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A couple of weeks ago I submitted the first article in my series on personality in blogging titled The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships to a few blog carnivals. Since then the post has been included in some carnivals. I’d like to thank the bloggers for the link love and pay them back in kind, so here goes:

• Diana Bajenaru of 134u.com linked to it in the 1st edition of the Resource for Bloggers Carnival.
• Sandra of Free Cash Quest linked to it in the 11th edition of the Free Cash & Making Money Online Carnival.
• Satish Talim of Blog Me Cash linked to it in the 11th edition of the Blog Me Cash Carnival.
• Tommy Smith of Online Income Project linked to it in the November 19, 2007 edition of the Carnival of Online Income.
• Liz Fuller of More Than We Know linked to it in the edition #27 of the Carnival of Small Business Issues.
• Anthony of The Lives and Times… of Anthony McCune linked to it in the the first Surfer’s Paradise HULLABALOO! Carnival.
• Butanido of Butanido-Autoblog linked to it in the November 27, 2007 edition of the Blog to Earn Carnival.
• John W. Furst of E-biz Booster Blog linked to it in the December 03, 2007 edition of the Webmaster Articles Carnival.

Thank you all!

Samir

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Luciano Passuello over at Litemind recently put up the final list of entries in his Lists Group Writing Project. I had thrown in my hat into the ring with my entry about procrastination.

Now it’s voting time, and as I have done before on similar projects, I decided to look though all 66 entries and list those that stood out and those I would like to recommend to my readers:

• Six Savvy Reasons Why You Should Travel Light by Sheila Beal
  I happen to be a whole-hearted believer in travelling light, and Sheila builds a very clean and convincing case for it filled with many practical insights.
• List Of Why Blogs Are A Female Gender by Domtan
  In a single blow, Domtan produces a list that is at once deep, depraved, and utterly hilarious!
• Best 101 Lists by Pearl
  This is a list of 40-something lists of 101 things. One even leads to a list of 1001 lists, and I’m sure many of the others also have links as part of their 101 listing. Pearl deserves a round of applause for just giving me a happy information-overload high as I try to contemplate the geometrical exponential explosion of it all!
• 100 Resources To Improve Your Career, Relationships And Money by Lawrence Cheok
  A monster list of useful links. Good work Lawrence!
• 100 Sites I Seek Inspiration From by Iain Hamp
  Like all grab bag-deals, this list of 100 inspirational websites is bound to have its fair share of duds that just don’t do anything for some of us, but the rest is pure gold and Iain deserves a pat on the back for putting this together.
• 40 ways to make your mind your playground by Fier
  This article is the result of three hours well spent by Fier. It is a listing of fun games and intellectual challenges, all designed to enhance your mind in some way. There’s something here for everyone, everyone who likes using their mental equipment on occasion, that is.
• Ten things I didn’t know until last week by Blaiq
  Blaiq proves once again that you can never know too many pieces of interesting trivia. Educational.
• 8 Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople by Daniel Sitter
  Simple and useful are by buzzwords when judging any content praise-worthy. This post by Daniel is both.
• 21 Punching Tips On Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization by Etienne Teo
  A great collection of links on the topic of social media that together form a very comprehensive tome on the subject. Excellent stuff by Etienne, and close to my heart because my old post on taking photos and even my Litemind entry on overcoming procrastination have greatly benefited from social media traffic.
• 10 Ways to Survive the Writers’ Strike by Cynthia Boris
  Cynthia obviously loves her subject matter, and it shows. I love geeks … and I use the word in the most complementary way, of course.
• 15 Tips to Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by CSS
  A simple and straight-forward post of tips on a truly useful subject, with enough appropriate links for further reading. Perfect.
• 12 Wordpress Editors you can choose by Karthik
  I’m a big fan of comprehensive resource posts. They take a great deal of effort and research to put together, but the end result, if done well, is always worth the trouble. This roundup of editors for WordPress blogs from Karthik is a prime example.

Enjoy these wonderful entries, and I wish all the participanats the best of luck with the competition.

Samir

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Always being up to a million different things is one of the perils of being me. An unfortunate side-effect is that some things tend to be neglected for a while, like this blog. One of the reasons is that I’ve been trying to research the availability and implementation of free online survey tools for WordPress.

A friend of mine wants to setup a complex survey on her WordPress blog. The idea is to ask some questions on a topic, study the reader response, gather some statistics and arrive at some conclusions — your bog standard survey stuff, really. The challenge and boon of doing an online survey is that a more complex system can be setup to get more out of the process. Ideally, the software tools should be able to gather data, compile statistics, provide some immediate feedback to the participant, and possibly interface with a mailing list or auto-response sequence to allow further contact with the reader. With these lofty goals in mind I set off on my own survey of the available tools.

