Category — The Blogosphere

Due to the sudden demise of Blogcharm, and the fact that blogcharm users appear to have lost their blogs, I will be deleting all blogcharm blogs from the directory - but not just yet.

I will wait a couple of weeks to give any users who have listings in the directory time to move to a new blog (if they are able to recover their posts from blogcharm) and to login to lsblogs to update their blog listing to the new address they choose.

Any that have not been updated after two weeks from now will be de-listed.

I know this post is technically a little early, as it is not 2008 yet, but back in 2006 a firm of analysts predicted that blogging would reach its peak in 2007.

Gartner predicted that during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million. Link to news article

Well its nearly the end of the year in question, and technorati is currently indexing over 112 million blogs, and new blogs are still being created - the queue here for submissions is still large, new submissions are still pouring in, so I dont see any sign of it levelling off..

If anything, blogging seems more popular than ever, as I am seeing a lot of talk about blogs in forums, there was even a tv show on UK tv the other night about sexual confession blogs written by annonymous women (Sex in the Naughties).

Has blogging reached its peak? Personally I dont think so, not yet..

After a recent communication from google where they indicated a problem on my adsense account, it appears there *may*, and I repeat MAY in my opinion (and that of others on the net by the looks of it) be a problem with using blog traffic exchange sites (not lsblogs, but blog traffic exchange sites) if you use adsense.

I have asked google for clarification on this matter, but they refuse to state any details other than

“It is against our programme policies for website publishers to click on
the ads on their own web pages or to encourage others to do so. Note that
some programmes including, but not limited to, auto-surf, pay-to-surf,
pay-to-read or pay-to-click services may provide incentives for generating traffic resulting in invalid clicks or impressions”

Now as I dont click my own ads, or offer incentives, nor pay people to click then the only thing left is traffic exchanges targetted to blogs, it appears this may be where the problem lies.
I asked them specifically if it was, but they wont tell me if it is, I guess they think people are capable of reading there minds.

I am writing to let you know that you should review your adsense policies, if you are using adsense on your blog and also a member of blog traffic sites. As far as I know I was not aware there was any problem, and cannot yet get google to comment on this matter.

Hopefully in time, we will find out the true situation, but if anyone else gets problems like this, I would appreciate it if you post in the forum so we can see the extent of the issue.

I cant see why google should have a problem, as any traffic on a blog exchange is targetted, but time will tell. In the meantime, I have disabled my blogs on the exchange I normally use to avoid further problems with google.

If anyone out there finds out more information, please let us know!

I frequently carry out manual quality checks on LS Blogs, to try my best to keep the listings as� clear as possible, removing bad listings, and dead blogs.

Occassionally (only happened twice so far) I find something more sinister, a blog that tries to infect its readers with a virus. Obviously when this happens, the blog (and ALL blogs from the same user) are deleted, as the last thing I want is to have infected blogs in the listings.

In the past, you could only get a virus if you actually ran a program that contained a virus, or were infected by another program that had access to your computer.

These days though, thanks to the wonderful world of windows, and those new fangled ways of programming, you can now get viruses in pretty much anyway you can think of.

You may not be able to get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat, but I wonder how long it takes before you can get a virus on a windows box from sitting on a toilet seat. Anyone who is used to the old school of thought that you cant get a virus just by viewing pictures or files had better start redefining their views, as its a different world out there now.
Even something as innocent as opening a windows media movie/audio file can now infect you, and this is what I found on someones blog today.

It is VITAL that you have upto date anti-virus protection on your computer, and you should never, ever download and run (or even PLAY) anything from a website without running a check on it first.

Remember, many web pages have embedded content, that plays automatically, and you could get a virus just from visiting that website now.

Keep upto date with virus news, install protection, and be viligent.

Also, if you have a blog yourself, its doubly important to make sure you have a clean virus free machine, you dont want to infect any files on your blog, which could in turn affect your readers.

If anyone ever finds a virus on a blog, be sure to inform the site owner, if the site is listed in LS Blogs, let me know, so I can delete it from the listings.

Thankfully, most blog owners are sensible, and it is, as I said earlier, VERY rare to find a problem like this, but you should be aware a problem does exist.

Many of you may be aware that you can personalise (I spell it with a S as I am English, in case any americans were wondering) your google homepage.

I have added a module that you can add to your google homepage, should you wish to do so, that displays a random blog from the LS Blogs blog directory each time the page is shown.

You can personalise your homepage by visiting google.com/ig and select from the standard modules which ones you want, or you can add one of the many custom modules.

To add the Random Blog module, you need to click the “Add Content” content link at the top, then on the left you will see

Create a Section

You need to enter

http://lsblogs.com/gmodule_random_blog.xml

and hit the go button.

It is my first module, and if it proves popular, I may expand its features, and add more modules in the future.
 
Hope you like it, if you do, feel free to blog about it so others know, after all if your blog is listed in the directory, your blog could be the one that pops up randomly on someone elses google home page. Note, blogs in the adult category are not shown by the random blog module, only the blogs in the non-adult categories.
Obviously some blogs may contain some material that is not work or child safe, so as always, its at your discretion whether to allow use of the tool