Twelve has always been my favorite number. I don’t know why but I have loved the aesthetics of this number since I was a little girl. 12.

While checking my blog’s statistics I notice more and more people finding my blog through the search engines query “anne.” While “Anne Helmond” has always been a very commonly used keyword in my blog statistics just plain “anne” is quite new. It turns out that I am currently the number twelve Anne on Google.com and the number thirteen on Google.nl. Of course this number differs per person, per platform, per cookies set, per <insert any random Google variable.>

I admit it is a vain finding but I’ve always been extremely interested in my blog’s stats. They feed my daily portion of stat addiction and they inspire me to write blog posts such as ‘Get Your Post Inspiration from Referer Keywords‘ for the Blog Herald. My stat keywords often give me new ideas for posts and they show me how Google relates my posts to a combination of keywords used.

Here are some of my recent favorite search engine queries that directed people to my blog:

• After deleting a myspace how soon can you make another one
  This query returned the following post on my blog: International Delete Your Myspace Account Day: The Morning After is Elfriendo Day! The post does not give the answer to the query but instead offers you the elfriendo service which can easily update your stale MySpace profile or create a new one tailered to your interests.

• we are sorry we have been neglecting you lately &
  sorry i have to give up my blog
  These queries return the following post on my blog: I’m sorry blog excuses which deals with the common habit of apologizing to one’s blog readers but also to the blog itself for not posting. This interesting phenomenon led to a follow-up post on ‘dead blogs’ titled ‘Daily blogging routine and the perceived freshness fetish.’ The question why I feel the need to blog daily is grounded in the increasing focus on freshness and updating on the web. I explored the history of freshness on the web in the use of under construction signs, last updated scripts, pinging services, blog apologies and Twitter in an essay on ‘The Perceived Freshness Fetish.’

• excellent photos
  I feel honored.

• can’t wait to be finished university
  I am the number 1 hit on Google for this query with my post on ‘Thesis Finished and New Job at the University of Amsterdam‘ which is actually quite ironic because I started a new phase at the University a day after finishing one.

Search engine queries reveal quite interesting things and often quite personal things too. I only recently started documenting interesting findings but I remember queries such as ‘i’m sorry i left you.’ Your digital traces are not only stored in your browser history but also in my blog’s statistics.

In April 2007 I read on several blogs about a new magazine, the Blogger & Podcaster Guide. I remember going to the website to check it out but I left pretty quickly, somewhat frustrated. The magazine was obviously meant to be read in print form as the online reading interface was slow and full of multimedia effects and unintuitive.

The idea of a print magazine about blogging and podcasting seems a good idea. I can imagine a number of occasions on which I would prefer to read about blogging in print form over reading on my laptop. Not all public transportation is equipped with wireless internet and reading and/or listening to podcasts is a great way to spend time traveling. I’ve read The Weblog Handbook and several essays from Into the Blogosphere on the train. I also started on a collection of articles on blogging as compiled in the We’ve Got Blog book but I soon turned back to my screen again.

When reading about blogging offline you cannot follow links or look things up. I keep a notebook and write down some URLs for further reference. It seems that the Blogger & Podcaster Guide wishes to serve both ends, the offline readers and the online readers. Unfortunately, the magazine cannot be downloaded as a PDF for offline reference. Although I fully understand why this decision has been made, it one of the main reasons I initially did not return to the site. The magazine is not available in the Netherlands, as far as I am aware of, so the only way to read it is online.

And this is what I personally have experienced as problematic.

As soon as the online version of the magazine is loaded it turns into a multimedia show. It is as if every single function and object multimedia has to offer us must be shown. Advertisements automatically pop up as videos that need to be closed before you can flip to the next page. Flipping pages, which can be done by dragging page corners, is accompanied with a “woosh” sound of flipping through a paper magazine. The front page and index are neatly designed and clickable but once again there is accompanying sound.

