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UPDATE: this site no longer has a PR of 0 – we’re up to PR3 now and should get better, but I still stick to the principles below.

So, PageRank vs traffic volume and content quality: a topic that’s been done to death; we all know that theoretically one should try to build traffic and quality content and not PageRank.

Still, the truth is that this rule seems to be more of a theoretical approach, and having a PR of 0 still seems to be a dreadful condition one should hide from the eyes of the world.

Sure, I do suffer from the sour grapes syndrome just now; I’ve had no dramas about not having a PR of 0 (for a blog that’s 3 months old that really should not be a point of concern). It would be great to have a high page rank and I’m sure I’ll get there in a while.

But for the time being it seems I should just crawl away and die and not embarrass the world with such a lowly PR.

PageRank based DoFollow directories

There are many DoFollow lists; the point of them is to encourage people to comment on blogs that don’t enforce the nofollow on their outbound links.

But this one was a bit different: all the blogs listed were of PR 2 or higher. And the author kindly requested any owner of a PR2 or higher blog to email him the URL. The list comprised of some 20 blogs, most of them in the tech or SEO business.

And most interestingly, all the links to these blogs were nofollowed “for SEO purposes”.

So I stop and wonder: is it more worthwhile getting a link from an SEO blog with a PR of 3 or from five blogs with a small or no PR but an active audience and within the same industry as you?

I personally pick the latter: I’d rather belong in a cluster of similar blogs, that can refer qualified traffic to my site than comment aimlessly on blogs that have nothing to do with me.

Topic based DoFollow directories

Now there is a point that needs mentioning here: most of the people out there who are so concerned about page rank will be in the SEO business; and as such they WOULD be in their own cluster.

But for a graphic design blog, or a home improvement one, or a parenting one, as I’ve seen so many of, and of such great quality, this strategy doesn’t make any sense.

So I advocate the creation of topic-based directories of blog that do follow regardless of their page rank. The only criteria should be DoFollow and quality of content and/or traffic.

If anyone knows of such directories, do post a link in the comments section below. I think we need to do more to promote them.

Mr. Leonard Cohen of course. My favourite singer and songwriter of all time. The man guilty of having infected me with the restlessness bug that drove me out of my country and to the end of the world.

So I’ve been watching this movie about Leonard; and while trying to find meaning in every crease of his eyes, and whispering snippets of his songs, I noticed this line, scribbled on one of his album illustrations: “I never found the girl. I never got rich. Follow me.”

He really never did find “the” girl, although he found many along the way. He never got rich, because he spent all his money on fine suits, girls, cigars, drugs and God knows what else. And then his manager bled him of his money and he never got anything back. Anyway.

And so it struck me how funny the resemblance: isn’t that a bit like all of us. Maybe we’ll never get rich, maybe we’ll never find peace; but we’re out to find our own quirky way to ‘world fame’ and to a following.

So here it is, to all people out there trying to tell their story.

A bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome heroes
were smoking out along the open road;
the night was very dark and thick between them,
each man beneath his ordinary load.
“I’d like to tell my story,”
said one of them so young and bold,
“I’d like to tell my story,
before I turn into gold.”

But no one really could hear him,
the night so dark and thick and green;
well I guess that these heroes must always live there
where you and I have only been.
Put out your cigarette, my love,
you’ve been alone too long;
and some of us are very hungry now
to hear what it is you’ve done that was so wrong.

I sing this for the crickets,
I sing this for the army,
I sing this for your children
and for all who do not need me.
“I’d like to tell my story,”
said one of them so bold,
“Oh yes, I’d like to tell my story
’cause you know I feel I’m turning into gold.”

This is my thought of the day; do forgive me for the very personal post – and in case you’re curious about the illustration, it is not mine.

The artist is Dianne Lawrence, a Canadian born painter who has designed it for Leonard Cohen’s album “The Future”. Her paintings are exquisite – and I think my favourite is this one: Descending Into Still Mind.

And for the people interested in finding out more about Leonard Cohen I warmly recommend Jarkko Arjatsalo’s Leonard Cohen Files.

