Some of you from my previous blog will remember that I posted a video on YouTube as an experiment. Since my switch to Wordpress some of you may not have access to the previous post.

In any case, here is what I did. I noticed that the all the most viewed videos on Youtube had loads of “Video Responses”. I wanted to know if posting video responses actually work. During that week, the top videos were related to the launch of the iPhone and iPod Touch. I happened to have purchased an iPod Touch and so I decided to create a video and post it as a video response to one of the iPod videos already on YouTube.

At first, I thought the experiment had failed as there were only a few views. And I almost totally forgot about the video I posted. To my surprise, the views started increasing exponentially and has now taken on a life of its own with very active commentators. As of right now, the view count on the video has exceeded 190,000 and it looks set to keep going and going.

You can watch the video here:

What I learned from this experiment:

1. YouTube can be a residual traffic source for you. Once you get over 10,000 views, the traffic keeps growing on its own.
2. Add your hyperlinks on the YouTube description panel by using “http://<youlink>.com”. If you only use www.<youlink>.com, the text will display but YouTube will not convert that to a hyperlink
3. Encourage comments - both positive or negative. Every time you reply to comments, the commentator will need to come back to the video to respond leading to more page views.

Popularity: 46% [?]

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After blogging for a year using the RapidWeaver desktop publishing software, I finally conceded to using Wordpress. There are a few reasons for my change:

1. It became increasingly difficult to upload the blog posts from my RapidWeaver platform. This is because the system upload each post as a HTML page and while that is pretty cool, when you have over 100 pages for example, that could take a long time. I still use Rapidweaver for my minisite designs because its just so easy to use.
2. I really wanted to take advantage of some of the awesome plugins for Wordpress. Being an open source platform, there are some really cool things I can now do with my blog which I could not before. For example, I can make a post from my browswer (using Flock) and also from my iPod Touch when I am on the road and also from a desktop editor (I am using Ecto to write this post).
3. With some cool plugins and software, I can take immediate screen captures of old pages and upload it to Flickr and embed it in a blog post with one step. I will write more about this at a later time.

Anyway, there are more reasons for the switch but I won’t go into it now. The first thing I wanted to do is to get your opinion of the new blog. I left the old one on the link below so you can compare. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Click on the image below to see the old blog:

Popularity: 42% [?]

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For someone with no graphic design skills like me, creating a button like the one you see on the left would take some substantial effort. This site has a simple and easy button/ badge generator. All you need to do is select the design and type in the text and your badge will be ready to download to your computer.

Here’s a description from their site:

What is Web 2.0 Badges
Web20Badges is a set of free and very cool web badges.
They are probably one of the most popular trend in Web 2.0 time. It’s most over-used trendy little design technique in our days, they immediately attract visitor’s attention. Web badges have various round or square corners and eye-catchy colours.
Badges can be used to display a big ‘Beta’ message on your website or emphasize a price or a promotion. No web 2.0 site is complete without one.

[From Web 2.0 Badges - Useful collection of stylish web 2.0 badges and badge generator.]

Here’s a screen shot of the generator and the free PSD files you can download.

Visit the Site Here

Popularity: 75% [?]

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As some of you may have noticed from all the weird posts, I am changing my blogging platform from Rapidweaver to Wordpress.

This is a LOT harder than I anticipated. The Rapidweaver blogging platform for Mac users is pretty much a theme-based desktop publisher. Very easy to use. Accepts full HTML and Javascript in the posts.

Wordpress is a much more robust software allowing virtually limitless variations and customizations. But the pain for me is that the way I blog must now change dramatically.

Anyway, I will fill you in on the details of my transition when its done. I will redirect the traffic from brianwong.com to brianwong.com/blog when the new blog is ready to see the light.

In the meantime, please ignore the test posts that I am generating. You will notice post such as:

1. Embedding Videos
2. Embedding Audios
3. Embedding Images
4. Posting from Flock Browser
5. Posting from Ecto Blogging Platform
6. Also there will be posts to test the various Wordpress plugins I have installed.

The good news is that if you are interested in setting up a blog and if you are as anal as I am, I will share all the tips I learned along the way to do all the above and save you some headache. :)

Stay tuned for the launch.

Popularity: 30% [?]

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