Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Re: more from Fred


On Jan 25, 2006, at 9:19 AM, Fred wrote:

> Hmmm...you actually managed to do a post via e-mail. I've never
> been able to get that to work for me.

It was pretty easy, even for a newcomer. You just go to your Blogger
dashboard, click on settings, and make up an e-mail mail address by
adding a word into the template. It's a bummer that the jpegs didn't
show up. I also noticed they have set it up so you can blog from your
cell phone using text messaging and even post phone cam pix. Just
what we need, people blogging while they're driving their cars (too
fast) down the freeway.

> Yeah, I did that blog value tool myself and mine was worth just
> less than $3000, if memory serves me correct.

Did the jpeg come through? It shows that humboldtlib has grown in
value to $5,645.40.
How much do you figure that is per hour of labor?

> Somewhere back in my archives there's a post where I mention my
> blog value and the value of a few of the other blogs I frequent.
> Don't really know what to make of all that, though.

It's meaningless. I'm beginning to see that blogging is an art form,
a means of self-expression that puts the tools to create an easily
absorbed message into the hands of the masses. (That last phrase is
almost straight from the end of the Blog Humboldt story, and I have
to credit Hank with helping conclude the thing.) Like any artform —
music, painting, photography, writing, whatever — people are going to
do it to please themselves, because of the basic urge to communicate,
or maybe because of some more basic urge: to mark their territory.
Fortunately you can't smell blogs. :)

> I'm surprised at how quickly it comes up with a value. You'd think
> it would take at least a few seconds to find the blog and analyze
> all the links?

It's instantaneous. You know you can find out at any moment in time
which web addresses have links pointing to yours. It's the same basic
data-trolling system used to create Google rankings. This applet
simply retrieves that data, multiplies it by an arbitrary number, and
spits out a value. It's simply the monetary equivalent of your Google
ranking. It assumes (or satirizes) an unproven concept: That blogs
can be bought and sold as a commodity. Again, as I mentioned before,
my blog is valued at $0 because no other blog or webpage has a link
to it. As you know (and Bill K. points out in his part of Blog
Humboldt) trading links is key to pulling in more readers.
It will be interesting to see what effect having a picture of HumBlog
(and it's address) on the cover of 22,000 copies of the Journal will
have on traffic to the site.

2 comments:

Fred Mangels said...

I'll give that e-mail posting method another try. I think I know what I might have been doing wrong.

I added a link to your blog to my mine to help you get some hits. I'm averaging 50 to 60 hits a day as of late.

I've been wanting to start a special links section just for humboldt related blogs but I'm not sure of how exactly to do it. I'm worred about screwing up my template. I'll have to see how other people are doing it.

Don't know if you have a hit counter on your site, as I don't see one but I know some people have them set to not be seen. The one I use, http://www.sitemeter.com/
can tell you all kinds of interesting things like what other web sites sent visitors to your blog. It doesn't tell all of them as most come back as Unknown. I suspect that might be from people using firewalls. But, mine show people coming from other blogs and humguide, etc., among other places.

Neat thing about the sitemeter counters is you don't have to mess with where to insert the html code for the counter. I'm not real hip to html. All you do is insert the url of your blog and sitemeter inserts the counter for you.

Fred Mangels said...

Nope. Still can't get the e-mail to post my comments. Don't know why. Oh well.