My HP Laptop Giveaway Contest Begins Today

Lets see, three blogs I read regularly…

http://mattbrett.com
http://macuser,com
http://consumerist.com

Beyond the obvious Weblogs Inc ones, I can’t think of many others and NewsFire isn’t co-operating. So, since I’m sure none of those are new to you, I’ll offer a suggestion as well. Hopefully this isn’t grounds for disqualification. :)

I think the biggest thing that could be improved would be the design. Don’t get me wrong, this design is very nice and easy to read, but it’s been pretty much the same design for years now (ignoring all the minor changes). It’s become a little long in the tooth, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks this; after all, your blog’s following aren’t exactly new readers.

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Cool. Here’s my contribution:

Blogs to check out:

N.E.R.D. (New media, Engineering, Research, Design)
http://www.nerdlogger.com/
Many’s last couple of posts have had a more artsy focus, but usually his subject matter is very tech oriented, with lots of tricks and tips to make life easier, much like your own blog.

Rands in Repose
http://www.randsinrepose.com/
Michael “Rands” Lopp is software engineering manager, and he writes a lot of blog posts about dealing with managerial types and engineering types in a corporate environment, and also about design and other cool stuff. I think of him as an efficiency and organization guru, and tend to believe he’s absolutely brilliant. I also highly recommend following him on Twitter. (@rands)

Call Me Fishmeal
http://wilshipley.com/blog/
Wil Shipley is the guy behind an app called Delicious Library. I don’t use it myself, but it’s won some awards. He’s a pretty smart guy and talks a lot about writing good software and marketing your products well, and his success would indicate that he knows what he’s talking about. Just don’t ask him how to talk to girls.

As for suggestions on how to make pstam.com better, the only thing I can think of at this point is making entries more frequently, which I totally understand isn’t feasible because of school. (My own blog’s become totally defunct because I simply don’t have time.) The solution, as someone already said, could be to have another contributor or two. But I wouldn’t suggest getting a lot of contributors really quickly because part of the appeal of the blog is the personal element you bring to it. That’s what makes it different from a blog like Mashable. It would still have to be mostly your deal.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

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http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/
http://geniushackers.com (interesting computer tweaks and programs, not real “hacking”)
http://modsecurity.org/blog/

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Does posting on the threads before the contest started count?

As for improving PSTAM, similar to what andre said, but I remember you saying something about redesigning your blog or that it was in the works. I think that that would be a great move to give your blog a nice refresh and have them align with your new goals (if they’ve changed) for this blog. Posting frequency and variety would also be nice to see a bump up on.

A couple of blogs I read regularly are http://ben.casnocha.com, http://www.codinghorror.com/blog (+ joelonsoftware) and more recently http://www.macrumors.com/ eagerly awaiting the new line of MBPs! Iol (that last one didn’t count, here: http://onstartups.com)

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I follow a number of blogs, but I’ll try to keep this list to some of the little more lesser known ones that I enjoy reading.

UNEASYsilence – http://uneasysilence.com/
Consumerist – http://www.consumerist.com/
The Daily WTF – http://www.thedailywtf.com/

Thanks Paul for the opportunity to win this laptop :)

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I have now signed up for the forum :)

Let’s see, you did say three comments or replies on discussions, so, I’ll be doing that as well.

Three sites I visit very regularly are:
http://www.johncow.com
http://www.onmoneymaking.com
http://www.momgiveaways.com

Just for an extra bonus and because it benefits all students…here’s a site you might want to add to your favorites, I know I have:

http://www.theultimatesteal.com (great for those awesome products for college students provided by Microsoft. Right now they are selling the Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 (normally 650-700.00) for 59.95…but, you have to have a student’s email account (.edu etc…)

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I thought I’d add this comment here also If I may make a suggestion; For the forum, it would be great if you could add some sort of navigational buttons to the home page (and in the individual topic pages) so that you can choose other discussions to read in or go back to the home page. I had to type in the forum’s address just to go back to the front page and comment on another discussion. Pushing the back button wasn’t working. I did however, manage to post on three discussions (username: barbarabaker).

I posted on these topics: Which RSS feeds do you follow, Your Blog? and Introduce yourself.

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http://mondaybynoon.com/ has given me some interesting web-related articles to read. I also follow all the Viget blogs, like http://www.viget.com/inspire/. And http://sonspring.com/ for more web-related tidbits.

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I don’t read econ blogs, I’m obsessed with food and these are the best food blogs I’ve found so far and I have read many.

Cookingforengineers.com
Also the same reason why I am on your site, I heard about the laptop giveaway from them, and they are awesome, I’m not an engineer but they’re recipes work well and there are pictures, I love pictures

Noblepig.com
Her name is Cathy and she is starting a vineyard, but besides that the best pictures with step by step instructions I have ever seen

Tastespotting.com
This is less blog and more food porn than anything, it’s pictures of yummy yummy food but the best part is that it links to all kinds of food blogs, with all kinds of recipes from all kinds of people, definitely the most versatile.

