Toluu

AdesBlog.com

Blogging Tips, Entrepreneurship, Usability, Making Money Online...

Contest: Free 1000 Entrecard credits giveawayFebruary 20

Ready to win 1,000 Entrecard credits? Well, rules are simple. Everyone who has entered myprevious contest are already automatically entered in this contest. So if you have entered in my previous contest, and if you have not unsubscribed from my RSS then you are already in. You don’t have to do anything.

Contest Rules:

1. Subscribe to RSS
   I am sure most of you have already subscribed to my RSS anyway, but if you haven’t please subscribe here first. This rule must be accomplished before you proceed to Rule No.2
2. Leave your Name and reachable email under this post
   By commenting on this post you will automatically be entered into the contest. Just leave your name and email.
   Example: Bill Gates, bill(at)microsoft(.)com - this is sufficient to participate in this contest. However, if you want to comment more than that, feel free.

Contest Deadline:

Winner will be announced after one week on 28th February, 2008. So please enter the contest anytime before this date.

Good Luck!

How to find how many sites hosted on one serverFebruary 16

SEOlogs has a tool called Reverse IP DNS Domain Check Tool. This tool allows you to enter your domain name and find how many other sites are hosted on the same server as yours.

Checking my own domain (adesblog.com) I found that there are 727 other sites hosted on the same server! (no wonder my blog is so slow). Many of the sites might be not functional, but come on! 727 sites on one server? goDaddy must be kidding. When I complained about the slow connection to the server, goDaddy said that there was no problem on their side. I think 727 sites on one server is a huge problem!

How many other sites share the same IP with your blog?

Blog loading timeFebruary 14

Lately AdesBlog has been loading very slow for me (my location: South-East-Asia/Malaysia). At the moment, it’s hosted on goDaddy.com. I did send an email to goDaddy support about it, but they said that everything was fine on their side.

Maybe it has to do with the latest undersea cable cut.

But I see that goDaddy sites are particularly slower than any other sites that are hosted on non-goDaddy hosts. For example, my AdesDesign is hosted on pair.com and it’s working fine. But then again, pair is located in Australia. And it’s not affected by the cable cut.

I do not know how the blog loads for you guys. There is only one way to find out. Please View Survey and let me know how it is loading for you. It will take about 3 seconds to answer, but the info that I get will be invaluable for me. So thank you in advance!

Based on the poll results, I will either shift the host or stay with goDaddy.

Are you boring your readers to death?February 11

This is a guest post by Alan Johnson, the author of The Online Business Handbook.

If you’re offering high-end services then sure, a corporate writing style is in order, because being professional all the way is a must. But as a blogger, choosing such a writing style is the biggest mistake you could possibly make.

Why? Look at it this way: there’s more to blogging than just getting a message across, that’s the main difference between blogs and other types of websites. Keep it personal, keep it conversational, add a “community feel” to everything or you may very well be facing the risk of boring your readers to death.

Think about it this way: how do you get a certain message across when talking to a person you have known for ages, a person you feel extremely close to? First of all, I’m sure you don’t use any of the “we pride ourselves with” phrases you see on corporate websites. The first thing you need to do as a blogger is drop the “we”. No, you’re not some sort of corporation, why would you want to make readers feel that you are? That’s not what blogging is all about, you need t

Offline Usability: Voting Made DifficultFebruary 11

Malaysia is gearing up for General Election soon. Yesterday mainstream newspaper NST had an article about how people in Malaysia cannot even mark the voting ballots properly. It read:

AROUND the world, a simple X is all it takes to mark the spot on a ballot paper. But just leave it to Malaysians to get a little more creative when stating their choice of candidate…

…According to Election Commission figures, there were 134,058 spoilt votes cast for state assembly seats and 165,018 for parliamentary seats in 2004.

While it may sound so simple to just mark [X] beside the desired candidate, little they know that this is actually quite confusing for people, especially the elderly.

First of all, people never use [X] for selecting something. X is used for deleting, rejecting or making something void. In everyday life, people either tick or circle the preferred choice.

I am sure this problem happens in every country, it’s just more prevalent in one country than another. Sure, Governments can teach its people how to mark [X] correctly during elections and decrease the number of spoiled votes. But the better, more sustainable solution would be to introduce a system that is usable and intuitive to