I’ve been a little frustrated with Google’s lack of foresight when they decided not to have a Mac version for Chrome; I mean honestly, isn’t it ironic that they make their big competitive move against Microsoft exclusively on a Microsoft operating system?!

Anyway, I digress; because what I really want to know now is when will we get Chrome for the iPhone!

Why the Chrome and the iPhone combo: think about it

1. They’re both the hottest must-haves of the year
2. The omnibox feature in Chrome ties in so well with iPhone’s auto-completion feature, makes you wonder what one could achieve by integrating the two.
3. The iPhone could benefit from a quicker interface than Safari, and Opera STILL doesn’t have an iPhone version (although you can get the mini version I suppose)
4. OPEN SOURCE people! It could be so much easier to build and test apps for the iPhone, to be accessed via the Chrome interface. No more jailbreaking or frustration!
5. The speed dial – wouldn’t it be nice to have your fav websites nicely displayed on your Chrome home page rather than fiddling with 3-taps-away bookmarks? Or trying to type something like http://searchvoip.techtarget.com.au/articles/26701-Four-iPhone-Twitter-clients-tested. I’m finding it difficult, and I’m a girl – I can only imagine what it’s like to type long strings of text on the iPhone if you’re a bloke built on a large scale…

So, Chrome for the iPhone: do you want it?

If you want it, put your full name, country and email address in the form below and we’ll put together a petition to Google. And pass this on!

The offspring of Google Gears and presumably many Red Bull fueled nights is here: http://www.google.com/chrome/

• Matt Cutts is twittering and blogging about it;
• blogoscoped.com has a page of Google Chrome screenshots;
• Google has put up an official confirmation, but the link is for the moment returning a 404.
• The Google Chrome comics book can be downloaded here. UPDATE: not anymore. But blogoscoped offers a much better quality version anyway: Google on Google Chrome.
• And speculation is rife… still no Mac version. Just a sign up link for Mac users to be informed of the upcoming Mac release (sigh)
• UPDATE: link to Google Chrome added to the Google main page

By the look of things, there are a few exciting things in store.

My top 5 Google Chrome features:

1. Open source platform – I can already hear the ooohs and aaahs of the open source community! This builds on the trend already established by the Google API platform. UPDATE: Chromium, he site dedicated to open-sourcing Google Chrome is live at http://code.google.com/chromium/
2. V8 javascript engine – apparently much more solid than anything provided by current browsers. I’m sure the applications are diverse, but as a web designer, let me take a deep breath and say Hallelujah!
3. Omnibox – this looks like a combo of the Onebox and the auto-completion feature, but I think it may get a bit more complex than that, integrating web search history, bookmarks, etc. Similar to what Firefox 3 already does, really.
4. Privacy mode – now this is an interesting one. Clearly, our paranoia has struck a chord with Google, and this is a powerful reply to Internet Explorer 8′s privacy invasions.
5. Opera style speed dial – so glad about this one, this was the main reason why I fell in love with Opera.

Unfortunately the Mac version will not be available initially, so I don’t think I’ll be able to play with this new toy too soon. In the meanwhile, have a look at Reuters’ video on Chrome:

Updates

• Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, on the lack of Mac Chrome: “It’s embarassing”.

These are my favourite images this week; having bought a subscription to Dreamstime.com for one month and 89 dollars, which covers up to 300 images (isn’t that insanely cheap?!) I have been frantically browsing for good photos and realised that

1. It’s very difficult to find unusual and beautiful images and
2. There are plenty of such images that people just don’t find, given the huge amount of time required to sift through thousand of images for that one shot that makes you gasp.

So I decided I’ll shortlist my favourites and post them here, in some sort of logical order. Today the theme is portraits, but I have another 5-6 categories in mind, so stay tuned!

On the logistics side: clicking on the image will take you to the Dreamstime website, where you can buy it. Happy browsing!

