Diane Clancy’s Art Blog

I know some of you loved yesterday’s colors … but these are the colors that really feed me … I just love them!! Colors like this make heart sing and make whatever feels heavy a little lighter. I will keep creating in the other colors that others of you like too though … don’t worry.

Ocean Dreams, Digital © Diane Clancy

Jean Levert Hood asked me a question about BlogCatalog, so I went and figured it out. By the way, Jean has a beautiful blog here. “Diane, I do have one question. How do you get BlogCatalog to know you’ve updated your blog?” I found it once and I found it again … so here goes. Here is my BlogCatalog. Go to profile (top of right sidebar), then go to the second section of the middle (”My Blogs”), click on “manage blogs” (tiny little link on top right of this section).

You will go to a new page. You will see your blog listed … on the right side, there is a title called “Actions.” Click “manage” - one of the 3 choices under Actions. The 5th section down on the page is “Thumbshot.” There you will see a button “Update My Thumbshot” - click that. I cannot imagine how I ever found that once (I too wanted mine updated), never mind twice. But at least now we can look back here! Thank you, Jean, for asking!

NicoleB Photography asked me to be part of her Artists Unite section of her blog. I am showing you to her About Me section since I think it is a good place to start with her photography blog. NicoleB is currently living in Kuwait - I think you will find her interesting. She has photos from her travels.

Nicole also has asked me to write posts … particularly showcasing some of my work for sale. Here is the latest post. Here is my other post if you want to see it. It is fun to connect with others in different parts of the world! Other artists are welcome to joint Artists Unite … I think NicoleB wants more artists! NicoleB is very much on top of her email (in my experience). If you leave a comment in an email saying you want to join, then she will get back to you. If you have an Etsy Shop or such, it could be one more way to market your shop!

Technorati Tags: color, Jean Levert Hood, BlogCatalog, NicoleB Photography, Artists Unite, Etsy

BlogCatalog is a really cool place to meet lots of other bloggers! I stumbled upon this place last September and have met several wonderful people there. My profile there is here. I have been writing about it this week and I have heard that it is being helpful to go into so much detail … so I am going to continue. You may want to go back to Sundays and Tuesdays posts to catch up.

Regeneration, Digital © Diane Clancy

First, to speak a little about this next painting in our Simple Pleasures bubblescape series. Those who know my work, know this is a different color range than I usually use. But when this image came out this way, I feel it has a lot of power, a very deep, earthy power. It took while to figure out its title. I ask the paintings what they are wanting to say and how they want me to present them to the world. I feel this is about regeneration and a deep, deep healing and redoing. I hope you enjoy it!

Back to BlogCatalog. We have finished with the center column and through “Shoutbox” on the right hand column. Next is “Broadcast.” This is a part of the sidebar I have discovered within the last week - chagrin here. When you join a “neighborhood” (see the other posts, it is saying you are interested in someone else’s blog - so you join the neighborhood), you then actually become part of a neighborhood. When someone posts a blog post on their own blog (like this one), they can choose to “broadcast” to their neighborhood about this post.

Not everyone broadcasts each time, but it is a way of knowing what someone’s new post is about. You can also leave a comment about the broadcast if you like. If you have set your notifications to inform you when you get a broadcast, then you will get an email each time one of your neighborhoods broadcasts.

Now for the fun part .. I had been getting broadcasts for quite while now. I have made a few myself. When I got one from someone else and I wanted to make one, it gives me a button on that right sidebar to make a broadcast. But only last week, I found out, not only are all the broadcasts I have received on the right sidebar … it also has a link “Post New Broadcast”!! Will wonders never cease! This makes it much easier to make a broadcast. You can view “All Broadcasts” and they will move to the center of the page in a list.

After Broadcasts (we are nearing the bottom here), there is a section called “Discussions.” Probably those are my own discussions that I joined. That must be it. I think I might have joined a few that sounded interesting. You can view “All Discussions” and they will move to the center of the page in a list.

Finally, there are “Neighbors.” I had to go look at it to figure that out. So neighbors are those who joined my neighborhood - those who want to receive my broadcasts. As before, you can view “All Neighbors” and they will move to the center of the page in a list.

