Yes, I did it. After hearing so many people rave about Twitter, I signed up today. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

In the first few minutes, it’s kind of fun. Very simple, just write a short post about what you’re doing. You have just 140 characters to get your point across.

I can see where it could be both a time saver and a time waster. The small amount of space means you can’t say much. But there could be that temptation to overdo it and update far too often. I’ll have to make sure that I work on balancing that.

Well, not so much my train of thought as my overall work efforts. After spending several days evacuated to my mother’s house it’s a challenge getting myself focused again.

Besides, Halloween is coming and I still haven’t made my son’s costume. But I did get a start last night. He finally informed me he wants to be a blue dragon. Of course the stores only have red dragon costumes.

I’m up for the challenge, though. I bought a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants for the costume, and I’m making a tail and spikes for him out of scrap material. The may not be too hard, just a bit time consuming. And it’s a nice way to keep my hands busy whenever I watch television.

We haven’t even unpacked fully yet. Did bring things in from the car at least, but not all the clothes are back in the closets or other stuff fully put away. After all that stress the big thing I’ve wanted to do these past couple days is relax.

Today I’m determined to stop that and get some actual serious work done. There’s enough I meant to get done before the fires started, and now I really need to get going on all that.

What can I say? When ProBlogger has a birthday bash, it’s fun for all! As in amazing prizes and giveaways.

It all started with the kickoff post for the Birthday Bash the other day. And now there’s a chance to win prizes such as two 20-inch FlatronWide L206WU USB-based monitors.

Anyone drooling yet?

But even beyond that there’s a great range of prizes, totaling around $54,000. If you want to keep up on the competitions, go to the site and subscribe to the RSS feed. The blog is worth reading other times too.

Friday will be a big day, with many time sensitive posts. I’m hoping I’ll remember to keep up with things that day.

In most cases, if you win a prize, that’s it. You can’t win anything else, so you don’t want to mess around too much with smaller prizes if there’s a particular one you want. The first drawing had more than 700 entries, so expect some competition even if you have to post for it.

Technorati Tags: problogger birthday bash

Yes folks, I’m joining the crowd and adding the new BlogRush widget to this blog. I already have it on my Aspects of Home Business blog, and I decided it was time already to put it here, just to see how it performs.

This is the latest brainchild of John Reese. The idea is that for every exposure your blog gives, you get exposure on other blogs. Plus you get exposures due to your downline.

No guarantee that anyone will click anything, of course, and the widget is JavaScript, so it’s not about search engines. But the widget is quite plainly visible in the sidebar, so hopefully people will find interesting blogs through these.

One of the really great parts is that you can add keyword and URL keyword filters to keep out blogs and topics you do not want on your site. Combine that with your choice of category, and this could be pretty good.

Blogs also go through automatic and human reviews, so they should be able to do a fair job of keeping splogs out.

I’m looking forward to seeing how BlogRush works. How about you? Are you joining or no? Do you foresee any problems for it?

Technorati Tags: blogrush, blog rush

I just couldn’t do it. I do paid posting myself, but blogging for McDonald’s just doesn’t work for me. Mostly because they’re talking so much about the quality of their food, and quite frankly I don’t believe it. I’ve eaten there, after all.

But they do have six moms across the United States who are going to get quite a bit of access to the entire process of how McDonald’s makes their food.

It’s hard to picture most McDonald’s food as remotely healthy. They talk on the site about low fat beef, fresh vegetables and so forth, but let’s face it, that’s not what people go there for. I suppose in the strictest sense it is possible to eat healthy there, but if that’s your goal it is not a place you’re likely to go. And it’s going to take an awful lot of marketing to change that. If such is even possible.

What do you think? Would you want to blog for McDonald’s? Do you think the bloggers will do a balanced perspective?

Technorati Tags: mcdonalds, mcdonalds bloggers, blogs