Author Archives: Midori
Jan. 30.
Bio:
“Throw your words at me, I’ll have my way with them,” mocks young and sharp-tongued singer, guitarist and songwriter, Alexx Calise.
Delivering a sound that is both fresh and uniquely her own, Calise combines hard rock, electronica, and urban-edged pop with crunchy guitars, angsty lyrics, and an instantly identifiable vocal that is hauntingly beautiful and completely raw all at once.
Calise grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she spent her childhood mostly alone or in the pages of a notebook, finding comfort only in her parents’ vast record collection, which included everything from Mozart to Led Zeppelin. At 11, she picked up the guitar to emulate her father, also a talented musician, and began fusing the melodies she heard in her head with her own poetry and recitations.
Now living in Los Angeles, California and continuing along the same path, Calise is endorsed by over 13 music gear/clothing manufacturers, she has appeared in several national TV commercials, shows and special programs (including the Discovery Channel documentary, “The Science of Sex Appeal”), and she has been featured in Blender magazine, Guitar World, and the how-to/method book, “How to Succeed as a Female Musician” alongside such notable musicians as Lisa Loeb and The Donnas. Her music is in heavy rotation on MTV/VH1 Networks, and on thousands of radio stations internationally. Most recently, Alexx’s song, “Morning Pill” was used in a One Tree Hill promo, she appeared as the lead guitarist for a Disney Imagineering DVD about soundwaves, and she was featured on Boston’s #1 Hit Station, Kiss 108 FM as a “hot up-and-coming indie artist.”
Currently, Calise is recording the follow-up to her 2007 critically-acclaimed debut album, Morning Pill, as well as her debut album with other music project, Sound of Cancer (with accomplished drummer/songwriter, Dennis Morehouse). Both albums will be released simultaneously in January of 2010.
To find out more about Alexx stay tuned but in the mean time you can check out her website….AlexxCalise.com
Become a Alexx Calise fan on facebook!
Check out her cool page on myspace!
Jan. 22.
hopeforhaitinow.org
[dciframe]http://outsidelands.youtube.com.edgesuite.net/haiti/deployment/?lang=en&hl=en_US,550,400[/dciframe]
Jan. 22.
This is an oldie but goodie and just so you know… Originally posted on Activerain 09/09/2007.
Update House For Sale-Three Years Later
As I was leaving this morning for work I noticed the house on the corner had a new for sale sign up. This would make listing agent number three.
Three different companies had taken that over priced listing. It’s been a year and a half and still no sale!
Did the seller really believe that if they changed the real estate sign their property would have a better shot at selling?
Do you think these agents really believe they had a shot at selling it with this property listed at 2004′s prices?
Are people so desperate for business that they would do this to a seller 3 different times?
The same seller and 3 different Realtors.
Why do professionals continue to make the same mistakes?
Walk away…just walk away! What’s it going to take? You can read the entire post here.
The point of the post really isn’t the post itself..its to point out this darn house has continually stayed on the market with very brief periods of being off the market..more than likely in search of another agent!
I lost track of the agents who have listed this house but I believe it is now real estate company #7.
A quick real estate training tip and reminder:
There is a price for everything! There is a reason why this house has never sold! It will sell if the price is right and easy to show and don’t forget to refresh the photos and information in your mls, your website, flyers and brochures.
Sometimes all it takes is a tiny bit of magic..dusting off an old listing giving it new appeal so when the buyer comes along…to them it will feel like home!
Not sure why this house has not sold but I know one thing…if you cannot sell it…don’t!
Don’t be REALTOR #8 unless you mean business!
Jan. 22.
A fantastic interview with Problogger Darren Rowse, yes its a little dated but the information timeless! Here is the interview in its entirety.
I spend hours reading a particular blog and I am so flattered and thrilled to have one of my many talent crushes interview with me..anyone who reads him knows him as “THE PROBLOGGER”….
