I’m just here to post a note on awareness and familiarization of GV site. I’m sure some of you have already heard about this great news source site – Global Voices Online. In case if you haven’t, here is abit of info.

Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

More info check out the FAQs section.

You may or may not notice that authors and editors from GV has been aggregating your sites and occasionally featuring/linking to your interesting posts. Those who have wordpress blogs will notice it quicker than those of blogger as there is a link tracking feature WP provides to detect the back links frequently. Ofcos’ you can always check Technorati for back-linking and tracking conversations.

GV is very search engines friendly site. The post published there will be on google search hit within an hour or so. That means, your link will get a bit of search branches and link bites. GV is also an internationally well known center for collecting news hence whatever featured on the site will reach to a vast medium of global readers.
At the moment, my regions of interest are:

East Asia (rather South East Asia) – Myanmar
[ Direct Page Link ] [ RSS ]

Oceania – Fiji
[ Direct Page Link ] [ RSS ]

Global Voices Online provides “RSS feeds” of all its content as it is posted to Country, Region and Topic sections.

Here is a list of feeds they roll for each region. [ GV feeds on Bloglines ]

I guess they haven’t updated the list for quite sometime now cos’ it is an old, incomplete compilation. They got only a few Myanmar feeds that time and no feed from Fiji in there. But ofcos each regional author has his own feed list. I have my own compilation for Myanmar blogs and also quite a few Fiji feeds. Due to last year coup in Fiji, many political blogs bloom up along with a few personal blogs. There is a good possibility of more Fiji blogs to come as awareness of blogging has been spreading through media – newspaper, forums, social networking and among youth groups.

The main difference between Myanmar and Fiji blogosphere is that, Fiji blogs are excelled in English; almost all of them post in English language with a few exceptions of Fijian language blogs. Where else for Myanmar blogosphere, a lot of new blogs emerge in Myanmar language and also some of the formerly English blogs are now transformed into native language blogs. Each has its own pros and cons; I won’t go farther into that.

Anyways, GV is starting to get interested in Fiji and South Pacific blogosphere as well as Myanmar Blogs. So if you find any interesting blogs/news from these regions especially from Myanmar, just give me a shout. The world is listening, so speak up your voices.

Alrite it’s very sleepy, sneaky, slimy, stupid kind of gloomy weather here at Suva today, plus it’s Friday evening so I’m getting bored typing this up. That’s all folks!

Oh Lunchers, your Lunch in Suva blog has already been noticed; how about that huh?

I’ve been tagged for “10 Weird Things About Me” post from MaMoe. Ten is quite a number to think up. May be I’m not weird at all, but when I ask my friend, she said everything about me is weird. Man, what is that suppose to mean? Anyways, the followings are ten weird things about me. (may be not)

1. I don’t like ice cream, chocolate and sweets. (ice cream sticky my mouth/fingers, chocolates stuck in the teeth, sweets are just too sweet)
2. Sometimes, I sleep with eyes open. (so mom says. Very rare ok!)
3. I pull my hair whenever I’m reading or into deep thoughts.
4. I bite my lip till it bleed.
5. I don’t own a single makeup or costmastic except lipstick (which I wear to prevent myself from biting lips).
6. I don’t like orange, I don’t like water melon or any other fruits that would wet/sticky my fingers. Not that I don’t like them, I just don’t feel like eating them.
7. I use tissue paper to hold my mouse. (Finger/palm got sweaty and it gets dirty and sticky which I hate very much)
8. Sometimes I don’t comb my hair or look myself in the mirror for the whole day. (Especially during the weekends)
9. Sometimes I talk/mumble to myself whenever I’m thinking or coding something.
10. Then again, I sometimes don’t talk at all to anyone for the whole day.

Ok so that’s about it for me and my weirdness. Now…who shall I tag?
I’m tagging…7venians, Klosayhtoo, CMS, Strange Pants and 50 Viss

Just informing my readers and the rest that I’ve been invited to join GlobalVoicesOnline.org site as a regional author for South East Asia – Myanmar.

