Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Testing Blogger in Beta by opening a new blog: SF Observer

I started a new blog--Science Fiction Observer--as a way to test the new version of Blogger, Blogger in Beta. The new systems retains all the advantages of the old version, while the following added functionalities seem most useful at this time

  • modular design elements - they can be included in the template or turned off with great ease
  • dynamic catherogizing of the posts via "labels" (tags, keywords)
  • redesigned user interface - it's more user friendly and "better looking"
  • you can still manually change and adjust the template code
I have extremelly positive general impression. When possible, I'll migrate the existing blogs from the old to the new Blogger. This possibility is currently delayed for large blogs or in some other cases.

PS
Help promoting the new SF and related topics blog by putting links to it or particular posts from your blogs/websites. If you are a member of StumbleUpon or Digg, put a good word through those services. The former proved quite effective, garnering over a 1000 visitors during yesterday, according to SF Observer's SiteMeter.

Sources (from the Macedonian version of Razvigor)

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Who is Your Favorite Hominid?

[Originally published January 26, 2006]

Happy Family

Forumisation of the Blogs from Macedonia

[Originally published January 19, 2006]

During 2005 I noticed a trend I provisionally named "forumisation of the blogs" from Macedonia, i.e. using blogs as a kind of "dispersed forum" ( Jovan). The blogger plays the role of moderator: starting a topic with his/her post, and then letting the visitors—including many other bloggers—providing comments, sometimes leading lengthy polemics.

This trend is not necessarily bad, but is different from the practice in the outside world, where majority of the bloggers, especially those most successful, use their own blogs to comment posts or articles published on other blogs or websites. Such comments usually consist of:
  • Short summary/blogger's opinion
  • Quote, and
  • (Obligatory) link to the source.
The mutual deep linking in particular (alongside the blogroll) enabled the blogs to rise to the level of new and influential "wave of the future." Mutual links influence increasing the blogs' rank on Google, enabling them to surface among the search results. At a time there was even talk of "blog noise" as major issue Google needed to solve. Nevertheless, Google bought Blogger, the blogs won the fight for their place under the sun, and then they were noticed by the Macedonian public.

Most of the Macedonian blogs that appeared in the last year or two are introspective and serve for publishing of personal views, findings, or literary works. Most of them visibly lack deep links towards other blogs and websites.

I reckon that increase in deep linking will not only widen the horizons of the individual bloggers, but will enable raising of the Google PageRank of the whole Macedonian web – bringing more visits to these websites by new users, especially foreigners.

Announcing: Best of Razvigor ;-) in Macedonian

Coming up soon – some of the posts from the Macedonian version of Razvigor blog which made a mark or are somehow significant, published during the last year.