Other posts related to social
From a Rock Star to a Nobody: Why My Social Life Peaked at Kindergarten
Lincoln Adams | April 27, 2009 @ 10:30 amLately I’ve been thinking about how simple life was back in kindergarten. Yeah I know, I’m going WAY back here, but bear with me. 
I started school for the first time shortly after I had been diagnosed with a profound hearing loss, and sentenced to wear clunky hearing aids that might as well have earned me the nickname Satellite Ears (I actually did get called that later on in junior high.)
When I started kindergarten though, nobody seemed to notice. I was just one of the kids, and for some reason, I was genuinely liked by almost everyone. Kids would meet me for the first time and instantly decided they liked me, even to the point of crying if I was apart from them for too long. I never really understood why, but it felt good to be in an environment where people really enjoyed having me around, even if we were all 5 years old.
I remember the playground too, and how this one skinny kid from another class would peel back his eyelids and then chase me around like some kind of monster. Scared the crap out of me too, until one of my newfound friends saw it happening and beat the living snot out of him. Seriously, you have not lived until you see a 5 year old whaling on another 5 year old dweeb just because he had been bothering me too much. It is truly a wondrous sight to behold. 
My tight circle of buddies continued to hold together throughout first grade, until the powers that be decided that my hearing disability wasn’t holding me back after all, and I could start the second grade at a normal school rather than the special school I was attending then with all my slimy shady friends.
So just like that, I got dropped into the second grade. Suddenly, my social circle was gone, and once again I was a stranger in a strange land. Only this time, no one befriended me. There were no easy and instant friendships to be had here. For the first time, I was alone.
I only remember having one friendship during that time, and it didn’t last long. I think we met in the third grade and got sort of close, but when fourth grade started, he decided he just didn’t like me anymore. It was a completely new experience for me, and I couldn’t understand how somebody could just decide out of the blue that they no longer wanted to be friends with me. I spent that WHOLE year trying to figure it out, confronting him, asking him, pleading with him for answers, until he teamed up with some tall, fat, ugly foured-eyed geekball and had him pound on me every time I got near my now former friend. The experience was so bad that my 4th grade teacher would give me unsatisfactory scores on my report card over my ability to get along with other kids. Stupid teacher.
And you know, I wasn’t trying to be a brat here. I just wanted to know why he didn’t like me anymore. I NEEDED to know. Why, just, why? Tell me why?! But he wasn’t saying.
Eventually 4th grade was coming to a close, and the fat, ugly ape-boy my ex-friend had latched on to decided he really enjoyed beating me up just for the heck of it too. I had to hide out in the bushes or under a slide somewhere just so I could get the frick away from this lardface. Every school day was a nightmare for me. I couldn”t even stay inside for much needed relief from all the beatdowns because it wasn’t allowed. Nooo, I had to go outside and play because it was “good exercise.” Yep, it certainly was great exercise running for my fricking life from the playground’s resident baboon every day.
Then one weekend I happened to see a movie about this high school student who kept getting whaled on by bullies, so he hired some biiiiiiiig dude to be his bodyguard. Eventually they became friends too.
That made me think about things.
I don’t remember how, but eventually I found and befriended a tall, black kid and asked him if he was willing to be my bodyguard, and if he was, I’d pay him 50 cents. He heartily agreed, cementing what would be my first ever successful business negotiation.
The next time I went on the playground, tubby four eyed freakbag once again began his pursuit after me… until he was clotheslined by my new bodyguard.
And just for good measure, Newly Hired Bodyguard began smacking him around until he knocked off his Woody Harrelson glasses and made Lardface cry. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
That finally brought me the relief I needed until 4th grade mercifully ended a few weeks later. I don’t know what happened to my bodyguard, but he must have moved after that summer, because I never saw him again. It’s a shame, because we were just starting to become good friends too.