I don’t read econ blogs, it’s depressing, I do like to learn about history, I am a wikipedia junkie sometimes, because I have questions and usually Wiki has the answers. I like to read about past economic crises, I just read about the Peso Crisis and also when the pound fell in Great Britain, I feel if we do not learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them, in fiscal policy, in foreign policy, and in real life, like everyday life where we work and make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. But as I said I am obsessed with cooking but that does not mean I don’t know about anything, it just means I found my passion and it’s cooking awesome food, and I’m pretty good at it, practice makes perfect.

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I am a Computer Science student in Canada and I read a lot of blogs(mostly tech/programming oriented), one suggestion to improve your blog for others like myself who love programming and love solving problems is maybe if you did more programming articles focused towards things that other CS students deal with on a regular basis. I have enjoyed your articles in the past about web development, using SVN and startup tools etc.
I think less senior students as well as peers would not only enjoy but benefit from reading a little more about how you tackle programming problems and the like(I say this understanding that this isn’t only a programming blog of course).

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Well, three blogs I read are:

1. Nikon Rumors
http://www.nikonrumors.com/
Well, its about nikon rumors…

2. MacDailyNews
http://www.macdailynews.com/
I love apple computers so… also you have the latest JoyOfTech comic there…

3. Strobist
http://strobist.blogspot.com/
I do photography, and in that site you can learn how to use small strobes like a pro…

Thanks.

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First off, I think it is genius what you did with the Google search integration combined with AJAX to search your website. Love it.

The only thing I can think of to improve your website would just be to add a Digg This button to your articles. Cheers mate.

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Here are three blogs that I enjoy:

1. Charlie’s Diary
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/

Charlie is Charles Stross, an excellent Science Fiction writer. His blog touches on many things including interesting details regarding the book-publishing process and politics. Often his works take place in the near-future, so, I find it particularly interesting when he discusses the challenges of trying to project what the world will be like in just a few years.

2. Seth Godin’s Blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/

I’ve spent my career on the engineering side of the house, so, I’ve enjoyed reading Seth’s visionary Marketing oriented blog. He generates one short, well written entry every day. I often particularly enjoy the entries that somehow remind the reader that there is a human on the other end of all this technology. In the future, it will be a requirement for us all to know a little bit about marketing. Many will define us by our web presence alone.

3. fnokd!
http://www.fnokd.com/

Bob McWhirter has been a major contributor to the open source community for many years. He’s worked on many popular projects like jaxen, drools, maven, groovy, and many more… Additionally, he is the founder and head “Despot” at codehaus.org which hosts many open source projects. fnokd! is his personal blog. Follow his progress as he adds hook-ins to allow Ruby people to run on JBoss or any number of other side projects…

Here’s a bunch of other larger blogs to check out too:
TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, O’Reilly Radar, Programmable Web, Ajaxian, John Resig, Universe Today…

Enjoy!

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Three other blogs I read are:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/

and

http://www.chasejarvis.com/

All photo related, I am sure most of you have heard of them, however.

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Ha! That last sentence fragment should say “if making fun of bad grammar *amuses* you.”

*Hangs head in shame*

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Well, let me start off with ways to improve the site. PSTAM.com has been great inspiration for me when I decided to launch my blog, but a couple suggestions, maybe invite guest to write for your site from time to time. The next thing I would change would be the comments section. I am a big fan of Disqus and how it allows threading style comments. A large amount of the commenting that goes on at PSTAM is conversational, and sometimes it is hard to follow with all the @usernames. Finally, I would agree with everyone else about updating the design. I love the simplicity of the design, but some minor small cosmetic changes can go along way.

To address your second item, I read a ton of blogs on a daily basis, in fact right now my NetNewsWire is reading 22 new post to read. I have selected a few you might not be aware of, but I very much enjoy reading:

/Film – http://www.slashfilm.com/ – this is the best film news blog on the net. It offers great film news ranging from the small independent projects all the way up to the big blockbusters, but it does it with out all the Hollywood & celebrity gossip you normally find on film sites.

Smashing Magazine – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ – This blog covers everything design. They do design news, design tutorials, program discussion, and design showcases. They offer up a lot of good freebie content too, like free fonts, icon sets, and desktop backgrounds. Defiantly check this blog out if you are are anyway involved in web design.

Consumerist – http://consumerist.com/ – This is a blog every college kid should read, it provides great financial advice, and discusses world topics. There is a lot to be learned by the common person on this one.