I will do one last piece and then call this done unless and until you have questions or requests. If you click your blog (or one of your blogs), under the blog will be “Recent Viewers” - those who clicked on your blog link in BlogCatalog and looked at what you said about your blog. They may or may not be your friends or in your neighborhood.

The next section is your “Neighborhood” - these are the people who “joined your neighborhood” and receive broadcasts. Then is a list of your “Recent Posts” - this is actually from your blog (like this one) and lists your recent posts.

After that is a neat section called “Comments and Reviews” - I never knew about this until I got a review. You can see what people say and how they rate your blog. At the bottom you can make comments and reviews yourself - you would generally do this on someone else’s blog section.

One last thing that I have noticed in writing these posts. On the right, partway down, on the page that features one of your blogs, is a section called “Related Blogs.” This actually looks quite interesting and I will have to check out some of these blogs on my sidebar!

I hope this series has been helpful to you. Please feel free to ask questions or clarifications and I will do my best - or someone else will respond. Happy Blogging!

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: BlogCatalog, social networking

On Sunday I posted about BlogCatalog - you may want to read that first. My profile at BlogCatlog is here. So, continuing from that post, in the center column, after “My Profile” and “My Blogs,” is “My Communities.” It took me quite awhile before I figured about what all that meant! OK, call me a slow learner - it gets a little overwhelming to me to learn about all the different formats and ways of being around this blogosphere.

Whimsy, Digital © Diane Clancy

“My Communities” are some of the social networking sites that are around. You can see on the side bar of this blog a list of my communities - BlogCatlog offers lots of cool little widgets that you can put on your blog. This little widget you can see is showing what some of my social networking sites are - like Flikr, and Facebook. Of course, BlogCatalog showcases only a handful of these sites … but they are some of the biggies like YouTube and MySpace. I particularly like that BlogCatalog gives people a place to put these sites into their profile.

If I like someone on BlogCatlog or through blogging like from this site, then I will like them elsewhere too. I find it fun to connect with people in a variety of ways. Sometimes people start these things with a network - like most of the kids at a certain college .. well, they have their initial friends cut out for them. But I am just an artist, in a rural area, and it is very nice for me to be able to connect with others across these different social circles!

Other widgets show who has been viewing your blog, who your neighborhoods (see the other post to see what they are) are, discussions (I haven’t entered into that yet if ever), your groups (which were covered the other day) and communities - which I love and which I have finally put on my blog after seeing it on numerous other blogs. This takes care of the center large column.

Moving to the right hand column … At the top is your name and also links to your profile and your account. A friend called me a few minutes ago and he wanted to know how to get back to his own page from mine. So thank him, Tom, for my telling you this. It took awhile for me to get this piece too. So click profile to get back to you … and account for settings and such.

Under that, is a link to edit your profile (the pencil) and create the widgets we have been talking about. Skipping to “Shoutbox.” Shoutbox allows you to leave messages for people - and they can be either public or private. If you want private, make sure you click the “private” button - I know obvious - but I missed that one the first time.

You can click on the link below an icon (person) in the shoutbox … BUT at the end of the Shoutbox list, is a box that you can put a shout into … so that is good. Took me awhile to find that shoutbox at the bottom too. You would use the shoutbox at the bottom of this part on someone else’s sidebar - when you want to leave them a message.

I just get overwhelmed by all the options!! I am sure I am not the only one. So, Shoutbox is just a way to message someone very easily. The profile is a magical place where you can do many things.

I think I better finish this tomorrow … or else it will go on too too long! If you would like to see the post I did today at World Gallery on Shades of Color, please check it out.

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: BlogCatalog, blogosphere, social networking, widgets, Flikr, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, World Gallery

I am so thrilled that I have been featured on another blog!!! You have heard me speak of Chris O’Byrne who has a blog focused on online art marketing. Chris has decided to feature an artist every Friday on his blog. He decided to start with me!! I hope you will take the time to go over and check out his very interesting blog … thank you again, Chris!! You (my readers) are so so wonderful!!