Fortunately, the playground’s resident ape had also apparently moved, because I don’t remember seeing him at all during 5th grade. My ex-friend was still around, but at that point I had finally given up and decided to just let things be. We were stuck in the same math class that year, but one day he had dropped all his books on the floor, and I promptly helped him pick it up. When I did that I guess he saw that even after all we went through, I still had no malice towards him, and whatever antipathy he had for me then had at that moment finally melted away. We chatted on the playground that same day, but afterwards I just left him alone. He eventually found his own circle of friends to hang out with while I floated around.
I think then that’s when I officially became a loner. It started happening in the second grade, but my horrendous experience in 4th grade really cemented it for me. Somewhere along the way, I was no longer instantly liked. Instead, most people either shunned me or decided right on the spot that I was the most repugnant thing they had ever seen in the history of mankind. And while 5th grade brought a small reprieve from all that animosity, my experience in junior high saw it being raised to new heights. I wasn’t just picked on. I was spit on, beaten, chased after, all before I even had a chance to do anything that could even make the kids loathe me like that. I mean I barely had a chance to say boo before I’d get pounded on like a piece of meat. There were times when I really reacted badly to it all (mostly by taking it out on my parents), but as I look back, I realize I was just a kid who was just trying to make sense of all the hatred.
It wasn’t till I started high school in another town that things finally began to calm down. During that time I met a guy who would be my first ever (and last) best friend, a close friendship that lasted over ten years. Other than that though I was pretty much a loner. I hated social circles and gatherings because I never felt like I belonged, and more importantly, I never felt welcomed either.
As grownups now, we’ve learned to be more polite (sometimes) when it comes to company we don’t like having around. But even then, I could always tell when I wasn’t wanted. There was this sense of awkwardness too because I felt no connection with the people I socialized with, no matter what circle or club or group it happened to be. Whatever magic I once had in kindergarten, it was gone forever now. To this day, I have still not found any place where I can feel like I truly belong. Perhaps that’s my destiny now, and if it is, I’m willing to accept that. The world sucks anyway.
But every now and then, I’ll remember that time in kindergarten, and what it was like to be the guy that everyone truly loved and enjoyed being with. And when I do, I can feel the loss. The loss of being connected. Of being a part of something special.
Tags: best friend, bodyguard, bullies, friends, friendships, hatred, hearing aids, kids, kindergarten, loner, memories, playground, school, social
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
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Social Networking May Cause Dementia, Diseases, and an Irrational Fear of Kittens
Lincoln Adams | March 3, 2009 @ 10:15 amI recently caught this article on the BBC:
People’s health could be harmed by social networking sites because they reduce levels of face-to-face contact, an expert claims.
A lack of “real” social networking, involving personal interaction, may have biological effects, he suggests.
He also says that evidence suggests that a lack of face-to-face networking could alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance.
This, he claims, could increase the risk of health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia.
“One of the most pronounced changes in the daily habits of British citizens is a reduction in the number of minutes per day that they interact with another human being,” he said.
“In less than two decades, the number of people saying there is no-one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled.”
Could be sensationalism sparked by psychologists looking for a little time in the spotlight, but in a way I agree with some of the opinions beng expressed here.
As much as I enjoy using the Internet, I find it to be a highly unsatisfying substitute for real life relationships, and if I had a choice, I would much rather meet people in person and forge relationships that way. Yet the reason I hang out on here all the time (instead of “out there”) is because I basically have no choice.
If you’ve read the comments after the BBC article, notice how many people with disabilities defended their use of social networking, and for good reason. The Internet takes away the bias and the barriers those of us with disabilities have to confront and deal with in real life. In my case it’s being hard of hearing, the kind that puts me right in the gray area between those who hear normally and those who are completely deaf. The deaf have their own culture and community, one that I can never fit into because I can still hear with the help of aids, and yet I can’t hear well enough to fit in within a society that hears normally either. I’m caught somewhere in the middle, without a true community of my own. As if that weren’t enough by itself, I’ve also lived the kind of unorthodox life that absolutely nobody could possibly relate to. It’s one of the major reasons why I remain single too.