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Street Vein’s blog. Cannot live my life without it.
http://headwaves.vox.com/

Potty Mouth… he is a raving idiot. But hey, he is a friend of mine and as such I kind of have to accept him.
http://potty.vox.com/

And finally…Simon Pegg’s Blog
http://peggster.net/index.html

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These are my 3 favorites:

DonationCoder Blog – http://www.donationcoder.com/blog/
Cybernet – http://cybernetnews.com/
Mark and Angel – http://www.marcandangel.com/

I think the forum would be allot better if there were options for text formatting and emoticons.

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My suggestion might be a bit different, but I think it can work and I haven’t seen it done anywhere else. And that is a something like “show off board”, where each visitor/commentator/user of your blog can post projects that they are working on and everybody else get’s to vote the interestingness/originality/quality of the project up or down and each week the top five get featured on a blog post or something. This will benefit you by having more people come to the blog and link to their own “show off boards” and thus driving more traffic to your site and it will benefit the users by exposing their projects to a bigger audience.

I’m off for coffee.

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Three blogs I read regularly:

1. Binary Bonsai – http://binarybonsai.com – The guy who made the K2 wordpress theme. Extremely good writer and very expressive. Always an interesting read, especially when he’s discussing Blade Runner
2. One9.us – one9.us – Mix of computers and mountain biking, two of my favourite things.
3. Gilbert Pellgrom’s Blog – http://www.gilbertpellegrom.co.uk – A classmate of mine’s blog, always interesting links to useful web design articles and good tips

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Apart from reading Mac/gadget related blogs daily, Techcrunch and Wired, I read the various blogs at http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/columnists/ . The blogs on both websites are business related. The bloggers on the HBR website are quite accomplished people in their field and post their opinions on current affairs or recent experiences that have a lesson that can be taken away from them. I’d recommend it for you especially as you want to get into the start up field and will give you a different perspective to view the business side of things. I read the CNN blogs to keep up with current events in the world related to business.

You may also like http://www.notcot.org/ if you don’t already, I can’t describe it -you’ll have to check it out for yourself.

Your blog? Well, the most obvious recommendation is to “clean up” the forums in terms of making it match your website (it’s not a difficult job as you can use the same stylesheet and call in the wordpress header and footer.) However, the biggest feature I would like to see is an “elsewhere/links” page where you post links and ratings of interesting articles or websites you come across the internet (please make sure it has an RSS feed). The first links you can have are your favorite ones from these comments.

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I read the following blogs:
http://www.consumerist.com
http://www.macrumors.com
http://www.mikematas.com/
as well as several other blogs.

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I’m fairly new to the blog game, but more recently have relied heavily on the internet for resources such as this site, which is really awesome because I want to enter into this contest. I have only discovered this site today and already I am looking at the links to visit and maybe gather some information for my classes. The site seems real user-friendly and easy to navigate around. I wanted to upload a photo but i saw a topic on how to do that, so I will do that later. Some of the things i like to see on blogs on are shortcuts, how-tos and economical friendly tips :) I enjoy reading blogs on local news websites, tech-related gadgets, and educational resources as well. 3 of the blog websites i like to visit often are:

http://www.cnet.com
http://www.techcrunch.com
http://gizmodo.com

However, I discover new blog websites every time I visit the computer lab. I am a single parent, live on a really tight budget and make use of the pockets of time i can create to get to the lab to do my classwork. I am currently attending school and pursing a 2 year degree in computer info tech. So I hope you can enter me into the laptop contest. Please :)

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Hey, thanks for the opportunity! I am actually entering this contest so that, if I win, I can give this laptop to my little sister. She just entered college as a freshman, is taking more than full classes, is a cheerleader and a rugby player, leads the college and local high school drum corps, and works part time at a nursing home. She simply can’t always make it to the school library to get her homework done.

Anyway, the blog looks great. (I like simple, straightforward blogs) Like many Excel sheets I create, I would like to see your header info, down through the light blue bar perhaps, remain at the top of the screen when you scroll through the page. That’s just my personal preference.

As far as three blogs I follow, the first will be my wife’s. It’s http://www.sunsetjohnsonfamily.blogspot.com. She always posts tons of pics of my family and it’s a fun way to share our family with the world. The second would be http://www.ncnblog.com. It’s a blog written by a guy who almost never uses credit. He buys everything with cash, and it’s not because he’s wealthy. He simply plans ahead. He shares a lot of his ideas on how to live financially responsible. The third would be http://blogs.sltrib.com/slcrawler. There’s no great self-improvement message here, but it’s a fun look at the community I live in.

Thanks again for the contest!

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I’m signed up on the forums =)

Here are a few blogs I read regularly:

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/
http://www.ordinary-life.net/
and of course….
http://www.jeffcroft.com

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hey,

I honestly love the design of your website so the only thing i can thing i have in mind is to have a type of background that shows some type of design on the sides of the blog since those are empty and then the middle should be transparent as it is . I am not making myself understood, but i think that would make the aesthetics so much cooler.

