Being the year 2008, more and more people are creating their own blogs. May they be photo blogs, personal blogs, tech blogs or art blogs, they’re still blogs non-the less.

I’ve been blogging for about 8 months now, and i’ve learnt a thing or two in the process, that I feel are worth sharing.

Write about something things you’re passionate about.
It’s important that you write about something you not only enjoy, but something you’re knowledgeable in. Don’t write about a topic because it has a big fan-base. Not only will readers become bored of your blog, but you will as well. So, keep the topics to things that you like, and things that you’re motivated to write about.

Post regularly.
I can’t say that I follow this rule religiously, as I sometimes post every 2 days and at other times, I post ever 2 weeks. However, it’s important that you keep a regular posting schedule, especially when you first start out. If your posts are very sparse and unpredictable, your readers will eventually fade away, as they won’t know when they should expect a new post. When you first start your blog, try and post something new two or three times a week. Once you get a loyal fan-base, you can post a little less often, but still keep constant.

Quality, not quantity.
I see more and more blogs that contain over 5 to 10 posts a day, but each of the posts are just links to other peoples blogs or pictures or things of that sort. These blogs rarely have original material, which can become boring. Make sure the work you post is well thought out and is original material. People will come back to your blog if you write informative and descriptive posts. If you can write 5 to 10 posts a day, that are informative, descriptive and original, then hey, more power to ya’.

Pick a good looking theme.
It’s important that you pick a clean, modern, easy-to-use theme. Your readers won’t come back if you’re site looks bad or unprofessional. Also, be sure to make it easy to navigate. The worst thing you can do is have a site that people can’t find their way around in. Lastly, don’t fill your site with ads. You can have a few here and there (as I do), but don’t put ads after each post, and have 10 different ad companies plastered on the side of your home page. This just makes you look like you’re blogging for the wrong reasons.

Get involved in the community.
It’s important that you contribute to other blogs and online communities. This will allow you to meet new people and make online friend. Some of my most loyal readers, are those that i’ve meet online through various sites such as Flickr, DeviantART and Twitter. By commenting on other peoples work, you make yourself a little more known, and eventually, the people you comment on will take an interest in what you have to offer.

Be patient.
When first starting out, you’ll get very little to almost no views on your site. The key is to be patient. Once you’ve posted some quality work, established a regular schedule and become involved in various online communities, you’ll start to get some hits. After a short while, you’ll gain loyal readers that will subscribe to your site or visit regularly and they will tend to leave comments on a majority of the stuff you post. So, like anything, if you give it time, you’ll be sure to see results.

Those are the most useful tips I have to offer. I know a lot of them have been posted by others before, but I figured I would re-post them in my own words, as they are things I have followed for the most part and i’ve seen work first hand. So, if you’re new to the blogging world, welcome, and if follow these tips, you’ll slowly get regular and loyal readers.

Hope that helped!

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Last year, I posted wallpapers from sites like DeviantART, Flickr, ect. This year, to improve my Photography, I’m going to try my best to provide you guys with wallpapers I personally made. I will rarely have the time to make wallpapers in Photoshop, but taking photos and posting them shouldn’t be too hard.

This week’s photo is of a bunch of bushes near my house. Being winter, these bushes lack leaves.

Download it here.

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The Keynote came and went, and let me start off by saying; I was disappointed.

The Keynote took off with the introduction of “Time Capsule.” Time Capsule is Apples version of an external Hard Drive, only wireless. I think having wireless backup is a great idea. I personally have both of my external hard drive hidden away under my desk. Thankfully, I was able to wire everything fine, but this might not be the case for some people. With Time Capsule, you can backup multiple computers in the house, all wirelessly.

I think it’s a great idea by Apple, but I really wish they would have come up with a more original design for it. It’s pretty much an Airport Extreme, only thiner, wider and with a silver Apple on the top. The 500GB goes for $299.00 USD, and the 1,000GB goes for $499.00 USD. A little pricey in my eyes, but then again, it’s wireless.

For now, I’ll stick with my LaCie Porsche Hard Drives, thank you very much.

iPhone and iPod Touch updates came next. Overall, these updates were just small little software updates and additions.

The iPhone received web clips, maps with locations, SMS with multiple people, customizable home screen, chapters and iPhone SDK is expected in February of this year. These software updates will be available as of today, for free.

When the iPod Touch was announced in September, talk of future updates that would include Mail, Weather, ect was circulating. Because the iPod Touch has Wi-Fi, people were scratching their heads as to why Apple didn’t include these features out-of-the-box. Well, today, these applications have been released. Like the iPhone, the iPod Touch can now have Mail, Weather, Notes, Stocks and Maps. Although a cool and useful update, it doesn’t come free. In order to get these extra little bells and whistles, you’ll have to cough up $20.00.

