While doing some semi-random surfing using Stumbleupon, I came across a website, 10 Ways, that is a collaboration of five designers, each with two projects. Two that caught my eye are Light and Information, both found under project Sumona. They are variations on a similar idea, using images (from Getty Images) in a fascinating way.

Light has a collection of images mapped onto a a rotating sphere that you can interact with.

Information starts with an initial image, and as you zoom in on area, you see a grid of smaller images that constitute the image - like pseudo-pixels. The idea is not new, but it’s presentation on a website is not one I’ve seen before.

I recorded a 3 minute screencast of a “journey” through Information, which you can see below. Please note: all of the images used in the Information project and thus the video below are property of Getty Images.

Technorati

If you haven’t explored Technorati, the blog search engine, you might be surprised at what a great tool for bloggers that it is. This short list shows you there is more to Technorati than you might realize, and many of the features are useful to bloggers.

1. Find hot terms: top searches.
Want to know what people are searching for on Technorati? Check the Top Searches list. If you search for the same terms a fair bit, use the Watchlist feature, which acts like an automated search aggregator.

2. Find hot terms: top tags.
Technorati indexes blogs and assigns one or more tags for each blog post. The Top Tags tag cloud displays what tags are most common at the moment. This data can change at any time Technorati indexes new blog posts anywhere in the blogosphere. Note that Technorati tags might overlap blog platform categories but are not the same.

3. Find popular rich media.
Want to know what videos, music, movies, games and other items are popular right now? Technorati scans blog posts - that it has indexed - for links to known “media” sites such as YouTube, IMDB and Amazon and builds a Popular list.

4. Blogosphere search.
Search for blog posts mentioning a specific keyword/ phrase. The results are displayed starting from the freshest.

5. Find niche blogs.
Search for blogs falling into a specifc niche category. This is a great tool for building up Top X Blogs lists for a certain category.

6. Track backlinks.
Use their Cosmos feature to determine who is linking to you. Amongst other uses, this also helps you track blog carnivals you might have been accepted into.

7. Get traffic.
Once Technorati indexes your blog, that could bring you traffic, especially if you are writing in a popular niche. It’s not guaranteed, but it could help.

8. Spread trends
That’s “Where’s the Fire?”, not the other meaning. WTF is Technorati’s social voting feature. Submit a brief description of a topic to create some buzz about it. You can include relevant links, so a WTF might bring you traffic. Just don’t spam WTF.

9. Claim your blog(s).
Let other Technorati users know that a blog is yours by claiming it. You can even put an avatar up if you like, and your bio.

10. Favorite some blogs.
The Favorite feature simply aggregates the latest posts from any blogs you add to it. They can be your own or someone elses. Essentially, you can use it in lieu of an RSS reader.

11. Customize Technorati tools.
Use the Technorati API to build custom applications, or use one of the many widgets or plugin tools.

12. Find popular blogs.
See what sites have the greatest buzz going. Blogs listed in the Technorati Top 100 already get a lot of traffic, but being on the list is sort of self-perpetuating. Or at least it had been, and many bloggers complained that they didn’t stand a chance at cracking the list.

Then Technorati started applying a sort of momentum measure for Authority. That is, Authority indicates the number of sites linking to your blog, but those links are no longer permanently recorded in Technorati. They’re only good for 180 days. So newer popular blogs now stand a chance of knocking off veteran bloggers.

Bonus Use: Web 2.0 mashup random slideshow.
Here’s how to have some real web 2.0 mashup fun. This is completely frivolous, but a bit of entertainment.

1. Sign up for a free Technorati API key.
2. Pick a term, any term.
3. Build a Yahoo! Pipe and use the URL Builder and Fetch Feed modules to retrieve search results for that term.
4. Sort results chronologically (most recent first).
5. Use the Term Extractor module to extract any keywords.
6. Use the Loop and Flickr modules to pull 1 or more images that have tags related to each extracted term.
7. Feed the output URL to a slideshow player such as SplashCast.

It’s quite possible I’ve forgotten something, since there’s a lot more to Technorati than just a blog search engine.

Having run a few blog carnivals for a couple of months now, one thing I’ve noticed that’s fairly common is that if a new blogger produces a relatively longer piece of “key content”, it’s often unformatted. That is, it looks like one big mass of visually intimidating text. There are no bullet points, no headings or subheadings.
Reasons

Here are a few reasons to use the latter, plus a couple of tips on how. The reason for bullets should be evident in the list below.

1. Eases scanning.
Makes it easier to scan an article:

1. Adds white space, reducing text density and also eye fatigue.
2. Defines information hierarchy, cueing the mind on how to absorb blocks of information.
2. Adds authority.
Partitioning information with headings and subheadings can improve search engine ranking authority for a page. It’s not guaranteed, but if you are producing lengthy resource articles (aka “key content”), headings can help with rankings. (This depends on other factors, including search engine algorithms.)

3. Eases production.
Starting with your headings and subheadings when writing a long article to make it easier to produce such key content. The reason is that you have easily definable sub-tasks to work on, not one massive task that seems endless.

What to try

Here are a few options for heading use.

1. HTML headings.
Try HTML h2-h4 tags for maximum effect. (H1 in most blogging platforms is used for the title of your article.) You can even customize h5-h9 if you prefer, by tweaking the necessary CSS.

Keep in mind that the smaller the “n” in the hn tag used, the more important it is. That is, your primary subheadings should use, say, h2. The next level of subheadings should then use h3. Follow the hierarchy, as you would with headings in a word processor app such as Microsoft Word.
2. Bolded headings.
Try HTML bold/strong tags on a line by themselves, followed by a “br/” (line break) tag.

