As I remove MySpace and add Plurk to my own Mitchelaneous side bar, I thought this would be as good of a time as any to bring up the fact that you should not be afraid to socialize and meet new people. Sure, some places build a fan following because of great content but great content alone can not win any popularity races.
You have to get out there and proverbially pimp your goods.
Let people know at least a few places where they can follow you or be your friend, and they are given a few more “gateways” to get back to your blog and content. Think of it this way, which am I more likely to be friends with:
The guy who’s web site I never knew about because he doesn’t push it out in the real world
The guy who is trying his best to make friends, and inform the public he’s out there and ready for his close up
I’m not afraid to mention anybody who wishes to can add me as a friend on:
Don’t be afraid to promote your favorite social web site profiles. By not doing so, you are missing a good chance not only to make a few friends but get some free press for your own web site. Don’t be a wall flower, be that comfy chair everybody likes to sit on.
Need a totally off the wall and oddball way of explaining bandwidth to your friends? This video (from what I guess is a commercial for Internet access from Hong Kong) should do the job.
If you don’t find that funny, you don’t deserve to laugh! (via HostingBookmarks.com)
For a long time I visited TechCrunch to see a lot of the latest Web 2.0 apps out there, but not anymore. I’ve got a resource to share with you that is ten times better than that. FeedMyApp.com is my favorite resource when it comes to finding the coolest and the newest in Web 2.0.
The large database there is also handy if you want to search around and find an application for the job or tool you wish to make better. I recently had a chance to chat with the guy behind the magic there Matteo Alessani about the FeedMyApp.com web site and what it is they do there.
What was the reason for starting the FeedMyApp.com web site and what keeps you going with it?
Matteo: The main reason we started FeedMyApp was that there wasn’t anything similar on the web. There were lots of sites and directories listing web 2.0 apps, but we just wanted to create a simple, easy to use and up-to-date site with the latest and best web apps. Most web app directories, list entries with their respective logos. We thought that most users couldn’t gain much information from a single visual. So we focused on describing each web app with a title, a short tagline (sometimes written by us) and a screenshot. Moreover we are always surfing for new apps, so why not put gather and share them all with our readers?
Do you have a team of people behind the web site, or are you a one man team?
Matteo: I normally work on FeedMyApp on my own, even though my other two colleagues help me find and add new. When you surf the web you always come across interesting new apps. So as soon we find a new one, we add it to FeedMyApp!
When finding new Web 2.0 apps out there do most of them come to you or do you do most of the finding?
Matteo: We do most of the finding although a small portion (99% are pharm/spam apps) are authentic and not yet listed on other web sites. del.icio.us is another excellent source of new sites and web 2.0 apps.
In your opinion, what does it take to get a lot of people’s attention these days?
Matteo: Simple, updated, new content. I could grab people’s attention by adding some useful features to the web site. But I prefer to follow the “keep it simple” mantra: do less and do it better than anyone. However, we are planning some cool new features for our web 2.0 directory.
I know you can’t make use of them all but, out of the hundreds that you have reviewed, which Web 2.0 apps are you using in your day to day life?
Matteo: In my day to day life I mainly use Last.fm, Flickr, Gmail, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Twitter, Basecamp, Feedburner, Digg and Facebook. At Extendi we always use Ruby-on-Rails, Prototype and script.aculo.us for our web 2.0 projects!
Remember to check out FeedMyApp.com and let him know I sent you there.
Emory Rowland of Clickfire.com is one of the legitimate good guys out there in the web development and hosting world today. He has also been around as long if not longer than some of the other big names in our business.
How did you get your start on the Web?
Emory: My path into the web began in the mid 1990’s. I was a fairly uninspired surfer and email user until I discovered online multiplayer gaming. Meeting others and competing with them in a virtual world fascinated me. I spent a lot of time gaming back then when I should have been reserving domains like games.com. Looking back, I guess you could say that playing multiplayer games was my first online social networking experience. But, instead of the polite introductions we have with today’s social networking sites, you broke the ice by joining a game and chasing people around, taunting and blowing each other up.
Soon, I started building my own user maps. The next thing I knew I was learning to create graphics, then my first Web site which was a Duke Nukem fan site that had an address of something like someurl.com/~emory/dukenukem/, then writing PC game reviews for Gamezilla and UGO and just generally enjoying the whole Internet experience.
Who is the bigger star, Emory or Clickfire?
Emory: The best way to answer that question is by comparing the number of people who stop by my place to visit (friends, magazine salesmen, mailmen, etc) with the number of people who stop by Clickfire to visit. Emory might get one visitor per month. Clickfire gets many thousands. Clickfire can serve a lot more people than Emory ever could. It really makes you think about the leveraging power of the Internet. I could be standing on the street outside my home with a sign that said “Free 100 dollar bills” and I’d never get as many visitors, solve as many problems or meet as many cool people as Clickfire allows. Creating and maintaining my own Web site has has been one of the most enriching of life experiences.
