As we mentioned earlier, Yahoo has taken on the task of producing a “style guide” for the Internet. Those of you who are already in the professional writing business know about the different writing styles out there. There is AP Style, which is based upon a book by AP called The Associated Press Stylebook. Then there is the MLA stylebook and a couple of others as well.

For those of you not in the freelance writing business, the point of all these style guides is to fill in some of the language gaps that exist between the grammar manuals, like The Chicago Manual of Style, and the dictionaries of the world. These gaps come from things like fast moving technology or unofficial concepts or terminology that don’t rate a listing in either the dictionary or grammar manual, but that still have an accepted usage or spelling.

In journalism, which the AP Stylebook is the referee of, one of the common needs comes from reporting comments or briefings coming from official government sources. For example, should a reporter write, “Brigadier General Smith,” or should a reporter write, “Brig. General Smith,” or “Brig General Smith” (no period), or just General Smith (no need to split hairs on what kind of general).? — According to the AP Style Guide, under the heading Military Titles, the correct answer is Brig. Gen. Smith. (That is abbreviating both Brigadier and General, and with periods.)

What Is Yahoo Style?

If you know what AP Style is, then the next question is, “What is Yahoo Style?”

The answer is that even with the AP Stylebook throwing in its two cents on topics like whether it is e-mail or email (e-mail) there are still plenty of online and Internet related terms that are not covered in any of the style guides. For example, do I have to use the exclamation point on the end of Yahoo!’s official corporate trademark name? If so, do I use the apostrophe ‘s’ like I just did for the possessive of Yahoo!? (What about question marks?)

Furthermore, there are those who disagree with what AP says – I use email, for example – and also those who have never seen the inside of an AP Stylebook, but who still write online.

There is now a Yahoo style website you can check out if you aren’t interested in purchasing the book, which is a good thing, because until I see a freelance writing gig job posting that says, “Must be familiar with Yahoo style,” I won’t be buying the book.

A handful of interesting articles worked their way through my RSS Reader this morning and I thought I would share some of them here for others who might also find them interesting for their freelance writing business. This list is not an endorsement of the content that is linked, which I may or may not agree with, but rather interesting or otherwise helpful information that made me stop and take note.

First up, is this post, which while I’m sure is not the official release, nor the original mention of the news, was the first one I happened to come across mentioning that the coming release of WordPress 3.0 might be sooner than I thought it would be.

Next is this post of 15 Lesser Known Blogs for Freelance Writers and Other Freelancers. Some of these are actually new to me, and others have been in my RSS subscriptions for awhile. As always, beware the temptation to read more about writing than you actually write. That is a fast trip to nowhere. Nothing makes you a better writer than writing, and nothing builds a writing business faster than writing. Still, when you are taking a break, want some food for thought, or just feel like you need to take another look at what is and isn’t working for you, reading some of these freelance writing blogs might be just the ticket.

Here is an update about Elance which some freelancers are fans of, and some are not. I wrote about what I thought of the website in is Elance worth it (no caps as part of an experiment…). The latest concept at Elance is something similar to what Odesk has been doing for a very long time. I have a soft spot for Odesk because they were the first ever “bigger” website to list my writing blog as one of the best freelance writing blogs in their Top 100 Freelance Blogs list.

The new Elance feature is called Work View and it allows the client to look into what the freelancer is doing in the middle of the project. Officially, the purpose is to allow clients to provide timely suggestions and updates. The writers, however, feel like they are being spied upon or checked up on, which most freelancers hate. I’ve always said that if you are a freelance writer being paid by the hour, then your employer or client has a right to demand that you actually work the hours paid for. How the client and freelancer choose to verify or not verify that data is up to them. On the other hand, if a freelance writer is paid for the project or even for parts of the project, then the client is only entitled to accountability for the delivered project. How much, how little, or how often, or not, the freelancer works on the project is immaterial because the amount the freelance writer gets paid is the price for the product, not for the time. This is why I strongly prefer to be paid by the project. Anyway, the guys over at All Freelance Writing are very upset about it.

Finally, comes a small note. Lately, it has become trendy to bash multitasking after a pseudo-science research study declared that multitasking hurts productivity. Here is an article at a site that I generally respect that delves into the same subject with a bit more finesse than usual.

Folks, everyone multitasks all of the time, every day. It is the way the human brain is wired. If you don’t believe me, just try and only hear one thing in a room that is not soundproof. That guy giving the presentation isn’t the only thing you hear. You hear all of the coughs and the sneezes too. Taken one step further, if you are writing notes, while listening, while looking up at the awful PowerPoint presentation, you are multitasking. The key is to multitask properly, not to stop doing it.

