Oy - Celebrating ONE YEAR on the web!

I’m speechless, just watch for yourself…

Online Videos by Veoh.com

If you don’t know what RSS is, check out this video first…

Click To Play

If you’re up to speed, read on…10. Disappointment overwhelms you whenever you visit a site with no feed link.

9. You know the names of all the major feed readers/services by heart.

8. Using bookmarks/favorites is suddenly too much work.

7. You don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t use RSS.

6. You know what “burning a feed” means.

5. You suddenly have much more free time on your hands….

4. …which is spent subscribing to more feeds

3. You spend more time clicking ‘Refresh’ than visiting non RSS-enabled sites.

2. You actually know what “RSS” stands for.

and finally…

1. For certain users: If you’ve ever reached The End of The Internet.

Another great video from the folks at Common Craft. I personally use Google Docs for all my comic writing so having it explained so simply for me to share with others is awesome! Though, one handy feature they didn’t address was the Revisions archive: if you or someone else makes a bunch of changes, then realize it was fine from the start, you can revert it like a Wikipedia article. Not even Word let’s you do that (unless they’ve added it to 2007.) Not all web applications (Google and non-Google) are a perfect replacement to MS Office, but Google Docs has already replaced Word for me. And best of all, it’s free!

Check it out:

Another handy video from Common Craft explaining why compact florescent light bulbs (CFL’s) save money and energy…

I’ve been updating the site over the last couple days: I streamlined and color-coded the RSS subscription options on the sidebar, added link icons to the top navigation and I added an all-new section titled “Subscribe, or, ‘What’s RSS?’”

You can access it via the “What’s RSS?” link at the top of the site. Inside you’ll find an explanation of what RSS is, plus, a rundown of the 5 different RSS options available here at theblogComics.com. Check it out!

Thanks to Wetpaint.com, theblogComics.com now has an official Wiki at: theblogcomics.wetpaint.com (I’m going to try to make the sub-domain “wiki.theblogcomics.com” for easier retention and branding, then forward it to Wetpaint, but we’ll see how that goes.)

What’s a wiki? Well, as usual, thanks to Common Craft, I can explain it in under 4 minutes:

Click To Play

So, theblogComics.com Wiki is a place where anyone can add content related to theblogComics.com, blogging and cartooning! Instead of a boring, static “About” page, the site will be constantly updated by people like you, with the latest info about the comics here and cartooning in general!Common Craft has also made a video specifically related to Wetpaint. It covers some of the basic wiki info from the previous video, but it has some added info specific to using Wetpaint.

clickThrough

Remember, this is a community project, so feel free to jump in today and edit away (Editor’s Note: unintentional rhyme alert!), while staying on topic of course.

This is an interesting video from Google talking about children with autism who couldn’t hand draw their own rooms, yet have been able to create entire dream homes in Google SketchUp. Google SketchUp is the (FREE) program I use to layout any complicated backgrounds in my comics. I’ve built a couple things myself, but I’m mostly reliant on the work of others in the 3D Warehouse, so this is just amazing:

I especially like how “Casey” built a whole factory inside one room.

I tried to add some better navigation to the site, and it messed something up big time! I had a backup of the 2-column version of the site, but not the 3-column version, but I think it looks good like this now, so we’ll leave it. And for those reading via an RSS reader, this is why the comics are suddenly showing up directly in your reader again.

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I signed up for Twitter a long time ago, but didn’t really “get it”. But I gave it a second chance and now I find it’s a fun way to keep up with other people, and people to keep up with me. It even lets me auto-post blog updates. Follow Me: http://twitter.com/theblogcomics

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For 24 Hour Comics Day 2007 I had hoped to provide a live stream of the comics being created. But the day came up and I hadn’t finished researching how to do it. Then I forgot about it. But yesterday, Scott “PvP” Kurtz mentioned in his blog that he was looking for a way to do it and asked readers for suggestions. So I ventured to try to figure it out… again, and settled on Ustream. I went to tell Kurtz, only to find he was using the same service! Now I’m setup to do the same…

If I remember to turn on the stream, I should be live most weekdays from approx. 5 AM - 8 AM PST (give or take half an hour, lol), and infrequently on the weekends. There’s even a one click Twitter update button that notifies anyone following me that I’m streaming. You can watch it right on the main page of theblogComics.com or go to the this link: http://www.ustream.tv/theblogComics. To participate in the chat, just go to that Ustream link, or click the word balloon on the video frame here on the site.

Well, after a day of several Toonin’ View Ustream screencast recordings not working, the service seems to be working again. Unfortunately for Ustream, I found out about an awesome alternative (not that they’re making money directly from me, lol). I’m not sure if the alternative is entirely compatible with my computer system and this site. If it’s not, I’ll stick with Ustream. More details as they are available. I should be back on tomorrow morning unless I miss my alarm (again).

Beyond that, when I went to re-add the stream to the main page, it was bigger! It seems like it’s just a zoomed version of the original size, but hey, it’s something.