[Event] Weekly Guest Bloggers

I just announced my first event, so please take a look and if you're interested in participating contact me via my email link.

Michele ~ Chef Michele's Adventures

A better ad network?

Hey all, I am sure lots of you all use adsense, as I have, but I wanted to let you know about this other adnetwork called Chitika eMiniMalls that I cruised by today and added to my blog at Nika's Culinaria (you can see two different types of ads from them throughout the blog).
They have a higher payrate than adsense and the ads seem to draw people in by ther interactive nature as well as their targeting ( am waiting to see how well it does that but you do get nice ads for wine and Fois Gras on my site now)

In addition to those, I also suggest putting up an affiliate button because the number one thing people say about our visitors is that they are very likely bloggers too and might be interested in a new blog ad network.

Check it out at:





Remember that they are dynamic so each page load brings different ads to different people.


This post was written by Nika at Nika's Culinaria.

Media: Food Blogs hit the Christian Science Monitor

Good coverage for a few food bloggers is in Thursday's issue online here.


This post was written by Alanna from A Veggie Venture.

(Podcasting) A Fun Way to Use Podcasting

I am guessing that most bloggers are interested in learning about new technologies. I am way behind most of you in this area, and have appeciated all the help I've gotten from many of you. I have learned so much! I recently had a chance to take a class in podcasting at the University of Utah. I came up with the idea of making this podcast of a Christmas Message for the people who read Kalyn's Kitchen. I thought other food bloggers might be interested in seeing this use of podcasting.

This post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

[blogger] Pictures
I can't for the life of me get a picture into my profile. I went through the whole "hello" file and still can't get it to work.
Any clear help?


This post was written by heather from eating4one

Chronicle article on making $ off your blog

In case you don't live in the SF area, the Chronicle had a story about bloggers selling merchandise and in other ways trying to make a living off of their blogs.

The link is
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/19/BUG07G9CT61.DTL&hw=blog&sn=030&sc=346

The story ran on 12/19, so if you are interested, out of inclination or horror, check it out soon in case it becomes unavailable in the future. I believe there is also a podcast on the topic.

[blogger] Recent Comments hack when viewed on Safari

Is anyone on blogger using the Recent Comments hack on BloggerHacks? I've noticed that in Safari, the recent comments are in some random order, it works fine on MSIE and Firefox though. I've seen other people noticing it too, but haven't found a fix. Anyone?

This post was written by Gerald from Foodite

[Stats] Question about links

.

So yesterday my stats indicated hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of people came to my blog via a post on Slashfood from August, that I had left a comment on with a link.

It just seems super-super weird to me. I am (just out of curiosity) wondering if anyone knows if that post (About Grilled Cheese Day) was featured in a newspaper or a magazine or something? (Andrew? Sarah? Beth? You all post on Slashfood...don't you?)

I looked around at Technorati and whatnot couldn't find anything that would explain this (excellent) phenom.

I know this is silly, but I really am curious why a post from August with a comment and a link would suddenly have people swarming to my blog.

Thanks!

Rachael

This query brought to you with lovin' care by Rachael from Fresh Approach Cooking

(Misc) Blog Polls

Help! I'm doing a contest this weekend, and need Blog Poll to cooperate. It's having trouble with the code - can't get the results graph to appear. Anyone have any experience with it/Blogger before?


This post was written by Sweetnicks from Sweetnicks

[idea] would anyone like to?

I've just been brainstorming ideas for my blog and have something I want to try for the first week of 2006. If this works out well I will make it a weekly event on my blog. This is what I would like to do. Each day for week 1 of 2006 I would like to feature a guest blogger. Each guest will write a post for my blog. In exchnage all that I ask is that the day before your post appears that you mention (with a link back), on your blog that you will be guest posting for me and on what day. Seems to me this will be a great way to help each other gain more readers. If interested, please email me at chefmichele@gmail.com. I will accept posts with content related to my blog subject matter and pictures are certainly welcome!

Michele from Chef Michele's Adventures

Typepad down: Menu for Hope campaign pages gone!

Hi everyone!

Those of you on Typepad would have known this already, Typepad went down last night. When they came back up they used a backup copy from a few days ago, and lost all the posts from the last few days!

