Don’t feel bad about spending time on the internet.

Just make sure it’s more than an hour per day.

Because that’s how long it takes before there’s a measurable boost in brain function.

This tidbit comes to us from a study done by Dr Gary Small out of UCLA.

Small got even more specific with this study.

Here are some of the facts about what blogging does to your brain…

Click to embiggen

Building a blog or website

What it does: Building a blog or your own website improves frontal lobe function, reasoning and memory.

“As you learn to build a site or blog, brain areas that are needed for making logical connections as well as medium to longer-term functional memory are challenged and enhanced,” explains Professor Small.

“Your memory is improved by learning and remembering how to construct a site or blog ,and will be enhanced the more you actually use and update your site,” he adds. To keep these brain functions active, add to your skill levels by learning new web-building functions and updating your site.

Small also found that sifting through your email can cause stress.

[source]

Tags: ::BLOGGING::, ::HEALTH::, benefits of blogging, brain, frontal lobe, gary small, memory, the point of blogging, ucla, why blog

I’m always debating in my mind about what constitutes a good* post.  I don’t even think I have ever in my life wanted to post, and yet now I find myself wondering constantly, What constitutes a good* post?

I walk around with the spigot flowing copious, like a champagne supernova, ideas pouring out of me into a lake of other ideas, and every single one of these ideas are a quest for the truth, the good* post.

By good, I mean a combination of useful, novel, and entertaining.  At least that is what I think I mean.

Because, to be honest, writing a useful post seems arduous. 

Novel and entertaining, alright, I can see that happening once in a blue moon, but useful, that’s just a bit too much to put yourself through, creating a useful post.

@

Tags: ::BLOGGING::, posting, the point of blogging, what is novel content, why blog

One of the best parts about blogging and debating with people on-line is that a person isn’t measured by where they’re from, the color of their skin, their background, even their accent. That’s because in the blogosphere, all that you know about someone, at least initially, is their choice in avatars. Once you get past the avatar, the only thing that can be measured is the depth of a person’s ideas and opinions. And those are reflected in whatever comments they choose to leave to a post, news article—any place where the owner turns on the “Comment” functionality to their web site as TOE has done here.

The vast majority of people I’ve met since I started my own blog have been superb. Occasionally, though, like a gooey maraschino cherry in the middle of a perfectly fine piece of chocolate, a troll breaks through.

X.

Tags: ::BLOGGING::, the 100 most annoying things, the open end, the point of blogging, TOE, why blog

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Tags: ::BLOGGING::, experimental, latin, the point of blogging, what is novel content, why blog

Today I write about the art of blogging for lack of anything better to write or do.  

But what to write about the art of blogging?  

What, if anything, is novel about blogging? Such a hackneyed subject by now.  Such an explored and exploited land. Nothing like the ocean bottom, nothing like space, nothing like the tile floor behind my toilet.

I could try and make a useful list on how to make your blog uber-popular, how to draw copious traffic to your URL.  

I could give you invaluable tips on how to get blocks of keywords into your title; how to magnify your tag cloud in the right areas; how to get some wicked SEO mojo working for you 24 hours a day, all year long.

But you’ve already read all about it.  You’ve already done it all.

You’re following the instructions.  You’re posting and promoting and commenting on the blogs that already have a following in hopes of siphoning some of their traffic.

You’re polluting the Internet with slightly related links back to your URL.  You have the rotating blog roll.  You study Google Analytics to see where people are clicking, where they’re not.  You refresh your unique visitor count every minute.

You’ve even sunk so low as to register on social media sites, the most pointless being Twitter, where you tweet, retweet, and follow like a chirping bird, not realizing that birds have very small brains.  

The goal:  to drive people to your site, to keep people there longer, to get them to look at more than one page and leave a comment, maybe even subscribe to your Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. 

The good news is that once you cover the basics of blogging, all it takes is marathon endurance.  If you can harness the enthusiasm you had for blogging the first month you started learning about the art of blogging, and carry the same level of enthusiasm for 24 months, you will reach your goal.  

Or you could just do this:

Tags: ::BLOGGING::, blogging tips, getting traffic to your blog, mobile advertising, rss, the open end, the point of blogging, TOE, twitter, twitter sucks, why blog