Article Network

Is Article Writing Dead?

2009-12-16T18:35:00.000-08:00

We've had junk food for years, now welcome to junk content.

And, just as junk food is not only the local market stall selling cheap sausages sizzling in recycled oil but is also a profitable global enterprise, so junk content is moving away from the scrapers and automated writing tools and going legit - or at least global.

AOL, that dinosaur that survived when the meteor hit, is churning itself into the disposable portal it was always doomed to be. You've no doubt read it in many places that the best way to write profitably is to launch lots of niche websites with minimal yet SEO-targetted content. Be smart and diligent enough and the numbers will start to stack up. The more worthless the content the higher the likelihood of someone clicking an advert just to find a quick exit to something potentially more interesting. This is now the AOL business model.

In "The End of Hand Crafted Content", TechCrunch writer bemoans this race to the bottom but vows to move on and stay competitive. For every bit of software, or cheap human, that spews out a mangled version of an original article and then rams it in front of an ignorant public, there are systems to track and list the origins of a story thereby rewarding once again the original producers.

The bottom line is money. The old media barons such as Murdoch were surprisingly late to the party as they couldn't figure out how to make any money on the net. They still can't figure it out but are desperate because the new media is eating away at their very existence. Murdoch's threat is to hide behind some payment system. I find it laughable that he should think this a good idea and he should take a long hard look at AOL to see his future. Maybe he should buy AOL and they can sink together.

But the sad truth is that shit sells - and free shit on the net is even better. There was some delusion a few years back that the internet would be different. Back then it was largely filled with techies, scientists, geeks and academics. They are still there but the noise to signal ratio is getting larger... and larger. But in the end we all create our very own individual internet. If a particular portal is spewing out crap we will find another one, assuming one will still exist.

For the writer, one has to decide whether you want to run a junk food franchise or your own gourmet restaurant. In physical space, both models co-exist. In cyberspace, where the food is free and paid for by fluctuating advertising the specialists will flounder, unless they stick together. Arianna Huffington is less pessimistic and insists that the likes of the Huffington Post can prosper in this free for all. But a close look at her final comments shows she can see the same kind of constellation taking place. The single solitary writer has to go where they feel most comfortable and where they will find an audience.

Many writers (or at least American writers) are making some money on eHow. This site shows what the bottom looks like when it is calculated by an algorithm. eHow is owned by Demand Media and they have developed a strict model of article titles they commission based on search and advertising bucks. You won't find anything on life, the universe and everything, but rather life, my family and that stain on the carpet. These are life's minutiae; things that some people obviously need to know, otherwise the article would never get written. But the pay is low and the quality I've seen is truly dreadful. You can read the full article at Wired and you can even copy the same model - just try to write better articles!

Original content is supposed to be king, but in the English language the word 'original' can have many meanings. AOL's writing factory is original in the sense that nobody else could put together those same words in that same order and think it worth publishing. eHow is a step up in that they hope their articles at least appear to be useful, or useful enough to be a stepping stone to an advert. When I take a step back and look at my favourite feeds I find that the writers are either paid a wage or are in another paid employment and write part-time. If originality is valued then it has to be paid for. How that is going to happen in the current online business model I just haven't figured it out yet.

sulumits retsambew

2009-08-01T04:47:00.000-07:00

Now there's a title! What does "sulumits retsambew" mean? What's it for? What is the point?

Well, the meaning is actually quite straightforward: it's just "webmaster stimulus" spelled backwards. Now that wasn't too hard, was it?! However, the pint of the whole exercise is an interesting SEO (search engine optimization) competition run by the forum Net Builders.

The aim of the competition is to see which 3 websites hit the top spots on Google.com. The competition started in March and ends on 15th August 2009 at high noon GMT. So only a couple of weeks for budding SEO experts to try and beat the current crop of top websites. To enter the contest, you must post the domain you are entering into the contest in a message here at NetBuilders.

There are prizes too!
First Place: $1,000
Second Place: $500
Third Place: $250

OK, this may seem slightly frivolous so late in the day but one interesting comparison is whether all those newly registered "sulumits retsambew" domains will beat more established websites with articles or features using the keywords. Is the domain name more important than the content? Some of the websites I've peeked at don't have much meaningful content at all and yet rank highly on Google. In one sense this shows that SEO is vital to get noticed... and content is crucial to get people coming back!

How to Mix Your Drinks

2009-07-16T22:08:00.001-07:00

As every barman will testify, there is an art to mixing drinks. Mixing sweet and sour can create balance, whereas adding a sharp note to a smooth drink can add character. It is perfectly possible to create a cocktail that tastes like it is nonalcoholic; sure, it'll hit you eventually but you'll have ordered another one by then. The one thing no barman wants to create is a cocktail that makes people sick.

So why do some people think it a really good idea to drink vodka and beer, or a bottle of wine laced with a dash of whiskey? Chartreuse and lager, anyone? Just make sure you know directions to the nearest lavatory.

So why do people insist on mixing drinks that they would never order? I know, you're at a party and the wine is disappearing as if a juggernaut needed refuelling, suddenly a bottle of whiskey appears - that's got alcohol in it, so will do. Gin would have been a good idea with tonic a few hours ago but at midnight is about to explode onto the scene. At the fag-end of the night the only things keeping the fridge gainfully employed are bottles of cheap beer. They too have alcohol inside them.

Many years ago I had a nice job running a student bar. Every term we would blow the profits on some extravagant celebration, one of which was a cocktail night. It would have been far too easy and boring to just read up on the standard cocktails. I mean, a Russian Black sounds exotic but struck me as a good way to waste both vodka and coke at the same time. Being a scientist this called for experimentation! In this case I had willing lab assistants.

Metiers such as winemaster, chocolatier or perfumer require refined senses; a master barman needs the same acute sense of taste and a strong stomach. Sure, we got sick, but the path to perfection is strewn with landmines. We discovered some disgusting concoctions which our perverse customers would probably have enjoyed... but we took pity on our cleaning staff and decided against them.

One particularly toxic brew gained a certain notoriety: Snakebite is a mixture of beer and cider in equal measures. Stir it a bit and within a minute or so a strange alchemy takes place in which your drink has turned into alcoholic wallpaper glue. It gets you drunk quickly, often with a collateral headache, and more likely than not it will try to exit your stomach by the shortest route. The fad died as quickly as it had arrived, but the point here is that we could witness in vitro what often happens out of sight in our stomachs.

