Today is the first day of Fall 2008, Autumn is an exciting time for bloggers, the slow summer is finally over and we can all get back to business.

Fall / Autumn is my favorite time of year. I’m a halloween junky, and I also love to attend the Renaissance Festival here in ohio. I love the changing leaves, and the fresh apple cider at the local farms.

Fall has always been a time of relaxation to me. Even though my online endeavors and businesses are speeding up. There’s just something special about fall.

Fall 2008 will be the first year my wife experiences fall in Ohio. She’s from Utah, and sure they have trees, but she’s never seen the leaves change like they do here.

As fall 2008 approaches and the holiday season encroaches, now is the best time ever to build up your blog. Fall is when people come back from their vacations. Fall is also the beginning of the busy season for online professionals.

For political bloggers fall 2008 is extremely big being an election year. It’s about 6 weeks till election day. Have you made your decision yet? Will it be Mccain? Obama? Ron Paul? Other?

I of course back Obama, because I think he and Biden will do the most for our country, but a great place to get the low down from both sides of the fence is whitehouse2008.info.

Of course if you’ve been following my segments on Google trends, then you should be aware that Fall is the hot topic right now, and I highly recommend blogging about it.

Here are some related blog posts:

First Day Of Fall - 2008
Autumnal Equinox aka First Day of Fall 2008 Officially Arrives Today
We Made It!
Happy fall
An Apple A Day
The first day of fall 2008
94 days before Christmas and the First Day of Fall 2008
The First Day Of Fall
First Day of Fall, Memory Lane

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Image via CrunchBase, source unknown
As many of you are aware, Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, went into retirement from blogging on July 11th. Claiming he needed to find his new voice, he set out on a quest to build an ‘intimate mailing list’ to host discussions on.

In a recent blog post, an update on his retirement, Jason says he is having a wonderful time writing his emails to his ‘intimate email group” (since when is 3000+ considered intimate?)…he continues: “I’ve been writing 2-5k word thought pieces on the email list, and I’ve found it to be very rewarding in a way that the mud pit of blogging isn’t.”

My thoughts are:

1. How is blogging a mudpit, and does that make us bloggers pigs? If so I feel a bit insulted.

2. Isn’t writing 2k+ ‘thought pieces’ the same as blogging just in a different format? I mean blog comes from the word weblog, which is a log of information on the web, a journal so to speak of one’s thoughts and opinions, whether it’s posted to a website or sent over email, in my opinion he’s still blogging.

3. It appears to me that this is somewhat of a scam like his twitter follower campaign, and other such to build a bigger audience for himself and mahalo. Everyone knows that the money is in your ‘list’. I’m not saying building a newsletter is bad, but if you want people to subscribe to your newsletter, don’t do it by trickery, just come out and say it.

Darren Rowse from Problogger says that before you do anything you need to build a list, and should start a newsletter on day one of your blog’s launch. There are just so many people who still don’t use feed readers that can benefit from your blog, and you can benefit from their visiting your site it’s a win-win.

Jason Calacanis continues his blog post : “Now I still love blogs: still read them, still comment on them…. but I’m trying to find my voice again–my true voice. There is something about the acoustic, intimate nature of email that is impacting how I write. I’m writing every sentence as if I’m looking someone in the eye and speaking directly to them. I’m thinking about the economy of words again. I’m trying to say things in as few words as possible, and I’m cutting sentences, paragraphs and pages more than I’m publishing them. I’m proof reading again, and C.K. Sample is proofing for me. It’s a new, slower and more considered process and I’m loving it. I’ve published ten emails or so and I’ve thrown away at least 30. Somethings happening, but I don’t know what it is.”

My thoughts:

When he says “I’m writing every sentence as if I’m looking someone in the eye and speaking directly to them.” I’m thinking, isn’t that how blogs are? That’s at least how I’ve always wrote my blog, as if I’m writing an intimate letter to a long lost friend…

He also says “I’m thinking about the economy of words again. I’m trying to say things in as few words as possible, and I’m cutting sentences, paragraphs and pages more than I’m publishing them. I’m proof reading again,” and I’m thinking economy of words?

Didn’t you say your ‘emaillog’(not to be confused with a weblog of course) are 2k-5k word thought pieces? How is that economical at all?

He continues:

“Over 100 folks respond to every email and I try to respond to every single person. Some of these emails are five pages and I read every single word. No one else sees these words–they are between me and the reader and that is also wonderful and true. Posting to the comment section of a blog is meaningless when compared to sending an email containing your thoughts inteneded for the author. Folks say very, very deep, true and honest things in one to one communications that they can’t say in a blog comment. I love that.”

