Technical Issues, Mostly Resolved

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As you might have noticed, The Blog Herald haven’t been feeling well lately. Database errors, too much load on the server, things like that have been plaguing us. Yesterday, a lot of work was put in by the tech staff, and hopefully things will run more smoothly from now on. There are still some kinks we’re looking at though, so bear with us.

Another step to further improve the site will be taken shortly. We’re working on the new design, giving better focus on the content, and in other ways make your stay with us here better. More on that later.

For now, we apologize for the inconvenience our technical issues might have caused you, and thank you for your patience.

Welcome to A New BlogHerald

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When Splashpress acquired the BlogHerald some six months ago, there were some changes that we planned on implementing, and I’m happy today to report that much of that is going to fruition today. Coupled with a new theme, courtesy of Brian Gardner, you can expect a renewed focus on all things blogging.

Our news coverage will cover redouble on events that are happening in and throughout the blogosphere, blogging networks, and how blogging is affecting the world at large.

Our featured posts will refocus on things that will also have special relevance for bloggers, including new categories and topics, such as blog design, blog monetization, and the legal aspects of blogging.

During the week we’ll be working out a few kinks, with J. Angelo (assistant editor) and Brian Gardner (wordpress theme ninja) working in the background to iron them all out, so if you happen to notice a few odd things please be patient.   As always, let us know how we’re doing because we look forward to producing some great content for you.

Cheers
Tony Hung // editor

BlogHerald Update: Upgrading Our Spam Killing Powers

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Hi folks,

Just wanted to let you all know that we have installed Bad Behaviour 2 to enhance the BlogHerald’s comment and trackback spam killing powers. The BlogHerald gets a lot of spam, and most of it is caught by Akismet and Spam Karma 2 — but these two agents together aren’t perfect.

We are loathe to get in the way of a perfectly good conversation, so we are not installing (nor hopefully ever) captcha’s, human testing elements, closing down old comments, or any combination of the above at the moment.

But if you happen to notice your comments now being flagged as spam — or, your comments mysteriously disappearing, its only because the BlogHerald’s spam killing powers have increased, and may flag a few comments that are genuinely not spam.

In that case, please email us at editor [at] blogherald [dot] com and let us know that something is amiss and we’ll try and remedy it pronto.

Alternatively, if you happen to notice a comment that is clearly spam comment spam / trackback spam before *we* do, we’d love to know about it as well; again, please use the same email address to let us know.

Thanks again,

Tony Hung, ed.

Splashpress Acquires 901am

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There was a brief post over at 901am.com yesterday by “admin” announcing the acquisition of 910am.com by Splashpress Media, the owners of the Blog Herald-:

We are pleased to announced that Splashpress Media has acquired 901am.com. We remain committed in bringing new media news throughout the day. We are currently working on moving the site to a new server. Thank you for your patience.

What has been missing from this announcement and its aftermath, as one would usually expect, is any word from David Krug himself. In this light, Splashpress have asked me to release the following statement-:

In the aftermath of the 901am.com sale, Splashpress would like to take the opportunity to thank David Krug for the marvellous job he did in building 901am.com and in such a short period. We believe the site still has great potential to grow and to dominate the niche that covers new media news. We are happy to announce that Minic Rivera, contributor at the Blog Herald and former editor of the Blogging Times, has agreed to be editor of 901am. And last, but not least, we would like to wish David Krug a speedy recovery, as he has been unwell now for a few weeks. Please join us in our prayers for him.

No doubt more news will follow on this.

The Blog Herald Shop Is Back Online

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The Blog Herald Shop had been offline for the past couple of months. Since we moved to our new servers, we couldn’t quite get the associate-o-matic code to work, and admittedly we’ve been busy focusing on making great content. But not wanting to see such a great resource put to waste, we’ve put some elbow grease into it (silly us, it just involved a few minutes’ effort modifying some Apache settings), and we’re proud to announce that the Blog Herald Shop is now back online.

The Shop is basically a collection of merchandise that we think might be of interest to bloggers. These include books about blogging, podcasting, and other new media. And then of course there are the other gadgetry and other publications that you might consider cool. For instance, there’s the set of books about blogging and podcasting, and the Web Marketing books that can help you start your way to earning millions off the Web. Or perhaps we can interest you to a Wired subscription. Or maybe you need some new spiffy accessories for your laptop.