There is an old adage of not mixing 'grain and grape', so that in one camp are the grain spirits such as whiskey and vodka and beer whilst in the other camp are wine, port, sherry and brandy. There are also a batch of drinks such as rum and fruit liqueurs that don't quite fit into this scheme, so much so that many think the advice itself is complete rot; alcohol is alcohol, largely ethanol, so what difference does it make whether it is fermented barley, malt, grape or potato? The problem is not so much the ethanol but all the other ingredients that make up a complex drink, especially beer and wine.

I won't drink beer and wine in the same sitting - they make me feel sick, so why bother? Other people may disagree, but that's up to them and their body. One thing few people consider is that they may have an allergy or intolerance to some of the constituent chemicals in their drink. Allergies are well known for things such as gluten and yeast but they also exist for sulphites and other chemicals. It is also possible to be allergic to alcohol itself. This is due to a genetic flaw that leads to a deficiency in the enzyme needed to break down alcohol into acetic acid. It is also most likely that your body has had enough punishment and is just telling your brain to stop drinking.

I've done the experiments; I know what to drink and what I can mix. Being mildly intoxicated can be amusing but being blind drunk and leaning over a toilet seat is not the most edifying sight. We've all done the experiments, we all know the results for us personally - it's just a matter of remembering them when you're offered that chaser. You could also try a glass of Snakebite.

Towards a New Lifestyle: Burning Bridges and Overcoming Fears

2009-07-09T04:04:00.000-07:00

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.” Yoda, from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

I've never been much of a reader of self-help books, be they on management styles, career choices or lifestyle designs. They often strike me as 10-page Powerpoint presentations inflated into 300-page yarns just so as not to appear too naked in front of the reader. Also, a life governed by aims and goals seems like a life reduced to flowcharts and spreadsheets. I personally prefer reading philosophy or psychology books, yet somehow came across a rather interesting example of the lifestyle design genre, “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss. It is essentially a guide to live a life rich in experiences on a modest budget whilst creating an income that frees up most of your time to actually have those experiences rather than postponing them to an uncertain future.

One thing that struck me was how similar the whole attitude was to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. I have written about Epicurus before and the method was being applied specifically to financial situations and material desires. However, the same method can be used for any kind of personal dilemma. I think that having a method is more important than following someone else's to-do lists. Such lists are the final action points but are useless at generating the kind of Socratic dialogue with yourself that makes those actions meaningful. How many New Year's resolutions go begging by mid-January? Was it even worth the mental energy used in making them? A resolution without resolve is pointless.

The sub-title of Ferriss' book is “Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.” Information technology, the internet and outsourcing all those tedious parts of our lives can transform a lifeless drone existence into a life less ordinary. The book has lots of practical advice but those parts that impressed me the most are those exercises in discovering one's own very personal and very real fears. I must admit to being homeless – not in the sense of not having a roof over my head but in that a house is just a dwelling, not a home. There are many such nomads in the world, either born out of two different cultures or living a peripatetic childhood. Having no allegiance to any one country means the whole world can be your home. It is just a matter of mind-set and a few practicalities. But you don't have to feel like a nomad to wander this world and experience the richness of lifestyles and cultures.

What would be your dream lifestyle? What would be your dream job? Where in the world do you want to go? Do you prefer walking barefoot on a sandy beach or feeling the crunching snow beneath your boots? Why are you where you are? And is it the best place to be? What about all those things you'd really love to do but are too petrified because they seem somehow too extreme – they are so far outside the box that you can't see the box any more.

What stops most people living their dreams is not physical but mental and emotional. Many fear that a major change in lifestyle means burning their bridges back to the safe, predictable, boring past. What few consider is that inaction means burning the same bridges but to the future and from the wrong end. Where Ferriss is full of the can-do spirit, Epicurus warns against losing things that are truly important. Running a beach-front bar on a tropical island sounds like a dream job, but if the love of your life is 10,000 km away then your real dream is only half fulfilled.

The idea is not to run away from anything but to free yourself from an unfulfilling existence. The first things to free yourself from are your fears. This is where the to-do lists fall apart and a sequence of questions-and-answers is a much better way to discover new things about yourself. The mind has this amazing capacity to create a construct of reality; only problem is that it isn't always very accurate. The mind seems to construct 'plausible narratives' and thereby sacrifices consistency and often truth. Seeking to edit that narrative so that it makes cogent sense will probably unearth a number of delusions. Changing our lifestyle is primarily about changing ourselves, and to do so means putting ourselves under the microscope.

The mind constructs its reality from its inputs. It is therefore important that your plans or problems are written down along with the questions and answers to each step. Your own written words thereby become new inputs rather than just the same doubts going round and round in circles as part of your mental chatter. Writing everything down, most especially the questions, means your mind will continue to process these inputs even when you're not consciously aware of it. The answers may come at any time; sometimes they will involve some action, sometimes they will raise new questions and sometimes it will strike you that it was just a matter of finding the right key.

In Carlos Castaneda's books on the Yaqui shaman Don Juan, the very first lesson is in overcoming fear. Such fears may be either internal or external. It could be the fear of confronting one's own inner psychic content or it could be the fear of approaching strangers. Tim Ferriss says he overcame many fears by forcing himself to contact famous people to ask for advice or assistance – he found most of them to be perfectly human and in no way divine. He also overcame his fear of water by learning to swim in 10 days. As you work through your personal questions-and-answers be honest with yourself – be brutally honest as if that person in the mirror is someone else. If your aim is to change the way you live then start by looking at the absolutely worst scenario. How would you manage it? Is it really all that bad?

Everyone has their own story to tell and their own fears that they hide from the world – and which they hide even from themselves. Building those bridges to a better future means crossing those bridges one by one. The passwords that let you move through the toll-gates are the answers to those questions you were afraid to ask. The sum total of all those bridges is the network of our life. In order to change that life some bridges need burning whilst others need building.

Time to rewrite that lifestyle narrative.

A Philosophy of Wealth and Happiness

2009-07-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

My thoughts on Not Having Enough Money: Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton

In times of economic hardship it is natural to take stock of our financial situation, but also wise to review what makes us truly happy.

Epicurus of Samos

The chapter on Not Having Enough Money, from Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy, starts by whetting the reader's appetite with an advertiser's relish for luxurious imagery: a Georgian town house; a private jet; a sumptuous bathroom, and so on. All the height of good taste, and all but dreams for most people's budgets. A philosophy of life that included pleasure and wealth would surely be the height of popularity; and, indeed, there is just such a philosophy. Epicurus was born in 341 BC on the fertile island of Samos and after some years of study he became dissatisfied by the generally austere and other-worldly philosophies he encountered. By the age of 29 he decided to set down his own thoughts. The chief characteristic of Epicureanism was that a good life was founded upon sensual pleasures - and by sensual is meant the pleasures of all the senses: the taste of a good meal; the sight of aesthetic forms; an exchange of friendly conversation; and, yes, this includes sexual pleasures.

