The Science of Web Art, Design and Development

Being the author of the Zo’C Powerblogroll — A Wordpress Plugin intended to transform the bulk blogrolls commonly are into powerful link-love tools — I couldn’t resist to offer Catherine Morley my plugin when I saw her blogroll was, literally, a few hundred links long.

I could tell you myself the story of how this happened, but yesterday I’ve been the featured designer on Designers Who Blog and since Cat decided to tell it in a much funnier way I’d be able to, then you’d better just go there and read it from her.

To me it was already a reason for pride that my plugin was the base for such a giantic and useful blogroll, but, makes me even prouder to be featured shoulder to shoulder in such a front line of great designers in DWB.

And by the way, did I mention how useful her blogroll is? I can’t stress that enough! If you are looking for great design blogs to follow, you should start there.

Two years ago on February 22, 2006, the Zo’C blog started as a personal blog and, while I’ve been working on the web for over ten years now, this was my first time blogging. The very excitement of running the blog and being a blogger designer transformed it into the professional one it is today.

Lessons learned and achievements

Two years blogging really changed my perception of the web and aside for professional opportunities I also made friends in the blogosphere. Among the best things that happened in these two years I can count:

Friends on the blogosphere

In Italy people say: “Le montagne stano ferme, ma gi uomini s’incontrano” (the mountains are still, but people meet) and that is completely true. You never know what can turn out from an aquaintance. And being friendly on the blogosphere had brought me friends and work opportunities like few times before.

Guest-blogging

I haven’t guest blogged a lot, but the three posts I wrote for Domestik Goddess (1, 2, 3) and writing for the January writing project at The Giving Hand were a door to indulge my will to write about subjects other than those of my own blog. There are so many things to write about that is a waste writing for a single blog.

The Mediterrasian Cooking Blog

One of my inspirations for having a blog, initially, was food. I’ve always loved to cook and one of food inspirations was mediterrasian.com. I can’t but be proud I’ve been invited to join them to create the MediterrasianCooking blog, officially launched yesterday.

Cultural diversilty

Thanks to my deep plunge on the blogosphere I had come to know blogs about all kinds of different subjects and their bloggers. Besides all the fun, it has been a rich cultural experience.

The road ahead

Provide more value

I think in these two years I have been too shy in submitting valuable day-by-day content and have focused too much on big discussions. I intend to add more tutorials and doable stuff. Make it a blog more result-oriented that it has been so far.

Video and podcasting

I had a very pleasant experience publishing my first two videos, I’m willing to do more. And I like to combine this with the previous topic: tutorials and results.

More regular posting

I hadn’t been very nice in being predictable. My post frequency is “about once a week”, but just looking to the archive you can see one can see that I should try it a little harder.

More out links

I read a lot of things on the web, really a lot. Yet, I link back in very modest amounts. This is not because I like it this way, it just happened. I want to engage this blog on a bigger discussion with other blogs and links exist for this purpose.

More comments

It must be something with my writing style, because despite the reasonable high number of visits and subscribers, there aren’t as much comments as I’d like. I’ll have to work out a way to make the readers more welcome to join the discussions.

More guest blogging

Definitely, as a blogger, writing is intransitive: You have to write! And it is a pity to be restricted at your blog’s subject. I see myself guest-writing a lot more and maybe I should open the door for some guest-posts here in Zo’C.

Back in the old cooking times of Zo’C, when it was more personal than anything else, one of my main inspirations for content was MediterrAsian.com.

I’m proud to say that a few months ago, I was invited by the talented MediterrAsian team to join them on a blog project and today we are launching a multi author blog named “MediterrAsian Cooking“.

Mediterrasian Cooking is a blog to share cooking experiences and ideas based on the concept that Asian and Mediterranean food is not only delicious, but a great source of health.

You don’t have to enjoy the site with moderation, it is quite healthy, use it a much as you want.

By following some principles contained on these cuisines and lifestyles you can live longer and better and have more fun out of food and life. After all, who doesn’t like to eat Italian, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Thai, Korean? And the list goes on.

The blog is authored by Ric Watson and Trudy Thelander from the original team and have been joined by Emily Seah and me. The blog was co-designed by Ric and me based on the mediterrasian site.

And the best part. You don’t have to enjoy it with moderation, you can have as much as you want, because despite its great flavor, is quite healthy, you can use it on every meal.

This post is just a quickie to wish all Zo’C Readers a Great Christmas. And I hope following this blog this year has been as interesting for you as mantaining it has been for me.

Also, warm feelings to the nice people at Authority Blogger Forum, which is friendly community and an invaluable resource for bloggers.

How often you click on the archives on the sidebar of a blog? How often do you follow links in a blogroll that you didn’t knew already? In my site, according to my statistics, almost no one does it.
read full post…

Dear readers,

Before I moved to Italy, I prepared a series of posts on photography basics to cover me while I was unable to write, but it seems that I underestimated this time and this is why this blog has been silent for the last three weeks.

I wasn’t even able to mantain the Bee Side of Zo’C which is a personal blog and much easier to fill with trip pictures and stories.

But, by no means this blog is abandoned, I have finally reached a point of comfort here and I am back on the track of writing, while I am still having a hard time to follow the blogs I usually do (If you own one of the blogs I read, I promess soon I’ll be active again).

Sooner that you can imagine, new Zo’C posts will be published.

Cheers,
Guilherme

As I said in my previous post, Anna and I are moving to Italy and I’ll have plenty to write and pictures to show that won’t fit here. So, by popular request, The Bee Side of Zo’C blog is born.

The Bee Side of Blog is just that, a B-side. I make no promises except that I’ll keep my writing style and the usual felling but the themes may vary. It is a blog in which the only off-topic subjects would be the ones that perfectly fit this one (the A side, if you wish).

You are welcome to join me in new themes and much more fun that is not web/software/photography/design related.

The title of the last posts of the Bee Side blog will be shown on the sidebar on the section named “What is happening on Bee Side of Zo’C”. You can also subscribe the mailing list or sign the feed.

read full post…

Dear readers, I apologize for the long time the blog has been left outdated. Most of the time I try to keep my writing on about 1~2 posts per week, but lately I have been just too busy.

I do have a bank of posts for the hard hours that is actually a large one but, I must confess, nothing on it is completely finished and revised. Yes I know, shame on me!

The reason why I am in such a hurry is that Anna and I are permanently moving to Europe in less than two weeks, and the amount of time such a move consumes is just huge.

read full post…

Flavia and Rogerio are a very modern couple of friends and have recently engaged.

They turned to me because they wanted an for a dinner party that would officialize the engagement.

read full post…

Recently, the Manage all your email accounts with Gmail post on Zo’C has been featured on lifechacker.com, which is a huge step for a still young blog.

I actually wrote that post thinking on some friends of mine that needed to do just that, but published it as a post because I thought many people would be interested, so I sent an email to the nice people at Etc blog, and they were kind enough to feature it.

read full post…