Technoranki Peer Group

A peer group is being formed to work on improving the technoranki blog ranks algorithm. If you’d like to get involved you need to be nominated (self nominations are allowed) and seconded by someone else.
[tags]technoranki,blog ranking,peer group[/tags]

Christmas Blogmeet, London

By popular demand there will be a Christmas blogmeet in London! It will be held on Saturday 9th December from about 2:30 PM, probably in a pub near Covent Garden. I’m thinking about the same pub as the last London blogmeet, but want to get a feel for numbers before we commit to anything.

These are always good fun once the ice is broken, so if you’re around please do drop in if you can. If you think you can make it (even if you’re not too sure), please leave a note below saying so in order for me to get a feel for numbers before I reserve any tables.

Pretty Please

It would be great if you could help spread the word about this event. They really are good fun, but only if people turn up! If you could mention it on your blog (even if you can’t make it) then it should help more people find out about it and boost the numbers. And of course, I’d be eternally grateful. Thanks

Update

Just to make it clear, the blogmeet will be in The Marquess of Anglesey (Google Maps – see flag ‘A’) near Covent Garden from about 2:30PM. I’ll try and get a BritBlog logo printed. If not, I’ll be the chap looking a little hot (if I say so myself) in a BritBlog hoodie!

[tags]britblog,blogmeet,london,london blogmeet[/tags]

Quick catch up

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about the developments ‘behind the scenes’, so I thought I’d just post a short update for any interested parties.

As you may know, we’ve been talking about a total redesign of the site from the ground up since March (I can’t believe how time flies!). Sadly demands on my time (read “day job”) have held this up somewhat, but that’s not to say we’ve been doing nothing.

We got our second server installed in July, which has taken a lot of the load of our older server (meaning a more reliable service for you). This new server will also soon be running a new ping server and spider combination that we hope to be testing in the wild over the next few months.

So this is Phase 1. We will be able to keep an eye on all our member blogs and find out what everyone is talking about. Not only will this allow us to say what the British blogsphere is talking about at any point in time, but it will allow us to segment the British blogsphere by location or category – meaning a very local or niche view of discussions (blog posts) will be possible. Exciting stuff!

You’ll probably see a new design go live with this new functionality too. So that’s the easy bit.

Phase 2 will have to be a total re-write of the directory and membership code. The new version of the site will introduce so many new features that we’re going to have to start from scratch. We’ve been tinkering with this for a while now but it’s still a fairly long way off I’m afraid.

And what about Phase 3? Well we’ve still got loads of great ideas that we want to put in place which I’d love to tell you about, but it’s probably best for me to firm these up first

Finally, for any new members waiting to get their blogs approved, please continue to bear with me. The queue is going down slowly, but has an amazing ability to grow back up if I have a day away! There are lots of spam blogs in the queue which aren’t always easy to spot, so blame the delays on them if you want to moan. Thanks for your continued patience.

That’s about it I think. Have I missed anything? If anyone is interested in a Christmas blogmeet in London, please let me know. And to make sure you keep up to date with any news from us, please consider either subscribing to our blog RSS feed or to our daily blogmail service (daily digest, only sent out when there is something new to send).

[tags]britblog,ping server,spider,christmas blogmeet,update[/tags]