At this time of the year everyone is posting the top stories of 2009, No doubt the choices are largely affected by personal bias. Which is not a bad thing because we all have different interests. But then there are those stories that are just so big that they transcend personal interests and become part of our social chit chat.

What has been the top stories for you during the year of 2009? Here is my list, yours might be different.

1. Susan Boyle Without a doubt Susan Boyle has to be the top story of 2009. Her introduction to the world on Britain's Got Talent, was phenomenal. After everybody sneered and laughed, their jaws dropped to the floor then a loud applause with a standing ovation.

Susan Boyle broke all sorts of internet and world records. Boyle’s performance is the top Internet video phenomena of all time with more than 100 million views. She is still breaking world records. With the release of her debut album, she became the fastest selling debut album of all time. The 48 year old internet superstar did not win Britain’s Got Talent, but she certainly won a lot of people’s hearts as she wowed thousands in America.

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent Uploaded by dwarthy

2. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson is a star in his own right as the king of pop, but his death shocked the world and almost brought the internet social media sites to a standstill. With Facebook fans And Twitter tweets, the news was spread far and wide. It suddenly became very personal as fans and enemies alike mentioned his death...

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Twitter, the social network and micro blogging service, that everyone seems to be using. Starts out quite mundane and innocent, until you get hooked. Then you get so involved that Twitter seems to take up a significant portion of your day.

Now there are some great tools to help you and make you more productive and more interesting on twitter. Check it out.

Tweet Everywhere These Twitter tools help you not only to send your tweets to twitter but also to other social networking and social media sites like Friendfeed, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.

Ping.fmHellotxt Desktop Clients These twitter tools get installed onto your desktop computer or laptop and allow you to tweet, organise, DM, Reply, use URL shortners and a whole bunch of other awesome things directly from your desktop computer. This without the need to use the traditional Twitter Web interface.

TwhirlTweetdeck Contact Management These Twitter tools help to manage your contacts, those whom you follow and those who follow you. You can also search for new followers, analyse those following you, find out who they are following and a bunch of other cool things as well.

BuzzomTwitterCounterMr. Tweet...

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The end of the year approaches fast. The week after Christmas and before the new year is generally a very relaxed and low production week. But it does not have to be low production for your blog.

Internet usage has slowed down and not many people are interested in work. Take this time of slow-down to spring clean your blog and get it ship shape. There are a lot of things you can doto clean up your blog that will make it just that much more special.

1. Clear out all the spam from the comments. This is a good time to sift through those comments and clean them up. Deleting all the spammy comments and self serving back link seekers, who’s primary role for their comment is just to get a back link and try to affect their Google PageRank.

There is nothing that highlights neglect of a blog and comments more than loads of spam. So clean up your blog by cleaning up your comments

Maybe it is even a good time to check out and test an alternate commenting system for your blog. Commenting systems that stand out for me are Disqus and Intense Debate.

For a nice little discussion on the top commenting systems available check out Blog Comment System Shootout: Disqus vs. Intense Debate vs. JS-Kit Echo.

2. Cut down on all those ads. Clean up your blog by removing some of your ads. Nobody likes a blog that has more ads than content. One thing I hate is when I get to a blog and all that I can see are ads trying to sell me something. Ads on blogs need to be well placed, discrete and effective.

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Want to drive traffic to your blog or website? Want to increase your subscriber base? Want to find new readers that will come back and convert into loyal readers? Then a sure thing is to run a contest on your blog. A give away. A freebie.

Blog contests are a simple and fun way to increase traffic and a sense of community on your blog. People love free stuff. But they also want to earn it. A bit of an oxymoron. Nevertheless a contest has the ability to achieve both goals.

People love to compete and blog contests are a great way to create a buzz of excitement on your blog.

What is a blog contest? In the simplest terms, a blog contest is exactly what the term implies - a contest hosted on your blog. Because it is your blog, the rules, boundaries, context and substance of the contest are entirely up to you. For example, you can determine the method of entry, duration of the contest, prize, and more. It’s all up to you.

Contests provide blogs with a cost-effective way to generate traffic, build a mailing list, and gain inbound links. And for the visitor, he gets the chance to win something for nothing (or for very little work).

Characteristics of a good contest. Running a good contest is a skill. There are certain characteristics that a good contest should have or you risk a crash and burn. You might find that for all the effort the contest does not work.

Entrant Requirements Should Not Be Hard To Meet – Don’t make it difficult to enter nor make it too difficult to win. The contest must require a little work, but easy enough that any Tom Dick or Jane can enter and feel confident...

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Our second edition of the Blog Paragraph Collaboration project. Some great articles here. Our topic for this post was Blog Promotion or Promoting your blog. We got another grand response. Thanks to everyone. Here once again are the fantastic paragraphs from a wonderful group of bloggers.

BTW, don’t be shy to visit their blogs as well. You will not be disappointed.

 

Chris Hinton

Website: Geek Speaks

I'm a bit shy of promoting my work, and perhaps that's why I'm a big fan of word-of-mouth. I used to maintain a site very specifically targeted about books published by The Salvation Army, and found the best way to promote it was to hand out business cards at Salvation Army events. That built up a small but very loyal readership who would spread the news about the site for me; their personal recommendation did far more than anything I could do! I now write about subjects that are a lot less specialised and find that the best way to get the word out quickly is through social media like Twitter or Facebook. Again, though, there are a few people who I've built up close relationships with and when they find something on my site they like they'll pass that information on to people they know and have a similarly good relationship with. While it's important to create content that people will find organically through search engines, it's the personal recommendation of friends that has the most value. I'd never suggest that you artificially build up a relationship with someone just to get them to promote your site, but if you know someone who's interested in what you're writing why not ask them to tell a few of their friends about it?

