All Things Pondered Here

Pondering Many Things....

blogger

My Blogger Blog Has Been Reinstated

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leaderlionI previously wrote about how my blogger blog had been suspended accidentally by google for Spam.

My blog has now been reinstated in full.  You can see it here:  https://blog.ToothyGrinsStore.com.
For those who cannot see that URL , just copy and paste:   blog.toothygrinsstore.com into your browser.

For those who are interested, this is what it took to get my blogger blog back.

First of all,  you have to realize that google / blogger is nothing more than a machine.  It often does not tell you the truth.
It told me repeatedly that my blog would be reviewed in 24 to 48 hours.  However it took about 7 weeks for anything to happen.

To complicate matters, every seven days my request for a review would expire and it would be replaced with a note that basically said:  If you don’t request a review within 21 days your blog will be permanently deleted.  That would have been a total disaster.

If I had not been checking back repeatedly, it would not have ended well.  As it was, I discovered that I must reset the request about every 7 days.  I would get the same message every time.  It kept telling me my blog would be reviewed in 24 to 48 hours.  It’s just a machine and doesn’t know whether what it tells you is accurate or not.  Or perhaps whoever set it up that way, didn’t really care what the message said.

Things were looking pretty dismal.  Then about 7 weeks afterwards, I received this message from google:

Hello, We have received your appeal regarding your blog https://blog.toothygrinsstore.com/. Upon further review we have determined that your blog was mistakenly marked as a TOS violator by our automated system and, as such, we have reinstated your blog. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused in the meantime and thank you for your patience as we completed our review process. Thank you for understanding. Sincerely, The Blogger Team

Well, that’s a relief.  On the other hand: It is disturbing that this happened in the first place.

Share your thoughts, comments and questions below.

 

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Anti-Captcha Versus Askimet – Blocking Comment Spam.

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ready to challenge your own perceptions?Which is better?   It just might be the case that you have never heard of the plugin called Anti-Captcha before.   I heard about this plugin from an IM training I was taking last year.   It has really worked great to keep the spam down.

I remember that Anna from Traffic Generation Cafe mentioned that Askimet was blocking her comments.   She said that she tried to get them to unblock her email address but they refused to do it.

I bet Anna is not the only person this has happened to.   Therefore, you might want to try Anti-Captcha.   After all, we don’t want to block Anna’s comments!

I have been using since last year when it was recommended and it does seem to work really well.   I basically don’t have any complaints about it.

Reminds me of that line in The Outlaw Josey Whales.  His friend dies and he puts the friend’s dead body on a horse and says, “We rode together and I got no complaints”.   It’s kind of like that.

Saying that you have no complaints is actually a higher compliment than searching to sing praises for something that you uncertain about, Isn’t it?   Your comments welcome.

PS:  If you like what I write, sign up for more in the box to the right.

PPS: Don’t be shy, leave a comment.   

Which Blog To Choose? The Dilemma That Triberr Presents

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answers to questionsAs most of you know I have been with Triberr for some time.   However, something recently happened that is inexplicable to me.  (And to others apparenty – Like Triberr support).  Read on.

I used to have my main blog as the one attached to my eCommerce store at ToothygrinsStore.com That blog is now defunct.  I still hope it will come back but it was (accidently or otherwise) shut down by blogger.   I suspect that it will never come back.   Every seven days I have to reset my request to have the blog reviewed because these requests apparently expire.  If you wait too long to reset your request, your blog will be permanently deleted.   I’ve had to reset the request about 7 times now.

For whatever reason, triberr suddenly changed all of my blogs to unassigned at some point, perhaps back in November.   Thanks to @twokidsandacoupon for giving me the heads up that my posts were no longer showing up to be shared.   I thought the decline in shares was due to the fact that my main blog is missing in action.  But, slowly I noticed that my other blogs were not being shared either.

Triberr support has told me that it has ALWAYS been the case that you could only assign one blog to one tribe.  So, at what point did all of my blogs become unassigned?   More importantly:  HOW did that happen?    Unfortunately, there appears to be nothing more than a guess to be had.

So, I spent about $40 per month on a triberr Prime Account and it looks like my account has been having major problems since November.   That’s a bummer for me, right?

