Why I Like Darren Rowse of Problogger

I like Darren Rowse, the author of Problogger.

Problogger is a blog about how to make money blogging. Darren started it maybe around two and a half years ago and I’ve been reading it for more than a year.

The thing I admire Darren for is that he uses only honest, straightforward ways to get high rankings for his blog in the search engines (an activity called Search Engine Optimization or SEO). In general he believes in earning his inbound links through posting very interesting content.

When people read this content, they learn something, appreciate what he has written, quote it and often link to it for other people to get to it. These ‘honest links’ accumulate over time and make his web site appear higher in the search engine rankings.

This intrinsic honesty is exemplified by his recent post on how to get backlinks, where he clearly states that he will not buy, beg or exchange links. Gotta say I really agree with him there, because these practices tend to wreck the accuracy of search engines. PLEASE read the post.

He goes on to enlist the ways he gets inbound links. Examples are ‘How To…’ lists and scoops. All very clean, all very legit and VERY healthy.

One more thing: his honesty has not cost him popularity: 21,000 people read his feed on Feedburner.

We need more bloggers like you, Darren, may your tribe increase!

PS: I have never interacted with Darren in any way. He has no idea who I am. I am, however, going to point this post out to him, he’s going to feel good and HE DESERVES IT.

Technorati Tags: darren rowse, problogger, seo, lucky balaraman, the magnum group

Deepfish, Mobile Phone Browser by Microsoft

Software behemoth Microsoft has been developing a high-power web browser for installation in mobile phones running Windows Mobile 5 operating system or later.

Microsoft recently announced public availability of a demo of Deepfish on a limited availability basis (unfortunately, within a day all the available demos were snapped up, but fresh availability has been promised soon).

Deepfish apparently reformats ordinary web pages to fit nicely into the tiny windows mobile phones have. This will likely make unnecessary the horizontal and vertical scrolling which makes mobile browsing a pain.

Deepfish also downloads only the part of the page the user is interested in, thus reducing those irritating download times mobile phones have.

What remains to be seen is if Deepfish will work with the Iphone… Steve Jobs of Apple has said that the Iphone will not allow third-party software to be installed, but Microsoft owns a huge chunk of Apple (which means Microsoft is not exactly third party)…

Mobile phone browsing is set to boom… we’ll keep you posted!

Technorati Tags: mobile phone browser, cell phone browser, deepfish, iphone

Performancing Becomes ScribeFire

Whoa! Performancing, my favorite blog editor, has metamorphosed into ScribeFire.

I found this out when I tried to create the last post about Amazon. I tried to launch Performancing, and to my dismay, Performancing had vanished from my list of Wordpress plugins. I drilled down into Google and found that it had changed hands.

I knew that some months ago Performancing hived off its blog advertising business, but Performancing itself was intact even last week.

Two minutes ago I did a search and found that the sale to ScribeFire was done in December 2006. The new download has been put in place only now.

Read the news release at TechCrunch here.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I downloaded and installed ScribeFire, and am happy to report that it’s effectively Performancing in a new bottle (at this point). Has the same great taste, too.

Download it and enjoy, it’s free!

Technorati Tags: performancing, scribefire, blogging, blog editor

Amazing Amazon Contextual Links For Affiliates

Yesterday Amazon.com announced a brilliant new feature for its affiliates. I say “brilliant” because this feature makes life very easy for affiliates and for Amazon; also, it is pathbreaking and original.

To explain it simply, if you put a snippet of code in your web page’s HTML, Amazon automatically reads the content on your page, understands what the page is about, and converts appropriate words in your content into hyperlinks.

These hyperlinks link to related products on the Amazon website. If your visitor clicks on the link, goes to Amazon and buys a product, you get credited with a commission. Is that mind-blowing or what?!

It’s appropriate to point out at this point that Amazon pioneered the concept of affiliate marketing and thus spawned a multi-billion dollar industry. They also managed to keep the release of this feature a carefully-guarded secret (as far as I know, there hasn’t been even a whisper about it in the online press.

Congratulations, Amazon, for taking technology forward!

UPDATES: Takuya Misawa, a fellow member of Ecademy, a leading online business network, says that the links lead to Amazon products with relevancy less than Adsense.

Andy Beard says in his blog that the Amazon links are is still swarming with bugs, and warns readers against using it.

Technorati Tags: amazon, affiliate+marketing, affiliates, contextual+links