Linkology: 2011 Holiday Edition
A Note About Blogging Frequency
As we head into the holidays, posting will be a little light here. It’s not that I don’t love you guys, but I’m pretty sure/hopeful you have other things to be doing over the next two weeks than reading a blog. If you seriously can’t get enough, I have two suggestions: 1) check your meds, and 2) don’t be afraid to click around our Categories (first right-hand sidebar, third section) for stuff you might have missed.
Also: Thanks
We started this blog back in late 2008. It began by drawing two, maybe three, visitors per day. Eventually we got up to 25 unique visitors per week. I still remember the first time we cracked 100 visitors in a week, which was right around March 2009. It was slow going.
Today, we have about 5,000 unique visitors per month, and our pageviews are upwards of 35K. The crowning moment for me was when I was walking through Detroit Metro airport one day in late 2009. I had my MIPRO shirt on, as I was returning from a user group. In the elevator heading to the parking deck, a gentleman looked at my shirt and said, “MIPRO, huh? I know you guys.” I asked him if he was a client and he said, “Not yet, but I read your blog every day.”
Really? That’s bananas.
It’s easy to sit here behind my monitors and hammer these words out and ignore the fact that people out there read our stuff on a daily basis. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a necessary mindset for serious writers/bloggers: you can’t sit around and worry about how your audience will interpret your stuff. You either write, or you don’t, and it’s OK to have an opinion. But it still blows my mind when someone emails me or tells someone on the MIPRO team that they dig our blog. If you’re a blogger yourself, you know how cool that feeling is.
So I want to say thanks to all of you, the readers. Without you this would be our own private echo chamber, and there’s no value in that for anyone. We started this blog to share thoughts and opinion with you, not rattle around our own dumb ideas to each other. That’s what we have lunches for.
Enough already. Do I get to read some links or something?
Yes, you do. I wouldn’t dare send you into the holidays with stress, fruitcake, eggnog and insane relatives looming at every corner without some stuff to read.
Is your holiday soup or casserole too fatty? There’s an easy solution to help skim out some extra fat, but you have to be quick. Drop an ice cube into it, as the ice will attract the fat, and you can easily scoop it out with a spoon. But be quick, because in case you haven’t noticed, ice melts quickly in hot things.
As a staunch iPhone user, I admit I’m more than a little intrigued by the new Galaxy Nexus. Here’s Danny Sullivan’s review of the new Android flagship, and it’s the most balanced I’ve read. It’s a review that talks about day-to-day life with the Galaxy Nexus and spends very little time submerged in the newness of the handset and Android 4.0 (dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, or ICS).
Slate.com on The Old Fashioned, a drink I often order to get a guaranteed sneer from the bartender that says, “Seriously dude? What are you, 80?”
The best Longreads of 2011. If you’re a fan of longish and amazingly well-written articles, don’t miss this list. There’s some great stuff here.
Jimmy Kimmel asks parents to play a trick on their kids as an early holiday gift prank. The results are awesome.
Happy holidays, everyone.
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More links:
MIPRO Consulting main website.
