Now that all the April Fool’s silliness is past us, it’s back to normal AmBlogging! I am a fan of the Performancing Metrics package and am glad that Dave Reid has been successful in producing a plugin for WordPress bloggers

I joined the plugin’s mailing list and was invited to be a beta tester for the newest version to be released tomorrow. So I’m not sure if this qualifies as a scoop! Users of 0.2 can look forward to quite a few new features in 0.3. Let me review them!

• Bloggers can choose to not track visits by users over a specified user level
• The javascript code is now valid HTML/XHTML
• As with most WordPress 2.0 plugins, the plugin can let you know when a new version is available
• You can enable a PMetrics module to be used with the Wordpress widgets plugin
• For non widget users (like me), you can manually insert the sidebar code into your template with some limited customization. (I’ve done this on my sidebar here!)
• You can also make the sidebar module private, so that only you can see it when you visit the site.

This is a big improvement for people who don’t mind showing their statistics. Personally, I tend to be more reserved than transparent. I may turn off the sidebar to the public in the future, but for now I’ll let it show my paltry visit statistics.

I also want to commend Dave for his quick response. Being beta means exactly that! When I tried out the plugin, there was a debug feature that wasn’t turned off and all the plugin’s internal information, including my Performancing username and password were revealed for all to see! I quickly disabled the plugin and notified Dave. I also took the precaution to change my Performancing password. Dave was very quick to respond and fixed the critical issue. All’s well for now. I won’t link to the new version as yet, to let Dave perform the official launch. You should look forward to it too!

Now that I’m going PRO, I’m thinking of ways to make lots of money! Blogging is way too slow because you have to build up your content gateways, work on increasing readership, building your community and networking with Bloggers! With my skills, it’ll be 2024 before I gain any traction.

I could also do single page Adsense sites and the advantage here will be one-off efforts that do not require me to update! But what I’m really looking for is an explosion! Since bubble 2.0 is here, I had better not miss the Web 2.0 limbo line-up!

So, I announce my latest venture - Thingamajig, the newest Web 2.0 app that you’ve never heard of. I don’t know what it does yet, but it will be the best Web 2.0 app that nobody can live without! Once you sign up, you will renounce all the other W2 apps out there.

Why will it succeed? Because it’s got a catchy name! I’m already hearing people talk about it - “What’s this thingamajig?”. It resembles the advertising of “What is the matrix?” and we know how that fared out! Plus, Thingamajig will have all the Web 2.0 design goodies that will draw you in to spend lots of money! I can’t wait to swim in those dollar bills!

I mulled over my decision to quit blogging earlier today, but I read one final blog that changed my life - Scoble’s decision. I thought if a blogger like Robert Scoble can change his mind and switch from Microsoft to Google, there may be hope for bloggers yet! So I’m launching a comeback and going pro! I called my mom and told her that I know it’s early, but I have to put food on the table. She understood my decision and said that I should get an agent, some PR guy, and get hooked up with a team. Awesome, here we go!

P.S. Steve Rubel is also making some changes! And he’s analyzed today’s major Blogger trade deal!

Why? Why ask why? There isn’t a reason why. I’ve taken the red pill and discover the veil of deception that blogging was meant to distract us from the real world that we live in. All around you, you see people reading blogs, writing blogs. One by one, we’re becoming the blogging death - zombies!

Before I become a zombie, or date a zombie, I’m renouncing blogging forever to keep my sanity and non-zombieness! You know when LifeHacker becomes DeathHacker, the whole world has gone zombie-crazy and insane for a day! All you zombies can go back to your graves! P.S. Don’t bite my head off!

One of my motivations for starting AmBlogger is to hopefully contribute original thoughts to the Blogging community. As such, it is not very often that I use the daily stuff I read to generate new Blog ideas. I mean, I try my hardest not to. I wanted to sound in about blogging with passion, referring to Paul Chaney’s “The Joy Of Blogging“, but Darren has already done it.

I held off for more original ideas but none have come to me in the last few days. But if you enjoy my writing, please stay tuned. I’m not creative like Chartreuse but damn it if I got something to say one day, you’ll miss it if you don’t stay tuned!

Myself, I’m like the many bloggers that read a lot of other blogs and draw their inspirations from those. But too often I see the “echo chamber” in progress and though I try my earnest not to be a part of that problem, I’m not sure I’m part of the solution yet. I have an example that I would like to bring to dicussion in the near future about not being part of the “echo chamber”. Till then, I leave you with a quote I absolutely loved from a ThreadWatch discussion.

many bloggers do what a spam bot does, but manually, and then give quotes like:

“the ends wouldn’t justify the means in my books. They are using the hard work of others to launch their own business off.”

Its really nothing but a bunch of self-referential hypocritical bullshit.

I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with drawing inspiration from the writings of others. However, whether you’re remixing or you’re copying, it is really a thin line that still results in the same thing - a derivation of a product that was not your original thought. We keep saying content is king, but what we fail to say is that the content doesn’t have to be yours, it can be your version of some other people’s thoughts. Let’s all think about it!

I experienced some technical difficulties with RSS and Feedburner feeds for two of my blogs, including AmBlogger. Finally got around to fixing it, so feeds are back up! Whew… Thanks to Eric for pointing this out but it was sure sad to see “0 readers” show up on my Feedburner chiclet.

How did I fix it? I don’t really know. I checked out FeedMedic as Eric suggested and resyncing solved it for one of my blogs, for AmBlogger, I thought the plugin was not compatible with my recent WordPress 2.0.2 upgrade, after reloading and re-activating the plugin, it worked again? In any case, I like to look forward, not backwards. Back to the usual programming!

… that the most popular pro/am blogger or blog site has not been born yet! I also see that the blog will be in a non-english language with a potential audience of over 1 Billion. If this person chooses to monetize (or ever finds a way to do so), he (or she) could make Six Figure Blogging look like kindergarten?!?

[voiceover: this rant has been inspired by the many postings/comments about the results of the 2006 bloggies]

S Shreyas is hoping to start a new trend at his blog Chrono Tron. He is hoping to start a meme-like link-and-spread called the Neo-BlogTree.

His explanation makes it seems interesting, but its not anything that hasn’t been done before. I’d also argue that Bloggers link and read each other in a way that is more like a net rather than a tree.

At the risk of being labeled as a chain-link spam (discussed in comment # 4 on that post). I will still link to his post and also technorati tag the designated keyword. I wonder if anybody on his list has actually linked back. It is an obvious link-bait attempt since he’s linking to only the famous, well-known and those who are considered ‘A-lister’.

I’d be surprised if ProBlogger would link to Chrono even though we were both brought up in his post. Not surprisingly I wasn’t targetted, but ironically, I’m the one to respond. Am I just gullible or what!