When I started this blog, I took a wide look around at what other blogs were talking about. I saw a lot of very precise tips and tricks, but very few articles on broader subjects. I often find myself lacking perspective, so I thought it would interesting to write the articles that I find missing. So I know I’m not yet an old hand, but after a few posts I notice that most of my readers come to my blog for the only really technical post, the one about RaVis. Furthermore, they come through search engines, which thoughtfully direct them them to my blog when they include RaVis in their search.
This begs the following question: How would I find my own posts on the net if I didn’t know of their existance? The short answer is: I don’t know. As a surfer, when I want to find something the first question that I ask myself is: what keywords would bring up the content that I am looking for when I feed them into a search engine? For a post on how to use RaVis, it’s quite easy: a search for “RaVis tutorial” isn’t very helpful, but a search for “ravis birdeye tutorial” brings up my blog post in the search results. But something on how to use flash wisely? A search for “Flash Best practices” brings up some interesting results, but I might completely miss a post that used another choice of words. This has the following possible consequences:
– Maybe the posts I would like to read and can’t find do actually exist, I just don’t know where to look. That’s not a pleasant thought, particularly for someone whose job revolves around Internet. I mean, I’m supposed to be a professional, so what chance do non-professionals have?
– Maybe there is an abundance of posts that fit the tips and tricks format because that’s the easiest way to get readers for a technical blog.
Recommendation engines such as Digg help to do to get the word out. I can leave comments on other blogs, use Twitter, Friendfeed and whatever other tools that are out there, but this does not solve the problem: People who are interested in broader technical writing have no easy way to find what they are looking for because it’s not easy to formulate a search for it.
Startup, anyone?

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