So, I go to the Internet. Because on here, I don’t have to worry about embarrassing myself because I missed bits and pieces of a conversation. I don’t have to worry about people forming misconceptions about me because of my disability or my background, or assuming because I can’t hear it must also mean I’m brain damaged as well. On the Internet, none of those things matter.
But I also see where it falls depressingly short too. Those who use the Internet to supplement their already active social lives have no time for me. I’m unable to bond with them and others in any meaningful way. I can be reached via email, instant messaging, social networks and even through my blog here, and yet most of the time I find myself twiddling my thumbs, waiting for somebody, ANYBODY, to talk to me. The hours are long and lonely in between.
And as much as I try to project the full spectrum of my personality into my writings, the Internet can only present certain bits of pieces of who I am, but never the whole. People who know me through the Internet don’t really know me as I truly am. Here’s a hint too: if you find me to be a truly likable person, then you really haven’t gotten to know me at all. 
Truth be told, I find the only people I can truly relate to to via this medium are those who are forced to use it as a subsitute for real life relationships themselves. Whether it’s because of a disability, or from living in a remote area, or from leading a solitary life that stunted their ability to network and bond with others, being online has become our only recourse to connect with other human beings. And yet it amazes me how few there are of us, as opposed to those extroverted types who project their already successful social lives onto the Internet (and then feel the compelling need to rub it in our faces too.) Dweebs.
And now, after having been online for so many years, I’m beginning to accept the sad conclusion that I will never find anyone I can truly bond with, a best friend who would always have time for me and vice versa, or a wonderful girl who would understand me through and through and where I’ve been. People who totally get me. I’m of the introverted sort who only needs one best friend and one special girl to be truly content, or perhaps those two rolled into one. I don’t need to have eons of acquaintances or casual friends to feel connected and feel like I belong. But the fact that I can’t even find ONE saddens me to no end. And I wouldn’t be surprised if all this really did adversely affect my health too just as the article claims. Oh well.
Oh and if you’re wondering about what might cause the irrational fear of kittens, look no further than LOLcats. I swear that mindless, idiotic internet fad is going to bring about the demise of civilization, mark my words. I can never look at a kitten the same way again.
Tags: community, deaf, disabilities, disability, friend, friends, health, health problems, hearing, internet, life, lonely, network, online, people, personality, psychologists, relationship, single, social, social networking, social networking sites, social networks
Categories: Romance and Relationships
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Exploring My Psyche
Lincoln Adams | June 11, 2008 @ 1:51 amI’ve been checking out OKCupid lately, and I have to admit there’s something to be said for their personality quizzes, which are fun to take. I don’t care for some of the raunchiness (the Slut Test?), but the results I got from taking their dating persona test intrigued me, considering the fact that it pegged me better than eHarmony’s craptastic crapola questionaire ever did. I was classified as a Slow Dancer, which is described as follows:
The Slow Dancer
Deliberate Gentle Love Dreamer (DGLD)Steady, reliable, and cradling her tenderly. Take a deep breath, and let it out real easy…you are The Slow Dancer
Your focus is love, not sex, and for your age, you have average experience. But you’re a great, thoughtful guy, and your love life improves every year. There’s also a powerful elimination process working in your favor: most Playboy types get stuck raising unwanted kids before you even begin settling down. The women left over will be hot and yours. Your ideal woman is someone intimate, intelligent, and very supportive.
While you’re not exactly the life of the party, you do thrive in small groups of smart people. Your circle of friends is extra tight and it’s HIGHLY likely they’re just like you. You appreciate symmetry in relationships.
Now who can argue with that?
My worst match is known as The Battleaxe, who I am to avoid at all costs. LOL, you’ll get no argument from me there…
I can tell they’re trying to soften the blow though, like saying I have “average experience” with love (translation: you’re a weenie virgin nobody wants to touch, haha!) or where it says the women left over after the playboys are done looting the dating pool will be hot and mine. Hot? After what, 10 beers? Leftovers aren’t hot dude, they get reheated. 
