It’s a little known secret that I’m a want-to-be RSS evangelist. I’m not interested in RSS so much from the tech-geek side of things. No, I’m interested in the everyday person side of things – how to get the word out about the simple power of RSS to people who haven’t found it yet. Perhaps when I get a bit more time, I can begin my second career.

In the meantime, here is the best example of explaining RSS that I’ve seen. Thank you to Common Craft for creating this video. And thanks to Andy Beal, David Peralty, Amit Agarwal, Alex Raiano, and Brand Linder for putting this in front of me enough times that I couldn’t help but watch it and share it.

I just completed A List Apart’s Web Design Survey 2007. Simple set of 37 questions. Probably took me 7 minutes to complete.

I had been avoiding it. So what changed my mind? First it was reminding me by showing up in my reader in a few places. So I took at look at ALA’s survey page and got the answser for me…

People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?

So get over there and take it. Whatever website design has given you, I’m sure you can spare 10 minutes to give back to it.

Need one more motivation?

Selected participants, chosen by random drawing, will win one free ticket to An Event Apart event held in the continental U.S.; an Apple 30GB video iPod, an Event Apart jump drive, or a funky A List Apart T-shirt.

Did you hear that there’s a new magazine specifically for us bloggers (and podcasters)? Yeah, that’s right. Blogger & Podcaster officially launched its first issue a few days back.

I’ve poked throught the first issue, which features our good friend Robert Scoble talking about podcasting (nice article, by the way). There’s also excerpts from a pretty nice discussion between Chris Pirillo, Technorati’s David Sifry and Tim Bourquin, founder of the Podcast and New Media Expo on the social media’s influence on our modern lives.

I found a bunch of other good articles as well from people like Leo Laporte, Rob Walch and Shel Israel, among others. I enjoyed the magazine very much.
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I’ve been noticing two problems with my blog the past month or so. One, the load times would often be slower than I would expect. I tried making design tweaks and changing plugins. No change. So I turned to my host and asked them about my database server. Sure enough, I was told that the server was having problems.

Over the weekend, they moved me to another DB server. I’ve noticed a pretty big speed increase. Hopefully you will too.

The second problem was my blog would sometime be unable to reach the database. That, too, was caused by the old DB server and should now be fixed.

My host assures me that everything is fixed and running smooth now. I’d love your feedback if you experience any problems or if you notice better performance from you blog.

Thanks.

I’ve been talking a bunch about removing the rel=nofollow code from links made in comments. If your remember, nofollow keeps Google and other search bots from following the links made in your comments – meaning, no link love to your commenters.

Well, Andy Beard started the campaign to get people to remove nofollow. And I, and number of other bloggers have picked it up.

Now Andy has found a post that explains how to remove nofollow from Movable Type. Take a look.

With the post on removing nofollow from Blogger, that leaves us to work on TypePad. Mike Sansone and I thought we had a solution for TypePad, but it hasn’t tested through with credited link backs in Google or Technorati. He’s still working on it.

So please, pass the word to Movable Type users. And, in general, keep passing the word about removing nofollow from your comments. And join the growing list of members in the Do Follow Community on BUMPzee.

The news of the violence at Virginia Tech yesterday is still fresh on my heart this morning. In honor of those who have died and been injured I’m taking a day of silence. So no other other post today.

Instead, I’m taking the time I would write a post to reflect on, contemplate about and pray for the families, hearts and souls that have been hurt by these…heinous events.

Be back tomorrow, God Willing.

Back on March 28 I wrote about how you’ve helped me create some good conversations. The day before I received my 750th comment – which I felt was a big milestone. Then Phil inspired me by writing about his 1000th comment from Carma Dutra.

And now, less than three weeks later, and I’m thank you for 1000 comments. Wow!

From the beginning, I’ve set out to make healthywebdesign.com dmiracle.com about conversation. I wanted to offer you good content that encouraged your thoughts, ideas, feedback and debates. It looks like we’re well on our way. So THANK YOU taking the time to comment.

So, do you want to know who number 1000 was? Well, it was Robert Hruzek. Here’s a photo of Robert. Handsome fella, huh? Though he does look a bit blue. Perhaps you could stop by and leave him a little blog love.

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You know, I’ve never really been one for conferences. Outside of MacWorld in San Francisco, they’ve never really lived up to the hype. So while I still go to conference from time to time, it’s often without much excitement.

Yet, as SOBCon07 gets closer, I can’t help but be excited. I going to get to rub elbows with 250 other bloggers – a number of whom I’ve already met in the blogosphere. So it’s going to be great to meet up.

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That’s right, eMoms at Home just turned 1. Boy do they grow up quickly.
How does Wendy celebrate? By giving away gifts, of course.

As Wendy says:

…what better way to throw a birthday bash than to create an opportunity for all of you to make more money, get more traffic, and have more fun with your online business?!

I couldn’t agree more.

She’s got lots of prizes she’ll be giving away all throughout the month of April. Look at what week 1 winners received.
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As if you haven’t gotten enough of me lately with My Absolutely, Gotta Get Goals and Are You Fully Expressed in Your Business. Now I’ve got my first interview.

Amanda Harris from The Blog World posted an interview we did a short time ago. Mainly she asked me questions about problogging. Yet, I don’t consider myself a problogger so I got to answer the questions in a more unique way.

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