Three blogs that i enjoy are:
http://www.mylifeinacube.com/ <– it has some comic posts that just make me laugh.

http://zenhabits.net/ because its very inspiring(argh i just realized the person above enjoys this site as well) lol
so here is an extra but is not a blog: pandora.com

and lastly http://mashable.com/ <–best of web 2.0

now on to 3 forum posts

good luck everyone

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I frequently read:
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/
http://www.ragamuffinsoul.com/
http://offbrandmedia.com/blog/

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http://lifehacker.com
http://www.cinematical.com/
http://www.tvsquad.com/

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3 blogs I follow on a regular basis would be:

1). http://jakeandamir.com

2). http://thinkvitamin.com

3). http://themovieblog.com

Jake and Amir is my humor for the week. Vitamin is where I keep up on and in touch with the design world. And The Movie Blog fulfills my movie buff needs.

You’ve probably heard of all of these, but they are my honest top 3. If you haven’t then I highly recommend them all.

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Of course:
http://www.boingboing.net/
http://blog.makezine.com/
http://xkcd.com/
http://ejohn.com/ for my jquery fix
http://lifehacker.com/
etc.. etc..
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/
http://hackaday.com/
http://hackszine.com/
I don’t have much in the way of obscure reading.

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Hey!
Please choose me! lol
My three blog reccommendations are:

http://getrichslowly.org/blog/ I love it! It started getting me finacially educated
http://calnewport.com/blog/ I know its one of the Freshman 15 Blogs but Cal has many ‘hacks” that have been so helpful to me about productivity in college.
also http://www.umpcportal.com/ this one might be a little odd, but the concept of mobile computing and all these UMPCs that are coming out are exciting, this site has many updates in this category.

I like the layout of your site, and cant seem to find anything to complain about, so good job =D Well one thing, most people that might be bored dont always make it to the bottom of the page, if you could have a smaller icon on the top side that way more people are aware of it, because heck, its nifty idea.

now let me hit the forums. (fingers crossed) =D

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I don’t rad many blogs regularly, so here is one thing I think you can improve with your site:
A fluid width would make the blog require less scrolling on hose newfangled widescreen monitors many people have.

Also, a good blog is coding the wheel:
http://www.codingthewheel.com/

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I don’t really read any blogs. I do visit flickr and visit people’s photostreams on there. Do they count?
Some that I visit are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/v1nz/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/imkhan/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66499731@N00/

And regarding a suggestion…this blog kind of seems bland. I would suggest adding a bit of color. It would look nice.

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It looks good so far. Maybe have some intro type topics.
http://centsiblemommy.blogspot.com
http://www.homesteaderswife.blogspot.com/
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/

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3 great blogs I read regularly

http://uneasysilence.com (Seems everyone else also likes them)
http://www.farleftside.com (Not really a blog, a comic)
http://cracked.com (Love their lists plus Wayne Gladstone is hilarious)

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http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/
I read several blogs on ScienceBlogs.com, but this one is my favorite. It offers peer-reviewed developments in cognitive psychology – an interesting and informative read.

(I also read the Neurophilosophy blog at ScienceBlogs.com.)

http://community.livejournal.com/useless_facts/
As the name suggests, it contains “useless” yet fascinating facts about… well, just about anything! E.g., did you know that there is a rare condition (cataplexy) where excessive laughter can induce paralysis?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/72854014@N00/
This isn’t a [conventional] blog, but Hana (the photographer) updates regularly with absolutely breathtaking and inspiring pictures. Each of her pictures is definitely worth more than a thousand words.

—

Overall, I really like the layout of this site: it’s simplistic and well-organized. The only drawback is that there isn’t anything eye-catching because it’s strictly blue and gray. Adding a new color (e.g., a soft shade of green for the hyperlinks) can accentuate flavor and still blend in with the already-existing theme. Or, perhaps you could retain the blue/gray text and add a little color to the header image. But that’s just my two cents. :)

I have nothing to critique about the content; I enjoyed reading your entries, especially your recent review on the Nikon D90. I’ve had my eyes on the D90 since its press release, but alas, I can’t afford it. Hopefully some day…!

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I made some replies in your forum. Thanks for the chance to win this!!
Here are blogs I read everyday.
http://www.moolanomy.com/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/
http://poorerthanyou.com/

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I don’t think these three have been mentioned. They’re all great:

Jack Shedd’s “Big Contrarian” : http://www.bigcontrarian.com/
The Morning News: http://www.themorningnews.org/
Jason Kottke: http://www.kottke.org

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Some of you stole my links :D
Well, here are three previously unmentioned blogs:
http://njpatel.blogspot.com/
http://webkit.org/blog/
http://news.e-scribe.com/

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A very nice contest, thank you so much! I live in Atlanta so it’s nice to see ATL repsented on the web in such a positive way.