Anyway, I also took their IQ test, which is a combination of quizzes that attempt to gauge your math, verbal, spatial and social intelligence.
Surprise, surprise, I completely bombed the social score, which indicates that I have difficulty forming and maintaining lasting interpersonal relationships. Dude, it’s not my fault if the whole world sucks is it? Really, why would I want to develop any kind of relationship with the human race when just about everyone around me is either an idiot or bugnuts insane, or both?
*Ahem* Anyway, so my social score tanked, my verbal scores were about average, but what really surprised me was my spatial score, which was through the roof. Anything above 145 was considered genius level, and I scored a 150. 
From the results page:
High spatial scorers understand physical space, recognize color, and interpret visual images quickly and accurately. It should go without saying that these people are the most artistic of our four measurement groups. They’re also the most confident and self-sufficient. Also, according to the picture-rating data we’ve accumulated on OkCupid, high spatial scorers tend to be significantly more attractive than average.
Now who can argue with that?
Everyday I look in a mirror I am just overwhelmed by how damned good looking I am. Such a thrill my body! 
Seriously though, what they supposedly found was not so much that those who were high scores on the Spatial were better looking, but that they were much better dressed. That actually makes sense in a way. One thing I’ve been complimented on in the past was my taste for clothes, which is another reason why I hate warm temperatures so much. Blistering hot weather keeps me from expressing my fabric art to the fullest, leather jacket and all. 
Additionally, high spatial scorers have the highest life satisfaction when they’ve found an appropriate outlet for their creativity, but were also the lowest scorers ever when they’re deprived of such an outlet.
I have to admit that’s been the case for me as well. While writing is one of my outlets, there’s so much more I want to do to express myself, including in a musical and artful sense. I just don’t have the equipment, time or privacy to express them successfully. I may someday soon, just not today, and it’s a large reason why I get so depressed sometimes.
So that’s me in a nutshell, according to OKCupid: A Spacey Slow Dancer. Interested? 
Tags: art, artistic, dating, iq, outlet, persona, personality, psyche, quiz, romantic, social, test
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
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I need MORE Power, Scotty!
Lincoln Adams | September 21, 2007 @ 3:12 pmHearing aid fittings seems to be more of an art than a science, evidently.
I noticed a clarity right away to the sounds I was hearing after being fitted with my new aids, but it’s possible these aids might be a bit underpowered for my degree of loss, so the audiologist wants to fit me with a more powerful version of the same aids next Friday.
My previous aids were very powerful, but failed to distinguish the most important sounds I really needed to hear, and while I was able to hear a broader range of sounds, I usually couldn’t make any sense of it. It was frustrating, especially in noisy situations, so I had basically given up on the idea that I could ever be able to intelligently talk to people outside the home and workplace.
With the new aids, despite being a bit underpowered (maybe), I was able to have conversations I hadn’t been able to have for years, and I was understanding speech far better than I ever used to, perhaps a little TOO well. Like with this coworker of mine, she just loves to talk, talk, talk, talktalktalktalk, and then when she’s not talking I’m betting she’s thinking about talking too. After hearing one of her usual 45 minute monologues, I was starting to think, maybe ignorance was bliss after all. 
Digital hearing aids by the way are designed to continuously analyze and filter out background noises, while attempting to leave in the vocal sounds that we need to hear. I could tell my aids were doing the same thing, and the results could get weird at times. Sometimes a sound will be really loud, and then suddenly it will get soft or disappear altogether, the result of the processor deciding the sound was irrelevant and actively squelching it. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but the worst offense is when it comes to listening to music. It thinks just about everything I listen to is noise, and actively tries to suppress it all. The more I cranked up the volume, the more the aids cranked it down. Excuse me, but Steve Perry is NOT noise. 
