Blogging Archive

Brand Yourself With A Twitter Background

Over the last few months, I have started to use Twitter (follow me) more and more. I think it is a great tool to stay in touch with friends, share links and information, and meet new people. I even wrote a post explaining 13 reasons you should follow me on Twitter.

The key to being popular on Twitter is setting yourself apart from everyone else. And what better way to do that then to make a sweet twitter background to customize your profile. I first noticed this in action when I saw Darren Rowse’s Twitter profile, which features a huge picture of his face in the background. It sure made his profile stick out.

Generic Backgrounds Are Lame

Although people are starting to create custom backgrounds, it is still early in the game. I still see a good portion of people using the generic backgrounds provided by Twitter. People may argue that it isn’t worth spending the time to create a custom one but I disagree. By spending a little time now, you can have a custom background up and running for some time to come. If you do it right the first time, you may never have to go back to edit it.

Besides, who wants to be normal? It’s the same concept as a MySpace page. People love to customize them because it sets them apart from everyone else. Which leads us to the next section…

Launching My New Blog Today

Today brings some great news. I have decided to share my new blog with everyone. I’ve been working on it for awhile now but haven’t spread the word about it yet. Although it’s not completely done, it’s usable and already filled with a few weeks of content.

So…What Is It About?

As everyone knows, I love photography. Therefore, I decided to start a daily photoblog. I think it will be a great way for me to share my photos with even more people. The other reason I started it is because I have accumulated a ton of photos since I have been traveling a lot more. It’s hard to squeeze them all into blog posts here on this blog.

As far as the domain name goes, I chose to go with my name because I wanted to make it a portfolio. Instead of spending time making an actual portfolio, I figured it would be much more beneficial to just go with a blog.

I haven’t decided yet if I am going to include any written posts on the blog. My guess is probably not…

The Most Offensive Blog Ever

It’s not everyday that I decide to write a blog review, especially one to call out the fact that a certain blog is one of the most offensive sites I have ever seen. Yeah the blog I am righting about just makes me say “wow.” I know the blogosphere is open to everyone, but some people just shouldn’t be allowed to blog. The point of the blogosphere is to share information with the world, not rant about how things that suck.

The Blog I’m Talking About

The blog I am referring to is Probably Sucks. The blog is focused on all things that apparently suck. How motivational huh? One of the recent posts is entitled “16 Ways To Upset or Hurt An Emo.” Talk about a great way to talk about others. In this post, the writer mentions things such as:

• Take away their laptop
• Break their iPod
• Take away their razorblades

The last one I mentioned was the most offensive to me. He basically states that emo’s love to cut themselves and taking away their razors would piss them off. Pretty offensive if I say so myself. What a great way to send out the message that it’s okay to be yourself.

Blog Directory Has Been Added

Hey everyone, I just wanted to make a quick post today to announce that I have added a new Blog Directory to Life of Justin. I got sick of having a million bookmarks to various blogs, so instead I decided to add a directory that is organized by categories.

I think it will be a great addition to the site and will help everyone get a little more traffic. Plus it offers my readers some cool blogs they can go check out (not that you should leave mine, lol).

Where Is It?

I currently have a link in my footer to the directory. Once I fill the directory up with more blogs, I will find a place to put a larger link so it can be found easier. I just figured I would wait awhile until more blogs get listed.

Can I Add My Site?

Well of course. To add a blog, simply go to the Add URL page and fill in your information. The links are free, but I encourage a link back to my site if possible. I currently have it set to require a reciprocal link for blogs under a Pagerank 0.

Lucia’s Linky Love Has Been Installed

As many of you know, I wrote a post awhile back entitled This Blog Is Now DoFollow. In this post, I talked about how I decided to make all of my comment links DoFollow to give back to my readers. I’d like to share my experience along with the changes I have decided to make. First up, the bad things:

Bad Thing #1: Large Increase In Comment Spam

Believe it or not, my comment spam has grown to the point of being a hassle. I have to moderate all of my posts before I can approve them. Even Akismet does not pick these up and there is a reason why. The reason?

The comments are made by real people, not bots. I have tried implementing the simple math plugin along with a simple captcha but neither of these worked because every comment passed.

Here are a few of the comments I am talking about:

• “Great Blog”
• “Useful content indeed, will be back”
• “Great posts I like it”
• “Love it”

The main reason I can tell these are spam is because the people didn’t even bother to read my post. Some of the comments I deleted were totally irrelevant to the post itself. I even had one person paste the same comment on three different posts!