The way I figure it, on June 27th, this blog will officially be 20 months old. I understand that 20 months is when children often enter the “terrible twos” (I don’t have any children myself, so I have to rely on what I read on the web).

While browsing around to find out about what happens at 20 months old (yes, I know a blog is not a child, but hey, I thought it might be worth a laugh), I was stunned to come across this statement:

Look for new signs of assertiveness from your toddler. Hallmark behaviors to watch for: He may insist on doing exactly what you’ve told him not to do or throw himself down on the floor in a fit of temper if he doesn’t get his way. His demands may alternately frustrate and amuse you. At times, for example, he’ll likely ask for something that he doesn’t even want, just to see if he has enough power to get it.

Unfortunately, this pretty much describes my nearly 2 year old WordPress install just as well. Last week’s denial-of-service attack on my host’s server didn’t help matters any either.

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Since I’m at home sick today with a particularly nasty throat infection, I was browsing through some of my old posts, and noticed that my Google PageRank had mysteriously returned to it’s old value of 4 (I use SearchStatus in Firefox to see PageRank values).

While I don’t really care too much about PageRank, I still find it odd that a redirect had dropped my PageRank to 0. Since I wrote that initial post though, I did a few experiments with my search results, and noticed that none of my Google results had changed at all.

What this seems to indicate to me is that PageRank can only be interpreted over the long term. Looking at the number even over the course of a few months seems to be pointless, since it doesn’t really give you an accurate picture of how Google treats your site or pages.

I’ve been waiting a while now to get my 13000th comment spam (don’t ask me why, I’ve just noticed the number creeping up to 13000 lately, and I’ve been counting down the days).

A while ago, I had decided to go with a challenge question as well as Bad Behaviour (which are both ways to block comment spam before it even happens). Unfortunately, however, Bad Behaviour slowed down the admin of this site to a crawl, so I had to dump it.

As for the challenge question, I didn’t notice any decrease in spam at all. While I didn’t exactly do any before-and-after quantitative analysis on the effects of the challenge question, I have noticed that most of my spam is of the automated bot type — not some spammer sitting there typing in long comments about shady online pharmacies.

So my conclusion would be this: challenge questions aren’t really an effective way to fight spam (at least not in my case). Has anyone else had a different experience with the spam they get or the tools they use to fight them? With all that spam out there, it makes you wonder how much more we can really handle.

I’ve been using FeedBurner for about almost a year and a half now (if anyone’s counting, that’s since the first month that I’ve been writing here. and FeedBurner’s been managing my subscribers since then). I’ve been lucky to watch my subscriber count grow consistently — with one notable exception.

This site has hovered around 400 RSS subscribers for months now, which is to be expected I think, since I have sometimes had less time to post than I would like in the past several months. But in the past two months, my subscriber count was suddenly cut in half.

That’s right. One day I logged into FeedBurner, and there were now roughly 200 subscribers instead of 400. I chalked it up to something weird happening on FeedBurner’s end, and didn’t think much about it (I’m not as obsessed as I used to be with subscriber count, fortunately).

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I’ve been debating (largely with myself) for quite a while whether to place full posts on the front page, or whether to abbreviate the posts with the ‘More’ tag. Most of the time, I’ve chosen to go with the abbreviated posts.

Why? Well, my logic kind of goes like this. If you have a bunch of full posts on the front page, it’s going to be very, very long to scroll down, even if there are only five or six posts on a page. The advantage, however, would be that you don’t have to actually click on an item to see the full post.

So I thought I’d ask you. Would you rather see the full post on the front page? Or would you rather have it abbreviated with ‘More’ and then click on it? Or, perhaps, you read through an RSS reader and don’t really care what’s on the front page. It would be great to get some feedback, whatever it is.

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There are many different reasons people blog — reflecting more and learning are good examples of common reasons to blog. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a (pre-recorded) session where Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, was talking about time-limited blogs.