I’m not going to blame anyone for what happened.  Technology presents many problems and challenges and even skilled technical people are sometimes at a loss.  So, I’m not going to blame anyone else.   I will blame myself for not seeing and fixing the problem sooner.

Dilemma or Trilemma

I was left with a problem.  I must assign a blog to each of my tribes.  But, which one should I assign?

1. I have another blogger blog, but I guess I can’t trust blogger anymore?   And for whatever reason, they are not concerned about my trust at all.   So, how can you trust a business or a person who is unconcerned about how they effect you?   I guess you really cannot, right?

2. My other option is my new Ecommerce store blog.  That’s located at ToothyGrins.info  It’s a wordpress blog.  Unfortunately, I have several unsolvable problems with it.  One is that it would be strictly commercial.   I think that is not fair to my triberr friends.

In addition, I cannot promote any affiliate links on it.  Over the years I have formed the opinion that Google is bent on devaluing any blog that utilizes affiliate links.   I’m not going to elaborate on this too much.  Let’s just say that it really appears to be the case – at least to me.  Feel free to disagree in the comment section below.

3.  Finally, there is this blog.   Since I also believe Google doesn’t like non-topic specific blogs, this is probably also a bad choice.

When you are left with only bad choices, what do you do?   I guess the only thing you can do is to choice the lesser of all three evils.   That’s unfortunate, but it s apparently something I cannot escape.   If I want to keep on writing and creating content, I guess I have to do it this way.   I’m going to have try my best not to worry about how my blogs are devalued by the Goog.

Triberr

Triberr support assures me that it has always been the case that only one blog could be assigned to a tribe.   I guess I don’t really understand how every one of my blogs became ‘unassigned’.  But, that is apparently the problem.  I’ve logged back in and assigned most the tribes to this blog.   So, comment away.   I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I have written here.

PS: use the sign up to the right if you want to be alerted to more posts written by me.  I warn you in advance, the topics will be all over the place.

 

 

 

 

Blogger Is Holding My Blog Hostage

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I spent a year working on a blogger blog.  There were over 1000 posts on the blog.  It was bringing traffic to my ecommerce store.  Suddenly, blogger locked my blog.

No big deal I thought.  Here was the message I received:

blogg-spam-prevention

 

Ok, they made a mistake and those robots accidentally pegged my blog for spam.   I put in an unlock request which looks like this:

blogger suspension

 

You might think:  “Cool!  In  24- 48 Hours and I’ll have my blog back!”

BUT, THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS.  

Turns out, after 7 days, my unlock request disappeared.   It was replaced by a message that basically said, I need to request an unlock or my blog will be completely deleted in 21 days.

I requested the unlock again.   Then I received another message like the first one above except the date was December 9th 2013.

After 7 more days, guess what happened again?    Yep, the unlock request disappeared with the message that I must request an unlock in 7 days or my blog will be deleted completely.

I put the request in again.   The date?   December 16th 2013.

As you can see from the above picture, each time it said my blog would be reviewed in the ‘next two business days’.   However, nothing of the sort had occurred.

 

I know that some of your thinking, “Why did you use a blogger blog in the fist place?”.   The reason is simple.  My ecommerce store company said that blogger was the best for working with their software.  You can see the ecommerce store at  https://toothygrinsstore.com   and the blog USED to be at  https://blog.toothygrinsstore.com .

So, as you have probably heard in the past, it is not a good idea to let your business rely on a blogger blog.

The only other option I had with my ecommerce platform was to use wordpress.com  NOT .org.

wordpress.com as you know requires a yearly fee for their service and blogger did not.    In addition, the ecommerce store software provider told me blogger was a better choice for their system.  Therefore I went with the blogger platform over wordpress.com

I never really thought I would be attacked by blogger for using their platform to promote an ecommerce store.  But, you can see what has happened.  I lost a good amount of traffic due to this.  Of course, I am not very happy about that!

But so what?  Google (who owns blogger) doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to help me out.   I guess I should be used to that by now.

What do you think about all fo this?  Feel free to tell me I’m stupid for using blogger.    Everyone knows you shouldn’t do that,  right?

Have you had any experiences like this during your blogging career?

-David

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marketing Lessons From A Mimosa Tree

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Mimosa Tree Flowers And Wife’s Marketing Attempt(s)

Watch in this video as my wife provides subtle hints about receiving flowers.

