Introduction to Blogging

This is going to be a multi-part series in which I go through steps to create, edit, and eventually customize a blog. If there is a demand for it, I can show you how to host your blog on your own web space (I use GoDaddy hosting). In this example your blog will be hosted at Blogger.com (Blogspot).

What do I mean by "hosting?" When you have information up on the web you have to have the source files for it somewhere. Just like a text document, the Internet is built on a connection of files. In order for you to have a blog up you have to have web "hosting" which Google provides for you through Blogger.com. If you are trying to get noticed, you can purchase your own web hosting and run the files from your own space.

Try to stay with me here: in my case, instead of my URL being everythingobjective.blogspot.com, the URL points to my own web hosting, not Blogger's hosting. So I can control my own URL, and I made it everythingobjective.com (which re-directs to blog.everythingobjective.com). In the future I can go in and make multiple blogs (ie politics, food, technology) and make their urls: tech.everythingobjective.com or politics.everythingobjective.com. Hosting from a site other than Blogger/blogspot.com will help your blog look more credible and enticing from an advertising standpoint.

Ok, first of all you need a Blogger account. Blogger is created by the guys at Google, that's why I chose this publisher to create a "How To" on first. You will need to set up an account with Google, or use your pre-existing Gmail account to login. AIM accounts work also for this login.

Google accounts are actually a great thing to have because of Google Docs. You can create and save documents, spreadsheets and presentations in Google Docs so that you have access to your files from everywhere. I'm actually editing this post in Google Docs in a document that I created in the library a few days ago on. This program comes with some caveats, though.

Formatting is limited so that the online editor only allows you to do minor changes like changing indents or font attributes. What I would recommend is editing the posts in Google Docs, saving frequently, and running the whole document via copy/paste through MS Word for format/ spellcheck issues before posting into the blogger "Compose" section under the Postings tab. Open a notepad document and paste the information into that before Blogger, because for some reason Blogger doesn't understand pasting directly from MS Word.

While blogging, don't be afraid to use the "Add to Dictionary" link in MS Word.

More to this series to come.

technology

Recently I have been finding that my questions online are often best answered by bloggers. I do search for a lot of Information Technology and web development knowledge., so this could be why. Bloggers are on the cutting edge of technology, because many of them have web development, programming or other communications backgrounds.

These experienced Internet specialists are king when it comes to extracting data from the web. Bloggers can utilize hyperlinking to display an immense amount of know-how, coupled with the ease of reading. And if the blog is linked correctly, it is often easy to follow their exact steps of action.

Also, more and more content development groups are using a sort of "thumbs up" or ranking system, that allows for the end users to moderate data. Link sharing through social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and obvious other mediums increase visibility for many sites. The lucky posters who are ranked near the top of Google have the combination of effective content and web traffic.

I have noticed that more and more bloggers are getting ranked above industry leaders in search result order. If your blog is informative, and can answer a simple, but generic question, your blog will be a hit magnet. Search engine optimization has a lot to do with routing this web traffic.

Advertisers are on board with this. If you find a good quality blog that provides good information and gets a lot of traffic, you are almost sure to see some ads on the page. So you can actually make money by blogging if you have the right things going for you!

In the next few weeks I'm going to put together some tutorials on blog making. It is free and relatively easy. And I'm going to try to set up a forum on my website so that people can post and answer questions on blogging. Stay tuned!

weekend update

Progressive Political Action Committee MoveOn.org has taken a firm stance on the Specter defection, and with good reason. The projected budget deficit for FY 2009 in the Keystone State was 3.2 billion dollars, which would trample the value of many seniors with social security and health benefits.

Mentioned in the link above, Specter has before flipped the coin to see who he’d be taking marching orders from. This time though, his hand may be slapped out of the way before he can catch the coin to look for heads or tails.

The day after positioning himself more to the left, Specter voted against President Obama’s budget and thus drawing a defining ideological line in the sand in Washington. The budget was the biggest piece of legislation to date for the Obama Admin. Specter’s party flip-flopping exposes a huge hole that exists in our bureaucracy: that of closed door, handshake meetings. But thank goodness, we live in a Democracy.

This entire situation, I believe, is turning into a classic “bait and switch” campaign. Obama said that he would campaign for the guy if he wanted to run for re-election as a Dem, but it’s likely that this promise was made when the Democratic primary was basically, a done deal. And I’d bet that the campaigning promised was designed to hit home near election time, after the primary.

