Upstart Blogger

There are a few professions which attract the dishonest. Lawyers, Real Estate Agents, and Pro Bloggers spring to mind. Pro Bloggers in particular are the new snake oil salesmen. In all of these careers there are the occasional practitioners who are honest. And when you find one, you hang on to them and to their advice.

Upstart Blogger is an honest pro blogger. Even the design is like a breath of fresh air (apart from those underscores all over the place that break up the flow of the text). No browser jamming ad blocks and hidden header pop ups. Free from the John Chow “look at me I’m great” rubbish and the Shoe Money (or whatever his name is) trademark bragging and photoshopped checks, Upstart Blogger concentrates on the art of blogging and genuinely cares about giving people blogging advice. It cuts through the smoke and mirrors associated with the pro blogging section of the blogosphere (I hate that word) and highlights the scams that lay in wait for the newbie.

Bottom line – If you want to learn about blogging and learn to make money from your blog, without being sold to and without being asked to sign up to ridiculous text-link-affiliate-scam-schemes then visit Upstart Blogger. You’ll be glad you did.

I don’t understand why Boing Boing is so popular

Boing Boing gets millions of hits but no one can figure out what they are writing about.  It’s a blog about everything and nothing.  Updated a crazy amount of times every day, mostly with absolutely useless information geared totally towards search engine traffic.

I just don’t get it?  Who is reading this stuff?

Zeldman is the man

If you are active online and you don’t know who Jeffery Zeldman is then you must have been living under a rock since the mid 1990’s.  In case you don’t know who he is here is a quote from his about page.

Jeffrey is the founder and executive creative director of Happy Cog™, a web design agency with offices in New York City and Philadelphia. Clients include Advertising Age, AIGA, and Amnesty International USA. Since 1998, Happy Cog has published A List Apart “for people who make websites;” a book series is in the works.

In 1998, Jeffrey co-founded—and from 1999 to 2002 he directed—The Web Standards Project, a grassroots coalition that helped bring standards to our browsers. Once browser makers got with the program, Jeffrey and his cohorts persuaded designers and developers to change the way they created websites—an effort to which A List Apart also greatly contributed.

Jeffrey has written many articles and two books, notably the foundational web standards text Designing With Web Standards, now in its second edition.

Jeffrey is the co-founder (with Eric Meyer) of An Event Apart, a single-track design conference focused on web standards, best practices, and inspiration.

A short biography is available at Happy Cog, a longer one at the Wikipedia Encylopedia.

If you are online you need to read his blog.  It predates all of the so called pro bloggers by years and still manages to be a great read.  Zeldman is passionate about web standards and he is right to be so.  Check out his blog at zeldman.com.  He’s one of a kind.

Yet another new year yet another new blog

It’s been my new years resolution to start a blog for the last 5 years.  But every time I start I can’t think of anything to write about.  This year I think I’ve cracked it.  Passionate Blogs is a blog review site that only reviews blogs by bloggers who are passionate about their subject.

See what I’ve done there?  I’ve made the blogs the subject!  Let’s hope it works.