Blog Engage, a generalist “Digg-Like” site where you send your blog stories had it’s one year anniversary. For this great even the site owner Brian decided to surprise us all with a brand new design. I noticed many changes:

- No more header ads, you can see more content when you arrive on the site.
- Each stories takes much less space, it makes the site appear much cleaner.
- The categories widget is gone, it used to eat much space on the right side.
You can go visit BlogEngage and if you have a blog, register and submit stories. You will get many visits if you hit the front page!

The crowd is great and you can meet some quality bloggers, Geoserv and Raivyn are two of them.
It has been a great experience to observe Blog Engage rise, after being stuck at 120k in Alexa, it now has a rank of 75k and I’m sure it will keep on getting better. If you are already a member, what are your thoughts on the new design?

Today I would like to talk about this great website as the blog’s owner asked me. Dreamcatcher is about making money online with your blog. Tyna writes alot and you will rarely fall on the same post even if you make more than one visit a day. She is very honest and will share the tips she got from some of the top bloggers. She is very dedicated, her blog is getting more visits every day.

The layout looks good, this is normal considering Balkhis designed it. The sidebars are well built not annoying for the visitors and you can navigate easily everywhere.  I would suggest a bit of work on the footer but this is optional, since content is the most important aspect of a blog. Tyna will often come with new and interesting ideas written in a proper and pleasant tone. I recommend the visit for any starting blogger.

On June 12, 2008, the Government of Canada introduced amendments to the Copyright Act. The Conservative government has filed, amendments to the Law on copyright in order to facilitate prosecutions against those who download illegal content on the Internet

Our current situation with canadian ISPs.

• ISPs are not responsible for copyright material communicated through their networks when they have no control over the content. They may become liable if they exercise some control in the communication of copyright material.
• Currently, most ISPs participate voluntarily in a “notice and notice” system to help prevent copyright infringement over their networks. Under this system, when an ISP receives notice from a copyright holder that a subscriber might be infringing copyright, it forwards a notice to the subscriber.
• Often, the subscriber is identifiable only by an IP address. The ISP itself, through its records, can notify the subscriber without revealing anything to the copyright holder. Depending on the nature of their subscriber agreements, in the absence of a court order, ISPs do not reveal the identities of their subscribers to the copyright holder.

What the proposed ISP liability provisions would allow

• ISPs will continue to be exempt from copyright liability in relation to their activities as intermediaries (e.g., when they provide Internet access, engage in caching for network efficiency or host websites for subscribers).
• Because ISPs are often the only parties that can identify and warn subscribers when they are being accused of infringing copyright, the new provisions would compel all ISPs to participate in the “notice and notice” regime.In other words, when an ISP receives notice from a rights holder that one of its subscribers is allegedly hosting or sharing infringing material, the ISP is required to forward the notice to the subscriber and to keep a record of relevant information (e.g., the identity of the alleged infringer). ISPs that fail to retain such records or to forward notices would be liable for civil damages.

With this bill, Ottawa responded to international pressure. It blamed for Canada’s lax in the fight against illegal downloading. Will this Law pass; Let’s hope not! I think the RIAA and MPAA are accountable for this sh**.

If you could share what rules are applied in your country and how your internet experience has changed, I would be glad to know about it.

I have been using EntreCard for two weeks now. There are a lot of “blog services” you can find but I have only good words for them. It’s a super product to visit random blogs. I’m not to sure if you can setup Stumble! in order to browse only for blogs, but Entrecard is very light and fast except when their data center goes on fire .
I discovered there are many blogs that have money for topic. Most of them talk about techniques to generate income from blogging. The problem is 90 percent of these blogs are not very convincing. I know my blog has a pretty ridiculous design but I started this to learn about css, php and how to generate traffic. I want to list some of the mistakes I saw on these money blogs.

- Please find yourself a host and domain name: Your website will cost you around 6$/month, you will have more freedom for your design and it will look more credible. I always find it funny when the blog talking about money is hosted on blogger.

- You might not have the skills to design or modify your wordpress theme. There are plenty of web developers out there, if you take the time to search in forums you could get something decent for cheap.

- Look for a picture that’s professional for your Top header. A bad example would be the header you have here at the top. The animated chameleon is a bit childish and will normally give a cute impression to a new visitor. Just to say your header is one of the first thing a visitor sees when visiting a site.

- Do not add every widget you discover on your sidebars. I’m sure you have these Facebook friends where it takes you two minutes before the whole profile loads. It works the same way with your widgets, I personally find them so annoying I won’t stop to look what they display. Try to select the ones that bring you more traffic and get rid of the annoying and useless ones. You can use the crawler from crazyegg to know which widgets to keep.

- Don’t lie to your readers. People will feel if you are genuine or not and might not come back if disappointed. There are many bloggers copying John Chow and displaying their monthly income. Some are really not credible when I view the Alexa rank or the comments made on the different posts.

If you have anything else to add, please do. I sure some people would be glad to learn what you have to say on the topic.

I own a Fujitsu Lifebook S6231, at first I was a bit skeptic on this brand as I didn’t know much about it, but the machine had the look I was looking for and two of my friends had purchased a similar machine and had nothing but positive feedbacks to give (if any of you use a Fujitsu laptop you’re welcome to leave your comments).

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