I just upgraded the version of WordPress here to 2.3.3, since apparently a lot of blogs who run older versions have been getting hacked recently. 2.5 is coming soon… supposedly. Can’t wait till my CMS is done, WordPress updates take to long to upload.

Besides that, I’ve officially made a posting schedule and I’ll try to create weekly and monthly goals in an attempt to get this blog rolling again. Traffic is already back up to 50% of where it was before my vacation, so I suspect within a few weeks it’ll be back to normal.

The weekly posting schedule is as follows:

Monday - Blogging articles, news, trends, tips, etc
Wednesday - Marketing and SEO
Friday - Security, current scams that may affect bloggers, spam news, etc.

In between those days I’ll of course post any important blog-related news that pops up. Basically I am doing a schedule to keep myself on track, since I apparently have blog ADHD and cannot stay focused on just a handful of topics.

I’m going to start working on creating high-quality articles that are packed full of information instead of falling into the trap of writing low-quality long articles that do nothing but make me tired. The average article length will probably be about the same as this post.

The first month’s goal is to double traffic (get it to normal levels) and try to increase the RSS subscription levels by 25%. The next month I will try to double both things. After that I’ll keep trying to double everything as long as I can.

As you can tell, I’m not fooling around with this thing anymore. It’s time to get serious in my quest to dominate the world.

Ahh, the first random thoughts post of 2008. Should we hold a party to commemorate this wonderful accomplishment… hmm… nahhh.

Ignorant Shoppers Are Happier

There’s an interesting bit of research that claims ignorant shoppers are happier. Personally I think ignorant people in general are happier. Found via SEO Book.

20 Free Web Design Ebooks And Guides

Mohsin posted a great list of some web design resources. Some of them I knew about, but others I didn’t. If you want to get into HTML, CSS, or if you’re interested in web design at all, I’d recommend taking a look at it.

How To Easily Boost Technorati Rank

Chris Garrett posted a 2-step guide on how to easily boost your Technorati rank. Personally I won’t be trying it, because I am a bit concerned about whether or not it could get your blog the boot from Technorati, but it’ll still be interesting to see what his results are. Good luck if you try it.

Create A Growth Strategy For Your Blog

There is a great read over at ProBlogger about creating a growth strategy for your blog. Lately I’ve been rethinking things here, and the article helped me come up with some quick ideas on how to do things differently not only with this blog but with any blogs or sites I may start in the future.

If you’ve written a cool Internet/Tech/Blogging article you’d like to share, or if you know of one, feel free to send me an e-mail.

Since I started nusuni.com many years ago I’ve used “nusuni” as my nickname all over the place. After all, it made sense, why not keep everything the same? It makes it easier to remember.

But now I have thought about it and I’m ready to get a new online nickname. I’ve been thinking about something along the lines of steeleman and steelejerm (hehe). Basically I want to try and merge my first and last name into a cool little nick name. I’m leaning toward steelejerm, just because it’s funny. What do you think? Have any other ideas?

Michael from AppleGazette.com, who is one of my favorite bloggers and podcasters, often criticizes the lack of fact checking by blogs. It seems like in every other episode of Apple Gazette Daily he has at least one rant about news blogs not correctly confirming their information and spreading misinformation, and he even criticizes himself on the subject. I have to fully agree with what he says.

Many blogs don’t have any sort of procedure for confirming information beyond looking at other blogs, which is just plain silly. Web 2.0 is basically the period in time in which the Internet has become the modern gossip arena. It has essentially become: “He said that she said that they said that my cousins uncle’s sister’s dead grandfather’s friend said…” While getting information out quickly is important, especially if you are a news blogger, getting the information at least somewhat correct is much more important. Incorrect news does nothing but hurt your reputation.

It also seems to me that many news blogs cite other blogs (or worse… Wikipedia) as their sources. Take any article on a news blog and there is a 50% chance that its cited source will be another blog, which will link to another blog, etc. This infinitely long linked list is the reason why false information spreads like wildfire online. Nobody does fact checking, and nobody links to the real source.

So, what do you think? Should news bloggers do more fact checking? Should they spend 5 seconds to find the originating source of the information and link to it, possibly in addition to their source? Do you think it really matters since blogs aren’t major media sites? Please share you thoughts in the comments.

Bet you weren’t expecting a post by me

Just wanted to wish you all a happy new year. Did you make any wishes? I sure did:

• Continue my exercising routines and lose at least 20 lbs
• Turn this blog around and point it back in the right direction again
• Make a nice (at least $500/month) income off the ‘net by the end of the year (2008 is my year - I can feel it!)
• Learn how to better juggle my personal life and work life
• Get a girlfriend (had to toss that in )
• Finish up all of my current programs and scripts and open source them (probably under a modified BSD license)
• Perhaps start doing heavy-duty affiliate marketing

There’s also a lot more - but that’s the gist of it. What did you wish for, and more importantly, do you think you will keep your resolution?

Oh, and if anyone is wondering how my little break is going, it is fine. It is a bit weird not blogging every day though. In the past few days I’ve slowly switched my main OS over to Ubuntu from OS X Tiger, and I will be dual screening with a 20″ and a 15″ monitor soon (before the 20″ was alone, and the 15″ was hooked up to my iBook G4). I’ve always been a Slackware and Fedora/Red Hat fan - but I must admit Ubuntu is alright and is ten times better than I remember it in the early days.

It is amazing what a simple change of attitude can do for you. I’m getting twice the work done in the same amount of time - and I may even pop back into my regular blog schedule sooner than I had previously thought. When it does relaunch there will be quite a few changes though - hopefully for the better.

Oh well, it is late, so I must be going. Talk to you later.

PS: Thanks again to everyone for your kind, supportive comments - they really mean a lot