I’ll be expanding upon my views of the benefits of multitasking in the future, but for now, remember this: eliminating distractions is good, tunnel vision is not.

As a professional writer, copyright law is of particular interest to me. Not because enforcing copyrights is a 24/7 job (actually it is), but rather because it is the concept of copyright, and its application to works of art, including writing, that make it illegal for anyone to rip off the things that writers write. If you want to write professionally, this is important, because otherwise anyone could take whatever you write for free, and free don’t pay the mortgage, as they say.

Not that that stops everyone. Especially when it comes to the online world, writers need to stop people from stealing their content.

Unfortunately, it seems that no area of the law attracts more armchair lawyers than copyright law. Check out any writing forum, writers group, or webpage about writing, and sooner or later, you’ll see Joe Writer turn into Joe Writer Expert in Copyright Law. Maybe he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Copyright law is actually very complex. It can also be very arcane. That is because copyright and other forms of intellectual property law were actually included from the very beginnings of the United States of America, which co-opted a great deal of English Common Law into its first legal codes. So, in some ways, copyright law is older than America itself. As you can imagine, that can make it tough to apply everything to modern times.

What makes it even more complicated is that while the actual copyright laws span volumes of books, the majority of how copyright law works is actually created and enforced via case law, which is the how the laws grow to be applied to a constantly evolving world via court rulings and subsequent reliance upon those earlier rulings (known as precedent) by courts in future copyright cases. In other words, even if you read and understood every word of copyright law as published, you STILL wouldn’t understand copyright law worth a darn.

Ironically, most people can’t even grasp the published law as demonstrated by a fun article on ARS Technica about how you can’t have a Superbowl party with a television bigger than 55 inches.

This article should be required reading for anyone looking to spout off about how copyright law works. In it, the author notes how a friend determined that using a TV bigger than 55″ to display the Superbowl or other programming violates copyright law, by saying, “It’s in there.”

Indeed.

Copyright Law Is Complicated

The law is all about context, pulling out a single sentence is bound to produce all manner of legalistic junk. In this case, while the sentence is indeed, “in there,” it also not applicable to private viewings because of other sections of the law.

A good way to understand it is to think of the law like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, those books where you read along and then either go to page 124 if you want to go left, or go to page 187 if you want to go right. By choosing to go right, you never read page 124; whatever is on that page never happens in your reading of the book. Similarly, as you go through the copyright laws, you come to a page that says if you are having a private showing in your own home go to page 22,820. If not, then go to page 13,283. The sentence that is “in there” is only there if you go to page 13,283. If you go to page 22,820 (private showing), that line never comes up.

Ah, nothing like a quick bit of pontification on a Monday morning. Cheers.

In my ongoing saga for finding a good, stable webhost for my websites, I have found a new snag.

HostGator web hosting comes recommended highly from A TON of different WordPress bloggers as not just a great web host, but a good WordPress web host.

Only, here is the thing. It is now WAY after midnight and I have just found out that the way HostGator’s servers are setup, any WordPress theme using an open source image resizing script called TimThumb will not work. HostGator apparently blocks the method TimThumb uses to display the resized images. The ONLY fix for the problem is to contact HostGator support and read them precise instructions and and programming language code from some website so that they can allow TimThumb to work.

Before you decide this is no big deal, just realize that almost EVERY theme out there that automatically generates thumbnails uses TimThumb either directly, or by calling it from inside of its own code. Either way, if you want automatic thumbnail generation for your WordPress blog, find another host, because this is really annoying.

On the other hand, if you love talking to customer service or cutting and pasting code that you don’t understand in order to blindly ask HostGator to open up some sort of security in your hosting account, be my guest. Otherwise, it looks like I’m off to find another web host to try out.

The freelance writing blog here at ArcticLlama is probably due for a makeover as well, but for now, the old girl will just have to wait. (I like referring to my sites like they were boats, or classic cars. I think it offers both the proper amount of respect and affection to something that is too often given too little, or too much, of both.) The big news is that the official freelance writing business website of ArcticLlama is getting a facelift.

Ok, that’s not weighty enough.

How about, ArcticLlama.com, the official website of top professional freelance writers will be undergoing a major site redesign starting today? I think that sounds solemn enough.

