Greg Oden, widely considered one of basketball’s greatest big man prospects, has launched his personal blog at Yardbarker.com. Oden, who earned All American honors as a freshman at Ohio State, will share his daily life experiences and answer questions from fans as he prepares for the 2007 NBA Draft as well as competes during the 2007-08 basketball season.
“The idea of connecting directly with fans made the Yardbarker opportunity very appealing to me,” Oden said. “No matter what happens in the draft I will be going through some dramatic changes in my life. I thought it would be fun to share those experiences with the fans and learn a little bit more about them too.”
Despite playing the 2006-07 season with an injured right hand, Oden established himself as the most dominant post player in college basketball, leading Ohio State to a 35-4 record, a Big Ten title and a berth in the national championship game. With his intimidating presence on defense, Oden has often been compared to Hall of Fame center Bill Russell.
“Greg Oden is pioneering the next wave of sports media,” Yardbarker Co-Founder Pete Vlastelica said. “The intimacy and sincerity of what he writes, and the access he gives his fans by actually responding to their comments, are unprecedented in professional sports. Greg is going to make it very difficult for anyone who reads his blog to root against him. We are very proud to be working with him.”
Last year, Willos Web raised USD $7,737.00 for their charity. An Indian Summer was honored as the Best Non-Fiction Blog during the Blogathon for blogging about her cancer. So You Want to Murder a Racecar Driver… got a lot of attention and won the Best Fiction Writing for their blog mystery novel. The Best Food Blog in the Blogathon went to In The Kitchen With Moozie, showing you a little of the amazing diversity of all the different bloggers involved. This year, the number of blogging participants is expected to be bigger than ever.
I’ve helped out a lot of bloggers during past Blogathons, which resulted in How Not to Blog in a Blogathon Blog. So I thought I’d share some tips to help you prepare for this year’s Blogathon. read more
WordPress wins the Webware 100 Competition. The WordPress Plugins and Sandbox WordPress Theme Competitions are rocking. The count down to WordCamp is on and we’re planning on tracking Andy Skelton as he rides his motorcycle on a 7,000 mile trip to the weekend conference. WordPress 2.2.1 Release Candidate has been released. And a wild GPS, hiking adventure for WordPress goodies turns into a great outdoor adventure for many! The summer fun with WordPress silliness has just begun! read more
Because not all books are created equal. We present a book by a blogger on the subject of blogging, writing, or business that is self-published or published by a small, independent publisher.
Before I read the business fable, GUST, I knew that office politics existed. I had determined I couldn’t avoid or resist being part of the “body politic.” What I didn’t have was a clue about how it worked, nor had I really tried to make sense of it.
This book did both for me. Inside this book, you’ll find
Three key things people manipulate and fight over in organizations — Resouces, People, and Information
Three kinds of politicians, and how to handle each one
Six core motivations of political behavior
Uses (and misuses) of influence in an organization
Hows and whys of strategizing an appropriate response to a political situation
Considerations of timing, passion, and support into your political actions
Executives’ roles in influencing (and correcting) office politics
Assessments for determining how political your organization really is.
At times the story bends to fit the content. It needs to — no company is quite that dysfunctional all at once – AND that’s what gives this volume a place in my top drawer. Every office politician I’ve ever met is in it and Tim Johnson offers a way to handle each individual . . . um er . . . colleague’s needs with finesse. GUST is worth picking up. just for that.
Pupils at a primary school in the county of East Dunbartonshire, Scotland, are adopting blogging as a way of improving how they learn, and as a way of communicating with other schools around the United Kingdom and Europe.
They are involved in blogging, and creating podcasts, including recording themselves speaking French. It aids their learning as they are able to download their own audio files at home to listen again to their work.
Joining top executive bloggers such as Mark Cuban, Jonathan Schwartz, and David Sifry, Bodog Entertainment founder and noted billionaire Calvin Ayre launched his blog today at CalvinAyre.com.
The blog features loads of insider video content and Ayre’s musings on free enterprise, philanthropy, and the internet’s impact on global business. In candid form, Ayre offers commentary on developments in gaming, mixed martial arts, music and Bodog’s entire global entertainment business.
“Visitors to my new blog will find some pretty cool behind-the-scenes video with inside takes on the global leaders, celebrities, and beautiful women I meet,” says Ayre. “The Calvin Ayre MySpace Page has been so incredible I decided to start a more official blog to share my globetrotting adventures personally.”
Forbes Magazine dubs Ayre as someone who has gotten very rich by taking illegal bets over the internet.
If you post your pictures on the Web, odds are that you are already well aware of the challenges in protecting them. Without some measure of protection, anyone who visits your site can simply right click the image, do a “save as” and post it to their site.
Worse yet, many will not bother to save the image and, instead, will just copy the URL and paste it to their site. This not only plagiarizes your image, but robs you of your bandwidth and money.
But what is most frightening is that, unlike text plagiarism, image theft is not easily detected by search engines. As of right now, there is no free, easy and effective way to search for duplicates of your image should you want to check for plagiarism.
Given the amount of time and effort that can go into an image it is more important than ever to take precautions to ensure that the work does not get misused.
I came across a problem recently concerning my Blogging. It was going downhill and fast, but I was in denial. What was the problem? A lack of organization and focus. I thought it might be useful to tell you how I identified the problem, and more importantly, how I fixed it.
Each month, Performancing releases an über-cool free wordpress theme intended for bloggers who wish to make a statement. This June, you can make an even stronger statement with the latest PhotoPress theme for WordPress. As they say: a picture paints a thousand words.
Have you ever wanted to display your pictures in a photoblog without sidebar uglification? Well, that was the motivation behind Photopress; a one column WordPress theme specifically designed for photoblogs. With Photopress you can display large 640px width images without any clutter; perfect for the 640×480 landscape standard.
If you want your photos to be front and center on your photo blog, with little interference from your WordPress theme, then Photopress is the theme for you.
Last year, 
