This book is guarenteed to keep your inner-geek happy.

I have just finished reading Corey Doctorow’s “Eastern Standard Tribe”, and found it to be hilariously funny (in the LOL¹ kind of way). Corey is an excellent writer, and this particular book develops into an interesting tail of comedic techno-drama.

It’s light and fluffy, and I personally knocked it over in two sittings, I could have easilly done it in one, at no point in the story was I lost, or even contemplated putting it down. It takes a fair lot to pull me away from a computer screen for long enough to read a novel, and even more to then go and blog about it, but Corey’s futuristic in a current-day kind of way world with twists of hillarity from occasional “fartmobiles” and a mention of a “metric shitload of porn” had me totally absorbed.

What is even better is that Corey is a fellow WordPress user, whose personal blog can be found at http://www.craphound.com. He also blogs at Boing Boing.

Sitting down to relax today after a lengthy night’s work on a WordPress blog for a new client, I turned my attention back to jq.info and decided I needed to look about for more ideas on promoting, and bettering the site.

It’s one of my many obsessions. I ended up with the Google search successful blog promotion. The first page of results wasn’t too bad, a few hits from sites that any search in this area of research tends to pull up, the good ones.

• How to Blog for Fun and Profit
• Pro Blogger

Then, there was an average one:

• Bloke’s Tips for a Successfull Blog

Great content on that one, but the layout was nausiating, especially as i’m currently using Kate’s laptop, binky, and sitting on a lounge a reasonable distance from it. Enlarging firefox’s fonts just slightly made things horrible. At least the content is good, something more then what I can say for the site that in essence caused this post.

Before I go on, I do need to point out that I am not the world’s best speller, nor is my grammar terribly good on occasion. I do often get Kate to have a read over posts and pages of my site to ensure they actually make sense to read (she recently did this on my subList documentation page and made huge improvements).

Anyway. JaredQuinn’s “You Can’t Be Serious” award goes to…

http://www.buildabetterblogsystem.com/

Starting with the fantastic suggestion to:

“Fire Your Web Designer!”

Great idea guys, the last thing the Internet needs is more badly designed, unusable blogs!

“You should be blogging because blog attract readers who make more money, and are more likely to buy things online!”

Excuse? Because Blog Attract Readers? This sort of grammar in a far too large headline in the middle of the page is just screaming for me to want these guys to makeover my blog!

Anyway, the page looks so bad, it goes on and on and on, I’ve read most of it now a couple of times and sat here amazed at how much like a 30 minute telemercial, including photos and snippets of “oh your so wonderfull.” from people who may have used the “service” these guys offer - which seems to be selling e-books?

They do have blog, it can be found at http://www.buildabetterblog.com, but when you take a look at posts like this one ones head begins to spin violently ready to explode.

When it comes to technical services, they should be provided by technical people, organisations and people who know what they’re doing, not just a marketed product. So on that note I’m giving up the idea of “blog promotion”, the good old “word of mouth” (or in this case inbound links and Google search results).

I’ve given the “You Can’t Be Serious” award earlier, now I’ll give out my “So Serious, It’s Good For You” award:

• Redwood Virtual

  Virtual Linux Servers - the website speaks volumes. No glitz, no glammer, just the facts.

• SEO Company

  Search Engine Optimization - again the website speaks volumes. No glitz again, just the facts… and Bob’s Hat.

• VCS Web

  DNS Hosting and other goodies - see a theme here. Website is again reliable and functional, much like the service they provide.

… oh and of course jaredquinn.info….