As for improvements, everything looks great. Maybe a flashy new header would complement your blog? Try having a design-off contest possibly. Well, keep up the good work.

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Blogs, that I like to follow and why?

http://www.thepopeisdead.com/

A blog from a friend I worked with in the Summer. He’s developing one of most rapidly growing news site in the UK for the Housing sector. His blog maybe new, but is full of helpful tips for web design and blogging for the public sector particularly.

http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/

This is one of the many blogs I get inspiration from. Being a dyslexic student, I struggle with new idea’s, and getting my creativity levels going can be though. I use blogs like this to help me to get idea’s, and going a steady template.

http://thedesignsuperhero.com/

This is another hidden little gem I found the other day – this is really helpful for when designing, and you need those little helpful things done for you, this blog is there for you. With helpful tips, and pre-made icons too!

_______________________

Paul – your blog could do with a style revamp, and blowing the dust off the style sheet. I love to see changes in blogs, showing designs, and how the style design moves on as you learn more.

Apart from the design, the content is excellent, and it’s the content I love to read. My dyslexia stops me from reading magazine articles, books, and the worst thing I need are long blog article’s. Your reviews are excellent, the right length, and way you review product is just excellent. The content is split up with pictures that you have taken, not stock PR – which I like.

Keep up the good work, Paul.

James.

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I like to visit these blogs:

Lifehacker – http://www.lifehacker.com/
Consumerist – http://www.consumerist.com/
Mac Law Students – http://maclawstudents.com/

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Browsing through the site (Yeah i’m new here) I like the overall look of your blog but i think a new layout would do it some good. For example instead of having a link for the archived posts, have it on the main page – or other pages, listed by month/year.

Just food for thought. =p
Other than that i’m very impressed, keep up the great work!

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Paul,
Enter me! I want that laptop especially since my Windows laptop is on it’s last leg! I’ve been a participant of the forum since it’s inception which made me happy because it was the first time I was ever able to get the username ROB ever!

Three blogs that I read constantly:
1.) Smashing Magazine – uber-blog regarding design and all things related
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

2.) Adii – I find it interesting to watch his business grow and evolve
http://www.adii.co.za/

3.) Most Inspired – I found this site when Truebluetitan was listed in one of it’s posts and have been going back ever since
http://www.mostinspired.com/blog

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Hi Paul and thanks for the contest!

I added my posts. I think some went into your Spam folder because I couldn’t find them after I wrote them but I wrote more than 3 so I am good.

Nice site you have here. I like the clean look. The only thing I can think of to change would be to move the header you have to it appears to the far left. Your eye immediately goes there and it is a blank spot. I think that since you have such a great smile you should put your profile pic in that far left corner.

Here are some sites I like a lot:

http://www.problogger.net
http://www.makeuseof.com
http://www.techcrunch.com

Here are some of my sites – please visit :)

http://www.swishersweetie.com
http://www.businessblogginguide.com
http://www.thecomputerladyonline.com
http://www.shopping-gems.com

Did I mention that I want to win! My son just went to Iraq and I would like to have a new laptop for him when he comes back. This is his second time there and his laptop is like 8 years old.

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Paul,

I forgot to mention that I added your contest to my blog. Hope you get lots of traffic and entries, but of course, I want to be the winner :)

http://www.swishersweetie.com/2008/10/enter-to-win-hp-laptop-giveaway-contest.html

Wendy

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I think I got three forum posts up but the one to the My Blog thread didn’t show up right away – I am assuming it was because of links in it.

I’ll check back in a couple days to make sure it went through.

As for blogs I read regularly they are authors and book review blogs primarily.
http://authorgeralynbeauchamp.blogspot.com has some recent teasers for her upcoming second novel in a time travel series

http://deenasbooks.blogspot.com is one of my favorite review blogs to follow

and http://brendacoulter.blogspot.com is an author I found last summer who writes about a variety of stuff on her blog including gardening, current events, publishing industry news, her writing career and much more.

Melissa

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I’m not usually on the internet, so I’ll comments on the site.
I don’t see what can be improved. Everything’s easy to find. On my browser, on problem is that the navigation bar at the top (blue var) has a google search box hidden. If you try to click it, it scrolls down and hides the navigation bar. So maybe you could fix that. Otherwise, no problems. Great blog. Keep up the hard work!

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My 3:

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/
http://www.docnotes.net/
http://lifehacker.com/

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Three blogs:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/
http://news.cnet.com/crave/?tag=bc

In terms of making the site better, the Google search integration could be better – it’s awkward right now. Other than that, a slight redesign might be nice – it’s pretty bland right now.

