Another crazy week in the past! Pretty stressful, I’ve been having all sorts of computer problems. It’s the last week of our 300$ cash + advertising contest, so make sure to enter if you haven’t entered yet, there isn’t much time left!

For our new subscribers and readers, if this is your first comment friday, the idea is pretty simple. Leave us a comment about anything you want, on topic or not. I will be selecting one lucky commenter that really stands out, and I will be giving out a free link to that person. In addition to that that, I will be giving them a free blogroll spot for that week.

Google Page Rank updates have taken effect on many bloggers, us included. Has it hit you yet? If so, will losing rank really effect you? It’s gotten me a little down, but I know we will just keep moving forward.

After Blogging the San Diego fires the threat has subsided by us, but has gotten worse for others. I have since unpacked our bags.

For a while the fire was moving so fast, I was getting pretty worried. The most houses that were destroyed in San Diego county were in the 92127 zip code, we are in 92126. It was burning about 10 miles away. With strong winds 25-50 miles per hour, it  could of reached us easily. Rancho Bernardo (92127 zip) was definitely hit the hardest. President Bush even took some time to visit the destruction.

The total cost, so far, is estimated at more than 1 billion dollars, and thats just in San Diego, not including the rest of California.

It’s amazing how much life seems to pause in a disaster like this. The Cedar fires weren’t that long ago, it feels close to the same. People going to the grocery store wearing surgeons masks, etc.

I know a lot of fellow bloggers were effected directly or indirectly, I hope everyone is okay. I was glad to hear that Nate Whitehills family was safe as well. Thanks for everyone’s concern about me and my family.

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

I bookmarked Brad Templeton’s site a while back. I recommend you do the same because he has debunked 11 myths about copyright. From a blogger’s perspective, I’ve selected a handful of the ones I find most interesting or commonly misunderstood.

Please take note:

I’m not a legal expert on anything. I trust Mr. Templeton’s article, and given his credentials, I feel justified in giving him my trust.

1. “If it doesn’t have a copyright notice, it’s not copyrighted.”
Not true. It helps, but since 1989, it’s not necessary.

2. “If I don’t charge for it, it’s not a violation.”
Not so, even if you distribute it free of charge, you can still be sued for damages under some circumstances.

3. “My posting was just fair use!”
I find this one a little tricky as it’s not easy to detect in some cases. But basically, if you use somebody else’s work in the form of a parody, commentary or the like, then it’s a darn good idea to at least attribute the source of your material. But of course, when in doubt, asking for permission is a safe thing to do first.

4. “If I make up my own stories, but base them on another work, my new work belongs to me.”
Not so fast there, cowboy. 😉 I think this is one that can be easily violated as a blogger. When you’re talking about a derivative work, permission still needs to be given by the original author. I think this is more easily seen with blogs that focus on actually writing stories of, say, fiction, but can also be applied to what any of us write as bloggers.

5. “It doesn’t hurt anybody — in fact it’s free advertising.”
Now this one gets me. Why would someone NOT want free advertising? In fact, I recall seeing on a blog a few months ago where the author of the blog wrote a review about a TV show. The star of that show actually dropped by the blog to comment. Included in his comments were his permission to use his photo, which was part of the post.

I thought it was rather inappropriate of him to do so because, after all, the blog’s author was doing him a favor by praising his work. But as Brad mentions in his article, it’s really up to the person you’re writing about to decide on whether they want free advertising or not.

I encourage you to read Brad’s full article to make sure you’re not missing a thing.

Of course you can get great blogging tips from us. I’ve even offered tips and help to contest winners and friends. There’s another way to get some free blogging tips.

5 Free Blogging Tips

Easton over at Business Blog Wire let me know of his blog’s birthday promotion. He is offering 5 blogging tips for anyone that emails him. For every 20th person to request tips, he will give them 20!

He’s thanking his readers for the support of the past 2 years, and also wanted to extend it to BAYB readers.

Our Tips

Before recommending the tips, I asked for tips for our blog. Here is what Easton had to say about us:

1. Masthead is too big.
2. Make headlines and text a tiny bit bigger if possible
3. Masthead makes the leaderboard ad kind of invisible – or, the ad looks like part of the logo so it kind of takes away from it.
4. Maybe only show 5 latest posts on your homepage since there is not much stuff in the right column.
5. I think you have great content with a nice community built up. Maybe make an e-book or a report or a “Best Of” with paid access that your biggest fans can buy.
6. Maybe a tagline would help under or in the masthead – something like “Blogging tips from bloggers all over the world.”

Lucky us, we got an extra one! Our theme is a bit limiting, however I did remove the Neverblue Ads Affiliate banner. I also liked the idea of the ebook and the ‘tagline’ posted somewhere.

It’s always good to get a fresh perspective into your blogs design and direction.

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

Trick or Treat Smash

This is a game befitting the season. It’s like the game Bejeweled, but you work with candy corn, eyeballs, vampire teeth, plastic wrapped candy, and frogs by placing at least three in a row to make them go away. If you get lucky, you can get “super moves” where the objects will fall into place canceling themselves out. Cha-ching!

Pumpkin carving
Halloween’s just a few days away, so if you haven’t carved your pumpkin, you can checkout some patterns here. But if you really want to avoid the mess, try this digital pumpkin carving simulator instead.

Our contest, sponsored by Bidvertiser, has gotten a great response. Bidvertiser is so happy with the results, the first place winner will now receive 200$ instead of 100$!

I definitely appreciate our new RSS feed susbcribers. We are nearing the 400 reader mark. If you are interested in advertising in our RSS feed, we have several spots available. The price is only 10$ each. Contact me if interested.

Don’t forget about Bidvertisers great promotion for new advertisers. New advertisers will receive 20$ in free clicks. With that you can send 100’s of new visitors to your blog.

There is still plenty of time to enter in our contest, so don’t wait on it.

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

So you’re shopping for something online, but just can’t figure out how what you’re looking at compares in size to other objects. Frustrating right? With Sizeasy you can remove that frustration by comparing apples to apples.

Give us a demo, will ya?
Happy to. Let’s say you’re looking at a flash drive for your keychain. Too big? Too small? Just click on over to sizeasy, enter the dimensions, then save the item. I did all this without having to create an account. I seemed to get better results by converting the measurements to millimeters first on another site, but it does accept inches, too.

Now I can compare it to other objects that are in their database: a deck of cards, book of matches, iPod, etc.

The object in purple above is the size of the flash drive. Now that I can compare it to the other commonly known products, I feel pretty confident it’s going to fit on my key chain, for example. Notice the tabs that allow you to view it from different angles. That’s pretty thorough stuff, if you ask me.