Lemon Flight, Digital © Diane Clancy

One other thing I want to let you know about today … I have found out about a new resource for bloggers called rrsHugger.com. I think many of you know what rss feeds are … a way to be able to keep up with your favorite blogs by a feed reader instead of having to go visit the site to see if they have posted yet. The rss feed is the mechanism that gives you the info about their blog.

Each blogger chooses a blog name … mine is www.rssHugger.com/dianeclancy.com.  They are providing this service free at the moment if you write a post about them. I am hoping you will go visit it.

This is great for bloggers because there is a lot of exposure. One exciting thing is that they have a random way of showing blogs so that everyone gets a chance to be seen. They also have the top 100 blogs and other ways of finding blogs.

For readers, it is an advantage because you can find lots of new (to you) exciting blogs to be able to read and follow very easily. I think this is a win/win all around!

I just read a very powerful post by Staci Rose on the Holocaust and powerful responses. There is a moving remembrance in London happening … this month. Harry Potter’s glasses are involved. Staci wrote an incredible post about the Holocaust, survivors, and several fantastic resources. I strongly recommend you check out this post!!! Thank you, Staci!

We will get back to marketing .. there are just so many exciting things to write about!

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: Chris O’Byrne, online art marketing, rss feeds, Staci Rose, Holocaust, rssHuggers.com, OnlineArtsMarketing.com

Susan gave out awards yesterday … starting another round I am sure! I have spent the whole day getting my internet connection back. I had to buy another modem and couldn’t find a dsl modem without a router. I already have a good router, so I didn’t want to re-buy it and lose the network I have. But it became clear that, around here anyway, that is your choice. So I bought it and installed and am now back up and running!.

Flowers in the Sun-ACEO © Diane Clancy

So all is setup but it has taken most of the day. So I am going to make this brief and will catch up tomorrow on blogs and comments. This was one of the ACEOs I created the other day. I really like it! There has only been one comment on the latest series I have been doing … I have been wondering if you like them. But I would love to hear how you are!!

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: dsl, router

CAPTCHA - those annoying little numbers and letters that are all tipsy that you have to figure out what they look like untipsy and then write them into a little box and push a button … and half the time redo it because you didn’t untipsy the stuff correctly! According to Wikipedia, “a CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. “CAPTCHA” is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University.” Wow - that is a mouthful!!

Monkeys and Owls, Digital © Diane Clancy

Completely understandably, many people start using CAPTCHA to protect their hard drives and computers from computer viruses. Understandable!! to want to protect yourself and your computer (is there a difference?) But that is not what CAPTCHA does.

CAPTCHA protects you from spammers. But, I don’t know about you, I don’t get that many spammers … in the spirit of full disclosure, WordPress has a dynamite spam catcher (Akismet) that comes installed with WordPress and you just have to activate it. And it is very effective - sometimes it catches your comments and I have to go free them from the Akismet monster …

And after a certain site linked to me while showcasing some of my graphic design work, my name did get out there for awhile. And I have traveled wide and far on the web asking technical questions and leaving my address … you have seen how I do …. so my blog has gotten out there in one sense.

But, for most of us blogging, we don’t really need to protect ourselves from those who are leaving comments just to link our blogs to their blogs (usually lists of links from what I see - I check them out before I delete them) so that we will go check them out. And I have friends who would love to have so much traffic at their blog that they needed protection … but no, most of us I know would LOVE more traffic!! So, if you are using CAPTCHA to protect your hard drive, then it is not necessary.

And anyone who has to use CAPTCHA because they are getting too much spam, I sure do understand! But you might want to try out and see if you really need the CAPTCHA … or not. I know I often have to try several times to get it correct … oh, oh … does this make me a computer rather than human? Nah … I make WAY too many mistakes … then again, I don’t think computers are as perfect as they are cracked up to be!! Well, you decide.

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: computer viruses, CAPTCHA, spam, WordPress, Akismet, graphic design

Today Neda of Papiers Collés wrote in yesterday’s post, “Diane, how about you have ANOTHER blog and you take people like me step-by-step through all this? I bet there are many of us in our 40’s and 50’s who really want to know more but are paralyzed the sheer amount of technical info? You can do it!!! Pleaaase!”