Motto: The world is talking. Are you listing?
It’s been a while they sent me the invitation; since the crisis about my “Populating mmBlog Gene Pool” post last year. Due to the event, I’ve turn down the request that time. Myanmar blogs have been blooming with a great speed these days and most of them post in Myanmar language so GV team in need of someone who is bilingual to help out rolling Myanmar feeds. I’ve already been rolling hundreds of Myanmar feeds so not a problem for me to collect news from the community. So for this re-invitation, I’m accepting it.

I’ll make sure…Myanmar Voices shall be heard!

It’s this time of the year again to join in the nudity. I’ve participated in the very first naked day last year and I’m up for 2nd round this year as well. More nakedness to join this year as already hundreds of sites has signed up for the day. This cool idea started last year by Dustin Diaz to promote Web Standards. April 5th is the day to see many websites in styleless bare medium.

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your body.

So join the gang, get ready to strip and drop your style sheets on April the 5th.

I’m feeling really down these days. I got a lot of posts to write about and a few photos been prepared but just not in the mood to sit and type it up. I’m also reading some books and watching movies a lot these days that I couldn’t come back to my blog. I’ve been extremely lazy these days that I don’t even want to visit my own blog. This evening I feel a bit refreshed after a long shower and sat down to do some posting. So here I am, out of the blue, reanalysing what to write and where my blog stands as Mayvelous ages into her third year. It’s been a great three years journey together with Mayvelous.

I learn many things about blog, bloggers, blogging, blogosphere and a whole lot of blogging aspects. I’m also gradually improving in terms of habitual writing. I don’t mean writing as in proper literature with perfect grammar and smooth reading. I just mean as a regular habit of putting your thoughts down in your blog. Mayvelous keeps me awake, she lends me ears, she shares my joy, sorrow and laughters. She’s very lame with keeping secrets but she’s very good listener. She’s been a great friend anyone would ask for.

As time pass, I’m thinking what kind of path I’m driving Mayvelous into. I’ve read an old ebook by Seth Godin a few year back about types of blogs and I remembered I noted down some quotes from there. I’m sorry it’s been too long that I noted down these points and I’ve lost the direct link to the ebook so couldn’t provide you with proper reference link.

From the book, I got to know that there are 3 kinds of blogs namely :

1. Cat Blogs
2. Boss Blogs
3. Viral Blogs

CAT BLOGS are blogs for and by and about the person blogging. A cat blog is about your cat and your dating travails and your boss and whatever you feel like sharing in your public diary. The vast majority of people with a cat blog don’t need or want strangers to read it. If you’ve got a cat blog, you should embrace that fact and stop wondering where all your traffic is.

BOSS BLOGS are blogs used to communicate to a defined circle of people. A boss blog is a fantastic communications tool.

Mainly used for projects and activities to share latest news with team members or activity partners

VIRAL BLOGS: They’re viral blogs because the goal of the blog is to spread ideas. The blogger is investing time and energy in order to get her ideas out there. Why? Lots of reasons—to get consulting work, to change the outcome of an election, to find new customers for a business or to make it easier for existing customers to feel good about staying.

Some of these blogs are for individuals (call them citizen journalists or op-ed pages) and others are for organizations trying to share their ideas and agendas. These are the blogs that are changing the face of marketing, journalism and the spread of ideas.

If you’re writing for strangers, that means you’re building a viral blog. The first principle is to make your entries shorter. Use images and tone and design and interface to make your point. Teach people gradually.

On the other hand, if you’re writing for colleagues, you’ve got a boss blog. That means you can make your entries more robust.

Reading through these and thinking what kind of blog do I own makes me confused. Mayvelous is personal diary-like blog though I don’t write too personal matters, yet I do write about my daily issues and occasional outburst of personal feelings. So it goes into the category of CAT-Blogs.