© Photographer: Vukvuk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Vukvuk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Kaleenakatt | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Dpaint | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Carlodapino | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Iofoto | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Wildcat78 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Photoshow | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Edfoto | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Gruizza | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Mosich | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Valuavitaly | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Lvnel | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Poco_bw | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Vukvuk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Yuri_arcurs | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Dolgachov | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Creatista | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Friday | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Dolgikh | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Poco_bw | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Maxfx | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Poco_bw | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Masta4650 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Alenkasm | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Ffotograff65 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Neoblues | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Krasphoto | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: Ffotograff65 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

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I came across an interesting post regarding compelling copywriting today. The author is Bruce Allen of Marketing Catalyst, a marketer, consultant and professional speaker with quite a professional background.

Bruce talks about the ‘feel’ of a piece and the Flesch Reading Ease rating as important factors in making a piece of collateral efficient. I think the same reasoning can apply to blog posts as well, in order to make them compelling and enjoyable.

I personally never thought of running my posts through Google Docs’ Word Count tool. It does much more than Word’s equivalent function: it provides the Flesch Reading Ease rating of the given piece of text.

Brilliant, brilliant idea. I have been running this post through the Google Docs tool a few times to achieve a rating of 67.14 (scale is 0 to 100 and higher is better).

It seems I’m using very long sentences, that I had to shorten drastically. To improve. The rating. :))

So go ahead and read the original article, then have fun with the reading ease test. If nothing else it will teach you something about your writing style.

Original article: Two Things to Create More Compelling Collateral

Hi guys, sorry it took me so long to come up with these – I’ve been through a full-blown drama with my website (changed the hosting provider and the registrar, long story..).

Anyways, here they are: the Twitter backgrounds to go with my Twitter badges. You can see the first one in action on my Twitter profile.

Click on the thumbnails to see the larger version (tip: you can open more than one at the time – great if you want to compare). More detailed instructions for using them below.

Using the Twitter backgrounds

• To download the background: right click on one of the thumbnails below and “save target as” with a name and destination of your choice.
• To change the background in Twitter: go to “Settings” – “Design” – tick “use background image” and make sure the “Tile” checkbox is NOT ticked.
• On the same screen, change the colours to match your new background. For example on my page I’m using #09BFF0 for background (not really necessary, but anyway) and link colour, and white for sidebar fill and stroke.
• When you’re done with the changes, REFRESH the page a couple of times, it takes a little while for the new background to display.
• TRANSPARENT background option: I have also designed a transparent Twitter background (the second one on the first row), that only includes the Twitter bird and no background colour. You can use this on top of any background colour of your choice, which you can specify on the “Design” screen. Tip: it works better on darker backgrounds, as the bird is white.

I surprised myself the other day writing a post about another blog. Somehow I felt vaguely embarassed about it. I did it because I genuinely thought they had great content that I just had to share, but it wasn’t honest work.

It was too easy. Easy to write the post – I didn’t have to do much thinking, quite honestly, just let my enthusiasm run with me; easy because I didn’t have to do any research. And very useful, since I didn’t have the time for a lengthy and well researched post but I did want to make an update and keep those bots coming back.

And this got me thinking whether blogging about other blogs can really help with the search engine optimisation, not only from a freshness of content point of view but also with link building (assuming the respective blog uses DoFollow). Every time one blogs about another blog and in so doing links out to the respective blog, one creates a trackback, which in turn is a link to the referring website.

Sure, it’s a reciprocal link. Sure, it won’t count as much as a uni-directional one. But still, a link is a link and if it anchors a website in a cluster of same industry/topic blogs can only help with the search rankings.

Not to mention it also creates a certain amount of good will and a feeling of kinship among fellow bloggers. And we can all do with a bit more of that. Mind you, if the reference is negative and controversial scrap all I’ve said about good will and be content with the link. Assuming your trackback doesn’t get dissaproved.

So this is my thought of the day: go on and talk about other blogs, folks: you only have to gain. Just make sure they use DoFollow, unless you absolutely love their content in which case just go for it, eh?

And in case you’re wondering how to find the said DoFollow blogs, I include a few resources (note how I’m following my own advice :))

• dofollowblogs.com
• Nicusor’s DoFollow List
• SlightShadySeo’s tip about finding DoFollow blogs with Google image search