The Blog - Go Retro! is a tribute to days gone by. The blog focuses on pop culture from the 1940s through the 1980s.
The Blogger - GoRetroGirl was born in the early 1970s. She is doing her part to preserve the memory of people, places, and things from the pop culture past so that they can be appreciated by future generations.
A Post We Luv - Classic Sweet Treat - The history of Sweethearts, the Valentine’s Day candy we all know and love.
10 Questions with Maxwell of Latest PSP News
1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
Life is beautiful - isn’t it? There are so many things to enjoy, so sometimes you don’t even know what to do because you want to do everything :) One such thing for me is video games. I like it… No! I REALLY like to play games. PSP games are the one I’m interested the most. That’s why I’ve started my blog - everyone should enjoy this great console.
2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
LEGO Indiana Jones US Version - Enjoy great adventures!
3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
Me and others? Everyone is apart - everyone is a unique one - that’s the reason!
4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
Em… i think it was 3 years ago.. thanks to Google ;)
5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
Spam! Spam is the biggest pet peeve - sometimes it get’s too annoying…
6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
Is there one? Never knew that :)
7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
I choose Qui-Gon Jinn - I like him. Why? It cannot be fully described with words. You must feel the Force to understand it.
8. How has blogging made you a better person?
One thing I know for sure - it teaches about what other people need.
9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
An open mind is the main tip - Think, think and think once again!!
10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
John Chow dot Com - example of the rule ”Think, think, and think once again!” - great results!
The Blog – The Date Girl Diaries is the personal journal of a single girl in California. You’ll read all about her search for true love and the successes and failures she meets along the way.
The Blogger – Known only as Date Girl, she prefers to blog anonymously.
A Post We Luv - The Drunk Dial – Date Girl receives a late night phone call from Birthday Twin, a guy that she is incredibly close to but can’t have in a relationship context.
Ten Questions with Karen of Europe A La Carte
1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
The Europe a la Carte blog is part of my UK based travel business, focusing on authentic travel in Europe on a modest budget. I feature travel deals, accommodation, less well known destinations, guest interviews, travel tips, site reviews etc. My blog aims to inform, inspire and entertain readers who love travel in Europe.
2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
No place for good advice on the web
3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
I’m an independent blogger who wants to write posts about travel in Europe that readers will find useful rather than writing for search engine optimisation and trying to attract attention in social media sites. My blog has perform a balancing act of attracting and retaining readers through content which also increases traffic and revenue for my site, through clicks on adverts or affiliate links. I have to see a return on the investment of time spend on the blog but if I write constant sales pitches no one will read the blog.
4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
I received an email from a business studies student asking for help with research for her dissertation about travel business blogs in Autumn 2006. Until then I thought that blogs were the online diaries of teenage geeks. I read up about business blogs and it was all so positive that I launched my blog in October 2006.
5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
The fact the blog which are part of a network ie B5 media or Boots n All immediately have a head start in rankings over an independent blogger such as myself. I started as editor of the Wandalust UK travel blog in March 2008, which is part of the Creative Weblogging network of 130 blog.
6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
Wordpress blogging platform which I use for Europe a la Carte, Wandalust uses Movable Type and it’s awful. Wordpress is much more stable and easier to use. My son recommended and installed a self hosted Wordpress blog when I started blogging.
7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
Jan Morris the travel writer. I totally agree with her sentiment, “The best way to find out about a place is wander around. Wander around, alone, with all your antennae out thinking about what’s happening and what you see and what you feel.”
8. How has blogging made you a better person?
Not sure if it’s made me a better person, just different. Well I reckon I’ve become a confirmed blogaholic as I write 3 blogs now, Europe a la Carte, Wandalust and Business Blog Boost about the benefits of blogging for your business. That takes up a lot of my time. I feel that I live part of my life in a virtual world and I’ve made lots of virtual friends and contacts in the blogosphere. Unfortunately it means I’ve less time for “real” contact with family and friends. I’m not a very techie person. Our son a computing student looks after my IT. He’s tried to set it up to be as simple as possible for me to do things myself. However it has been really hard for me to do things like get to grips with basic html. To be a successful independent blogger it would be great to be more IT literate.
9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
Dedication and perseverance. Blogging for your business can really boost your business without spending a lot of money but you will require to invest a lot of time and effort. You have to participate in the blogoshpere, read and comment at other blogs. network and promote your blog.
