I have always believed that blogs will be here to stay no matter what and a company that is smart will make use of this opportunity by setting up a blog to keep customers informed of the company’s progress and update them on the latest products or trends. In fact, my buddy recently wrote an article about matching the layout of a website with its blog.

Coincidentally, after reading her article, I came across a website with a matching blog. Future Steel Buildings, a Canadian company that is the leading designer and manufacturer in the construction of steel buildings, also believe that a blog can increase their online presence. Did you know that blogs are favored by the search engines over conventional websites? This means that what we publish on our blogs are easily picked up by the major search engines.

If you think that the blog of a steel company can’t be all that interesting then you are wrong to prejudge. There are other interesting articles as well. To be able to keep the blog updated regularly for a year now shows they are doing something right.

If you are interested in blogs like me, then check outthe blog of Future Steel Buildings. You would be surprised what you will find there!

I have read some pretty bad things about this company from bloggers who blog for them. I don’t know how true they are so I am not going to repeat. I don’t even remember how long I have published their posts but definitely more than a month now.

Sometime back, I received a mass mailing from them saying that while most of us did a great job, we need to add their image to our posts. I don’t see any image in their opportunity though. So I wrote in to ask which image they mean but what I got instead was a membership verification link. I mean, “Duh!”

Some people have already been paid this week (let’s pray there’s no charge back) but I still have no news about my payment. I only wrote three posts for them because I was not sure if we could write the same opportunity on different blogs. Some of my blogger friends did it and their posts were approved although it is stated that each blogger can only accept an opportunity once.

Anyway, I am impatiently, silently waiting for my payment. It’s not much but it’s still money owed, you know what I mean?

Update: Great news! BloggerW.A.V.E did send my payment a couple of hours after I have written this post.

Midnight is the last hour for submission to Daryl’s My List. Yup, it’s yet another list that I have participated in. Check out my TABS… so many lists, so many linky love. All for mutual benefit, you know?

I myself just participated in it yesterday and let me tell you, my Technorati Authority jumped FIFTEEN *gasp* notches overnight Whhheeeeeeeeee not that it makes much difference in the grand scale of things but it does feel good to see the number rising. I feel LOVED!!

To be frank, I knew about Daryl’s list when it was first initiated but I did not participate. I thought I would check it out “later” when I have the leisure to read through the long instructions but my, how time flies. If not for Daryl’s reminder, I would have forgotten about it totally and missed the dateline. So I managed to submit my blogs on the second last day and I am more than glad to be part of the Malaysian blogroll.

If you are a Malaysian blogger or if you are a foreigner who blogs about Malaysia and her people, do participate. To read the rules, please visit Daryl’s post. Publish My List on your blog and submit your blog URL to Daryl and he will do the necessary.

Be quick!

Recently, I published a post about getting my comment deleted from some one’s blog and that I was pissed off by her action. Well, what an embarrassment. Ten days ago a reader dropped by my blog to leave me a comment. Unfortunately, I did not receive the email notification from Blogger that I usually get telling me to Approve or Reject a comment.

So, I did not know even though I did log into my account. I saw the comment count but I did not click to take an action because I thought that it was a spam comment that was left to me something back.

In actual fact, I have already deleted the spam comment shortly after. Oh my, I was somehow lost in time between deleting that spam comment AND receiving this new one.

I feel so embarrassed to only realise it AFTER ten days. I promptly approved the comment and replied to it, of course, though the level of embarrassment is not as high as the one from MySpace message notification blunder. Geez, I really need to be more alert!

A few days ago, PayPerPost rolled out new features. Does it seem like they keep rolling out new stuff ever so often? Anyway, while I am mostly satisfied with their new features, what I am not happy with is the time that one is allowed to reserve an opp.

When I first joined PayPerPost seven months ago, only the fastest members who submitted posts managed to get the Opp. This was then upgraded and people had 30 minutes to write out their post.

Complaints after complaints, it was raised to an hour. Fair enough, 30 minutes may not be enough for some people, especially when their blog host acts up or when advertiser’s site refused to load or when there are too many links to add plus videos and what not.

So this time, PayPerPost has gone to the EXTREME by raising the time frame to SIX freaking long hours. I mean, I only sleep less than five hours every night so if I were to reserve an Opp, I could take a nap, take a bath, have my dinner, get my hair done and even catch a movie, come home and THEN write and submit my post while the rest of the Posties keep clicking on the Opp that I have reserved.

I just think that it’s not fair to other Posties to subject them to this torture. If they were anything like me, they would be clicking on the TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY button non-stop. It’s not fair to the advertisers too who expect swift action AND quality work for the money they have paid.

TWO hours is the most that I would give for an Opp to be completed once it is reserved, but then who is asking me?

I have enrolled into the DoFollow BlogRoll. I am so happy to announce this. It is not that I do not want to Follow but I just only discovered how to do it over the weekend! Call me slow or whatever, I am not that technical mah!

Anyway, as soon as I read about it and finally understood how to implement it after reading a few times, I got it done!

If you would like to participate too, you first need a WordPress hosted blog on your own domain. Then download and install the DoFollow plug-in from Semiologic. By the way, they have some of the best WordPress plug-ins. After uploading the plug-in to your plug-in folder, activate it from your WordPress admin panel.

And then create a page for the DoFollow BlogRoll and just copy and paste the blogroll code from Tricia’s page. Drop her a comment and when she adds your blog to the blogroll, you will instantly be linked to all the other blogs that are on the blogroll.

You may wonder what benefits you have by implementing DoFollow. When your reader leave a comment on your blog, it is an instant link back to his/her own site. This will encourage more people to comment on your blog. I am sure all bloggers love more comments. Anyway, the more links there are between you and your readers, the more popular your blog will be and hopefully Google will revise your Page Rank upwards in the next update. I know your Technorati Score will definitely improve!

Since this weekend when I decided to increase the readership and popularity of my blog, I began to actively search out other blogs to read and possibly comment if I could relate to them. As you may have noticed, I also joined the DoFollow Blogroll and increased my link out in the hopes of reciprocal link backs.

One of the blogs that I came across that is worth mentioning is a personal blog by the name of The Capitalist Chronicle. The most recent post is about being fleeced by a computer repair shop. Boy, can I relate to that! You may have read my post not too long ago that my computer kept hanging, which the problem is entirely different from what happened to The Capitalist, I would like to point out that my computer was in that condition AFTER I brought it home from the computer shop. Sometimes one wonders if these shops purposely create problems for us so that we continue to send in our computer for them to repair.

Another post that put a smile on my face is that after SIX long months, The Capitalist managed to change his screen name from the default “admin”. Haha, I remember the first time I hosted my own blog. I had to ask my webhost how to change it!

The Capitalist Chronicle is a blog that I really can relate to. For one, I love his writing style and his rants are what I would rant about to, but after reading his posts, I don’t feel the need to rant on my own blog anymore because, hey I don’t feel so bad anymore knowing I am not alone!

If you are looking for a good read, check out The Capitalist Chronicle.