Mayvelous also talks about work matters and project/technology related news which mainly concentrate on programmers, web developers and IT professionals. So it’s kind of gets under BOSS-Blogs category as well.

Blog by nature is very public, hence you’re writing for various types of strangers. Some may find your post informative and some might not. It’s all depends on which type of “strangers” your blog attracts more.

You’re not interested/attracting anyone then the blog is obviously a CAT-Blog. When it attracts more of your friends and family attention, it becomes the BOSS-Blog. Ofcos, once it catches the attention from general public then you become the VIRAL-Blogger. In my opinion, all blogs aim to be Viral some day. The three blog types are very much inter-related; many blogs start as CAT-Blogs then move their way up to Boss-Blogs and finally be the Viral-Blog.

So, where is Mayvelous? Mayvelous is still in the state of the BOSS petting her CAT. Sometimes the cat runs away and a few times the boss wants to quit. I’m hoping to move mayvelous towards a wider circle of audience with informative content to become the VIRAL-Blog in near future.

So this is what I’ve discovered about types of blogs. Which type does your blog fall under and is it in the correct path that you want it to be? Just something to think about anyways.

Oh Holly mother! I never thought of that way. I feel like…..I don’t know how to feel at all.
If you think of that way, it’s quite true. haha.

No prior experience necessary
Word of mouth works best
Doing it once a day is good, doing it twice a day is better, doing it three times a day is best but awfully hard to sustain
Learn a few basic tricks and then do them over and over
Getting someone to pimp your business can increase traffic but also has unintended negative consequences
Some days it’s impossible to satisfy the customers

I must add the differences though,
#1. We don’t get paid,
#2. We don’t get laid,
#3. We don’t get STD.

No offences intended, just a merry quote passing along.

Via: Business2 | Blogging Pro

Over at friendlybit, Emil talks of feed readers being a threat to a design on web. I find it a good article and something to think about. I’ve seen many debates over “Full vs Partial Feed” publishing. I’ve seen lots of talk on “Great Content vs Great Design”. Now Emil brought up another thought on “Users should decide vs Webmasters should decide” and “styling vs unstyling” web trends.

The widely accepted rule was to let the users decide the layout; after all why should we need to download the same design over and over? Design was something the user decided, not the author.

But those content-only sites didn’t live long. First tables, then CSS, enabled users to make sites more interesting and in many cases easier to read.

Everything has pro and con. Sometimes it’s so hard to take sides.

Myself as a user, I like the idea of reading full feed from various site content through feed reader for faster and easier (no need to remember all site urls) accessibilities.

But then again, you lost track of the site look and feel aspect as well as some other factors like aside links, photo galleries, no-feed related content pages such as “about page”, “portfolio”, others articles and even a good comments discussion. You become very unfamiliar with the site and sometimes you don’t even recognize the site that you roll the feed from when you happen to came across.

Not too long ago feeds were introduced. Feeds make it easier to subscribe to websites by separating content from all the “design stuff”. This enables users to decide how your content should look. Proponents often talk about how much faster it is to read content from different sites when they all look the same. No time is lost trying to understand a new design.

Apart from having a great content, site aesthetics is also one of the essential factors of web medium.
So, myself as a designer/site owner, I published partial feed only.
Why? Becos’ I got alot more stuffs to show off than just feed content.
I prefer varieties of stylish medium than a dull unstyled web.
I want my readers not only to taste my writing but also to feel my overall site identity.

What kind of web do we want? What kind of web do you want? Should we go back to an unstyled web where content is the only thing that matters? Did the “content only”-proponents win after all? Is it a “feeds only” web what we want?

In the case of “Users should decide VS Webmasters should decide”, I take it as webmasters are the advanced users and hence they have a chance to change the direction in which they prefer best. ie. If you favor unstlyed web, go ahead and publish full feed. Otherwise, support the effectivness of design aesthetics and force trick the users to the direction by publishing a partial feed.

Oh yes, LONG LIVE DESIGN!

Read Emil’s full article on “Feed – a threat to design on the web” here.