I glanced at google analytics for the stats on this blog recently and I noticed the site at number seven in the top 10 list of referrers JapanBlogList.com. I recall sending a request to be added back in 2007 when I moved to Japan, but I had never really noticed it since then. Looking at the site two weeks ago, it was obvious that it was no longer being maintained, which I thought was a shame.
Long term readers from my time in Korea may remember, I wrote a number of posts about new blogs from the KoreanBlogList.com and I always enjoyed finding new blogs to read. So I emailed the JapanBlogList site. To my surprise I received an email back, even more surprising was that the man behind the site is none other than Gary (GDog) from TheDailyKimchi. I met him a couple of times while were both living in Korea and we exchanged numerous emails.
So, to cut a long story short, Gary is busy in Canada and he had not had time to update the list, so I volunteered and he was delighted to let me loose on the site that he built. There is quite a lot of work to do for the site, so I have decided on number of phases for the effort required.
Phase One : Delete all the dead links. That started a couple of weeks ago when I took over, and ( thanks to Jeff as well who sent in a couple of links that I had missed) I think all the dead links have gone.
Phase Two : Add all the latest suggestions in the JapanBlogList inbox. This phase is almost complete. There are still another ten or so from the June and May that still need to be added. I hope to finish that this week.
Phase Three: Revisit all the blogs and collect the RSS feeds for each blog. Once this is complete I will use the Blogger.com feature 'list of blogs' to publish the latest updates for all the blogs onto the JapanBlogList.com website. That's going to couple more weeks. Maybe I should set myself a deadline...
Phase Four : Start a regular posting schedule to list the newly added blogs with maybe a few lines on each blog. In addition I have already started a twitter feed twitter.com/JapanBlogList. All new blogs will get a tweet with the link.
Phase Five : Run a competition for a Logo for the site for use in social media sites etc and start promoting the site. www.Japansoc.com will be the first port of call. Any other suggestions?
Phase Six : I can't think that far ahead. This should be enough to keep me busy for a few month yet...
So, I have you a blog relating to anything Japanese please let me know. Just follow the instructions on the site for submission, or feel free to add a comment below.
The main requirements are :
1. That the blog has a least ten posts : I don't want people who have just started a blog, try it for a couple of weeks and then give up, so that I have to go and delete them.
2. Has posted something within the last four months.
The site is getting at least a hundred visitors per day, so addition to the list will certainly increase your chances of getting visitors.
If you know of other Japanese blogs not already listed (and I already know there are quite a few that I read that are not listed) please let the blogger know that JapanBlogList.com is Back in Business.
Showing posts with label blogger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogger. Show all posts
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Odds and ends on blogging
One new feature from Blogger.com is a long overdue enhancement to allow those leaving comments to be notified by email if there has been a reply.
So, if you leave a comment expecting a reply, you can subscribe and receive any further comments by email without having to go back and check the blog each time. This pretty basic idea has been available on WordPress and MovableType blogs for a long time but blogger just launched it recently.
If you have a blog, the feature is available automatically to your readers if they use a Google account, you don't need to change anything on your blog.
I recently subscribed to blogrush.com. It has not brought me any visitors yet, but I've moved the widget up to the top of the blog on the right hand side to promote it. If you see an interesting blog post title there, click to visit another blog in the blogrush network.
I followed one link today and on the blog I visited, Violet eclipse, I saw a link in her blogrush widget to a my good friend Gdog over at The Daily Kimchi. I think that almost proves that relevant links are being generated by their system. I continued following links and it led me to Japanese Penguin which is a blog written by three English language teachers in Tokyo. One of them has the misfortune of being an employee of Nova, a rather large English language school that has very publicly gone into administration last week owing 7,000 teachers several months salary.
I try to keep my blogroll on the right hand side up to date with blogs that are still being maintained. I've said goodbye to several blogs that have stopped posting and added new blogs, particularly on Japan, as I come across them. Check out some of the new blogs added on the righthand side today.
There is no good equivalent of the Korean Blog List for finding bloggers in Japan. The top two blogs JapanProbe and Japundit have sizable blogrolls so I'll be working my way through those in the coming months. RokDrop always has some good links from Japanese blogs in his regular Rok Droplets feature on Sundays. I very briefly considered joining the Yamanote line Halloween party on Saturday evening. Reading about the event afterwards however, I am very glad I did not.