The problem is all the Menu for Hope pages are GONE! They might come back, I'm sure folks at Typepad are working on it, but I don't want to lose momentum on this. We've been doing so well and go up by over a thousand every day! The last I checked we were at $6,473.00 and unfortunately there had not been any donation since Typepad went down. People must be wondering what is going on when they come to Chez Pim and couldn't find any of the post on Menu for Hope.

Would those of you NOT on Typepad put a post up about this? Please inform your readers that the fundraising page is temporarily down, and we are working to get it up as soon as possible. In the meantime, the donation page at FirstGiving is still up.

Is there anyone who has a copy of the entire menu? If you do you might want to speak up so the rest of us can point to your copy while Typepad works on the problem. Thanks so much.

keep your fingers crossed!
Pim



This post was written by Pim from Chez Pim

[Blogger] HELP! My page is off center!

What am I doing wrong? When I look at IE part of my page is not showing properly. How do I fix this problem?

http://chefmichele.blogspot.com

Michele

[RSS] new reader in gmail

Read more details here.

I haven't tried it out yet. Will do.


This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

VenderPro.com: BEWARE!

On Friday, I was very excited to receive this e-mail:

I've spent a lot of time at the Gastro Gear website and I think your T-shirts are perfect for our stores. I especially like your "Garlic me all over" and "Great legs" designs. We work hand in hand with the largest stores in the country, plus thousands of small to medium sized specialty businesses stretched across the U.S.. If you want the opportunity to sell your products through major retailers like Sears, Macys, Nordstrom, Robinsons May, JC Penney, Target, QVC, HSN, etc ... plus the other 51005 gift stores, 11329 men's clothing stores, 39089 women's clothing stores, 7129 children's clothing stores, and over 24000 mail-order catalogs ... check us out at http://www.VendorPro.com

Sincerely,
Mark Adams
VendorPro.com

And I mean really excited. I called my husband and told him about it (he also has a line of t-shirts designed around poker and playing cards), and we were considering whether to pay the $350 and join this outfit.

Thank goodness my business mentor told me, "Google them and see what you find out." I did so, and learned that they have a Better Business Bureau rating of F. More than that, complaints are scattered all over the internet, discussing how disreputable they are.

The moral of the story is: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

Beware. Most of the complaints were that the letter is just a template into which the slurky salespeople insert Your Name Here...although this guy clearly had seen my designs, which he cited.


This post was written by Tana from Small Farms: A Blog from the Heart

Using an image as your title *on a modified* blogger template

Due to bandwidth issues, I have to change from typepad to blogger for one of my sites.

As far as I can tell, I cannot just copy and paste the template into blogger. So I found a suitable
modified template from an online source to use.

My problem is the fact that previous food blog
school posts about how to use an image for your title/header are no longer applicable to this modified
template (at least that is what I think, forgive me if I am mistaken)

Can anyone tell me what to change in my template (that follows) so that the image i want to use (found here: http://static.flickr.com/34/72546532_fe0d06bbeb_o.jpg )
shows up as my title/header for my blogger site?

Modified Template


This post was written by Ali from Something So Clever

Requesting Opinions on Convection Ovens

This is not a blog related question, but it is a food-related question so I hope no one minds me asking it here. (I don't know of a better place to get opinions from highly skilled home cooks.)

Every year for Christmas "Santa" brings me some kind of new cooking toy. I have a 1940's era gas stove that I love and want to keep (especially since Dr. Biggles taught me via the internet how to turn up the burners), but the oven is not that reliable. It's ok for something like a casserole, but anything where you need to cook it at a very specific temperature is iffy.

I was thinking of getting one of those new countertop toaster oven - convection oven combinations since I have tons of counter space. I like the idea of the convection oven cooking more quickly. I'm wondering if any of you use a convection oven, and do you like the results? Are they mostly just for baking, or are they good for roasting? I'd love to hear from anyone who has one.

Thanks in advance.

Posted by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

(Misc) Graphics Help

I want to make business cards and labels that feature my banner. I have it as a jpeg, but when I shrink it down small enough, it gets either fuzzy or distorted or both. Can anyone help? I need it small enough to put on the upper half of a business card, so I can put text on the bottom. I'm also trying to make labels to put on Sweetnicks Cookie Care Packages for the holidays. Suggestions? Advice? Help?!


