhile read.
• Finally, not so much an eBook but rather a Slideshare presentation you can download: Chrystie Corns, Social Marketing Manager at Where.com created a cracking presentation giving insight into what it’s like to tweet, blog and use social networks for a living.

Make a conscious effort to relax

Not interested in any of the above and prefer to snooze or stare out the window on your way into work? That’s fine, in fact, it’s great! Your brain needs that restful time. But let’s do a deal, if you’re going to go for zen, do it well.

In other words, don’t let the train’s delay, the elbow in the ribs, the loud guy on his phone or the snow wrecking havoc piss you off. Take a deep breath and admire the glint of the sun on the buildings. Smile at strangers. Just enjoy the mental time off.

[Image: Birdbath's Piccadilly Filly (or 50 Things you never knew about London Underground) on Flickr, Creative Commons license]

I love RSS and I hate RSS.

It’s both one of the most useful tools I’ve ever used; it allows me to catch up with my favourite blogs, keep up with seldom-blogging friends and find inspiration for my own posts.

It’s also the bane of my life; I turn away for a day or two and Google Reader sits there, laughing at me with its smug “1000+” in the toolbar, reminding me just how far behind I’ve fallen on my reading.

Either way, it’s a way of consuming media that seems to have become routine so this morning, when I came to the realisation that I had just unsubscribed from my last summary-only RSS feed, I wondered if I was the only one to take such drastic action against those frustrating feeds, and wanted to understand why anyone would choose to publish them.

I wrote about this topic 2 years ago with little conclusion so I thought I’d investigate informally whether things have changed by asking my Twitter followers.

So what are their issues with the short summaries?

The results were enlightening but roughly reflected what I expected; Out of 15 responses, 12 people expressed a strong preference for full feeds, to the extent where summary feeds were either not subscribed to or unsubscribed from.

• Don’t want to click
• Don’t want to be forced through to a site to read something
• Full feeds get more readers and engagement
• When using Google Reader on iPhone, RSS summaries are annoying. Clicking through is a waste of time
• I never subscribe to anyone with summary-only feeds, why encourage them?
• “Publications” opt for summaries to drive traffic and ad revenue
• Summary on mobile sucks, don’t subscribe and probably forget to visit again
• Would rather see a full feed with ads, than a summary feed

One person seemed to stand up for the summary feed, saying that short post feeds are fine when reading basic news story while travelling. So that’s one for the summary feeds, but with the caveat that the summary must really summarise the story rather than simply be the first run-on sentence of a post where the author might not get to the point immediately.

The publishers’ point of view

Two publishers were kind enough to explain their side of the story; in both cases, it was a question of protecting their content against sploggers who previously stole their feeds on a regular basis. While summaries don’t fully solve the problem, it makes it more difficult for a spammer to copy their content.

No one piped up with regards to summary feeds as a method to gain more traffic to the site, and more ad impressions as a result. Either that isn’t the motivation of most summary-feed publishers, or they’re aware that it isn’t a popular view and avoided responding to my question.

Finding a solution

Finding a solution to these publishers’ problem is tricky; it’s difficult to identify who is subscribed to your RSS feed and what they’re using it for. Feedburner makes a good effort of reporting “uncommon uses” of your feed, but in my experience it has picked up the legitimate uses of my feed (where I’ve used it on another site I own) but missed most instances of splogs “borrowing” my content.

So if the flow can’t be stemmed, we need to make the flow smarter:

• Add an automatic footer to a post in the RSS feed linking back to your site: Joost de Valk created a WordPress RSS footer plugin which takes care of the hard work for you.
• Cross-link generously when writing your posts: Don’t go overboard and write purely for the purpose of linking back to your older content, as it’ll show in the quality of your posts. But when you do post, think of the relevant and useful content you could refer to, so that if your post is on someone else’s blog, there is still a reference to yours. This can be done within the content or as “related items” at the end of your post. Yes, some services or plugins can create related items automatically, but I don’t endorse those as I find the relevance to often be too poor. Take 5 minutes and do it manually!

These benefit you from an SEO point of view as well, so why not put them into action? Remember, however, that creating value on your site and building your personal brand so that people recognise you as YOU rather than a generic blog-post churner is the best way to create a loyal readership and make the sploggers’ efforts (almost) pointless.

