Amazon Trying to Shut Down the Little Guy

Amazon is scaring Kindle news sites that have the term “Kindle” in their domains into handing over control of the domains to Amazon. They are threatening to cancel Amazon Associate accounts and withhold Q1 2008 affiliate revenue. They have already scared a few sites into handing over the domain, but I refuse to let them do this to my Kindle Report news site.

You can read my article on their attempts to strong-arm me here.

A Work in Progress

I just wanted to let people know that I am currently tweaking the site navigation. You can see a categories listing across the top of the page now, below the logo. I plan to have sub-categories open up below that listing when a category is visited. But since upgrading to Wordpress 2.3 they made it a lot trickier, so it will take some time to figure out. Especially considering I don’t have much time to work on it each day.

The goal is to have a simpler navigation and open up some space on the right side of the page where the navigation has been and still is. I’ve been visiting CNN so much lately I just had to copy some design elements.

So try out what’s there and let let me know what you think.

New Project Coming

I have this great idea that could revolutionize the world. I just have to find some time to work on it. So expect to see something pretty cool and useful from me. As always you will find out about it here. So keep checking the site and reading all the great news that I find and post about almost daily, until which time I make my big unveiling.

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.2

I have finally upgraded this site to Wordpress 2.2. Let me know if you come across any problems. Most of the plugins I use seem to be working, but if anything isn’t working let me know so I can fix it.

Posts Fixed: Some Were Set to Private and Gave 404 Errors

I just realized that some posts on JasonBlogs.com had been set to private accidentally. This meant that I could see them but no one else could, and I didn’t know they couldn’t. I must have accidentally set a few posts to private when I was going through all my posts, reorganizing and tagging them. And how did I finally figure this out? Ayesha posted in the comments that she could not access my list of SingingFish Alternatives. For the first few days I thought she must be mistaken, but then I decided to use my Windows XP virtual machine to test the page in IE. What I discovered was that when not logged in I could not see the post. And after a few seconds of thought I realized the problem. Yet another reason virtual machines are great for development.

Explanation of New Category Layout

I have reorganized every post into new categories in many cases. New posts will now go into only one category, but tags will remain universal across all categories. I have moved things around to create a few niches within JasonBlogs.com. Hopefully this will enable people to read the section of the site that most appeals to them, or they can read the main area to see everything new that gets posted.

You will not see sub-categories in the category listing until you visit a category. Then that category’s sub-categories are displayed. This should make it faster to navigate to where you want to go, or if that doesn’t work out well I can always change it to a dynamic Javascript-driven fold-out display. So let me know if you would like to see something like that instead.

Some new categories or changes of note:

• Post links were changed from being based on the date of a post to being based on the category of a post. A plugin was installed to redirect all posts to the new format, so you shouldn’t notice any issues at all.
• Categories are no longer located in the “category” sub-folder, and they now reside in the main directory. This will make it easier to brand each section of JasonBlogs.com with a unique category logo and explanation of the section.
• There is now a Development category where I will post tips or scripts I come across, and the Projects section is now part of that. Projects is where I post about anything I am currently working on.
• Radio Firefox show postings are now under Technology.
• Web/Tech was renamed Technology, with a sub-category called Web.
• Many videos were moved to a sub-category of the new Videos section. They could apply to other categories but instead they will be tagged with relevant tags.
• Interviews are now under Business. These are original interviews and I will be adding a few more to them. I could have added them to the Thoughts category, but the interviews aren’t my own thoughts.

So in summation: categories were changed around, and the tag cloud is the new way you will be able to find items that could have previously been in multiple categories. There will eventually be a tag for most things you could be looking for. I will also be tweaking the site design. The right-side navigation will become cleaner, and the new categories will be clearly marked.

This is what happens when I go to an advertising conference. I start thinking of ideas to improve this site. Hopefully they will work better and drive up readership.

Changes Coming to the Blog

I’m currently in the process of re-organizing posts into different categories. So things may be messy for a little while. Then I will be changing the link structure. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, so I might as well slowly start doing it.

Jason Blogs Now Has Tags

I added tags to the site. You can find a tag cloud to the right of the page. This will hopefully allow posts to be found more easily, and could eventually eliminate the need for categories. I’m still tweaking the tag cloud look. And how about the nifty graphic in this post that I made quickly?

Nexus Trade Places in TCNJ Business Plan Competition

I placed second with Nexus Trade in the Business Plan Competition sponsored by the School of Business and Small Business Development Center at The College of New Jersey. First prize was $1,000 and second prize was $600, so I came out okay. :)

Testing Amazon Context Links

Amazon just released a beta of Context Links. It is a way to “automatically identify and link relevant phrases within your page content to Amazon products.” You will see them sometimes on this site as green links with a double underline. They may not always be relevant, but it’s better than those annoying links that show up randomly on other sites associated with common words. Here it should only show up when I say something like Apple 80 GB iPod video. Or Steve Wozniak. Though I’m not yet sure how soon it takes to find the words to link.

I figure that this is a way for me to make a little money off of the site, but without using something like Google’s AdSense. You get relevant product links automatically inserted in my posts when the page has finished loading.