Call my cynical, but the tone is that of perhaps a hippie(and I’m a very liberal person, hell I voted for Dennis Kucinich), or someone in a midlife crisis, or perhaps someone post stroke, maybe he’s been playing with model kits in a non-ventilated room, your guess is as good as mine. No offense but it’s like he’s living in a dream land. If he were writing blog pieces people could still email him from the blog if he so choosed to put up a contact form right at the bottom of each post or such.

Bottom line: Jason Calacanis if you’re really retired from blogging, more power to you, but why not stop blogging about being retired from blogging, seriously. I know blogging is addictive, and there are places that can help you with your addiction. (that last line was sarcasm, in case you weren’t paying attention…)
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IImage via Wikipedia
I posted earlier today about the Discovery Educator Network scraping my content… I also took the initiative to email Steve Dembo at discovery who is in charge of the network. He has issued an apology, and removed the post in question.

I’d like to poll my readers:

Should I pursue a legal suit against Heather Sullivan?

Whether the content is still accessible or not, she still stole it. I’m not going to pursue anything against the Discovery Network, because it’s hardly their fault, but still I think someone should pay, and that I should be compensated. Anyhow I guess the case is closed for now, unless any lawyers think they can win a case against Heather Sullivan, if so contact me for a 50/50 split.

Here’s the email I received from Steve Dembo at Discovery Educator Network:

UPDATE: Steve Dembo’s Email Screenshot Image has been removed, Steve emailed me back and apparently doesn’t like his email being posted, so I complied at his request.

I’m still upset about this issue, but I’m just going to let it go and move on to blogging about stuff that really matters to me…

Note: He also requested the removal of the Discovery channel logo, but as the image is from Wikipedia, and qualifies as fair use, I have the right to use it, and unless someone from Discovery wants to pay me to remove it, it shall remain.

This Topic is now Officially closed and I’m done blogging about it. Let’s Move On…

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It seems that wordpress has released their newest update - wordpress 2.6.

So far I’ve upgraded to wordpress 2.6, without any hitches, most of my plugins seem to work.

Here’s a list of new Wordpress 2.6 features from the official wordpress blog:

Version/revision saves a copy of a post every time you edit it, allows you to view (not edit) each of those copies (revisions), Shows forward (in time) diffs between any two revisions.
Display captions of images alongside them in posts and pages.
Add paging of Themes in Design panel
Word Count displayed when writing and editing posts and pages
Press This bookmarklet
Add sorting to gallery
Export/import post excerpts
Theme Previewer
Check (assigned) Categories at top Category box in Write/Manage Post
Show when a term is both a tag and a category
Wider Profile fields
TinyMCE 3.1 [Maybe the horizontal rule issue is fixed]
Two categories can have sub-categories with the same name

Wordpress 2.6 Poll:

Have you upgraded to Wordpress 2.6 yet? If not are you planning to? If so, when?

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Roadtrip Update:

Sorry that they’ve been few and far between.

I’m currently waiting for Overlay.tv to finish going over the contract I sent them - and hopefully I will have $5000 for my roadtrip with-in the week. Everyone there has been a big help and the money will go towards acquiring a laptop, camcorder, gps, and pay for the outrageous gas prices for the trip.

I don’t know if $5000 will be enough for the whole trip - but I’m certain it is enough for the first half of the country. I’m hoping to pick up momentum and get sponsors / advertisers to keep it going.

Currently it’s been rough to keep updates coming — as my new house - doesn’t have running water or electricity. It’s quite a doozy - my wife and I also are between jobs as we just moved out here. To say the least it’s been interesting. I almost feel like a pioneer - living by candlelight errr I mean flashlights.

About our Move to Cleveland

Our house definitely needs a lot of work - we’re estimating it may take $10,000-20,000 to get it good enough to sell. But we paid $3000 to get the house, and currently it appraises at $115,000 in it’s current state - we figure when we’re done we’ll be able to turn around and sell it for possibly $140,000.

Not bad for a $25,000 investment (or less)…. We’re also planning on living in it for maybe 3 years, it’s rent free living, the house is huge - and the neighborhood is one of the fastest improving neighborhoods in all of Cleveland.

A cop we talked to a few days ago said that he’d pulled out more dead bodies off our street than reside in the cemetary - which was a bit startling - but he also hasn’t worked in our neighborhood in about 5-10 years.

According to the power technician our neighborhood has improved a lot - a local hospital has been buying up a lot of the nearby buildings and has built a huge hospital presence.  They even have their own police force and have been making the entire neighborhood a lot more secure. A year ago they were even offering incentives for moving into the neighborhood - as long as you, or your children had no criminal history. Their’s maybe 3-5 foreclosures / boarded up houses and about as many houses that are currently being fixed up and remodeled.

I’m hoping to hold on to the house till the housing crisis is over then sell it, when it’s a seller’s market again. We do have some differing opinions as to the value of the home. When calling our insurance agent to get homeowners insurance - she suggested that according to an insurance appraisal 6 month’s ago the house was appraised at 340,000.  I definitely like the sound of that, as soon as we get some of our repairs done - and get running water / electricity etc - I’m going to have another appraisal done and see what it’s really worth, I do know that it’s a 3 story house with over 3000 square feet. It’s a Victorian Cottage Style home.

