Romantic Side of xkcd...

Click the image above to see the full-sized.

Album I'm Waiting for...

The Killers is coming out with their new album, Sawdust. Click the image below to pre-order from iTunes and listen to the first single. Hmm... these guys are pretty active -- releasing three albums in three years with some singles.

BlogRush Update: I'm Qualified

Only a day after I blogged about BlogRush's quality audit process, I've got the email below from the founder.

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Congratulations!
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You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict
Quality Guidelines and criteria -- we believe you have a high-quality
blog and we are happy you're a member of our network!

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10,000+ Blogs Removed From BlogRush
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We've just completed a massive SWEEP of our entire network. We've
removed over *10,000* blogs (Yes, ten thousand) that did not meet our
new Quality Guidelines.

I've always placed the widget four pages (for 1024*768 resolution) down on the right pane. Well... sorry to say this but I wouldn't consider it a good page location (at least I wouldn't put AdSense there).

But after all, keep up guys. You're at a very important moment of your idea... whether it will take off or will flop.

BlogRush Update: A Month Later

After I started placing BlogRush widget on my blog and wrote one update, here's the update at one-month mark:

• BlogRush member's Dashboard and Report are not up yet; the temporary Dashboard shows that my "Traffic Last 7 days" is 36. Below is the preview that the founder promised to the community. Looks pretty neat.
  

• Google Analytics reported that I've got two single visits from BlogRush widget, with the average page view per visit of... one.
• The founder sent a short email (thank god...) to every member and link it back to his blog post. Here's a quote (with the part that I think important bolden):
  

We are adding Widget Performance Monitoring to our network. If a member’s natural widget performance (the rate at which visitors click headlines and other factors we aren’t making public) falls far below the average activity of other members in their category…

THIS MEMBER WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BLOGRUSH NETWORK.

We are working on something that might give members with poor widget performance a “warning” to let them know they are in danger of being removed from the network; which will give them a chance to give the widget better placement on their blog so they can, hopefully, rectify the situation and remain a member of the network.

We are not going to require our members to place the widget at the very top of their blogs or put it in any specific location. However, it’s common sense that if someone places the widget where normal visitors aren’t going to see it much, that they will achieve poor widget performance — and will most likely be removed from the network.

DO YOU HAVE THE WIDGET PLACED REALLY LOW ON YOUR BLOG?

If so, you need to move it higher on your blog to give it better placement.

Don’t want to do that? THEN PLEASE REMOVE IT COMPLETELY.

As I said, BlogRush was designed as a FAIR system. There’s a reason it was created as a COOPERATIVE network. It’s so its members can work together to generate more targeted readers for their blogs.

But this system doesn’t work if all members aren’t contributing at least somewhat equally. Why should any member give the widget high placement if other members are not going to? And yet those other members stand to receive the SAME REWARDS? It’s just not fair and, therefore, we have no choice but to make this change.

So any member that’s only willing to put the BlogRush widget at the very bottom of their blog isn’t a member we want in our network — and our network will deliver more traffic, per member, without them.

This is the part I don't get. We have to give their widget good placement enough, otherwise, we'll be removed from their network? Here are my takes on this:

1. BlogRush is not yet a mature service. Its success relies heavily on involvement of the community, i.e. bloggers. Thus, the "stick" approach - forcing the bloggers to give up the valuable page space (potentially for ads) to the service that hasn't been proven to boost traffic - is not going to work.
   
2. The criteria for fairness and equality doesn't make sense. I haven't gone through the whole logic for giving members the credits yet but I feel from his message that earned credits are primarily constituted of the number of times that the widget is loaded, and not much on the times that the widget is really viewed or clicked. As you figure, the weight on views and clicks should be much higher.
   
3. Lastly, I don't agree that the higher the widget is located, the better performance it's going to give. Back to the second point, BlogRush should change their logic to give more credits when blogger's widgets are watched or clicked.

Like I said, I'm a big supporter for innovative internet marketing ideas but BlogRush doesn't go the right direction. The blogger should have freedom to choose where in the screen they want to place the widget and accept the consequence of higher or less traffic. Threatening to cut off membership is, frankly, quite dangerous for BlogRush at the moment.

Say that again? Dumbledore is Gay???

JK Rowling revealed in her interview at Carnegie Hall that, while she was writing her HP Saga, she always imagined in the back of her mind that, Dumbledore is actually... Gay.

Found it through Digg and Leaky Cauldron so this shocking news must be legit.