I have a crush on his writing….I follow him on twitter..he recently co-authored a book…
DARREN ROWSE
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started blogging? “You can read the full Darren Rowse blogging story here (http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/01/25/becoming-a-problogger/) but in brief: I live in Melbourne Australia with my wife, toddler (he’s almost 2) and soon to be born baby.
“I started blogging back in 2002 on a personal blog which I started to record the journey of starting a new church (in my previous life I was a minister). I learned a lot from that blog and over the coming years started a number of other more commercial blogs including ProBlogger (a blog about blogging) and Digital Photography School (a photography tips blog).
I also have met a lot of other bloggers through ProBlogger which has opened up a number of opportunities including to start b5media (a blog network with over 300 blogs) and write a book.”
Can you give us a few tips for the novice blogger in regards to topic, growing communities and getting their blogs read? “Choosing a topic is really important. Ideally you want to write on a topic that you have an interest in, that you know about and can see yourself writing regular content on for years (it’s a long term thing), that is popular (it’s hard to grow a blog’s readership if you’re the only one interested) and that there’s not a lot of competition.
That sounds like a big ask but every day I come across bloggers who’ve founded blogs with this sort of mix of factors working for them.
In terms of getting your blog read – there’s a lot of things I could suggest (I’ve written literally hundreds of posts on the topic and we write quite a bit about it in the book) but here are a few tips:
- Identify other key blogs, forums and sites where the kind of reader that you want area already gathering. “Then work hard to become a part of the community in these sites. The goal isn’t to spam them but to add value to them to the point that people want to know more about you and come searching for what else you do.”
- Pay a lot of attention to the readers who come to your blog. “They can sell your blog for you as they go about their daily business – word of mouth is so important.”
- Engage in the wider blogging community around your topic. “Write guest posts on their blogs, leave useful comments, link to other blogs. All of these helps grow your profile.”
- Explore social media sites like Facebook, Digg.com, Twitter.com and see if there are opportunities there to engage with people and promote yourself/grow your profile.”
How many subscribers do you have on Problogger.net? “It varies from day to day but it generally between 45,000 to 48,000 at the moment. He has over 15,000 unique visits on some days and 20,000 or more on other days.”
I am so excited that you have co-authored a book, what makes the book so different from your Blog? And why should I buy the book vs. reading your blogs? “There’s a definite overlap between the blog and the book – however the blog has been going now for 3 and a half years and has 4000+ posts on it. Some of these posts are a little dated and while I attempt to give readers good ways of accessing the best stuff it’s presented in chronological order and isn’t the kind of thing you could read in an order that might be sensible for a new blogger.
The book on the other hand is up to date, ordered in a logical way that leads readers through different topics and areas that they need to consider in starting a successful blog. It’s written in a language that a beginner can understand and an intermediate blogger will be able to go further with.
Personally I think you should read the book AND the blog 
”
Can you give us a few SEO Tips? “Search Engines are a logical place for a blogger to desire to get traffic from. While other social media sites have become popular in helping people find information online the majority of people still head to Google when they want to access information.
Blogs are naturally pretty good at ranking well in Google but there are a number of things that you can do to enhance this and rank higher:
- Post frequently - Google loves sites that update regularly. Also every time you post you create another page that Google can index and potentially send someone to. It’s like every post you write is another open door to someone finding you.
- Titles are Important - Search Engines pay particular attention to the title that you give your post to determine what it is about and what to rank it most highly for. Use the keywords that you want to be found for in your titles.
- Keyword Density – also use those same keywords in the post that you write numerous times. The higher the density of your use of those words (within reason) the more obvious it is to Google that that’s what your post is about. Don’t go over the top with it but use the words in your first line and throughout the post. Also bold them and use them in sub headings as these things are other triggers to Google.