As her marketing / persuasion attempts fall on deaf hears, notice as the hint gets stronger (metaphorical hit over the head)

As you watch the video, think about how the lessons from this video can improve your own marketing campaign – and then let us know in the comments below:

 

The Mimosa tree has provided us with an object upon which valuable marketing lessons can be learned.

Share your thoughts in the comments below

What Nursing Apps Can Nurses Use to Nurse Better?

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Today’s Guest Post is By :   Lisa from FancyScrubs.com

Nursing Apps

Florence Nightingale would not believe all the nursing apps that nurses now have at their fingertips to aid in nursing their patients to better health. Here is a list of a few helpful apps for nurses.

  • 2013 Drug Handbook – A nurse can now look up thousands of medications by name or generic names on their smartphone. This app contains over 4,000 medications and with over 400 pictures. Nurses can now find which medications may not mix together or cause adverse reactions in certain patients.
  • Nurses Pocket Guide – From NANDA-approved diagnoses (with over 800) helping nurses to make quick diagnosis from this medical app made for nursing.
  • 5 Minute Clinical Consult – This nursing app can give you access to over 900 topics all alpha sorted for easy access.  It includes 45 built in calculators and over 180 interactive flowcharts – Florence would be impressed!
  • Nursing Constellation Plus by Skyscape – Designed for nurses and nursing students. This is one of the higher priced nursing apps but includes various other apps in it like: Davis’s Drug Guide, Nurses Clinical Pocket Guide, and several more. They have a dynamic update policy which will allow you to receive one year of software and content updates, or until a new edition is released, whichever is sooner. After the subscription period, you will have full use of the product, but will not receive any further updates. Customers with previous editions will receive discounts on the new editions by responding to new edition announcement emails.
  • Handbook of Signs and Symptoms – This nursing app helps in recognizing patient signs and symptoms for over 500 different kinds. This app identifies specific signs and symptoms caused by emerging diseases such as avian flu, monkeypox, respiratory syncytial virus, norovirus, metabolic syndrome, blast lung injury, Kawasaki disease, and popcorn lung disease to name a few.
  • Lab Notes | A Guide to Lab & Diagnostic Tests – This nursing app explains lab reference ranges and considerations, diagnostic test purposes and procedures along with pre-test preparation and post-test care.  
  • John Hopkins Diabetes Guide – This app can answer in-depth questions on diabetes care and associated conditions. It has details on testing for diabetes, complications, medications and management of the disease that so many today have.
Most of these nursing apps can cost anywhere from $24.99 to over $100.00.  You can purchase some of these apps at this website and use their code to save yourself some money. You may also purchase some nursing scrubs to store your new nursing apps in nursing scrubs full of pockets. You would not want to be on the job and not have that app handy in your pockets when you need it.

What Can These Nursing Apps Do?

These nursing apps may aid in the reduction of medical errors made on the job. Healthcare is constantly changing and new diseases are being formed that these apps can help nurses to better detect and test them. If a nurse is unsure of an abbreviation or a medicines conflict with another drug or food they can quickly find out on their app. It will also prevent them from interrupting other nurses or doctors during their work.

Do you use these types of nursing apps on your nursing job today?

 

Today’s Guest Post is By :   Lisa from FancyScrubs.com

 

Comments and Thoughts Welcome Below

Is Twitter Response Declining?

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Twitter Response declining? Twitter Response Headed South?

My experience has been that twitter is a great tool for reaching people, engaging in conversation and even getting the occasional sale.

It can be helpful in building your brand and creating awareness.

But many people don’t utilize twitter very much or very well.   I think this is part of the problem.

With over 108,000 followers, I find twitter to be very responsive.   I can ask nearly any kind of question of my followers and get a response.

For example:  I am studying German and I asked a very specialized question about the use of the verbs ‘benutzen and genutzen’.

I was delighted to get a response that gave me the correct answer and additional insight!

That is just one example.   When you have enough followers, there is almost always someone to communicate with.

 

Search.Twitter.com

If there is a conversation happening about your brand, your product or your customers needs, this is the place to find it.

Use of Search.Twitter.com can help you find the people who want / need your product or service.


Twitter Spam

There is a tremendous amount of twitter spam.  I think you have to take the good with the bad.

At the end of the day, if they tried to control the spam, it would be disastrous.   That is because one persons spam is someone else’s useful information.