Ask anyone who is self-employed or regularly works from a home office, and you’ll get polarised answers; The home office is either the best or the worst thing that’s happened to them. Either a source of peace and focus, or a never ending stream of distractions and frustration.

In my case, I have to say, it’s been bliss. I’m a social being so I’m thrilled that I get the opportunity to work face to face with clients and colleagues fairly regularly, but I relish the few days a week where I can go a whole day without distractions. The productivity I get out of those days is amazing, so I thought I’d share how I took my space from being “the back room with a desk in it” to “My office” from which I can run a business.

1. Keep your goals visual and within sight

I recently wrote about having clear goals for your day, as a way to drive your productivity. Set your 3 most important tasks for the day and stick to them. It doesn’t mean you can’t do anything else, but each unscheduled task that comes in needs to be critically assessed. “Will this stop me from getting my 3 MITs done today? Is it worth sidetracking for right now?”

Stick them on the wall in an obvious place so that you don’t forget to refer to it.

2. Get a timer

Whether it’s a virtual one (I use Alarm Clock 2 for Mac) or a physical one, like a kitchen timer or a radio alarm clock, it’s a great way to motivate yourself when facing tasks you hate.

Set the alarm for a block of time (I tend to go for 20-30mins depending on how distracted I fear I might be) and cram as much as you can during that time. I’ll use it to get the draft of an article complete, then when the timer goes, I’ll take a break and get on with editing the ideas and polishing the article. This can make bad days seem a whole lot better after a few productive blocks!

If you belong to the other extreme, and can find yourself still working in the same position hours after you started, you may want to use it to remind you to take breaks. A friend of mine uses Time Out, which pops up a reminder to look away from the screen every 10 minutes and one to take a break every 50 minutes. Stand up, move around, have a sip of water… Simple but these small steps can help you avoid the discomforts of RSI at a later date.

3. Buy an inbox tray

Everyone says this, but not enough people do it. A pile of paperwork on the corner of your desk is not the way to go; it’ll distract and stress you every time you see a mountain of things you haven’t dealt with yet.

Mine is a silver mesh 3-level inbox tray, with the top one labelled “Inbox”, the second “Accounts” and the third “Scrap Paper”.

The top one takes in all business-related (and personal, let’s admit it) paperwork which gets filed into a filing cabinet behind me or sorted into projects to action twice a week. The second one contains any receipts, bills or accountant-related material that needs more attention than simply going in the Inbox. The bottom basket contains scrap paper, old print outs where the back of the page can be used for notes, etc. It’s easily within reach so that when the phone rings or inspiration catches, I don’t need to spend time looking for a scrap of paper to write on.

4. Get a whiteboard (or two)

If you have any wall space available, I’d recommend a whiteboard. It’s a great way to sketch out an idea or leave yourself big obvious reminders of progress. I tend to put high-level targets/goals for the month on the board and tick them off to get a sense of progress throughout the month.

For example…

January Projects

- Client A: Complete Phase 1 of project
- Client B: Provide 3 days of support for Phase 2
- Write n posts from topics list
- Close £n in new business
- Book attendance to Event

Every time I complete an action that wraps up the project, it feels great to tick it on the board.

For those who get inspired in the shower, I’ve seen great bathtime whiteboards for kids before, so stick one in the shower and scribble that superb idea before it disappears.

5. Shape your energy with scents and sounds

Every so often, treat your senses to revive your energy. You may be surprised of the effect it has on your mood.

Need to focus and energise? Put lemon & orange or satsuma & spice scented oils in your oil burner.

Stress of the day getting to you? Put some lavender in, close your eyes, take 10 deep breaths. Pause for a moment and get back to work.

Want to pretend it’s Christmas? My favourite mix is: 4 drops of satsuma & orange and cranberry oils each and 2 drops of vanilla extract and cinammon each. Yum!

In my personal opinion, I would avoid the use of incense. It can get smoky and the smell of old incense lingers for a long time which can trigger headaches if you’re prone to them.

Music can also have an impact on your energy levels; create playlists to energise, relax and focus. Personally, I opt for classical piano for focus, Soma FM’s Groove Salad for general writing and pop music when I need to motivate myself to get filing and clearing up done!