-Kabren

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These are Three blogs I like to read:
http://www.hackcollege.com
http://www.michaelsinsight.com
http://www.cookingforengineers.com

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Three blogs that I love to read are:

http://www.CodingHorror.com
http://www.Moolanomy.com
http://www.ResultsJunkie.com

As for feedback, I like the color scheme, but would prefer 3 columns for the site.

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Just some little things:

Personally, I like being able to browse tags/categories from the main page, but here you have to go to the archives page.

Also, I’d love to see more of a visual demarcation between the main column and the side bar, whether by background color or just a bolder line.

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I read:

http://www.calnewport.com/blog/
michellemalkin.com
http://www.shinyshiny.tv/

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A petite review of Stammy’s site through my mobile phone
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I’m browsing this website through a smart-phone (symbian S60 platform and 176×208 pixels resolution). Using the symbian native browser I got a badly rendered page with insane html and… well lets just say it doesn’t have a kink for mobile platforms (have you ever considered this?). Using operamini 4.0 (admin, sorry if I’m advertising here) however I got beautiful stuff. One little itch though, certain pages are way too long (an insurmountable wall of text)! I counted 169 page-downs for this page!! Would be sweet if the comments were in offsets of errmmm 15 or so. Tried it on opera-mobile v8.5, netscape for mobile, the operamini-mod (russian source-code modified) and a few other low-end browsers, with same results. Well thatz pretty much it :) and I’d like to say “thank you” to Paul Stamatiou and HP for this awesome giveaway, thumbs up!!
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Three blogs I read:

http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/

http://desertcandy.blogspot.com/

http://thepotatovine.blogspot.com/

I like food :)

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Here are a few blogs I read regularly:
http://www.johnchow.com/
http://www.winningtheweb.com/
http://www.thenetfool.com/

I’m hoping to start up my own blog in the near future by using some of the tips from sites like these.

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I read these blogs on a daily basis:

http://churchtechmatters.com/

http://churchtechtoday.com

http://www.edyoungblog.com/

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Hey Paul,

Great contest, I’m glad that HP understands that the internet isn’t just for those in the US and over 18’s!

Anyways, three blogs that I enjoy are mostly personal ones where I can’t go anywhere else to find stuff like it. No news sites, they just seem to say what has already been said. Just pure opinion.

http://michaelmistretta.com Michael writes and thinks like an adult, it’s hard to believe he is fifteen. The his blog really focusses on anything that interests him. But being a technology enthusiast he often writes about Apple, photography and gives very detailed opinions on tech related matters. I know you didn’t ask for this but if you want a taster I recommend this post: http://tinyurl.com/4uu234

http://shawnblanc.net I discovered Shawn’s site about a year ago when I stumbled upon one of his interviews that he has done with various bloggers. Shawn is a designer and it’s always interesting to hear his thoughts on things from a designers standpoint. An article that I always come back to when I need inspiration is this: http://tinyurl.com/33kt6u

http://hivelogic.com/ I have only recently found Dan Benjamin’s blog and regret not finding it sooner, I find it hard to put a specific genre to the posts. Though technology based, Dan really puts a personal twist of things. A personal favorite is actually is latest on podcasting: http://tinyurl.com/53fe9n

I hope you check out these blogs if you haven’t already. I think they all go for quality over content, so don’t be put off by the periods in between posts, it is defiantly worth it!

As for what I would like to see from this blog:

I would like to see more on how PSTAM.com has influenced your personal brand and also how you manage to get review units for products. I love writing reviews, but most of the time don’t have the money to buy stuff being a poor student.

Finally, keep up the great work, I always get a buzz when my RSS reader flags up a new post of yours.

Jonathan – a loyal reader who should probably comment more! I’ll try! :-)

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Suggestion for improvement? Well, I am just really visual, so I would like a little more color and maybe some pictures. I was an early reader and I never quite got away from liking illustrations in my books, ya know? ha

Seriously, even cool designs or something to jazz it up. I am a good writer, but not an artist, so when I finally get my mess together and do my blog (which I will), I am going to have to hook up with someone artistic to punch my stuff up visually because I know it will need that touch and it ain’t in my gift mix.

But I do like the mix of clean fonts. They work well together. Sometimes I see blogs that I swear, they are trying to use every font they have, all right next to each other, and they are the most cluttered looking sites! Yours is easy on the eyes. Good job with that. Best wishes to you.

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The three blogs I make sure to read every morning include:

- TechCrunch – http://www.techcrunch.com/
- Mashable – http://www.mashable.com/
- VentureBeat – http://www.venturebeat.com/

Some other sites I find interesting:

- http://news.ycombinator.com/
- http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
- http://www.readwriteweb.com/
- http://www.gigaom.com/

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Hmm…What should you improve this blog?