3. Other options.
Try underlines (solid, dotted, dashed, hairline, colored), colored heading text, different fonts, boxes, colored backgrounds (of the heading text), etc.

Summary

Using headings and subheadings (and bullet lists with bold short phrases) make it easier on your readers’ eyes, easier to absorb information. That makes them more likely to return, since you’ve made the effort to not only make their reading experience convenient, but informative with your key content.

Blogging carnivals can be a very effective way to promote your website and build links. They’re free, requiring only your time to find and submit URLs to appropriate carnivals, and writing good content to submit.

I’ve been running several carnivals for clients and it gets tedious at times to keep track of submissions. Because many blog carnival hosts prefer only one submission per person per week, it’s simple etiquette to track the URLs you’ve sent, when you did, etc.

If you are running a link building campaign, it’s also good to track which carnivals accepted your entries so that you can link back. (It’s also carnival etiquette, though unfortunately too many bloggers don’t bother linking back.)

Keeping track of at least your carnival submissions simply takes a bit of organization.

Basic strategy:

1. Create two spreadsheets for weekly use:

1. Track the articles you’ve submitted and where.

* Column 1: URL of the article submitted.
* Col 2: Date of submission.
* Col 3: Carnival name
* Col 4: Status (accepted or not)
* Col 5: If accepted, then the URL of the carnival edition.

Update this spreadsheet whenever you (1) have a new quality article to promote, (2) have submitted an article to a carnival, or (3) have been accepted to a carnival.
2. Track most recent submission to any carnival. There is obviously a bit of overlap, but this sheet also serves to be an easy reference to any carnivals you’ve previously submitted to.
* Col 1: Carnival name.
* Col 2: Carnival submission page URL.
* Col 3: Homepage of carnival [optional].
* Col 4: Next edition [optional]
* Col 5: Last URL submitted.
* Col 6: When submitted.

What I do is after a submitted article has been published to a carnival, I clear out the info in Cols 5-6.

Summary:
* From spreadsheet 1, I can see which articles haven’t been promoted enough, whether due to lack of enough submissions, or because they were not accepted.
* From spreadsheet 2, I remind myself to check if a carnival submitted to has published the article in question.
* I use Google Spreadsheets because they’re easy to use and can be shared teammates and/or clients.
2. Each week, choose 2-3 articles to submit to 3-5 carnivals each. Keep in mind that your blogging niche may or may not have enough weekly carnivals. Do your best. Get creative in the next step.
3. For each article you intend to submit, make a short list of 3-5 keywords/ tags/ categories.
4. Using the first item in the keyword list for an article, search for appropriate carnivals at BlogCarnival.
5. Read over the carnival description, and if you’re article suits, submit it.
6. Repeat this with any of the keywords until you’ve submitted the same article to 3-5 different carnivals.
7. Repeat the process with each article you’re promoting that week. Remember to keep track in your spreadsheets.

Additional strategy:
Here are a few extra tips that I use.

1. If you’re having a hard time finding appropriate carnivals:
1. Make a mindmap of the article titles to be promoted.
2. Brainstorm keywords for each title..
3. Now search for new carnivals for each keyword.
2. Were you accepted to any carnivals? Track accepted submissions in Technorati. Simply type in your blog’s full homepage URL in the Technorati search field to see what blogs have linked to you. (If a website links, Technorati will not pick it up.)
3. Automate the tracking process using the Technorati API and custom code. I use the API features in a custom Yahoo! Pipes pipe to first search for any “Cosmos” links to my blog, then filter the list further by only looking at entries with the word “Carnival”. Unfortunately, due to some glitch, this Pipe only works in debug mode. I’ll release it here when it functions properly.

There are always little tweaks you can apply to improve your site’s look and feel and rankings. This includes tweaks to customize a theme, adding a sitemap, using optimum permalink URLs, and deciding on home and archive page post excerpt lengths.

1. Minimalist website themes.

Plaintxt.org

Are you looking for a unique WordPress theme? You probably already know that there are thousands of free ones out there, but dozens to hundreds of other bloggers might already have downloaded and used them.

An alternative is to start with a minimalist WordPress theme then customize it with easy tweaks that don’t require a lot of design experience, just a little bit of CSS knowledge and maybe a new blog logo.
2. Using sitemaps.
Dagon Design

If you’re not good at deep linking archived articles from new articles, you need some other way to ensure that the search engines index your older articles. New sites do not always get indexed with any sort of regularity, resulting in them sometimes being “invisible” in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

One solution is to use a sitemap, which typically has a link to each and every page on your site. Dagon Design has a Sitemap Generator WordPress plugin [via One Man's Goal].
3. Better Permalinks.
SEOoptimise.com

With all the blog platform options you have, you might some day decide to switch. Make it easy on yourself now, on any new blogs you set up, by using a folder name URL structure.

That is, if you have the option of using permalink URLs that have no file extension - such as .html, .php, etc. - then a move to a new platform will not affect search engine rankings. You will not even need to redirect old URLs to new ones.
4. Optimum post excerpts.
Xfep.com

Still undedecided whether to use full or partial text posts on your website? Xfep suggests using a combination: full posts on the home page and excerpts for archives. The reasoning is solid. People often want to see full posts on the home page but only want to browse the archives. That makes archive pages load faster, enhancing a quick-browse ability.
5. Finding time to blog.
Dumb Little Man

Of course, all these tweaks for an improved blog are pointless if you can’t find time to blog. A number of up and coming bloggers have told me lately that their salaried jobs keep them busy, though their blogs are just starting to earn revenue. Should they quit their jobs?

I’d suggest being conservative, at least until you’ve had consistent and significant blog ad revenue for at least six months. Enough revenue - and all saved up - to warrant quitting.