Enkay Blog

Enkay’s Free Ebook

Yes, its true! I have an eBook of my own now. I have been writing this eBook since December of last year and because of school, I never got around to completing it. Well, over the summer I decided to completely re-write what I had and today is when I will be launching the free eBook. Before I get started, you can visit the eBook website at http://www.enkayblog.com/ebook or you can download it by clicking on the image below:

What Is It About?
First off, about 90% of the eBook content is written from scratch, so a lot of the content has been written specifically for the eBook and you won’t find it on my blog. It is 62 pages long and its a guide for all bloggers specially new bloggers. It helps you get started with blogging by picking out your options and then it provides you with tips about blogging, Alexa, Technorati as well as other topics such as Social Networking, Video Blogging and even Monetization. Its a very comprehensive guide to blogging and I really hope you like it.

Why Free?
Well, I figured that if people are unhappy with the book for some reason, then they can get their money back, which was zero to begin with. At least thats what one of the reasons was. The main reason why the book is free is so that I can help a charity.

I want everyone to read the book and once you’re done reading, and you like it, I want you to think what the amount would be that you would be willing to pay for this book and then I’d like you to donate that amount to the Save The Children Foundation. For those of you who don’t know what the organization does, I’ve created a small video below and have provided the narration for the video. I hope you can understand what this money can do for people who need it more than you and I do.

Hopefully the video will encourage you to support such organizations and foundations. For those of you who are wondering, yes, that is my voice as part of the narration and this video was created specially for the eBook. I would really like to hear your thoughts on the fact that the eBook is free and can really make a big difference in the lives of children who are truly deserving of help.

Win A Free iPod Nano

I have a brand new 4GB Silver Ipod Nano that I have to give away and so I figure that right now is the best time to do so. Theres only three ways you can get an entry.

1) The first is to subscribe to my blog using the form below (2 points):

2) The second way to get an entry is to blog about the book and link to this post using the words “free blogging ebook” or “blogging ebook” or anything you find fitting. Be sure to let me know what your url was so that I don’t miss it. (5 points)

3) The last method is to just let me know that you’ve downloaded and read the ebook (1 point). This is based on the honesty method so there isn’t any way that I can check on this but please be honest about it.

Once you’ve subscribed and downloaded and read the eBook or blogged about the book, just leave me a comment or send me an email and I’ll put your name in the mix. Also, I would like to offer more prizes so if you’re an advertiser and you’re willing to sponsor a prize, do let me know. I will be picking the winners October 15th so its less than a month away.

Hope you enjoy the eBook and I’d love to hear your feedback. This is the first eBook I’ve ever written so if you find any errors, do let me know. I also want to thank Rebecca Mercurio for helping me pick a date to launch the ebook. Since last night I have read it about 10 times to avoid any embarrassing errors but after a while you seem to think that everything looks good. So, in that case, do let me know if you find any errors and what you think! I look forward to hearing from you.

Hurricane Ike Videos

Here are some videos from today. Its currently 3 hours before the eye of the storm is over Houston however, the winds are already at around 60mph with gusts at 70mph. I have some videos to give you an idea of the winds at different times of the day.

This video is 12 hours before Hurricane Ike makes landfall so this is from 1pm CST today. The winds were at about 20mph with short spurts of rain.

The video below is 7 hours before Hurricane Ike and is from 6pm CST today. The winds were at about 40mph with gusts reaching 50mph. I was actually talking in the video however you cannot hear it because of how strongs the winds were. Also, the camera is shaking in the beginning due to very quick gusts of wind.

I will have more videos as time goes on and will add them to this post in order to not create unnecessary posts. I may not be able to post them as they happen since I am sure that Internet may be out and the possibility of losing electricity is also not something to overlook. These videos are just to give you an idea of how the storm is and these were taken at my house. Hope others in the Texas area are safe. Hope the rest of you have a good weekend!

UPDATE: I am fine and well. Its 10am and the storm is going to be in my area for a couple more hours. Winds are still quite strong and the rains are still coming down. I haven’t slept since yesterday and had lost power for a little bit as well but nothing major. There are 3 million customers without any electricity right now so its worse for them. The winds had really picked up and were howling for hours at a stretch and the rains were extremely hard in the middle of the night. So far, there was no damage and I can only leave the house after the curfew ends at 10am and even then, I won’t be driving anywhere. I hope to bring you more videos soon!

Video Posts - Part 2 - The Advantages

Yesterday I talked about the challenges of having video on your blog and today I decided to change it up and talk about the advantages of having video posts. As with most things that you do, there will always be pros and cons. The idea of video blogging has been around for a while but with camcorders and webcams becoming more affordable and providing good quality of video, they have become the commonplace. So lets discuss why they have become so popular:

1 - Video Is More Visual - Well the simple fact of the matter is that video is more visually appealing. It can show a reader whats happening instead of having them visualize something by reading a post in text format.