- Attempt to Get Links from others - every time someone links to your post it’s like a ‘vote’ in the eyes of Google that your post is worthwhile. The more ‘votes’ the more authority Google gives it (that’s a very simplistic way of describing it and there’s more to it than that – but it’s a factor). As a result you want to write content that you think other bloggers and sites will find interesting and useful and it can be worthwhile your time pitching your best posts to other relevant bloggers.
- There’s a lot more to it than that - but they are some good areas to start working on.“
Do you have any weaknesses when it comes to blogging? “Like many bloggers I can get quite addicted to it and spend too much time online. I try to set myself boundaries for when I am online and when I take breaks – but it can be hard because I love it so much!”
How often do you post? “I try to post to ProBlogger at least twice a day and to Digital Photography School once a day.”
We are a real estate community and there has been much debate, in your professional opinion, do you think we should just write about real estate? “I encourage bloggers to stick to their core topic for the majority of the time. The more you go off topic the less focused your blog becomes and the less likely you are to find readers who share your wide variety of interests. Do inject a little personality into your blog and don’t be afraid to share some of the other parts of your life – but if you’re trying to use your blog to build your profile and expertise in a particular niche/topic then you’ll want to stick to that topic most of the time.”
Ok, now I know you are on twitter, facebook among other places, what social network platforms do you enjoy and think will be helpful for us to grow our communities and our business? “I personally enjoy Twitter a lot. I find it to be a space that is very personal, interactive and playful. It is also increasingly sending me decent traffic to my blogs as I grow the number of ‘followers‘ that I have there.
I think the platforms that you use will vary from topic to topic and depending upon your personality. Some social media sites are more appealing to different demographics and topics so you should experiment with a lot of them – but then concentrate on those that work best for you.”
Please explain to us how you feel about commenting on blogs and of course your blog? “Commenting on other people’s blogs is one of the most basic and effective ways to grow your own profile and traffic in a niche. My approach is to only leave comments on another blog if you have something useful to say. If your comment benefits others you’re more likely to have it come back to benefit you.
If you spam other people’s comments you’ll hurt your brand.”
Check out some early post you might find useful!
search-engine-optimization written in 2004
why-lists-are-good-for-getting-traffic-to-your-blog, written in 2005
Blog Mistakes written in 2006
the-importance-of-letting-a-good-post-wait
I have to say, when he said yes to my request, I was so excited. As a matter of fact, my crush rekindled going through some of his archives…so if you are new or experienced really doesn’t matter..
I guarantee if you take the time to read his blog..and practice what he preaches I too believe you will increase your readership, your subscribers and your business too! If you find his words useful in your business buy the Problogger book today!
“Unlike other books that are big on potential and theory, ProBlogger provides results based on the authors own experience of what really works through practical, tried and tested advice. Wiley”
Rereading this interview…a lot has changed with Problogger..a second edition book, 31 days to build a better blog down loadable work book among other things. That just means one thing……I think we need an update!
Jan. 10.
Digging up old interviews…..An oldie but goodie…find out why Clustrmaps are so widely used!
If you read my posts you know I almost had a meltdown when our widgets were not working…as a matter of fact I feel I need to explain. See my clustrmap, my geoglobe and mybloglog represent readers..visitors and people to me. Not just statistics…but readers and I need that reassurance..readers are reading!
As I look at these products I am truly amazed and I think about the mind of the creator..interesting right..and so different from the way that I think or maybe not. Well when you want to know something you just ask right? And I did..and with that said…pay attention to the mind of this greatness! Because to me..its very different than what I expected.