This post was written by Sweetnicks from Sweetnicks

Blogger won't upload my images!

I was so excited tonight because I just wrote up my first restaurant review. And then I was completely deflated when I could not get Blogger to upload the one pic I wanted for the post. Everytime I try to upload and it completes it (with the blue button that says "Done"), but there's not image in the post! Has anyone dealt with this before? Is it just Blogger being finicky or something I'm doing?


This post was written by Rose from The Hungry Rose

[Blogger] making the extended post link

I was looking around the FBS archives as well as on Blogger's help page but couldn't find any information on the code to shorten my post and create a link to extend it. Is it done in the template or can it be done in the post itself?

This post was written by Rose from The Hungry Rose

[Feedburner] What Am I Doing Wrong?

I have a Feedburner animated graphic that I use on some message boards but often times it will display "JP: Watch This Spot For Future". When I log into feedburner it says my atom feed is obsolete. It says I need to update it, but there in no info on HOW to update it. Any ideas? Usually this happens when I post any type of pic on the blog. If it's just a text post this does not happen. You can see the graphic I am speaking of at http://crockpotadventures.blogspot.com on the left side towards the top.

Michele - Chef Michele's Adventures

[Digital Cameras] Shopping For A New Camera?

When my digital camera had a massive stroke two weeks ago, I panicked (because I knew next to nothing about buying a new camera.) And then I posted a little cry for help on my blog, asking for advice from readers. The response was overwhelming and incredibly helpful. Several readers told me that the info helped them, too, so I thought I would share it with my school mates.

My two main criteria were that the camera cost $300 or less and that it have a fully automatic option so I could use it right away and figure out the rest at my leisure. People offered up advice on everything from specific models (including great sounding pricier ones) to buying rechargeable batteries. There are also several excellent links. So if you're in the market for a new camera and don't know much about the zillions of choices out there, click here to read all the comments.

For more info on digital cameras, you can do a search through the Food Blog S'Cool Archives.

So what camera did I end up buying? The Canon PowerShot A520 from Amazon. $175, no tax, free shipping, and tons of favorable reviews from various sources. So far I love it. All the photos posted on Farmgirl Fare from 12/8/05 to the present were taken with it (and none were retouched, etc.). Downloading photos into the computer is a snap (even for me).

I also followed the advice to invest in rechargeable nimh batteries and a charger. I bought this Sony Battery Charger with four 2300 nimh AA batteries for under $20 at Amazon. It works great. You can charge two at a time and always have two fully charged and ready to go.

NOTE: I have also discovered that nimh batteries burn out a LOT faster in very cold weather.


This post was written by Farmgirl from Farmgirl Fare

[HTML] Columns?

Does anyone know how I can have columns in my post. Is it possible.
I am thinking of two or three columns going down instead of one body of text. This is just for a one off post - I am not planning to be columned for the rest of my blogging life.
Ta, tarra...

This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

[Event] Food Fete

Are you going to the Fancy Food Show in January in San Francisco? If so, you may also want to attend the Food Fete. I went last year, along with a few other bloggers and it was a good event. Head over to the web site if you are interested. At the site, click on "press" for more information about attending.

Food Fête is a public relations and marketing event for the gourmet food and beverage industry. We produce sponsored press receptions that showcase gourmet food and beverage products driving current food trends.

Oh! to attend the Fancy Food Show, pre-register here. FYI a business card with your title and blog is about all you need as "credentials" to qualify as press.

This post was written by Amy from Cooking with Amy

(Misc) New Blog Directory

Got an e-mail today about a blog directory (as I'm sure some of you also received). I assume it's new since when I went to register, I was the first food blogger (!), but I thought you guys might be interested.

Add URL Blog


This post was written by Sweetnicks from Sweetnicks

Blogger and photos

This may be old news to some, but I was delighted to discover that I could use the blogger image uploader to put in a series of photos and then go to the edit html (as opposed to the tab labeled compose) and then cut and paste the photos to where I wanted them in the post.

Since I have been having issues with Hello and haven't tried flicker yet, it seemed a simple solution.

If you try this, I think it is easier to write your post and then move the photos.

Hope this helps someone.

Posted by FJK of Blog Appetit

[Blogger] Too Many Posts?