Back when we first launched Arctic Llama we had a vision, a vision of a large freelance writing firm staffed by high-level professionals with years of experience in virtually any field or subject matter. Businesses and corporations ranging from IBM and GE all the way to the small mom-and-pop business run out of a home office would come to us and find exactly what they were looking for, for all of their copywriting and publishing needs. (AP Stylebook, where were you on mom-and-pop? I think we could use some clarification on that one.)

It was a bold vision and one we took very seriously. The original Arctic Llama home page was crafted around that grand business plan, but then something happened.

Freelancing Experience Gives Life Lessons

While the original business plan for a grand ArcticLlama freelancing conglomerate remains a valid concept, and one that could be pulled off quite profitably for the right entrepreneurial writers, it is no longer our vision.

What happened?

It turns out that we love what we do; what we do, right now. Not what we might do if we grew the business in this direction, and what we would do if laid out a strategy for expansion, and certainly not what we would do if a dozen Fortune 500 Companies were banging down our doors looking for writing from our two-dozen writers. In other words, we don’t want to be businessmen, managers, and CEOs, and contractors with sub-contractors. We want to be writers, plain and simple. Writing is what we love, and it is what we do. Add in the joys of family, friends, and each other, and you’ve got a recipe that you don’t want to take away from to build another segment of a business.

Don’t get me wrong, I still relish the idea of consulting with small business and large corporations while standing on the back of solid ground-breaking research and analysis that we provide, but I don’t have any interest in building up that business. I don’t want to schmooze, and take executives out to dinner, and worry about whether or not kids play on soccer teams with kids whose parents might be useful connections to have.

What we do want, is to sit in our home offices, brew up our coffee, take turns writing and playing with our two kids, and then shutting down for the day at 3:00 PM to go to the zoo, or on a bike ride, or just to the nearby playground. In other words, we want the sweet life, not the power life.

New Web Design New SEO New Mobile Website

When we first built the ArcticLlama website, we did so with a keen eye for search engine optimization AND user readability. We must have done something right, the ArcticLlama homepage carries a PageRank 4, and we have never asked anyone for a single link. In fact, most of the links come from us. I guess content does matter.

What we did not design for were mobile users. The ArcticLlama header graphic is deliberately long and repeating, so as to fill up the widest computer monitor screen. Of course, this makes it nearly useless to anyone on a mobile device. At the time, we weren’t really concerned about it. I, myself, am an unreformed techie who was once a high-level systems engineer with a handful of computer certifications including an MCSE (before there were more than 50,000 of them) and some Netware certs as well. The point is not what my computing credentials were, but rather that I am not someone who shies away from technology, indeed, quite the opposite. Yet, it was my opinion at the time that the only people looking at websites on tiny little mobile phone screens were bit-twiddlers who preferred computer screens to sunshine.

Today, I can’t get enough of the Internet on my cellphone, and I dread the day my $30 a month employee referral unlimited Internet data plan with 500 minutes included from Sprint expires, because there is no way I’m going to pay $100, $70, or even $60 per month just for a data plan. Hopefully, sometime in the next year a serious competitor emerges (Google?) or government regulators get tired of the most powerful country in the world lagging seriously behind every other first-world nation in mobile technology and networks (as well as broadband deployment).

The new site will obviously be more mobile friendly. It will also make better use of newer developments technologies including CSS and HTML

In other words, the new writing business website will be different, but really great. We’ll keep you posted on the progress and any snags, gotchas, or hiccups we stumble upon along the way, as well as all the great tips and advice we learn about while making the move.

To all of our great clients, rest assured that we will always be here for anything you need, including the services that will be disappearing from our website. To all of our future clients, never hesitate to ask if there is something else we can do for you. The inside look we continuously get at businesses big and small gives us a constant stream of ideas that we’d love to put to work for you. We just won’t be aggressively marketing those additional services.

I often sign off my posts by wishing you luck. Perhaps this time, you can do the same for us.

- Brian Nelson – Co-founder ArcticLlama, LLC – a.k.a. Brian Llama

Regular readers will know that I launched a bit of a investigative review of Dreamhost webhosting after my WordPress blogs ended up being offline a few times in a just a month. The answers I got from Dreamhost tech support were not very satisfying, considering that every admin who looks into my problems gives me a different answer. I don’t know if they aren’t actually looking, or if they don’t know what they are doing, but either way, I plan to launch a major online effort very soon, and up and down websites is not something I can tolerate.

Update: For those of you following along, I have moved one of my blogs to HostGator, and I have setup two others over there as well. So far, so good. Of course, none of my sites have been down since then on Dreamhost either, so no conclusions yet.