 

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Welcome to the December 21, 2009 edition of web developers.

General Angela Martin presents 50 Awesome Facebook Apps for Serious Bookworms posted at Online Colleges.org.

HTML Case Ernsting presents MetaSpring Blog | 5 Tips for Differentiating Your Design Mocks posted at MetaSpring Blog, saying, "A designer’s greatest challenge isn’t necessarily in coming up with a good design, but in coming up with a good design that is different. This post gives some good advice for those sticky situations when you have design-block."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of web developers using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:web developers, blog carnival.





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It’s Christmas time, songs of cheer and joy are in the air. Along with carols there is the traditional Boney-M CD’s playing. Of course somewhere someone has to sing the traditional 12 days of Christmas.



What would your blog sing to you this Christmas.

On the 1st day of Christmas my true blog said to me …

I’m in need of a make over please. On the 2nd day of Christmas my true blog said to me …

Too many adverts here And I’m still in need of that make over please On the 3rd day of Christmas my true blog said to me …

No more than three columns please Get rid of some adverts I see you still missed my make over On the 4th day of Christmas my true blog said to me …

4 is too many colours here Why the extra column Get rid of some adverts please And that make over will really suite me On the 5th day of Christmas my true blog said to me …

5 posts is not good enough 4 is too many colours here Why the extra column Get rid of some adverts please And that make over will really suite me On the 6th day of Christmas my true blog said to me …

6 keywords will do 5 posts and still nothing new still too many colours Get rid of that column oh no more advertisers I really need a make over On the 7th say of Christmas my true blog said to me …

7 paragraphs is great include those 6 keywords mate 5 posts won’t do so many colours Now another new column...

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Christmas season is upon us. People all over the world are getting into that joyful happy mood associated with Christmas. Shopping, buying presents, giving gifts is what it is all about. You have bought presents for your friends and family. Perhaps you even bought yourself a gift. But what about your blog? What will you do for your blog this Christmas?



Business slows down tremendously over the Christmas season as people start to wind down for the end of year in an effort to relax before the start of a new year. It seems to me that blogs and blogging suffer the same symptoms as bloggers do not write as often, readers are on holiday so they do not read as often. Something that I fully understand and accept.

So how do the remaining bloggers keep up their readership or perhaps even gain more. What can you do for your blog that will increase it’s growth and readership this Christmas?

Give something for free. I think we need to look at this from a different angle. It’s not what we should be doing for our blog, but what we can do for other blogs. The key is to help promote other bloggers, to give something away for free.

This is a fitting exercise especially at this time of Christmas. The season of giving. Why not take this week and do something wonderful for another blog or blogger. Perhaps give them a free eBook that you normally charge for. Maybe write a small post promoting their blog. Maybe run a free advert linking back to their blog. Maybe offer them a...

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So the end of year is near and everyone is looking back to see what the last year did for them. We are seeing a lot of “Best of 2009” lists being publish. Here is yet another one. But with a difference. I am only going to list the ones I enjoy as well as some blogs and bloggers you might have missed.

Best of A-list BlogsMashable

ProBblogger

CopyBlogger

Daily Blog Tips

David Risley

Best of the restSteitBlog – Steit specializes in Social Media, Internet Marketing and  monetizing blogs and sites. Steit has  almost 20 years of technology and the Internet.

World’s Strongest Librarian – Josh has Tourette’s Syndrome, but that does not stop him from writing with passion. This is a blog for anyone looking to get stronger, healthier, smarter, and who wants to enjoy every day of their lives.

Mikes Life – I can’t say it better than what Mike says himself: “fantastic resource for new and learning bloggers who are passionate about writing and are serious about wanting to create a long term, sustainable income from their blogs”

Nathan Hangen - Nathan focuses on lifestyle design, with a focus on how to use the Internet to design that lifestyle.

Lifestyle Design for you – Gordie’s blog is a Life Style Design blog. He takes a more rational...

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Every one does interviews with famous bloggers, celebrities etc. So I decided to interview my wife to see how she copes with having a husband as a blogger. computer programmer and all time geek.

Her name is Beverley Bravery, a bit of a mouth full. She hails from England, grew up in Garswood near Liverpool. Garswood is a village within the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, in Merseyside, England. It lies between Ashton-in-Makerfield, St Helens and Wigan

She supports the correct English football team. Came to South Africa with her parents when she was 11 years old. Parents recently moved back to England to retire. She is stuck with a “Boer”, well not quite.

She is married, to me. We have two children, Daniel 12 years old, Dana-May 3 years old and wishes she could go back to England.



1. Do you love your husband? Yes, very much.

 

2. What do you think of computers? They are necessary for paying bills, email and Facebook.

 

3. Do you think blogging is a legitimate job? NO

 

4. Do you use the computer at all, if so for what? Paying bills, email and Facebook or “FaceWork” as Dana-May calls it.

 

5. Do you Blog, if not would you ever consider doing so? NO, never.

 

6. How often does your husband work on his computer / blog? 23 hours per day.

 

7. If he spends a large amount of time on the computer, how does this affect you and the family? We forget what he looks like and sometimes forget he lives here.

 

8. Would you ever get rid of the computers in you house? NO, they are necessary for some things.

 

9. Are your kids influenced...

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