Category: Other

Midnight at the Lost and Found RSS feed

rss If you publish the entire RSS feed of your blog (which I strongly recommend as a service to your readers) instead of, say, the first 250 characters of a post, chances are that a good portion of your readers never visit your blog. So if you for some reason decide to change your RSS feed you need to announce the new address within your old feed.

I’m not sure how the details have been communicated here, but I am glad that one of my favourite bloggers, Martin Jönsson of Svenska Dagbladet, has neither quit blogging nor vanished from the face of the earth. I was a bit curious why no new blog posts came up after November 27 last year, but the reason was simply a change of RSS feed (new one here). There are currently more than 80 subscribers to the old feed in Bloglines alone so it could be a good idea to inform them of the switch via the old feed, if it is possible.

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The Fred Astaire of ballpoint pens

Once in a while you stumble upon a story that is so amazing you just got to share it with others. This is such a story. Check out the photo realistic art work by Juan Francisco Casas who only uses ballpoint pens to create images that look so realistic you think the guy must be pulling your leg. Can it really be possible?

Story and photos at the Daily Mail.

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Tax authorities spider the web in search of fraud

Two days ago I blogged about how the Swedish National Tax Board is investigating new areas where there is a risk that individuals have income that they withhold from taxation, one of these areas being blogging. Now it doesn’t seem that blogging has become such a big problem yet. Of the total of 420 million kronor that the investigation found were withheld from taxation, 59.9 million were found in the category that include as diverse areas such as:

Dating, SEO services, international web services, internet- and SMS loans, blogs, astrology, electronics/satellite tv, weight control/gym products.

In total, the tax authorities say they have 156 million kronor to claim in taxes.

Bloggers should be aware that tax authorities are looking into the area and that they actually are spidering web sites to find suspects.

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One in two teens have been harrassed online

Kairos Future have studied youth between 14 and 18 and their views about online integrity on behalf of the Swedish Data Inspection Board. Some interesting findings include:

– About half of the respondents 51 % say they have been thinking about information concering their private life.
– 54 % say that someone has written nasty things about them online.
– They are more willing to reveal religious and political views than personal information like who they are in love with.
– Girls are more active bloggers than boys.
– Girls are more reluctant (71%) to reveal other personal information than their names online, than boys are (58%).
– 17 % of Facebook users regret they have put up a text or a photo on the social network. It is more common among girls than among boys.

Full report here, in Swedish.

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Aftonbladet to launch Facebook-like community

The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet is about to launch a new community on its website, reports Dagens Media. Readers will get their own Facebook-like profile pages where all activities will be visible. In the future, profile pages will for example contain users’ comments to articles (Aftonbladet.se does not currently allow comments to articles, but does show links to blog posts). According to Andreas Aspegren who is responsible for the project, the profile pages will include a guestbook, a messaging feature and a photo album.

Advertisers will be offered the possibility to purchase targeted ads on user pages. Due to recent security issues (Aftonbladet was the victim of a hacker attack recently) the community has been delayed. A possible launch date is within the coming two months.

Aftonbladet is also working on a new advertising model in which revenue would be shared with bloggers, like the free daily Metro already does.

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TV show the most popular podcast in Norway

The tv show “Norges Herligste” (Norway’s Loveliest?) has become the most popular podcast in Norway with about 90,000 downloads to date. That makes it the most popular podcast right now, according to Itunes.

In the show, two brothers, Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker, travels around the country and interviews odd and interesting people. From what I can tell, this is a format that was first launched in Sweden when Fredrik & Filip did a show called “100 höjdare”, a format later sold to some 6 or 7 countries.

Via Vassa Eggen.

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