enrii.blog

Google's email asking me to accept new terms is a mistake. I receive this email today:

We sent you a message earlier this week reminding you to accept
our updated AdSense Terms and Conditions. However, the message was
sent in error, as our records show that you have already accepted
the new Terms and Conditions.

We sincerely apologize for the miscommunication and any confusion
caused. Please be assured that no further action is required on
your part, and you may continue to access to your account as
normal.

I received a email notification from Google AdSense, telling me that there are some changes to the terms and I should log in to accept the changes.

As you may know, we recently updated our AdSense Terms and
Conditions to reflect upcoming product changes and ensure that
they're consistent with policies across Google.

We noticed that you haven't yet accepted the new Terms and
Conditions. To review them and indicate your acceptance, please
log in at http://www.google.com/adsense and follow the
instructions. Please be aware that all publishers must accept the
new Terms and Conditions in order to continue their participation
in the AdSense program.

You can find more information about some of the changes in the new
program terms by reviewing
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81794
. Unfortunately, we're not able to further interpret the meaning
of the Terms and Conditions for you. If you have additional
questions, you may wish to contact an attorney.

We appreciate your understanding.

I was asked to follow the instructions after I log in but I don't get any instruction at all. Is anyone experiencing the same thing?

P.S. I'm glad I my blog is finally up again. It has been down for almost a week!

Philipp Lenssen wrote about using Comic Sans font in the Google AdSense and my first response is... Yuck!

He then mentioned about an initiative to ban Comic Sans font. I'm glad I found a group of people who hates Comic Sans font as much as I do. I can't tell the exact reason why I don't like it, but I really hate to see that font.

The site also created a petition to ban the font.

At this moment, there are only 1,635 signatures and they are aiming for 2,000 since the November of 2005. The number of people who signed is unbelievably small.

I was wondering whether there is actually not that many people that hate the font, or the petition is not well spread?

Reasons to Install FeedBurner

Sometimes, I am really curious whether there is anyone reading my blog. From Google Analytics, over 80% of the traffic came from search engines, mostly from Google. Am I really write for search engines only?

Since I share my full feed, there is no point for the readers (i.e. you) who read at RSS readers come to visit my site.

I think the best motivation for a blogger to continue writing is for him to know that he has followers. And, I don't get much comments on my blog.

Setting Up FeedBurner

Simple. Create an account at FeedBurner. Add in your current blog feed, then get a new feed link from FeedBurner. E.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/enriiblog

Obstacles

I have been promoting the default WordPress RSS link all the while and I think I could have a few readers subscribed to my feed. I think it is not appropriate to ask everyone to switch to the new feed link provided by FeedBurner.

Moreover, if I ask you to use this new feed link so that I can track you, would you like use it? Nobody likes to be tracked.

The WordPress Plugin

To solve the problem, I installed the FeedBurner FeedSmith WordPress plugin (gbyeow suggested me to install this years ago, but I didn't do it until now). The plugin will automatically redirects your original feed link which looks like http://blog.enrii.com/rss/ to http://feeds.feedburner.com/enriiblog.

So, you will need to enter the FeedBurner feed link into: WordPress admin page > Settings > FeedBurner.

There are users reported some .htaccess issues in the older version. It seems like we no longer need to do anything with .htaccess with the latest version of FeedSmith.

OK, It's working now!

Now I know how many people subscribed to my feed.

What else could you achieve with FeedBurner?

• Link to AdSense account - If you already have an AdSense account, adding ads into your feed can be done in a few clicks.
• Email subscription - If you have readers who do not use any RSS readers, they could subscribe to my post via email.
• Put subscriber's tag (FeedCount) - A small tag that you could put on your blog to show everyone that you have many subscribers.

Do you use it?

Just a note, if you are not aware, FeedBurner is now part of Google.