ISO: Daily Reads

Back when I first started blogging, there were two websites that directed 90% of my traffic here. They were also the way I found almost every blog on my blog roll. Those two websites were blogmad.net and blogexplosion.com. Both have seemingly went out of business.

Blogmad's page no longer exists. Blogexplosion exists, but the FAQs page is dead and I don't know what my username is anymore. An email seeking help went unanswered, so I assume that's just a ghost ship.

I'm looking for something similar. I don't particularly care about driving traffic to my blog at this point, but I'd like to find some blogs that are updated almost daily. How the hell do people find interesting blogs these days?

First I tried stumbleupon.com. I find it to be awkward and clunky. To make matters worse, it seems like every blog I stumbled to was last updated two years ago. How hard is it to add a god damn filter to only stumble to blogs updated in the last two weeks?

Since then, I've been to a myriad of other sites: blogtoplist.com, blogflux.com, blogcatalog.com, and I don't even know who else. The end result is always the same.

Doesn't anyone know how to search for recent, interesting blogs anymore?

Blogrolling conundrum

Ok, everyone, I need some help. My blogrolling list is out of control (soon to be trimmed). In the meanwhile, I thought I'd shorten the list to 5. The problem is I have no way to access the others.

Stupid blogger allows me to create a drop box for my archives, but I can't do so for my blogrolling list. Anyone know how I can either a) create a drop box, or b) make my blogroll accessible without displaying ALL of them?

Thanks!

Blog Maintenance

Big changes are coming soon. While this is layout is more interesting than the first one I had, I'm still not satisfied with the set up. Aesthetically, I'm pretty demanding.

Changes include:

1. Blog roll will only consist of blogs.
   
2. Links that are not blogs (i.e. the Onion) will be in moved to a separate section.
3. A new section will be created for all post labels, so you can easily see related topics.
   

Anyway, is there anything this blog does not currently offer that you would like to see offered in the future?

Also, as you may or may not have noticed, I posted my first sponsored posts. They'll always be labeled as such at the top of the entry and in the labels section. I'd like some feedback on them. I know they aren't as compelling as my usual writing, but I also want to make sure they don't detract from the site. Are they easily ignored if you aren't interested? Are they annoying?

I'm going to be posting more than once a day as well. This is partly due to sponsorship. I don't want a sponsored post to be the first thing you ever see when you come to this page. It's also because I've suddenly got a lot to talk about, and I hate long blog entries. You'll never see one as long as the one you're reading again.

Finally, I put a Suggestion Box in my profile (quite some time ago). It's remained fairly unused, which is disappointing. Should I dump it?

iTunes Help

So, for Christmas, I got an iPod. I was never sure about this technology, but in a world of convenience, it has certainly caught on.

I could never see myself paying money for downloaded songs. I still can't. I wouldn't use it at all if I couldn't burn my CDs on to the iPod. Man, though, these things hold a ton of songs. I have the smallest one, and I haven't filled it yet (although I haven't really tried).

iTunes offers a free song every Tuesday, which usually sucks. So I need your help. Since I'm new to this 3 year old technology, I need you guys to tell me where I can find all the free stuff for this thing. Links to free iTunes, tricks of the trade, whatever. Eventually, my cheap ass won't have better things to spend my money on (e.g., children), but until then, I need all the freebies I can get.

In other news, I've decided I need to include more graphics on this site. I'll include a related picture from now on. Except today. Mostly because I don't have a picture of my iPod, or any iPod for that matter. Rock on, Mary Prankster (who will make her way to my iPod shortly).