The day we removed "no follow"

After some thought and reading up on the issue, I've decided to remove the "nofollow" tag from the comments section. Seeing as how I get TONS of comments, I thought this would be the sensible thing to do... Maybe it will be incentive enough to get more comments from some of you faithful readers! Oh, that's right I have no faithful readers... hmmmm... Ok, so any trolls wanna take me up on the free backlink, then? Comment away!

As usual, GL&HF!

One more time!

Back by popular demand! Well, it wasn't really in demand, but it still brought some traffic... Apparently there is nothing here to see...

1. padma lakshmi

2. vietnamese dress

3. the stranger author

4. navy advancement

5. songwriter harold

6. century plants

7. capital of south australia

8. ancient hebrew mystic

9. units of conductance

10. four noble truths

Today's Top 10... and the experiment continues???

Might as well tap into this again and see what the results for today will be...

1. lucy stoner

2. monica goodling

3. joya williams

4. julianne hough

5. fellini film

6. igasm

7. singer irene

8. fleet week

9. monokini designer gernreich

10. a girl reading painter

Google Trends

Google Trends

Update: The experiment proved worthy, for me anyway... 46 page views, 32 readers... interesting.

Google Trends is a list of the top searches on Google. I thought I would try an experiment and see if my blog gets any hits by posting this. Rather unsophisticated, but just a test. Shotgun approach, if you will.

1. kassie depaiva

2. tanzania national park

3. clinton portis

4. danny of radio days

5. harry belafonte s daughter

6. t mobile wing

7. tessa horst

8. singer ritter

9. what part of a graduate’s costume gave the cordon ...

10. d isere

Here's the rest of the Top 100:

11. kimberly buffington 12. writer leonard 13. star in orion 14. japanese coin 15. andy and tessa 16. actress hagen 17. polonium 210 18. 2004 world series champs 19. mushrooms growing in a circle 20. bevin powers 21. gerund maker 22. how does a kangaroo keep cool 23. andy baldwin 24. yolanda king funeral 25. terre haute s river

26. the bachelor 27. avandia 28. paula abdul broken nose 29. whosarat.com 30. river of rouen 31. malay archipelago sultanate 32. mia sardella 33. nba draft lottery 34. steven van zandt 35. quixote s squire 36. golfer mediate 37. paige johnson 38. gethuman.com 39. actor novello 40. dimensions international 41. yapta 42. atlanta smoke 43. sushi bar soup 44. orion s occupation 45. cubemeister rubik 46. actress patricia 47. byron velvick and mary delgado 48. virgilian hero 49. paper moon star 50. iron carbon alloy

51. battle of pea ridge 52. cofounder of desilu 53. brazilian river 54. kelly crosby heyniger 55. gertrude weiss 56. shavuot 57. nebraska state patrol 58. elroy jetson s dog 59. for the boys 60. south american rodent 61. what did the body of water balboa named el mar de sur or “the south sea ” come to be called 62. wim iceman hof 63. xm outage 64. california motto 65. lambertson truex 66. xm radio problems 67. podrida 68. what sports league was born in 1949 when the baa absorbed the remains of the nbl 69. ottoman governors 70. helmet boxing 71. jerry falwell funeral 72. xmfan.com 73. american identity 74. avandia recall 75. xmfan

76. ross or bering 77. avandia news 78. b s purses 79. xm radio outage 80. aviator post 81. flexor muscle 82. yapta.com 83. plastic leather brand name 84. alexander litvinenko 85. bay of pigs island 86. golfer ernie 87. a thousand splendid suns 88. andy baldwin tessa horst 89. bachelor finale 90. city in yemen 91. bachelor tessa 92. bubonic plague 93. natural sponge 94. cicada 95. chris samuels 96. second commandment 97. google trends 98. danish currency 99. yolanda king going home wake 100. cleveland steamer

Some new things on the blog...

Just a quick post to point out a couple of new things here on the blog de Roy...

First off, I was FINALLY approved by ReviewMe.com for reviews at $40 a pop. The ad is at the bottom of the left pane.

