I’m glad that Friday is finally here, because it has been one exhausting week (again). Go ahead and kick off your shoes, because it’s time to read some great posts from the blogosphere.

Martin Reed from Community Spark is always one to look a little outside of the box and his most recent blog post is no exception. He describes how your competitors can make you more money. Who knew that Coke and Pepsi could be such good bedfellows?

Courtney Tuttle says that he wants to subscribe to your blog, but you have to give him a reason. The post goes at length over how you can go about getting new subscribers to your blog, but the biggest piece of advice that he gives?
I (and the rest of your readers) want to feel I’m better off for having read your post. As a reader I’ve never said “That post was junk, but at least the author posts a lot.” Quality over quantity, folks.

Aimee from Foximus walks into Future Shop and is tempted to buy a new laptop. A $3000 infrared sauna would be nice too, but sometimes you just have to protect your savings from yourself. Remove the temptation and you won’t spend frivolously.

Derek Semmler is getting ready to take his blogging a little more seriously. He asks, “Have you attended a blogging conference?” He is striving to attend his first this year and he’s looking for any advice, feedback, and direction.

Cameron from Career Ramblings addresses a very common issue. Have you ever showed up at work and you’re already exhausted? That’s not a good thing, so be sure to check out Cameron’s post on how to keep your energy levels up throughout the work day.

Last night Netenberg updated Coppermine, Gallery, Joomla, osCommerce, phpBB, SMF and WordPress…

Updates:

- Coppermine Photo Gallery: 1.4.12 -> 1.4.16
- Gallery: 2.2.2 -> 2.2.4
- Joomla: 1.0.13 -> 1.0.14
- osCommerce: 2.2 MS2 (060817) -> 2.2 Release Candidate 2a
- phpBB: 2.0.22 -> 3.0.0
- SMF: 1.1.3 -> 1.1.4
- WordPress: 2.3.2 -> 2.3.3

If you are using these software’s I suggest you upgrade.

They also added the following scripts:

- Joomla 1.5: 1.5.1
- LimeSurvey: 1.53+

Notes:

- Joomla 1.5 branch has been added as “Joomla 1.5″
- Joomla 1.0 branch is still being supported as “Joomla”
- PHPSurveyor has been deprecated (as requested by the author)

There was a recent post on the ThinkBlog that discussed the difference between features and benefits. This distinction is of paramount importance when it comes to marketing your company, because customers typically are not interested in the features of your product or service, at least not directly. When you think about the cell phone industry, for example, telling people that you have a high resolution camera is one thing, but the reason why they would be interested in such a camera phone is because it is able to take good quality pictures. That’s the benefit.

Think about some of the commercials that you see on television. Car companies will boast about having the best in-class fuel economy, but what they’re really trying to sell you on is that their car will save you money. That’s a huge benefit. Truck manufacturers will take about the largest towing capacity — a feature — but they’re really selling you on the truck’s ability to help you do your job better (benefit). When designing your own marketing strategy, you have to ensure that you are emphasizing the benefits rather than just the features.

You may have seen a TV ad spot for London Drugs wherein we are presented with a computer geek that talks about all the features found on the PC behind him, mentioning the numbers involved with the processor, hard drive, and all the other components that go into a computer. The commercial then cuts to a London Drugs sales professional asking if you want “computer advice you can actually use.” Why would a customer want more RAM, a bigger hard drive, or a speedier Internet connection? London Drugs is taking the focus away from the features, emphasizing the benefits of their customer service.

Die-hard enthusiasts may nit-pick over the features, but for mass market appeal, you need the potential customers to appreciate the benefits of your product or service. Make sure your advertising campaign reflects this.

Customization is an important aspect of any blog. We’ve talked before about the importance of having a custom header image and how you should be tweaking the layout of your blog to best suit your needs, whether it be related to the color scheme or how you decide to arrange your sidebar. Another way that you can go about making your blog your own is to feed it with all of your latest photos. Everyone loves looking at pictures, after all.

Unfortunately for most people, this can be quite a tedious process. You probably already upload a photo or two when it seems appropriate for a particular post, but what about all those pictures you took that don’t exactly fit in with a blog post. Or maybe you just took some fun photos and they don’t warrant a blog post of their own. For times like those, you may want to have the ability to pull photos straight from your Flickr account and have them displayed on your blog as a standalone feature. For that, you can consider something like the flickrRSS plug-in for WordPress.

In a nutshell, this plugin will display photos from your Flickr account automatically, pulling these pictures from the RSS feed. It’ll support user, public, and group photostreams and you can configure your preferences through the options panel. It seems easy enough to use and the pictures can be displayed not unlike the popular 125 button ads that have started sprouting up in the blogosphere. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the flickrRSS plug-in does not allow for random images to be pulled from your Flickr photostream. Instead, it only shows the most recent photos as evidenced by the provided RSS feed. It also does not have support for sets. Even so, this appears to be a viable option for anyone looking to display their most recent photos. See it in action at Eightface.com.

Last week we asked who is your favorite BlueFur.com support staff and 33% of you said it was Tina.

With the final Geek of the Week question being asked this last Sunday and a winner of the $200 to be announced on this Sunday.

This weeks question is…

There are many different types of businesses, but if you have an interest in owning a bar or restaurant, there is a significant possibility that you are also interested in serving alcoholic beverages at this establishment. Even a casual burger joint could prove to be a little more popular if it is also a place where customers can get a beer. This opens up the opportunity to offer “burger and a brew” specials, for example, and if you have televisions installed, you could become a go-to place for sporting events and the like.

The following information is specific to a liquor licence in British Columbia, though similar institutions and processes can be found in the other Canadian provinces as well as throughout the United States.

In order to get a liquor licence, you’ll need to go through the Liquor Control & Licensing Branch of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. On that website, you’ll find all the information regarding the different types of liquor licenses. As you can imagine, the license is different for a liquor-primary establishment like a pub than it is for a food-primary establishment like a family restaurant. The fees also vary accordingly.

For restaurant owners, there are three forms to fill out to get an applicable liquor licence: Food-Primary Licence Application (LCLB001b), Personal History Summary and Consent to Criminal Record Search Form (LCLB004), and Consent for Disclosure of Crminal Record Information (RCMP GRC3584). These are all available as PDF files on the website. There are a similar set of forms for bars, private liquor stores, and other establishments that sell alcohol.

In terms of fees, you can check out this schedule (PDF). The application fee ranges from $475 to $1,100 and then the annual fee for subsequent years will vary depending on the volume of your liquor sales. The minimum is $275 for up to $12,500 in sales and this goes up to $1,400 for over $250,000 in sales. This is for bars and restaurants.