Even at the time, over 2000 years ago, this was a shock to Athenian society who had a mental picture of the Socratic philosopher inhabiting the realm of ideas and largely oblivious to the corporeal needs and desires of most of humanity. It also comes as no surprise that Epicurus soon surrounded himself with wealthy patrons, desirous to wine and dine at the table of their philosopher of pleasure. He eventually established what is best described as a commune on the outskirts of Athens, where both men and women could devote themselves to the pursuit of happiness.

However, it would be a grave error to confuse Epicurus with Dionysus (the god of wine and fertility). Before rushing headlong into a life of sybaritic gratification it would be wise to read Epicurus beyond the headlines. To be successful in the pursuit of happiness one needs to have a thorough understanding of what is true happy. In the case of Epicurus, such pleasures were actually simple and inexpensive.

Friendship

“Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.” Epicurus stressed that dining in good company was even more important than what was on the menu. That true friends relate to each other at a deeper level than mere casual acquaintances, and are always there for each other. A handful of true friends could not be purchased with any amount of money and power.

Freedom

The Epicurean commune also removed itself from the economic and political life of Athens, being as self-sufficient as they could. They forsook wealth for simplicity, and placed their freedom to be happy above the desire for status at the service of another. They measured their wealth in terms of happiness rather than in gold.

Thought

This third necessary ingredient is in the great tradition of Greek philosophy; that only the analysed life is truly worth living. The ability to think clearly and openly was the best way to resolve both the smallest domestic problems to the largest questions of life. Having the freedom to think clearly and the friends to discuss issues openly, it would be more likely to lead to a resolution rather than having thoughts swirl around inside our solitary troubled mind.

What is necessary and natural

Epicurus divided desires into three categories. He placed freedom, friendship and thinking into what was both natural and necessary – adding here the obvious physical necessities such as food and shelter. Those things that were considered natural but not necessary were luxuries such as a fine house, sumptuous meals and exotic holidays. In the last category Epicurus placed fame and power as desires that are neither natural nor necessary.

Money and Happiness

We are now in a position to see clearly the relationship the Epicureans had with money. Money is both natural and necessary in order to further those desires that are natural and necessary. If your life is already fulfilled and pleasurable then earning the extra money needed to finance those luxuries may not be necessary but is not harmful either. However, if the aim of accumulating wealth is in order to fulfil desires in the second or third categories, without first having satisfied those in the first, then our life is liable to remain unfulfilled and unhappy. For Epicurus, happiness is the absence of either physical pain or mental suffering - he is not interested in an ostentatious show of joy, but rather the inner tranquillity that comes from leading a good life.

A State of Mind

Happiness is a state of mind and throwing money at the problem is not a solution. Epicurus sees that much consumer behaviour is a displacement reaction, with a tragic lack of awareness of the real desires we are trying to fulfil. We buy that sports car, when what we really want is freedom; we throw a lavish party, when what we really desire are some close friends; we take an expensive holiday, when what we really need is time for quiet contemplation. Even as far back as ancient Greece, Epicurus pointed the finger of blame for this psychological blindness to the 'idle opinions' of the masses, fed by the corporate desire to increase profits by stimulating a material vision of the good life, whilst ignoring our true needs – friendship cannot be bought wholesale, repackaged and sold at a profit.

Advertising Space

Some 400 years after Epicurus, a huge stone colonnade 80 metres long and 4 metres high was erected in the market-place of Oinoanda, a town in south-western Asia Minor. On it were inscribed sayings from Epicurean philosophy on the dangers of seeking true happiness in material possessions. This advertising space was sponsored by one of the town's wealthiest citizens as an expression of his joy in having discovered the philosophy of pleasure. Alain de Botton seems to think that a modern Epicurean advertising campaign would likely cause global economic collapse. This may be more telling about how fragile our consumer driven economies really are, however, as one of the Oinoanda slogans read,”Real value is generated not by theatres and baths and perfumes and ointments ... but by natural science.”

Discussing Epicurean science and their general world view would stray too far from our focus on our financial health. However, Epicurus does suggest a scientific thought experiment to help us analyse our desires and thereby distinguish between our real needs and our apparent desires.

Five Steps to Genuine Happiness

1. Imagine your current desire projected into the future. For example, you want an expensive holiday villa.

2. Now imagine that your desire does not actually lead to the expected happiness. For example, the villa is fantastic but you don't have a close companion, or alternatively, going camping could be more pleasurable if in the company of the right person.

3. If you find such cases that do not lead to happiness then the original object of desire was neither natural nor necessary and therefore will ultimately not lead to the hoped for pleasure.

4. By such analysis the original desire should be recast to take into account any exceptions just found. In our example, it becomes clearer that whether staying at an expensive villa or a more modest destination, true pleasure comes from sharing the experience with the right person.

5. Your true needs should now be clearer than your impulsive initial desire. In the language of Epicurus, having established your natural and necessary desires you are also in a better position to judge whether you can really afford the villa or the camping in the full knowledge that neither is the real source of happiness.

It is best to set down in writing the whole process so that the mind does not play tricks on itself. The whole analysis essentially starts with an object or objective of desire and then adds things that would make it more pleasurable and subtracts things that make it less. By doing so it is possible that the original object disappears entirely, replaced by something that is both more important and less expensive.

To twist a famous saying; you can't always get what you want, but you can get everything that you truly need.

Stephen Fry Writes Back - What Would You Say to Your 16 Year Old Self?

2009-05-01T01:48:00.000-07:00

In his 1997 autobiography, Stephen Fry published a letter he had written to his future self as an unhappy 16 year-old. This week, in the 25th birthday edition of Gay Times, he finally replies to his teenage self. An excerpt from it is also published in The Guardian.

I suspect few of us were self-centred enough to pen a letter to our adult selves. Having said that, if we could now send an epistle to our teenage self, what would we say?

Fry rather focusses on his studies and his homosexuality. Many comments have been deleted at The Guardian webpage - no doubt nuggets of gay abuse - even though Fry's monologue proclaims that his source of misery and tragedy was not so much sexuality as love. Like any precocious talent, he didn't just ignore his problems in the vain hope they might dissolve away, but rather tried to analyse them with his intellectual scalpel. Discovering a galaxy of dead friends through their writing probably compounded the isolation - at least until university.

So, are all 16 year-olds doomed to a state of turbid confusion as they learn to swim through their hormonal cross-currents? Were we all desperately seeking love and approval, or just connections to fellow spirits?

