Alexa ranking has been acting up for a few days now. It has been erratic in its ranking that most of my blogs have swinging ranks. I know that the rank changes daily. But the swing is really in big numbers. This blog for instance. I have been in the 120K for quite some time now. And then all of a sudden, despite the traffic, my Alexa rank dipped. I went to the 130K ranking. When I opened my blog today, it was already in the 230K ranks! That’s a 100K dip. Wow.

I also checked my other blog, My Own Utopia and the Alexa rank dipped by 300K! Ridiculous!

Have you experienced a big dip yourself?

Starting today, whenever I come across something that I think will benefit me and another person or two, you will see this button and you’d know right away that I will be dishing out Tips and Tricks.

I love using the “Bookmark This Page” function of my browser. I use two browsers right now. Firefox and Opera. This Tips and Tricks post will be about using the Bookmark function in a Firefox browser.

Whenever I come across a web site or a blog that I like, I bookmark it. Sometimes five or so sites a day that I have a very long list of bookmarked sites. Honestly, I sometimes get confused why I bookmarked that particular site. Thanks to a blogging resource web site that I’ve come across today, I learned how to organize my bookmarked sites.

Click on the screenshot that I took to show you what I did to my Bookmarks Toolbar. I organized the sites that I bookmarked into folders. Yes, you can use folders in your bookmarks toolbar. Label your folders accordingly. I had mine as Fave (For sites that I love and would like to read daily), Check! (For sites that I need to check once more), WP (For anything wordpress related), Memes, Entrecard (Posts related to Entrecard as I am still thinking of whether to join or not) and Problogging (For anything related to making money online). Labeling your folder will make sure you don’t forget why you bookmarked a particular site.

Makes sense?

I hope I was able to teach you a thing or two about your Bookmarks Toolbar today.

Happy blogging!

There has been an ongoing controversy with regards to blogs being used to dish out ‘libelous’ information. I believe this has been an ongoing issue for quite some time now, ever since blogging has been in the spotlight due to its gaining media power. But the Australian Brian Gorrell’s blog about his Filipino ex-boyfriend whom he is accusing of swindling him some $70,000 and being backed up by his high society “Gucci Gang’ friends has put blogging at an even more glaring spot.

Brian Gorrell is spewing mud all over kingdom come with his revelations on certain well-known personalities here in the country. Loathe as I was to admit it, he lends credibility to his revelations through the photos that accompany his blog entries. And he has been very consistent with his entries. Well, personally, as I have read it, that is. I watched Delfin (DJ) Justiniano Ocampo Montano II in Korina Today with his family and godfather when they were interviewed about the controversy. DJ Montano was inconsistent in his answers. There were just certain questions that I believe nailed it for me.

• Why would an HIV-positive man, who sold his property in Australia to be with you in the Philippines and who requires expensive medication in order to survive, squander all that money just to live like a king, as you and your stepfather put it? If he did, did it ever occur to you to stop him, knock some sense into him?
• You claim that Brian is just using his blog to extort money from you. Normally, an extortion act goes like this: the extortionist calls up the, uh, extortionee and demands that if the extortionee doesn’t pay up, he will expose the skeletons in your closet. In his blog, Brian has exposed so much dirt about you that it would make a fertilizer factory extremely happy. Why would he risk his chances of not getting that money from you, if indeed it was extortion?
• And if indeed it was extortion, why threaten to sue him with libel and defamation, and not extortion or some such related crime?

These are just some of the questions that made me think that Brian Gorrell might indeed be telling the truth. You can read Brian’s blog yourself. Just go to this link and see for yourself if he indeed is telling the truth.

Anyway, back to the main issue here. Is blogging good or bad? Why is there a campaign that says people beware of the blog?

Personally, I believe that a blog is a great medium to express oneself. Yes, it can be abused just like any other form of media. But it can be really powerful if it’s put to good use. We should not generalize all blogs out there. Not all blogs are engaged in mudslinging. And bloggers and their family and friends know that. Yes, there are blogs that we should stir clear from. I can name a few (but I won’t). All in all, only a few blogs can be put in the category like Brian Gorrell’s. Most are good and informative.

What do you think on this issue?

I know a lot of you have experienced this at one time or another. I, myself, have been in this situation numerous times. I am talking about a slump in blogging juice. Blog juice stops running through your veins for a period of time.

If you noticed, this blog suffered through the worse of my slump. I was able to schedule posts in My Own Utopia so the entries keep coming in. But this blog had no scheduled posts so all you see for quite a few days now were sporadic short entries and a dose of the paid ones.

What do you do if you are having one of those days when your mind just shuts down and refuses to acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of issues out there that you can write about? Me? I just rough it out and wait until the blog juice comes pouring in again.

*Dad’s birthday today. On April 4 to 7, my whole family will be off to Baguio for a vacation. I will schedule posts so this blog will not look unattended. I will return visits when I get back.

Happy blogging everyone!