Fortunately, there are musical programs or similar settings you can upload to the hearing aid’s memory banks to compensate for this, so when I try out the next set of hearing aids next week, I’ll see if I can have those implemented as well. I almost got into it with my audiologist last time though. He’s a good guy, but he is way too used to dealing with people 50 years older than me and adjusting hearing aids according to their typical needs. I was ready to tell the guy, “Look, I have a life, or at least I’m trying to. I need adjustments that will allow me to hear everything, including music and crickets and doorbells and the sweet, dewy sounds of beautiful women whispering sweet nothings into my ear. I don’t need you setting these things thinking the only important sound I’m ever gonna need to know is the voice of my doctor telling me when I’m gonna die, a’ight??”
Sheesh.
Tags: adjustments, aids, audiologist, audiology, bliss, clarity, conversations, digital, fitting, hearing, hearing aid, hearing aids, monologues, music, science, social, sounds, steve perry, talking, tongue, voices
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
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The Six Thousand Dollar Man
Lincoln Adams | September 19, 2007 @ 8:00 amToday I get fitted with my new $6000 hearing aids, the Destiny 1600 by Starkey. I’m not expecting miracles, or the ability to hear conversations from 100 yards away, but it would be nice to have a normal conversation in noisy settings for once without finding myself trapped in a puffy shirt situation.
I grew up hoping with each new generation of hearing aids that passed, that the technology would finally advance enough to give me the level of hearing I so desperately needed and wanted. I wanted to be able to hear someone whispering in my ear at the movie theater, or the sound of crickets chirping in the early hours of the morning, or the sound of my car jingling its merry little tune whenever the keys were left in the ignition. I wanted to be able to carry on a decent conversation in places like the subway, or at ballparks, or anywhere I happened to be.
But most of all, I no longer wanted to be afraid. Afraid that if someone asked me for help, I wouldn’t be able to tell them because I’d have no idea what they were saying. Afraid to approach beautiful women I saw in everyday life, not so much because I was shy and ugly, but also because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear a single thing they said to me.
But after 27 years of wearing all different kinds of hearing aids from all different kinds of manufacturers, I still have yet to realize those dreams.
Will today be the day? After so many years of disappointments and heartaches, has the moment finally arrived where I can at long get my life back?
We shall see.
Tags: aids, audiology, ballparks, beautiful women, conversations, crickets, destiny, everyday life, hearing, hearing aids, hearing loss, life, movie theater, new generation, puffy shirt, social, social life, starkey, subway, technology
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
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Inspired by Mashable’s latest streak of publishing insane link lists for their readers (covering images, audio, video, analytics and podcasting), I decided to publish my own personal toolbox for bloggers in general. Enjoy!
Analytics This
- Add This! – Make it easy for your visitors to bookmark your blog and subscribe to your feeds. Saves you the real estate of using tons of bookmarking icons, and also provides tracking stats.
- BlogStorm – A free service allowing you to track the number of websites linking to your blog posts.
- Clicky Web Analytics – One of the best stats services I’ve seen out there next to Google Analytics. They have a premium version you can try out free for 3 weeks, and it only costs less than $2 a month to use (if you sign up annually). Worth every penny, and offers even more features than Google does. Check here and scroll down for a comparison between Clicky and other analytic services.
- Google Analytics – Arguably the most comprehensive analytics service out there, now with a much improved interface and look.
- HitTail – Reveals in real time which keywords people use to find your website, while offering optimal keyword suggestions you can use for marketing and SEO purposes. They have a basic free service.
- Sitemeter – One of the oldest and most popular tracking service of choice for bloggers.
- Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem – Get a rough idea of where your blog ranks in the blogosphere. Determined largely by link popularity and Sitemeter stats.
Buzz Buzz Buzz
- Google Trends – You can view the latest Google search trends here. VERY useful for getting a sense of what the most popular keywords searches currently are, so you can possibly utilize them for your next blog post.
- Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ BlogPulse – Find out what the blogosphere is currently abuzz about. Also contains helpful tools to track stories and conversations between bloggers.
