Deaf Musician

As a frequent user of Digg, I love observing the psychology of Diggers. One thing I love about Digg is the comment system. No, not the functionality part of it… but what people post. For the most part, Digg users have similar mentalities of different situations. Most people read the most positively rated comments, but I, on the other hand, read the most negative comments. Over the months, I have collected a list of things that really piss off the true Diggers.

1. Diggers hate Hitlery: If there is one politician all diggers hate, it’s that boyish looking woman named Hitlery. Everything negative about her will be promoted, and positives, not that she has any, will be buried.
2. Leaving Lame Comments: Don’t say “wow” or “good article” or “thanks” in the comments. You just end up looking like an idiot, and that’s why we dig you down. It’s known as comment spam. Don’t leave your signature on after your comment. We all know what happened the last time somebody did that.
3. Blog Spam: Taking a short paragraph from the original article, posting it to your blog is not only lame, but also idiotic. Digg original articles, not blog spam.
4. Annoying Ads: I don’t know what Kevin Rose was smoking when he decided to accept “Congratulations! You’ve won an ipod” ads. Don’t you just hate that annoying little high pitched voice? Also, don’t submit websites with annoying ads, no matter how good your article is, we’ll bury it!
5. Religious Enthusiasts: No we don’t want to hear what your religion has to offer. Most Diggers are atheists. If not that, then they are not interested in your religion advertisement. So, you’ll never see any kind of religious story.
6. Misinformation: Do a fact check before you posts anything. Diggers aren’t stupid, they’ll spot out any false information. This isn’t Fox News, these are Diggers who do fact checks.
7. Stories about Digg: We don’t like articles about Digg. It just seems like they write these articles just to get on the front page of Digg.
8. Top 10 Lists: That’s exactly what the internet needs: another top ten list. It just seems like after half way down, they are just making up stuff so they can get 10 things on the list. Lame.
9. Making Assumptions About Diggers: Don’t go off and write lists about what diggers are and aren’t. Every Digger is unique in their own way. Diggers really hate when they are judged based on some stupid list written by some stupid jerk with a blog.

I am sure there are plenty more. Are they are any that you’d like to share?

About a month and half ago, I signed up for Blogrush, just like everyone else. But today, I am saying goodbye to Blogrush for three reasons:

#1: Ask yourself, do you click on Blogrush links / widget?
If you said no, that makes two of us. The reason why people don’t click on the widget is that the titles are short and there’s no description. Sometimes, titles aren’t enough. You don’t always need description, look at reddit, but at least the titles should be descriptive enough for me to click on them.

#2: Chances of your link showing up / getting clicked are very little
The way Blogrush works is more hits you get on your post, more exposure that post will get through the Blogrush widget. Statistics don’t lie, I had over 10,000 “credits” (that’s how many times my posts were displayed in the widget) and only 10 or so people clicked on it. The click through rate is realllllllllllly low, because of reason #1 above.

#3: It doesn’t integrate into my design
Sure, there are Blogrush flavors, but why can’t it integrate into my design like Adsense or Text Link Ads? Why do I have to use THEIR design?

I hope Blogrush does well in the future, but it just isn’t for me. Sorry. On the positive side, at least I don’t HATE them like I hate AGLOCO. Oh, how’s that coming along, everyone? Made your first million yet or should I say your first penny?

Sorry for the lack of updates here at DeafMusician.com. My Vista kept crashing, as soon as it shows the desktop, it says “explorer is now restarting” and it kept doing that in the loop.

How DOS Saved My Life

The explorer kept crashing and I didn’t know why. I ran Spyware by quickly double clicking on the desktop icon before explorer crashed again, but that didn’t help. I went into the safe mode and it kept doing the same thing. I read forums from the other computer and some guy said it happened to him after Firefox download was canceled. None of this made any sense. Then I remembered that windows crashes whenever I have a divx file in a folder, and I remembered that I downloaded a file and saved it on the desktop. Some how I had to delete that file, but there was no way to do it since the explorer.exe would quickly restart. It was really annoying.