I really don't recall such a desire for love - death seemed to be a far more effective stalker. Like Fry, my 16 year-old self was largely immersed in books and wandering London's cathedrals of knowledge. The Science Museum and the British Museum are both testaments to a human search for the sublime; to something above and beyond this mundane life. But the search for the ephemeral is also liable to produce a very concrete case of depression.

Doc: Why are you depressed, Alvy?
Mother: Tell doctor [?] It's something he read.
Doc: Something you read, heh?
Alvy: The universe is expanding.
Doc: The universe is expanding?
Alvy: Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything!
Mother(shouting): What is that your business? (to doctor) He stopped doing his homework.
Alvy: What's the point?
Mother: What has the universe got to do with it? You're here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!

(from Annie Hall, directed by Woody Allen)

Although I didn't look like the geeky Alvy, that scene always makes me smile. London was also not expanding, but rather shrinking as I took up the freedom to roam. But what had also shrunk was my ability to delve deeper into my psyche. "What's the point?" is the kind of irritating thing teenagers love to say, but is also a deeply serious question. It is an intellectual sledgehammer against all the social protocols that seem to keep people going. But from childhood to teenage-hood, those things gained eclipsed those things that were lost.

One of the grave errors adults make is to assume that the inner life of a child is just a mass of confusion waiting for the orderly rules of adulthood to tidy up that mental bedroom. From my experience, this is far from true and the insights gained were only lacking in the ability to express them eloquently, as well as a certain amount of self-protection as these were not things that seemed to be discussed. However, the hormonal changes during pubescence seem to conspire to draw a curtain across those natural abilities and to push us into society - as society then pushes back.

If there is a message to my 16 year-old self, it is that this too will pass, that what you are looking for you had already found... and lost. That once the firework display ends you'll be able to see the stars again.

Time for a Fifth Estate: Citizen Journalism

2009-03-25T04:35:00.000-07:00

The Fourth Estate is dead. Suffocated by an avalanche of lies and propaganda, it is obvious that corporate mainstream media no longer serves its lofty ideals but is, rather, the tool of its masters. Does anybody truly believe what the corporate media says? Sadly, I think most people do, and therein lies the problem – propaganda works.

What is the Fourth Estate?

The term Fourth Estate usually refers to the function of the free press to investigate the truthfulness of the other three Estates, and goes back to at least the first quarter of the 19th century. In Britain the three Estates were the Lords Spiritual, Lords Temporal and the Commoners. Even in France, without a House of Lords, the tripartite division still made political sense and constituted the clergy, nobility and commoners. Thomas Carlyle quotes British politician Edmund Burke as exclaiming that up in the Commons Press Gallery “sat the Fourth Estate more important by far than they all.”

The press has been keen to propagate its own self-importance. In a democracy it is indeed vital that issues be discussed openly and arguments dissenting from accepted wisdom be at least aired without fear of any physical reprisals. But this is all highly idealistic. The word 'free' must be the most abused word in the English language. The free press is supposed to imply that it is free from outside interference but in reality the press is merely free to disseminate its own agenda.

The so-called mainstream media is owned by private individuals through corporate vehicles and is there purely as a propaganda machine to disseminate news that serves the interests of its owners. This can be blatant, as in backing a particular political candidate, or more covert, as in burying news that is seen as damaging to their own corporate interests. As corporate media is really no better than corporate advertising, why do people still believe it? And most people do still believe what they read.

The Fourth Estate is Dead

I was recently involved in bringing to light a story that Fox News had broadcast but then buried. The problem with having live guests is that they do not always tow the corporate line. This happens regularly in small ways. The financial press will often bury comments from analysts that do not agree with their pumping up of stocks. This attempt to ignore a valid analysis is a good pointer to its true value. But using the media's obvious bias to somehow extract the real story can be tiring.

The case of the Texas Senator being buried by the whole corporate media was eye-opening in how thoroughly the cartel operates. Although this is now 'old news' the lessons are important. A small number of online bloggers had seen the live TV interview and commented on it, only to then realize that the news had disappeared. There really were zero references to the interview in any corporate media outlet – that piece of news just did not exist! It never happened!

Most people think of themselves as being smart, street-wise, able to discern what is true and what isn't. But in this case, most people came across as children in need of parental guidance from the same mainstream corporate media sources they like to blame of bias. Now, you cannot simultaneously believe and disbelieve the corporate media. Either you understand what is being fed to you, or you don't. Either you believe what individuals are saying, or you don't. The sad fact from this case is that the propaganda works. The alternative media sources are actually powerless. However many non-mainstream sources there are on the internet their readerships are pitifully small compared to the corporate behemoths.

It is good to be critical about what one reads on the net, but this must surely apply to all news sources. If the corporate media has buried a story it is the height of folly to expect the same media to verify a story that it does not want you to know about! And yet this is what many people tried to do. They charged the bloggers with fabricating the story. Why would anybody fabricate a story citing a live interview that perhaps millions (probably just thousands) of people would have watched? Eventually, two copies of the Texas interview came to light, both proving that the original story was true in essence, if somewhat exaggerated on specifics. By this time the covert political machinations had resolved to play down the whole issue, as it became obvious it was not going to remain buried for long. The bloggers were vindicated but this was no Watergate and, unless I'm mistaken, there was no lasting follow-through. However, the lessons are stark – the Fourth Estate is dead, long live the Fifth Estate.

A Fifth Estate Needed

The Fourth Estate, in the shape of self-interested corporate mainstream media, is no longer there to serve the interests of its readers, assuming it ever was. Yes, I'm sure their sports results are accurate, but that's about as much reality as one can expect from news that is spun so much as to be largely fictional. If people really want to know what is going on in the world there really must arise a new Fifth Estate – a citizen journalism.

As with any new term, the Fifth Estate has already been used but in a multitude of ways, from a term to represent the poor, trade unions, organized crime as well as for bloggers. The book Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate by Stephen D. Cooper, published in 2006, explicitly connects internet journalism with the much needed Fifth Estate. There is nobody guarding the guardians now, apart from individuals who are in the right place at the right time, with a story worth telling and, most importantly, a media outlet on the internet.

The internet is at the same time global and local. Every web page is there on your screen. Wherever the server, the editors and the writers might be doesn't matter – to the user everything is just a click away. There is therefore no excuse to keep begging at the altar of corporate media for 'faux news'. There is no excuse for swallowing lie after lie when there are far more honest sources of information. Being aware of the propaganda and the newspeak is useful in knowing what one is expected to believe, but there is no excuse in actually believing it. There are alternatives, and they are as accessible as the corporate media sites – just a different click away!

There is no excuse for slavishly following the corporate media propaganda, unless, of course, you've swallowed so much of it that your discernment has all but vanished.

