Another cartoon created by creative genius  Matthew Schmoll. 
If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

The blogosphere is a very interesting place, because there are so many different personalities and voices. They all offer a unique perspective on the world around us, commenting on everything from making money online to freelance writing, and yes, plenty of Hollywood gossip too. Here a few posts that caught my eye this past week.

Ed Lau discusses everything good on TV for 2007 and I’d say that our tastes are pretty similar. I was a late adopter of Heroes, but after getting into the compelling — although sometimes campy — storyline, I couldn’t wait for the next episode to air on Thursdays. Personally, CSI has lost some of its fire for me, but it’s still a great show to watch if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief for an hour at a time. And let’s not forget about The Office.

Gdog is teaching English in Korea, and while there, he’s experimenting with a lot of great (and cheap) food. One of the most affordable snacks you will encounter in Seoul are waffles and cream. He tells us that it only costs 600 Korean won (roughly equivalent to 70 Canadian cents) to get in on that creamy goodness.

Dy Phan is a little bit older now, so it came time for a little retrospective. She lists six things she wished she knew when she graduated high school. College and university life is fun, but it’s also incredibly challenging. Armed with this new knowledge, you may enjoy greater success at your alma mater.

Want to monetize your blog, but you don’t qualify for ReviewMe? Why not try out the newly launched PayPerPost Direct, as described by Marisa in her dandelion patch. While ReviewMe takes a 50% cut, PPP Direct only takes 10%. But where’s the advertiser marketplace?

It seems we do have a few people on board for starting some group projects, which is great! Now we need to get all our ducks in a row.

So I have been looking at various ways to go about it thanks to the comments and suggestions.

I was not so happy with the idea of Google Code and SourceForge. Both worked okay but the idea is that we work as a BlueFur community and eventually bring more into the fold that are members of our community.

So now I am left with a decision.

We can go with Trac which does seem like a very good solution. I am not sure how well Trac will scale for more then one project. Has anyone used Trac enough to know how well it works for more then 1 project?

The other way we can go is to create our own tool with a Wiki, Mailing List, Bug Tracker, RSS feed built into it. This may take more time to build but in the end it will be ours and we can modify as needed.

As this is going to be something used as a group I will open it up to you to comment and provide your feedback on these to ways to go.

Most people, myself included, are not prepared to take a huge risk and start a business is completely outrageous and 100% original. That’s fine. I’m not telling you to embark on a highly risky endeavor that is so far out there that no one will take you seriously, but at the same time, if you want to be successful, truly successful, you do have to offer your customers something that no one else does. It’s important to demonstrate to potential clients that you are special, unique and/or better than your competitors in some way.

This can be expressed in a number of different ways, so I’m just going to touch on one of the most important. Even in the age of Internet-based communication, in-person relationships are absolutely vital to the success of your business, regardless of what line of work you’re in. As such, when you go and shake that guy’s hand, you should be handing him a business card that is actually original. I’m not going to name names, but if you can afford it, I’d avoid ordering business cards from websites that only let you choose from a small handful of pre-set templates with pre-set imagery. Instead, you want your card to boast your company logo (naturally) and to express just a little bit of what makes you different than everyone else.

To truly succeed, you need to stand out from the crowd. Sort like how a big, blue beast — and one that’s smiling at that — stands out from the crowd.

Ever wonder what your top 10 posts are? We installed the plugin WP-PostViews which keeps track of how many people have viewed each and every post.

The plugin does provide you with a way to view the top 10 posts which I am sure most people who install this would like to know. The problem is it needs to be called from within a page on your blog.

The application for this is that a user would want to display their top viewed post on their main site and not their blog.

I created this small script to view it on just a blank page. You can use this script yourself if you wish to view your Top 10 Posts.

Even if you already have this WordPress plugin, you should definitely keep reading, because there’s a few important things that are noted below.

While it’s great to build up a strong RSS readership and have a loyal following, it is a well known fact that traffic from search engines is more likely to click on ads (and hence, make money for you). As such, if you want to make significant money from your WordPress blog, it is important to keep search engine optimization in mind. A descriptive title for each post goes a long way, but under the default WordPress settings, the title appears after the name of your blog on SERPs (search engine results pages). This could mean that your post title will get truncated, and thus, reduce your search engine visibility.

Thankfully, Aaron Schaefer developed the Optimal Title plug-in for WordPress that switches this order. It effectively takes the title of each blog post and puts it in front of the blog name, giving search engine users more relevant-looking results, and thus, these users are more likely to click on through and visit your site. Speaking from my own personal experience, after installing this plug-in several months ago, I have seen a significant increase in search engine traffic for my blog. It fluctuates, naturally, but typically 50-70% of my traffic comes from search engines (mostly Google).

If you currently have Optimal Title 2.0 installed on your blog, Schaefer recommends that you upgrade the latest (and final) version, Optimal Title 3.0, because it is “more efficient, future-proof, and secure.” He claims that this plug-in should work with “ANY version of WordPress, past, present, and future.”