Our friends over at Sizlopedia have released a great new free Wordpress theme that is worth a look. The theme is called MacPress and is actually being currently used on the Sizlopedia site itself.
Here you go with some of the features of MacPress:
Compatibility – It is compatible with the latest version of Wordpress.
Elegant Design – Much like Leopard, the theme has a eye-catching UI of its own.
Theme Options – The theme also comes with a built-in Options panel.
Validated Code – From the XHTML to the CSS, every bit of codehas been validated.
SEO Friendly – It bears a fine code with SEO friendly tags and structure.
And some of the features planned for the future releases:
Styles Chooser – The Options panel would allow the user to select a pre-defined style.
Magazine Layout – A switcher between normal/magazine layout modes.
It was confirmed last week that 9Rules the premium blogging network was purchased by Splashpress Media. 9rules has to be one of the longest running network of blogs, but for a long time now they have just been completely pointless. 9rules profiles the best blogs in each sector, well thats what they claim to have but in reality they have pretty much have none of the top blogs within their network and just seem to promote the blogs they like.
This leads me to Splashpress Media which has a good number of blogs in their network that seem to make some decent money, however I dont really understand why they would purchase 9rules. Obviously the purchases didnt disclose the amount and it doesnt seem like 9rules was purchase because of their earning potential, so Im not too sure why Splashpress did the deal.
How is Splashpress Media going to improve 9rules?
They need to get the actual top blogs in each sector on board – Sites like Regator provide much better quality in terms of content and 9rules are just so far behind its not funny.
9rules needs to move away from just aggregating posts – Instead of just profiling blog content they need to have a different angle. 9rules would be a great platform to develop an exclusive advertising network. They could sign the top sites and sign them to exclusive advertising deals.
Revenue model – currently 9rules doesnt make any money and hasnt done for quite a long time.
I have been after some great social media icons for a long time and I have finally come across a great set. All icons are circular and of the highest quality. Icons include AIM, Bebo, eBay, Hi5, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Windows Live, Ning, Orkut, Twitter and more.
It appears as though Yahoo! may be the first real competitor to Twitter. Other companies such as Facebook have tried to draw people away from micro-blogging back to social networking. But there has been no real competition on the actual micro-blogging front.
A while back, Yahoo! stealthily rolled out Yahoo! Meme in the Portuguese language only. Nobody was all too sure why they did this because as business goes, you’re supposed to promote, promote, promote! Now their reasoning is clear.
It was a test. To see if it stood a chance without causing the company any embarrassment if it failed. They are now tackling Twitter on the global front by launching the micro-blogging platform in the second biggest language in the world; Spanish.
While people all over the world do use Twitter, studies have shown that services are received better by the public when they are tailored specifically to their needs – in this case their language.
While I can’t see Meme over running Twitter on the English servers I can see the new Yahoo! service picking up steam in South America, Mexico, West Africa and of course Spain.
A new study of Twitter, more specifically the ‘Tweets’ on Twitter, found that 40% of all communication on the popular micro-blogging service is pointless gibberish, spam or people babbling about stuff only they would understand.
The company who conducted the study are called Pear Analytics and say that 40% of the posts on twitter are things such as ‘Only Eight Hours to go’ which would mean nothing to the average user – only a small inside circle would understand.
Another kind of tweet which make up the rest of this babble is SPAM; our beloved old nemesis.
You realise your followers has gone up by fifteen in a few days so your check them out. Then, your bubble is burst when you find that all they only followed you so you’d “check out their vids”. Hmm…perhaps not.
“We thought the news category would have more weight than dead last,” the report read, “since this seems to be contrary to Twitter’s new position of being the new source of news and events.”
Anyway, I wasn’t too surprised by this. Often, when I scan tweets on my Twitter homepage I ask myself “Now what in the world could that mean?”. But then, I’m guilty of it myself with some of my tweets reading like this; “No, I shouldn’t have done that. It was a baaaaad idea”. I suppose it’s good to have a number to put on all those useless tweets though.
Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging. Google Analyticator also includes several widgets for displaying Analytics data in the admin and on your blog. It includes a graph of the last 30 days of visitors, a summary of site usage, the top pages, the top referrers, and the top searches.
Our friends over at DailySeoBlog have put together a great list of the Top 20 SEO blog feeds you should follow. We have decided to show you our top 10 SEO blogs worth subscribing to.
World of Twitter is a series of mosaic tile wallpaper created with thousands of Twitter avatars as background and Twitter logo as foreground. These mosaic artworks are generated with Mac’s MacOSaiX and further refined with Photoshop and resize to fit as wallpapers. These desktop wallpapers were developed by HongKiat.
This has to be one of the best ways to design a font. Two typographers ( Pierre & Damien / plmd.me ) and a pro race pilot (Stef van Campenhoudt) collaborated to design a font with a car. The car movements were tracked using a custom software, designed by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman. ( openframeworks.cc )
Getting paid to blog is a distant dream of most bloggers. The initial high hopes for Google ad sense will have vanished after just a few weeks, even days. So what is one of the fastest, easiest ways to get paid to blog? Today.com seems to have the right idea.
The service allows you to establish your own blog as a sub-domain of Today.com. E.g. Myblogsname.today.com. You can then customise using the Word Press tools and begin blogging as you normally would. I tried this out and my third post was featured on the international homepage within hours of it going live. This got my page quite number of views as I’m sure you would imagine.
Today.com do pay you, however, it’s not a set rate or pay per post (at least for most bloggers – there are some who gain popularity and get a pay per post). Instead they pay you depending on how many impressions your page gets. For each impression you, $0.002 is added to your account ($2.00 CPM). This may seem minuscule but if your blog gains popularity you could be earning hundreds each month.
Today.com is different from other blog providers as they actually publicize your blog on the homepage rather than just leave it to it own devices at the mercy of the search engines. Users can search for terms on Today.com and your blog will appear if appropriate.
All in all, it’s a good service that is a step above the rest with the highest industry payout. However, the blogs themselves are always kept looking similar to Today.com and as such you can only really customize basic features such as colour etc…
It could be a good earner for bloggers but keep in mind – to get regular readers and thus impressions you have to blog regularly (one or twice per day) and also publicise your blog. 6/10
War is Boring, a political and wartime blog owned by David Axe (an experienced conflict reporter) just keeps getting better and better. It started up a few years ago as a small blog featuring a comic strip of the same name drawn by Matt Bors, based on David’s experiences as a war journalist. Since that time, the comic strips have taken a back seat with a more journalistic approach being adopted.
David began reporting from trouble spots around the globe such as Darfur, Iraq and Afghanistan. Money is raised through a donate button on the site for trips, equipment and in some cases to aid fellow journalists in sticky situations.
Every day there is at least two or three new posts so you’re never short of anything to read and feel like you’re missing out if you neglect the blog for a while. The best thing about War is Boring is that’s its not just some armchair general typing about Iraq all day, David actually goes to these places showing dedication and determination – something I found individual and attractive about War is Boring.
Recently, War is Boring underwent some changes including the addition of more correspondents. These include Kyle Mizokami, Bryan William Jones, Jason Reich and Kevin Knodell. These simultaneously cover different topics from around the globe ranging from US Politics, to Somali Piracy to Sri Lankan trouble. This gives the blog a good range in tone and subject matter instead of just following the one reporter. They also have some big trips planned soon such as heading off to Afghanistan and Dubai.
Overall, War is Boring is a cool blog that interest anyone who is in anyway politically minded or interested in warfare. 7/10
A new study of 
Getting paid to blog is a distant dream of most bloggers. The initial high hopes for Google ad sense will have vanished after just a few weeks, even days. So what is one of the fastest, easiest ways to get paid to blog? 
