Looking at Vlogging

Spurred by the ROTLD announcement I started considering monetizing my blogs. That means, for most of them, a new look and more frequent posting. I started by looking at a few Romanian blogs and even considered vlogging or video blogging.

OSS WLW and quitter bloggers

As blogging is dying, those of us who still cling to this habit are occasionally baited by news we'd like to think will come true, only to be proven otherwise. One such news items suggests that Microsoft might release the source code of Windows Live Writer or WLW.

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.

AdSense, Chitika and advertising alternatives

Having covered recently how to modify a Blogger template (i.e., Layout) to add AdSense to your Blogger / Blogspot blog, we shall now look at a different way of placing said ads and also other advertisers, beyond Google’s AdSense.

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.

Is buying followers or likes a good idea?

I've recently heard about a "big blogger" - if not in blogging, definitely in volume - who may have artificially inflated his twitter count with fake followers. Intrigued, I decided to take a look at the business of buying fake followers.

Webhosting with 1and1

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

Beauty and the B..logger

A recent story about a Dakota Fanning selling perfume with sexually explicit ads, while Oscar nominated Gary Busey is selling cars got me thinking about brain damage and blogging.

More harassment from Google

After having my Google Plus account suspended for daring to protect my identity even while following Google policies to the letter and then having to deal with another suspension whose sole explanation was "suspicious activities", I find yet another email from this corporation, this time accusing me of running AdSense ads on pornographic content. But is that content really pornographic?!?