This is the second part of a post on how you, your spouse and your blog can live happily ever after. (Part 1)

3. Get them involved. It could be as simple as showing them a post you are proud of. Or better yet, a series of comments reacting to something you wrote. You’re not blogging in a vacuum. REAL people read your words. Once your spouse understands that, you might be given a longer leash to do your work. You should even consider writing a personal blog post about them. Appeal to their ego!

4. Set a schedule. There’s nothing more annoying than being summoned for a household chore when you are in the middle of blogging. If you establish a routine with your better half, they will be more likely to respect your blogging space.

I love blogging, but I do take it seriously. In my mind, the craft could hold the key to an unforeseen opportunity – one that might be life changing. Therefore, I embrace blogging, 24/7. And if my wife doesn’t, we could be looking at a bumpy road. Life deals you enough problems, why let blogging be yet another one. Getting your partner on board might sound silly, but in my view, it’s an imperative task to achieve success.

Recently, startup Pikk.com joined the ranks of Digg, Mixx and other social news/blog links aggregation sites.  In the company’s own words:

Pikk is a link aggregation service that lets users submit and vote on stories. Every story is submitted with two choices, such as “thrive or fail.” Stories with the most votes make it to the front page.

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Are you frustrated by the mundane conversations taking place on your Facebook wall? Tired of spam friend requests on MySpace? Sick of the Fail Whale? The folks at Current TV feel you, and have put together a game that will let you do what we have all dreamed of… kill the social networks! read more

“Who is she?” my wife questioned.

We’ve had this conversation a dozen times.

“No one, babe. I’m just working on my blog.”

“You LIVE on that computer.”

Cue dramatic exit.

If this sounds familiar, the you too are looking for ways to justify all that time you spend blogging to your significant other. Here’s how… read more

While the big boys of publishing are looking at methods of walling their content and then charging for it, smaller publishers such as bloggers will often look to making money from at least some of their content.

With this in mind, GoPayforit has launched its mobile small payments service in the UK, which allows content owners to sell content online and charge very small amounts (micropayments) for it.

It’s simple to set up – site owners add some code to their blog template – and then both pay-as-you-go and contract mobile phone users can purchase the right to view protected content via their mobile phone credit.

Purchasers enter their mobile phone number online, receive a PIN via SMS, then enter the code online in order to read the content. It’s supposed to be much quicker, and more secure, than messing around with credit card payments, even via a service such as PayPal. read more

With the war over blogging apps slowly cooling down, it looks like BlogSpot fans have yet another premium option to choose for their beloved iPhones.

Created by Kiloton Applications, altBlogger provides a simply way for Blogger users to publish text entries to their blogs, as well as check who has posted a comment on their blog. read more

Automaticc’s Matt Mullenweg appeared on stage, together with Microsoft’s CTO Ray Ozzie during their Professional Developers Conference. Ray was talking about Microsoft’s latest foray into the cloud computing niche called WindowsAzure.

According to reports, WindowsAzure will let Microsoft’s corporate clients to write code on a cloud-based OS running on Microsoft’s data centers. WindowsAzure is about to go live sometime in January. It’s obviously a paid service which will have business corporations as the main clients.

But what was Matt’s business there? read more

The company behind TypePad today announced the launch of an official AVATAR online community, in collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox, a month ahead of the release of James Cameron’s film on 18 December.

avatar.typepad.com offers fans a central place to read AVATAR-themed microblogs, other content from around the web, behind-the-scenes video, and integration with Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other social sites.

Simulating Twitter and Facebook, but in an AVATAR themed environment, users can sign up and then follow other members, share notes, photos and videos. They can also create AVATAR blogs. read more

After the disappointment surrounding the withdrawal of many international Twitter SMS services due to exorbitant costs, it seems that UK mobile operators are helping them to bounce back.

Both Vodafone and O2 have offered SMS-to-Twitter services to their UK users in the past year, and now Orange is introducing MMS-to-Twitter.

MMS, or picture messaging as it’s colloquially called, will allow Orange users to send images directly to the Twitter service, via the newly-created Snapshot web site. read more

Of course you all know who we refer to as the father of the web, right? – The one and only Sir Tim Berners – Lee. Berners-Lee is set to go on a trip to Africa, particularly Kenya and Uganda, to meet with several government leaders, educators and development workers. Part of the discussions that will be held during the meetings will be on various local web initiatives relating to health and education.

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