For most bloggers, finding story ideas is one of the hardest parts of maintaining a blog and it is something that becomes increasingly important important, though much more difficult, the more topical your site is.

Fortunately, the Web provides many great ways to keep on top of what is going on in your field, if you know how to use the tools that are available.

For me, the trick has never been to find the one best way to get new story ideas, but to but open up a wide variety of communication lines. Though my system is not perfect and I continue to miss stories from time to time, I also have a backlog of about three weeks forth of topics in my notebook.

That is because finding story ideas, for most niches, is fairly simple. It is just a matter of knowing where to look. read more

While my blogs have experienced some community link love, I’ve never been fortunate enough to have the Digg-effect overload my server like a Ritalin kid on crack sugar. I can tell you that one social site that has never sent me an iota of traffic is Reddit. Perhaps their algorithms simply don’t like me - or maybe my content just sucks. I’ll let you decide.

Showing my objective-nature, I will not hold a grudge and will tell you about Reddit’s much-needed, well overdue redesign (the first such change since 2005).

The gang at Mashable have outlined the notable changes:

- The top navigation bar has been re-styled, and now includes a link to the site’s “most controversial” stories (stories with both a lot of up and down votes).

- On the right, you can now customize Reddit based on the topics you want aggregated on your homepage. Just check and un-check the categories you want included/removed.

- Links for creating your own Reddit and submitting a link to the site are much more obvious (also on the right sidebar)

- Story links have been re-styled – it’s not a dramatic change, but it’s easier on the eyes and includes links to comments, saving, hiding, and reporting.

One thing is dramatically clear: Reddit is easier on the eyes. Since I don’t expect the site to suddenly fall in love with my content, I’ll chalk this up to putting some makeup on an average looking woman.

Has anyone out there ever experienced a bump in traffic from Reddit?

Here’s a list of ideas I’ve had over the past year or so while using social news sites. Most of them are ideas that I think would improve sites like Digg, Netscape and Reddit in one way or another. Admittedly, one or two of them would just be interesting to see implemented on an experimental level. Either way, feel free to rip each and every one to bits.

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The principle of transparency is regarded by many to be necessary in a successful democracy. Every day, people are demanding more transparency out of the media, business and government. Socially driven news sites are a step in that direction. They offer a level playing field where users come to edit news democratically. What role does transparency play in the users’ actions on these sites?

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On Friday, The Huffington Post quietly slid their foot in the door of socially driven news by launching a public beta of HuffIt. Insert obligatory glue-huffing joke here. read more

With a new year comes new opportunities and a chance to set goals for the year to come. Here is a grab-bag of new year’s resolutions for Netscapers, Diggers, Redditers, etc. If everyone took on a couple of these, the world of socially driven news would be a better place by the end of 2007. read more