PureBlogging

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Be sure to check out the SEO Clinic review of TechSmith to get an idea of how the process works and the quality of the information provided.

If you would like to participate, submit your info and maybe they will choose your site.

Auction Ads (aff) is a new advertising network from ShoeMoney and MediaWhiz (the owners of Text Link Ads (aff)) that allows bloggers and other website owners to monetize their site by displaying eBay auctions. Several people have already posted extensive reviews of the new service, so I will just point you to a couple of the best reviews that I have run across:

• Techcrunch: AuctionAds eBay Advertising Widget
• Problogger: eBay Auction Ads
• John Chow: New Ad Network - Auction Ads
• Weblog Tools Collection: AuctionAds

Blog Flux, which is operated by the same people that own the Bloggy Network, has introduced a new tool called Uptime Tracker. If you have ever wondered how often your blog is unavailable due to network or server issues, Blog Flux now allows you to track the uptime of your blog.

Using twenty-three servers, they check your site constantly, and give you a report based on the last week, month, quarter, year and lifetime. According to thier email update:

We have also added a very cool tool - Uptime Tracker. A lot of web hosts make fancy claims of 99.999% uptime, but how can you be sure they aren’t liars? Using a network of 23 different servers (all in different locations), we check these web hosts every 10 minutes.

Even better, we have extended the system so we can also track your blogs. Head on over to http://webhostingdir.blogflux.com/uptime-tracker/ and follow the instructions. You can make sure your host doesn’t try to pull a fast one on you.

Actually, this is just one of the many free services that Blog Flux provides specifically for bloggers.

If you are thinking about redesigning your blog and need a little a little inspiration, here is a list that may help. Glen Wolsey has put together the “Top 10 Most Beautiful Blog Designs”, and some of these are very impressive.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the list:

What are some of your favorite designs?

This morning, PCWorld.com posted an interesting piece entitled “The 50 Most Important People on the Web.” They included people like Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin of Google, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Bram Cohen of BitTorrent, etc.

There were a few bloggers that made the list:

• Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos, a highly influential political blog.
• Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, the most popular technology blog.
• John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, and Paul Mirengoff of PowerLine, another very influential political blog.
• Perez Hilton - of PerezHilton.com, a controversial celebrity blog.
• Mikko H. Hypponen of F-Secure’s security news, a blog that covers the latest Internet security threats.
• Nick Denton of Gawker Media, which owns and operates over 15 blog properties including: Gawker, Wonkette, Defamer, and Gizmodo.
• Mohammed and Omar Fadhil of Iraq the Model, a blog based in Baghdad that brings an inside perspective to the discussion of Iraq.

Other influential people from the blogging world that made the list include:

• Matt Mullenweg the developer of Wordpress.
• Kevin Rose the founder of Digg.com.
• Gabe Rivera the creator of Techmeme.
• Rob Malda the founder of Slashdot.org.

That is quite a list.

You can check out the full article at Yahoo.com.

Marc at Macalua.com recently released a very useful plugin for Wordpress. His Top Post by Category plugin will allow you to show your top posts by visits or by comments, all sorted by category on a page.

Here is a bit of the description from his site:

One of the things your blog readers don’t have is time. That’s time to wade through your 500 or so posts to pick the golden posts that declare your blog “add to my feed reader” worthy. You need a way to present your top posts up front and you need an easy and automated way to do it. Lucky for you Wordpress fanatics, help is definitely around the corner.

I present to you the Top Post by Category plugin. This baby allows Wordpress bloggers to display their best posts, as determined by the number of visits to the post or number of comments.

Easy to setup and works like a charm. You can check out our top posts page for a small example or check out his example to really get a feel for this plugin.

More Info: Top Posts by Category