Promote yourself.
This is a great blog and I feel bad because I should have found it sooner.
I’m no expert but here is what I ‘think’ you can do.

1. Use twitter everytime you have a new post.
2. Interview other good bloggers.
3. Ask them to post a guest article here.
4. And maybe post something at their blog.

It will get more exposure and more people like me can stumble upon it. :)

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I’m a regular reader of:
- http://www.macuser.com
- http://www.consumerist.com
- http://www.wesg.ca (shameless self plug! :D)
- http://www.engadget.com

I really like how your site is heavy on CSS while going easy on the images. As for improvements, I’d say go with more guides and reviews. Those are always very informative and help us readers find cool stuff.

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Hey Paul – love the blog. I’ve been reading it since around the time you started in back in 2005. Here are a few blogs I’m into. Trying not to do duplicates is hard :)

Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire – http://politicalwire.com – I’m sort of a news/politics junkie, and this is usually the first thing I read every morning. Great for keeping tabs on everything happening in the political blogosphere too, since it links out to a lot of stuff. In the same vein…

http://Fivethirtyeight.com – Excellent site with the run down on the electoral college standings, based on the latest polls. Run by Nate Silver, who’s pretty much a boy genius when it comes to baseball statistics. Good political news too.

Digital Photography School – http://digital-photography-school.com – Great tutorials on a whole bunch of stuff. Their archives and forums are great for honing techniques. Good luck with the new D90.

Thanks Paul!

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I’m not sure if anyone else put this but here’s a way for you to improve your blog:
Go to the store and look at magazines. Pay special attention to the types of titles that are used on the covers. Write down the most interesting titles and think about what makes them interesting. In order to generate buzz around a post, a great title is an absolute necessity.
This is good for your blog because I noticed that a lot of your titles are extremely long, which makes your whole left side and bottom of your page cluttered with words. Reduce your titles but make sure the readers know what the article is about.

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http://digitalfilipinoclub.blogspot.com/
http://cebuheritage.com/
http://nyindieseen.blogspot.com/

Hope you’d enjoy going over them. =)

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Three Blogs that I’ve been rather hooked on as of later are:
Dumb Little man – Dumblittleman.com
EpicFu – http://blog.epicfu.com/
and
Making Use of – http://www.makeuseof.com/

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@ MokiMoki .

The idea is interactive though, the load time of the Web site will be slow. I think stammy likes the clean, fast loading template.

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3 of the blogs I most frequent:

http://acontinuouslean.com/

http://swissmiss.typepad.com/

http://whatilearnd.com/

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Hi there!

First off, thank you so much for hosting such a fantastic giveaway!

I just found your website today, and I’ve enjoyed looking around. I can’t see anything that needs improvement, except for the fact that I encounter technical difficulties when I attempt to post to the forums. I was able to make 2 posts but have been unable to make any others since – I get a “Topic Not Found” error every time. I sent you an email detailing the problem, and also included the post I was attempting to make, in the hopes that it will still count as my 3rd post and entry into the contest!

As for the blog recommendations, here are my picks:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ – Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Horribly Wrong
http://x-entertainment.com/updates/ – X-Entertainment: a blog about retro toys and pop culture
http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/ Candy Blog: A blog about my favorite food. ;)

Thanks again for the chance!

-Beeb
(forum username:hardertobreathe)

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I have started a thread in the forums with the topic “Bringing a laptop in school”, I’m not able to visit the forums for 6 days because I’m busy with our final exam. But when I’m back, I’m glad that many had replied, which I had never experienced in other forums before. Actually, you don’t have to change anything on your site, particularly, in the forums. I like the way you keep the site and the forums alive by replying to comments and threads started by other members.

Anyways, I still have little thoughts about how you can improve PaulStamatiou.com…

If you are planning to make an improvement for your site, do not include in your plan the changing of colors or the replacement of the layout of your site. The layout with white background and soft-color fonts is always presentable for me. However, it’s up to you as you’re the owner. If you had a better and more beautiful layout than the current layout, then, use it.

A site is worthless without the visitors and readers, that’s why I’m suggesting that you maintain the giving of love and importance to your readers and visitors. What I mean is when someone comment or ask questions that are worth replying for, you should reply and answer. It’s usually what the readers and visitors need and want. When people visit your site, there main intention is to gather reliable, believable, and valuable information. That information could be gathered not only from the articles and posts but also from the reactions and replies made by the other readers and the blog author itself.

More people expect reliable content from reliable sites, so keep posting interesting and genuine news, and reviews. Some people will want tips and guides from real technologists. Give tips to them without any doubt because they thrust you and the information that they could get from you. Keep posting regularly to fill your readers craving for new, fresh and updated contents.

What else could be improved? I think no more. That’s all… Keep up!