So, here’s what you do.

1. Open Task Manager and end task “explorer.exe” (this will stop the crashing, but will not show the desktop)
2. Go to File > New Task (run…) > type in cmd (this brings up the command prompt)
3. Browse to the desktop in the command prompt and type “del filename.divx” (.vob, .wmv, .divx, basically delete any video files)

That should do it. I love you command prompt! This is why I love simple tools like command prompt and telnet, no fancy interface, just get the job done. I always program through telnet in vi and pico on unix, all my WordPress programming is always done on either of those programs.

How to find out if your site has been Dugg

Digital Inspiration has a great tip on how to find out if your site has been dugg. Basically, you search for dugg urls and subscribe to the search results.

Usability Nightmares

Smashing Magazine has a great article on 10 Usability nightmares you should be aware of. Usability is pretty much everything when it comes to designing websites, so this is very important. 37signals wrote a book long time ago called Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points, which was very informative. I recently purchased Web Accessibility book from friendsofed publishers. This book is written by 11 different authors and it’s great if you’re getting started in the world of accessibility.

DeafMusician.com Updates

• I get a lot of questions on why there’s no search box on this website. As stupid as it may sound, I FORGOT! That’s the answer. I completely forgot that this site needs a search engine. I am working on it, so it’ll be up soon.

Three WordPress Themes Coming Before End of the Year

Theme #1: I am still releasing the ApnaNukkad.com WordPress theme as it was requested by some of you. Theme #2: I will then release the theme from the winner of the custom WordPress Theme Contest. Looks like Mark, Tech Guy Tales, and David are strong candidates. Good luck to all, and the winners will be announced on Monday, October 8, 2007.Theme #3: And lastly, I have really been inspired by the drive of Christopher Ryan. Chris orignally entered the theme contest, but later emailed me more about him, and after hearing his story and his passion, I have decided that I will design a free WordPress theme for him regardless of him winning the contest. So, I’ll release that theme. Passionate and driven people inspire me, that’s why I go out of my way to help them. Here’s a short video on Chris Ryan:

That’s all for today, folks. Lots of update coming your way. Stay tuned.

I don’t usually check my “adsense” or “analytics” account to see how much I made or how many people are coming. I check it about once a month. Recently, something came to my attention. I was featured in so many CSS galleries. Here is the list: cssmania.com, cssimport.com, screenfluent.com, designshack.co.uk, mostinspired.com, cssbased.com. These sites brought in tremendous amount of traffic, my RSS subscription increased about 30%! There was also a lot of traffic coming from StumbleUpon. Thanks to those who submitted this site!

I remember reading an article on Random Jabber about submitting your site to CSS galleries. I did try to submit my old design which didn’t get accepted in many places, so that motivated me to design a better theme! I take constructive criticism as a motivation to do something better. I noticed that my feed count increased (almost doubled) when I launched this design. The lesson: make sure the look and feel of your site look decent.

I don’t usually do the sidebar widgets, and buttons (e.g. MyBlogLog, Alexa, Technorati, and many others) mainly because they are cluttered and ugly. But today, I decided to give Blogrush a try, simply because it looks promising enough and also, I like giving exposure to other bloggers. StumbleUpon is also a great way to give/get exposure. Instead of telling you what Blogrush can do, I’ll let this video explain it:

I’ll see how it does on this blog, so far I like it. Give it a try, and let me know if you like it.

Today, the DM - Bloodless WordPress theme reached it’s 1000th download. To celebrate this I am launching another theme. It’ll be a combination of two colors, you can decide what color in the options panel. To preview the themes, check out the green version and the brown version. Please keep in mind, this theme is totally separate from the Custom Wordpress Theme Contest.

I am looking for two donors / supporters. You will get one footer link with your $25 donation. If you decide to buy both links for $50, you will have the option to chose any color for your links and whether to make it bold or not… AND you will decide the name of the theme… AND you’ll get a free one month link on the sidebar under “Supporters” section.

This is a great opportunity to get your name out there. Interested? Post a comment or email me if you have any questions.