The Rhythms of The Muses

2009-03-23T22:48:00.000-07:00

In popular culture the Greek Muses are seen as representations of artistic inspiration. Writers, and especially poets, are keen to express their mysterious source of insights as a territory inhabited by their muse. Dante, feeling fragile and forlorn as he enters the Inferno laments, “O Muses, O high genius, aid me now!” This may all seem a bit of classical allegory; harmless but slightly anachronistic for our age. However, I think the Muses are symbols of something far more important.

Let's firstly look at a list of the nine Muses and their respective arts:

Calliope - Epic poetry
Clio - History
Erato - Lyric poetry
Euterpe - Music
Melpomene - Tragedy
Polyhymnia - Choral poetry
Terpsichore - Dance
Thalia - Comedy
Urania – Astronomy

Yes, there is a lot of poetry in the list but we also mustn't forget that in an age with few books or any other recording medium most knowledge was set down and transmitted in some poetic form so as to make it easier to remember. The rhythms and rhymes of poetry are just so much easier to memorize than long passages of prose. Having said that, there are two Muses that have always struck me as seemingly out of place: Clio and especially Urania. What is the Muse of Astronomy doing in the same family as her poetic sisters?

According to Hesiod's Theogeny (written in the seventh century BC) the Muses were the offspring of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Indeed, our words for 'memory', 'mnemonic' and even 'meme' are derived from Mnemosyne. This now starts to make much more sense. In the same Theogeny, we are told that kings and scholars receive their powers of knowledge from Mnemosyne and the Muses. Such memories are not just personal but collective. In an age with few written records the preservation and teaching of one's history is of prime importance in fostering one's identity. The history of the tribe, of this world and the next are encoded into the rhythms of the Muses, be they in poetic meters or planetary orbits.

In this new context what seemed to be the two ugly sisters are perhaps the two most important ones, with Urania, in the guise of astrology, being the history of the future and Clio, the Muse of History, being the embodiment of everything the other arts aim to achieve – the preservation of history and hence identity. It is therefore also fitting that the word 'museum' is derived from 'Muse', as well as 'to muse' and 'amusement'.

As our modern physics and neurosciences show that both the universe and humans are ultimately composed of frequencies, the idea of the Muses as personifying the rhythms of memories brings the nine sisters back into being a meaningful part of our own culture.

Electronic Cigarettes - Quit Smoking or Quit Nicotine?

2009-03-05T00:15:00.002-08:00

The electronic cigarette was developed in China in 2004 and designed to replace the smoking of tobacco cigarettes and cigars. In spite of indoor smoking bans sweeping across the globe, many smokers are finding it difficult to quit. There are a variety of nicotine replacement products but these drug delivery systems in no way replicate the smoking experience. The e-cigarette is different in that it aims to both deliver nicotine and also simulate to some extent the experience of smoking a traditional cigarette.

Using an E-cigarette

The e-cigarette, or e-cig, consists of a mouthpiece containing a cartridge with a nicotine solution, a heating element or atomizer, a lithium-ion battery holder and finally an LED at the tip of the e-cig. The way e-cigarettes function means they also contain some electronic circuitry and an airflow meter. They come in different designs, often made to look like a fountain pen so can be discreetly kept in one's pocket but also available as a replica cigarette.

Using an electronic cigarette is pretty much like one of those nicotine inhalers one can buy in the pharmacy. There is no need to switch it on but rather just inhale through the mouthpiece. The airflow sensor then becomes activated and switches on the heating element. A short burst of heat vaporizes a little of the nicotine solution which is then inhaled. At the same time, the LED at the tip of the e-cig lights up showing that the battery is functional and the device operational but also simulating the burning tip of a tobacco cigarette. The nicotine vapour is largely absorbed through the lungs, just like tobacco smoke. Exhaling actually creates a “smoke” vapour even though, obviously, the tip of the e-cig doesn't emit smoke. After an e-cig puff the device switches itself off automatically.

The Smoking Experience

One question that arise is why develop an electronic device, with the possibility of it breaking one day, when there are already cheaper nicotine inhalers on the market? The motivation here is that the experience of using an inhaler is just not particularly enjoyable. It may be an effective nicotine delivery method, but it tastes like... well, like nicotine! On the other hand, e-cigarettes come in different flavours depending on the cartridge used, some of them even trying to duplicate traditional brands such as Marlboro and Camel. As has already been stated, the real aim of the electronic cigarette is to replicate the smoking experience, not just to deliver nicotine.

The nicotine solutions are available in different strengths and flavours with the main solvent being propylene glycol. Different recipes exist, sometimes with tobacco essence added or flavourings such as menthol. Rather like some pipe tobaccos e-cigs also come in exotic flavours such as strawberry, vanilla or coffee. Although tobacco smoke contains a huge cocktail of chemicals the novelty of the liquid nicotine ingredients has raised concerns about their safety. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, propylene glycol is considered safe for human consumption in foods and medicines, but there are indications that inhaling the chemical can cause irritation to some individuals. The profile of electronic cigarettes has suddenly increased when they were exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2009. There are many online stores selling them and they can also be bought on eBay. The arguments as to their safety and their legality have just started to heat up.

Are E-cigarettes Healthier Than Tobacco?

Early marketing of e-cigarettes advertised them as a healthier alternative to tobacco cigarettes, some going so far as to claim WHO approval. However, the World Health Organisation stepped in with a strongly worded disclaimer. "The electronic cigarette is not a proven nicotine replacement therapy," said Dr Ala Alwan, Assistant Director-General of WHO's Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health Cluster. "WHO has no scientific evidence to confirm the product's safety and efficacy.” The organisation does go on to say that clinical tests are urgently needed. There have now been some tests done in China and the UK, with New Zealand seemingly at the forefront of research. However, the Health New Zealand website claims that government funding for research is not forthcoming. In the USA e-cigarettes can be sold as alternatives to cigarettes as they contain no tobacco but are not approved as smoking cessation products. It is thus becoming clear that there are real moral and liberty issues here. Is quitting smoking the same as quitting nicotine?

Quit Smoking or Quit Nicotine?

Products such as the electronic cigarette highlight the fact that tobacco smoking and nicotine addiction are two separate issues. Yes, tobacco has been the main transport mechanism for nicotine intake. But we are in the situation where one nicotine product – tobacco – is freely available and highly taxed, whereas any other nicotine product needs clinical trials and sold as a medicine. This all starts to smell like the lobbying efforts of tobacco companies. But is nicotine bad for humans? Long term tobacco use is certainly unhealthy yet cigarettes are still on sale. But the idea that smoking cessation nicotine products actually work is highly debatable. The way that nicotine reacts in the brain and body means that even a small amount will keep the nicotine addiction thriving. Although due testing of the chemical cocktail inside e-cigarettes is definitely needed for health and safety reasons, the product should be welcomed as a stigma-free non-polluting alternative to tobacco cigarettes. But some governments disagree.

