Speaking of Darren Rowse, here is a great video from him that examines the process of going from idea to blog post. As always it's incredibly informative and valuable!

Here's a great interview with Chris Garrett, co-author of "Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a six figure income". (Great book btw, go out and buy it!). Chris's co-author was the one and only Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. These two are living the dream the rest of us bloggers are striving for!

Google is in trouble again. This time the culprit is the flag function on its Blogger.com blog service. It seems a large number of anti-Obama blogs were flagged as splogs and as a result Google blocked them while it investigated. This prompted outrage among the bloggers, who felt they were being treated unfairly. While Google quickly apologized and restored the blogs, it wasn't good enough for many of the affected bloggers, who promptly moved their blogs to other services such as Wordpress.

"It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts," Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. "While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the 'Just Say No Deal' network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression."

It doesn't look like Google will get off easily this time. There are a lot of angry bloggers out there right now. They say they were never given an apology or explanation and feel Google unfairly treats bloggers whose blogs have been flagged, proclaiming them guilty until proven innocent. So is this a simple mistake or something more sinister? Let me know your thoughts!

Here is a very informative video with tips on how to make sure your blog is SEO'd. This is crucial if you want your blog to show up on that first page of search hits!

There is a terrific article over on Mashable about sponsorship is a smart way to monetize a blog. Here's an excerpt explaining why:

For the companies it is a win/win situation at they aren't having to worry about constantly verifying stats or paying through the nose for ad words in order to get good placement. Additionally they would know that they are in fact reaching a market best suited for their products rather than being thrown into some rotation pile of ads that could show up anywhere.

For the blogger it gives them a chance to promote products and/or companies that they believe in. They also know that the ads will represent products or companies that are of interest to their readers who are probably fed up to the gills with ads (if they don't block them out) that are of no interest.

I'm sure you've seen that CW makes use of this form of monetization on several of its blogs and so far it is doing quite well! Sponsorship is definitely worth looking into. You'll have to contact potential sponsors and sell yourself-that is, convince them that sponsoring your blog will be good for their company/service/product. It won't be near as easy as simply signing up with an ad network but the rewards can be amazing!

Cellspin has released a new version of their mobile blogging app. This one supports Palm devices such as the Treo 680, 700, and 755p and the new kid on the block, the palm centro. It allows the user to post text, video and photos to its list of supported sites. This list includes big names like Blogger, LiveJournal, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, and more. You can download it for free at Cellspin's site. Happy Blogging!

There is a new blog network in town that hopes to make big splash! sail on over to Blog Island and check them out. They've got over a dozen blogs so far covering a wide variety of topics including beauty, education, gardening, politics, humor, travel, home schooling and more. Check them out and let me know what you think. Information on what kinds of writers they are looking for, pay rates, etc. were not available at press time but stay tuned-that info will be coming shortly!