Entries Tagged 'blogs' ↓

Go read Seth Godin’s excellent Just one post note.

Seth is right: you have at least one post in you. And not just a blog post: I bet you also have at least one contribution to make in many other fields. So just go and implement it. Why not?

Lately I’ve been noticing that a big percentage of entry titles in the RSS feeds I read contain a numeral. Often these titles are of the form: “N ways of doing X” or “M best Ys.

This trend seems particularly pronounced in the del.icio.us/popular feed. As I write this, the top two popular bookmarks are Top 17 Search Innovations Outside Of Google and Top 57 Wikis By Rank.

Today I noticed Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers, one of Jakob Nielsen’s last columns. The summary of the article goes:

It’s better to use “23″ than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data.

Apparently writing numbers as numerals, instead of spelling them out, improves scannability of the text. Which is, of course, the exact opposite of what our language teachers taught us.

And not only numerals make your facts easier to extract from the text, Nielsen claims that numerals can also increase your credibility:

Even when users aren’t scanning for data, having your facts stand out visually by presenting them as numerals is an easy way to enhance credibility by making your page seem more useful.

This might explain the numbers-in-titles phenomenon: the “10″ in the 10 R’s to Apply if you Want to Succeed makes the title/article so credible that 668 people found fit to bookmark it. Scary stuff.

A good friend of mine, Ali, has started posted regularly in his blog, xawaaTir, about current events in Lebanon (his home country). For those interested in a different perspective on the current Israeli attacks on Lebanon (different from the one you will get from CNN, that is), it might be an interesting read.

I was reading Ali’s latest post, and I was reminded of all those surprised Americans we saw on TV on the days after 9/11. They stared wide-eyed into the camera and wondered “Why would someone want to hurt us?” I suppose if they read more posts like some of Ali’s, they would understand why. Not that Ali advocates physical aggression in any way. Not that physical aggression is ever justified.

As I said, an interesting read.
xawaaTir

Sometimes you feel that you should shorten your feed list. Sometimes you wonder which blogs are worth keeping and which not. Posts like this really help making such a decision.

I just changed the theme for a modified version of White As Milk. I started working on this new look a while ago, but then lack of time (or, someone could say, inability to focus on thing at a time) made me abandon it. We’ll see if this time around I can take it to some state that I am satisfied with.

Let me know what you think. More stuff on the sidebar? Less stuff? One of my ideas was to leave only one post on the front page, and then just list the previous posts below. Is that a good idea? Don’t know. Will continue thinking.

And yes, I will write about at least on of the gazillion things on my list soon. I promise.