Gnorb.NET

All my life I’ve tried to create revelry and camaraderie by putting together contests where people could participate and compete in. I’ve seen others do this and have amazing success at it. But I… well… queue the violin:

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I’m a blogger. By definition, that means I’m an attention whore. Search engines are to bloggers and web masters what tabloids are to Paris Hilton: the only way to ever really be seen, since outside of this most haven’t really done anything to garner attention. Today’s edition of Le Linkage focuses on some rather interesting places I’ve recently found on the topic of SEO. This isn’t a list of all the best sites on the Web for SEO — I could literally spend a whole blog writing about that very topic — its just a list of interesting articles I’ve recently found on the topic.

Like always, if you like this post, bookmark it! You can also find more Le Linkage episodes in the Le Linkage section of Gnorb.NET.

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Ok, 2005 tapped me on the shoulder last night and told me to check out the Google Analytics page. Basically, if you own a site, Google Analytics will help you see where your traffic is coming from, where it’s leaving from, and will generally help you optimize your site for your audience. From everything I see, my audience is mostly made up of horny males who find me via Google by looking for the term “Elita Loresca”, which of course takes them to the Elita Loresca Pics and Info page I put up a while back. (Never did I guess that page would end up becoming so popular. Behold the power of sex, I guess.) That aside, it seems people enjoy the Bloody Penguin Baseball game an awful (and I do mean “awful”) lot. I guess violence sells, too.

Hmm… sex and violence… Interesting that while I work pretty hard not to include any of those things in most of my posts, in the end, those end up being the most popular. Maybe I should take a hint…?

Nah. Unless she did the weather every morning. “Today, it will rain… BLOOD!” *bites cameraman*. Then it’d be different. Somehow.

I plan to keep playing around with that tool (uhm… Google Analytics… not what you’re thinking… after seeing that picture…) to make the site better, but in the mean time you may have to “pardon my dust” to turn a phrase. If you see strange things happening with the RSS feeds and the site layout you’ll know what’s happening and why. I’ll keep off the whole “sex and violence” thing, though. Unless Square-Enix changes their formula for Final Fantasy, in which case… well, I’ll get off of that subject.

(By the way, for those of you not familiar with the image above, that’s the main character of the BloodRayne video game.)

A couple of weeks back I got an email from a friend. The email, which seemed frantic at best, ignored most of the laws of conventional English in that there were no capitalizations, no complete sentences, and all punctuations were replaced with ellipses (…). As I read it, my heart began to race, my blood pressure arose, and I suddenly found myself sweating, even though the temperature was at about 75-degrees (Fahrenheit). “Why do people write like that?!” I thought. I shrugged it off as it just being one of those emails written in a hurry, where information is being communicated just well enough for the reader to both understand it and understand that it was done super quickly. After all, this friends was always a great writer and this was something I didn’t exactly associate with her.

A few days ago, I got another email from the same person. This email was written in the same frantic style, making my head feel again as if it was about to explode. “What,” I thought, “could have possibly gotten into her?!” I didn’t actually ask, since I didn’t want to offend, but I couldn’t help think that some form of parasite had burrowed into her brain. I’ll admit, I’m being a bit anal about this matter, but c’mon: I’m a writer and an editor. It comes with the territory. (Note: I know, I know — I don’t edit this blog as much as I could/should. It’s not meant to be that professional anyway. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. Hypocrisy be damned!)

Yesterday, I was at my parent’s place. My younger sister, who has her own MySpace page and circle of friends, was sitting at the computer writing an email to one of her MySpace pals. Being the cyber-quidnunc that I am (sometimes), I looked over her shoulder to see what she was writing.

There it was again: the writing.

hey…didnt c u at Amp last night… tell mel i’ll be flying in at 12… i dont plan on staying up too late either… yeah, I feel old too, but at least u’re already doing what older people are supposed to do….lol….responsibilities!! I will definitely keep u updated…

It seems like the Internet’s spawned yet another lingo: MySpaceTalk.

MySpace has always been a bit of an enigma to me. In fact, I hadn’t heard of it until about a year ago, when someone told me that it was “like LiveJournal, but different.” Yeah, real descriptive there, buddy. Other than that, I’ve pretty much ignored it until recently, when I began to hear that a lot of people were using MySpace as a way of getting in touch with old friends. “That’s not a bad idea,” I thought. After all, MySpace has something like 75,000,000 subscribed users (or about 10% of all Internet users world wide, if you don’t account for the myriad of users with multiple accounts), so I’m sure at least a few people I know are probably there.

After looking around for a bit, I decided to take the plunge and open up my own MySpace page. I figured it could help me network by helping people who may be looking for me (and who can’t find me via Google, which has Gnorb.NET on the second page for the search term “Norbert Cartagena” after a few meta tag blunders I made with this site when I revamped it), find me. Furthermore, I figured I could use it as a technique to drive visitors to this site while still allowing them to comment on MySpace if they should choose. This one I’m still a bit unsure about, but I’ll see how it turns out.

The one thing I still have to do…aside from setting up my MySpace profile…is work on my MySpaceTalk cos that way i can communicate with people and seem like im all busy…which i am so dont bother me…j/k hahahaha…. loves ya!

I just finished XHTML validating the site. Now for the RSS feeds. Maybe Technorati will finally start looking at my site.

Check it out: W3C Markup Validator

Edit:Victory is mine! My entries are now starting to show up in Technorati! Huzzah! huzzah! Huzzah! I looks like after the clean up, the Technorati spiders were finally able to work with the site. Sadly, it took me having to remove my Amazon links to do it. (Drat!) However, I think I know how to get around that. (See the post More on Technorati Problems for more information.)

For more information, check out this WordPress forums link.