Happy Halloween to you all.
So, if you leave a comment expecting a reply, you can subscribe and receive any further comments by email without having to go back and check the blog each time. This pretty basic idea has been available on WordPress and MovableType blogs for a long time but blogger just launched it recently.
If you have a blog, the feature is available automatically to your readers if they use a Google account, you don't need to change anything on your blog.
I recently subscribed to blogrush.com. It has not brought me any visitors yet, but I've moved the widget up to the top of the blog on the right hand side to promote it. If you see an interesting blog post title there, click to visit another blog in the blogrush network.
I followed one link today and on the blog I visited, Violet eclipse, I saw a link in her blogrush widget to a my good friend Gdog over at The Daily Kimchi. I think that almost proves that relevant links are being generated by their system. I continued following links and it led me to Japanese Penguin which is a blog written by three English language teachers in Tokyo. One of them has the misfortune of being an employee of Nova, a rather large English language school that has very publicly gone into administration last week owing 7,000 teachers several months salary.
I try to keep my blogroll on the right hand side up to date with blogs that are still being maintained. I've said goodbye to several blogs that have stopped posting and added new blogs, particularly on Japan, as I come across them. Check out some of the new blogs added on the righthand side today.
There is no good equivalent of the Korean Blog List for finding bloggers in Japan. The top two blogs JapanProbe and Japundit have sizable blogrolls so I'll be working my way through those in the coming months. RokDrop always has some good links from Japanese blogs in his regular Rok Droplets feature on Sundays. I very briefly considered joining the Yamanote line Halloween party on Saturday evening. Reading about the event afterwards however, I am very glad I did not.
Happy Halloween to you all.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Blogger Update and Blogging statistics
One item of feedback I received from my father Grumpy Old Bookman was that after I moved to the new version of blogger, he saw 25 posts he'd previously read, as "new" in his RSS reader, bloglines.com . So apologies to the people using bloglines.com, I did not see this problem with the RSS reader NewsNetWire that I use.
As mentioned before, I also had to fix the template so that clicking I'm A Seoul Man takes you to the home page as before. Since the ItemPage attribute no longer worked, I removed the four references to it and it now seems to work.
This ensures anyone reaching one of my posts from a post-item link can easily go to the home page without having to edit the URL in the address bar.
So, how do people reach the blog? The wild and wonderful stats of Google Analytics lists these search strings, amongst others:
seoul man
gerry bevers
ask enquired clothing
sk korea send sms to england
places to go in seoul
bosintang
prisoner of wonderland: an esl misadventure
christmas in korea
national arboretum seoul
yongpyong
polham clothing
yang yong-eun
korean pop bands
recycling in korea
korean blogs
noryangjin fish market
seoul blog
aussie in seoul
All of these I can understand, but some of the other 320 people who came here last month from Google were looking for something I cannot provide :
cameron diaz privat cell phone
mind charity shops dulwich village
photo of man walking in london fog
urban myths in wimborne
i'm a snow man
the man who cooked his girlfriend for dinner
I find it all quite fascinating, particulary the last one!
It also provides a list of the number of visitors that have been referred from other sites. A very large number come from Gdog's blog The Daily Kimchi. He puts a huge amount of effort into writing and promoting his blog. I hope one day he makes as much money as Darren Rowse who claims a six figure income from blogging. (and he's not talking South Korean won here either).
Another big source of referrals is The Korean Bloglist. I have not completely given up my idea of trying to visit all the blogs on the list, but I have certainly slowed down.
All these great blogs have provided me with visitors, so go check them out:
Between pee and kimchee
A Geek in Korea
LostNomad
SeoulLife
Kimchi For Breakfast
Soju and I
The Road Not Taken
DPRK studies
Chosun Bimbo
Expatriate Games
Looking @ Reflection
Seoul Hero
The Marmot's Hole
Joe Seoul Man
Guano Island
Yeolchae
eye4insanity
Geofftech
Student in Korea
IdiotsCollective
The other sites from which I've had a few referrals include flickr.com, Thorn Tree, expat-blog.com and eflblogs.com
So if you have a blog and not signed up for Google Analytics go for it. It's free and provides hours of entertainment!
As mentioned before, I also had to fix the template so that clicking I'm A Seoul Man takes you to the home page as before. Since the ItemPage attribute no longer worked, I removed the four references to it and it now seems to work.
This ensures anyone reaching one of my posts from a post-item link can easily go to the home page without having to edit the URL in the address bar.
So, how do people reach the blog? The wild and wonderful stats of Google Analytics lists these search strings, amongst others:
seoul man
gerry bevers
ask enquired clothing
sk korea send sms to england
places to go in seoul
bosintang
prisoner of wonderland: an esl misadventure
christmas in korea
national arboretum seoul
yongpyong
polham clothing
yang yong-eun
korean pop bands
recycling in korea
korean blogs
noryangjin fish market
seoul blog
aussie in seoul
All of these I can understand, but some of the other 320 people who came here last month from Google were looking for something I cannot provide :
cameron diaz privat cell phone
mind charity shops dulwich village
photo of man walking in london fog
urban myths in wimborne
i'm a snow man
the man who cooked his girlfriend for dinner
I find it all quite fascinating, particulary the last one!
It also provides a list of the number of visitors that have been referred from other sites. A very large number come from Gdog's blog The Daily Kimchi. He puts a huge amount of effort into writing and promoting his blog. I hope one day he makes as much money as Darren Rowse who claims a six figure income from blogging. (and he's not talking South Korean won here either).
Another big source of referrals is The Korean Bloglist. I have not completely given up my idea of trying to visit all the blogs on the list, but I have certainly slowed down.
All these great blogs have provided me with visitors, so go check them out:
Between pee and kimchee
A Geek in Korea
LostNomad
SeoulLife
Kimchi For Breakfast
Soju and I
The Road Not Taken
DPRK studies
Chosun Bimbo
Expatriate Games
Looking @ Reflection
Seoul Hero
The Marmot's Hole
Joe Seoul Man
Guano Island
Yeolchae
eye4insanity
Geofftech
Student in Korea
IdiotsCollective
The other sites from which I've had a few referrals include flickr.com, Thorn Tree, expat-blog.com and eflblogs.com
So if you have a blog and not signed up for Google Analytics go for it. It's free and provides hours of entertainment!
Friday, February 09, 2007
Upgraded to New Blogger
Notice anything different? No neither do I. Which is good because I just logged into Blogger.com and I was presented with the option to upgrade to the new 'Out Of Beta' Blogger or whatever they are calling it.
It said 'you can skip this only once' so I crossed my fingers and clicked OK. The upgrade requires a Google login. I already had a Google account, which saved some time. After that it took a minute or two before it came up with the message 'All Done'.
Creating this post there is now a line below to add labels which are one of the new features of the upgrade. It will be interesting to see if you need to add something in the template to make the labels appear in the sidebar. I've not read the manual yet!
Another other good feature is that they have added RSS site feed as standard, which is something I have been persuading several fellow bloggers to add to their blogs. This will save you having to go to Feedburner.
The spelling checker is a lot more friendly. It highlights all the problem words in one go and provides a drop down list of suggestions when you click on them.
The only thing that seems to have changed is that the 'I'm A Seoul Man' in the box at the top of the blog is no longer a link to the front page of the blog. I'll fix that next.
It said 'you can skip this only once' so I crossed my fingers and clicked OK. The upgrade requires a Google login. I already had a Google account, which saved some time. After that it took a minute or two before it came up with the message 'All Done'.
Creating this post there is now a line below to add labels which are one of the new features of the upgrade. It will be interesting to see if you need to add something in the template to make the labels appear in the sidebar. I've not read the manual yet!
Another other good feature is that they have added RSS site feed as standard, which is something I have been persuading several fellow bloggers to add to their blogs. This will save you having to go to Feedburner.
The spelling checker is a lot more friendly. It highlights all the problem words in one go and provides a drop down list of suggestions when you click on them.
The only thing that seems to have changed is that the 'I'm A Seoul Man' in the box at the top of the blog is no longer a link to the front page of the blog. I'll fix that next.
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