The inaugural BookCamp Vancouver was organized by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing, Nick Bouton of Protagonize.com, Sean Cranbury of Books on the Radio, John Maxwell of SFU’s publishing program, and Morgan Cowie from BookNet Canada.

BookCamp Vancouver was an incredible experience! It took place on Friday October 16, 2009 and there was so much to absorb! I wasn’t able to make it to every event that I wanted to because there were four events going on at a time. The great thing about BookCamp is it was organized as an “unconference”; instead of having a speaker or a lecture, the person was more of a moderator or host.

Grab a cup of something warm and get comfy, this post is a long one!

Read the rest of this entry »

I am slowly coming to realize that I may need to buy a new laptop. I don’t know if this 3-year-old MacBook is worth the investment of getting it fixed. I have a feeling it would cost less to just buy a new MacBook. For a while now I’ve had battery life issues. This usually means that I can’t have it unplugged from the power source for more than 5-10 minutes or it just shuts off. I’ve dealt with it, although it has limited the mobility of my laptop, it’s been okay.

But over the weekend I forgot my laptop and left it at home not plugged in. It obviously had trouble keeping the harddrive alive because booting up yesterday I kept getting a “kernal panic” message which basically says you need to reboot for whatever reason. Booting up just now took about 20 minutes and I had to keep turning it off and on, off and on, until it booted up. Sometimes it would just sit there making the boot up noise a bunch of times, doing nothing.

So I’m looking at a 13-inch MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM (which I was considering updating on this computer anyway). It’s $1,749.00, with free shipping… but we also now have an Apple Store here in Vancouver, so I might go down and play with some of the new computers. Is 3 years too short of a lifespan for a laptop that I use every day, sometimes non-stop for several hours at a time? Have I got my money’s worth when I spent $1,600 on this machine?

 Loading ...

All over the blogs participating in the Blog Improvement Project, I’ve been hearing about Social Media people use: Twitter, StumbleUpon, Technorati, LibraryThing, GoodReads, Shelfari, Ning networks such as NaBloPoMo or BookBlogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Deli.cious, Digg, YouTube, Reddit, Flickr… really the list is endless.

But I have decided to talk about the Social Media outlet that everyone is taking for granted: your blog. Because it is so easy to set up a free blog and run it, many people are unfamiliar with simple practices and habits that make blog surfing, reading, and commenting so much more enjoyable. Your blog is an aspect of social networking and you should not take for granted the small steps you can take to make it more connected.

Buttons:

• Buttons should link to the blog/project/website it is about. When you put a button on your sidebar, or in a post such as here with the Blog Improvement Project button, if you click it, the button should link to the specific website about it. It is completely useless to have your image link to itself (so when you click, it just reloads the image in a new page).
• Not having a button link at all frustrates your visitors if they want to join in the challenge / along / carnival / blog. With most blog interfaces, all you need to do is click on the image so it is selected, and then click the link button on your blog template. Here are some great instructions to make a Button into a Link.

Links:

• Where possible, include a link. If you are talking about another blogger, or a website, or some group that has a website. Link to it.
• The second best thing to know with links is targeting. This means where the link opens to. If you don’t specify anything, the link will open on the page the user is currently on (ie. your blog site) So when you insert a link, be sure to target it to “open in a new window or tab” because this way no one is automatically/accidentally removed from your website. You want them to stay there as long as they want and opening any external links in a new window or tab is the best way to ensure this.
• Another thing to remember is to include the full URL from the http:// to the .com. This is important so that your blog doesn’t think you’re trying to link to another page within your blog.

Content:

• Be honest with yourself. Your blog is for personal use, creative expression, and public viewing. Be aware that anyone, anywhere in the world, can and may see your blog. Do not put heavily personal stuff on your blog if you don’t want the whole world to see it. An especially touchy situation is when you write about something from your real life (versus online life) and someone IRL sees it. Remember what you say is public and cannot be taken back.
• Hooking your RSS feed up to your content is pretty important. On most free blogs (Wordpress.com, Blogspot, etc.) this is done automatically. But if you would like to learn more about optomizing your RSS feed, check out this awesome tutorial.
• Having an easy way for people to find content on your blog is key. There are 3 main ways to address this, and if you look on my blog, you can find all three: 1. Have a search bar (see my top right hand corner); 2. Have your archives linked somewhere (see bottom of my left sidebar); 3. Tag or categorize your blog posts and have a tag cloud or category list (see drop down menu in left sidebar).

Design:

• Your blog layout is best clean and simple so as not to detract from the content. Build your blog on what you like, then your design and layout will have a personal slant. If you don’t know how to do design, you can either teach yourself through online tutorials (try Blogging Basics 101) or you can hire someone to do it for you (hint hint nudge nudge)
• One of the most common questions I encounter is “How do I add stuff to my sidebar(s)”. Click here for a very detailed answer with different blogging hosts covered.

Images:

• People love visuals. The way we read on the web is drastically different from how we read on paper. On the web people tend to skim and view things in a Z-shape — across the top, down the page, across the bottom.
• Here is a fantastic tutorial on how to add photos to your blog.

Consider this my “official” unveiling as a website, blog, print, and graphic designer! Check out my portfolio, feel free to grab my button, and contact me next time you need some web or print design work done!

I’ve done some minor updates around the blog as suggested by the Blog Improvement Project Week 4. Nothing too hefty, just some minor maintenance I’ve been meaning to do. After my rant about Social Media sites, I thought about being connected and getting the blog out there. I also thought about making it easier for people who do use those kinds of sites to share my blog with others. So I’ve decided to stick with the AddThis social bookmarking widget. It is fairly widely used and I appreciate that it’s design is not intrusive like the other widget I was using.

