Hi everyone! I just found this nifty WordPress plugin while looking at my Twellow Pulse, and thought I would share it with you.
Business Directory For WordPress allows you to add a web directory to your blog in just a few, quick, and easy steps. This is a great way to promote business websites on your blog, and from an SEO standpoint, provide a backlink from your blog to a specific business.
Feel free to try this plug-in out!
Happy Blogging! 
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Fellow bloggers, we now have a search engine devoted just for us! Twingly is a search engine service where you can search solely for blogs and blog content. I have provided some advantages of how this new search engine will work for you.
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Flock is a web browser, which is built on Mozilla Firefox, and it has just left beta. The draw to Flock as opposed to other browsers is its social integration, which includes that for MySpace, Facebook, Digg, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and Twitter. Mike Sachoff talks a bit about it here.
what’s probably most intersting to bloggers though, is that Flock also includes a built-in blog editor, which is compatible with TypePad, Blogger, WordPress, Blogsome, LiveJournal, and Xanga (Flock recommends WordPress, TypePad or Blogger).
Once configured, Flock remembers your username and password for one or more blog accounts. To confirm that your account information has been saved, open the accounts and services menu by clicking on the Display Accounts and Services button in the top bar. The button is represented by a picture of a key. If the account was added successfully, the account will appear in the My Accounts section of the Accounts and Services sidebar.
Your browser can also automatically publish blog posts to a notification service, such as Technorati. A notification service alerts people when you post a new blog.
I haven’t used Flock yet, but I have to admit it sounds kind of cool. They have more details about the blogging capabilities here.
What are your thoughts on Flock? Anybody used it for blogging?
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It is not my intention to just link to my own articles on WebProNews everyday on this blog. It just so happens that I’ve been covering stuff that seems relevant here, so if the shoe fits…
Those of you out there who blog about current news topics might be interested to know that Yahoo! News has a redesign in the works that will feature a section where blogs covering news items can get some links.
To see the new design, you can go to any Yahoo! News article page and alter the URL slightly, replacing the “S” with “Story” in the following manner:
news.yahoo.com/s/…
news.yahoo.com/story/…
I have not heard anything about when Yahoo! intends to roll this new design out, but once they do, it should be a good way for bloggers to pick up some good promotion. Yahoo! News is pretty popular, so it should drive a good amount of traffic to the blogs it features.
For more on the topic, read my WebProNews piece.
I promise this blog won’t consist entirely of retreads of my own work as time goes on, but I don’t know how many of you are WebProNews readers anyway, and there’s some crossover in topics of interest.
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Happy beginning-of-the-week, everyone. As promised, I saw The Dark Knight over the weekend and, unsurprisingly, nearly pooped my pants with glee. A little plot-heavy, a little crazy at times… but good gravy, what a Joker. And that Aaron Eckhart was pretty damned unbelievable as Two-Face as well. I still haven’t seen Mamma Mia (nor have I heard good things about it, sadly), but that’s why the good lord made weekday matinees. I’m pretty sure they got made on the fourth day, somewhere between naked mole rats and Tejano music.
So, let’s see what’s going on in the world this week…
(opens newspaper, shakes creases out)
Freelance Writing Gigs asks: Is a Blogger a Writer? My answer: Sure! Every blogger is a writer! Not every blogger is a good writer, mind you…
Two good Twitter-related posts over at friend-of-the-site Crenk: Steven Finch points out ten great tools for using Twitter, and Luis Sandoval offers the top ten Twitter add-ons for Firefox. I’m about the world’s worst Twitter user; I tweet about once per week. Or I won’t tweet for five days, then make between six and eight updates in two hours. Then I’ll neglect it all over again. You know where I belong? 1850, that’s where.
Speaking of Luis Sandoval, he’s got a great post that asks one of the purest and most important questions every writer should ask his- or herself: Are you writing intentionally?
The folks over at SEOmoz are in the midst of a great discussion: What part of the SEO process is hardest for you? For me, it’s pretending I know what I’m talking about. Kidding, kidding. Or… am I?
At the Writer’s Bag, there’s a brand-new post about semicolons which does two things: Settles a discussion I had with commenter PS3 after my comma post, and makes completely obsolete the post I had planned on semicolons.
Cracked offers up its holiest of holies in two articles: The Top Seven Secrets for Writing a Cracked.com Top Seven List, and Seven Cheats for Hitting the Front Page of Digg. My prediction is that they won’t work for you. But then, I’m a depressive, pessimistic bastard who likes seeing other people fail, so I may not be the best source of advice. Again, I’m kidding. We all know by now how awesome I am.
Now: Stop reading websites and start writing something that excites you.
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Well, it’s still Monday morning on the West Coast. For a little while longer, anyway.
37 Signals offers some great motivation (and good ideas) for finding revenue streams.
Hacker News has a great discussion on the nature of SEO.
Copyblogger has tips on managing the length of your blog posts.
Men With Pens asks the Ultimate Question: Why do we blog?
Seth Godin makes a great observation about Wall-E and the bravery of creating great content.
Has anyone seen Wall-E, by the way? For my dollar it’s the best movie of the year. If I ever make it as an actor, I’ll be able to cry like a hungry baby, on command, just by thinking of the scene where EVE is trying frantically to find a new circuit board to replace Wall-E’s broken one. See, there I go right now. Big salty tears, right in the keyboard.
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