Flowers XIV, Digital © Diane Clancy

I am not going to start another blog, but I would like to keep writing about technical stuff as I learn it. Perhaps it will help someone else out. If people would like me to, I can certainly either share info as I learn it, answer questions to the best of my ability, or I could every several days dedicate a post to another piece of setting up a blog.

I have several friends who are planning on starting blogs soon. That could be one way of documenting the process in a way that might be helpful to more people. If I tag the information well, then someone can come along and use this as a resource - hopefully in relatively clear language.

I have met a friend online lately, Julie, and she has asked me to help her learn about copyright issues for artists. I repsonded to her that I would like to write some posts about that for 2 reasons. One is so that I wouldn’t have to write it several times, but also, more importantly, maybe other people would find it useful too.

Sue O’Kieffe of Sacred Circles Mandalas has also asked me to share more techniques on how I create some of my digital images. So perhaps those two things go together. I would be interested in people’s response. I know there are lots of resources out there about these things. But this is here and now and some people are asking. Thank you for sharing your feedback.

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: Neda, blogs, copyright, Sue O’Kieffe, Sacred Circles Mandalas, Papiers Collés

In yesterday’s post I shared my research of the day about feed readers and FeedBurner that allow people to subscribe to blogs so they can read the posts without going to the blog. Free newsletter subscriptions, often through FeedBlitz, are one way of subscribing. Another way of subscribing is to use a feed that brings the link right to a feed reader that you have on your desktop or web browser.

Flowers X, Digital © Diane Clancy

Today a reader shared another tidbit with me for making effective use of feeds. This reader stays linked in to a lot of feeds every day; he makes great use of them and has studied what works and what doesn’t - at least from his perspective.

He is suggesting that the feeds contain only a summary rather than the whole post. That way it still gives people motive for coming and visiting the blog. He added that it is different for people to read a post on the blog where there is a whole effect - I agree.

You may have noticed that I like bells and whistles and have several ways of displaying where people come from. I am totally thrilled that people from Australia, Europe, Asia, and Africa have visited this blog. I like that the tracking, maping extras show me that people come here.

I cannot, as of now, change my settings to summary - my server won’t let me. For myself, reading the feeds I have subscribed to from other sites, I am mainly using my own new feed reader to see if people have posted yet so I don’t have to go to their blog just to check. Then I like to go read the post in the context and atmosphere of their blogs. But I would like to keep knowing the different places people come from to look at my blog.

You might want to check out these two posts for more information - Ryan Healy and Chris O’Byrne.

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: feed readers, FeedBurner, FeedBlitz, technology, Chris O’Byrne, Ryan Healy, blogs

Tonight I learned more about feed readers and rss feeds. I had feeds on this site - for rss1, rss2 and for comments rss. So I thought I was doing it pretty well. But for some reason I decided to go exploring and learn more about the world of feed readers in general and FeedBurner in specific.

Flowers I, Digital © Diane Clancy

Now I remember … I checked out the sites of people I tagged yesterday and one person, Chris O’Byrne, had an article, About trackbacks, on feed readers and pointed to another article, Blog Readership Rising, on another blog. So off I went into the wild blue yonder …

One thing I found out reading at FeedBurner is that they recommend using a feed reader on your desktop rather than a web-based news feed reader. I have looked for the article there and I can’t find it again. But they said that some of the most popular news feed readers sort of take over your feeds and go snooping. Sorry I can’t find that quote. But the essence is that they say your privacy is safer if you bring the news to your desktop rather than going to a news service that is web-based because they are always looking for other feeds.

So a friend suggested NetNewsWire (and the Lite is free) and Vienna (free) for Macs. So I am set up to read some of the blogs I like by feed reader. If you like, I have gotten my feeds in better shape and it should be easy for you to keep up through feeds. There is even a comment if you want to keep up with comments.

~ Diane Clancy

Technorati Tags: feed readers, FeedBurner, Chris O’Byrne, NetNewsWire, Vienna, technology, blogs