I have an issue with my sidebars: what should go “above the fold” … or to use a non-newspaper term, “above the scroll”. What fits in the sidebar before you have to scroll? Should my Knitting Widget be so high on the right side? I think my feed is important to have on the left. I have participated in so many things (Swaps & Challenges in particular) that I moved all older buttons onto the pages. But what’s different from Weeklies and Participating? And do you (as users) prefer Categories or Archives better? I don’t like Wordpress.com Tags since it doesn’t show me everything on the blog I’m viewing that has been tagged, so I was also more into categories.

I’ve also been working on my blogroll. If you have added me to your blogroll and I have forgotten to add you (not intentionally), please let me know so I can add you! I tend to forget that adding people to my Feed Reader does not equate to my Blogroll.

I’ve been working on getting the blog “out there”… and I am shocked and just how many damn social networking sites are out there! I transferred my blog from Feedburner to Feedburner-owned-by-Google, and included a little “readers” button… now I think it’s broken because sometimes it says 24, and othertimes it says 56. I hope it’s 56! I also added a plug-in for the blog called Social Bookmarking Reloaded and they have so many options for sites to “share with”. I only selected the ones I knew, but holy crap, look at this list!

Del.icio.us   | digg   | FURL   | reddit   | Technorati  | Newsvine   | Ma.gnolia   | Google Bookmarks   | Squidoo   | Netvouz   | Blogmarks   | Scuttle   | Tailrank   | OKnotizie   | Bookmark.it   | Linkagogo   | Socialdust   | SlashDot   | Diggita   | FaceBook   | Wikio |   Barrapunto   | Kipapa   | Blogmemes   | Blogsvine | Scoopeo  | ZicZac  | IndianPad  | Technotizie   | Diggitsport  | Leonaut | Tipd  | blinklist   | Feed Me Links  | Yahoo My Web  | Socializer  | Stumble Upon  | RawSugar  | BlinkBits  | Rojo  | Co.mments  | Bloglines  | Segnalo  | Netscape  | Ask  | Delirious  | Live-MSN  | Sphinn  | Seotribu  | Upnews  | Health Ranker  | NotizieFlash | Fai informazione  | BlogSphere News  | Mixx  | MySpace  | Plimsocial  | Twitter  | BlueDot  | Connotea  | Mister-Wong  | Social Bookmarking Reloaded

Some of them I know to be outdated (Netscape) and others I assume are country-specific (Fai informazione), but some I’ve never heard of before! There must be people using them… because they obviously exist… but how many social networking sites does one person (or blog) need?!

Other things I’ve done have been “claiming” my blog on Technorati, which sort of makes sense so far. I signed up for StumbleUpon (still don’t really understand that one) and I don’t really get LinkedIn or Del.icio.us either. If anyone can shed some light on those, that’d be great.

I’m on Facebook the most often… and that is definitely a personal account but I use it for work too because FB doesn’t like duplicate accounts. I am now on Twitter, although I don’t really understand why it is fun for personal accounts. I can see how it would be excellent for events and news and all that. I’ve got Twitter for two of our projects at work because they’re community/arts/literary events.

To be dead honest, I’m starting to feel drained by Social Media. I was thinking after driving home after saying goodbyes to Ruth and her husband that I hadn’t done anything social-media-related all day and I felt such a big weight lifted off my shoulders. Maybe I get too worried about being “connected” or “in the loop”… but I don’t like getting left out. I know that blogging is a form of Social Networking… but it’s a lot more personalized than a 140-character limit for messages about what you’re doing.

This week, Kim has brought up the topic about what to blog about; more specifically, brainstorming ideas and what to do when we can’t think of anything to blog about.

Well, as you may have noticed, I don’t seem to have this problem. I blog nearly daily… and I always try to make it something new, interesting, or unique. I’m trying to cut back on the pointless memes. For example Tuesday Teasers; while it’s interesting to know what other people are reading, picking a random quote from a random page just doesn’t do it for me anymore. However, I really enjoy Friday Fill-Ins, mostly for the final question which talks about weekend plans.

Kim posted some links to websites that have ideas and suggestions about what to blog about. If you’re just starting out blogging, this might be helpful, but to be honest for me, if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Kinda like Thumper’s mom’s motto (from Bambi).

I don’t think my problem is the ideas or how often I blog, I think it’s the quality/interest-level of my blog posts. So I’ve decided to become more connected in the blogisphere by 1. Doing sort of an “in the news” / bloglines kind of post every so often; and 2. developing and marketing my blog designing skills and hopefully doing some freelance work.

Formerly Crafty Creations by Monica M., I am now relaunching my knitting patterns and jewellery designs as Monnibo Designs.

The idea is that this will encompass all of my creative endeavours, so if I decide to start selling skirts or bags that I sew, they can become part of Monnibo Designs. Please take the time to check out my jewellery designs if you haven’t already — I’m really proud of some of them and they’d make great Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa gifts! *wink wink*

Accepting Nominations Now! Go put in your two cents… or my blog if you feel so inclined! Just joking! Put in some of the favourite blogs you read — there are regional categories as well as by subject matter. I put in some pet blog nominations and a literary one too.

I just updated to 2.6.2 a couple days ago, and I don’t notice anything different. So today I was looking at the WP Development Blog (read: I subscribe to the feed). They were talking about the release for 2.7 in November and they have a Survey up for users to take. They are hoping to get feedback about Navigation and usability. I thought this was a fabulous idea and when to give my input. Fingers crossed 2.7 is brilliant!

P.S. WP 2.6.2 was mostly security updates.