Took these pictures about a week ago, on the left bottom you should see a cloud shaped a giraffe.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.1 Japan License.

I used to write about WordPress Mu (now called multi site) and BuddyPress tips for beginners and intermediate on a different blog, but lately I've redesigned (BuddyPress default theme customized) and restarted updating beneficial information to users.

http://en.wpmubp.org/

Please join Facebook fan page if you are a Facebook user. RSS is available via feedburner. BuddyPress themes are very easy, even a non designer/programmer like me can customize. If you are someone like me, then my new site should help you.

Have you heard of zenback? It's currently the hottest related posts widget from Six Apart currently provided to Japanese bloggers only as beta program.

It's lightweight (loads fast), fetches Twitter mentions (similar to BackType), Hatena bookmarks, mixi check, and recently added Evernote button. Options (i.e. how many related items to show) are configurable, you can also show referers to your posts.

One interesting (zenback's main) feature is it automatically shows related posts from other bloggers who use zenback. So for example, your posts may be liked from A-list bloggers even if your blog is normally getting 30 visits a day (like my Japanese blog...).

In English there're several related posts widgets for many types of blog platforms. For example, LinkWithin is quite popular for almost any types of blogs, and there're great plugins for WordPress, too.

Since Blogger doesn't offer related posts feature (I miss WordPress for this), I've been hoping Six Apart teams in Japan would make zenback global. Once it's available to anyone in various languages, I'm sure most bloggers will love it, perhaps better than BackType.

You can see live example from my Japanese blogs (recommended for Japanese readers).

For those who aren't familiar with Japanese online services. Hatena Bookmarks is Japan's largest social bookmarking service, and is still powerful and influential for bloggers. Mixi Check (developer document in Japanese) is just the same as Facebook Like. Evernote.... I don't think I need to explain that. ;)

I have no idea what this person wants... But this is an example of spammers on business social networking services. Whoever you are contacting, make sure to add personalized message unless the person tells you to just send friend requests.

I've been a member of LinkedIn Bloggers Yahoo! group almost since the beginning, at the same time I was co-moderating LinkedIn Japan with Vincent Wright for Japan related users on LinkedIn to share knowledge and networks.

At that time, LinkedIn didn't have the trademark policy, so we could use the name LinkedIn within our group names on Yahoo! groups. In fact LinkedIn co founders and employees also participated our parent group, My LinkedIn Power Forum founded by Vincent to get feedback from thousands of members.

Then LinkedIn introduced group feature on its platform. This changed the way members gather with common interest, and the more groups grow the less our yahoo groups were used. It was kind of sad, but a good progress for all of us to fully enjoy LinkedIn.

Lately LinkedIn Bloggers moderator, Des Walsh announced he's moving to LinkedIn groups from Yahoo! groups. I'm one of those who stopped blogging since tweeting, but after a few years, I'm back to blogging again (of course I'm and I'll still be tweeting).

So if you are blogger and a LinkedIn member, please join us at LinkedIn Bloggers group on LinkedIn. Oh, and don't forget to join Brandergy (formerly as My LinkedIn Power Forum), too.

IMG 0740 by Jerry Luk Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License