the urge to zurza

With the exception of the accepted waiver claim of Manny Ramirez by the White Sox, the waiver trade deadline was a real dud, with the change-of-scenery-type trades of Manny Delcarmen and Jeff Francoeur the only deadline-day moves. It was a year when GMs were especially aggressive with their claims and blocks, severely limiting deals. But Manny has spiced up trade deadlines before (take the 2008 non-waiver deadline when he went in a memorable three-team trade, for instance), and he could well spice up the AL Central race, executives predict.

   - Melanie Griffith in The Saddest Thing You Will Ever Read. - Amy Winehouse wants Pete Doherty to crash at her place for a spell. This should be good. - Mel Gibson apparently wasn’t clear the first two time. “BLOW. ME. ON. MY. PENIS.” - Hilary Duff in The Oldest Trick in the Book. Read More ...

In my neck of the woods, a new school year is starting and parents are collectively rejoicing as kids head back for another year of learning. The timing seems right for a blogging back to school post!

With that in mind, following is a refresher on the fundamentals for successful blogging:

1. Publish useful content.

This fundamental rule of successful blogging applies not only to the content in your blog posts but also to the content in your blog comments and across the social web. Make sure it’s useful or no one will read it, share it or talk about it.

2. Avoid things that make you look like a spammer.

Go light on the links, disclose paid posts and ads, and don’t crowd people’s in boxes. In other words, be honest and play nice.

3. Give credit where credit is due.

Cite your sources. If you quote content from another website or blog, link back to that site or blog as the original source. If you use an image with a creative commons license that requires attribution, make sure you link back to the owner of that image.

4. Follow the laws.

Claiming ignorance won’t get you off the hook if you’re caught breaking the law. Make sure you don’t plagiarize, and only use images, audio and video that have the proper copyrights and usage permissions attached to them that allow you to legally do so. If you publish paid posts or reviews on your blog, make sure you follow the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 16 Title 255.

5. Remember your words live online for a long time.

Don’t publish content on your blog or elsewhere online that you might regret later. What you publish today can be found in Google searches for many, many years. Even your Twitter updates are archived by the Library of Congress!

Remember those rules you learned in grade school about being nice to others, being respectful, listening, taking turns, and so on? They apply to us as adults, and even to bloggers and online publishers, just as much now as they did when we were children. Follow those golden rules you learned in kindergarten, and you should be just fine.

Are you still following the blogging basics or is it time to go back to school?

This is a guest post by Kim De, a freelance writer and author of Zen Kitchen, a blog focused on recipes and food issues.

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For animals to remain strong and healthy under adverse situations. For humans to maintain their well-being. For agriculture to satisfy human needs for generations.

It is a word that has been batted around for awhile and has been prevalent in the media recently as farmers who are using sustainable practices are finally getting the spotlight.

But what if we were to stretch the definition to encompass other areas of our lives? Sustainable relationships. Sustainable employment. Sustainable blogging.

Lets see how easy it is to adopt the techniques used by farmers to bloggers.

Sustainable farmers raise food in a way that is healthy for the consumer and animal.
• They employ practices that will attract like-minded customers.
• They take care not to harm the environment to keep the land usable for years
• They show respect toward their workers, animals and land.
• They keep their land rich and viable which assures that crops and livestock will thrive for years to come.

But how does this relate to blogging?
• Don’t you want to attract new consumers (readers) and keep them coming back for more?
• Don’t you want an environment (blog) rich with ideas and conversation? Evergreen topics that are viable for years to come?
• Don’t you want to show respect for your land (blog and readers)
• Don’t you want to write articles (crops) that will enrich the land (blog)?

Well maybe the analogy is a bit much, but you get the idea.

So the question now is, “How can I use these ideas to create a blog that will be productive for years to come?”

1. Have one or two focus topics and stick with them. This will help you develop a base of interested readers.
2. Know from the start if this is for fun, or for revenue
3. Networking, network, network.
• Participate in other blogs
• Have a Facebook page and post regularly
• “Tweet” your topics
• Make RSS feed available
4. Encourage commenting, then reply to all comments. This shows an enthusiasm for not only your topic, but for your readers.
5. Post regularly. Keep a list of ideas as they pop into your head so you will never run out.

Remember that “sustainable agriculture” is more a philosophy than a strict set of rules, and the same applies for blogging. Find what works for you and stick with it.

And most of all, have fun!

