Entries Tagged 'Writing' ↓

SocialSpark is live. I was a little bit leery when I first heard about the project and really didn’t see the true potential of it. That was before I had a chance to see it in action for myself. Once I signed up, I became a believer. It is a marketing concept that can totally revolutionize online advertising in ways that even payperpost was unable to. I am excited that SocialSpark asked me to write a review about their new way to advertise.

Advertisers can create opportunities for bloggers to complete. That’s not new, but what is new is that the opps are nofollow and have full disclosure. Bloggers can choose to give either a positive or negative review of the post. The reviews truly are reviews that can help a website or business improve their offerings.

Another great advantage of the SocialSpark is that everything is transparent. It’s also a social networking platform. It’s easy to see the bloggers in the system. Bloggers and advertisers can leave public feedback on each other. The level of communication between advertisers and bloggers has never been better. There is a street team feature for advertisers where they can assemble teams of their favorite bloggers for projects.

Every blogger and every advertiser has a profile on the system. The Louis profile is mine. It allows me to publicly say a little about myself and a little about what I am doing as well as let other to leave comments about me and my blogging.

The only thing I am not as keen on is the dynamic pricing, but that’s a huge positive for advertisers. I guess there’s nothing wrong with providing an advertiser friendly marketplace.

I really think a bright future awaits SocialSpark.

Lately I have been finding it very hard to deal with deadlines. I don’t know why things are so different over the last several weeks, but things that used to be so important are now a lot less important. This means that no matter how hard I try to re-prioritize things, I just can’t get it done.

The upshot is that I am starting to examine the way I have been prioritizing things. I am hoping that once I am able to do this and see how I have been handling projects, maybe I will see how I can better deal with the deadlines of those projects.

I think one casualty of this will be that I will be declining more projects that I previously would have been putting a lot more effort into. It also means that I am going to be focusing on just a few websites that I hope will become profitable. It’s a big leap of faith, but if I can do it, it might become very profitable for us. And hopefully worrying about deadlines will become a thing of the past.

If you are doing any research on how literature dealt with the subject of Mars and comparison to what we know now about mars, you would be wise to visit Universal Value Exchange and check out the two part series on Mars Literature Vs Reality.

It explores some of the literature in the science fiction genre and how it relates to what we know now from various successful expeditions to Mars. I enjoy studying about this aspect of science. It’s almost like an intersection of science with culture. It’s very powerful and definitely will give you a reason to chuckle. It’s worth a read, I know I wrote it. Enjoy!

Ah, my reflections on things going around me. That is sometimes the way I feel when I see things going on around me. It sometimes fills me with hope, sometimes it fills me with dread. I look at the past and look at the future. I look at the good decisions I have made and the bad decisions I have made in the past. It all engulfs me sometimes, but sometimes I break free.

I know the future is bright and things are moving forward at a breakneck pace and that the future is something we are never quite sure or even uncertain about. We can only do our best and hope and pray for the best. That is the powerful power of all of this and that is what brings me happiness and contentment.

So often I write a post here that I base off of information I read on another blog or an online newspaper, or sometimes even an offline newspaper or book. I hardly can take credit for the ideas myself, but at the same time I may not be quoting the source. How can I let people know that I got some of my information from another source without a cheezy line that says I got it here with a link on the word here?

It’s important to cite your sources when you are writing online because it does give you some credibility since readers can see where you got your information and see if that information source is a quality information source. The more credibility that your article has, the more it can be trusted as a good information source. Now, how can we cite our articles?

I have been doing some academic writing lately and they have three or four different styles. Their information for citing web sites is particularly difficult and hardly seems like an option for bloggers interested in putting together a quick and easy blog post. Anyway, I have come up a style that is a bit easier. I call it GLM Web Style. Here is the structure:

Article Title(hyperlinked to URL); Author (Date Published); Website Name; Date Accessed.

And here is an example of it:

Las Vegas proves immune to jittery U.S. economy, but not casinos elsewhere; Gary Rivlin (12/26/2007); International Herald Tribune; 12/26/2007.

It goes right at the bottom of every article where you use an external source. If you make a quote, you should ensure that the quote has some identification with the website name so users can tell where the quote came from. That’s up to you. You may use footnote or you could follow this example:

Gambling revenues on the Strip are up this year - way up in recent weeks. Despite higher energy prices, a volatile stock market, a slumping housing market and fears the economy may be heading into a recession, some of the city’s largest casinos are on pace for a record-setting year. In October alone, gambling revenues on the Las Vegas Strip were up 19.8 percent over the comparable month last year. –Internatonal Herald Tribune

For offline sources, a simple style like this would suffice:
Title of Article or Book; Author (Date Published, if known); Name of Publication.

Your writing will benefit when you begin citing your sources for articles. Likewise, so will your credibility increase.

I know I talk about this a lot, but I can’t help it. I really enjoy writing. Since I started to write professionally, I have really seen some great benefits. My wife notices how happy I am. I finally have a creative outlet for many of my feelings and desires. I like to write for the art of it.
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