Last night as well as this morning, Blogger has been running extremely slow for me. I now have over 700 posts so I am wondering if that is the problem and if so, will switching to a paid service take care of it? (Switching all my posts over is not something I look forward to, but I'm willing to pay the price - literally and figuratively - if that will resolve the issue.)

Thanks in advance!

This post was written by Cathy from Chief Family Officer

[Recipe] Stollen MEME

Hi Guys,
I know as foodies most of us are very "prepared" for christmas and have the finer details down pat. But just incase there is any extra room on your Christmas table, or you feel like trying something different, I have posted a recipe for Weinacht Stollen (A yeasted german christmas cake). If any other bloggers want to make the stollen and share their experiances then I will post a round-up.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

This post was written by Clare Eats from Eatstuff

[Posting] Help! How do I make the pictures, links?

Hey kids,

I have a Mac (gack) and use Firefox.

While trying to do my round up for My Blog Went Up In Flames, I thought it would be super nifty to have the photos be links, only I have no clue how that could happen.

Can anyone explain this in super layman's terms?

Merci!
Rachael



This query was written with lovin' care by Rachael from Fresh Approach Cooking

Google Adsense - Promoting Your Blog to Advertisers

FYI - For those of you who use Google Adsense on your blog, Google is now putting an "Advertise on this site" message on many of the ads. You can can customize to some degree the look and content of the landing page when someone clicks on this link from an ad on your site. Advertisers can now specifically request your site to have their ads run on in the Google Adwords program.

To find out how to customize the landing page with your logo and content, log into Adsense and select, "My Account" from the menu options. Scroll down to the bottom to "Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up" to edit.

This post was written by Elise of Simply Recipes

[event]Menu for Hope II: last call for participation

Hi there,

I'd like to drop another note to invite participation to my Menu for Hope II. We are raising money to support the victims of the earthquake in northern India and Pakistan.

You can read more about it in my previous Foodblogscool posting here. Basically, I'm asking food bloggers to offer up a gift for your readers to raffle. Each $5 donation will get a virtual raffle ticket. The donor can specify which gift they want. Each blogger will only be responsible for coming up with the gift, and the shipping cost to send that gift to the winner. Oh, right, and for a blog post about their gift, I will run the roundup of everything on offer on our Menu for Hope II next Monday.

I've already got a lot of bloggers who agreed to participate, but most of them are of the usual suspects variety, which is a good thing, mind you. Who wouldn’t want to be in the company of Clotilde, Adam, David, Alder, Heidi, Sam, Kate, Amy, to name but a few? But I'd really like to include a lot more of you whom I don’t' normally have an opportunity to play with. The more the merrier, no? And it's also for a very good cause.

Don't be afraid that you might not have anything fancy enough to offer. I've got pledged gifts ranging from a jar of home-made jam, to cookbooks old and new, to a fancy basket of goodies solicited from gourmet shops --and even to a chance to 'own' your very own sheep (guess who that's from). Anything you think your readers wouldn't mind giving just $5 for a chance to win it would be enough.

Please email me, chezpim@gmail.com, or leave a comment here to let me know you'd like to participate. And tell your blogging friends! As I said, the more the merrier! Hopefully we could raise a good amount of money for this very worthy cause.

Thanks so much,
Pim

This post was written by Pim from Chezpim.typepad.com

does anyone know some shortcuts.

Does anyone knows some shortcut ? I have created several blogs to sort out the category of my posts, now, I decided to have 1 blog that I call home.. I just knew recently that it doesnt show my old post when u search in technorati under "search this blog" I'd like to have my other posts to show in my homepage when being searched for the sake of filing... is there anyway I could do some shortcut other than posting old posts in my home page? I dont like to post a list of links either in my home page. The thought of doing everything again is getting into my nerve especially that hello isnt working.

[RSS] new Reader (Beta) from google

Check it out here at Reader/lens. I just started playing with it.


This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

DNS for typepad

I know someone must have worked this through and I am getting absolutely nowhere with Typepad support and today's the deadline to switch things. I am hoping for a simple answer here.

Typepad recently sent out mail saying they needed DNS changes for all their mapped domains; all they are asking for is a single CNAME that maps the subdomain to their server, like this:
blog (points to) kitchenmage.typepad.com

This is how I tried to set it up when I first mapped my domain to the blog and it fails, so I added an A record to point to the IP address of kitchenmage.typepad.com, which works. However, the address is apparently subject to change so it may not work for long.

