YourSite.nu is a web site where members post and review each other’s web sites, blogs and forums. It also has its own discussion board and web development tutorials.

The site lists its membership at about 10,000 but I am not sure how many of these members are actually active on the site. Each time I’ve visited the site there have been about 30 or so people on it.

The site requires you to do three reviews of other member’s web sites before posting your own web site(s) for review. The feedback received ranges from anywhere between “cool site” to a dissertation on the fundamentals of proper web design layout.

The site is useful for getting basic feedback, but its appears to be more of a social community that a fully professional web development community – which might just be for the better.

Im not sure if submitting a blog to a directory will increase your traffic dramatically but I do know that when I am looking for a new and interesting blog to read, I take a look through a few of them. Here are some of the most popular and interesting blog directories.

Blog Show Off - A dynamic directory that keeps on changing
BlogTopSites - A nice looking directory that will rank blogs on the number of visitors.
BlogHub - Im not a fan of this one, however im told it is quite popular
BritBlog - A directory just for British Blogs.
FindingBlog - Pretty much the standard directory
BlogCatalog - Ranked as the number site in Google for the term “blog directories”
Blogdup - Blogs are arranged by the country of origin.
KingOfTheBlogs - Another “Top Sites” directory
BlogFlux - A nicely designed and popular directory
Blogarama - Another standard directory
Blogwise - Blogs are arranged by country and keyword
Technorati - The most popular and largest directory of blogs!
Bla.st - Several categories, including one for blogs.

If you know of any other directories then let me know and I will add them to the list

AddThis.com offer a variety of tools that helps users bookmark your web site or blog as well as subscribe to any feeds you may have. The service is free and involves just placing a couple lines of code on any page you want the AddThis button to appear. In addition, the service tracks all pages bookmarked and the social bookmarking services used which can be viewed from the online user interface. An example button is shown below:

BlogWorld and New Media Expo will be hosting the first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of blogging and new media this November 8th and 9th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The conference will include over 60 seminars, and more than 100 speakers including A-list bloggers, award winning journalists, Fortune 500 executives, and world renowned online marketers.
Show topics will include blogging basics, podcasting, monetizing your blog, blogging for corporatations, using RSS feeds, Search Engine Optimization and much more.

A new blog has popped up within the MSDN blogs over at Microsoft. The title is “hackers @ microsoft” with a url of http://blogs.msdn.com/hackers/. Currently, there is only a single post to the blog from a user named techjunkie.

According to the post, “Microsoft employs some of the best hackers in the world and actively recruits them and develops them”. These so called “white hat hackers” currently hack Microsoft applications prior to release to find weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

What I found interesting in the post was the statement, “A true hacker is someone who is curious and wants to learn how systems work. This can and of course at Microsoft is done in an ethical, legal manner”. Ethical, legal manner? Does this mean that Microsoft has fired all its programmers that are part of the their special “reversed engineering” team?

The Tap Team has been sending questions to one another over the last week to put on their blogs and it looks like its my turn. These questions come from John Davey our programmer.

What are your favorite web 2.0 startups - Im a big fan of Revision3, Talkshoe, and other companies that are changing the way in which we use the internet.

Are you cool enough to receive hate mail yet? Hehe. Is this a sign of blog popularity? I receive emails now and then from disatisfied readers unhappy with my opinions or companies annoyed at replying to there emails (I receive lots guys give me a chance). But I dont think this is hate mail

Fav Blog? Hmm, I actually read a lot of blogs. I do enjoy Read/WriteWeb and EmilyChangs Blog

Who or What annoys you the most online? Recently its been our hosting company, and im sure John you can easily relate to me on that one.   And also Jason Calacanis for for bagging the hell out of any company who competes against one of his ventures while trying to look impartial.

MySpace or Facebook - MySpace has the numbers and Facebook has the features.  Im really starting to get over MySpace.

Technologies That Excite You - Anyhting that makes the internet something more than just webpages.  Im also excited about how the internet is getting more closely integrated with mobiles.

Companies We Should be Watching?  What am I some kind of expert?  Look out for the next major release of Firefox.  This could be ultra interesting.