Today, I stumbled across this post about how much memory WordPress uses now. Apparently, a "regular" WordPress blog installation now uses 32 MB of RAM. The most disconcerting part of the post is where he says that 32 MB is more than most shared hosting providers allow. That is big news, if true. All of these web hosting companies out there selling their shared hosting solutions as good enough for a handful of WordPress blogs when, in fact, they may not be truly capable of running even a single WordPress blog at full strength.

I haven’t had a chance to look into this any further, but it might explain my issues at Dreamhost. I was hosting 6 WordPress blogs on my Dreamhost shared hosting account. None of them gets much in the way of traffic and they aren’t exactly high-end JavaScript loaded power websites. Check out my make money from website writing blog for an example. They are mostly just text and pictures with a couple of plug-ins to make things run smoother. But, if each one is using 32 MB of RAM, that adds up to 192 MB of memory.

The weird part is that I can’t even find how much memory someone gets when running on the shared Dreamhost hosting option. I haven’t searched really hard yet, but I shouldn’t really have to should I? I mean if the memory limitation is going to be what restricts my ability to host websites with Dreamhost shouldn’t that be a big front-and-center number that gets publicized right up front?

In all fairness, I don’t see that number widely publicized on other hosts either.

Maybe this is the dirty little secret of the whole webhosting industry.

*

As regular readers are aware, I’ve been evaluating web hosts after having some trouble with my current host, Dreamhost. Yesterday, all six of my sites hosted on Dreamhost were down again. While waiting for technical support to get back to me about my help desk ticket, I tried my best to get them back online, because some of them make money for me and I don’t want to be losing dollars, or visitors while they are down.

In a desperation move, I used the Dreamhost control panel to restore the mySQL database that powers the WordPress installation on one of my websites.  When that worked, I did the same thing for all six sites and was able to get them back online.

Tech support responded to my ticket by saying that they “suspected that the database permissions needed to be reset.” It went on to say that restoring the databases does that, and since I already did that it looked like everything was fine.

This is pretty poor support to say the least.

First, I specifically noted in my ticket that this was not the first time this had happened. Apparently, no one cares that I KEEP having problems, all they care about is that it is up for right now. That isn’t good enough.

Second, this is the third different answer I have gotten to the exact same issue, namely that my WordPress blogs seem to be going offline for no real reason. So far, I’ve been told that someone else was using too much resources and that took my sites down. Then, I was told that I was using too much resources and that is what took my sites down. And, now, I’ve been told that my database permissions probably needed reset. No word on how all six of my sites got junked up permissions in the first place.

I’m now officially very unhappy. I have signed up for Dreamhost’s Private Server offering, which is an extra upgrade to the regular highly advertised price that their site claims is good enough for most websites except those that get high traffic, which mine do not. This is not really acceptable, because I should not have to sign up for Dreamhost PS based upon my sites and their traffic, but it is better than losing my Pagerank, or new visitors, or losing more money.

The Private Server cost is variable depending upon how much resources like RAM, or memory, you use and how much processor you use. I am most definitely NOT a Dreamhost customer for long, depending upon how my evaluation of other webhosting services goes. As soon as I find a better home, I am gone.

I only signed up with the Private Server plan because it is free for the first week, and because as a PS customer I get access to a graph with my memory and processor usage so that I can see if tech support is just feeding me a line when they say it is my fault that my sites are going down. More specifically, I bet that the first thing that Dreamhost technical support checks is what kind of hosting plan you have. With Private Server, they can’t blame me, because I am allowed to use up to 2300 MB of RAM during my trial period, which I know I will never hit, so that excuse is out.

Now, they will either have to keep my websites up and running, or at least come up with better excuses. If I get really lucky, maybe one of their administrators will actually do their job and look into my issues instead of just clearing my ticket as quickly as possible, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m trying out HostGator right now. It comes recommended from several in the blogging community, so we’ll see how it goes. Right now, I’m setting up a couple of new sites and will be moving one of my Dreamhost sites today. If things run better, faster, or smoother over there, that will be ONE of my new hosts.

I’m getting ready to launch a major web development and site creation project that I hope to use to build up some pretty solid income, and I know better than to put all my eggs in one basket. No matter how this move goes, I will have at least two web hosts, and maybe more soon.

Thankfully, I was smart and did not register my domain names with the same company that does my webhosting (except for the free domain name they gave me when I signed up). That makes transferring to a new host so much easier.

If any of you have suggestions for web hosts that you like, I would love to hear them. But, please don’t just put I use So-and-So and have been happy with them. I’ve already read that a thousand times about a hundred different webhosting companies. If you can say WHY you like them, or what they give you that you don’t get elsewhere, that would be helpful.

