My uncle passed this weekend, leaving behind 5 amazing children and a cloud of people who loved him. Sitting here at the hospital in Reno, NV, most of my reflection time has been spent on blogs:

From his brother, my father

A poem about love and suffering

A blog article from the community news

Technorati is doing a 4-part report on the “State of the Blogosphere” – it is quite interesting to see what kind of people are blogging. Some highlights: 

• in the last 6 years there have been over 133 million blogs recorded by Technorati
• 57 =% of bloggers of male in the US (over 70% in other countries)
• The majority of US bloggers are employed full time
• The majority of US bloggers make a profit off of advertising
• 74% of bloggers are college grads
• Over half of bloggers make more than 75K annual income
• More women have personal blogs compared to men… who have professional blogs

This is some pretty important information that we all should at least skim: 

http://www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law/

Pattie from Clarke Marketing and Nannette Saunders asked me yesterday (in so many words) if Wordpress was a good system to use for non-blog websites. It really got me thinking. 

The Wordpress Content Management System isn’t just for blogs anymore. The number of designers using Wordpress as for non-blog websites is increasing – and for good reason. 

A couple big reasons I can think of are: 1) Wordpress is free, and 2) Wordpress is easy if you use pre-made templates.

Wordpress is not a high-end CMS but can very easily be used for professional websites. 

ifacethoughts pointed out that the difference between blogs and non-blogs is that in a blog the posts take up the entire website, but in a non-blog the pages are what dominate. The blog also gives some other great reasons to use Wordpress for your non-blog sites. 

The performancing blog, also, linked to some reasons why you should NOT use wordpress, and others why you should. He also listed some great examples of non-blog sites that use WP, including Camacho Cigars.

So – when choosing a content management system for your website, consider cutting your cost with Wordpress. 

Important read called ‘How to Hire a SEO Firm According to Google’

With all of the new technological advances out there… we barely have to think for ourselves anymore! Just wanted to let you know about a new Gmail feature that recognizes when we forget attachments, and can remind us to do so! The new Gmail Attachment Decoder will save us from embarrassment. 

What other advances do you think teams like Google may reveal in the future?

Instead of getting frustrated with technorati this morning, I just laughed:

What is SEO? Wikipedia defines it as improving quality traffic to your website via search engines with targeted key words. 

Basically, the higher up your search results appear, the more targeted customers will come to your website. 

Why is it critical? Galleon-SEO in the UK said it perfectly: 

• 87% of all visitors come from the top listings
• The majority of people online use search engines
• 3.5 billion websites compete for the top slots, but only a few make the top listings