In The Sphere: Pay It Forward

The sun is shining and the birds are singing. Spring is here! That doesn’t mean that you’re going to neglect the blogosphere, now are you? Let’s see what people had to say to this week.

Mr. Gary Lee has been involved in a number of link trains in his day, but his latest scheme is actually a lot more altruistic. He describes 20 ways to pay it forward offline. Have you done your good deed today? Maybe you should blog or tweet about it.

John Cow has become somewhat of an Internet celebrity, so he’s begun to wonder what other superstar bloggers would be doing if there was no such thing as the world wide web. Where would Shoemoney be? What would Problogger do? What would become of the dot com lifestyle of John Chow?

Chris Bibey is certainly glad to be a freelance writer, but he also knows that there are drawbacks to freelance writing as well. No career is free from its shortcomings and freelancing is no exception.

Bob Buskirk used to be pretty unhealthy, sitting in from his computer all day, slamming down Mountain Dews like they were nothing. These days, he is trying to live a healthier lifestyle by joining the gym, cutting back on the caffeine, and eliminating fast food from his diet altogether.

Derek Semmler of The Man Page, despite being a rather outspoken blogger, is actually quite the shy person. He’s made huge strides SOBCon08, though, where he managed to step out of his comfort zone and meet some rather terrific people.

CIRA to Introducing Privacy on Whois

I got the following email this morning from CIRA…

The dot-ca WHOIS service is a public search tool that allows users to look up information about the holders of dot-ca domain names. A WHOIS search returns such information as name, address, phone and fax numbers and email address. After consulting with the public, CIRA adopted a new WHOIS policy that no longer displays this information, to provide greater privacy for our Registrants.
As an individual Registrant, your private information will be protected by default – no action is required to receive this additional privacy feature.

As a result of the changes to the dot-ca WHOIS, there have also been changes to the Registrant Agreement. To review the new Registrant Agreement, please visit http://www.cira.ca/en/cat_Registrar.html. A list of changes to the Registrant Agreement can be found here.

Please visit http://www.cira.ca/en/Whois/whois_intro.html for more information about the new dot-ca WHOIS.

I personally think this is a good move by CIRA as I know that the one concern for most customers is that they are going to be spammed through email, phone, fax or mail.

What do you think of this change?
 

Managed Blog Hosting Upgrade

For those that have managed blog hosting please contact our blog support in regards to upgrading your WordPress blog to version 2.5.1. Remember to include your cPanel login details so we can upgrade them quickly and efficiently. The current version has security and bug fixes so do not delay in upgrading.

If you have any issues with how to contact blog support post a comment and I will contact you.

Marketing 101: Public Signage

I remember watching an episode of Kitchen Nightmares some time back and it really made me think about what it takes to have effective business signage. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Kitchen Nightmares is a reality show hosted by chef Gordon Ramsay and he goes around helping to “fix” failing restaurants and dig them out of the rut. He looks for ways to revitalize the menu and to refresh the image of the restaurant.

In this particular episode, the business owner spent a lot of money on professional banners and signs that he would place in front of his restaurant. These signs would proudly proclaim that they had certain specials and how people could save money on this meal or that. The problem was that these signs were much more an eyesore than they were any sort of effective promotional material. It just made the place look kitschy and cheap, despite the fact that they were trying to establish themselves as a upper class family restaurant.

The other problem was that the signage was just too plentiful. There was far too much to look at and it had nothing to do with their brand identity. When you consider setting up business signage in front of your brick and mortar store — the same can be said about online stores as well — make sure that you keep to your company image and you keep things uncluttered. Make it easy for the potential customer to see what you offer without going over the top. Some of the most effective billboards are the ones with the least amount of writing.

How to make Twitter more like FriendFeed

I know  you have seen a lot about twitter on our blog over the last 30 days but this tool continues to be a great resource for traffic and business networking with others online. If you do not use twitter then as I have said before I suggest you sign-up and get started today (you can follow me on twitter once you do).

In most industries there are 2 or more similar services with each having unique features that sets it apart. In the microblogging or cloud communication world the two major players are twitter and FriendFeed. One thing that FriendFeed does well is pull in your outside feeds into one location. On the other hand twitter does not do this by default so pulling in your outside feeds you will have to do manually.

Blog Posts
We have gone over this before but you can pull in your blog posts using Twitter Tools or WordTwit.

YouTube Videos
You can use twitterfeed to pull in your youtube videos. The process is easy, sign-up at twitterfeed and add your youtube feed. To get your youtube feed replace your youtube username in the following link…

http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/[youtube_username]/videos.rss

Delicious Links
Like youtube you can pull in your delicious bookmarks into twitter to share. Again sign-up at twitterfeed (if you have not already) and add your delicious feed. Like before replace your delicious username in the following link…

http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/[delicious_username]

With twitterfeed you can add any RSS feed to your twitter. The trick sometimes is finding the RSS feeds.

Does any one know how to find the Stumble Upon RSS users feeds?

Community Poll

Last week we asked if you would allow negative comments on your blog and 89% said yes. This weeks question is…