When I go back to just the CNAME it all stops, due to no DNS resolution. (duh)

Their help says stupid things like, leave the A record at the default. Default? There is no *default* for A records.

I've got five blogs mapped and if they all stop working I'm going to be a very unhappy mage. (and it's seldom good for people when mages get unhappy, for people are crispy and taste good with ketchup...no wait, that's when dragons get mad...never mind)

So, who wants to show me their DNS settings? I'd prefer to hear from someone with a DNS server, not DNS set up at a registrar, mostly because I need to know what was done and registrars are notorious for doing things behind the scenes where you can't tell that they did it...so stuff works, but not for a discernable reason.

This post was written by kitchenmage from Kitchenmage

Photography Help Needed

I would love some tips of how to photograph food to get a good clear picture with nice bright lighting. Just ordered my first digital camera and have no idea about photography. Hoping to add some nice pics to the blog. any tips appreciated! TIA!

Michele from Chef Michele's Adventures

New Style of Comment Spam

I came back this evening from a delicious, icy, snowy weekend vacation in Seattle to discover a new type of comment spam on my blog.

These are comments that are relevant, don't contain links, are personal, have obviously read the entry and are typically responding favorably. So why did they set off my spam alarms?

In the field for a commentor's url, name, and email, this commentor has put in a blog address that leads to a content non-sense blog that looks to be up only to drive search return ratings.

So... approve the comment? Delete as spam?

Sweets gave me a good suggestion to try at first. He says keep the comment (since it is relevant, and not the part I am objecting to), and break the commentor's url by changing http to hxxp and putting a space after every character in the url.

I'll see how that goes. I definitly get the impression that these commentors are watching to see what my response is before they flood me.

Example of the comment change is exhibited with the last two comments on this Harry Potter recipe.


This post was written by McAuliflower from Brownie Points Blog

Message from Noodle Cook re Paper Chef

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAPER CHEF!!

Dear Headmistress

I couldn't work out how many people are particpating in this weekend's Paper Chef based on the low number of ingredient nominations and no announcement on Is My Blog Burning?

I have organised an Aussie judging panel, with some "secret" surprises :) to help celebrate Paper Chef anniversary and the holidays, it would be disastrous if everyone has forgotten... Would you be kind enough to put in a reminder for Paper Chef participants to head to Tomatilla for nominations and details. Thank you in advance.

Noodle Cook


Note from Sam - people who wish to announce things on Food Blog S'cool are encouraged to simply sign up and join the Scool for full posting priveleges. Food Blog S'cool Mail is only checked once a week or less. For more urgent issues email me directly via Becks & Posh.
This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

Adding video to your blog?

does anyone know of an easy way to add a small video clip to your blog?


This post was written by Darell from Darell Eats

[Event]

Hey kids,
If our headmistress Sam is willing to show her un-glam shots, why not you?

Email your bad food photos to me, Rachael@FreshApproachCooking.com, for My Blog Went Up In Flames. So far I have six awesomly bad entries...but somehow I'm sure there are more icky pictures out there!

Thanks ev'body!

Rachael
(Bitter Melon)



This post was written with lovin' care by Rachael at Fresh Approach

what to do with a heckler?

Hey everyone, I'm wondering what you would suggest I do with someone who's leaving insulting comments on my blog. It started yesterday, with a post I put up about beets. He critiqued my cooking method, then my writing, and then questioned whether or not I have celiac disease at all. I probably made a mistake in responding to that comment, given that it goaded him, but what he was saying was medically inaccurate. And my readers need to know that. Now, he has come back twice more, saying that my site is indecent (with all these hungry people in the world, I shouldn't be posting about all these "feasts" I have). And now, he's making comments about a typo I made. (As a writer, he says, I "...obviously care more about quantity than quality.")

I suppose this happens to all of us, doesn't it? If so, what do you do?

I have to say, as well, I sort of think it's a hoax. I think someone is hiding behind this persona of someone with celiac disease. It doesn't ring true, and now it's so ridiculous. Do I delete the comments? Never answer him? What do you think?


This post was written by Shauna from Gluten-free Girl