Are E-cigarettes Legal?

The eBay Australia auction site has this week (late January 2009) removed all e-cigarettes for sale after the Federal Department of Health and Ageing stressed that every form of nicotine, except replacement therapies and cigarettes, are classified as poisons. In October 2008 the National Drugs and Poisons Schedule Committee reiterated their earlier stance that e-cigarettes were a form of poison, thereby making it illegal to sell them. Although illogical and ridiculous to class the same chemical as poisonous in one product but not in another, the real reason is that the Australian government sees e-cigs as an insidious product designed to hook non-smokers onto nicotine and then onto smoking tobacco. They fear a similar sequence of events as with alco-pops. Across the world, laws on e-cigarettes are currently in utter confusion with some countries like the UK openly accepting them whereas many others classing them as medical products and needing to comply with the same regulatory requirements as other medicines. The question needs to be asked again: is nicotine bad for humans?

The Effects of Nicotine

What does nicotine actually do to make it so addictive? For a detailed explanation please read the Wikipedia article, but the important thing is that nicotine passes through the blood-brain barrier and increases the levels of various neurotransmitters. “It is thought that the increased levels of dopamine in the reward circuits of the brain is what is responsible for the euphoria and relaxation and eventual addiction caused by nicotine consumption.” Nicotine also increases the flow of adrenaline (or epinephrine) which is a stimulating hormone and increases the heart rate, blood pressure and breathing. Many other hormones and neurotransmitters are activated but just these two show that the same nicotine can have opposite effects. This is largely determined by the quantity of nicotine in the system, with low levels causing a stimulating effect and high levels acting as a sedative. In this respect nicotine is unique when compared to other drugs, with amphetamines showing the opposite profile.

Its effects as both a stimulant and a sedative don't yet explain its addictive nature. The addiction seems to be due to the effects of dopamine on the reward pathways in the brain. Bizarrely, as dopamine levels increase the brain tries to compensate by decreasing its natural production when not smoking. Because of this decrease in background level the brain also increases the number of dopamine receptors so it can react more sensitively to the lower default level. This then means that just one puff of a cigarette will increase the dopamine level to such an extent as to activate all these extra receptors. This is the buzz of that first cigarette of the day. It is also the reason that nicotine increases the sensitivity of the reward pathways in the brain. Again, this is the opposite effect of other addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Although nicotine withdrawal symptoms are mild compared to, say, heroin, those brain receptors and neural pathways take many months to return to their pre-nicotine levels.

Is Nicotine Addiction a Medical or Moral Issue?

Now, the medical profession seems happy enough to prescribe mood altering drugs to millions of people and yet somehow nicotine is an evil that needs to be fought. Perhaps because it is a natural product and freely available without prescription that it needs to be either banned or brought within the pharmaceutical industry. The development, manufacture and sale of electronic cigarettes has caught them by surprise and needs to be regulated. The “soma” pills taken in Huxley's Brave New World could very easily be nicotine tablets. But perhaps, with a cultural history of smoking cigarettes people might prefer an e-cig rather than a pill.

So perhaps the case against nicotine is not a medical one but a moral one. Being addicted to anything means not being wholly free. Being addicted means having to do things to feed the addiction. This can cause other parts of life to suffer as a consequence. The negative health effects of smoking tobacco is proof of the power of addictive behaviour in spite of the consequences. But we now know that it is not the smoking that is addictive but the nicotine in the smoke. In a bid to halt smoking related illnesses there has been a worldwide drive to make cigarettes expensive and socially unacceptable. Replacement therapies give an illusion of attacking the underlying problem whilst at the same time feeding the nicotine craving. But quit smoking aids are really not much fun! In the e-cigarette we have a product that users seem to enjoy and delivers the needed nicotine without the tobacco smoke. Perhaps governments should just ban the sale of tobacco and switch to e-cigs. The tobacco giants would love that! Watch and see who owns the e-cigarette manufacturers to see how this story will end.

For the moment, electronic cigarettes are easily available online but do check the regulations for your particular country or risk the possibility of them being confiscated by customs. The arguments for and against e-cigarettes are only just beginning.

How Many Satellites Are There Up in Space?

2009-03-05T00:11:00.001-08:00

Space is big, but it can still get crowded up there. The recent collision between two orbiting satellites, including one Iridium satellite, was just an accident waiting to happen, according to debris scientists at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The fact that there even exists such a job as a space debris scientist shows that the problems are very real. The dangers are not so much to us on Earth - falling debris largely breaks up by the intense heat on accelerating through the earth's atmosphere - but rather to other fully functioning satellites. How many satellites are there in space orbiting Earth? And more importantly, how many satellites does it take to cause a space crash?

The most up-to-date data comes from CelesTrak which is funded by the Center for Space Standards and Innovation, located in Colorado Springs. As of writing there are over 13,000 satellites in orbit and over 20,500 satellites have decayed since 1957. Looking carefully at the data it appears that there are just under 3,500 satellites that are both functioning and in their correct orbit compared to nearly 10,000 that are classed as debris but haven't yet decayed. So 75% of the satellites orbiting the Earth are junk!

Just to get a sense of what a collision would mean let us look at how fast these satellites are travelling. The Moon, which is at an average altitude of 385,000 km from Earth travels at a mean straight-line speed of 3,600 km/h. A geo-synchronous Earth orbit satellite such as GEO is at 35,800 km and travels as 11,000 km/h, whereas the International Space Station is only 380 km from Earth and whizzes around at an astonishing 27,600 km/h. At these speeds, even a small piece of debris can cause serious damage to satellite instruments and sensors and larger pieces can even shunt the satellite out of orbit.

The collision quoted above happened at an altitude of about 800 km, so the real concern is that as the debris decays and falls towards Earth it may hit either the ISS or the Hubble telescope. Telecommunications satellites are usually in geo-synchronous orbits so that they appear to an observer on Earth to be in a fixed position in the sky. As seen above, they are at high altitude and do not move relative to each other, so the likelihood of two communications satellites colliding is very low. But other satellites such as spy satellites are in lower faster orbits so they can cover the whole Earth taking snapshots as they pass overhead.

The Iridium satellite phone system has 66 (now 65) satellites in fast low-altitude orbits so that they can give good reception even in the least populated areas of the globe. Users of Iridium make telephone calls in direct communication with the satellites rather than through a local mobile phone mast. Their biggest client is the US military. Luckily, there is some in-built redundancy in the system to safeguard the network against just such an accident. So what are the world's space agencies going to do about all this space junk?