Also, I added a widget to Jaxtr.com, a new service that you, the world-wide blog reader, can use to call me or text me, anytime! Just another way to keep in touch. Take a look at the service and get signed up, after all it's free, and who doesn't like free?

As usual, GL&HF!

I Am Most Honored! - Announcement: I Heart The Blogshpere

Ray over at Mr. Besilly, was kind enough to include me in his post "I Heart the Blogosphere" . Ray is a very accomplished and extraordinary man and I am indeed humbled to be included in this list. It is an honor!

Thank you very much, Ray!

Greetings from Seattle in The Great Northwest,

Your URL has been placed front and center in today's post "I Heart The Blogsphere".

Cheers!

Ray Basile

One Man's Highway

www.mrbesilly.com

I've Been Drummed Up!

Mark over at Me and My Drum was kind enough to include this blog in his latest efforts to "Drum Up Some Link Love #3". This is his third post identifying blogs he finds interesting in hopes of spreading the word to his visitors. According to Mark, not just any blog makes his list, so I feel especially privileged to be included.

Be sure to stop by and check out his thought-provoking blog. Thank you, Mark!

How-to advice sites

I thought I would post a list of sites I visit that provide very good and very easy to follow how-tos. These sites have a lot of information and are usually a lot of fun.

First up is the venerable Lifehacker, run by Gina Trapani. She and her staff have a lot of great stuff EVERY day, even weekends.

Another site is Hack a Day, which offers a lot of interesting "hacks" of every-day and not-so every-day items. It might be a bit too geeky for most, but is fun to visit just to see the craziness, if you will.

Instructables is a step-by-step guide to doing many things, like building and NES PC or creating a 3D effect with image editing software.

wikiHow offers featured articles on everything from How to Dress in a Sari to Do(ing) the Samoan Fa'ataupati (Slap Dance).

Make Magazine and Tricks of the Trade, which, unfortunately, is on a hiatus until who knows when, are two more resources for you quest to do something constructive. Make Magazine also has an annual Maker Faire that looks like a lot of fun!

Hope you have fun doing some projects from these great sites!

And as usual, GL&HF!

Wow, this has been an up and down week...

Had my biggest "view" day ever earlier this week, and now, nothing... Only ONE view today, and that was from me, lol...

Actually, I have been a bit distracted this week, as well as being sick. My wife had an accident that really threw another kink into the works.

I hope my 15-minutes are not over...

Killer content: The key to blogger success?

Found this interesting and free ebook over on NotSoBoringLife. Basically, you subscribe to Chris' RSS feed and he provides his ebook on creating killer flagship content on your blog. It's basically a list of ideas for getting started on those articles in your blog that will be the foundation of your content and will keep your audience coming back for more.

Chris begins the article by defining "flagship content" and then telling the would-be blogger why he/she should create "flagship content". If you take a look a Chris' blog, you will see that he really takes takes his advice to heart by creating some really good content that you will want to refer to often.

The final part of the ebook is ideas for generating "flagship content." Here are just a few of the ideas that Chris presents:

1. Your biggest tip
2. Guides, How-To and Tutorials
3. FAQs
4. Jargon Buster
   ...
   

I'll let you subscribe to the RSS feed to get the rest.

All told, I was very impressed with the content and ideas presented here. Chris' writing style is easy to read and comprehend, and he seems genuinely interested in helping the blogger to create truly impressive content.

GL and HF!

WTF, people?

I tell you that I have a new template for my blog and you can't even be bothered to comment on it? I tell you that I have an "About" section and still, NOTHING. I mean, come on, I think the new template is good change, one that makes the site look cleaner and load faster, and the "About" section certainly says a lot... but that could just be me admiring my handiwork...

Seriously, I know you all have things going on in your life... Ilker has a new domain; Joe has a new casual gaming site; J always has something going on (I don't know what I would do with TODDLERS at this time in my life!); Heather, well hell, she's a freaking NEWS ANCHOR!; and Becky wearing her short shorts. And of course, John Chow is John Chow...

Throw me a frickin' bone here, folks...

Well?

w00t! New Template FTW!