If you can, get some headphones. Sometimes tuning the world out (whether it’s the kids or the construction outside) is the only way to get full focus onto the task at hand. I live in a quiet neighbourhood and am childfree so open cup wireless headphones are ideal; I can still hear the doorbell ring if I’m expecting a delivery. You may want some radical noise-cancelling headphones if you’re surrounded by more noise.

6. Give yourself breathing space

Your home office should be your haven of productivity, not a messy backroom where you sit on the edge of the bed to write (unless that’s really how you get into creative mode!)

Think wisely when buying new furniture or storage for the office: Will it improve your productivity or just be something cute that sits on a shelf and adds to the clutter? I received a humongous red bean bag from Sumo Lounge a few months ago, and kept it in the office for a while. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but last week, I relocated it and am much happier to have regained the walking space in the office.

7. Keep creative tools nearby

If your job requires creativity, sometimes a bit of madness can kickstart the process.

Creativity cue cards: I’ve pasted them to index cards and added to the pack with some ideas of my own. I’ll just grab something randomly from the pack and start sketching until I find a thread I can run with.

Whiteboard: Draw a process chart, brainstorm keywords or draw pictures, whatever helps you find an angle to approach the issue

Lego, silly putty and arts & crafts materials: Yup, I’m a grownup (well, that’s debatable…) and I own a big box of Lego bricks. Sometimes letting your subconscious work while you distract yourself can be just the trigger you need.

8. Keep emergency snacks nearby

If you’re focused, don’t let the urge to make a sandwich distract you. Keep dried fruits, nuts and water at hand. However, remember to take midday breaks to feed yourself properly!

Shop smartly so that you have a good balance of healthy snacks and nutritious meals to avoid having to break up your day to go to the supermarket.

9. Declutter

Create a folder for each project to make tidying easy at the end of the day. Put each project away and make a list for the following morning instead of leaving every file out as a reminder. It’ll make tomorrow morning feel a lot less daunting when you walk in.

At the end of the week or when you have dead time (eg. when you’re on hold with customer service, waiting for a conference call to start…) pick a single shelf and remove anything that’s accumulated. Put the receipts into your expenses file, put the Christmas cards you received 2 months ago from a client in the recycling bin (they don’t need to know!) and you’ll feel it’s much easier to keep your office clutter-free.

10. Accept that some days won’t work your way

I’m still no good with unexpected derailing of my day, but sometimes, there will be unavoidable distractions; building works, deliveries, errands that must be run or, for parents, kids who are sick and staying home for the day. On those days, accept that you may need to switch your focus to the jobs that can be done quickly and between distractions as opposed to writing your most in-depth research paper.

What are your tips for a more productive and zen-like home office?

Other resources:

• Advice for Setting up a Home Office – Group Interview at Productivity 501
• Pragmatic Thinking & Learning on understanding your brain’s natural architecture
• Be Realistic About Time on Chris Brogan’s blog

According to Spamhaus, over 96% of all email is spam. That leaves 2% for Facebook notifications, 1.5% for those forwards your mum sends you that you saw in 2001 anyways & about 0.5% for those nagging emails your boss sends on Sunday nights. It’s grim isn’t it? Yet we love it, and we (certainly I) couldn’t live without it.

How about blog comments?

We love getting recognition and fandom for the great entries we write, even though we might not get as many as the big blogs who might get a few hundreds for every post written! And how much spam in blogs? Well, according to Akismet, who power the spam filtering for WordPress and Movable Type blogs, 85% of all blog comments are spam.

Recently, however, I’ve noted a slightly disturbing trend where bloggers let some spam comments through by choice. I’m mystified on why they would do this; ignorance that spammers can “customise” a spam message by including your post title and therefore assuming it’s real? Naivety that a comment like “I was searching for Blogs about personal government grant applications and found this site. I am interested in your content and appreciate sites like this.” could be a real one? Or a personal interest in wanting to see their posts appear to have more comments?

Others seem to simply hit “delete” instead of “spam” in their WordPress admin area, since the immediate results are the same.

But here is why it matters

It’s important for us all to call a spade a spade and a spam comment a spam comment.

Akismet is more than just a spam filter for YOUR blog, it’s a giant brain. Not the gooey, kept-in-a-jar kind of brain, don’t worry. (Though I wouldn’t put it past Matt Mullenweg to have one of those too…)

It’s a system that learns from all our actions, so every comment you mark helps it identify ham from spam in the future on your blog, but also on every other Akismet user’s blog. So marking a commenter you don’t like as “spam” or a spam comment as “deleted” muddles the waters. Bet you didn’t realise it affected everyone else, did you?

