FerrariDave

Random StumbleUpon

Written by David Dunn on August 4, 2008 – 7:24 pm - 1,226 views

I’ve decided that I am going to now press the StumbleUpon ‘Stumble’ button 5 times, but each time I am going to take a screenshot and I’m going to comment about the page.

The pages are obviously going to be random and if I don’t really want to comment on the page that’s tough because I have decided I have to!

So… here goes…

Number One - Add a Picture

Oh dear… as I have just got myself a new StumbleUpon account, the first page I am given is the page to add a photograph for my profile. Okay well, I guess I will add one, seen as they asked nicely!

That reminds me, I need some friends added to my new StumbleUpon, if you would care to add me, please do… http://buymeaferrari.stumbleupon.com/

Number Two - RetailMeNot.com 

Hmm… seems like a great site in theory, however, it appears to be aimed towards an American market, and as I’m in the UK it doesn’t really help me at all.

Oh.. hold on.. I’ve found a UK button That’s a lot better! There’s actually a really good selection for the UK market - didn’t think that there would be as many coupon codes as there is.

This site gets a thumbs up, however, not for the homepage but for the page dedicated to the United Kingdom.

Number Three -  Friday, insane time, and this is what we are after

The third site in my random stumble is ‘The Funny Site’ (dfunny.info). And a blog post from them.

First impressions seem to count here as when the page first loaded, I am greeted with what you can see in the above screenshot. Now yes, I am definitely no expert but I know what I like and what I don’t like; all I can pretty much see when it first loads is a load of adverts and links, I can see one line of the post.

I personally prefer to see a bit more of the blog post, I don’t so much mind a load of ads on a homepage of a blog but on single post pages, I prefer to see a lot of the screen dedicated to the blog post itself. Just a personal opinion.

The post itself isn’t really to my taste either - it’s just a load of photographs of drunk people gathered from across the internet, some of which I have seen before.

Yes, of course this will be to some people’s taste, but to be honest, it isn’t to mine. This one is getting a thumbs down, not because I think the post is useless because it will appeal to some people, but it because it doesn’t personally appeal to me.

Number Four - BookMooch

As you can see from the boldness of my RoboForm toolbar, I am already a member on BookMooch. However, I can’t remember the last time I logged in.

I personally much prefer a site I found after BookMooch and that is ReadItSwapIt  - to me it’s so much easier and seems to have more books to my taste.

However, I am still going to give BookMooch a thumbs up as it is still a really good website it’s just I have found a better resource to suit mu needs. The website itself has a decent design and functions pretty much as I would expect it to.

Number Five - There’s a method behind StumbleUpon’s madness (VentureBeat)

In all honesty, this is the most interesting blog post I have read in a while - MG Siegler is talking about the workings of StumbleUpon and explores the StumbleUpon Recommendation Engine.

I knew a little bit about it and the different methods the toolbar uses to recommend you pages but I didn’t really know about it to this extent.

I’m also glad to real that the co-founder he talked to has said that the limitation on the amount of friends you can have is going to be raised from 200 to 1000. On my previous account I struggled to shuffle the friends around so I could have a decent friend base but still keep within the limits (yes, I know, it probably doesn’t seem like it with my new account but it will grow :-))

This page is definitely going to get a thumbs up, a review and I am even going to comment on the blog itself as I really did enjoy reading the post.

Summary

I really enjoyed implementing this idea and actually talking about each of the sites which I stumbled upon. It made me really think about the site rather than just aimlessly stumbling, thumbs up/down then moving on.

This will definitely be something I will do again on FerrariDave as like I said, I really enjoyed it. I hope you enjoy reading the above. If you did, or have any other similar ideas that I could have a go with, please don’t hesitate to leave me a quick comment

Blogging Contests

Written by David Dunn on June 30, 2008 – 10:05 pm - 678 views

Just been reading the Blog About Your Blog post about a roundup of current blogging contests and thought that I should enter some of these and share them with you guys and girls.

Blog Paradise and Contest Whiz competition

Blog Paradise’s contest blog and Contest Whiz’s contest are giving away an impressive list of prizes including one year web hosting, 5000 Entrecard credits and six months SKY.fm subscription.

Techogy contest

Techogy are hosting their very first blog contest and are giving away $500+ in prizes - has a very easy method of entering too!

I will be entering more and more of these similar contests and hopefully hosting my own very soon. If you are running something similar, please do leave a comment

Yet Another Change In Direction

Written by David Dunn on June 29, 2008 – 9:53 pm - 672 views

Those of you who read both this blog and my other blog (Buy Me A Ferrari) will get what I mean by ‘yet another’ change in direction, especially if you have read this post.

It’s time for me to make a change in the type of blog this in (yes, I know I’ve done it before). But I really couldn’t think of enough stuff to do with motoring to make it a viable topic to blog about.