Trying a new template. Blogger has very limited choices for templates. I'm sure I could put in a custom template, but then I might not be able to post via this interface. I guess I need to do more research...

Update: Lost a few things during the transition, but I did find this Three-column variation of the new theme and I like it a lot better. By the way, FTW...

The Great About Page, or How I Learnt to Blog, Correctly

Mr. Philip Liu tells me I should have an "About" page that roxorzz (heehee, l33t speak ftw!)... so I copied his... Well, not really, but I did use it as a "template" if you will. Only thing is, Blogger doesn't really have an "About" page, per se (INSIDE JOKE ALERT - an homage to a co-worker), so this post and the "About this blog" section over there -> somewhere, will have to do for now.

Hello! My name is Roy and I am publisher of "Musings and Somesuch... that is all..." I am lifelong resident of Texas, the last 21 1/2 years in the DFW area. Before that I lived in west Texas - Seagraves and San Angelo, TX to be exact. My background is in computers, servers, networking and a little finance - at one time, I had my series 6, 7 and 63 brokers licenses. I am married to my beautiful wife of 24 years; we have three kids - two sons (19 and 17) and a daughter (13). We also have three dogs, that I had nothing to do with acquiring.

Musings and Somesuch... that is all... is a blog about many aspects of my personal and professional life. This includes my love for all things Texas Longhorns and Dallas Cowboys, gadgets, technology, geekdom and just about anything else. Yeah, I'm kinda random like that... I like to describe myself as a jack-of-all, master of none! I play a mean game of Trivial Pursuit, because I know a lot of useless shtuff; I'm the kind of guy you want on your team when you play Battle of the Sexes or Fact or Crap. I'm a real peach - just ask my wife! I'm just hoping people like my randomness, but it sure doesn't fit well with the marketing pablum - you know "identify your market", "know your readers", "find a niche", etc. But I still hope to engage you because I really do KNOW a lot about a lot. Ok, so that sounds like a bunch of BS, but it's true - sorta, maybe! Well, I'll try anyway...

There has to be room out there in the "great blogosphere", the "wide, wide world of web", the "internets," for a blog like this. I hope you like what I have to say and I hope you leave some comments and suggestions. Hey, no one's perfect; me and this site are from it!

Some link love and the Z-List meme

By way of Kumiko and Dosh Dosh, I'm going to try this Z-List meme. If you recall, Kumiko is the AGLOCO dissenter I wrote about a few days ago, but she has a lot good posts on her blog about her quest to make money on the internet. So here's the deal about the Z-list meme:

How can I participate in the Z List Meme?

Finally, the exact steps you need to follow in order to join the meme.

1. Create a new post on your blog.
2. Copy and Paste the entire list of blog links below
3. Add any blogs that you want to include near the top of the list. (This isn’t compulsory, so you can either add as many blogs as you want or none at all.)
4. Include the blog where you first got the list from, on the list in your post.
5. Do not include your own blog links on the list in your post.
6. Make sure that all links point to each blog’s homepage.
7. Publish the Post.

Do note that you can join the Z List meme even if your blog isn’t listed below. Just copy and paste any or both of the lists below, add Dosh Dosh and any other blogs you want to share on the list and publish it as a post in your blog.

Here's my list:

Just a Girl in short shorts talking about whatever
Hotel @nyware
The Thinking Blog
Snippy
Heather Kovar's blog
Build your MLM!

Here's the combined list from Komiko/Dosh Dosh

Dosh Dosh
Connected Internet
Blog-Op
Can I Make Big Money Online
Blogtrepreneur
Time to Budget
Blogging to Fame
Million Dollar Experiment heads Down Under
Kumiko’s Cash Quest
Calico Monkey
Internet Bazaar

Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes!
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
Two Hat Marketing
darrenbarefoot.com
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly

Another Great Article from John Chow dot Com

John Chow writes on some of the strategies to increase links to your site. Very interesting article with great strategies.

Six Top Linking Strategies « John Chow dot Com

Seven Secrets for Improving Your Alexa Rating

Interesting article... I'm not sure if getting my Alexa rating up really matters. Some speculate that it only really matter to the top-tier sites, but I really don't know myself. I will have to look into this, but I will also get started on some of these and see if the improvements happen over time. In the meantime, read and decide for yourself if these are worth your time...

