Random Jabber Turns One Year Old!

• May 11, 2008 ·
• Filed in Random Jabber ·
• 13 Comments

This past weekend, May 10th to be exact, Random Jabber turned one year old. I actually forgot all about the big one year anniversary and when it hit me a few days ago before checking my archives for the exact date, I thought I had missed it. Luckily I remembered just in the nick of time! A few months back I actually had intended to have a huge one year anniversary birthday bash and give away some cool stuff, but as you know if you own a blog, time flies. This date came up much quicker than expected.

So You’re One Year Old, What Now?

I’ll keep moving forward, what else? That’s really all I can do. I’ll admit that I didn’t accomplish everything that I set out to accomplish with this blog, like becoming a work from home blogging millionaire. OK, I admit that really wasn’t in the plans, but it sounded good, right? I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot in my first year. Definitely not as successful as some, but Random Jabber is still alive and well after a year and that’s more than most blogs can say, so that in itself is the ultimate accomplishment in my book.

What About Year Number Two?

I plan to improve Random Jabber in the second year. For one, a redesign is in the plans. I really don’t know when it will happen, but it will happen. I also would like to write more articles that help others rather than just rambling. I’ve found that the vast majority of the successful blogs attempt to give something back to their readers. I’ve done that on occasion, but definitely not as much as I should.

Here’s to year number two!

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Not Having a Niche - The New Niche?

• April 13, 2008 ·
• Filed in Blogging ·
• 7 Comments

When you’re thinking about starting a blog and you’re reading all the information you can about the best way to start a blog, what’s the number one thing you’ll read? That you must have a niche to be successful. Whether it’s about a blog about blogging, making money, design, or anything else, it must have one centralized niche as the main focal point or the odds will be against you to succeed. It seems that over the last few months, the tide may be turning on the idea of having one single niche. Here lately, I’ve noticed that more blogs are talking about not having a centralized niche. One of the blogs I came across the other day which discusses the pros and cons of this topic is The Abundance Highway.

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DIY Covers Review

• April 8, 2008 ·
• Filed in ·
• 7 Comments

It seems everyone has an e-book these days, doesn’t it? Well, except for me of course. Maybe one day I’ll be an internet millionaire and have desires to write an e-book telling all about how I made my millions online? For the time being, I had to settle for getting a little practice creating an e-book cover and store the experience back for a rainy day when (and if) I ever decide to write an e-book.

A while back, my good friend Sarah who had such a big part in helping me get the rating system set up on Nice Stylesheet asked if I would like to take her new DIY Covers for a spin. Of course I said yes. Last night I finally had a chance to try out DIY Covers and here’s what I think:

Ease of Use

I wouldn’t consider myself a Photoshop guru, but I definitely know my way around it. I could easily fire up Photoshop and create a cover myself, but after trying DIY Covers out I’d never attempt to do it manually in Photoshop. You can see my e-book cover above, which took all of 10 minutes to create. If I had created the cover myself, it would have taken much longer than 10 minutes for sure.

With this pack, you can create amazing covers without tons of Photoshop experience.

Not Just for E-Books

I only had to opportunity to try out the DIY Covers Review Pack, so I was limited to creating an e-book cover, but don’t be fooled, the full product does so much more. With the full product you can create: e-book covers, covers for software, quick reflections for your covers, CD graphic and lots more.

Give It a Try Before You Buy

Contact Sarah for a free download of the same review pack that I test drove and see for yourself how easy it is to create great covers in no time at all.

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Wow! Very surprised to see the Random Jabber logo as a finalist at the Logo Design Love Awards

• March 26, 2008 ·
• Filed in Logos ·
• 5 Comments

I bet you all thought I had fallen off the face of the earth, huh? Nah, I’m still here, just staying very busy trying to get a new site launched in the next week or so. I really hope after the launch I’ll be able to get back to some sort of regular posting schedule. I really have some good article ideas, just no time to publish them. I appreciate everyone hanging in there with me and checking back in from time to time. Random Jabber definitely isn’t dead!

I took a look at my traffic logs tonight and noticed some traffic coming in from David Airey’s Logo Design Love so I popped in to see what all the fuss was about…

Random Jabber’s Logo is a Finalist in the Personal Blog Logo Award Category

A while back I entered into the Logo Design Love Awards contest under the “personal” category. I’m pretty critical of my own work and honestly didn’t think my logo would get a second look in the contest. Obviously I was wrong as David and the judging panel thought enough to make it one of the top logos in it’s category and it seems that some of my peers feel the same way as my logo has quite a few votes already.

Check out all of the designs the personal category and don’t forget to leave a comment on the entry and give Random Jabber another vote!

Found a Little Inspiration From the Contest

David had to slightly alter my logo because of the small size. As you can see to the left (from the Logo Design Love website), it’s small. The border around the talk bubbles needed to be removed as I’m sure they were blurry at that small of size. I’m actually glad David did this because it provided me with some inspiration for a Random Jabber logo revision. I’m a big fan of simple and I actually like the logo better without the borders around the talk bubbles. So, kudos to David for this accidental inspiration.

On a Final Note… Anyone Want to Do a Guest Post?

One last final thought before I close, I thought I’d ask if anyone out there would like to do a guest post here on Random Jabber? This would be my first experience allowing someone to guest post but with next to no time to write lately, I think getting a couple guests posts could be a great addition to the site and would hopefully pay dividends to the guest poster in that they would receive some traffic out of the deal.

So, if you’re interested, just drop me an email and let me know what topic you’d like to write about (should be in line with topics found here) and a link to your site so I can see some examples of your writing style.

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE FOR RANDOM JABBER!

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ExpressionEngine 2.0 Official Preview at SXSW

• March 9, 2008 ·
• Filed in Web Development ·
• 19 Comments

The long awaited ExpressionEngine 2.0 preview from theSXSW Interactive Festival has finally arrived. You can check out some official screenshots of EE 2.0 from Derek Allard’s blog.

ExpressionEngine is now built on CodeIgniter, which is EllisLab’s (the group behind EE and CodeIgniter) open source PHP framework. The most interesting thing about this is that the ExpressionEngine community will become one with the CodeIgniter community. Derek explains it well:

You an ExpressionEngine developer? This represents an instant expansion of EE’s capabilities. Faster, easier, more modular code, with a huge number of libraries and functions. You a CodeIgniter user? How about instantly being able to drop ExpressionEngine on top of your code base, and have fully accessed, fully shared information between each. Instant forums, instant wiki, instant EE – on your existing code

I’m Pumped!

I’m very excited about 2.0 and can’t wait to see the final product. The only thing I have to do now is try to at least get a beginning grasp of PHP (I know zero about PHP currently). With ExpressionEngine being built on CodeIgniter, knowing your way around PHP would prove to be invaluable. If you don’t like how something worked in EE, you could simply build your own way of doing it. The possibilities are virtually limitless when you think about what could be developed using EE on CodeIgniter.

What Do You Think?

If you’re using EE, what do you think? If you’re not using EE, are you considering taking a look at it?

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