17/09: Blogs To Put In Your Sights This Week

This is another of those general roundup posts where all kinds of information that's been rattling around in my head finally finds expression on these pages. With so much to read, digest, comment upon etc. it's almost impossible to dedicate a full post to some of it, so, here is a general melting pot of things I wanted to blog about over the past few days. Read on, maybe you're getting some link love you weren't expecting!

First off, some of you may notice I've changed both my Avatar and my Favicon. Couple of reasons for this but it was a post on Bumpzee by Mona Weathers at Iwebis.com that finally got me to do something about it. I'd been using the crest of the Cayman Islands as a picture on various social blogging sites, but now, like it or not you're getting something a little more personal.

I've also added this blog to BlogCatalog where I've been a member since June 2006 but never used it. Another of those jobs I kept meaning to get around to and never did, but it's finally done and I've even added a widget to these pages.

After mentioning the slowly increasing number of internet users discovering how to block advertising, BigBucksBlogger Lucia has been keeping herself very busy, looking at ways to try and ensure that your ads are seen. That's a story worth following. TDavid over at Things That Make You Go Hmm has a very interesting interview with one of his readers who regularly uses the AdBlocker plugin and brings another perspective to the subject. 

Talking of Lucia we both took the plunge and joined CoComment a week or so ago. Since then, I've been struggling with a few minor bugs but overall it's a good tool and is certainly going to help build more links. Dane Morgan, who runs two great sites including Blog Strokes has jumped on board too and I'm still hoping more savvy bloggers will join in conversation with us.

Mention of Dane (who recently helped him out with NoNoFollow) leads me to Vlad who you may know as VladTheAffiliate. Vlad has an excellent blog on affiliate marketing, and this is just a little bit of fun. He is trying to outrank Vlad The Impaler for first place on Wikipedia's search for the term Vlad. Well, now we've given him another little hand up, why not help him out yourself? He's even gone to the trouble of giving you the HTML for his anchor text link!

With so many blogs rapidly filling my RSS Reader I'm almost tempted to keep one of the RSS Contest prizes to myself. I thought everybody was ready to rant about their web hosting company at the slightest provocation, but responses have been very slow so far. Why not stop by, tell us about your host and give yourself a shot at winning a FeedGost license? Jayne over at AboutBlogging has set the ball rolling and deserves a mention not only for that, but for standing by the principles she talks about in her latest post entitled Be A Community Builder. Be warned though, the design of her blog is likely to make you suffer 'design envy', well, it did me anyway.

There are so many others I could mention and I know that as soon as I hit 'publish' I'll remember something I really wanted to include but didn't. I apologize to those I've forgotten who don't even know that I've forgotten them, and will be almost sure to mention you the next time I make one of these rambling type posts. 

For those who haven't taken advantage of the free download of the Downtime Witness software, I recently found a free online monitoring service at HostTracker which you may prefer. Judging by the number of blogs that are often offline, it might be an idea to keep a closer eye on, and a record of, your hosting company's performance.  

Now that the new avatar has been unleashed on an unsuspecting world, I will try to put up a long overdue "About" page sometime, as it seems a lot of you like to see a little more of the bloggers behind the screens. In the meantime, enjoy some of these great blogs if you're not already a reader.

TCH - The Cayman Host Online Store