Some of these items are hand-picked by us (with some dating back to the previous editorial teams), while some are automatically-generated through relevant keywords.

The Blog Herald Shop can be accessed at www.blogherald.com/shop/shop.php

So Who Do Japanese Bloggers Like Best?

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Still on the topic of The Blog Herald Japan and our subsequent, unique glimpse into Japanese blogosphere, we’ve had a little internal search to see which posts from BH that have been translated have proved most popular, and thus which of our resident Blog Herald bloggers are most appealing to Japanese blogging tastes.

And we have a clear winner: Lorelle VanFossen!! Japan’s No.1 Social Bookmarking site is Hatena Bookmark and users are bookmarking The Blog Herald Japan there.

The most linked post, by Lorelle, is “It’s Catching: Blog Disease“, translated- here. A Japanese blogger wrote a parody version: “Hatena Bookmark Disease“, crediting Lorelle and The Blog Herald Japan with the original version. And this has proved by far the most popular post translated so far. Lorelle’s other posts also get to 2nd and 3rd in the rankings when compared to other translated columns, with Derek following in fourth.

Well done, Lorelle!!

Should You Consider Human Translation For Your Blog?

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Like many other blog owners, we’ve been having severe problems with automated translation tools, particularly Angsuman translator in our case–where either blank pages appear or one gets this message from Google:

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

[Read more…]

A Word About Comments Here At The BlogHerald

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Just a quick word about comments.  We like comments.  We welcome all kinds of opinions and thought.  But we get a lot of comment spam, here at the BlogHerald.  We’ve got Akismet and Spam Karma 2 working over time to catch spam, but sometimes it gets a little overzealous and catches stuff it shouldn’t.  We don’t, as a rule, delete anything except if it is spam, or unless it is clearly offensive and inappropriate, such as material that is abusive, is off topic, promotes hate of any kind or uses excessively foul language.

Otherwise, we let people say what they want to say.

I felt it was necessary to draw up a few thoughts on the issue, particularly because we *do* delete stuff on occasion and I wanted you all to know under what conditions we actually do it.

If you feel like your comments are not showing up, it may because it has been erroneously flagged as spam, or is held in moderation; please email us at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to sort it out.

For the “official” comments policy, head over here.

Cheers,
Tony

Irrasshaimase! The Blog Herald Japan Debuts!!

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Did you know that English isn’t the biggest language in the Blogosphere? According to some data, courtesy of Technorati, Japanese might be the biggest language in the blogosphere! Records show that in 2006 Japanese accounted for 37%, while English only accounted for 31% of the language posted in the blogosphere.

So, in an effort to make the Blog Herald a little more global, and to align with the largest non-English speaking audience in the blogosphere, we’ve released a Japanese version of the Blog Herald at //jp.blogherald.com. No, we haven’t just run our content through Babelfish — we’re partnering with Ioix to humanly translate our most important articles into Japanese, over at The Blog Herald Japan. We currently have over 100 articles ready, and each new article gets translated in less than a day.

We believe that our stable of writers have a lot to offer, from Scott Karp‘s thoughtful posts on the blogging and new media, to Lorelle Van Fossen‘s must-read musings on WordPress, to Amit Agarwal‘s weekly productivity tips. And we think that non-English reading audiences would enjoy them as well.

To that end, look for other international, humanly translated versions of the Blog Herald to compliment The Blog Herald Japan– to be released in the near future.

Oyasuminasai! (well, its late evening as I’m writing this, anyway!)

Minic Rivera Joins The Blog Herald!

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As astute Blog Herald watchers may have already picked up, Minic Rivera has joined the Blog Herald as a daily writer. Minic has previously worked as a reporter and research editor for a major newspaper in Manilla, Philippines. But to the blogosphere, he may be more well known for his blogging efforts at The Blogging Times, where he worked as the chief editor and writer. Currently, Minic also blogs at Webby Reporter (www.webbyreporter.com).

Welcome aboard, Minic!