2 - Helps You Network/Connect Better - It really helps to see the person behind the blog. It gives readers a face and a voice to recognize compared to just writing style. The idea of having video can eventually help you connect better to your readers if they are able to see you and how you speak, act, etc.

3 - Helps Get Your Point Across Faster - Its true! Video Posts that are 3-5 minutes long usually get your point across faster than a post thats a page long. Its the idea that people would rather watch and listen to something than read it for themselves.

4 - Keep Readers Longer - Video posts also keep readers on your page for longer than usual. As you saw in point #3, Video posts help you get your point across faster but usually when you have a post in text format, people read some and skim some and disregard the rest. With a video post they tend to watch all of it and therefore they stay on your page longer. The longer the stay, the better it is for you.

5 - People Tend To Remember Better - Isn’t it true that when you hear something its easier for you to remember it? Ex. If you were listening to a song theres a higher probability of you remembering some of the words rather than reading the lyrics directly. The point is that when you hear someone talk, rather than reading something, you tend to remember it better.

So although I’d like to say that this concludes the Video Post mania, it really doesn’t because I have a short post that I’ll write before my big post for the day with examples of good and bad lighting in a video. It should be interesting so look for that. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this post and let me know if you prefer video posts or not. Thanks for stopping by!

Video Posts - Part 1 - The Challenge

Video posts have gotten quite popular around the blogosphere and ever since I did my first video post, I have already started to plan out a few more. The topic of video posts is large so I’m going to cover it in two segments, the first is the challenge and the second is the advantages. Today I want to start by talking about the challenges of video posts because it looks easy but it can take time if you like to make your videos look good, so lets begin.

1 - Video Posts Take Time - Its true that a 4 minute video could take an hour to put together mainly because of the time it takes to record the video and edit it. You have to willing to put forth the amount of effort into editing the video to make it not only look better but also so that you can include such things as names of people or urls onto the video frames.

2 - Small Things Matter - Small things such as the lighting, how fast you talk, the tone of your voice all make a difference. The lighting of a room can lead to a video looking dull or if the light source is behind you then it makes you look like a silhouette. Things such as how fast you talk also result in how well your message is communicated to your audience. You have to watch for these things with videos.

3 - Body Language Adds Into The Equation - When you blog, theres only the text aspect that your reader sees but when you have video, your body language becomes a part of your message too. How your body responds to a message can send your reader a sense of connection to the message. If you’re body language is low and you look disconnected then it shows that you’re not truly committed to the topic at hand.

4 - Using Your Voice For Emphasis - This is something that goes unnoticed but some bloggers use bold terms or italicized terms to emphasize something but when you have a video camera in front of you then the emphasis to such items depends on how you stress it by using your voice.

5 - Third Party Noises - I call this third party noises as it can be anything from noises resulting due to action of people around you or environmental noises such as birds or rain, etc. You have to watch for these as you want to be able to hear yourself during the video playback. There was a video that someone had posted where you could clearly hear the vacuum cleaner in the background and that causes a diversion of attention which you want to avoid.

All in all, it depends on how camera shy you are and that really decides how well you are able to “act” in a video post. I hope you liked this post and stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow that will discuss the advantages of video posts! I really wish to incorporate more video posts so hopefully you will see more of those from me shortly!

Wordpress Blogs on iPhone or iPod Touch?

Have you happened to think about what happens to the iPhone and iPod Touch users when they visit your blog? Well, if you don’t know, let me explain. Basically, the entire page is loaded up and fitted to a 3.5″ display. In order to read your posts they have to use their fingers to zoom in on the post and scroll side to side. Doesn’t that sound somewhat boring?

Well, theres a twist because theres a plug-in called WPtouch by BraveNewCode that will make life a lot easier for your iPhone and iPod Touch users. What this plug-in essentially does is, it automatically displays your blog in an iPhone compatible theme when it recognizes that the user is using an iPhone or iPod Touch.

It also allows them to switch between the customized iPhone view or the Normal View so its easy to flip back if they rather see it in normal view. The best part is that its highly customizable from the Wordpress Admin panel. The plug-in was really simple to install and just needed to be activated for it to work.

To demonstrate, I whipped out my Flip Mino and did a small tutorial on an iPod Touch.

So now that you realize what this can do for your readers, you may want to install WPtouch . The reason is that very soon there will be a large number of iPhone and possibly iPod Touch users and you wouldnt want to disappoint them by having them zoon into portions of your blog. Many major websites such as FatWallet, Facebook, Google and even Twitter have an iPhone specific design. So if you want to keep up with the times, add this plug-in and make life a little more easier for your iPhone and iPod Touch users.

Note: I apologize for the brightness issues with the Touch. It seemed as though if I made it brighter it wasnt too clear but if I lowered the brightness then it would act as a mirror of everything else but the screen. Hopefully its clear enough considering I dont have any fancy lenses or anything.