Why don’t use your CEO title - Its on my personal blog John!  I hate adding it in emails etc.  Is too formal and Tap Media is the complete opposite.   And we all know whos boss anyway.  Lol

Favorite TV Show - The Office.  The God of all TV shows.

Finally, What do you think about paid blogging?  Im assuming you asked me this cos this blog has had sponsored posts before.  I think they are no different to other forms of advertising if disclosed properly.  all the paid posts I have done clearly have “Sponsored” in the title.  So they are pretty hard to miss.

Ok, John im done with that now get back to work.

Thanks to Odiogo you can now listen to this blog!

Odiogo is a really cool service that creates a text-to-speech podcast from any podcast. It’s free for bloggers and they will even pay you if your “podcast” is popular.

Im not sure what the status of the service is (alpha, beta, etc.) however after a couple of days since registering I was sent an email which included links to my new podcast feed. However, I am not sure how I meant to access the statistics that site claims to offer.

Check it out at Odiogo
To take a look (or should I say listen) visit this page.  I will be adding this feed to the sidebar soon.

Here are some of the amazing wordpress themes which I drool over while thinking about how good they would look on my blog!  Let me know if you have any favorite themes.

Scary Little Theme
Download
Although its not the most beautiful theme it comes with some really cool features and some oh so cool ajax

Wave Link
Download Demo
Here is a simple and clutterless theme.  I also like the drop down search bar at the top

Durable
Download
This is a really cool theme.  It allows the user to control all the page colors using a cool color pallet mod.

I Feel Dirty
Download Demo
This is quite a popular theme and why wouldn’t it be with a cool name like that

Drunk Loser
Download Demo
Another dirty style theme.  I really good dark layout

Organique
Download Demo
Clean fresh look with rounded corners.  What more could you ask for

Vistered Little
Download Demo
A Glass like interface with drag and drop backgrounds.  Again not the most beautiful but still cool

Glossy Blue
Download Demo
Simple good looking oh and its glossy too

Spreeksel
Download Demo
Although I probably wouldn’t use it my blog it has a real nice look to it

Shantia
Download Demo
I had to include a really simple and minimalistic theme as well so here it is

These 10 themes are just some of the hundred or so amazing themes I have found, downloaded and played with.  Hopefully I will find the time someday to list them all.

Well I havnt done this for a while so here it is - a list of some interesting blogs that I have either found or have linked to this blog. Enjoy!

Hunna’s Happenings - A personal Blog with all the blogging cliches you could ever imagine. Nice!

Linquistics and Languages - The title says it all.

Army Mom - The trials and tribulations of an Army Mom

Maven Mappers Information - If you’re into knowledge management then this is the blog for you.

Make$ Money$ - Make money from the internet (is that possible??)

I have seen a lot more great blogs out there. And I would also like to link back to more of those who discuss the Tap Blog so stay tuned for some more interesting blogs

Here are my top 5 tools that I rely on everyday to blog with.  Let me know what your top 5 are.

Number 1 - Wordpress
To me Wordpress is the ultimate blogging platform.  It has all the features you need built right in and extending it is simple.  I have tried other platforms but none suit me as perfectly as Wordpress does.

Number 2 - Gmail
I know it sounds silly.  Why would I need an email account to blog? I use Gmail to receive Press Releases and stories from readers.  With Gmail’s effective search tool I can easily find press releases in seconds.

Number 3 - Firefox
Again this one sounds silly.  Firefox has a built in spell checker which is so handy when writing posts.   Without it my posts would BE silly.

Number 4 - Feedburner
Feedburner is an amazingly useful tool.  Every blog should use Feedburner.  Before I switched to Feedburner I had no idea how many people were reading my feeds.  Now I have a handy set of stats and a great set of other useful feed related tools.

Number 5 - Netflask
I know it sounds bad listing a tool that was created by me but Netflask.com was built for me so of course its going to be useful.  Now I can have all of the blogs I read daily on the one page in a clear and easy to read format.  I can even preview each post without having to go to the blog.
So there are my top 5 tools for blogging.  Let me know yours!