Follow these simple rules

• If it’s a real comment from a squishy human user but you don’t agree with it, hit delete.
• If it’s a comment from a bot, something that looks automatically generated or links to obvious spam sites, hit spam.

Being consistent with these rules will allow us all to spend more time blogging and less time moderating comments. Meanwhile, if you haven’t got Akismet already enabled on your blog, what are you waiting for?

[Image: Bucket and Spades by Auntie P on Flickr, under Creative Commons]

The past few weeks have been very spotty in terms of blogging, with so much of my time being focused on getting stuck in to new projects and flirting with a few more potential ones.

Yesterday, however, was an insightful (and social) day for me, spent at Future of Mobile in London. Future of Mobile is in its second year, organised by the great team at Carsonified. I did a dreadful job of tweeting or blogging the event, being far too busy buzzing around chatting to new people, but many others did a stellar job of documenting what turned out to be a very interesting day.

During my presentation at FOM, photo by Rudy de Waele

The very lovely Tom Hume (who’s excellent presentation teased us all with colourful macaroons right before lunch) posted his review of the event earlier today. Helen Keegan, fellow blogger and geek gal, shocked the crowd with her “There is no future to mobile” (your faces were all priceless when she stated that), James Whatley was (as usual) the most energetic body in the room and – at the risk of potentially getting an ass-kicking for saying this – the younger share of the speakers did a rather stellar job at keeping the audience awake and interested.

I was asked for the slides to my 6 minutes presentation on Why Community Matters throughout the day, so as promised, here they are. (And thanks to Carsonified for being mad enough to let me loose on stage)

In summary, I think we all agreed that we’re looking at a fragmented, young and constantly evolving industry and there’s a whole lot of work to do in order to get to a stage where normobs can really make the most of the technology that’s racing ahead, in terms of accessibility, simplicity, pricing and education. But without a challenge, what fun would it be!?

Some more coverage of the event:

• Andrew Grill’s “The Future of Mobile is…”
• Jonathan MacDonald’s “Every Single One of Us” was an excellent thought-provoking presentation
• Dale Zak’s coverage of the event on Ideas 2.0
• I hear official footage of the event will be released soon, but in the meantime, you can catch Tom’s presentation thanks to the Vimeo video Ribot captured from his front row seat.

Desperate as ever to get a rise out of bloggers, Paul Boutin, of Valleywag fame (or shame, your choice), has been writing in Wired’s Entertainment section that “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004″.

He says “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.” Boutin’s argument is so flawed, when he mentions Jason Calacanis’ decision to stop blogging last summer and refers to Technorati as though it’s the sole reason for a blog’s existence.

Hello? McFly!? Being a Top 100 Technorati blog isn’t the be all and end all of blogging. Thousands of bloggers make a living from their trade, directly or indirectly, and it’ll take more than one bitter blogger to stop them from writing about their passion.

Millions of bloggers, big and small, write for completely non-financial reasons. It can help someone find focus, in the way a personal diary may have done a few years ago. Some find like-minded people to discuss hobbies, habits and interests with, from GTD to crocheting.

Others have found the longest lasting value of a blog; indirect revenue. Advertising is a fickle friend when revenue from your blog is dependent on traffic. A bumpy ride on the Googlecoaster and revenue can be eclipsed quicker than you can say “Google AdSense”. So the indirect revenue can be a longer-lasting, slow-burn solution, whether it’s in selling homemade jams and liqueurs after having detailed on your blog how you make them, in selling your band’s music where you’ve been actively blogging about the evolution of rock in the modern day or, like myself, providing services that are in line with the knowledge you’ve been sharing on your blog.

In this instance, blogging is about reputation building, finding a community that feels like home.

Technorati’s algorithm and Boutin’s thinking are both relics from blogging’s first life. Now, like a snake shedding its skin, we are seeing blogs evolve into something more organic. They’re more three-dimensional, showing people’s Flickr photos, their tweets in the sidebar and contain a link to their Dopplr profiles outlining their next few trips. But in all reality, they still are the home and heart of many passionate bloggers, money-earning or not.