10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
Travel Rants is an independent blog written for the UK travel consumer and it’s a great forum for consumers to air their concerns over travel related issues. Travel Rants was recently voted best consumer travel blog in the Travolution awards. The founder and editor Darren Cronian adheres to the ideals of the blogosphere by intervening on consumers behalf with travel companies and promoting other travel blogs, while holding down a full time job.
Ten Questions with Payne by Name
1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
Payne by name charts the weekly highs and lows of a typical 30-something British male. It’s peppered with insightful, entertaining, albeit sometimes totally un-PC observations and musings of life today. PBN doesn’t hold back, he readily opens up his life (and his head) to the unsuspecting reader who quickly gets to know in passing his views on all number of diverse topics. The prose is light, though not unintelligent or lightweight, and while some will be daunted by the sheer length of his entries, those that are capable of reading more than one paragraph will find treasure hidden there.
2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
http://www.paynebyname.com/page16.htm
3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
Honesty and sincerity. A belief that content is ultimately more important than presentation.
4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
It was at the end of 2005 when a work colleague bought me a ‘create your own website’ package. To be honest it was one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given. Something that gave me a voice and an online presence.
5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
The reverse chronological order of a blog. You randomly stumble on a blog and have to gauge whether to invest the time reading more by the very last entry. You are then basically reading everything in reverse. What I like about my site is you can go straight to categories such as movies, women, relationships to get an idea of the kind of person I am and then if interested can tackle the journals.
Also the whole tally of comments and hit counters one-upmanship. It’s almost like the amount of either determines whether someone should read your blog. In reality though it’s the most popular ones that don’t have the time to genuinely interact or connect with others. They might be entertaining but they are almost run more like a business than the musings of a genuine person.
6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
This is where I demonstrate my lack of knowledge. I work on my site and web surfing at work so don’t really use any of the above.
7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
Never sure about the whole guest blogging thing. If the blog is meant to be your online presence or persona then getting someone else to do it seems wrong. From a purely selfish point of view it would probably be Sylvester Stallone. I find he is much misunderstood and dismissed by too many kudos seeking, chin rubbers. Whenever I’ve seen him interviewed he comes across as intelligent, funny and self effacing. Yet many want to label him a fool to curry favour with those individuals equally unwilling to give someone a chance. I think his blog entry would be fascinating.
8. How has blogging made you a better person?
I think it’s helped my writing and it’s given me a place that I can say to people if you genuinely want to know me then paynebyname is me. So many people on the web are insincere or want to paint a false picture of themselves. My site is me, warts and all. Some will like and some will not but at least it’s an accurate representation of my thoughts and opinions.
9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger.
Write more about yourself and don’t be afraid to open up. People want to feel a connection when reading a blog so you need to engage them with from the heart stuff. Also if you going to have comments enabled, take the time to reply to them otherwise it’s clear that you only have them for ego massage.
10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
I read Kentucky Girl a lot. It’s well presented and well written. It probably isn’t that unique but that’s what is at the heart of blogging. I don’t read certain blogs because I want others to see that I read the ‘coolest’ blogs. I just want to keep up with genuine nice people. Kentucky Girl is one of them. She sometimes contributes to a blog review site and along with others caned me when I submitted my site for review some time back. Unlike so many others though she took the time to look below the surface and beyond the fact that it didn’t conform to the normal blog format. After a year of keeping a watching brief she contacted me.
One has a website / blog for some kind of approval that maybe you aren’t that bad a person. Her eventual appreciation of my site and in turn me as a person was a shining moment for the notion that someone had understood me and validation for all my efforts.
10 Questions with Mitchell of Juiced Sports Blog
1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
It’s a sports blog with three writers who all try to be funny. I try to be controversial as well, and some of my posts like “Virginia Tech: Not America’s Team” have really pissed some people off, but that’s just from me expressing my opinion. We try not to do the same damn thing as every other sports blog, so a lot of the posts are “out there.” I often mix sports with politics, for example.
2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
Here’s the Virginia Tech post: Stop Supporting Those Trendy Causes. I was sick of ESPN commentators talking about how VT’s football team needed to win to rebuild the school. The massacre was terrible, but it had nothing to do with sports! Even worse, VT was playing LSU, a team that ESPN crowned “America’s Team,” after Katrina, and New Orleans was still in bad shape, so wouldn’t LSU still need to win to rebuild LSU? According to ESPN, anyway. Unfortunately, the comments didn’t get imported when I moved from Blogger to Wordpress.
