I’m already back in blogging mood

Wonderful Jaiku users,

Exciting news, Jaiku is joining Google!

While its too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together.

In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not! All our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will continue to be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.

We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition at http://jaiku.com/help/google

Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders

They seem to have closed new user sign-ups until they figure things out, which I hope won’t last too long. Jaiku is a vibrant, developing online community, and shutting out new users is NOT something wise right now. Especially with readily available competitors offering similar services online.

In any case, good luck to them!

Imagine my excitement when I came across Pownce. A new micro-blogging, social networking type of site that promises a lot more than the competition and far as I can tell – it delivers as much.

The produce of the labor of four dedicated individuals, one of whom happens to be web-pioneer and Digg founder Kevin Rose, Pownce allows users to exchange notes, messages, pictures, links and files. The privacy controls allow how much of what you publish is made public. You can send staff to just one person off your friend’s list, a select few or everyone on it. I guess it depends on how big the space will be where you plan to throw your next parteeeeyy!

There is also a “pro” version of the service, which offers more features, but personally I am quite content with what I can get for free. Well done to Megatechtronium (how did they come up with this name for a company – I don’t know) for the brilliant work they’re doing, and from the looks of it Pownce will just keep growing in features and goodies for everyone, users and developers alike. Check them out here.

The user interface is very easy to get used to and everything is self explanatory. Besides, you can experiment with all the different tools and styles available, or make your own theme. Customization being the key word in any traditional scrap book, so it remains here. You can tailor your Scrapblog to whatever your personal requirements are, and to how far your imagination reaches. And if you’re out of ideas, there’s an active community of users to explore and jolt your inspiration.

Get creative now and have fun while at it, visit them over at Scrapblog.com

I remember a time when blogging was not even invented as a term. When places like Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal simply did not exist. And that time was a little over 10 years ago, when I designed and uploaded my first homepage. I hadn’t even finished school yet, let alone having gone to university or having had any kind of training on how to build a web page other than self study and endless hours keeping company to the computer.

Even then people felt the need to keep online journals though. However, it wasn’t as easy. You had to type everything in, give shape and form to what you’ve written with HTML tags, manually add a date, and then make sure you have another page which you manually needed to update keeping track of past journal entries.

The only way people could leave comments on your homepage at that time was via a “guestbook” and not on individual posts. So, you usually had an e-mail link somewhere and if someone wanted to discuss something you’ve written about – they e-mailed you.

Then technology progressed and it was made possible to simplify the entire process into type and publish. Easily making categories for posts, adding tags, keeping archives, comments, and publishing news feeds.

So now EVERYONE blogs. Even the least technologically savvy people with a connection to the Internet. Blogging is not now, nor has ever been reserved for an elite of Internet users anyhow. And once again technology came to the rescue making a wonderful way of expression available to the masses.

Blogs exist today on pretty much every subject there is to discuss. Some bloggers go with niche subjects such as blogs on flowers and gardening, other’s like myself just blog about anything that draws their attention. All these blogs together formed the blogosphere. A virtual space within the world wide web were all the blogs reside.

Even Technorati.com recently lost count of how many blogs there are, and started making use of the term “Zillions”.

So, if there are so many blogs out there already, why bother starting your own? Well, because you can. There is no guarantee anyone will ever read what you write, and if you write too much about your workplace it may even cost you your job. But if writing is a passion of yours, and you want to do it – go ahead.

You can get a free blog at any of the following places:

• Blogger
• WordPress
• Vox
• LiveJournal
• MySpace

And because the blogosphere is a vast place where it is very easy to get lost, let me know where your blog is and I may drop by for a visit some time.

Write journal entries, post photo albums, invite and make friends. Among the wonderful features of My Life Of Travel is the ability to have an interactive Google Map pinning out the places you’ve been at, and the ability to earn revenue on the ads displayed on your journals. Something not all free blog / journal services allow.

Most important, it’s fun, and you can start by adding the places you’ve already traveled to.

Spam, whether it reaches your Email inbox or your WordPress blog, is annoying, can be irritating, and at times it may be wasting your precious time to have to manually delete all of it. So, let us discuss some well tested solutions to the spam plague and help keep it away from you.

Fighting spam messages on your WordPress blog

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms out there. If you operate a privately hosted WordPress blog, you have the ability to add plugins which enhance the software’s functionality. Among these plugins, we find two amazing spam filters which deliver what they promise and keep the vast majority of spam messages out of sight.

Akismet
Developed by the same people behind WordPress, Akismet is an undoubted leader in the world of spam-fighters. Short for Automattic Kismet, it makes use of a web service which puts each comment under a rigorous testing process to judge whether it is spam or safe. You don’t have to do much other than sit back and relax while Akismet takes care of spam messages on your behalf.

Spam Karma
Spam Karma is one of the first plugins for WordPress to earn a place in the “spam-fighters which actually work hall of fame”. And rightfully so. An intelligent tool which is automatically trained to recognize spam messages. The most annoyances it stops the better it gets at it. And it has lots of options and customizations to work with, definitely worth checking this one out.

Helping keep your Email inbox spam free

Free web-based Email accounts today are a good way to hassle-free protect yourself from unwanted Emails, aka spam. Google’s Gmail as well as Yahoo! Mail offer you fully featured Email accounts at no cost, while they take care of keeping your inbox nice and clean.

As a general guideline though you should avoid giving out your Email address on websites where it may be seen publicly. Spam-people have bots surfing the web continuously picking up any Email address they find on a website and adding that to their spamming To: lists.

Get free anti-spam enhanced Email accounts at:

• Yahoo! Mail
• Google Mail

If you use a POP Email account that you wish to have protected, one of the most popular and effective solutions out there is Spamihilator.

Spamihilator is an anti-spam filter software, available for free download and use. You can use it with many Email clients such as Oulook, Eudora, Pegasus Mail etc. It boasts a new Bayesian learning filter for training the software to easily recognize spam and block it from reaching your inbox. Check it out here.

Well, that is all from the spam-fighting front for now. I hope you find these solutions useful, and if you have any more suggestions to the issue at hand, please don’t hesitate to tell.

Anyhow, I decided it was about time to start caring about spam and do something about it. I used to simply ignore-mark-delete. Now I think I’m taking more proactive action. Something should be done to stop this madness, but until those responsible are actually dealt with in manners too graphic to describe here, there is some great software out there to help protect your blogs and websites and send spam in the pits of digital hell.

If you’re frustrated over receiving to many spam messages and comments, stay tuned as I will soon be posting in detail what solutions are made available to you.

Vox is all of these things and then some. A free service by the same people behind LiveJournal and TypePad (Six Apart). What Vox does is offer people a suite of tools for expressing themselves online and keeping in touch with friends or meeting new people. The participatory nature of Vox, encourages people to view, subscribe and comment on content created by fellow users.

The service is free and you get a free blog, photo and video posting, more privacy controls than what you’ve grown accustomed to expect from a service of the type, and seamless integration with other popular web services you may already be using, such as Flickr and YouTube.

Truth is there is too much there which may get you confused at first, but once you get a feeling of the place and learn how to use it – it can be a whole lot of fun.