I hear and read lots of opinions on Twitter. Some people hate it, others simply adore it. I guess I belong to the second part of that. As @coenjacobs, I’m running close to 2.000 tweets now. It fascinates me, that I have hundreds of people actually listening (reading) what I’m doing, all day long! But besides being good for my ego, Twitter is something, I can’t go without (for a long time).

But the good part is, I don’t need to go without Twitter! I can Twitter on my mobile phone, I can Twitter from the web, even from the toilet (if you’re willing to know)! So why are people calling it crap, a waste of time and what more? Because they don’t get what Twitter is all about.

My tweet announcing this article on Twitter

The key word for Twitter is networking. In the past three days, I managed to get in contact with three developers that are in need of my services. Not that I wouldn’t have come across them if I wasn’t using Twitter, but travelling halfway through the country is just a little more effort than writing a single tweet to a person you might (want to) know. Continue reading ‘Why I simply love and hate Twitter at the same time’

The first month in new style, new language and new posts was a tremendous success if I’m allowed to say that. With a wonderful result of hitting the Digg frontpage 3 times in one week, I’ve managed to get over 200.000 unique visitors across my weblog, in almost 3 weeks time.

These 3 weeks really got me back in blogging-business and made clear to me that blogging is the factor that really adds some value to my life. Blogging in 2008 is beyond writing nice articles, hitting the big bucks with AdSense and getting popular on social media. To me, blogging has become a way of life, meeting new people and in between, writing nice articles!

But before we’re going trough the special posts of this month, I’d like to thank everyone that has supported me in the past weeks. People that cheer me up when I’m a little down, people that stayed trusting in me while my blog wasn’t updated for a while. Thanks all, I greatly appreciate it! Continue reading ‘June 2008 - CoenJacobs² first month’

After I posted about me completing most of my big blogging goals, I got a lot of questions about how I set my goals and how to determine what is a realistic goal. Off course, this is variable through most kinds of blogs, but there are some basic checks you can run on your goals.

For me, there was a commercial from Fortis, that got me thinking about setting goals. Life is a curve, just like your blog is. It has ups and it has downs.

Just as the life this commercial explains, a blog is also full with ups and downs. But you as a blogger, are not limited to following the curve, you can set your own paths. And that is just as important as setting realistic goals for your blog. The decisions you make, determine the rest of your blog. Continue reading ‘Setting proper goals for your blog’

Once my latest post about improving your Gmail experience hit the Digg frontpage, lots and lots of comments were submitted to that post. One of them was from mmilian, writing the following in the comment;

Adding some tips on managing multiple accounts would be really helpful!

That exactly is what I’m going to describe, as there where more and more people asking for some tips and tricks to do this properly. Gmail has all the tools you might need for doing this. Although there are a few remarks of which I really regret that they are still not available as features of Gmail, I’ll get back on that later in this post.

But Gmail is a perfect tool to manage multiple accounts, from different domains, even when they run on different servers. It’s also possible to fetch all your mail from Live, Yahoo or another provider, straight in your Gmail inbox. And yes, we can put all stuff we’ve learned in my previous article in practice on all of our mail! Isn’t that convenient? Continue reading ‘Tricks to manage multiple accounts in Gmail’

After I published my article about improving your Gmail experience, it became submitted to Digg almost instantly. Now, we are 24 hours further, and over 1000 people have dugged the post. I guess we can call this a success, can we? To be honest, reaching the Digg frontpage with one of my posts, was one of my goals for this new blog. This week, I completed this goal even twice!

But, another goal has been completed today. It’s the one goal that I never expected to be completed this soon. Darren Rowse, yes the one from Problogger.net, linked on his blog to a post of mine. Actually, my posting is the subject of his new post on “How To Promote Other People’s Content and Drive Traffic to Your Own Blog“. Can you imagine what this means to me?

Darren Rowse was, and still is, one of my favorite bloggers. He is my biggest example in the world of blogging. Not only his excellent style of writing, but also his behavior is what I like about him. This ‘little’ effort for Darren is such a great motivation for a small, (re)starting blogger as I am. Continue reading ‘Almost reached all of my big blogging goals’

Yesterday I decided that it was time to restructure my email. A completely stuffed inbox and reading Darren’s article about 10.000 to 0 emails in 24 hours convinced me, that it was time for some changes. If you have read Darren’s article, you will notice similarities since I used his tips, but I’ve made some personal tweaks for some reasons, I’ll explain later on.

