Doug Benson's blog

SES Toronto 2008
Metro Toronto Convention Center, South Building
Toronto, Canada
June 17-18, 2008
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/toronto/

SES Chicago 2007
Chicago Hilton
Chicago, IL
December 3-7, 2007
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/index.html

SES Paris 2007
Paris, France
November 27-28,2007
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/paris/

SES A4U
ExCel London, Docklands, London UK
October 25-26, 2007
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/a4u/oct07/

The Daniel Kovach Scholarship Foundation is giving away $10,000 to a blogger this year.

Full scholarship details are available here:
http://www.collegescholarships.org/our-scholarships/blogging.htm

This 2nd Annual Blogging Scholarship offers a large prize of $10,000, which will be awarded at the Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas, Nov. 8-9.

I stumbled onto a site called Website Grader which is a site that grades your blog or website using SEO guidelines. It gives you pointers on things you can do to improve the search engine rankings of your site. I was surprised to see what it said about some of my sites.

It all ends up with you entering in an email address and you get a pitch for professional SEO services. But the tool is cool enough, to make me overlook their pitch. Check out Website Grader, you may get some useful information regarding your site.

KeywordSpy is a keyword search engine tool that generates keywords for ad campaigns in the most popular search engine sites in the Internet. KeywordSpy generates information by using keywords in identifying key competitors that may be advertising in the same search engine.

Some of the advanced features of KeywordSpy are instant access to over a billion keywords, as it has the most comprehensive keyword database today which is updated on a daily basis. KeywordSpy has 100 percent search results accuracy on keywords and instant downloading capabilities plus enhanced user interface for ease of use. With keywordSpy one can create effective ad campaigns to increase business exposure and revenue by 100x over with just a few clicks in our site.

Here are some tools provided by the W3C in the domain of Quality Assurance: validators and other test tools. Almost all of these tools are web-based, are available both as downloadable source, and as free services on the w3.org site.  read more »

Having great content is not enough. With the explosion of blogs, you are just a small fish in a huge pond...why should anyone read your blog. Most of my favorite blogs I read because I like the writer's tone and what they have to say.

So, how should I write my blog posts? I will try and tackle that question today. Below are 20 tips for better blog posts.  read more »

Ok so you've got your site up, you're about 1% of the way there. Most people have no clue how much time and effort it takes to keep your blog alive and kicking. Sure you have to post information, which can get extremely challenging after only a few short months.

There are things you need to do on a daily basis:  read more »

I've recently decided to try Auction Ads. Since my Adsense and YPN numbers have been horrible lately. I gotta try something. I've heard people say they made some pretty decent income from Auction Ads. I'll let you know. I plan on testing for 3 months on several sites. The great thing is you can run these ads alongside your Adsense or YPN ads because they are not contextual.  read more »

How come most of the people on the web are guys? How come you never meet any women programmers or developers? I'm sure they're out there, but it seems like the web is dominated by...the man.

Sure there are women bloggers, and women that have sites, etc. hell we even have a woman running for president. But you don't hear about an 18 year old girl creating Napster or WordPress. I'm sure this sounds completely sexist, it wasn't meant to be. I just think we need to start hearing more from the ladies. 

Come on Girls take us into Web 3.0. 

Pros

No More Driving - No longer do you have to join the rat race to get to work by 8:00. I live in Minnesota, so in the winter the morning commute can be very ugly. I no longer have to suffer thru this. I also am saving a ton of money on gas as well as use my vehicle only on weekends.

Eat Healthier - Now that I get to eat all of my meals at home, I save a ton of money on fast food. Not to mention, now I can eat more healthier meals as I have full access to my kitchen.

Workout at Lunch - I usually go use the treadmill during my lunch.  read more »

Cons

Distractions - Lots of distractions such as TV, pets, household duties, phone calls, etc.

Dedicated - You have to remain dedicated and stay on task without a supervisor. This can sometimes be difficult.

Appearance - You may think it's great not shaving or wearing shorts all the time. Sometimes it feels like I'm slobby all of the time.

No socializing - It get's a little lonely. Sometimes I miss the potlucks or the lunch's with fellow employees.  read more »

http://www.rossgerbasi.com/2006/01/21/extreme-video-plugin-20/

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time using Google Video Search and Youtube. You can find some really amazing things out there. They have videos for everything. Until today, I have always struggled trying to add video to my blog. I found a plugin for WordPress called Extreme Video, you can download it here.  read more »