The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee was founded to monitor space junk and advise member space agencies on actions to mitigate the problems this causes to future projects. The 27th meeting of the IADC is scheduled for late March and this recent collision will no doubt be high on their agenda. But, just as it is difficult to force polluters to clean up their terrestrial accidents, it is likely to be just as difficult to get a consensus on cleaning up space.

Texas National Guard on High Alert - The Interview, The Story and the Media

2009-02-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

Texas State Senator, Dan Patrick, was on FoxNews this morning [19 Feb 2009] at 8:45am. He said he had some “breaking news to share”. Boy was it!!! The Texas State Legislature had been trying very hard to get the Obama Administration to respond to a critical situation on the Texas Border. The Administration had not gotten back with Texas as of last night. So the State of Texas told Washington D.C. basically they could go jump, and “we’ll take care of Texas!”. As of last night… the Texas National Guard has been put on High Alert!!! This is the first time in history! Texas tried, desperately to get Washington’s approval… but when they could not get it… they acted on their own. Which I say…. it’s about damn time!!! I personally applaud the guts it took to defy the Fed’s and act in our best interest! In case you are unaware of what the problems are …. Sen. Dan Patrick spelled it out nicely!

1) 100’s of PRO-DRUG CARTEL Mexicans were blocking the entrance to the United States, yesterday and today, banging cars, shouting and holding signs. 10 people were killed Wed. and 12 more yesterday at the border (5 of which were children!!!)

2) They aren’t sure … but they think the Drug Cartel is paying the demonstrators to do what they’re doing.

3) This will spill over into the States! Mr. Patrick, and the other State officials,. are convinced that road-side bombs and car bombs will make it across the border and WILL NOT allow that to happen!!

4) Mexico is breaking out in Civil War in the western part of the border and they expect it to spread the entire border with no end in sight.

5) The National Guard will be activated as the scenario worsens and is on Alert now and will remain so until (and IF) Washington does something to end the danger on the border (Yeah… like that’s gonna happen!).

This story was from Patriots of America via The Commentary. However, the thing that intrigued me was that there was no mention of this in the corporate news sector - nothing! And this was a broadcast on the 19th February. The Senator, as you will see below, obviously thought his decision was not just newsworthy but vitally important for Texas and the USA.

The people at Patriots of America had a problem though: they didn't have proof of the Fox News broadcast. Or rather, one guy had proof but it was stuck in his DVR and he couldn't get it onto YouTube. The silence from the media was deafening and as I spread this story through a few channels I noticed that many people just didn't believe that such a story could be buried - they preferred to believe that the story was somehow a hoax. Somewhat unbelievable and shows the power that the mainstream media has; this in spite of so many alternative sources.

Anyway, I suddenly get an anonymous tip-off that proof of the interview existed at a fairly new blog. Amazingly, it not only existed as proof of the story but is a Fox News streamed video! Why was it so hard to find?

I thank again my anonymous commenter and the bloggers at Mountain Steps for the video.

So, what was supposed to be an important announcement by Senator Dan Patrick seems to have gotten buried. As of a few hours ago any search engine would have found just a handful of sites that had followed this story. Just as I embed the video I notice it has gone from one star to four star. Indeed, it was important. It is surely a grave issue that the state of Texas has unilaterally gone on High Alert. Does it send a bad signal to other states? Does it show that Washington was not listening? I will leave such speculations to the political pundits. What is interesting is how one story has become two stories. How did the whole corporate media bury this and why did most people just not believe the words of an independent witness?

You can also see how the story unfolded here and here.

And finally... the YouTube version:

How to Really Find High Value Keywords

2009-02-19T02:34:00.001-08:00

There are lots and lots of articles about the importance of keywords in search engine optimization (SEO) and plenty of articles about how to find them. Unsurprisingly, they all say the same thing. If you are hoping to make some money from Adsense advertising then the starting point is to use the Google keyword tool in Adwords. That will give you a long list of keywords closely related to your input keyword, with average search traffic and cost per click (CPC). However, one thing I haven't found is any advice on how to prioritize which keywords are the best earners.

For example, is a keyword worth $10 and with an average of 20,000 searches per month really worth more than a similar keyword worth just $2 a click but with 1.2 million searches? In terms of probability theory what is most important is the expectation value of each keyword. This is what I'm going to describe in this article and what I am going to call the Potential Earnings.

Using Google Adwords Keywords Tool

Firstly, a few small points so that you download the most accurate data. Login to your Adwords account. If you don't have one yet just create one and you can use the same login details across all Google tools. I know that Adwords is for advertisers rather than publishers but you are under no obligation to pay for adverts and the Keyword Tool is free to use. It used to be available without logging in but recently I was forced to create an account, hence assume this is now standard for everyone.

Before you input the keyword(s) to analyse just have a quick look at the 'Results are tailored to the following country' information. This usually defaults to the country in your account details. If you are creating an article or website aimed at a different country then change these details. If your article is aimed at a global audience then set the appropriate language and then the country as 'All Countries and Territories'.

Now input your keyword or keywords and click 'Get Keywords ideas'. You will get more results by having each keyword on a separate line rather than one keyword phrase, and I also keep the synonyms option on as one never knows whether similar words are actually more popular.

At this point you will have a long list of keywords, their Cost Per Click (CPC) rate and search data for the previous month and the current monthly average. You may, depending on your default setup have other data columns. Now, a lot of this is not all that useful for our purposes. Soon we will download a csv file and analyse the data in a spreadsheet, so there is no point downloading data that we are going to delete in the spreadsheet - best do it now.

If your target audience has a seasonal theme to it, such as Christmas or Valentine's Day then looking at the data for that particular month, say December or February, makes more sense than the average monthly search traffic. Otherwise, for evergreen content I think the monthly average traffic is the best indicator.

So, the only columns we really need are obviously the keywords themselves, the CPC and the monthly traffic. All the other columns can be deleted. At this point, just make sure the CPC rates are in your currency of choice. You can get a feel now for the most profitable keywords. By clicking the CPC heading you will see which are most expensive keywords in your topic area. Also, by clicking on the Search Volume heading you will see which are the most popular keyword combinations. As you can see, sometimes the most volume does not correspond to the highest CPC rate. We are now just two steps away from finding out which keywords are really worth money.

Analysing Your Keywords in a Spreadsheet

At the bottom of the keyword list are three links to download the data to your computer. I personally just download a generic csv file, which is a comma delimited text file and can be viewed in any spreadsheet package. If you only use Excel then there is an Excel csv option, but if you use any other package leave this alone as Excel adds some extra information to its files that are useless and will confuse other packages.