The CEO and creator of Clustrmaps..Marc Eisenstadt <<<Click the link<<< He is really amazing!<<<
1. Will you share a little about yourself? “I’m a lifelong-academic-turned-entreprenuer, now giving away and promoting widgets instead of publishing thoughts about (and studies of) the future of knowledge, learning and user interfaces – go figure! I keep a summary of highlights on my LinkedIn profile!“
2. How did you and your crew come up with the idea of clustrmaps? “I have long been interested in graphical visualizations, as typified by Edward Tufte’s great book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin’s wonderful Atlas of Cyberspace. Much of my academic work in the past involved developing tools to help novice computer users visualize what was happening inside their computer programs. In the mid-90′s my research work moved into the direction of social software and ‘presence’, looking at ways to create a better ‘community spirit’ and a feeling of ‘being there’ during on line interactions with large groups – not by deploying Virtual Reality but rather through custom visualizations of symbols to depict moods, gestures and locations. We developed an idea called BuddySpace which essentially married location visualization with instant messaging, and grew a respectable user community in the academic world. That work emphasized real-time presence (‘Who is on-line NOW?’), but it later occurred to me that ‘offline presence’ (‘Who WAS there?’) was just as interesting. It became apparent that SEEING the locations of your own website visitors in a graphical and intuitive way could be very informative and motivating, in fact even better than seeing the standard statistics provided by the big-name web analytics tools! ClustrMaps was developed as a way of showing off to your public readership ‘impossibly many dots in an impossibly small space, all impossibly fast’, because people enjoyed the motivation of quickly seeing visitor locations, yet without it being too intrusive.”
3. I dream of having to pay for the pro version one day..believe it or not its a goal…who uses the pro version? Share a few of the big dogs, please???? “I assume you are talking about the “ClustrMaps+” version, which provides better zoomed-in maps and no ads for a small subscription fee (less than $1 a month if you take the 2-year option). Sure… there are a very large number of these. One of our biggest users in that category is www.educar.org, a Latin American e-learning and virtual education portal. They actually run a family of sites that all use ClustrMaps+. Another big user is Jesse Ferrell of Accuweather.com, who runs a great blog and weather analysis site. Jesse uses ClustrMaps+, and archives the maps afresh every single DAY so it is easy to keep track of the changing pattern of daily visitors. Another big user is www.hitsusa.com, a webmaster-oriented website traffic tips site, and then there’s www.1800pocketpc.com that specializes in PocketPC freeware and Windows Mobile software. I could go on and on – we get everyone from bloggers to businesses, and a few very large media companies and even international retail outlets that obviously have their own webmasters and server analytics tools, but prefer the simplicity and ‘gestalt view’ that they get from ClustrMaps+. Some of these bigger ones pay for an extra license that entitles them to have a hidden map!”
4. I noticed that my traffic is coming from all over the world..do you have any suggestions to increase traffic besides writing interesting relevant content? “It’s the old story: if you have interesting stuff to say, and stick with it consistently and over the long haul, the visitors will find you! Another thing that helps is being very active in the ‘social sphere’, getting out there and posting comments on other people’s sites, not out of vanity but rather out of genuine constructive ‘good citizenship’, which will earn you strong kudos and reputation in a way that no amount of spam postings ever can.
And always leave links and tags back to your own site so that people can find you either through a blog trackback, through tagging, through Twitter comments, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles whatever – just make yourself accessible.”
5. Is there a benefit to being on the top 100 Free Users list on your site? “Actually we list the top THOUSAND free users for the previous day, every single day of the year. This is purely out of interest: some people get a buzz out of seeing themselves up there, and its a good motivator for all of our users. At the same time, we are conscious of not wanting anyone to ‘game’ the system, and also to prevent monster sites from overwhelming the poor small blogger, so we actually do NOT show users who are too big, i.e. if they go over a certain threshold. They can view their own maps of course, but we just don’t include them on the list (this is rare, incidentally).“
6. Mybloglog, Geoglobe and my stats from clustrmaps sometimes are different and I realize time differences…resetting etc.etc..is your stats based on a 24 hour period and/or timezone…can you explain?
“We take great pride in the accuracy of our visit counts, which is based on what is widely regarded as the best third-party commercial geolocation database. Different counters can come up with inconsistent totals for a variety of reasons. Most of us rely on similar 3rd-party databases to undertake the IP-to-geolocation conversion, and these tend to be updated regularly, but they are not all the same! In some cases it is possible to get very detailed statistics from log analysis software that analyzes hits to many pages on a site, whereas ClustrMaps only (and deliberately) counts the number of times that the ClustrMaps thumbnail map it is displayed!!