Blogs I’m reading, probably, you may not have read yet.

http://www.makemoneyonline-x.com – This is a blog of an 18 year old student which inspires me that indeed there is money in blogging. The contents of the blog are honest and suitable for all readers, especially for student like me.

http://www.yugatech.com – This is a blog that talks about the latest and coolest technology. You may want to visit this blog as it is also a technology and reviews blog, just like yours.

http://insoymada.wordpress.com/ – This is a blog of a newspaper columnist and musician/rocker. I enjoyed reading this blog for the contents are entertaining and they reflects to the life of the ordinary people and individuals.

Thanks again… James Palar

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Blogs:

http://www.danielbru.com/

http://internetducttape.com/

http://www.smileycat.com/index.php

Great minimalistic themed blog, some things I think you could add/alter would be
maybe adding some tags in a more prominent place, in a floating cloud perhaps to the upper right hand side. I saw that you have tags on the bottom of the blog, I missed it for awhile, I also saw that you have tags on your archives, maybe you like the clean look?
You love flickr, why not make a page that features some of your photos? You could also put some media up where you can post some flash videos, maybe showcase the nike ad, etc. You could also maybe do a few tutorials? Check out this player, it’s free and awesome!
http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player

Not much I change with you site, I love how you provide interaction with people
through skribit, etc. Thanks Paul!

-Raquel Rodriquez

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Paul,

You are doing great with your blog (far better than me). I feel hypocritcal critiquing you . . . but I want the laptop so here are 3 suggestions:

1. Reach your readers’ readers. Offer to write a periodic guest post on the blogs of your readers (use Skribit to find out who wants you to write and what they want you to write about). Link it back to your blog.

Example: after you went to the car show, I would have loved for you to have written a guest post on my blog about any Hydrogen powered cars you saw.

Benefits: strengthens relationship with your readers (shows them you are interested in them), builds incoming links from relevant blogs (SEO), exposes loads of new readers to Stammy.

2. Each time you review a product, include links to a few reviews that others have written. Don’t make your readers go find them on their own. You inspired this suggestion when you told me about Skribit AND its competitors in the same email–I really appreciated that I didn’t have to go looking.

Further, invite your readers to submit links to reviews they have read or written.

Benefits: lots of relevant links (more good SEO), more reader involvement, and more value for your readers.

3. Periodically highlight one of your readers. Write a short post about what makes them or their work fascinating/special. Or write about how they’ve influenced your work.

Benefits: it could turn out to be one of your best networking tools. People who you’ve written about will be more than excited to do business with you, promote you, and help however they can.

Well, I hope these are of some worth. I’m going to the forums to post so I’m eligible!

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Here are three knock-you-dead blogs, none tech-related. It’s possible that you’ll find them all dull as cardboard, as i’ve got no idea of how your other interests run. But who knows, they have me completely sucked in. In the name of trying new things:

saidthegramohone.com : a gorgeous and straightforward mp3 blog, the best i’ve found in english (actually, in canadian!)

3quarksdaily.com : science, arts, lit, politics, gossip…

mcsweeneys.net : this may no longer be considered a blog, since its grown itself an empire. except that it’s been a sort of ur-blog since…mid-nineties? longer? and still a daily for me.

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Suggestions:

1) Disqus. ‘Nuf said.

2) More posts! I only heard about this blog a few weeks ago, thanks to this contest, but I’ve been subscribed ever since. Anyway, quality is great, and I’d love to read more! I guess Skribit is supposed to help with that, haha.

Blogs (I figure I’ll go for extra credit and do both):

I’ll aim for ones that I think are relatively obscure.

1) TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com)

haha, jk ;)

1 for real) Digital Inspiration (http://www.labnol.org)

Good blog about tech, lots of handy little tips and giveaway alerts.

2) Freakonomics (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)

Ok, not really too obscure, but might be unread in this crowd. They always present a very interesting way of thinking about problems.

3) Kevin Kelly (http://kk.org/kk)

Lots of good posts on tech, the singularity, science, the future, etc

Finally, and I’m sure pretty much everyone here has already visited this one, Jessica Mah Meets World — which was how I found out about this whole contest! Anyway, great blog, you can find it at http://jessicamah.com/blog.

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I’m going to post four blogs because one of the blogs (the best one IMO) is no longer updated and is (or rather was) supposed to be replaced by another blog. NOTE: THESE ARE ALL PRETTY NSFW
http://www.tuckermax.com/ (The best one)
http://www.festeringass.com/ (Supposed to replace the other one)
http://www.icantbelieveimstillsingle.com/
http://www.thebunnyblog.com/

Tucker Max is the best blog of them all.

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Will you announce the winner on the blog?

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@ MokiMoki

HMmm, I agree for certain extent. However, it is left to Stammy to come with swift decision.

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Runner ups?

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Lame to be honest, what a boring topic to start. Paul is in lala land.

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