7 Proven Strategies for Improving Your Alexa Ranking

By Michael Fleischner | Marketing Expert | Internet Marketing Secrets*

After spending two years building my own website, I was very disappointed that my Alexa ranking was still higher than one million. Alexa ranks each website based on the number of visitors it receives. The top ranked website, Yahoo! has an Alexa rating of 1 or 2. Less popular sites could be ranked up to 5,000,000.

In order to improve my Alexa rating, I spent about three weeks combing the web to find tips, secrets, and proven strategies for increasing my Alexa ranking. Unfortunately, many of the sites offering advice didn’t even have a high ranking themselves. Finally I discovered a number of sites ranked within the top 100,000 that were all applying the same “Alexa techniques” to improve their ranking. I’ve begun implementing a number of these techniques and have improved my Alexa ranking by 250,000 spots in just one week.

Here’s what you need to know. The basis for many of these techniques is the fact that your Alexa ranking is based reach and page views. However it only counts those who visit your site and have already downloaded the Alexa toolbar. Anyone can download the toolbar for free which is automatically added to your browser and tracks the sites you’re visiting. Increasing visits from those who do not have the Alexa toolbar installed will not help your Alexa ranking.

I’ve summarized the 7 strategies that I’ve discovered and applied to my own website to increase my Alexa ranking. Apply these strategies to your own website and see your ranking climb towards the top.

1. Download the Alexa toolbar and use it every day to visit your own website. Alexa even gives you the ability to co-brand the toolbar with your own logo and give it away. You can download the toolbar here: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/associatetoolbar.html

2. Use Alexa redirection whenever you can. No matter when or where you provide a link to your website, be sure to use the equivalent Alexa redirect URL. For example, when providing a link to my website, I use http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com. If you copy this URL into your browser, it will take you to MarketingScoop.com. To use this technique, simply replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours.

3. Encourage your website visitors to add their positive testimonials on Alexa’s detailed listings page for your website. This can be done by placing a link to the appropriate Alexa page on your website and asking visitors to “Click here to rate this website”. You can find your detailed Alexa page here: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=marketingscoop.com. Again, just replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours. By clicking on the URL, visitors will be able to reach your detailed rating page and write a review using the review link located on the left hand side of the page.

4. Write your own site reviews on the top 100 rated Alexa sites and include your redirect URL. The top 500 domains, according to Alexa can be found at http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 When you write a review, be sure to use the redirection URL we discussed in number 2 above specifically for your website [http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com].

5. Download the Alexa ranking button, traffic history graph, info links, and other traffic counters onto the page of your website that receives the most traffic. For example, at the bottom of my home page http://www.marketingscoop.com, I’ve added the Alexa ranking box. You can do the same for your own site by visiting http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup You’ll notice that I haven’t added the traffic history graph. This is because it wouldn’t look appropriate on my home page and because Alexa is only providing detailed history on the top 100,000 sites. So if you’re not in the top 100,000, site stats would not be available.

6. Take an inexpensive advertisement out on the ExactSeek search directory for only a few dollars per month at ExactSeek.com Search engine results are directly correlated with Alexa rankings. You’ll notice that if a website is highly ranked on ExactSeek, chances are that it will be highly ranked on Alexa.

7. Get listed on as many search engines as possible by placing a free listing in DMOZ. This is the largest human edited directory on the web and is co-branded among hundreds of thousands of sites. Be patient though, it often takes up to 5 months before you see your website listed after submission. Even though it takes longer than it should, you have little say in the matter because it’s so widely used across the Internet.

These simple Alexa strategies are easy to implement and will make a huge difference in your Alexa ranking. Ultimately you want visitors to do more than visit your home page, you want them to interact with your site. Be sure to optimize your home page for SEO purposes, ease of use, and interaction. Creating a positive user experience will get visitors to return again and again.

*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. Visit today for free marketing information and marketing blog directory. Michael has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit his marketing blog for further details.