This next announcement, has been flying around the Internet for months now, and it’s finally here. iTunes Movie Rentals. Launching today (in the US only), the rental store will feature 1000 movies and movies will become available 30 days after their DVD release. The rentals can be watched on Macs, PCs, iPods and iPhone and once rented, you’re given 30 days to start the movie, and 24 hours to complete it. Each rental will cost $2.99, 3.99 for new releases and $4.99 for HD movies (only 100 titles available right now). This will make movie rentals easy! *iTunes Movie Rentals will be available to more countries later this year.

Apple TV Update came next. There isn’t to much new about the Apple TV. The only real new feature is that, you no longer need a computer. You can still sync stuff with your Mac or PC, but now you can buy music, download podcasts and view photos from Flickr or .Mac all from your Apple TV, no computer necessary. The price also went from $299.00 to $249.00.

Lastly, MacBook Air. The rumors proved to be right on this one. Apple releases an ultra-portable, ultra-thin, ultra-lightweight notebook today, by the name of “MacBook Air”.

The notebook is 0.76″ at its thickets part and 0.16″ at its thinest part. It features a full-sized, MacBook-like ambient light sensor keyboard, a 13.3″ LED backlit widescreen and a multi-touch trackpad, allowing you to zoom in and out of things just by moving your fingers. All packaged into a 3 pound machine.

Being ultra-portable comes with some downsides. A huge one for a lot of people, is the lack of an optical drive. For $99.00, an external one can be bought from Apple, but that just adds clutter to your desk, however, there is apparently software that’s in the works, which will allow you to “borrow” the optical drive from another Mac or PC. The machine comes with only 1 USB 2.0 port, and no Firewire ports. It also doesn’t come with an Apple remote.

Now to move onto the negatives of the notebooks specs. Being ultra-thin, makes it hard to hold a lot of power, which I feel is a major downfall in this product. Running a 1.6GHz or optional 1.8GHz with a standard 2GBs of RAM across the board and a 80GB hard drive or an optional 64GB SSD hard drive, doesn’t allow for that much performance. Although I understand it’s not a pro line notebook and it’s meant for easy and simple portability, I feel that, with the lack of an optical drive, USB ports and only sporting a small 80GB hard drive (which for todays standards, is quite small), the average consumer is getting ripped off. Of course, if priced a around $1,000.00, this notebook would be a pretty great option for many people, however, this isn’t the case. The bottom line MacBook Air has a tag of $1,799.00 and for the SSD hard drive with the extra 200MHz boost, you’re looking at over $3,000.00! That’s insane! For the same price, you can get an amazing MacBook Pro. Sorry Apple, but that’s way over priced.

Overall, I think the MacBook Air looks nice, but lack performance and is insanely priced. You’d have to be mad to actually buy one of these.

I have to say, this years MacWorld has been a disappointment to me. How do you guys feel about what was announced and released today?

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Last year, I posted wallpapers from sites like DeviantART, Flickr, ect. This year, to improve my Photography, I’m going to try my best to provide you guys with wallpapers I personally made. I will rarely have the time to make wallpapers in Photoshop, but taking photos and posting them shouldn’t be too hard.

This weeks photo was taken on the corner of my street. These last few days it’s been pretty warm and it’s been raining a lot, so the majority of the snow has melted, making the streets and sidewalks filthy with garbage and stuff. This is a 13 second exposure.

Download it here.

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A while back, I posted my top 10 favorite applications (in fact, it was my second post on here). Today, I want to share with you guys, my top 10 most used applications. These are the applications I pretty much have running from the minute I turn on my computer, to the minute I turn it off. So, lets take a look at them, shall we? *List is in order of left to right in how they sit in my dock.

1) Mail: I’ve only been using Mail for about 5 or 6 months now. I used to use Google Notifier, which informed me when I got a new e-mail, which I then had to open Safari and log into Gmail to read my message. Having a little icon in my dock, displaying the number of unread messages, is just fantastic. Not only do I not have to open my browser, log into an account, ect, but I can also have multiple e-mail accounts set up with Mail. The reason why I just recently started using it, is because I never understood how to setup a Gmail account with it. I always thought it was just for .mac accounts. Anyway, now that I have it all set up with 3 different account, it makes incoming and outgoing e-mails so much more enjoyable. So, being an e-mail client, I obviously have this open 24/7.

2) Vienna: I use Vienna as my RSS reader. I personally don’t need anything more than being notified when a site I like has published a new post. That’s pretty much all I use Vienna for. I’m subscribed to 42 sites, and I like to know when a site posts something new. Once Growl notifies me about the post, I open up Vienna and just read it off of the application. It saves me time from going to each site one by one. However, I just like that Vienna is free. I personally wouldn’t want to pay for an RSS reader, as I don’t feel it’s really worth it, which is why I pick Vienna as my RSS reader.

3) Safari: We all use an internet browser, and mine is Safari. I’m just used to the interface, and I feel that it runs a little faster than say, Firefox or Camino. Although, ever since Apple launched Safari 3, I’ve been experiencing nothing but problems. I have to restart it at least 4 or 5 times a day, and it just freezes a lot. Despite all of that, I’m still keen on using Safari, thus making it my browser of choice.

