For the people who have started to take up blogging and are planning to take it to the next level, the Blogging and Beyond mentor program is something they should look into. This especially holds true to the people who are looking beyond blogging as a hobby. Blogging has also been known to be a good marketing tool and companies are well aware of the benefits it can give once they get the proper people to handle the position.

“What do 97 savvy professionals have in common?

They all participated in the successful Blogging and Beyond Mentor Program with The Blog Squad.

Now it’s your turn.

We’re opening this program to you at a fantastically reduced introductory fee so you can experience it for yourself.

Yes, for the price of a couple of Starbucks frappaccinos, you can put more boost into your marketing than a shot of caffeine!

The Blogging and Beyond Mentor Program gives you a competitive edge for marketing your business online.” – Ready to take your marketing to the next level?

[tags]blogger, problogger, blog marketing, blog mentoring, mentoring program[/tags]

So we are all aware that Earth Day is fast approaching. While there are posts relative to the upcoming event, there are people who have dedicated most of their time sharing about the ecological nature of things through having their own blogs and blogging about facts of green events.

Rebecca Carter has acknowledged the use of blogging as the new tool for providing information towards people and this has been more than helpful. In such events as Earth Day 2007 on Sunday, proper citation towards her efforts is something that justified the actual intent of blogging if used properly and given a chance to grow.

“It’s hard to find out about getting involved locally,” she said.

Carter said she does it as a community service to help bring attention to the local nonprofits that may not have yet taken advantage of blogging as an information-sharing medium. And with Earth Day approaching Sunday, her blog is buzzing with South Florida events.

“Our generation gets information in different ways now,” Carter said. “The local Internet has some catching up to do to cater to the way that the younger generations are expecting their media.”

Carter isn’t the only one realizing the potential of reaching out to the blogosphere to make a difference environmentally. Doug Young, president of the Broward County Audubon Society, said a majority of his members and donors are of an older, less tech-oriented generation. He realized that creating a blog is vital to the survival of his nonprofit as a means of communicating with younger generations.

“In this day and age, going to meetings is just not worth it for a half-dozen reasons,” Young said. “Therefore, electronic medium is the way to go.” – Eco-blogs target younger generations in South Florida

[tags] earth day 2007, ecology, greens, blogging world, blog world[/tags]

With the every gaining popularity of Google, the advanced ways to help enhance the various ways to make searching and other related online queries and needs has been among the priorities of the search engine giant. To date, it has now added another feature that of which is providing a history tracker to aid people from looking back at visited sites so that they would not have to do new queries of the same nature and simply go back towards the site they last visited directly.

The twist here is that saved cookies pertaining to the sites are not stored on the local machine. Google will host them for the user. Here is a better overview:

“If you remember seeing something online, you’ll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History,” Payam Shodjai, Google’s product manager for personalization, wrote in a post to the Google blog late Thursday. “It’s your slice of the web, at your fingertips.”

The feature works in a manner similar to the way in which web browsing software like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, and Opera do, recording a list of pages that have been opened. However, unlike a web browser, the data is stored on Google’s servers, and users can gain access to the information from any computer with an internet connection and a web browser. – Google adds history tracking to search engine

[tags]google, google history tracking, google cookies[/tags]

Anyone looking for cheap web hosting for his new website has many options. These days many web host are offering their hosting services at cheap prices. Even some wireless ISP providers have started this business as part-time income. For starting this type of business people need to have basic IT knowledge in the form of a+ certification. Other than this IBM exams can also prove very handy for novices.

As technology enhancements have been continuously implemented in most business organizations, educational and informative law articles, references and other necessary law materials can now be easily searched with the proper filters to get exact files and links to what people are really looking for.

This innovation is a big boost to pinpointing relevant legal information through articles and blogs. It is surely a welcome addition towards minimizing the searching time needed to actually get what a querying person would really want to read on.

Law.com yesterday launched a new search tool, called Law.com Quest, that allows more focused searching of legal sites than would a general search site such as Google. The goal, of course, is to deliver more relevant results. Quest provides two options for searches: search only the Law.com network of sites or search a broader collection of legal Web sites and legal blogs.

I posted my initial impressions yesterday on my LawSites blog. In the interest of full disclosure, this blog is owned by Law.com and my LawSites blog is part of the Law.com blog network. That said, I found Quest to be a significant improvement over previous options for searching the Law.com network of sites, which includes all ALM national and regional publications. As I wrote yesterday:

“A nice feature is the ability to filter search results by date ranges or by the content source or type. For example, if you search within the Law.com network, you can then filter results to show only those from the National Law Journal or The American Lawyer, or you can choose to see only results that come from court decisions or blogs. If you use the broader “legal Web” search, you can filter results by selected courts and regions.” – Law.com’s New Legal Search Tool.

Perhaps the daily need of most bloggers today is that of thinking of a way to be able to help promote their blog and gain attention and traffic to help in its development. Such has been the intention and the task that FuelMyBlog has taken into consideration and has now officially opened for bloggers to publicize their respective blog sites and jack up their hit counts and popularity ratings.