Now open up the csv file in your spreadsheet. What we are interested in doing here is basically to multiply the CPC rate by the search traffic. The method of doing this will depend on your package, but the basic formula is fairly generic. If you followed the above advice you should only have three columns, with the keywords in column A, CPC in column B and traffic volume in C. What we need is a fourth column with the formula =B2*C2 and then copy and paste this throughout all the rows of data. You now have a fourth column that you can label Potential Earnings.

As I intimated above, the Potential Earnings combines the CTC and traffic to give a more accurate picture of what the expected earnings are for particular keywords. Often there is a balance between high CTC and low volume compared to low CTC and higher volume. This calculation means you don't have to make these judgements - it is all in the numbers!

The last step is to sort your keywords with the highest PE at the top. Again, the precise method depends on your spreadsheet package, but usually just highlight all the data, look at the sort function, pick the PE column and sort in descending order.

Now you can really see which keywords are top of the heap!

Example Potential Earnings Calculation

One brief example to show that results can sometimes be surprising. I chose a less popular keyword as things like insurance and money have fairly clear and obvious top keywords. I tried the keyword 'keyword'!

The top 5 in terms of pure CPC were:
keyword ads
keyword bids
keyword advertising
keyword ppc
google keyword finder

However, the top 5 in terms of our Potential Earnings were:
keyword
keywords
keyword search
keyword tool
google keyword

As you can see, these are totally different to our first list. The sheer volume of search queries means that our PE is much higher for this second list than the first. Indeed, 'keyword ads', the highest earning CPC is way down in 62nd place in our top PE keywords because of very low traffic. The decision as to whether to focus on a high CPC low traffic niche is up to you, but now you have a tool to help you make that decision.

I hope this quick and simple method of calculating the true Potential Earnings of each keyword will help you focus on which websites or articles are worth spending time on.

(c) Rycharde Manne

~o~

How to Gain Momentum from Social Media Websites

2009-02-16T04:58:00.000-08:00

How many times have we seen articles climb up the social bookmarking ladders and wonder... Why? How often do your best-written most-researched articles just sit there earning crumbs and then something you've knocked up in no time rockets to success? Well, the internet seems to run on momentum. This is not so very different to what I wrote on getting published – do the hard work, be prepared and push that momentum when it happens.

Hot Stories

Perhaps the easiest way to generate momentum is to pitch yourself in the slipstream of a news story that is already hot. It is very easy to quickly bookmark these stories on places like Xomba and Infopirate and earn a bit of money in the process. But to really grab other people's attentions you'll need to do some quick research and create a value-added article. This could be a comparison with competing products or a brief historical overview to put the news story into context.

When there was much talk about LIBOR interests rates I wrote a piece explaining in layman's terms precisely how LIBOR is calculated and the inherent flaws in it. The article continues to get steady views even today.

Popular Sources of Stories

Look closely at the most popular stories on a particular social bookmarking site and see which websites the stories originate from. You will quickly realize that some news sources have a loyal following of social media users. If you're lucky enough to bookmark an article first then you can go away and write your article as mentioned above in the near-certain knowledge that it will be voted up. You will then have extra kudos when you come to promote your follow-up article.

For example, Yahoo Buzz is filled with stories from Yahoo News, so don't bother trying to Buzz up the same story from another site – join the herd and you'll get noticed. And if your follow-up article is based on a piece on Yahoo then this is where to promote it.

Focus Your Efforts

There are over 1000 social media websites on the internet. You need to find the ones that seem to work best in your particular topic area. The previous section will give you a very good idea. Some news sources have also decided to focus on maybe just half a dozen bookmarking sites. Don't try and be clever to bookmark a site on a different social media site and expect it to succeed. It is worth experimenting but keep those speculative tasks to one at a time and see what works and what doesn't. As I said near the top, sites like Xomba and Infopirate are not yet considered in the top rank but the huge advantage there is that you're already earning money on your bookmark before you've even written the article!

For example, I tend to use StumbleUpon for my science and religion stories rather than Digg. StumbleUpon has a religion category and various related groups whereas Digg has no such category and similar articles are scattered across the site, often ending up in Arts & Culture. Why waste my time Digging when I can Stumble more easily!

Creating Your Own Momentum

For the lone online writer this is the hardest to achieve. It could potentially be very lucrative but it needs some careful planning. You can Buzz and Digg and bookmark your own articles on pretty much all the social bookmarking sites and then hope for the best. Luck happens! You need to try and that's fine but how would you plan such a promotion? Without a ready-made receptive and cultivated following your efforts could look like spamming. Sure, tweet your followers, message the groups you belong to and maybe post the story on some forums. Just be careful your story doesn't get buried just because your efforts at generating traffic look... manufactured. By far the best source is the readers you have following you on your blog or writing website. Encourage them to vote.

Buying Success

There are now website services that can generate the momentum you need to make a huge social splash. They are not free and it is probably the worst thing to do. As I said above, the algorithms used to calculate a news item's success are usually a well-kept secret as social bookmarking sites attempt to keep their listings as free of spam and artificial hype as possible. Getting caught once will result in your being banned from that site immediately. Not exactly what you paid for is it!

Overall, use the skills you have to your advantage. Whichever websites you write on will have a better search engine placement than your personal blog. Use that muscle rather than dreaming of the big break-through. Cultivate your readers, ride the trends with new insights and slowly build up that blog. One day the hoards will be at the gates and if your blog has more than one article worth reading then you're a star!

original at On Writing Online.

(c) Rycharde Manne

Also published at Xomba .

Twopular to Find Popular Keywords on Twitter

2009-02-15T01:34:00.000-08:00

Twopular.com (I know, it's hard to pronounce) is a keyword tool extracted from aggregated Twitter feeds. It lists the most popular keywords, with time periods from the last 2 hours, 8 hours, day, week and month.

Next to each keyword are three useful buttons. The first one just takes you to Twitter's own search function so you can see what people are actually talking about. The other two are particularly useful to those writers chasing news stories. They link directly to Google News and Yahoo News with automatic search so that you can see if all the Twittering is related to a recent news item.

"This project is thoroughly of the type let's start first and see later what it is about - so please consider enjoying what you see right now and don't miss to come back occasionally to check if we have found out what this is for. Or just follow us @twopular and we will let you know all new insights.

Arisen from the confused mind of Martin Dudek. (Twopular is not affiliated with Twitter.)"

The "About Twopular" section is a refreshingly honest admission that this is a project that just might be a good idea - rather defines Twitter itself.

(c) Rycharde Manne

~o~

This article has also been published at Xomba.