- Sphere – Excellent service that can help you find blog posts and media articles related to your content. They provide a widget you can install on your blog as well. Very helpful if you want to find other bloggers who are posting content similar to yours.
- Spotplex – Provides real-time ranking of blog articles based on actual impression count. Similar to Digg, but without the voting.
Everyone’s Got An Opinion
- Co.mments – I use this over coComment as it runs faster and it’s easier to use. Comment organization is rather simplistic though and can be hard to read through sometimes.
- coComment – This is more community oriented than Co.mments but it can get VERY buggy (and at the time of this writing there has been a lot of issues and complaints regarding its integration with Technorati.) Still, when it works it does prove useful.
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money!
- AdBrite – A versatile ad marketplace that offers you a variety of ways to publish ads and advertise your own site.
- AuctionAds – Display live eBay auctions on your blog for profit.
- CafePress – Merchandising, merchandising! Where da REAL money from da blogging is made!
- ChipIn – A cool widget that provides an easy way to do fund raising.
- Chitika – A contextual advertising company that offers the popular eMiniMalls ads you can place on your blog for profit. Best for blogs that are more product oriented.
- Google Adsense – Google’s ad publishing network, one of the foremost and most widely used networks by bloggers.
- Kontera – A service where you can change some of your text into link ads for profit.
- Openads – A huge ad-space community that offers powerful software to help you rotate and control ad space on your site. The ability to rotate ads will also make it far easier for you to use multiple ad services to help monetize your blog.
- PayPerPost – Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion. As with most monetizing efforts, your blog should get a considerable amount of traffic in order to truly benefit from the service.
- Text Link Ads – One of the most popular context advertising services on the Internet, where you retain full editorial control over the advertisers that appear on your blog.
Multimedia Frenzy
- Radio.Blog.Club – One of the first stand-alone players that lets you stream sound on your blog.
- BlogTalkRadio – Host your own live talk show for free. A great alternative to podcasting, and allows call-ins to your show as well.
- BlogTV – Broadcast live and recorded video shows for your blog.
- finetune – A visually appealing widget that allows you to build your own custom playlist and embed it on your blog. Not as versatile as Radio.Blog.Club though.
- Flixn – Fast and easy way to upload a webcam video to the web and your blog. Very easy to use and perfect for those times you want to make a quick webcam vid on the fly.
- Gabbly – Chat service including code you can use to embed a chatroom on your own blog.
- Hipcast – A service that can take a lot of the guesswork out of podcasting for you. Offers audio and video blogging capabilities.
- Meebo – Meebo now offers you the ability to embed any chatroom you want on your own blog.
- myBlogTunes – Create your own radio station and embed it on your site.
- Odeo – Podcasting portal that recently assimilated Audioblogger into its service.
- Project Readon – If you’re a hearing impaired blogger, this site offers closed captioning for many popular Internet videos.
- Quizilla! – Got blogger’s block? Here’s a site with tons of quizzes you can take, the results of which you can post on your blog. There’s also a directory of lyrics, poems, stories, games and more.
- YouTube – Again, if you don’t know what this is by now, there is no hope for you.
Newsworthy
- Bloglines – One of the oldest and most popular free online readers for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content.
- FeedBlitz – Gives you the ability to offer email subscriptions to your readers, though it’s not without its problems. There’s a newsletter edition as well.
- FeedBurner – It’s FeedBurner. Nuff said.
- Feedster – A new service that gives you the ability to jazz up your favorite feeds and include them as widgets on your blog.
- Google Reader – Despite still being an experimental service, it’s already become one of the most popular feed readers out there. Neat and simple, though some features remain severely limited.
- Popurls – Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, NewsVine and more, get it all in one neatly organized page here.
- Topix – This might prove useful if you want to blog about local news rather than national or international (which is what every other blogger does.)
Picture Worth 1000 Blogs
- 123Flickr.com – Takes the guess work out of creating Flickr galleries for novices. The galleries are basic looking, but they can spare you a lot of coding grief.
