I have been testing out Flock for the past few days and I must say that I am impressed with the way it handles so many applications that I use every day. I can blog from it with the quickness about any subject or picture no matter where I happen to be struck by inspiration on the web. Flickr and Photobucket are only a click or two away. I can add in Technorati links quicker than you can say “OH LOOK!”.

I have been a long time supporter of Firefox browser. This is just like Firefox, but hand made for those of us who desire the utmost in easy access to multitasking. I was sold when I found out they had a web clipboard. I hated having to open up a whole other application just to copy something down for use later on.

Most of the extensions from Firefox work in Flock because they use much of the same programming. For instance, if you look at the bottom of the status bar on the first picture youw ill see that I Have YouPlayer and Greasemonkey installed. I have only encountered 3 out of at least 20 addons that didn’t work in Flock.

There are so many things I can do now without having to switch a bunch of tabs around. So much more is involved in this browser, but I just wanted you to know the main blogging aspect of it. You can upload photos, see them in your media bar, blog them, and go about your merry way. It is such a time saver. I have been blogging like a maniac all day. I suggest taking a look at it.

Happy blogging!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock, browser, web, blogging, social media, networking

If you have the number of subscribers “show off” badge on your blog you might find yourself obsessing over the number that the little box shows. You may have noticed a big drop off over the weekend. And not just by 1 or 2, but by 20 or 30 or 50 at a time. I noticed it on my Craft Blog this past week, so much so that I removed the feed count badge because it was making me crazy to see it! Then I started looking at other sites that I frequent and noticed their Feedburner numbers had changed a lot as well.

I didn’t know if it was all a coincidence or if the service had a hiccup! Fortunately, I’m not as crazy as I thought I was. Feedburner announced on their blog yesterday that the drop was due to Google Feedfetcher being offline most of the weekend. Numbers are back up this morning ~ whew ~ what a relief that is to see. I thought I had offended about 40 subscribers in some random way!

I do recommend using the FeedSmith plugin if you are running your feed through feedburner. That way all your subscribers are counted.

Do you remember a while back, I posted about stats, and specifically mentioned Sitemeter and StatCounter? And I said I didn’t think those two were very accurate when compared to server side stats? Well, I am blogging tonight to let you know that these tools might work better if you insure that the code is on every page. This is particularly worth noting if you use different sidebars/footers depending on what page is loading. Like I do on Cass Knits. Just sayin’

PS: I’ll let you know next week if I have anything else to add/subtract from my thoughts on these services. *cough*

If you are looking to make the move to your own domain and not sure about hosting and everything I came across this offer at my host and thought it might be of interest to those trying to make the move, but nervous and not really ready to make the big change.

I recently bought a new domain name and found this free hosting credit in my account and inquired as to what it was. Turns out this is a good option for new bloggers or bloggers who just want to test the water with their own domain.

You purchase or transfer a domain name to them you get a free hosting credit in your account. You can choose to put Wordpress on there with just a few clicks. You don’t have complete flexibility because you can’t upload your own template, but there are 50-some cool ones to choose from, and they each have different color schemes and customization options in them. Like adding pictures to the header etc…

It’s free, there’s no charge for the hosting at all, and it comes with one domain email as well so you can be you@yourdomain.com

My host ~ Identity

I suggested they put up a sample of what the free hosted blog might look like and she used an old domain name to do so, and this is what it looks like and there’s also a post there with the information about the free blog.

Sample Blog using the service CLICK HERE

There will be an ad banner across the top, and of course if you decide after a time to upgrade to a full hosting account that would go away and you would be able to upload templates and all sort of other things. The important thing is that it gets you on your own domain name!

I hope this helps someone to get started into blogging more.

hosting, free blogging service, free blog, own domain blog, blogging software, wordpress

Lynne asked how to go about hosting a carnival. Now, I have to admit that I have not been very successful in the carnival arena, and I think my major problem has been in follow through. But that’s in steps three and four, and we need to begin at the beginning.

1. Decide on a theme. Ideally, this will be related to your blog in some way. Like, you maybe wouldn’t put a goth music carnival on a classical music blog. OTOH, you might get away with Baroque.  make a page explaining your carnival.
2. Set a date for the first carnie, and publicize it. Don’t be afraid to ask for submissions.
3. Make sure the people who submit to the carnival link back to you! This is paramount, and part of why I had trouble with my own carnivals. I wasn’t insisting on the linkage, and so word was not spreading.
4. Publicize, publicize, publicize. The linkage above will help, but you will still need to remind people, mention it on message boards, post reminders on your blog, etc. You will need to continue to do this even after the carnival has gotten off it’s feet.
5. Write your own post.  Yeah, you;d think that would be a no-brainer, but I have forgotten now and again.
6. Publish the carnival.  To do this you will need to read the submissions and link to them, so your readers can find them.  When you do this, ask the folks who entered to link to the carnival post, too.
7. If your first carnival is a smashing sucess, great!  If not, give yourself time to think about what went wrong, regroup, and try again.