So I’m officially reverting back to the general sort of blog where I am just talking about anything that I am interested in and basically anything I wish to blog about.

This seemed to work better when FerrariDave was like this before so hopefully it will work again.

The competition at the moment is one complete flop but hopefully if I can pick the readership up again, I can have better competitions and stuff that people will want to enter.

Your comments are, as always, welcomed and I’d love to hear what you think, both positively and negatively.

Going to London

Written by David Dunn on June 3, 2008 – 10:12 am - 696 views

Long time, no speak! I’m back (yes, I know I’ve said that much before, but I really am this time).

Enough about me being back, that’s too obvious - or else you wouldn’t be reading this post!

Let’s get onto the main topic of this post, I’m going to London. No… not to buy a Heat Magazine.

Me and Sam are going down there on Sunday and staying in The Royal National Hotel for two nights. We’re going to London to see the sights as it’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go visit for some time but never really had time or never got round to it when I did have time.

We’ve already got two things booked for when we get there:

• London Eye trip
• Madame Tussaud’s visit

If anyone who has been there before or even lives in the city would like to offer us some tips or has details of great places to visit, it would be much appreciated

I will be blogging about this trip as the hotel we’re in has WiFi and I’m taking my laptop. It won’t be like it was on the France trip as I’ll make time to blog this time and I definitely know the times when I can do so.

Please leave some comments about stuff to do in London, bearing in mind we’re there for two nights and we leave Newcastle on the 8th June.

I’m Back!

Written by David Dunn on April 13, 2008 – 4:07 pm - 688 views

As per the title and my previous post, I’m back from Belgium/France and I enjoyed the trip very much so.

Until I was nearly home there wasn’t a WiFi hotspot anywhere near where I actually went.

However, even if there was, to be honest, I don’t think I would have had much time to post as we never stopped other than on the ferry and in the hotel. Every other time we were out and about.

That’s why I haven’t posted about it as we went to so many places that I couldn’t even start to list and blog about, in order, where we have been.

I will be shortly uploading some photos up to Flickr after I begin to go through them and edit them as I see fit.

There’s also a little bit of news about FerrariDave. The blog is still going to stay as a motoring-related blog, however, as you have seen finding decent motoring news to blog about has been a little difficult of late.

So…. I am going to slightly change what I blog about so that it is more my opinion of news rather than actually trying to break the news myself.

This will mean I am going to comment and share my opinions on other people’s blog posts, and also motoring news in general.

You’ll probably also find me ranting on about one thing or another related to motoring, whether it be something I’ve found annoying (or helpful) whilst driving or whether it be something I’ve seen on the roads when I haven’t even been driving.

For more personal topics and a blog related to me I wont be using daviddunn.co.uk yet I don’t think, I need to find a different domain name for the personal blog. This idea might however change as I’m thinking about different ideas right now.

If you’d like to check out my photos (as they’re being uploaded) from my Frelgium trip (yes, that’s Frelgium, appropriately named by Mrs Charlton), please click here.

A New Blog

Written by David Dunn on January 18, 2008 – 11:31 am - 877 views

You will have probably read recently that I was expanding and that I was only going to post motoring-related stuff on here - I lied - just this once, sorry!

I thought it was only right that I post about a new blog I have just released, it’s the money making blog that I talked about and it is called Buy Me A Ferrari.

It’s going to talk about money making and how I am making money on the internet. More information can be found on the blog itself - would be great if you could head on over there and have a read of the welcome post.

Entrecard competition

If you are participating in the Entrecard competition, I’ve got a new way for you to gain a lot more entries - any comments that you make over at Buy Me A Ferrari will convert into two additional entries per comment.

If you subscribe to Buy Me A Ferrari via RSS and post a comment in the original Entrecard competition post, you will earn yourself an additional 5 entries to the competition.

There’s one last way you can gain more entries - StumbleUpon. If you thumb up the homepage and/or any of the posts at Buy Me A Ferrari, you will get yourself 3 entries per page you thumb up. You will need to tell me about what you have thumbed up, along with your SU username, in the original post.

Back to motoring

I now promise you - 100% that there will be no more posts about anything other than motoring - but please don’t hold me to that promise Good luck in the Entrecard competition and I hope that you join me over at Buy Me A Ferrari.

FerrariDave is Changing!

Written by David Dunn on January 14, 2008 – 11:33 am - 1,129 views

After running FerrariDave since 11th November 2007, I have decided that some stuff needs to change. Nothing too drastic so don’t worry.

Rather than FerrariDave being a personal blog, I am going to start another more personal blog with a domain name more personal to myself. This website will not only have a blog but will talk about stuff I am working on and other personal stuff - basically it will be more of a website than just a blog.

What will happen to FerrariDave?

FerrariDave is going to become more focused on motoring/automotive topics. Anything related to the motoring industry, driving, traffic law, Formula 1, and the likewise will be posted on ferraridave.com.