(Read more…)

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Another month another milestone here on Samir Bharadwaj dot Com. This monthly report is a bit special because it makes this blog 6-months old. With milestones comes a natural process of looking back and planning forward. In the last six months I have made many mistakes and learnt a lot of new tricks, so it is natural for me to want to make some changes.

Refactoring

I have nothing drastic in mind, but I know of a lot of things that aren’t working well on this site, and many things that could be working better. In the coming months the plan is to do a comprehensive rethinking and refactoring of this site and blog, mainly on a coding and technical level. There are browser compatibility issues to be ironed out and cleaner SEO techniques to be employed. All of these things will make this site better, faster and more effective in the long run.

(Read more…)

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The ever active Forest Parks has tagged me with a new meme of his making. This one is about displaying your mug and letting yourself be know — putting a face to the rubbish we force your poor unsuspecting readers to read, basically.

I think it’s a good idea, but I wonder how many people are a little attached to their online anonimity. On the other hand, someone like me doesn’t have any problems with it. In fact, my stunningly un-remarkable mug has always graced my about page. Not wanting to simply copy and paste the existing photo into this post, I decided to present a deep photographic insight into Samir Bharadwaj, with never before seen scenes, and up close and personal sights.

We begin with me in my element … Aah! The great out doors. Of course, like all big stars of my stature, I let my lowly body double do this sort of thing. My time is precious, after all. I also have it on good authority that he’s much sexier than I am in that light. We all need a dramatically lit serene portrait of ourselves to show our distinguished side, so there’s that. And since I wanted to really open up to my readers more than most bloggers ever do, you also get a exclusive shot of my thumb. Really, it is very important to me. What would I vever do without my opposable thumb? It’s my favourite finger.

That’s my bit, and what follows is all the general meme stuff. Feel free to add yourself to the line of crazy faces by joining in on your blog.

This is me: >>

Blogging can become unpersonalized as we rarely see the author, so the idea of this meme is to let us all have a little peak at the person behind the blog.

Instructions:
- Copy this post and amend the text above ‘This is me’.
- Replace the image with a nice smiley, silly, serious picture of yourself.
- Make sure your name and link is added to the participant list.
- Tag and link some fellow bloggers in the ‘Show us yourself’ area
- Let them know they have been tagged.

See us here:
Forest Parks from The Random Forest
Samir Bharadwaj

Show us Yourself:
I was going to name a few people but then I realised that they all either had their faces prominently plastered on their About pages, or they were fairly generous with sharing shots of themselves in their posts. So, I leave this one open to all. If you read this, consider this an open invitation and a personal tag from me to join this mass face-pulling competition. And do leave a comment with a link here if you could, I would love to see what new faces join the blogosphere.

Samir

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At long last it is here, and the waiting is over. Blog Action Day has been on the cards for a while now, and it has grown from strength to strength since it was first introduced to the world. This site has also grown from strength to strength through this event, because I chose to take on the daunting task of writing an entire series of articles on, what I felt were, the failings of the environmental movement, and more specifically, the communications that it engages in. Now I am finally at the end of my journey with this discussion, and I thought it was simply not right to critique without suggesting solutions to the issues I have brought up over the past eight articles. Considering this blog is meant to be a record of my activities in online enterprise, it was only fitting that I tackle what kind of online presence would solve some of the communication shortcomings that are facing the ecological movement.

These are general traits which could very easily be used in any medium, online or off, but the elements that would make for an effective ecological website are:

1. Originality
2. Irreverence
3. Entertainment
4. Recurrence

(Read more…)

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This report is a bit late. I’ve been quite busy pondering the details of the series of environmental articles I’ve been writing (more below), and my regular report date of the 4th slipped me by without my noticing. Better late than never, here are the highlights of the month that was on Samir Bharadwaj dot Com.

More Photography Tips

With the continuing success of my original post of photography tips, it has felt a bit strange even for me to have not written anything further on the topic. In September I got the perfect excuse. There was a blog writing project over at DailyBlogTips.com on the topic of Tips & Tricks. My article on the subject was a lighter take on a listing of tips on how to take clear and steady pictures without a tripod. I think I probably only got one vote in the competition to find the top posts among the bunch, but I am very happy with the article and I do hope it grows into one of the major attractions of this site in the long run.

Environment Series

As part of my count-down to Blog Action Day, 2007 I started writing a series of articles in September on the theme of The Environmental Movement and Why It’s Not Working. At the time of this writing there are still 4 articles to go in the series. I took on a bit of a large challenge here, trying to put out a 9-part series on the environmental movement and its communication shortcomings. I’ve always wanted to add a new category on this blog to cover my general scientific interests, and this seems like a strong way to start on that path.

(Read more…)

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