This is a guest post by Kim De, a freelance writer and author of Zen Kitchen, a blog focused on recipes and food issues.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Odd, sort of, to be reviewing the most important week of the preseason and writing mainly about the impact of an officiating decision. But the most intriguing event of the third round of games has to do with officiating, and the effect of moving the umpire from the defensive to the offensive side of the ball so he won't be such a defenseless target in the middle of pass patterns.

Manny Ramirez's days as a Dodger appear numbered, and his number should be up by Tuesday, by which time Mannywood should finally come to a close after an eventful run. At least, that's what should happen.

Google today announced the acquisition of social-graph and news content startup Angstro.

According to ReadWriteWeb, the Angstro website describes themselves as:

“Inspired by the angstrom unit of measure (0.1 nanometre) named after Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Angstrom, Angstro represents the ability to hone in on highly focused, relevant news across professional networks. Where search engines such as Google and other news aggregator services have immense infrastructures that return a huge array of random results, Angstro analyses a wide breadth of information from multiple data sources to deliver very few, yet very intelligent results.”

With the acquisition The L.A. Times is also reporting that company co-founder Rohit Khare has been hired to help mold the companies newly forming social network. Khare is a respected Internet researcher and will help Google form the look and feel of the new network.

The acquisition and hiring of Khare was confirmed by Google employee Joseph Smarr when he tweeted:

“Thrilled to welcome @rohitkhare to Google to help us work on building a better social web!”

The move is an important consideration for Google as rumors are circulating that Facebook may soon release their own ad network to compete with Google Adsense. Currently several ex-Google executives are running the advertising division at Facebook.

How Khare will affect the GoogleMe project base is yet to be determined, however one thing is for certain, with his know how it will be a huge step forward for Google and their efforts to compete with Facebook in the social networking field.

I spent a good chunk of Thursday mock- and real-drafting for fantasy football, utilizing three distinctive methods: 1) Standard-scoring leagues, 2) Points Per Reception leagues and 3) Auction leagues. And as luck would have it, I'll devote a sizable piece of Friday's Clicks to the draft results. But first ...

There are countless of posts that highlight great WordPress plug-ins and after sometime you keep coming across the same ones over and over again. The fact is that no matter how good or great these plug-ins are sometimes they are just overkill for your needs. Once a plug-in is popular developers will mostly keep expanding its features to satisfy all its users.

For a change I decided to look around what other plug-ins there are out there that are almost never mentioned and I came across more then two that I will be using on my own WordPress install. Especially wp Time Machine and Simple SEO are plug-ins I can’t believe I didn’t know about.

Check out these 10 plug-ins for different purposes.

postMash – custom post order

Organize the order of your posts using a handy AJAX drag and drop admin interface. Handy if you use WordPress more like a CMS then for content publishing only.

Pretty Link

Your own URL shorten-er with your domain address. Easily hide affiliate links and keep track of amounts of clicks, where users click from and other details. There is also a pro version.

wp Time Machine

Create a back-up of your WordPress:

• Your data (from your WordPress MySQL database)
• Your files (and Uploads) — everything in wp-content
• Your .htaccess file
• Instructions for a smooth recovery
• A shell script that can help automate recovery — though this is still a “work in progress”

and store them on your DropBox account, Amazon AWS S3 or on another server using FTP. You need to have PHP5 to use Amazon and DropBox. A cheaper alternative then VaultPress if you can’t afford the latter.

Shortcode Exec PHP

An admin interface to create and manage your shortcodes.

SEO Data Transporter

Transfer your plug-ins and SEO data from theme to theme and plug-in to plug-in.

Supported Themes

• Builder
• Frugal
• Genesis
• Headway
• Hybrid
• Thesis
• WooFramework

Supported Plug-ins

• All in One SEO
• Headspace2
• Platinum SEO

MailChimp Archives

Display your past MailChimp newsletters on your site using a shortcode.

Facebook Likes it!

A simple plug-in to add Facebook like button, fully customizable. It’s a modified version of Like plug-in by Bottomless.

Breadcrumb NavXT

Custom location breadcrumbs.

Easy Verification

Verify your website with Google, Bing and Yahoo! without going through the hassle of FTP and file editing. Just fill out your verification code and the plug-in will generate the correct meta tags.

Simple SEO

Add a custom page and menu title to your pages for usability or SEO purposes. This plug-in is perfect if you don’t need the whole SEO she bang or use WordPress as CMS for a low key website.

   Seen here yesterday after signing divorce papers Monday, Elin Nordegren gave her “first and last” interview to People regarding her divorce from Tiger Woods that’s obviously been vetted through an entire gauntlet of lawyers. How can I tell? Tiger Woods himself gives a statement in it that she’s a wonderful mother and she calls him Read More ...