With the pull out of MoveOn.org’s financial and grassroots clout, questions are looming in the Senior Senator’s head. MoveOn went to bat for Dems across the board in 2008, and the $38,123,090 that they spent running ads, strategizing and online organizing, no doubt, helped to swing many races. Now they have established themselves as progressive heavyweights, a voice to be reckoned with.

So what does all of this mean? Best case scenario, the Dems put up a few other candidates, including progressive Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, which will dilute Specter’s chances of winning the primary. Then, once Sestak wins out in round one, he will have a bruised Pennsylvania Republican Party opponent to beat up on in the general election. WHAMO! Now that is some “strategery.”

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

the link

Nowadays it seems like everyone is text messaging. I find that more of my friends are using text messages in lieu of a phone call to communicate, likely due to the ease of and convenience of using text. Often text is used in conjunction with an overbearing, micro-managing boss, a spouse, or even nature: I have heard it is convenient for hunting.

This week's link is devoted to that text message that you sent last night, that you probably shouldn't have.

www.textsfromlastnight.com

investment

click me for a better image ^

I'm reading the book The Automatic Millionaire by bestselling author David Bach. It is kind of timely that I am reading the book and getting involved in investing now, because a lot of the points he makes were valid until the economic downturn caused by the housing bubble bursting last year.

One of the biggest points that this author makes is that homeowners, not renters, are the ones who have the wealth in the United States. Again, this is something that would need to be viewed subjectively. When this book it was written he notes that the National Association of Realtors reported that there had never been a housing "bubble." Since then many people have lost their homes to foreclosure due to exploding ARMS (adjustable-rate-mortgages) that left them owing more money than their house was worth.

The problem with ARMS were that at any time the interest rate you were paying in your home could go up, and you were locked into this contract for in most cases 30 years. When the interest rate goes up homeowners were paying less on the principle of the loan and more on bank interest. Coincidentally, the National Association of Realtors is one of the heaviest lobbying organizations in the United States of America.

One fail-proof system that is mentioned in this book is to make an extra monthly payment every year on your mortgage. There are varying ways to do this he says, but the most inexpensive and easy is to add an extra 10% to your current monthly payment. Here is a calculation showing this difference on a $250,000 mortgage with a thirty year, 6.5% fixed interest rate.

click me for a better image v

At a glance, you are paying off your mortgage 7 years earlier! So if you crunch the basic numbers, $1580*12*7 = $132,720. This is a secret the banks do not want you to know.

Calculate a mortgage here at BankRate.com

technology

Facebook recently made some changes to its layout which caused a huge backlash amongst its users. Then they got smart, and implemented a bureaucratic structure so that the users could vote on these changes which I think is a good thing.

The crew at FB knows what they are doing, though. They realize that a few people still prefer Myspace to FB because of the functionality, less spam, etc.

Recently I have been exploring the new features they have added, and I find them to be quite effective. One issue that I had was with embedding video.

So today I am going to blog about how to embed video into your Facebook profile.

Step 1: find the video you want to embed
Step 2: see if there is a share link, and if FB is available amongst the share options
Step 3: if there is a share link for FB, give it a try. often you are done after this part
Step 4: share link doesn't work: see if there is an embed video link
Step 5: if there is an embed video link copy it and post it as a link in FB
Step 6: no embed video link: search for the video on YouTube
Step 7: you find the video on YouTube, look to the top right, copy the embed text inside the combo box
Step 8: go to your Home on FB, type in comment text, then paste copied text into link
Step 9: doesn't work: Go to the top of the page at YouTube and copy the url
Step 10: paste copied text into link after typing your comments into the top box
Step 11: if you can't get this video to work, try to find the same video with a different link, maybe the embedding is correct here or you can make it work with this video

On YouTube I usually try to find five star videos to embed because more often than not, they are linked correctly.

technology

I blogged in an earlier posting about Information Technology and how far it's come since I first got in during the early '90s. The need for information innovation drives the taxi of technology, while data is the fuel of this vehicle.

Companies like Google, a large cap (market capitalization) growth stock, sell for $400/share. This figure, down from $700/share last year, combined with the large market share of Google shows the emergence of IT futures in our society.

A friend linked a video the other day that you should see. It is a Viral Video (a bi-product of IT) about the IT of tomorrow. Credit goes out to Eich for linking and to Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman for the video creation.