Kevin Dixie says: “I came up with the idea after writing my own blog and wanted to find a site that brought bloggers together and enabled easy reading within a couple of clicks. I always thought of blogs as just online diaries and never realized there was so much good creative content in the blogosphere. Re-launch feedback has been very positive and we have been very encouraged by the buzz generated in the blogosphere.”

Kevin Dixie surely knows what bloggers from all over the world really needs. With FuelMyBlog garnering over 100,000 hits a day along with its special features as highlights likes “Blog of the Day” and widgets, its aid for bloggers will surely be a welcome attraction.

[tags]widgets, blog marketing, blog promotion, seo, links, features[/tags]

After doing a survey on random men aged 18 to 35, it was found that these people would prefer to utilize technology rather than the usual old style of reading magazines.

“Teens today are so tech savvy and to keep up with the times we realized that a print magazine no longer meets their needs,” Mattel licensing manager Victoria Field said. “Barbie is constantly evolving to keep up with young girls, so it’s now time to explore new ways in which to engage with them. Barbie.com is already one of the most frequented sites for girls and there are plans to expand Barbie’s internet presence.”

With the advent of technology and the obvious shift of people to finding articles and information over the web, print advertising and materials are not entirely passé. It just so happened that people find it more convenient accessing such articles over the web, all thanks to technology breakthroughs in this modern age.

Print isn’t dead yet, however. Research released by Magazine Publishers of America showed 262 magazine launches were announced in the US last year, a 2 per cent increase on 2005. Of the new titles, 88 were in the lifestyle category, 29 sports and recreation and 22 shelter. Eight magazines that started as websites or online-only editions made the leap to print during the year.

Source: Relaunched sites offer social opportunities:The Australian, March 15, 2007

[tags]magazines, portals, newspapers, articles, reading materials[/tags]

What’s the best way to get on your users’ desktops than give them free toolbar downloads? I’m not particularly fond of browser toolbars myself, though, since they take up precious browser real estate, and I still associate them too much with those sneaky spyware. But b5media thinks their readers get a better experience from having the network’s blogs more accessible, with the b5media toolbar.

We’re constantly on the look out for new ways to make it easier to find all the great content that our bloggers create. So, we’re really excited about the official launch of the b5media Toolbar (alpha version) – a quick and easy download that’s installed on your browser.

Here’s what you get: – You can get to any page on the main site easily – You can get to various areas of the forums quickly – You can chat with other b5 users in the toolbar chatroom – You can read content from across the network right in the toolbar (and then click through to read more) – We can send all toolbar users alerts – And you get regular features such as a popup blocker, search, e-mail notification, and the weather.

The best feature here, in my opinion is the user-to-user chat. That’s one way to build up a good community. However, I would tend to think that such a feature could have been best implemented on a Webpage and not on the browser itself. With most applications today moving away from the desktop and towards Web apps, you’d think people wouldn’t bother with installing local software anymore. And then of course, the more tech savvy crowd would probably be a bit wary about installing browser toolbars and such add-ons.

b5media has inked a major partnership deal with VIP Fan Clubs to produce co-branded shows for Fox Media’s Television Shows:

The initial test run is just 4 shows, but we are confident that the initial 4 will let us figure out the best way to cross-promote the blogs from both sides of this deal.

The point is to provide high quality daily content for passionate fans of the shows. Inside information. Exclusive deals. Discounts on merchandise. The whole 9 yards.

Aaron Brazell comments on this deal over at The Blog Herald:

Television shows and entertainment blogs are nothing new to b5media as a large portion of their blogs are based on these genres. But this marks the first time that the network has partnered with what is termed “old media” to advance common themes.

We’ll have an interview with b5media President Jeremy Wright on Wednesday over at Blog Herald.

Om Malik has a few thoughts up in response to Jason’s earlier post and yesterday’s New York Times article over at Gigaom:

There were others like Ian Bell, and David Newberger , and my editor on the story, Andy Raskin weighed in. Like Jason a whole bunch of people disagreed. Regardless of what you might think of a “box item” in a much larger story, which I urge you to read, it is clear that the content, and by extension, eyeballs are back.

Much more in the posting – be sure to check out the comments as well.

Nick Wilson, over at Performancing, has some thoughts on a better blog network structure:

What kind of visible structure do you think of when you think about a blog network? A loose collection of links down the side menu right? Perhaps under category headings?

At best, some networks seem to have a focus on an audience sector, and their blogs, still all linked down a side menu, are at least vaguely related. But even this approach, which to me is far better than the “no relationship other than owneship” approach, seems to be crying out for some kind of better way to organize and (warning, buzz word coming…) leverage the power of the group.

Nick goes on to outline a decent hub and spoke outline for a blog network.

I’m not sure that this is the path I would take – but it does offer several benefits. Read Nick’s post for more.