- Flickr – You really, REALLY should know this one by now.
- PhotoBucket – Along with ImageShack, both sites provide one key service that will serve you well: the ability to offload your images elsewhere, thus relieving the stress on your own server during peak traffic times.
- SlideFlickr.com – Instantly turn your Flickr photos into a slideshow, which you can then embed on your site.
Promotion Commotion
- Blog Carnival – A directory of carnivals you can join to help promote your best blog posts.
- Digg – Want to try bringing in a horde of obnoxious, drunken, one time visitors to your site? Then Digg is the perfect place to go!

- Meshly – Not as popular as the major user driven news site like Digg, but it offers an interesting way to submit news articles (via instant messaging).
- Netscape.com – one of the largest user driven news sites, but it’s a bit slow and hard to navigate. However, it contains far more topics you can choose from to submit posts to, so your content is more likely to hit the popular front pages here than at places like Digg.
- Reddit – Another user driven news site, but one which can be more effective in bringing traffic to your blog. The quality of visitors also seem to be far better than the Digg community as well.
- StumbleUpon – Randomly surf the Internet with a toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. Also proven to be a great for bringing traffic to your site. (For more info on stumble promotion, read this article.)
- Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone – READ THIS THREAD from Webmaster World. It provides the best advice I have ever seen for optimizing your blog for search engine traffic, and truly reads like a “condensed SEO Bible.” Even though it was written in 2002, it’s just as true now as it was back then.
- Technorati – Where’s the Fire? – You probably already know
about Technorati, but you may not know about their new WTF feature. It’s not as active as the more popular aggregators out there, but that fact means it also makes it easier to get your content voted into the front pages for more exposure. - Truemors – This might be a good site to submit postings of a gossipy/rumor related nature.
- Twitterfeed – A free service where you can feed your latest blog posts directly to your Twitter account.
Reach Out And Blog Someone
- Blogathon – A blogging community that does an annual marathon (where bloggers post every 30 minutes in a period of 24 hours for the charity of their choice). Creates good exposure for your blog, as well as offering a chance to give something back to the community.
- BlogCatalog – A directory and community for bloggers. Contains a discussion forum and a well designed directory to help you find like minded bloggers and readers. In my view it’s far superior to MyBlogLog, which lately has become more stagnant and prone to spam.
- BloggerTalk – An up and coming blogging portal which includes a forum. Looks promising and may become the go-to spot for bloggers once they get enough members.
- Blog Mad – Traffic exchange network, where you earn credits while surfing other blogs. Great way to find new bloggers and expand your community, but the interface is HORRIBLE.
- BumpZee! – Similar to BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog but tedious to navigate, plus the community seems to be more narrowly focused on niche marketing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

- del.icio.us – You ought to know this one by now. Excellent and popular social bookmarking service, not blog oriented but it can be used that way. It’s a bit on the geeky side though, along with an interface about as attractive as Britney Spears without hair. If it doesn’t suit you, Ma.gnolia is a viable alternative that sports a much better looking interface.
- Feedslice – Currently in private beta, but keep checking back for its official launch.. It’s designed to be a niche social network themed around syndication feeds. Sounds very promising!
- LouderVoice – Review network that allows you to publish reviews both to their network and your blog. You can also use Twitter as well.
- MyBlogLog – Blog community that emphasizes connecting with readers of some of your favorite blogs. It’s more stats oriented than BlogCatalog, but it’s become stagnant lately and more prone to spam abuse.
- TheGoodBlogs – Clunky but interesting blog network. They still need to work out some of the kinks though.
- Twitter – A microblogging service where you can tell the entire world (who could care less) what you’re doing in 140 characters or less. Can also send tweets via IM and SMS as well (that is, when it works.)
- Webmaster World – Though some forums require premium membership and the site is tailored for web designers, there are still many free forums you can participate in to get help for maintaining and designing your blog.
