Moar Refreshments (mai multe piscoturi)!

The Romanian word “piscoturi”, loosely translated as “refreshments,” has become associated with the meagre price deontology or blogger ethics commands on the online advertising market (i.e., “piscotareala”) in that many are willing to sell not only their blog, but their soul and their mother’s soul for a few cookies and a coffee. Being a writer is a job everybody would love to have, except the writers themselves. Few other jobs (except maybe acting or singing) have as many people trying and so few succeeding. Being a blogger is somewhat less glamorous than being a writer, at least not in the traditional sense of the (former) word, as it combines traits of several other fields, such as IT, publishing, PR, but it still has a strong creative component. In this article, we take a look at the Romanian refreshment (piscot) market.

Feedburner Feed Stats–useless

I have recently decided to suppress the FeedCount, "another cool way to promote your feed" - a Feedburner option. I found that my subscriber count varied wildly, with a minimum below my email subscriber count, suggesting that there is something very wrong with the way Google has modified said algorithm after taking over this service. How wildly?

DMCA takedown–Vali Petcu aka Zoso

Once again, I find myself at the receiving end of a bogus DMCA claim (I cannot even ascertain what it is about). This time however, I intend to fight it and document every step of the way, in the hope that others might find it useful.

Submitting Your Site to Bing Webmaster and Microsoft AdCenter

I recently changed my domain for a website and decided to submit my site to Bing. In the process, I discovered Bing Webmaster Tools as well as got started with a Microsoft AdCenter coupon for free advertising on Bing.

Webhosting with 1and1

It started out well, but it devolved into strange domain freezing and impenetrable wall of silence.

Branded Short URLs

Short links are great, but wouldn’t it be great to have your own such service, much like New York Times (nyti.ms). It turns out that there are at least three ways you can achieve this goal. We will be looking at Bitly Pro, Google Links and hosting your own.

Entrecard – drop it like it’s hot

I've recently looked at Entrecard advertising system as a way to discover interesting blogs and to build a community. Sure, there are other community / promotion tools, but they each have their drawbacks.