At the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) this weekend in Chicago, the famous Left Thumb Blogger, Glenda Watson Hyatt of the Do It Myself Blog rocked the attendees world with her powerful How POUR is Your Blog presentation, reminding us that if our blogs don’t meet web standards for accessibility, it could be disabled.

Glenda’s powerful presentation wasn’t the typical dry stuff of web accessibility. Dry? Boring? That’s not possible with Glenda around. She has a wicked sense of humor and used it in her PowerPoint presentation, accompanied by her voice program, Kate, which read her presentation out loud. I’ve never laughed so hard over such a serious subject as web accessibility.

Glenda has cerebral palsy. It restricts her movement and speech but it doesn’t impact her intelligence, though many have labeled her otherwise in the past. In her book, I’ll Do It Myself, she shared the trials and tribulations as well as the challenges of being a highly intellectual woman trapped in a body that just can’t keep up. I highlighted Glenda in How WordPress Changes Lives, showcasing how WordPress changed her life by giving her a voice that connects with people around the world through her blog.

One of the great points she made was on how to justify using ALT attributes in your blog images: read more

Do you measure your blog progress and celebrate your milestones? One of the things I like to do with my coaching and authority blogger course customers is to remind them of their goals and their progress against them. This can be very rewarding and motivational, but also sometimes we forget how we started out and the memories along the way. read more

Blog directory Blogged.com is expanding its offerings with a slew of new features designed to help bloggers drive traffic to their sites.

I first learned about Blogged last year when I received an e-mail telling me that my primary blog had received an “Editor’s Review” rating of 7.7. Not too shabby. Blog Herald boasts an impressive 9.7!

Aside from pro reviews, the community can also write thoughts about what they think of your blog. The site lets users search for blogs or blog posts, all while pulling your feed and assigning tags to each blog.

Some of the Blogged 2.0 features include… read more

Duncan Riley’s site The Inquisitr is 1 year (and a day as I’m writing this) old, and it appears as if the goals were met. Just read this paragraph from Duncan’s post on the matter:

As I type this post, Google Analytics says we’ve delivered 13,059,144 page views in our first 12 months. The real figure is probably around 13.3 million, as we’re missing about a weeks worth of stats from various periods, but I’m happy with 13 million none the less. Our other vital stats: Alexa 11,341, Technorati: 225, Compete: 3,907, Quantcast: 1,756, Australian Blog index: 2, Australian startup index: 8.

Very nice, happy birthday then!

Be sure to check out the post on Paul Short joining as a permanent writer, with quotes from both him and Duncan.

Zemanta will give away $6,000 to the most blogged about charities during May as part of the Blogging For a Cause challenge.

Three grand will come from the prize money Zemanta won at the Change The Web Challenge last week, while the other half will come from partner Weber Shandwick’s Social Innovation Greenhouse.

Zemanta’s CEO, Ales Spetic, said, “It doesn’t matter what you normally blog about, we want you to write at least one post this month about the cause or charity that matters the most to you. read more

Disqus is a hosted comments solution, a popular one at that. What it does is that it replaces the comment functionality on your blog (or site for that matter) with a hosted one, which means that people can sign in with one username, and you get a lot of cool features without having to mess with plugins or code on your own.

The Mini-Profiles is pretty cool, but the killer feature is the Twitter sign in, available thanks to the new OAuth support (for you techies). Not only can you sign in with Twitter, you can also synch your commenting with your tweets, which is cool. Check out the Disqus blog post for more, or try it out yourself on any of these blogs.

You might remember that MTV Multiplayer went on hiatus since its lead writer Stephen Totilo joined Gawker instead. Well, now MTV’s popular videogame blog is back, sort of, temporarily run by Tracey John, who’s been around for some time. A larger announcement is due this week, I wonder who they’ve recruited?

In “Five Tips for Composing a More Effective Social Networking Bio” by Maria Langer of Maria’s Guides, she asks if your social media bio is really saying what you want it to say and makes a good point:

Your bio is your primary way to tell people who don’t know you what you’re all about. If they’re heard about you from someone else or stumbled upon one of your Twitter tweets or Facebook wall posts, they might be interested in learning more. They might even want to become your . . . wait for it . . . friend.

…Think of your bio as bait on a fishing line. Who will it attract? But, at the same time, how many people will ultimately be disappointed by the mismatch between what your bio says about you and who you really are?

She includes some basic tips for creating a virtual biography such as be brief, accurate, meaningful, careful with word choice, and avoiding really personal and private information, but let’s take the picture you paint of yourself online in these various sharing outlets a step farther.

What is most important for you to share publicly? read more

This week Gizmodo takes one small step for man, one giant leap for the blogosphere.

Astronaut Leroy Chiao, who has flown on the Space Shuttle three times, is blogging during a five-day mission for NASA.

I’ve blogged from some weird places (weddings, funerals, the bathroom) – but this takes the cake – Astroblogging! read more

The Webby Awards winners were revealed today in a wide range of categories, including websites, online film and video, interactive advertising, and mobile websites.

Webby Person of the Year goes to Jimmy Fallon who broke new ground by using the Internet to hone his late-night-hosting chops before the TV launch of his talk show. He became one of the most ardent online evangelists interacting with fans through his blog and Twitter, inviting feedback on his skits, and even hosting a contest that allowed fans to select the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon logo.

As expected, Webby Breakout of the Year goes to Twitter, which has grown by 900% in the last year alone.

A full list of winners can be found at WebbyAwards.com.