For a blog to be somewhat successful one component of it’s success will be it’s owner’s ability to apply technology to tweak the settings, to figure out what new technology is being used to create, lay out, and distribute content.
The technology side is not the most important aspect to having a well read blog. The most important factor being that a blogger provides the reader with interesting content. There are probably blogs out there that do well despite the owner’s lack of knowledge of how to leverage existing technology (much of which is free to use). These bloggers may write for publications that have tech staff who handle the way their content gets distributed so all they need to do is write and email in their piece. GMG and all it’s techy features were all figured out one at a time though. we didn’t have a computer engineer to walk us through the steps, but hopefully i can help you by directing you all straight to the best of the web that I’ve found through extensive research over the years.
When I started GMG I had no idea how to code things to look a certain way. I had no idea about distribution, video editing, video or photo hosting, what widgets were or how they relate to a blog, what a blogroll was, ect, ect, ect. Never took a class, but I just got started. Didn’t let much intimidate me and when I had a problem that I couldn’t figure out I used the wordpress or google search box and typed in the question. It might have taken a while to figure out the right way to enter the search query properly but eventually I would get the answer. This is especially true if I thought there was a way to make the blog better or how to increase the readership. I’d just keep researching til I found the right answers.
So during my quest to make the blog the best it could be and to reach the most people it could I figured out that there is an incredible number of free resources out there to help you. There are free video hosting sites. There are free photo hosting sites. There is twitter. There is Feedburner. There are statistics sites. The number of resources that you can use to help in your blogging journey is mind boggling but you need to know where to look to find them. You also need to know what the right tools you should consider for your content creation whether it be software or cameras, tripods, video editing software, photo editing software, computers, smartphones and any other stuff that you use in the creative process.
So here is a list of geeky tech sites I visit and have in my rss feeder to keep track of the latest and greatest technology.
LifeHacker
lifeHacker tackles a ton of do it yourself tech ideas, and is a site I believe anyone could enjoy, even someone that doesn’t care about computers. It has great travel tips. It has a weekly Dealhacker post in which they scour the interwebs to find insanely good tech deals and list them for you.
Gizmodo
Gizmodo Is a gadget guide. If you are a techy gadget freak like me you can’t get enough of sites like Gizmodo and fierce competitor Engadget listed below.
Engadget
DPReview
DPReview is THE source for camera reviews and news. You can find out the latest cameras and you can also do camera comparisons by selecting certain specs that might be important to you. There are also photo examples taken by each camera and user reviews.
Steve’s Digicams
Steve’s Digicams is similar to DPReview but like it’s little brother. It’s good to get a second opinion on cameras though.
Vimeo Community Forums Camera and Editing Software
The Vimeo camera and editing software forum is the best of it’s kind that I’ve found. The users there are knowledgeable and
offer great advise when you are pulling your hair out trying to edit your videos.
Newegg
Newegg offers daily deals and is the place I feel MOST comfortable buying my external hard drives, flash drives, computer monitors, cameras- basically anything. The prices are great and the shipping is insanely fast. I’ve gotten things overnight without paying for overnight shipping. They also have a great return policy. I Highly Highly recommend Newegg for technology purchases. I subscribe to their daily deals newsletter in which they always have prices that make me scratch my head. More times than not you’ll find it cheaper on Newegg than you will at best Buy.
Bidding For Travel
Bidding For Travel is a forum where users list their winning Priceline Hotel Bids and Rental Car Bids. I can confidently say that we’ve probably saved $5-10,000 on travel over the past decade using the information gleaned from this forum to drill down and offer ridiculously low prices for 4 and 5 star hotel rooms and gotten great rates on rental cars. Read the FAQ to get a better understanding of how it works and you too can routinely get 4 or 5* hotel rooms in Boston, Las Vegas and other big cities for over half of what the prices they list on their own websites by using the winning bids of others to get a great deal on a room using priceline.
Better Bidding
Better Bidding does same thing that Bidding For Travel Does. the only reason I listed Bidding For Travel first was because I discovered that site first a long time ago. Both sites are worth visiting before you plan a stay someplace. You are wasting money if you don’t use these free tools to drill down on incredible travel savings.
Aviary
Aviary is a suite of online cloud based computing tools like photo editors, video editors, color editor, image markups and the like. You don’t have to install anything to use Aviary. It’s all up there in the sky, and Free. Did I mention it’s free?
Flickr
Flickr is a website where you can upload and categorize your photos. The reason it is a great idea to upload your photos to a web hosting site like Flickr is because Computers crash and you can lose all your shit but if you take the time to upload your photos to a site like Flickr and put identifying tags you can always have access to your photos no matter where you are. At Flickr you can also use their photo editing software to edit your photos online. Some people are partial to Picassa which is another great place to store and edit your photos.
YouTube
YouTube is THE place to host your videos for a variety of reasons. I used to pay for hosting on Blip.tv because they would convert the video and put them in podcast form for iTunes, but discovered that the way YouTube will automatically make a bunch of different quality movies for you so that people with slower computer connections can view the lower resolution videos you create without having to stop and let them load to view them. They aslo have the best distribution and sharing options. You can upload your video to YouTube for free and share them in emails or on websites with ease.
Those are the biggies for me.
You could waste days looking through all of those but I would suggest you bookmark each one because they are all the best I’ve found over the years.
Hope I’ve provided some decent info for you guys.
-Joey
Good Morning Gloucester 