Category Archives: Internet

I am female, I am married and my husband is in the military. All of these things generally indicate that I “should” have children and that we don’t does make us kind of the odd ones out but I’m generally okay with it. It also makes me the minority when it comes to blogging. You see, 5 or so years ago when I was in the prime of my teens I hung out in a lot of communities made up of peers around my age and more folks has blogs than did not. Teen bloggers were a sizable force but as we have grown up, our numbers dwindled and today’s teens don’t show nearly the interest that we did a few years ago. I’m okay with that, too, as I still enjoy it. It’s why I’m here and doing NaBloPoMo.

In their wake, “Mommmy Bloggers” as they are called (but who first called them that, I have no idea) stormed the scene and I’m cool with that, too. Girl power and all that. I don’t want to be stereotypical but it seems like a lot of stay-at-home-moms found the internet around the same time; perhaps the recent economic conditions contributed to more people being at home again or perhaps there’s no real reason and I’m just making stuff up. I’m not making up what a sizeable force they have become, however.

Recently, PR companies and people have started to look at the blogosphere as a way to spread word and have been offering their products and services for reviews and giveaways. As a blogger, I love the idea of being recognized for my contribution and, hey, who doesn’t want free stuff, right? But these PR folks have been majorly focusing on Mommy bloggers (it makes sense if they are doing a lot of the household shopping, I’ll give you that) and, in addition to their sheer numbers, “Mommy blogger” has pretty much become synonymous with “review blogger” even though it’s totally and completely erroneous.

There are daddy bloggers and retired bloggers and travel bloggers and grandparent bloggers and working professional bloggers and all sorts of bloggers who do not fall into the category of mommy blogger and they are being completely overlooked not only by PR folks but the community at large. A while back, I was reading an article on Blog Friendly PR about blogger-PR relationships and instead of “review blogger” it used “mommy blogger” as if there are no reviewers who are not moms. I’m a female, I blog and I review but I have no kids. I recently joined BlogHer but, to my dismay, that oversight runs rampant there as well.

I’ve visited at least a hundred review blogs in the last month (that number is probably really low but I’m trying to be cautious), about 95% of which were moms and their sidebars were filled with buttons for other mommy blogs and groups and communities but nothing general. There are not very many review communities it seems and I’d hesitate to call any of them quality but even the “general” ones have an undertone of mommy.

So here I am. I’m not a mom and you know why that works? Because I can offer unique insight and reviews about products that moms may never have a need for, because my lifestyle doesn’t involve kids which may just mean more time to dedicate to more interests, including your product.

I’ve nothing against mommy bloggers. They’re here to stay and their perspective is respected for a reason but they’re not everyone or everything. I’m just tired of feeling like the rest of us don’t matter.

I’ve been spending more time aruond review blogs and the mommy review community in specific. It’s got some very unique traits that don’t transfer over to the blogosphere, for better or worse. There’s definitely more of a sense of community than the blogosphere overall. There’s more interaction and perhaps some of that is very shallow and is only dependent on giveaways and other superfluous content but even shallow interaction is more than some folks will ever see.

There’s also a lot of linkage going on in a way that reminds me of what it was like to have a blog 5 years ago. No, make that more like 10 years ago. It’s not a bad thing. For one, it boosts interaction and exposure and, for another, it helps Google PageRank which is something a lot of people are looking for when it comes to sponsoring items or paying for advertising. Linking is just another way in which the community is supportive.

And I don’t have anything bad to say about the principle of the thing; it’s just that the way people actually do it really isn’t helping. I know one of the reasons is because a lot of review blogs are Blogger hosted and there’s no good way to deal with linking blogs with buttons but… I’ve come across one too many pages which dozens and dozens of randomly sized buttons linking to others. To put it plainly: it looks like crap. If you do it, take a step back. It looks horrible and you are diminishing the value of your site. It’s the simple truth. If your content ends and the viewer has to scroll more than once because of a sidebar full of mismatched buttons, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

My suggestion? Bring back the button wall: a grid of neatly arranged, same-sized buttons all on one page. Hell, done well, it could even be added to a footer and look better than it does on most sites.

Of course, in order for this to work we have to go back to a standard sized button. It seems like 88×31 has seen its hey-day so 125×125 pixels is probably the solution; most people are already using it. Everyone else can just get on board.

Of course, Blogger doesn’t allow people to easily add pages so people have to work out it by creating posts (usually several years in the past so they don’t show up in recent archives) and then linking to it like a page. It’s not the prettiest solution but it is one solution.

And you know what else? It just might help PageRank to only have a few of your preferred links on the front page. Linking to tons of sites on every page can actually lower your PR. Moving all your links to a different page will not only make your blog look better but could potentially raise your rank. Not too shabby, eh? I didn’t think so.

Now get to it!

On a serious note, I really think this is an ideal solution to the cluttered sidebars I have seen recently and I wouldn’t mind if folks took the initiative to spread this post.