3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
Just look at the post above. Not many other bloggers would write that even if they thought it. Also, that post is pretty long. All of our posts are longer than regular blog posts. I don’t like reading a 2 paragraph post that just links back to a news story, and I think my readers would like more as well. That’s why JSB writes long and original content.
4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
When I was like 13, five years ago, I read Maddox.xmission.com and thought he was hilarious, so I decided to start my own blog and found Blogger. I didn’t update it very often, but then I started writing sports for various websites, then I started my sports blog last year when the fantasy football site that paid me went under. I saw that you could make money from a blog through John Chow, so then I started my own blog.
5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
Blogs that don’t add value. Often you will see a blog that has one or two paragraphs about a big story that everyone is already talking about then it will just link to the news source. Great, I already know about that story. I got into the blogging biz to entertain my readers and give them something to think about. I hope that each post they read is worth their time.
6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live
without.
Is StumbleUpon a service? They offer the best quality visitors of any social media site. Their visitors stay longer and view more pages than average visitors, and the traffic continues coming forever, though it dies down after a few days of Stumbling.
7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
Frank Deford. He went into journalism writing news but then he started doing a lot of sports writing when he started writing for Sports Illustrated. He comes from a better time when journalism had values. Sports writers traveled with the team and respected the athletes. They wouldn’t take a single quote and twist it out of context for instant gratification.
8. How has blogging made you a better person?
It has taught me a lot about marketing and promoting. Not sure how that makes me a “better person,” but it is good experience for future jobs or whatever I end up doing. I don’t think blogging has made me a “better person,” I just try to be as good of a person as I can be day in and day out.
9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
Unfortunately, it is not always true that content is king. Marketing is king. You can have the best content, but if no one knows you have it, you won’t build readers. It’s like if John Chow writes a post on the side of a tree in the forest, will anyone read it? Well, now that I invoke John Chow, now, he doesn’t have good content either, does he? He used to.
10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it
unique?
Mixed Market Arts with Colin LaHay. It’s another make money blog, but LaHay is young, and his blog is new, so he still has good content. He doesn’t update every day, but that means that when he does update he usually has good content. For example, he has found a lot of places to build links that I haven’t heard of anywhere else.
10 Questions with Hibs Blogger of Hibs Blog
1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
News and views about Hibernian Football Club. It’s been running a short while now and is getting more popular every day. I try to update it as regularly as possible to keep it fresh and interesting.
2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
George Foulkes’ Buffoonery
3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
My subject matter is unique. There are no other active Hibs blogs.
4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
Having read other people’s badly written rants, I eventually decided to do my own.
5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
Spam, spammers, not having enough readers, the usual stuff really.
6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
Wordpress Sitemap Generator - geeky huh?
7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
Franck Sauzee - Hibs legend. Selfish reasons, it would mean I might get to speak to the great man.
8. How has blogging made you a better person?
It keeps me out of the pub.
9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
Write regularly and don’t be scared to promote your blog in any way you can.
10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
The Tears of a Clown - unique because I know him personally.
10 Questions with Olivia of High Culture on a Low Budget
1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
As a former employee of the fine arts and a lifetime traveler, I often find that culture and hopping a plane/train go hand in hand (for me at least). Yet I also hate the misconception that the fine arts are for fine budgets. So when I got into travel writing, I really strove to make the “other” side of high culture known to people going through Europe on a shoestring budget. There are cheap opera tickets, free days at the museum, public concerts, etc., and High Culture on a Low Budget is a haven for all of those goodies (plus the occasional splurge). In addition to being breathlessly plugged-in, it has also recently launched weekly columns for travel playlists from some of the best-known travelers, ask a local Q&As, and cheap dates for the weekend warriors.
2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
That may have to be my first post, which was Vienna’s Universitat Grosser Festaal with its gorgeous Klimt ceilings. I love Vienna; if I had to live in one city for the rest of my life I’d park my derriere on Mariahilferstrasse and be quite happy. And, since the University is closed to the public, you kind of have to use some fancy footwork to get in there. I’m all about being a little sneaky to get some great art. However, my most popular post remains the Paris: Opera Garnier and Beyond so I guess I did something right there, too—I’ve been told your most popular posts are generally the ones that are most “you” (as it were).
