But the problem that has recently occurred is the fact that with all these networks, they all want you to use your login creditials to sign into other networks, for example:

• Google Friend Connect
• Facebook Connect
• OpenID
• whatever it maybe next week….

So all these social webapps want to know where you are (hello 4square), who you are friends with (hello facebook) and where you post comments and leave feedback (hello google friend connect). Now the networks are obiviously not doing this for your benefit, or to make it easy for you to login. The reason? Because if there was this magical cloud login certificate authority (lets call it CloudAuth), there would be no reason for separate sign ups for each network. It could actually pull the standard required data from CloudAuth and store only that username and password - and then the relevant activity you have placed on that network.

Currently you are just duping up your information across the Internet - especially the most important details, your contact information. Think about what you are giving them. You are providing a social map of what you do with your day and where you are and who you are with. I didn’t even want my parents to know that when I was a teenager and yet I am more than happy to tell Facebook and 4square.

So What can you do?

The short answer is not much. Those networks provide great services and information, and allow you to connect with your friends and family in ways you never thought. Unfortunately, you have to go through the labourious process of inputting your data and receive stupid updates to a whole bunch of networks you don’t actually like.

What I would love to see is one day, CloudAuth becomes a standard, where there is no more actual signups because you have already signed up once, and there is only one of you. But not only tie it into your social networks, but your work and personal email, your online shopping, your favourites.

One day we can hope and dream…

Neil Patel on his excellent personal branding blog wrote a post outlining the 4 essential elements of a blogger’s “About Me” page. Below are his 4 essentials and a brief on why;

1. An image of yourself - This is important to ensure readers can see who it is that is putting forth ideas and information. If you wish to be a thought leade, it is no good to just get your name out there - names are easily duplicated on the world-wide web.
2. A little personality - Rather than just your education credentials or previous industry experience, allow your readers some insight into what makes you tick - where is it you have been and what is it you have experienced that makes you who you are and gives you the opinions you have? (I believe this applies to all your posts and a bit of character adds depth to your posts and sets you apart from others)
3. Some value for the user - What is it you can do for your readers, or their friends, family or colleagues that all the other blogger’s in your niche, posting about the same issues you are, cannot offer? Neil says this is the key to being remembered amongst the thousands of other about pages a reader will come across. Let’s not forget there are over 71 million blogs out there.
4. Make contact easy - The key to building a fanbase (so-to-speak) is being approachable. You will notice that steaps 1, 2 and 3 are all focused around giving your readers insight into who you are and what you have to offer - once they have that information you must be willing and able to provide more to anyone who wishes to network.

I have given these tips from my own point of view so I highly recommend checking out the orignal article on Quick Sprout, and having a look at his about page. His final bonus tip is something I have already applied to my about page, however now that I have put up these essentials I best get my act together and write up some more content about myself and this blog!

For more information you can check out the post, but below is a quick checklist;

1. Be sure to test your feeds are working.
2. Ensure your contact page still works - which sadly mine does not at the moment!
3. Ensure your About page is up to date.
4. Thoroughly check each of the pages of your that they still display and link properly.
5. Re-check your AdSense to ensure it still displays correctly and is producing relevant Ads.
6. Regularly check your common outbound links to be sure none have gone dead.
7. Update affiliate links in your posts should you join any new programs.

I recommend checking out the source for more info.

The new features are as follows;

• Trim the length of your title
• Limit to only showing related posts to the post’s page itself
• Easier CSS customisation, by moving it the administration menu
• Made it possible to inject the php code, to customise where you want it placed.
• Mixture of posts with and without excerpts. For example, first 3 posts have excerpts, remaining 2 don’t. So it doesn’t look as cluttered.

The existing features;

• Automatically inserts the ‘Related Posts’ to the bottom of your post
• No need to inject SQL
• Includes into the RSS feed
• Customise appearance via CSS

More info and download at “developer symphonies“.

Nate Whitehill writes that using the 7 methods he tripled his RSS subscriber numbers in a month. These tried and true methods are going to help you visitors become regular readers or subscribers. The short list is as follows;

1. Use a highly visible Feed Button.
2. Include a magic sentence after each post along the lines of “If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed.”
3. Install a related posts plugin.
4. Ask questions of your readers to promote thought and response.
5. Offer a full feed RSS.
6. Be highly reachable should your readers wish to get in touch with comments or feedback.
7. Host a contest.

For in depth descriptions check out 7 Ways To Get Readers to Stick.

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Fantastic. However after a quick search on Google I found the Wordpress instructions on how to post YouTube clips. I also, however, came accross a nifty plugin that makes it super easy to post not only YouTube clips but also clips from other sources such as Google Video and Metacafe. This plugin also allows you to control the size of the clips.

After you download the plugin and extract it to your plugins folder (wp-content/plugins/), you can add the videos to your posts by copying the clip ID and placing it between simple tags for each video type. Dependant on the clip’s source you will need to place either “youtube”, “google” or “metacafe” tags.

For example: [tag name]clip ID[/tag name]

To modify the size of your clips you will need to go to Options -> My Video in your admin.

It’s a simple yet effective plugin and I recommend it to anyone wanting to easily post clips from different sources on their blog. Check out Youtube & Google & Metacafe Wordpress Plugin for more information.

1. No communicated benefit for the reader. If the reader can’t see “what’s in it for me”, they are unlikely to read your article.
2. Failing to spark the curiosity of the reader.  If the readers imagination if not sparked they are again unlikely to bother reading, or will simply scan quickly over the article.
3. Lack specificity. If the title is unclear or confusing you’re less likely to engage the reader.
4. A lack of simplicity.  If you over complicate things in the title, expect your article to fail.
5. No sense of urgency.  Are you letting the reader know that they should get into this article right now rather than put it off until later?

For more information I recommend you check out the article titled Five Common Headline Mistakes and How To Avoid Them.

From the site;

You probably know a ton about your favorite bloggers - what they think about the subjects they write about, maybe some of their work and life history… you may even know what toothpaste they use. But how much do you know about all the other people who read their blogs? And how much do they know about you?

Readers can become friends with other people who read your favorite blogs. See what else they’re reading. Check out their MySpace and Friendster profiles and view their Flickr photostreams. Authors can learn more about their readers individually and as a group. What do they like and what are they ignoring? What are they reading elsewhere on the Web?

After signing up, for those of you with your own blog you are able to choose from a few different widgets to plug into your blog pages including a statistics tracking code, a Recent Readers table (as you can see on my right hand column) or a Top Links table that automates a list of the most popular links on your site.

Members who visit your blog will pop up in your Recent Readers list so you (and your readers) can click through to check out their profile. Depending on how they’ve setup their profile you’ll be able to check out a wide variety of their accounts at different Web 2.0 sites including Flickr, LiveJournal, MySpace, Digg, Friendster, Watchr and more.