It’s a busy day, so I thought I’d hit up some six-year-old blog posts and see which links are still alive and interesting. It’s not surprising that the link decay rate is at least 50%. What is shocking is how of the broken links go to mainstream media sites. All links but the last one go to external sites:
Remember SaveKaryn.com? She parlayed her debt-ridden slackerdom into a book deal, and now she’s written a novel, too.
Due to my own busyness and ambivalence, this site’s redesign is moving at a glacial pace. However, it is happening.
In the spirit of revamping things around here, I’m considering dispensing with my links page. Despite what the page claims, it is no longer an accurate representation of what I read. I used to use Bloglines, and I shared my public feeds on that page. That’s no longer straightforward, because I use a variety of aggregating and filtering services (most notably, AideRSS) to mash and morph the feeds to which I subscribe. Plus, I switched to Google Reader a while back.
As a result, my blogroll is littered with old sites I don’t read, defunct sites and inaccurate links. I’m very bad at maintaining it because it’s a chore, and always at the mucky bottom of a long, long list of tasks.
So, should the old blogroll stay or go? I could discuss the pros and cons of killing it, but Rebecca recently did a good job of considering the issue. Looking at my site stats, it ranks #68 in popularity over the past two years. Do you ever use my links page? What do you do on your site? Should I keep the thing? Here’s a poll:
Adding a Job Board?
I receive an email mentioning a job in the Vancouver technology or marketing industries at least two or three times a month. Depending on my inclination and busyness, I occasionally post these to my site. I thought it might be useful to include a job board page on the site where all of these jobs could live.
Somebody recently pointed me at Job Thread, which displays local jobs specific to the industries I specify in a widget. Somewhat like Google AdSense, you earn money “based on a number of factors including the quantity and quality of traffic your Widget generates”. I ought to reject them for the needless capitalization of ‘widget’, but never mind that. That’s not quite the right thing, because I don’t see a seamless way for people to submit jobs that would ensure they appeared on my site. Plus, I want something more robust than just a widget.
Ideally, I’d like a system where anybody can submit a job listing, which would be held in moderation until I approved it. Then it would be posted to a page, and eventually retired to an archive after a couple of months. I imagine one could hack something together with WordPress, but does anybody know of any ready-made solutions? Plus, you know, if there’s a money-generating angle, I wouldn’t complain. I’d do it out of the goodness of my heart, but I’m not going to turn down a little passive revenue. Any advice?
We wrote each of them a hand-written letter on pink note cards and decorated them with stickers. We used one of those silver pens that were really popular with girls when I was in elementary school. When you shake the pens, they rattle like a can of spray paint. This, obviously, was to make the letters stand out, and it jibed with the whole ‘dates and relationships’ theme of the book.
Unusual pitching strategies are a topic we cover in some depth in our book. Part of the strategy is linking to these folks, so that I can get 117 seconds of their attention. I do that on SocialMediaReady.com, and I’ll replicate that list here:
What with the traveling and the buying and selling of laptops, I’ve accrued a largish set of open browser tabs I’ve been meaning to mention. I need to get that particularly set of web monkeys off my back, so here they are, in yet another list:
Via the Fast Company blog, Frog Design staffer Ashley Menger devised a new way to think about the garbage we create: for two weeks, “anything that she couldn’t compost, flush or recycle had to be carried or kept within 5 feet at all times”. Other staff members have apparently joined the project.
Sarah Lane is yet another attractive host of an American tech show that I don’t recognize. All of my American colleagues know their Morgan Webbs from their Cali Lewis’s, but I got nothing. Regardless, Sarah and her husband traveled around the world in 2006, and she kept a blog. Her FAQ is very informative.
Anne Mullens is a veteran journalist who’s taken on an interesting project this summer–she’s driving a Kabuki pedal cab and blogging about it. She’s an excellent writer, and it’s a great view into that world. She does suffer from a common ailment of professional journalists who try blogging–each post is too long for my tastes.
A bunch of movie bloggers got together and built their own list of the top 100 movies of all time. I sense a science-fiction bias in the Force. And why is The Empire Strikes Back ahead of Star Wars?