3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
I used “blow job” in tandem with a post on a Polish art gallery. Take that, Fodors. Like I said, I try to give high culture a spin for the Gen X and Gen Y crowds. We didn’t necessarily grow up with weekends at the philharmonic or afternoons at the museum. So it’s about making that part as exciting as the part where you can do it all on 10 Euro.
4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
I think like most teenagers in my generation, I must have played around with Blogger in high school. But my first major blog was started when I moved to Italy. It was an easy way for me to keep in touch with my friends (all five of them) and to get in daily writing exercises. I wound up getting some recognition for it in the blogosphere and in the Rome edition of Metro for having a no-holds-barred view of my travels (including a few wild nights around Europe). I had fun with that for about a year before turning to service-oriented travel blogging.
5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the Internet?
“Or the Internet?” Wow, that’s a wide range. I’m going to go with Tila Tequila here. Seriously. What the hell? Another pet peeve I have as a writer is how easily others can rip off your work and how flimsy your side of the argument holds up without any hard copy proof. I’ve pitched via e-mail to outlets that have in turn rejected me and then assigned my story idea to an in-house writer. I’ve seen some of my posts (which, in the interest of full disclosure, will occasionally include sentences lifted from press releases, event details, etc. Which, coming from a PR background, I can tell you is exactly what they’re there for) lifted into other blogs and websites. That sort of pettiness frustrates me, but you learn to develop a thick skin.
6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can’t live without.
I’m addicted to my WordPress blog stats page. It helps me figure out what I did on what day to make my hits jump (or plummet), I can monitor which posts are the most popular over time (which is what led to the playlist inception). And it also helps me monitor where I get my incoming links, etc. It’s a pretty simple service, but one that helps a great deal.
7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
I’m kind of with Barry (of Inn of the Last Home) on this one; HC/LB is my baby and I’m a little protective of it. I’m the mommy that will listen to the advice from other mommies on the playground, but the minute one of them tries to otherwise shape my kid directly, I’ll probably be the one smacking her down in the sandbox with my tweed handbag and leather boots. I am, however, all for interviews and guest contributions (vis-à-vis playlists) to my blog, and I have a long wish-list for travel mix-masters for the latter. Off the top of my head: Anthony Bourdain, Cedric Klapisch, Barack Obama, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Julie Delphy, Eric Ripert, the folks at Hidden Europe magazine, Takahashi Murakami, Tim Gunn…they all travel, right?
8. How has blogging made you a better person?
It’s taught me about the communal/community aspects of writing. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. And my straw reaches across the room, and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake. Oh, wait, I think that may have been how oil has made me a better person. But there are some communal/community aspects of writing that can only be learned through blogging, I believe. It creates a dialogue that can go almost instantaneously between blogger and readership, and that encourages honesty and authenticity from bloggers. I always take the extra five minutes to make sure I’m giving out the right information; I’m not too proud to e-mail an institution or put off a post to make sure it’s on pitch (as it were). And then I drink your milkshake.
9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
Discipline. If you say you’re going to blog every day, blog every day. That doesn’t mean that each post has to be on par with Hemingway or Tolstoy, but you’ll get in the groove of writing on a set basis and it will make the process much more natural and easy. If you’re blogging to further your writing career, this sort of daily exercise will help you exponentially. Also, look for ways to make your blog engage with your readership if you are looking to build a large fan base. Starting this month (April), I’ve been emphasizing the community aspect of HC/LB and am excited about the turns it’s taking. While I am not entirely for someone else writing my blog, I love the idea of someone else speaking on it.
10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
Being a displaced New Yorker, I’m all over New York Magazine’s blogs — Daily Intel, Grub Street, The Cut, etc. I feel like they keep me plugged into my home and give me a mix of politics, fashion dish, cultural goings-on, foodie news, and New York gossip. I was also really happy to see Alex Robertson Textor launch Spendthrift Shoestring last year; he’s an amazing travel writer and was one of my first editors, so I already have some built-in loyalty. Bias aside, he has a great sense of style when it comes to writing (and 80s Europop) and constructs engaging narratives on a word budget. No small feat.
Copyright © 2008 BlogsWeLuv - Blog Reviews / Built on the Structure theme by Justin Tadlock