November is National Blog Posting Month (as well as National Novel Writing Month) and I tihnk I’m going to give it a try. My entries here have been sparse lately as I focus on other projects but I do have several drafts set up for when the ideas are running low. Luckily, I posted yesterday so I’m off to a good start!

I remembered 5-10 years ago when I was apart of countless forums where web design was all the rage. To me, to everyone, it seemed like the future was limitless and that we could do anything we wanted. Back then, being able to successfully call an image or make a link was cause for excitement. And I was hooked. So I took a bite of the possibilities and hopped on the blog train before they weren’t considered anything different than journals. I had affiliates, I made fanlistings and cliques and joined webrings and, for the most part, still maintain much of that. I made my own forums on Delphi. I dived in head first.

Then I took some time to weed out what it was I really wanted to do. I stepped away from cartoon dolls and trying to have my own forums. I slowly weened the list of projects to the ones I cared about the most and, of course, this site was always at the top of that list. I spent hours working on content which was all the rage. I looked up HTML help and tricks and CSS guides and Javascripts and shortcuts and includes and colour charts. I commented and linked and associated with very similar people with very similar sites. At that time, Web2.0 was far in the distance, everything was graphic intensive (and, usually, beautiful) and everyone and their dog had a site. We were all still learning and making mistakes together.

Then, something happened. Maybe people grew up. Maybe we just got to a point where we could comfortably do what we wanted without learning much more or anything more. I know I’ve been there for a while. I could make new themes, add new content and continue doing things the way I’ve been doing them without learning anything new. It feels kind of stagnant. Back then, I learned basic HTML, I learned tables, then frames, then divs then increased my understanding of CSS and it seemed like progression was obvious and logical but now I don’t know where I’d go even if I wanted to. I suppose PHP is the future and I’d gleaned some information here and there, especially using WordPress, but it doesn’t thrill me the way learning something new used to.

There’s not really anyone else whose thrilled either. I definitely think we all fed off the excitement of the group and it encouraged us to do more, go bigger. It’s harder to keep up the frenzy when you’re alone in it. But there’s this general trend of folks getting on with their lives and the internet just doesn’t play as big a part of that anymore. There’s school and work and families and stuff I have somehow managed to avoid and now I’m a remnant of something that will probably never come back and I miss it.

Of course, there’s people left who are still trudging on but now that the internet has made the transition to 2.0, I find myself alienated by the new trends. There is no inspiration for me anywhere; I do not want to do what people are doing and, even if I did, what they’re doing doesn’t feel remarkable the way everything used to feel. I guess I’m just not a big fan of function over form.

Man, I write all these posts where I am nostalgic for the past, especially when it comes to the internet. I’m not that old; how does that even work?

First off, there’s a new featured link for you to check out. I advise you do it, now. Now, on to the show.

I do a lot of things online. I have several sites, I participate at forums, I play games, I chat, I work with icons, I check Facebook/Myspace periodically, I write reviews, I roleplay and I enter giveaways just to give you a brief rundown. The funny thing is, there isn’t a whole lot of overlap in all these things. I sort of compartmentalize all my interests and only discuss the vast array of them with a few “priviliged” invidividuals.

For instance, I may IM people I know from real life, forums or chat but they’re all very different and separate groups. I may talk about my blogs on those forums and via IM but I don’t bring them up in chat. I’ve been apart of the same general chat community for a decade now and I make icons but aside from my icon site, don’t discuss my blogs. Furthermore, I rarely discuss my icons or icon site to anyone outside of that community.

I play games with Ryan and friends and participate in very specific communities for those games but not in gaming communities/forums/chat overall. I’ve always felt like I play MapleStory or Mario Kart but I’m not really a gamer. I also don’t tend to mention icons, blogs, reviews et cetera when playing games. I only make the briefest of mentions of those games to my general communities, too.

Meanwhile, I roleplay and that is completely separate from everything else.

Of course, my reviews and blogging tend to go hand in hand, especially now that I have a review site. Plus, it’s semi related to giveaway hopping as I’m hosting my own and sort of use entering as a way to spread the link to my review site (when I remember) but it’s not a readily apparent connection at first.

And, unless you click through to my blogs from status updates on Myspace of Facebook, you’d never realize how involved I am with the internet. I don’t know what it means or if it’s good or bad but it does sometimes feel like I have to flip a switch and go into “review mode” or “blogging mode” or “chatting mode” and leave the other interests at the door. Perhaps I simply have too much on my plate or is that how everyone does it?

So, if all is quiet on this front it’s likely not because I’m not doing anything. In fact, the opposite is true. I’m probably working on other projects, participating in communities and forums across the net, playing gamings and writing dozens of reviews. They’re just not relevant to the way I see this blog. Unless you want to hear crazy chat adventures and listen to my go on about giveaways, which I guess I can. In the meantime, here’s some cats.