It’s the end of the year, and like most bloggers I decided to take a look at my blog’s performance over the last year…

My Top Posts (According to Google Analytics)

Here’s are my top 10 posts from 2008, as ranked by Google Analytics:

1. The Dark Side of LINQ
2. 99 Ways to Become a Better Developer
3. Wordpress – 10 Tips and Recommendations
4. Scaling Web Applications – Recommended Readings
5. Developing a Robust Data Driven UI Using WPF – The DataModel
6. Developing a Robust Data Driven UI Using WPF – Introduction
7. Microsoft’s Next Killer OS is… SharePoint?
8. WPF Screen Saver Template for Visual Studio 2008
9. Google Applications for your Domain – Does it Measure Up to Expectations?
10. How Do You Define "Good Code"?

Personal Favorites

The following are a couple of my personal, somewhat overlooked, favorites:

• Looking For New Adventures – On May of this year I left my (pretty cool) job with the Duet team at SAP to face the unknown…
• Google Chrome is a Failure… Surprised? – Originally published on Cloud Avenue and triggered an interesting discussion worth going through.
• Are You Designing for Bigfoot?
• Is Google Replacing My OS Again?! which was followed by On Google’s Chrome and The Future of Cloud Computing.
• Introducing Kampyle – The Next Generation of Online Feedback. Just because I got to be the first to write about my friends company and I think this post written a lot better than the many posts that followed on TechCrunch etc.

That’s it. All wrapped up and ready for 2009!

Tags: Blog, Blogging, Cloud Avenue, DeveloperZen, ekampf, Eran Kampf, erankampf

The hero of our story is Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.
The background for the following discussion is a post made by Dare Obasanjo referring to TechCrunch as FuckedCompany 2.0. A response on TechCrunch was soon to follow, blaming Microsoft as a company for the things said.

(You can read the full details  here and here)

The discussion then moved to Twitter where it deteriorated pretty fast:

Regardless of the topic and which side is wrong or right, discussion should reach this kind of level…

While Dare’s blog may have an impact on Microsoft’s brand, its no question that whatever Michael does impacts the TechCrunch brand. The above discussion doesn’t do well to TechCrunch…

The of the story? Never (ever!) write when you’re upset.
Or to be more exact, take the night to sleep it off before you publish it. If you still think your text is ok on the next morning, then by all means publish it.

Remember that text (e-mail, blog post, twit, etc.) is a terrible medium for communicating emotion. The reader can’t see your facial expression or hear your vocal intonation. Therefore, any negative emotion that is expressed in the text is probably going to be perceived several times stronger – much more than intended – probably just causing damage instead of getting your point across.

When I was at SAP it wasn’t uncommon for me to get really upset and write long, angry emails through the night. Most of these never saw their way outside of my drafts folder. I would wake up the day after and figure out that things aren’t that bad, that there’s a better way of handling it, or simply that I have to pick my battles and that there’s more important stuff to spend my time on…

I’m sure Michael’s reactions are just a result of frustration and the heat of the moment. In fact, Michael edited the post and removed the controversial paragraph the day after.
Everything’s brighter on the morning after…

(P.S., if you just can’t hold it until the next morning, at least take a moment and listen to yourself. You’ll get a different perspective doing a second reading. I used to have a rule in my Outlook to elay delivery on any email I send by 2 minutes. It helps….)

Tags: Blogging, Effective Communication, productivity

I was checking out my analytics page with Yosi the other day when I noticed this rather disturbing Unique Visitors graph:

I’ve been paying less attention to the blog the past couple of months and it shows… I’m loosing readership and I don’t like it…

As I see it, the most important rule for blogging successfully is to continuously produce great content for your blog. As Larry O’Brian best puts it:

My theory is that lead generation derives from Google rank and that the best way to increase Google rank is to be like a professional fighter: neither jabs nor haymakers are enough. You must be always jabbing and you must regularly throw haymakers. Blog continuously to keep your hit-rate and link-traffic high and write longer pieces, containing the high-value words associated with your niche, occasionally.

I’ve been pilling up more than 15 posts on my drafts folder so it doesn’t seem like I have nothing to write about. Getting these drafts to a state where I’m willing to post them online is a different story…

As I’ve learned for the past couple of years, the best thing you can do when writing a blog is to pick a schedule you can live with and stick to it.

And so, I’m going to pick a two-posts-a-week schedule and see how well it goes…

What’s your posting schedule?

Tags: Blogging