Wish me luck.

The local newspaper has an interesting story about what they term "gigonomics".  Gigonomics is just economics with eco replaced with gig, so Gigonomics means the economics of being gig based as opposed to job based.  The Denver Post is seldom cutting edge, so I’m sure the term comes from somewhere else, but it was the first time I ran across it.

If you read between the lines a little bit, the article shows exactly what makes being a professional freelance writer so difficult.  People with no other options cast about looking for "anything" that they can do to make money while unemployed and freelance writing always seems to come up on that list.

There is nothing wrong with this course of action, and frankly, it should be applauded.  It just sucks to see freelance writing thrown in with house painting, bagging groceries, moving furniture, and other menial labor.

Part of the problem is due to the fact that neither the job seekers, nor many clients, know what professional writing is.  So, the newly minted "freelancers" get hired by unassuming clients and the world gets yet another round of low-grade, low-cost, why-did-we-pay-for-that, writing.

If you are serious about being a pro freelancer, you need to be able to readily distinguish yourself from the temp freelancers.  And, if you are an organization or business that requires professional writing, you need to make sure that the person you are hiring is actually a professional writer, and not a down on their luck used car salesman.

Anyway, the article, like most local news business articles, is about four months too late.  The economy is picking back up and the job market is stabilizing.  That means that virtually all of these temps will go back to the other jobs that they have the skills and passion for, and the low-paying, whoever answers the ad first, clients can go back to hiring students and overseas workers.

When we started the Arctic Llama professional freelance writing blog our missions was clear, to help inform, educate, recommend, and inspire both those who hire freelance writers and those who are, or wish to become freelance writers.

Over the last several months, our little blog has drifted off course with all manner of posts regarding topics not related to either the craft of freelance writing, or the business of hiring and working with freelance writers.  Usually, these posts were made under the auspices that they were about things that freelance writers or business owners might be interested in, even if they were not directly related to freelance writing itself.

In reality, we’ve embarked on several projects, both long and short-term, here at Arctic Llama which we are confident will both broaden our reach as professionals and increase both the amount of revenue and the number of revenue streams that we have.  Many of these projects involve creating, developing, setting up, and marketing new websites.  As we’ve encountered interesting or frustrating concepts and issues along the way, we’ve written about them here.

There is nothing wrong with stretching one’s knowledge nor learning new things, but when you have committed to provide a certain kind of information to an audience, it is proper to focus on delivering that information.

With that in mind, as of this moment, we are rededicating the Arctic Llama blog to the business of freelance writing.

However, we have learned some very interesting things.  The amount of research we have done is significant, and in some cases, our experiments and implementations have led to knowledge and understanding that is not widely available, and perhaps even not widely known about.  We want to share this knowledge.  After all, we are professional writers because we love writing, not because we were looking for a quick way to make a buck working from home.

In order to both fulfill our core commitment with the Arctic Llama professional freelancers blog and to write informative articles about other areas that might benefit freelancers, business owners, entrepreneurs, and others, we will be creating and authoring new blogs that focus on those topics that we desire to write about.

Our first new blog is Make Money Writing Online.  Others will be coming later.

While there are numerous – perhaps too many – blogs and websites out there about how to make money online, they are dedicated to making money with the Internet.  Any writing that may be a part of making money on the Internet is incidental.

Make Money Writing Online, by contract will be focused upon using the craft of writing to generate income and profits on the Internet however that may come whether it be blogs, websites, writing for article directories, and the like.  Freelance writing business information will be captured here at Arctic Llama, though there may be some innevitable overlap.  When that happens, we’ll be sure to point you in the right direction regardless of which website it will be on.

We encourage you to take a look at our site about using writing skills and talent to make money online.  Of course, we hope that you will continue to read our posts here on our professional writers blog as well.  In fact, grabbing the ArcticLlama RSS Feed is the best way to make sure you never miss anything.

Thank you, and we hope to see you around for a long time to come at both of our sites.

Well, my experiment with automatic tweeting has been a good one.  I think I am getting good results out of it, and I like both the feedback I get and the conversation that sometimes occurs.

But, there is one problem.

TweetSuite runs my links through TinyURL, which is fine except for the fact that I’ve come to really like tr.im because it lets me create an account and then it keeps statistics that shows how many people are actually using the links I created.  I don’t get anything like that from TinyURL.

So, now I need to find an Automatic Tweeting WordPress Plug-in that lets me pick the link shortening service, or at least uses one that provides some analytics.