While the session was about a year old, I was still very surprised at the number of people (and these are people who would participate in a session about blogging) still didn’t really understand the difference between forums and blogs. As is usually the case with communication, it’s easy to blame those being communciated to for not understanding.

But I’d say the lack of understanding probably comes more from a lack of clear communication on what a blog actually is (versus a forum, or a non-blog site). Personally, I very rarely refer to my site as a blog — I don’t often find that there’s a useful difference by distinguishing it as a blog.

What really caugth my interest in Debbie’s talk though, was the growing interest she had identified in time-limited corporate blogging. This is where a company takes a specific issue or event and creates a blog around it that only lasts for a given amount of time (which could be anywhere from a few weeks to a year or more).

While there’s certainly no shortage of blogs that eventually just die off (which usually happens with a whimper, rather than a bang) — these blogs are intentionally set to self-destruct.

My initial thoughts was that this must be such a let-down for people who subscribe to the site — knowing that one day a site you enjoy reading is going to be gone.

But when I thought about this some more, rather than setting your readers up for disappointment, you’re actually setting realistic expectations. Being a content creator is tough (even in the short time I’ve been writing, I’ve found it tough to stick to a regular posting schedule).

By establishing realistic expectations with your readers, they’ll come back when you launch your next issue- or event-specific blog. This way, you keep the focus of your blog targeted and specific, rather than just dumping content into a site because you feel you have to.

One of the endless information science/knowledge management debates is on the value of connection versus collection. For anyone unfamiliar with this debate, it’s basically this: is collecting information all in one place better than providing connectors among the people who share that information (or knowledge, if you like that word better). Or vice versa?

Obviously, there’s no one right answer (or maybe even an answer at all) to which is of more value. It always depends on the specific context we’re talking about, as well as the type of information or knowledge. But even more importantly, if you only do one, how do you how valuable the other approach could have been? You can’t measure what you didn’t do.

I’ve noticed a growing trend toward lists of things in people’s blog posts — something like this list of 83 beautiful Wordpress themes. My own list of knowledge management sites has also been by far the most popular post on this site. Digg users also love these lists, and they often get thousands of Diggs.

So while blogs provide a connective link between individuals and create communities of people interested in the same topics — there also seems to be a trend toward collecting information all in one place. I know some people absolutely hate these lists, but they seem to be mostly bloggers who feel it’s not original writing (perhaps someone should put together a list of reasons why they hate lists).

What do you think? Does collecting information in a blog post defeat the whole connectivity element of a blog? Or does it enhance that connectivity?

First off, I want to welcome everyone who’s coming to this site for the first time. Traffic doubled last week, and by this week, it has quadrupled. So if this is your first time here, welcome. You can take a look through some old posts as well as the front page features by using the category links on the right (this way you can get to topics that interest you right away). And of course, thanks for stopping by to read!

So, to celebrate this huge increase in traffic, I thought I would thank one my favourite sites by featuring it. Today’s featured site is North x East, which is home to my good friend Collis, who was one of the first bloggers I swapped blogroll links with (considering the huge success of North x East, I think it was a great trade!). As usual, I just want to say up front that I don’t get reimbursed in any way for these reviews — they’re just sites I really like.

What I like the most.

North x East provides knowledge and advice on setting up, promoting and succeeding in the online business world. What I find is the big differentiator on Collis’ blog, however, is the almost subconscious focus on innovation.

While bloggers like John Chow often focus on the financial side of blogging, North x East focuses more on establishing successful business models for web startups. North x East also isn’t afraid of dishing out the dirt on things like making your blog seem more established so you don’t scare new readers away. And Collis’ comprehensive guide to starting your freelance career is must-read material for anyone even thinking about starting to do freelance work.

Since my own site is all about knowledge sharing, I really enjoy sites that take a particular field and build a repository of first-hand knowledge and experience a novice can draw on. Collis’ knowledge of doing business on the web comes across brilliantly in his writing — there’s always something new to learn at North x East.

What I would change.