I really wish to read this magazine as it seems to offer a great amount of content such as ’7 Steps to a Better Blog’ and ‘To Blog is to Write,’ Scoble on Video Podcasting or the Ask Ninja’s Interview. Unfortunately, the multimedia effects are currently distracting me too much from the content. I am wondering, am I a secret print addict? Should I print the articles for offline reading?

Today we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the word weblog as coined on December 17, 1997 by Jorn Barger. In another two years we can celebrate the coinage of the word blog but in the meanwhile let’s focus on creating new pathways into the history of blogging. Instead of arguing about definitions and dates we should write more blogging histories as there is no single history of blogs and blogging. Michael Stevenson is working on one, I am working on one and Jill Walker Rettberg is working on her final manuscript of her Blogging book.

So happy birthday webloggers!

In the meanwhile I celebrated my birthday and got some incredible hand-made gifts from my friends:

1. My friends (including my non-geeky friends) often call me “the Web 2.0 Girl”

2. Notebooks for Random Access Memory

3. Extra memory and my avatar in pixels.

4. Control-Alt-Delete (if I ever lose my keys again)

I can only say tHaNK J00 9uY$, J00 4r3 9Re@!!

I wrote a guest contribution for about:blank, a Dutch blog on blogging that has been around since 2002. The post is about my personal blogging experiences and the Blog as an Evolving Object (In Dutch). Enjoy!

It’s been over six months since I celebrated my first thousand bookmarks on del.icio.us. Time flies when you are having fun because I didn’t even notice I crossed the 2,000 bookmarks two days ago.

But I cordially invite you to my belated “2,000 del.icio.us bookmarks” party! The center of attention today is nr. 2000:

#
Essential Blogging – Google Book Search edit / delete
to blogging corydoctorow book … 2 days ago

I am currently writing my MA thesis on Blog Software and I was looking for an article which I thought was titled ‘The Anatomy of a Blog.’ Google served me Cory Doctorow’s book on Essential Blogging which contains a piece on ‘The Anatomy of a Blog’ and ‘The Anatomy of a Blog Post.’ Great, but then I remembered the article I was looking for was Meg Hourihan’s ‘What We’re Doing When We Blog‘ which contains a paragraph on ‘The Anatomy of a Post.’

Thanks to del.icio.us for enabling this party. Now I really need to get back to work.

Saturday afternoon I went to one of New York City’s billions of Starbucks for the New York City WordPress November Meetup. Even though only a few people attended it was very interesting to meet fellow WordPress users and enthusiasts. WordPress was applauded for its ease of use, the fact that its free and that it has a huge developer community.

Easy to use

One person who attended the meeting had not even begun using WordPress yet and mainly came to the meeting to find out if WordPress is the right tool for his purpose. Other people set up some blogs for friends who had no computer knowledge at all. Because the WordPress interface is so easy, all these blogs are now actively used by people who hardly had any computer skills.

It’s free

The fact that it’s free is a big motivation for using the software. Nearly all WordPress plugins and themes are free too so you can customize your blog to your wishes.

The huge (developer) community

We often referred to all the wonderful people who make plugins and themes, write excellent articles on blogging and WordPress and answer questions on the forums. The fact that there is such a innovative community behind WordPress was a big choice in choosing WordPress.

Lorelle was mentioned a few times by other people as a major resource for excellent articles on blogging and WordPress:

What interested me most was that it is hard to talk about WordPress only. We talked a lot about WordPress plugins, themes, WordPress MU and shared some tips but we often went “offtopic” as well. We talked about content management systems in general, Joomla, photo editting software, hosting and various other programs and services.

WordPress and blog software are tightly knit into a web of services and software. You cannot talk about starting to blog with WordPress without talking about hosting and databases. It is hard to talk about WordPress and uploading pictures without talking about photo editing software or services such as Flickr. When we exchanged contact details I was really happy with my new MOO business cards, it makes it fun to exchange business cards!

The only negatives of the meeting were the fact that Starbucks has no free wifi and that it took forever to get a skim milk latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup.

I also wrote a piece on this meetup and The Value of Meeting Your Fellow Bloggers – Offline! for the Blog Herald.