This article is my personal review of Darren’s article, but it isn’t my intention to copy it. Darren has the habbit to keep his inbox clean and tidy, but my experience is that you will hold this up for just a few days or at most two to three weeks. After that, your inbox will grow and grow, untill it’s no use to archive email any longer, since the inbox almost exceeds the archives. Continue reading ‘Tricks to improve your Gmail experience’

After my very first succes on Digg, I faced the next big challenge. The post that hit the frontpage now includes 37 comments (including some of myself). All authors of the comment would like their comment to be replied on, I would at least. How can you do this effectively is my next big challenge.

Bloggers like Darren Rowse from Problogger, receive hundreds of comments on a daily basis I guess, as he runs multiple blogs. How on earth, would he be able to manage all those comments? Continue reading ‘How to manage lots of comments on your blog?’

My previous post about the integrity of search engines hit the Digg frontpage. I greatly thank Elbert from Crunchlabz for posting it and giving it a boost to the frontpage!

In the past, I’ve written numerous posts about Digg, the front page of the largest social news site and what it’s all about. Until then, I never had such a success at Digg before. So now I can write a post about my experiences and answer the question; is it worth reaching the front page of Digg?

For the amount of visitors, yes it is worth the shot. Today, I’ve reached the 2.000 unique visitors, due to the Digg front page. Too bad 90% of these new visitors, only check the post they clicked on and then close their browser. But most of the people that write a post like this one, say that this is a habit of the people that come across a site via Digg.

For the amount of comments, yes it is worth the shot. I’ve had 23 new comments, from people that haven’t commented before on my blog. Just over 10 comments have subscribed by email for receiving new comments on that thread. They will receive a email once a new comment has been posted, so they might just pop in again (and again, and again… ).

This first shot at the Digg frontpage for this blog, also added 17 new RSS subscribers to my RSS feed. People like them might want to read more what I’m posting about. 17 new subscribers don’t seem to be that much, but for a small (re)starting blog like mine, every new subscriber counts.

If we count this all up, I’d say that it’s worth the shot!

Are we doing the right job by trusting search engines, for example, Google in everything it does? Is there someone adjusting the search engine results, overruling the algorithm? If Google has more than enough money, what’s their next goal? More power over the (online) world?

Just a few questions a colleague fired at me, once I mentioned that I’m a big fan of Google. First off, here’s what Google says about it’s integrity;

Google’s complex automated methods make human tampering with our search results extremely difficult. And though we may run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a particular or higher placement). A Google search provides an easy and effective way to find high-quality websites that contain information relevant to your search.

So Google claims to be as pure as it can be, besides the sponsored links. But there really isn’t a single person in the world, besides Google itself, who is able to check this. What if pages from certain websites always receive extra ‘points’ to get higher in the results, just because they donate a certain amount of money each month?

But perhaps we have to look beyond this. What if Google isn’t looking for more money, but for more power in the (online) world? What will the people from California do, in order to get more power? Perhaps I should state the question a little different; why should they stay fair and square if they can get more power (and money), the other way? Continue reading ‘Questioning search engines about integrity’

If you are one of those people mailing me about why I posted my previous post in the lifehacking category, this post should clarify that. For all of you who haven’t heard about lifehacking before, this post could be helpful improving your digital life. And for the rest, just read it.

Perhaps you find something that might come in hand, as lifehacking is applicable for loads and loads of people. Lifehacking changed my life in many ways, but most of all (and most important) my productivity has improved! Ever since, my boss likes lifehacking too!

Imagine yourself, finding a way to save three clicks through a application you use all day long. Three clicks don’t sound that much, but if you have to do it dozens of times a day, it will save you lots of time. Especially if you apply more lifehacks, your productivity will increase drastically!

Read more about lifehacking. I can write post after post about lifehacking, but why would I? There is so much to be found on the internet about lifehacking. A simple search in Google results in 900.000 pages, but there are lots of pages I can recommend;

• Life hack at Wikipedia - The commonly known description about lifehacking.
• Lifehacker.com - One of the best blogs about lifehacking.
• Lifehack.org - Directly applicable tips on lifehacking.

There is much more to explore, spread your (digital) wings and find new lifehacks (and share them with me ). It will be worth the search if you can save time and do more work in the same time!