PureBlogging

I have decided to start a new weekly feature here at PureBlogging.com. Each Friday, I will give a little recognition to those who are active participants in our little community by featuring an interesting post from the top commentators on this blog.

If you would like to see your posts included here, just join the conversation by commenting regularly on this blog.

• How To Generate Targeted Site Traffic Without Search Engines - Search Engine Marketing
• Are You Brushing Your Teeth With Pooh? - Bobs
• 5 Tips to Avoid Night Eating and Sabotaging Your Diet - JoLynn
• Monetization Options - egon
• Unusual Mating Habit of Anglerfish - The Thinking Blog
• Kids Soccer and Airmiles team up - Collect Airmiles Faster
• 9 SEO Tips to Out-Flank Your Opponent in the Search Engine War - The SEO Blogger
• There’s Money In Domain Names - Website Revenues
• State Of The Blog Address, May 2007 - Saman Sadeghi

Also, a big thank you goes to Saman for giving me the inspiration to do this.

It looks like Google’s continued expansion is making Microsoft a little nervous. There are reports circulating that Microsoft has stepped up its pursuit of a deal to buy Yahoo Inc.

The two companies have discussed the possibility of a sale before but this latest approach comes as Microsoft looks to counteract Google’s recent expansion. The discussion is apparently still in the early stages but this is definitely something to keep an eye on.

You can get more details over at Darin.cc.

MySpace News is a new news aggregator that has the potential to send your blog a lot of readers. MySpace will take news from around the web and allow it’s users to vote on the stories that they find interesting. There doesn’t appear to be much activity yet but with their immense traffic base that should certainly change.

Much like other social news sites, an articles rating will influence the order in which it appears in the listings. Anyone can browse and read news but according to their FAQs, you will have to be a MySpace member to vote.

The good news is, you can submit your site/blog/RSS feed for inclusion. All you need to do is enter the title, url, and select a category.

It only takes a minute and who knows, MySpace News may start driving traffic your way.

Was this the first virtual riot?

After receiving a removal demand, the guys over at Digg deleted a story that included the decryption key for HD DVDs and what followed was absolute bedlam. Digg users began submitting story after story that included the decryption key. These stories were quickly deleted and many of the offending users had their accounts suspended, which only made matters worse.

Before long, the Digg homepage was completely filled with stories containing the decryption key and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson eventually responded on the company blog:

I just wanted to explain what some of you have been noticing around some stories that have been submitted to Digg on the HD DVD encryption key being cracked.

This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

Needless to say, his post did not help the situation. And after finally realizing that the situation was completely out of control, Digg founder Kevin Rose posted the following:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

For a day, at least, Digg users didn’t just vote on the news… they were the news.

Well, it’s time to find out who wins the 8GB Apple iPod nano!

Thanks again to everyone that submitted a review. You did a great job and gave me a lot of things to think about. As result, I have made a few changes around here… we now have a new professionally designed logo and a new tagline for the site. That’s it for now but I’m still thinking about a few other changes.

And the winner is… Jessica Biel… oops… wrong contest…

Seriously, the way I decided to do this is: Each review was assigned a number that corresponded to the order in which it was received. So the first review submitted was assigned the number 1, second review, number 2, etc. I then went to Random.org and plugged the numbers into their random sequence generator. With the idea that the winner would be the review that ended up in the first position as determined by the random sequence generator. The sequence returned was 8, 5, 11, 10, 12, 9, 14, 6, 1, 2, 16, 18, 4, 17, 3, 15, 7, 13.

So, the winner is… Bobs of ReformatThis! Here is a link to his review.

Congratulations Bobs! I hope you enjoy your new iPod.

It’s official… the contest is over.

By now I am sure you know that I am running a blog review contest where the winner gets a free 8GB Apple iPod nano. I like to give everyone that submits a review a little recognition by giving them a link here in the weekly update.

Here are the entries from the past week:

• Supernatural Harmony - I Love getting free stuff.
• Graphicsman - Hobby Blogger?
• I Thought, Therefore I Blog - Blog Review Contest

That’s it for this week… unless I missed someone. If you have submitted a review, please make sure I have included you in one of the update posts (Update 1, Update 2). If you don’t see your review listed, please contact me immediately.

That means a total of 18 reviews were submitted and I want to thank everyone that took the time to submit an entry.

Be sure to check back later today to see who wins the iPod!