Across Clickfire.com you cover lots of different web developer topics and discussions. What is your favorite area of the massive tent of web development and why?
Emory: I am still having a great time playing around with RSS/XML. Every major social site these days has a feed for the mashing. WordPress has individual category, post and comments feeds. I like to pull pieces of them from my own site and present them on a static page. Then, there is the mobile side, which I haven’t even begun to experiment with yet.
I would say you’re one of the longest running webmaster resources, with your roots going all the way back to 1997. What has made you want to stay in the game so long?
Emory: I enjoy it. Why I enjoy it is something I’ve thought about a great deal. I like having my own “place” online where I can do creative stuff like writing reviews and building free tools. Visitors read the reviews and use the tools and comment; that makes me like doing it more. I can earn revenue by adding affiliate marketing into the mix. So I enjoy it even more. I can increase that revenue with SEO. Now my career is in search marketing and I’m having fun and getting in even deeper. So, I meet even more interesting people like yourself who inspire me to be creative–the cycle starts again.
Are you afraid your going to wake up one day and have the sudden urge to quit and sell shoes at the mall?
Emory: I have no talent outside the Web, so I am sure that will never happen. Besides I can’t sell. I’d probably offer the customer an objective review of the shoes and then give him a pair for free. If I had to make money the brick and mortar way, I’d be broke. Being a webmaster is too much fun.
As far as web hosting goes, which two web hosts out there impress you the most and why?
Emory: You saved the toughest question for last . It seems that all the big shared hosts are offering more bandwidth than you can shake a pipe at. As I’m sure you are well aware, webmastering can be a lonely job and often keeps you up late into the night. If your site goes down at 3:00 AM, you can’t scream. Opening a support ticket online doesn’t seem to satisfy the human need to know that someone is listening and just might care. It’s probably no coincidence that the only two web hosts that have ever won 5 out of 5 Clickfire stars both have 24 hour phone support lines, BlueHost and HostGator. I will say that Lunarpages was the highest rated host we reviewed last year and I really like LP’s pro customer attitude. I am also hosting some sites on HostDime, which I like so far. And HostICan seems intriguing, which we are reviewing now. I think that’s more than two so I’ll stop and bid farewell before I get carried away.
Thanks, Mitch, for giving me the opportunity to share with your readers. And thanks for the free therapy because I have learned some new things about myself now. Keep up the great work with the Web Hosting Show and Mitchelaneous.
Mike Muise, one of the tech geek, pretty good writer and business development mastermind has started up his own blog over at DroptheMike.com. I’m always excited to highlight interesting people in the hosting and domains universe and Mike does fit the bill there.
In the hope to drum up some interest in the new project, he is also giving away a Ipod Nano (to one lucky winner) for those who spread the word about him. Heck I would have done it for free too. Shameless promotion aside, reading some of his posts he has up thus far I am highly impressed and can’t wait to read more. Might have to try to get him on the podcast too.
In hopes to open new folks up to even more great writers and personalities out there on the Web I am going to open my blog up to new “guest bloggers”. There are a lot of great people out there - and many of them you probably have never heard of. Well that is - till now.
So what are the requirements?
Have a passion for writing, technology or the Web
Need to be able to string more than three sentences together
Have something you’d like to share with others
What do you get? I’d be more than happy to toss an “author” credit your way as well as a link back to your own project so people can get to know more about you. If your spot becomes more permanent you might even get a cool little bio on here too.
If your interested, and you want to write about the above mentioned topics you need to have a passion for - drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I’ll be in contact with you soon.
As I remove MySpace and add Plurk to my own Mitchelaneous side bar, I thought this would be as good of a time as any to bring up the fact that you should not be afraid to socialize and meet new people. Sure, some places build a fan following because of great content but great content alone can not win any popularity races. 
For a long time I visited TechCrunch to see a lot of the latest Web 2.0 apps out there, but not anymore. I’ve got a resource to share with you that is ten times better than that. 
Emory Rowland of 
. It seems that all the big shared hosts are offering more bandwidth than you can shake a pipe at. As I’m sure you are well aware, webmastering can be a lonely job and often keeps you up late into the night. If your site goes down at 3:00 AM, you can’t scream. Opening a support ticket online doesn’t seem to satisfy the human need to know that someone is listening and just might care. It’s probably no coincidence that the only two web hosts that have ever won 5 out of 5 Clickfire stars both have 24 hour phone support lines, 