What else have I got planned?

Over the not-so-distant future, I plan to release the following sites:

• Personal website
• A joke site
• A cool idea for my local area that I don’t really wish to go into more detail about until I develop it a bit more..
• Local news blog
• Money making blog

That’s about all I have in mind at the moment. Obviously some of the ideas are going to be developed a bit more quickly than the others and some I have even started work on already.

More information about each project will be posted on my personal website, rather than on this ‘motoring’ site

Entrecard competiton

The Entrecard competition is still running and I will probably keep on running Entrecard contests once this one is over. Which reminds me, I need to find out how I stand with regards to Entrecard once I have more websites. Anyone have any ideas?

So hopefully the readers that I have at the moment will continue to read FerrariDave. If you aren’t interested in motoring, then I am sorry, but hopefully you will continue to follow my projects and hopefully I’ll develop something else you are interested in

Thanks for reading and wish me luck with my projects, please, I might need it!

Windows Live Writer

Written by David Dunn on January 7, 2008 – 5:43 pm - 1,712 views

Ever since I started blogging on FerrariDave back in November 2007, I have used  WordPress’ admin section to write my blog posts.

As most of you bloggers will be aware, it isn’t the most advanced tool in the world.

While looking around other blogs, I found that a lot more people were using Windows Live Writer to create their posts. This made me realise that there must be some reason why people are switching.

First and foremost, Windows Live Writer means that the blogger can create their posts anywhere, whether they have access to the internet or not. It also means that you don’t need to use bandwidth every time you want to create a post, loading up all the dashboards etc. in the admin section.

Once I started using Windows Live Writer (yes, I’m using it to create this post), I found that when you are writing a post, it shows it as though you were viewing it as a post on your blog.

This, to me, is a huge advantage as WordPress creates the posts in the default font and the CSS file depicts what the font should be once on your blog.

Ultimately, this means that you have to guess how big your paragraphs are and guessing isn’t always the best option!

Inserting pictures is also made easier in this as you can see exactly what it would look like on your page and how the text is wrapping round it. Whereas on WordPress, I found myself having to save and continue with the post, previewing it to see how the text and images are looking.

These are about the only features I have explored in Windows Live Writer but the rest looks very promising including Plug-ins.

If you would like to give Windows Live Writer a go yourself, click here and download it from Microsoft. I think it’s one hell of an improvement in comparison to the traditional WordPress methods.

If anyone has any cool tricks for me, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

If you use anything better than Windows Live Writer I’d also love to hear from you as I’m always open to improvement!

Buy a Blog Review

Written by David Dunn on January 7, 2008 – 5:10 pm - 673 views

I recently signed up at Buy Blog Reviews and have just today received the confirmation that my blog has been approved to give reviews.

Thought it would be pretty cool to have a go at this - yes, I’m probably not the most amazing person in the world to review a website or blog but I’m happy to have a go.

You don’t really have much to lose as a review from FerrariDave will cost you only $10 per blog for the time being. If you are interested in me having a go, click here to be taken to my page on BuyBlogReviews.

I really appreciate those who do purchase this service. Bear in mind that I’m very new to this sort of thing

Blog Stats for December 2007

Written by David Dunn on January 1, 2008 – 11:07 pm - 838 views

Here’s this months statistics for FerrariDave during the month of December 2007. As you will soon see, my blog has had more of most things in comparison to November.

On the 29th my hosting suspended my account for reasons stated in this blog post (note: some of the goals such as the Alexa rank refer to my .co.uk domain and therefore will now be reset with the .com), so I purchased hosting from Lunarpages and moved across to the .com domain name.

Hopefully now I’m across, I should be well on my way to meeting some of my goals for 2008.

As always, I will be using Google Analytics to collect my information.

Total visits: 6,644

Average visits per day: 214.32

Post popular day: Monday, December 31, 2007 (941 visitors)

Most popular hour: 00:00 (810 visitors)

Page views: 12,431

Average pages per visit: 1.87

Top 5 browsers:

1. Firefox (6,112 visitors)
2. Internet Explorer (452 visitors)
3. Mozilla (27 visitors)
4. Opera (25 visitors)
5. Safari (24 visitors)

Top 5 countries:

1. United States (4,091 visitors)
2. United Kingdom (951 visitors)
3. Canada (446 visitors)
4. Australia (135 visitors)
5. Germany (86 visitors)

Top 5 traffic sources:

1. StumbleUpon (5,464 visitors)
2. Direct (501 visitors)
3. Entrecard (169 visitors)
4. Walyou (80 visitors)
5. Digg (63 visitors)

Top 5 posts:

1. The Love Dress (2,963 views)
2. Free Download of DivX Pro (1,378 views)
3. Home (1,134 views)
4. New Year’s Resolutions - Over Time! (994 views)
5. Beer Brothers (678 views)