Tools For Fools Bloggers
- .HTACCESS Banning Generator – Provides an easy way to modify your htaccess file for banning purposes.
- Browsershots – Want to make sure your blog still looks spiffy for Bulgarian readers using the Konqueror browser on their Linux box? Then this is the site for you.
- Copyscape – A Google like search engine that can help you find sites that might be plagiarizing your content.
- CSS Compressor – An online tool you can use to compress your stylesheets. Compressed CSS files can sometimes boost the response time and speed of your blog.
- Google Adsense Sandbox – Helpful tool to get an idea of what kind of ads might display on your blog from Google’s Adsense network.
- List of User-Agents – If you’re the sort of blogger who loves to check his logs regularly, here’s a directory of user agents you can look up to determine who owns or runs some of the spiders and bots that are crawling all over your blog.
- Market Leap Search Engine Marketing Tools – Several free tools you can find here, from checking link popularity to keyword discovery.
- SEO Toolset from Webconfs – A lot of cool tools you can use here, from checking backlinks to Kontera ad previews to making sure your URL redirects work.
- ServerMojo – Free monitoring service that can check your blog every 15 minutes to ensure it’s up and running. Includes various settings and notification options you can choose from.
- Test Everything – More online tools than you will ever need to test your blog.
- ZapTXT – Use this service to receive notification and alerts when sites are updated. The site relies on feeds to determine whether a site has been updated or not.
But I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Not to worry, here’s a list of sites I subscribe to via feeds, providing some of the best resources, tips and advice for blogging.
- Andy Beard – Offers lively blogging posts that focus on niche and affiliate marketing, social media and blog search engine performance.
- Blog Herald – A stylish group blog offering commentary and valuable articles from some of the Internet’s most prominent bloggers.
- Blogging Tips – Just recently added this to my feed, but so far he writes good stuff (though the Superman logo hurts my eyes.)
- Blogging Pro – News, plugins and themes for blogging applications, though most of it is geared towards Wordpress.
- Copyblogger – Emphasizes copywriting skills to help promote and build a successful blog. Note, that’s copyWRITE, not copyRIGHT.

- Daily Blog Tips – Shockingly, this site provides blog tips on a daily basis.

- DoshDosh – An always informative blog with articles focused on helping you promote and monetize your blog. Really wish he would drop the anime images though and replace them with Jessica Alba photos instead.
- eMoms at Home – Don’t let the name fool you. There’s some valuable content to be found here for blogging whether you’re a Mommy or not. Personally I’ve always considered myself to be my beloved car’s Mommy, so I fit in just fine.

- North x East – An offshoot of FreelanceSwitch offering weekly but informative articles for bloggers.
- Problogger – Darren Rowse is a machine. Nonstop advice for professionally minded bloggers.
Lorelle on Wordpress – She’s been around since before blogs became blogs, and provides some of the most insightful advice for successful blogging I’ve found to date. She also recently published a short book to aid beginners in successfully launching their blogs.
Addendum
For some reason I seem to have a hard time finding popular message boards and forums specifically dedicated to blogging. If you know of any that might be worth checking out, let me know! 
Updates
As it turns out, Mashable also published a Blogging Toolbox a few weeks before I published this one, and I completely missed it (though this was before I started subscribing to their feed. And here I thought I was being so original too, *sniff*. The good news though is that there’s not much crossover between the two lists, so I’m glad to see I still managed to list a ton of goodies that went unnoticed by the Mashers. 
Still, you should find their “toolbox” highly useful as well, so go check it out.
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Only Me
Lincoln Adams | April 25, 2007 @ 6:19 pmOnly me, in spite of the millions of people on this planet, in spite of the untold number of single girls out there both on the Internet and in real life, would see a social/dating site match me with a potential soulmate… who turns out to be my stepsister.
Only me. 
Tags: bad luck, dating, internet, love, matchmaking, millions, people, real life, romance, social, soulmate, spite, stepsister
Categories: Romance and Relationships
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