See “http://clustrmaps.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/clustrmaps-trumps-geovisite-amungus-feedjit-neoplanet/” a discussion of ClustrMaps vs other counters!
We intentionally assume 1 visitor per IP address per day, which is great for overall unique daily visitor statistics, but not if you want more fine-grained analysis that other packages provide. Some counters are (almost) real time, whereas we have typically a one-day turnaround: the difference between real time and delayed updates is simply a pragmatic trade off. We go for the visual gestalt, and massive scalability: no other system can yet show millions of dots the way we can. On the other hand this decision necessitates a trade off, and we have opted for the delays because we can get tremendous scalability from our special-purpose overnight batch runs. In the near future, we hope to be able to provide something like ‘the best of both worlds’, i.e. massive scalability and near-real-time reporting. Stay tuned!”
7. What are the biggest benefits you see using clustrmaps after all you created it? “For users, it is the sheer delight they take in watching and sharing the global village, and seeing ‘in an instant’ what their impact is. We have professionals from all different communities who paste their big world maps into PowerPoint presentations to demonstrate the impact of their work when they are seeking funding, for example. Sure, they can get the big statistics from other services, but nothing beats the visual impact, and ClustrMaps is something they can understand and install for themselves without having to negotiate with their own IT departments. We receive thousands of emails from delighted users, and we see many blog postings from around the world that are testaments to the thrill people get from seeing their worldwide readership at a glance, and in turn sharing that with each other. We have hundreds of these bookmarked on a Delicious testimonials site at http://delicious.com/clustrmaps/testimonials, but there are many more.
Read the reviews Just today, we helped out a user who wrote “Thanks again! BTW your map is my FAVOURITE widget!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” which is always great to see, and we recently had a school class in New Zealand bake a celebration cake containing frosting with a world map full of red ClustrMaps dots to celebrate their 20,000th visitor. You have GOT to see their story and photo: Clustrmaps Cake In School . That cake and the email from their teacher totally made my year – that is why we ClustrMaps: because of the thrill and motivation it brings to users. In fact, we also accrue a very modest profit, which is remarkable for a self-financed startup, especially in these times of economic recession, but I can honestly say that it is NOT money that drives us to deliver the kind of fanatical support we offer and attract the kind of end-user loyalty that we have seen.”
8. I was excited that CJ (my clustrmap friend) left me a comment on one of my blog posts a while back..is that common and who is CJ? “As mentioned above, we take great pride in supporting our user around the globe, and this means ‘beaming in’ as often as we can on the sites of random bloggers who use ClustrMaps, seeing what they are up to, offering help and assistance where we can. The users love it, and the benefits in terms of good relations speak for themselves. CJ is one of our highly motivated team of part-timers who undertake our social networking support of this kind, and answer user emails.”
9. Any SEO tips? “The web is full of great tips, and our style is simple: whenever the title, keywords, description, and actual content of a site all ‘converge’ on a core of meaningful terminology, without being overloaded by bogus keywords and tricks (that can actually count against you), then you will eventually move up in the search engine rankings for that core of meaningful terminology. It’s simple, and effective!”
10. Last words? “Be true to your core aims and ambitions, be good to your users, get out there and make constructive comments on other people’s sites, and help them to succeed in what they want to achieve, and you well find yourself well and truly into a very effective virtuous circle. It won’t necessarily make you a zillionaire, but if the current economic crisis has taught us anything, it is that you need to re-focus on the core values.”
If you do not believe that you have readers and from all over the world…I challenge you to install the FREE widget and track your visitors for a week!
You will see and understand how Clustrmaps served up over 4 billion maps and I personally don’t want to ever go without my clustrmaps again!
