Technology is good. There has been a lot of innovation that has come through technological advances, and innovative people have taken technology forward exponentially in the past century. Our lives today have been emailed, forwarded, broadcast, uploaded, tweeted, facebooked, instagramed, stumbled upon, downloaded, translated, amplified, demonized, antagonized, and pasteurized. We spend so much time connected to our computers and smartphones that it’s hard to imagine going an hour, let alone a day or week, without them.

Let me say it again. Technology is good. There is nothing wrong with sharing your life with your thousands of Facebook friends, or posting memes that express your inner satirical thoughts. You can post Instagram photos of every Starbucks drink you every buy if you want. As we become more and more connected with the world in this digital age, I would argue that we are becoming more and more disconnected.

Real life is happening all around us, and it doesn’t fit into 140 characters. Have you ever tried disconnecting from your smartphone and computer for a day? You might find that there are real life human interactions that you’ve been neglecting, or missing altogether right in front of you. Continue Reading…

Goose eggs are no fun for bloggers. (via flickr)

No blogger likes to see a zero day in his/her analytic graphs. The most effective way to avoid those zero days is to post something every day. Even if you only have a few regular readers, posting every day increases traffic to your blog.

But what if you’re like me and you have a job that does not involve your blog? Maybe you would rather do ten thousand other things before writing a blog post. Sometimes you can go weeks at a time without a single word written. Continue Reading…

I came across this intriguing video while surfing through Vimeo last night. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

[tentblogger-vimeo 25118844] Continue Reading…

I know a lot of satisfied customers who have bought WordPress themes from 8-bit. I’m one of those satisfied customers. Just this week, 8-bit released a theme designed with the professional photographer in mind. If you are a professional photographer and are looking to update your site, or you’re a budding amateur looking to make a place for yourself on the web, then you’ve got to check this out.

This is AWESOME.

Not only is the Pro Photo Theme based on the same standards as Standard Theme (used here and on many other sites across the web), but it comes with some awesome options for photographers built-in, making it easy for anyone to jump right in without having to decipher all kinds of code to get it to look the way you want. Continue Reading…

I'm still wrapping my head around this number!

I’ve been blogging somewhat regularly for over two years now and I’ve seen some growth in my followers, but it’s been slow going. Sure there have been spikes in pageviews when I’ve written on something controversial, but I haven’t seen a lot of people stick around beyond those posts. I’ve tried to practice good SEO and I’ve consistently plugged my blog on Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon, but even with the shout outs from other people on those social media outlets, I haven’t seen a lot of return visits. Maybe it’s because I am not focused enough. I write on just about anything because that’s who I am. If that’s why my readership looks like a roller coaster, that’s fine with me. I know that everyone has certain topics they are interested in and others that they couldn’t care less about.

What got me on this topic today is the recent spike I had in readers. On May 12, my post on leadership traits brought in 20% of my visits from the past year and 30% of my visits since the beginning of 2011 (stats via Google analytics).
Continue Reading…