Anyways - just thought I’d let ya’all know what I was upto.

I’m excited to get the roadtrip on the road. As soon as I get my laptop I will also be able to make a lot more frequent posts as well, currently I’m just able to connect via the library.

It kinda sucks, but I just keep telling myself that now I’m a homeowner, and things will be wonderful when we finally finish fixing up the house and selling it.

I must say I did miss Ohio - I missed the green / rain. It doesn’t rain as much in Utah. I don’t like the humidity all that much - at least the sweating part -lol … But I couldn’t stand being uber dry either. 

 

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So,

I’ve been incognito, most of the day, working on my new theme for my blog.

I like it a lot - after-all Green is my favorite color.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on my new theme.

Likes / Dislikes?

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I’ve had an amazing week with traffic, and hits, I wish my adsense was a little better (1000 hits per day and only like 7 clicks the whole week…I need to monetize better).

But adsense and money isn’t the end all to success, yes it’s great, and someday it will come. The fact that my Readership has grown immensely (1700 new subscribers in one weekend — *wink wink*.)

My alexa ranking is skyrocketing, and people are genuinely interested in what I have to say.

I was planning on writing a really good post to day on Twitter, what it is, who uses it(a-listers and what not), popular tools, popular web services, etc… Today was just really busy though, with the exception of a small post here and there, I haven’t written anything huge today.

Do you ever feel drained - you have ideas but just can’t get them finished, at least not in the time frame you want? I dream of the day, when this is my full-time job. Except full-time= 3 hours a day 7 days a week, and the pay is more than I can fathom.

I’m planning a lot of cool articles to come, so please stay tuned. I did sign up for RocketProfit today, a new cool way to monetize. I will give you an update on my findings.

I would also like to thank my friends on twitter / and in the blogosphere in general for making this an awesome community blog, with all the comments, and what not. I’m really excited with all the response, and hope to keep up the momentum.

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NOW HIRING: GUEST BLOGGERS - DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOGS!
Here’s how this works.

I want everyone reading this to send me their very best blog posts. If the post is something I think I’d like to publish, I will send you an email, and let you know when I will be publishing it.

I will of course provide a byline for you to mention your blog. On top of that, I will add you to my blogroll. On top of that I will give you a full-fledged graphic intense Blog Review, worth at least $40.

If I decide NOT to use your blog - I will STILL write up a 1-paragraph review of your blog(and post it with 3-5 other mini-reviews).

This blog is about to break the 100 subscribers mark. I have 1400 followers on twitter, and 600 friends on friendfeed who will see each post. This blog gets 1000 hits per day(at least it has been for the past 2 weeks.) My alexa ranking hasn’t caught up since the traffic is new, but it will catch up, very quick.

Main Criteria of Blog Posts:

1. Must be along the theme of this blog, which is technology, blogging, making money online, gadgets, social networks, twitter, social media, etc…

2. The blog post must have never been posted else where.

This is a very good way to gain some added exposure, and begin building your brand.

Please send all entries to: patrickwcurl at gmail dot com.

Update & Clarification: I am looking for the best of the best posts - they need to never have been published elsewhere, and if I choose not to use your post - I will let you know, and you can post them on your blog, and I will link to all of the Honorable Mentions.

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Twitter continues to Amaze me - Doubled my subscribers in 2 days!

I wrote yesterday how I got about 15 new subscribers in one day using twitter.

I woke up today, and checked my stats. Today I had 63 subscribers, up from 47.

My blog had approximately 600+ hits yesterday.

The most I’ve ever received on any of my online entities.

This truly is awesome, I am a twitter believer.

There is a downside though, with twitter comes a lot of distractions, the same can also be said of friendfeed, pownce, etc…(which I’m also trying to tap into a little bit.)

My major advice is to be devoted to your blog above all else. Twitter is great, and can give you some great ideas as to what to blog about, but the bottom line to being successful is to blog, and blog often.

I try for 2 times per day, 3 would be great, but even once per day if you’re really busy. If you go long periods without writing you’ll never build a true following, and you will lose a lot of your current readers.

Yesterday, I also asked about people who ‘Google Themselves’. I got a lot of responses in comments, as well as a few on twitter.

As an experiment, I’ve decided to make a change in the Title of this blog, from ‘There’s a Blog in My Soup’, to “There’s a Blog in my Soup: A Blog by Patrick Curl”.

My goal is to see if that raises my ‘brand’, in the search engines.

Also if this is your first time reading my blog you might want to check out, my latest pillar article, on 40 some odd ways to increase your rss subscriber count - which I will be updating regularly.

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