May 31 2007

Weekly Update 31 May

Published by at 9:10 pm under Australian Blogs,BUMPzee,community,dLook,Top Australian Blogs

It’s weekly update time.

1. New blogs added to the Top 100 Australian Blogs

Alister Cameron (yes, the star of 1 vs 100) wrote an interesting post today mentioning his thoughts on how Google’s BlogRank would make collating a list like this much more accurate.

You might also notice that I’ve got a new button that links to the top 100 list (designed by myself – you mean you couldn’t tell?). I’ve got this in various sizes from micro upwards – I just haven’t gotten around to making an easy way to copy and paste the code.

2. New blogs added to the Australian Blogs Community on Bumpzee

I know that there have been a few people who have subscribed to the Australian Blogs Community Feed. With this one feed, you get a teaser (the first 250 characters) of each blog post for every blog in the community.

Because it is a community feed, we should each consider that we might have a wider audience now. I mention this, as I think we should be mindful of how we use those first 250 characters. If a post is going to contain bad language, be overtly sexual, might be deemed offensive to some, or talk about something that might make other readers squeamish, then I think it would be good to use those 250 characters to issue a short warning.

By the way, we’ve now got 62 members and 78 blogs. Is your blog there?

And if anyone was listening to 2UE around 1.15pm on Monday, you might have caught an interview I did with John Stanley about the introduction of business reviews on dLook.

10 responses so far

10 Responses to “Weekly Update 31 May”

  1. # Neeravon 31 May 2007 at 10:41 pm

    Good idea with the buttons, I have 2 suggestions:

    1. I hope there’s a narrow one I can put in my sidebar like the one at the top left of your blog but with the flag at the top and text underneath roughly 100px width.

    2. IMHO more people are likely to use it if it the button text makes it clear that they are a “Top 100 Aussie Blog”

    eg: “This is a Top 100 Aussie Blog”,
    “Ranked in Top 100 Aussie Blogs”
    “You’re reading a Top 100 Aussie Blog”

    Those have too many words in them for a button, but i’m sure you get the idea

  2. # Michael Visseron 31 May 2007 at 10:45 pm

    Come on Meg, making me chase the news! I’m writing up about your new review feature on dLook now… 😀

  3. # Megon 31 May 2007 at 10:58 pm

    Hi Neerav,

    I have done a button that’s 82 x 15 (and varying sizes in between) & also have one saying “Top 100 Australian Blogger”. Do you think that would be ok? I could probably add “I’m a” before it. Or alternatively your first suggestion works.

    Hi Michael

    Should I copy you in on the press release next time 😉

    Many thanks for your support :)

  4. # Neeravon 31 May 2007 at 11:03 pm

    That sounds perfect, something like

    [FLAG]
    I’m a Top 100
    Aussie Blogger

    Would be fine … but forget about that until tomorrow or monday. Look how late it is! 11pm off to sleep

  5. # Megon 31 May 2007 at 11:06 pm

    Neerav

    You’re all heart 😉

  6. # Snoskredon 02 Jun 2007 at 5:56 am

    I have to say the 250 characters appearing on the RSS feed has changed the way I blog a bit. It’s probably a good thing, because it’s making me think about how I’m wording things.. 😉

    Could I suggest we Aussie bloggers take on a project of commenting on our favourite Aussie blogs to let them know about the Australian Blogs community? The more people we get on board the better – I have found some fantastic new blogs through the RSS feed and I’m loving it.

    Also my friend Sephy has started a US blogs community on bumpzee because surprisingly there wasn’t one, so anyone with friends in the US might want to suggest they join that group. 😉

    The flags will be great. 😉

  7. # Johnon 02 Jun 2007 at 4:29 pm

    You provide a great service with all of this work Meg.

    I am still learning how to take advantage (in the proper etiquette way) of this networking ability.

    Thanks again.

    John

  8. # Megon 02 Jun 2007 at 5:06 pm

    Hi Snoskred

    Glad you’re enjoying it and using it to it’s full potential (via the RSS feed). It’s great to discover blogs outside the one’s we might generally visit. I think some gentle promotion would be good for the community, perhaps via our own blogs or private messages on other social networking sites (BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog)?

    Still working on the flags…

    Hi John

    Thanks for dropping in and for your kind words :)

  9. # Snoskredon 03 Jun 2007 at 9:43 pm

    One thing I am wanting to do is make a list of the blogs involved and put that in my sidebar, because I like linking to blogs that I read. I see you have a list there, is there any way this could be adapted to just a html list which one could copy and paste, and could be updated whenever you do a weekly update?

  10. # Megon 03 Jun 2007 at 10:41 pm

    Hi Snos

    I’ve emailed you a list of all the blogs. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re after? Let me know if not.