4) iTunes: Being a Mac user, I don’t think it should come as any surprise that I use iTunes. I love iTunes. I have over 75GBs worth of entertainment in it, and it’s just such a great way to organize my music, TV shows, movies, podcasts and more! I wouldn’t think about using anything else to do the job.

5) iCal: I use iCal to write in all upcoming days off, all upcoming concerts, when school assignments are due, important events and things of that nature. I love the interface and its simplicity. I find it to be a great organization tool for me, and I pretty much use it multiple times a day.

6) Photoshop CS3: I’m someone who spends a lot of time working in photoshop. I edit my photos in photoshop, I put together my designs in photoshop, I use photoshop to crop and size images for this site, I pretty much use photoshop for any image related task. I always have it open, just incase I need to quickly tweak something in it. I’ve been using it for over 3 years now, so I don’t know how I would be able to use anything else. It does everything I need it to.

7) Adium: Let me start off by saying; Adium blows everything else ever made, out of the water. Adium is an IM client that allows you to log into multiple IM accounts, such as: MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and much much more. It gives you the ability to customize the UI like you’d never believe. There are endless possibilities to its customization and plugins, making it my choice for chatting.

8) Twitterific: There are a few Twitter applications out there, but the one I like to use most is Twitterific. I like the simple look of it, and I’ve been using it for some time now, so I’m used to the user interface.

9) Last.FM: Being a member of Last.FM, and always listening to music, my Last.FM application stays open 24/7. I use it to scrobble the music I play out of iTunes, as well as discovering new artists.

10) iStat Menus: This little application sit in the menu bar, and lets you see a number of different things going on in your computer. Things like the computers temperature, CPU usage, Memory usage, Fan speeds, Disk space and much more. I personally find it really handy. I like to see what my computer is doing, and what’s hogging my memory.

So, like I said, these are the applications that I always have running. As soon as my computer turns on, I launch these applications, and I don’t close them until I shut my computer down.

What are some of the applications you guys use a lot?

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Well, i’ve decided to join the trend and do a “project 365″. This means that I’ll be posting a new photo every day. I was originally going to do this on Flickr, but I wanted to put up a nice photo blog that people can visit and comment on. So, I spent about an hour and a half yesterday, setting up and putting together my photo blog. *I will still be posting the photos up on Flickr.

Like I stated in the “about” page of the photo blog; there may be some days that I’ll forget to update, or there might be times where the photos lack substance. I’m pretty busy, being only 16, getting through my last year of high school, running WYendrys.com, doing the weekly podcast, doing all the sound-tech stuff for my school, working on my portfolio to get into college, as well as maintaining my social life, it will sometimes become hard to produce good images. So, plesase forgive me if I miss a day, or if a photo is lame.

That being said, I put the photo blog up there for you guys to enjoy, comment (which is done by clicking “details” on the top menu bar), and critique. So, subscribe, enjoy and have a nice day!

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Last year, I posted wallpapers from sites like DeviantART, Flickr, ect. This year, to improve my Photography, I’m going to try my best to provide you guys with wallpapers I personally made. I will rarely have the time to make wallpapers in Photoshop, but taking photos and posting them shouldn’t be too hard.

This weeks photo, is from a photo shoot I did for my Personal Project. This isn’t the actual piece that’s going in my book. The actual piece is going to be more conceptual and will involve a physical object submerged in the water. Anyway, I thought this might be cool as wallpaper.

Download it here.

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It’s that time of year again! MacWorld 2008 is just around the corner, and I’m hoping for some great things from Apple!

Let take some time to voice my predictions and wishes. I personally want to see a 12″ MacBook Pro, 2.4GHz, 4GBs of RAM and up to 250GB hard drive along with a new line of cheaper, brighter and better Apple Cinema Displays. I also want a release date for the iPhone Canada.

I’m personally looking for a smaller MacBook Pro with more power, so that it’s easy for me to take around, but so that when I’m at home, I can hook it up to an external monitor. If Apple releases a new line of ACD’s and that 12″ MacBook Pro I’m hoping for, I’m going to sell my 17″ MacBook Pro, my 15″ iMac G4, some wireless mice and keyboards, an old printer, and whatever else I can, just so I can acquire that set up.

I’m hoping for an iPhone release date in Canada, either at MacWorld, or some other time between Q1 and Q2 of 2008. May is when my parents are going to allow me to have an phone, and so, I want to be able to buy an iPhone straight away, rather than waiting for Apple to release one in 2012, when the iPhone has gone through 10 generations. Although, I don’t think we’ll see an iPhone Canada release date, it’s just wishful thinking.

As far as software goes, this would be around the time where iLife and iWork ‘08 would be released, but we got that last August. I do think however, we might see some iTunes updates. Maybe even iTunes 8.

Anyway, this post became more of a wish list, than a prediction list. So, you heard what I want at MacWorld. What are the things you guys are hoping for?

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