Ranting in Writing Blogs
I've included a "recent visitors" box from Blog Catalog now, mainly because it's the only way I can see more than ten visitors from there to thank and entice to leave a shout on my Profile page or a Comment or Review or to join The Neighborhood on the blog's page. I may expand the features from MyBlogLog, too, currently in the left column.
This must be the Week of the Blog for email, because I've received several nutty messages, including a request to remove a link to a news article because someone is unhappy with what the article says. I don't even mention the person in my post! He writes to me, "Yes, I am the subject of the slander in the article." His logic goes like this: my link causes the newspaper article "to show up highly on the search engines...what is happening as a result of the hyperlink in your post that is objectionable to me." I"d much rather that my links cause my blog to show up highly in the search engines, but maybe there's a lesson here, somewhere.
Then a Google Alert alarmed me when I found one of my recent posts appearing in toto in someone else's blog, but WITHOUT links or attribution. Jeez! If you're going to steal my work, at least leave the link or use my name. I wasted an hour or more trying to track down an email address for the hacker jerk (he has several sites on Blogspot), found none, so settled for wading through Blogger's complaint system, only to receive a lengthy email from them, saying that I had to put a full DMCA complaint in writing. Sheesh! Shall I post his name, this Indian student? Let you visit his sites and leave nasty remarks? Would you? Or would he welcome the attention?
Labels: blogging, promotion, technology, websites














After almost four years of preaching about writers needing websites, it's time to move on to the next logical step to success: maintaining websites. It is debatable if a static site is worse than none at all. Visitors who return a few times and find nothing new, seldom come back. More importantly, fresh new content keeps search engines spidering your site and sending people who search on your keywords to your little corner in the vast web.
Did you ever wonder how many search engines scan the Internet? The search engine optimization (
About a month has passed since Liz Cohen wrote to tell me about the 
A new-to-me company, Adaptive Blue, is offering "smart links" and SmartLink Widgets to enhance blogs and websites. They come in a variety of flavors (stocks, music, wine, movies), but we'll focus on the one for books.
Sorry if you came for a laugh on Silly Saturday. Nothing struck me funny this week, especially the payment demand received by snailmail from a company which shall remain nameless (because I don't want to inadvertently send them any business by mistake). This NAMELESS.NET company purports to be a "domain listing service". The bill uncannily resembles the monthly statement from my water company. It purports to cover: 
[Groan!] I think I broke my new blog layout. However, in the process, I've discovered a great new resource,
I see I've managed to lose the background to this page. What a challenge! I'm trying to switch from a two-column to a three-column template, HTML to xhtml markup language, and Old Blogger to New Blogger--all in One Swell Foop! Unfortunately, I avoided learning xhtml, seeking to hone my CSS skills, then resting on my fat assets. Wrong! A writer, even those who write the behind-the-scene coding for web pages, must keep learning. So, here I grow. And although little shows on this page yet, like the duck floating serenely on a pond, I'm paddling madly below the surface!