There is no good way to really filter that out well.  So you have to accept it.

The good news is that you can unfollow anyone that is sending the same, repetitive message over and over again.

You can unfollow the people who don’t respond to you.    So there are tools build into twitter to allow you to limit the spam yourself.

Is Twitter Response Faltering?

No, not really.   I think the response is not as great as it once was, when twitter was a novelty.

However, the tools for communicating (and not communicating) have improved over time.   Twitter also does not seem to have as many crashes as it once did.

It is a useful tool, even now.

What are your thoughts on twitter today?   Have you seen a decrease in response?   Are you able to sell your products or services on twitter?   Use the Comment section below to respond…

 

Google

Toothy Grins Store Offers The Hydro Floss Sulcus Jet Tips

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Toothy Grins Store Offers The Hydro Floss Sulcus Jet Tips

Sulcus Jet TipsThe Hydro Floss Sulcus Jet Tips can be found here:

https://www.toothygrinsstore.com/Sulcus-Oral-Irrigation-Jet-Tip-For-the-Hydro-Floss-p/hydroflosssulcustips01.htm

These tips are designed for 5 and 6 mm pockets.   They come with special instructions for use.

Basically, you cannot use your Hydro Floss on full power with these special tips.

These tips also have a hard plastic tip on them.

For these reason, I suggest that you consider the Pocket Pal Jet Tips as they are made of a softer plastic.

Poking your gums with the harder tips (which is almost inevitable) is not a lot of fun.  But with the softer tips on the Pocket Pal jet tips, there is no such problem.

Both are designed for 5-6 mm pockets.

What Are Pockets

The pockets we refer to here are known as ‘Periodontal Pocket Depths’  your dentist or hygienist can measure them for you.

The measurements should be taken on as many sides of each tooth as possible.

This way you can determine where your trouble spots are.

It is a measurement of the attachment of the gum to the tooth – roughly speaking.

In General terms, you could say that most dental practitioners will say your gums are relatively healthy when all of your pockets are 3mm and below.

Generally speaking – anything above 3mm is considered a problem.

Therefore, you want to get those pocket depths down to 3mm  and below, since gum disease is the number one cause of tooth loss and the need for a replacement tooth or dentures.  The former of which can be quite costly.

To learn more on this topic, it is suggested that you read the books:
What You Should Know About Gum Disease – The Layman’s Guide to Fighting Gum Disease  (about 24o pages) 

How To Stop Gum Disease In 4 Easy Setps   (about 25 pages)

(I have written both of them)

The first book is a paperback and can be found at Toothy Grins Store  as well as many other book retail sites.

You can get both books in digital format at https://GingivitisKiller.com for a small fee.

Again, you can get the Sulcus Jet Tips At:  https://www.toothygrinsstore.com/Sulcus-Oral-Irrigation-Jet-Tip-For-the-Hydro-Floss-p/hydroflosssulcustips01.htm

You can watch the videos below for more info as well:

 

 

 

 

If you have any comments or questions about anything on this page, please do comment or ask below:

Gorilla Chases Another Away From the Food!

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As you watch this video, I’d like for you to ask yourself:   Do I know any humans that behave this way?    Share your answer in the comment section below,  Here is the video:

 

This video was taken at the Heidelberg zoo. I believe it was in 2012 – just a few months ago.

Gorillas are definitely not humans. But, the behavior shown in this video seems to reflect human behavior on many levels! For example, there are many people today who have the mentality that they should protect what is theirs.

You can go play over there with your own stuff, leave mine alone!

I am not expert on gorilla behavior but it seems that if humans don’t want to be like animals, they really need to examine their own behavior and get rid of the bad stuff.

On the other hand, few people who read that are going to think what I just said was important. Maybe you are different?

This is a hint for us. What separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to modify and change our base behaviors. Perhaps that is the way to the next ‘higher’ level in this universe?

Any thoughts? Comments are open below. Share and enjoy!

Understanding Alexa Rankings…

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I was going to write a post about this, but then I realized that having a visual aspect would be very helpful.    I also thought that it was be easier to pump out a quick video than to write a long explanation and then edit it.   So, here is the video:

  What Are Alexa Rankings And What Do They Mean?

 

Did that answer the question Mia? 

Questions, Comments or Thoughts from All are welcome below: