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Working For eHow

I’m very happy to report that my online job ventures are paying off. I’m working for two companies, currently: Demand Studios and eHow. I really enjoy writing “how to” articles, as you can see from my other blog, The Older Geek; I also like writing fact sheets. It’s a time-consuming job, however. Both jobs require onerous references, preferably from educational or government websites. Many times, I know how to do something or fix something, but I have to hunt the web for additional, related references. It can be very time consuming. But I enjoy it, and I am able to stay at home.

Working for eHow so far has no immediate financial benefits. You must first build “clout,” and write some good, solid articles. Once an article starts to get a lot of traffic, you can earn the money. I’ve read a few testimonies of people earning over $1,000 on one article.

So I’ve had less time for blogging. Which is OK. Blogging started out for me as an outlet and a journal (travel) but over the years my blogging has developed, and I’ve loved every minute of it. But I do realize that it may not continue forever.

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Haloscan Closing Its Doors

Ouch.

Haloscan, that blog commenting software that has been around for years, is closing the service. This is from their website.

Haloscan, the legacy comment system that JS-Kit acquired last year, is physically starting to fail (the software and hardware). In order to minimize the disruption for users and avoid a hard stop, we have worked hard to provide two ways to transition off the system.

This transition will happen in batches of users over the course of a couple of months. The first batch of users will start getting a notice of the upgrade right away on their Haloscan admin dashboard.

Once presented with the upgrade message, Haloscan users will have 2 weeks to make a decision. You will have the following two options.

1. Upgrade to Echo for a 30 day free Trial and then $12/year – all your comment data will be transitioned over automatically. Read below for important information about Echo.
2. Export your Haloscan comment data and turn off their service – Haloscan comment importers are on the way from various vendors.

If you do not choose a specific path within the 2 weeks notice, you will be upgraded to the Echo trial automatically.

Haloscan was very popular with Blogger, since Blogger’s commenting functions are woefully inadequate (even after a few small tweaks by Google). I tried Haloscan a few years ago, and wasn’t too impressed. Of course, the Blogger commenting functions are terrible. But rather than continue to work with Blogger, I just went to Wordpress and my own self-hosted blogs. It’s been a great experience, with Wordpress.

Regarding Haloscan, some bloggers are afraid they may lose all their comments across hundreds of posts. I *think* Haloscan is offering a free comment migration back to your original blog host, through various third-party vendors. Not sure, though, because it seems some things are still up in the air. Read the FAQs here.

Haloscan is closing February 20.

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The Older Geek Blog

This is one of my newest creations, The Older Geek. It’s still just a baby, but growing fast. ;) I *finally* have the theme just the way I like it, and have been starting to write posts. It’s my latest leap into building more blogs. With The Older Geek, I hope to have more tutorials for topics such as blogging and database management, computer how-tos, and more. These kinds of articles take a long time to write: often, I have to make photos, screenshots, and videos to accent the text tutorials. So the new blog is growing, but slowly. I invite you to come over and take a look! I have a few posts up about how to begin a blog, which I hope will be very helpful to new and experienced bloggers.

Blogging is more than just signing up, picking a template, and writing away (unless you have a Blogger blog, haha! They’ve made it that easy). But blogging (even Blogger blogging) takes time and effort. You must choose a good domain name. you must manage your posts and files, you must update– you MUST know what you’re doing! Security is a big issue, too. Over the summer, Wordpress and Blogger blogs were targeted by hackers and spammers, and I know dozens of bloggers who were affected. Some even lost their blogs because they didn’t know how to backup their content.

I am of the opinion that if you are going to have a blog, then you need to know how to maintain it– not only for your own sake, but for the blogging community at large. That’s what I’d like to accomplish at The Older Geek. And the aspect of blogging is just one aspect of The Older Geek. I also want to address computer security, computer tweaks to make your unit run in good condition, and other helpful ideas. I hope my posts are able to help others out with what I have learned over the years.

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Another Great Wordpress Theme Site

Believe it or not (!!), I’ve started up some new blogs! :D So I spent quite a few hours looking over my options. I checked out Drupal, Joomla, and b2evolution platforms for possible choices… but Drupal was difficult to manage and had very limited choices. Joomla looked too complex, and b2evolution was too plain. So I reverted back to Wordpress. When it comes to blogging, I really need a variety of nice themes. I’m willing to slog through technicalities and database manipulating, but when it comes to nice themes, I draw the line. By FAR, Wordpress has the best themes around. And there are plenty of exceptional-quality themes, too. Here’s one: Template Lite Wordpress Templates. (This is not a sponsored post!). I have used some of their themes, and I think they are beautiful. They are very artful, and free! I’m going to use one o their new ones, Sunset Farm, on my new blog very soon. I’ll be sure to let you know about the grand opening. ;) Check out Template Lite for free WP themes. I’m very impressed with what’s there.

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Finding Literature Online

It’s winter for us in the United States– that means more inside activities. For us, it means more reading. I have a stack of books that I’ve ordered from the library, but there are several books that I desire to read that my library does not carry (I like history books, especially ancient civilizations and British history; these seems to be in short order at my library, which carries a ton of fiction stuff).

I considered getting one of those e-reader gadgets (like the Kindle or Sony e-Reader) but the price tag gave me sticker shock. But I found that one doesn’t really need one of those gadgets to read books, not really. There are a ton of e-books to be found online. And if you have a netbook, it’s as easy as starting up a browser or opening a pdf file. Here’s a quick list of e-books to be found online. All of these sites have free books and other forms of literature to read.

Google Books
By far, Google has the largest selection of books and magazines, new and old. I like their library because they have many books that have been out of print for decades , which are very useful to me for my research.

Project Gutenberg is a huge site, with thousands of books you can download or read online.

The Christian Classic Ethereal Library has many old books and documents online for reading.

American Rhetoric has a large database of speeches, documents, videos, and more.

The Classic Bookshelf The website is a little hokey (old), but they have a searchable database and some great classics online.

The Open Library is good.

The Online Books Page is run by the University of Pennsylvania and has a searchable database.

Diploma Guide.com has a listing of free books and textbooks you can read online, as well as a listing of universities in the U.S. (public and private) where you can search for more.

The Internet Archive Text Archive
This website has a large selection of older books.

The Cornell University Library has some very old journals from early America. And The Making of America has a selection of older books, too.

Children’s Storybooks Online has children’s books.

And this list just scratches the surface! If you still haven’t found a particular book, try searching for “read books online” and/or the title or genre of the literature you want.

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