July :: 2007 :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

I’ve been reminded a few times lately that participating in blog carnivals is a good way to build awareness of and traffic to your blog.

And I’ve had an example close to home – well, at home really – of how enthusiastic some bloggers can be about participating in these carnivals. My partner Suzie, who has recently been putting more time than previously into her Abundance Highway blog, hosted a blog carnival two weeks ago on the topic “abundance thinking”. She was warned that it would be hard work and it would be a challenge getting people to participate. Neither prediction proved true. According to Suzie, the work was not too difficult and she had thirty four entries. And she enjoyed the process so much she announced a second carnival.

I was inspired by all this, plus a dash of patriotism, to submit today a post for the Blog Carnival of Australia which is scheduled for August 1 and is being hosted by Megan Bayliss at the Imaginif blog, self-described as “the largest child protection conversation in the world”. The process of submitting a post could not be simpler. All you need to do is select a post you have written, or write and publish a new one, on the topic of the carnival, go to the Submit page and supply some basic details: article permalink, your name and email address, select the carnival you are submitting for and an appropriate category and you’re done. Easy peasy.

I chose to submit my slightly tongue-in-cheek post from last week on Second Life, titled First Life, Anyone?. I thought the picture of an Aussie beach, at the world-renowned (among surfers) Snapper Rocks, compared to a picture of a virtual beach in Second Life, was reasonable qualification. We’ll see.

It’s not too late to submit for the Blog Carnival of Australia. Closes today, Monday July 30, at 5 pm (that’s Australian time, natch).

I used to love getting email greeting cards.

And they were very handy in the sending department too:

those “almost forgot” birthday greetings, when the regular post is going to be too late
people you like but are not so close that you want to set up an obligation to reciprocate with posted cards for birthdays, Christmas, Hanukkah, or other festival
when you want to send someone something just for fun, with the lightness of touch that comes of it being bits, not atoms

photo from everystockphoto

Sadly, I suspect that the days of sending and receiving email cards might be numbered.

That’s to say, judging by the deluge of email greetings I’ve been receiving lately, purporting to be from:

a friend
a former schoolmate
a “mate” (the Aussie touch – hmmm)

How boring, that something which has probably done a lot of good for countless people and kept many connections alive or revived old connections may now be so discredited by the spammers that it will be on the way out.

Now what was that system we used to use in the olden days? An envelope? A card or a sheet of paper?

The postal services will be pleased – that is, unless the ease of email card-sending has made us just too lazy to use the paper version and find a postage stamp.

Whose day could you brighten with an old-fashioned greeting card, or just a note of friendship, with an envelope, and a stamp, and even “SWALK” on the outside of the envelope?