Collis talks quite a bit about other projects he has going on within the pages of North x East — and these other projects are a great source of learning for readers of his site. I would love to see a page that collects some of the projects Collis has going on — which would provide both a great promotional vehicle for those projects, as well as giving us the inside take on how those projects are going.

I’d love to provide more ideas for changes to North x East, but this is truly one of those sites that is doing just about everything right — and has build the readership to prove it.

Want to read more featured sites? Check out my review of The Paper Bull and the JibberJobber blog.

It’s been a while since I’ve featured some of the great contributions I get to Business, Technology and Knowledge. I’m absolutely astounded by the number of submissions received. There are really some quality posts in this issue — take a few minutes to browse through some of these. You’ll be glad you did.

Barbra Sundquist presents Incorporate or Not? What You Need to Know About Business Structures posted at HomeBusinessWiz.

Anja Merret presents 10 easy steps to try your hand at SEO posted at anja merret, saying, “Free and easy way of increasing traffic through the web site.”

Business

Wilson Ng presents Profits Straight to the Bottom Line posted at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife, saying, “Understanding pricing strategies and knowing your cost structure as optimizing your bottom line is essential knowledge for managers.”

Matt Inglot presents 5 Tips for Staying on Top of Your Books for Small Business Owners posted at Matt Inglot.

Christopher J. Brunner presents Choosing Powerful Text for Your Business Cards posted at GreatFX Business Cards, saying, “How to draw in potential clients by adding powerful text to your business cards.”

Matthew Paulson presents The Ultimate Guide to Making Money through Freelance Writing Online posted at Getting Green.

Becky McCray presents Small Biz Survival: Startup: Resources to get from Idea to In Business posted at Small Biz Survival, saying, “Online and real world resources to go from a business idea to starting your business.”

Steve Faber presents 4 Great, Free Business Resources To Help Grow, Start, or Save Your Business posted at DebtBlog.

Silicon Valley Blogger presents Filthy Wal-Mart = Poor WMT Stock Performance? posted at The Digerati Life.

The Positivity Blog talks about 5 lessons I have learned from John Chow posted at Henrik Edberg.

Jack Yoest presents Job Interview: How To Tell If the Candidate Will Lie, Cheat, Steal? posted at Reasoned Audacity, saying, “It seemed that many of the clients of Your Business Blogger were having challenges finding integrity in job candidates. Even business schools are forced to teach ethics. Goodness. So I ask Bob Knight, who runs the Culture and Media Institute a part of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center about this. Bob’s team just released a report, The National Cultural Values Survey.”

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The Paper Bull was kind enough to provide me with a very honest, unpaid review a few days ago — so I thought I would return the favour, and point out some of the great content on the site. As I said in my last review of the JibberJobber blog, this provides some exposure to these great sites, but more importantly, provides the readers of this blog with great content that would be of interest (and again, I’m not compensated in any way for this review).

The Paper Bull provides information on search engine optimization (which is just making your site discoverable for search engines), as well as information about Wordpress and eBay. Mostly, though the site is about tweaking your site for search engines and some Wordpress tips and tricks that will get your blog ahead.

What I like the most.

The writing is almost always concise and to the point, and provides good explanations of the subject matter. For an example of what I’m talking about, here’s a bit of sneak peak at The Paper Bull’s tips around anchor text links:

“It’s common knowledge that anchor text links are a strong component of embedding your blog and making it highly visible within its niche community. Utilizing them to their full potential is another matter altogether and it’s worth some grass roots training. An anchor text link is probably better known under a former name hyperlink: a portal which takes you from website A to website B by clicking on an active text.”

As Uncommon Knowledge is all about knowledge sharing, I enjoy any site that establishes a knowledge base and allows the author and readers to share and communicate that knowledge between them. The Paper Bull does an excellent job at this.

What I would change.

While the content of the site is excellent, it doesn’t appear that the MistyLook theme has really been customized too much. I understand that hiring a designer can be expensive — and I’ve been fortunate enough to have the help of many people to assist me in the creation of my site.

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