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I’ve done more than my fair share of blogs browsing over the last 5 months to qualify as “seen them all” and come up with my own list of blog browsing pet peeves. All those little annoying things that turn me off and make me scurrying to the nearest “EXIT”, never to return again. These are good lessons learnt for myself as well as sharing with you, as a precaution not to create such irritations on our blogs.

Here are my list in no particular order of annoyance:

1. No Contact Information
How many blogs have you come across where you cannot find an email address or contact form that allow you to contact the blog author? For me, it’s plenty, and I can’t stand it!

2. Registration and Login Required to leave comment
A few times I wanted to join in the discussion and leave my thoughts on the interesting topic posted but was “turned away” because I didn’t login. And to login, I must first register with the blog! Oh, that was a big turn off for me! We bloggers are an impatient lot and we got thousands and one other stuffs waiting for us to do rather than to register and login to leave comment on your post.

3. Poor spelling and/or grammar usage
Slight mis-spelling of words here and there is acceptable for me but wait till you read a post full of spelling mistakes and bad grammatical usage. If the author couldn’t be bothered to proof-read his/her articles before hitting publish button, it really shows a lack of respect for the blog’s readers.

4. Multimedia “circuses” - one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Niffty Flash intro or your favorite 50 Cent rap music on auto play may look and sounds cool to you, but may not always appeal to your readers. Even worst if there is no option for users to tuen it off. Having these multimedia “circuses” will also lead to the next point.

5. Sloooow loading time
Some blogs are loaded with Flash, MIDI, audio, video, widgets, obnoxious banners or other files that load with the page, thus slowing loading time tremendously. Too many fancy features slow down the loading speed and casues readers’ mind to wander off. As stated in point 2, bloggers are an impatient speices, most will be gone before the page finish loading! My suggestion - dump them. Put up text links instead. Let the visitor choose if they want to watch the video or listen to your favorite playlist.

6. Font sizes and background contrast with font colors
I’ve came across blogs that uses such small fonts that I have to practically squirm my eyes to read the post. What’s worst when the small fonts are bright yellow written on dark blue background! And how about this? Light pink colored fonts written on pink background! No matter how “killer” the content is, these color-challenged blogs will be killed off by the author’s own color blindness.

I believe most of us blogs to share our ideas, opinions and knowledge with the online community. Besides focusing on your writings, put yourself in the shoe of the readers and try to offer them a pleasurable experience overall. Avoid any of the above that wastes the reader’s time or causes confusion, and you’ve won half the battle.

I’ve only listed 6 of them and believe there are more irritants. What are your poisons of blog reading? Care to share your blog reading pet peeves?

Imagine being able to search, chat and send instant messages to friends while you watch a full-screen high quality program or flip to any of the more than 150 channels online, many of them available to International viewers. Now you can enjoy all these and more with Joost. The cool thing is that you now have access to many of these programs which will pretty much never reach local shores, watch what you want, when you want and as often as you want. What’s more, it’s free!

I am talking about the new free broadband TV service called Joost (pronouced “juiced”) available worldwide via the Internet. You need to get Joost, because as it proclaimed on the website, it combines “all the things you love about TV, fused with the interactive power of the Internet”.seriously! Currently in private beta, Joost is expected to roll out its full general release by the end of the year.

The genesis of Joost
The latest brianchild from the duo who brought the world Skype and Kazaa, Joost is the revolutionary Internet service that streams TV shows, movies, music videos, documentaries and much more direct to your computer. Joost works by downloading software that allows the transmission of content via the Internet, without the need for an additional set-top or cable box. Unlike popular video site YouTube, Joost users can only view, but not upload content, preventing anyone from posting copyrighted material.

Content, which is acquired directly from the copyright owners, is then made available through the service, much like via a regular TV. There is even a channel guide and a synopsis of each show. As content is obtained from different markets, there are geographical boundaries and restrictions. For example, only US residents can watch shows from US television networks like Comedy central or Adult Swim. On the other hand, international viewers can catch games on World Poker Tour which those living in US cannot.

There are 150 channels in all, and users here have access to more than 30 of them. There is a race car show, IndyCar series; a music channel, Intimate and Interactive and my personal favourite, Swimsuit Illustrated on Demand. Yes! Swimsuit Illustrated!

Swimsuit Illustrated on Demand should not be the only reason to get Joost, although it’s a good one. There are so many other reasons for international viewers to sign up and they come in the form of music, documentaries, animation and comedy shows, many of which are not available in local shores.

Right off the bat, the introduction video throws a video montage of shows available on Joost. Once you access the main menu, the Channel Catalog lets you add any or all the shows onto your own channel guide. Each channel guide lists a selection of programs to view and switching between shows is no different from clicking a button on your TV remote.

The only difference is the slight delay between channel surfing, but the end result is a satisfying one. You can pause, forward, rewind or skip to the next clip just as easily. As the Internet is suppose to be free, so hopefully Joost can look at dropping the geographical limitations of streaming shows.

Add to that, a remote controller, recording function and/or limited downloads for my portable media player for viewing on the go, for future Joost upgrades and I’ll have to seriously consider why I’m still paying for my cable set-top box at home.

Do search engine keywords really matter in post titles? There are really 2 school of thoughts when it come to this question. Many pro-SEO bloggers often preache and promote the idea of writing post title with keyword and will never be caught publishing any articles without first researching some sweet keywords for their titles headlines.

On the other side of the fence, the purist will question the point of search optimized post title if the content of the post pales in quality and no one read or link to it.

Whichever schools you belongs to, writing attention grabbing titles, search optimized or not, is a great way to intrigue the readers and make them curious enough to want to read more. Here I list 12 of my favourite headline grabber, some I’ve used before and some I’ve seen used in other blogs to great effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is an extremely special day, a day that will happen only once in our lifetime! Not once in 100 years, not even once in a millennium, it will never happen again, ever. So what the heck am I talking about? Well, if you are using the DD/MM/YYYY date format, you will have a slight idea what I was rambling about there.

Yes, its 20072007! To many people, this may just be another day, no more, no less. Many of us are “runners” in the rat race of life, often working our butts off trying to make ends meet. So much so that we let life past us by without living it to the fullest. Life is wonderful but life is short, so let’s stop to smell the roses, celebrate life’s every little successes, like there’s no tomorrow.

In my earlier post “Top 5 Ways to Generate Traffic To Your Blog“, I mentioned one of the way to promote your blog and generate online traffic is to submit your articles to the many online articles directory. Submitting articles has become one of the most popular means of generating quality backlinks and targeted traffic to your blog as it may be exposed to hundreds of thousands or potentially even millions of content-hungry Internet users.

I submitted my post recently to Ezine articles and I am proud to announce that it was human reviewed and approved by its in-house editorial team. Thus, I’ve earned bragging rights and accorded the use of the “Featurted on Ezine article” banner, which I’ve slab right on the top left corner of the side bar. In addition, I was inducted into the list of Expert Authors!!! LOL!! I know, it’s funny, and totally undeserved at this point! Having one article approved doesn’t make me an expert, it’s a fact and I consciously know it. However, It does have great motivational effect for me to prove to myself that this was no fluke. Read the rest of this entry »