If you’ve been online for more than, hmmmm, 17 seconds or so, you’ve probably heard about Twitter - the nifty site that lets you communicate in chunks shorter than 140 characters. 

If so, you’ve probably noticed that people use the TinyURL function to easily let their friends know about super neat blog posts, websites, etc.

After witnessing this sharing about 817 times, I said to myself:

Gee self, it would be quite spiffy if I could proactively give my readers the TinyURL itself…and then encourage them to tweet it on Twitter!

And thus was born my quest that resulted in every one of my blog posts being prefaced by:

NOTE! If you enjoy this post, please feel free to twitter it with the tinylink (fill in tinyURL here). Thanks, I appreciate it!

Here’s how I did it and how you can do it too.

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Quick!  Visualize:

Are you ready?  Are you anxious?  Can you guess what I’m about to write?

Smoke Signals!  In a Tornado!

Are you seeing them in your mind yet?

Are they effective?

Or are they immediately dissolved by the raging winds that physical hit them the instant they’re released?

Tell me now…is the information you offer in your blog  presented the same way?

Hmmmmm?  Well if so….

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Watch out Easter Bunny - There’s a new Hare-raising VeggieTail in town!

Oh, the looks of excitement in children’s eyes as their fevered imagination conjures up visions of:

• Chocolate eggs!
• Chocolate bunnies!
• Marshmallow Peeps!
• Crunchy stalks of broccoli!

Hey wait a sec, who said anything about Crunchy stalks of broccoli?  Well, keep this hush-hush to yourself…but the Easter bunny has a new hiney-kicking rival in town: [Read more]

Diversity…it’s a wondrous thing. 

There are tall people and vertically-challenged people and thin people and width-challenged people and competent parents and "parents from heck whose little monsters could give The Creature from the Black Lagoon a run for the money" and …

People WITH computers

and

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<YAWN> oh, it is NICE to have actually snatched MORE than 23 minutes of luxurious sleep!  What nirvana NOT having to keep one ear open to catch the stray

"Psssst Mom’s asleep!  We can play Superman on top of the filing cabinent now!"

or [Read more]

Today I received the question in my email:

Dear Owlbert,

How many articles do you need as a basis for your blog when you start it, are these in categories?

Signed,

Eager Blogger

Here’s the short answer: 

a number between 1 and 3,243.

Here’s the longer answer: 

Nothing ever sprang into being in the multitudes.

In other words, [Read more]

Yesterday was my second class of Brazilian Jui-jitsu!

Now, if you’re not familiar with this awesome sport of kings, macho dudes and all-powerful mother units, let me explain a bit about it - basically you grapple with your opponent and try to pin/immobilize/win the bout.

Doesn’t that sound simply heavenly?  I mean, think about it - after hours and hours of typing at your keyboard and watching your children fling their cheerios heavenwards in order to test out if removing them from the box FIRST makes them fall faster….what else [Read more]

Welcome back again!

Yesterday I had held your attention by showing you how to step outside the box when considering awesome domain names.  It was an insightful lesson; one that showed you how to turn your thinking upside down.

So!  During the past 4 days, we’ve discussed:

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QUICK!  Tell me the first thing that pops into your mind when you read:

VACATION

Is it…

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Do you want to blog a write the right way?

Wait a sec; that bit of New Grammar shouldn’t have gotten by my eagle eye.  Let me rephrase the question:

Do you want to write a blog correctly the first time?

No, wait, it’s still not quite there….

I GOTS IT!

<ahem>

Do you want to write correctly a blog….the first time?

Well?  Do you?  But immediately after that [Read more]