Popular local blog advertising network AdGator has closed it doors.

For long Adgator has helped the local blogging community make some money at what they do best, but all good things must come to an end. Yesterday the Afrigator team announced the termination of the Adgator service.

In the statement the Afrigator team only says that Adgator is no longer a viable business, but I tend to disagree. My personal opinion with regards to the reason why Adgator has closed down it because there was no time and effort put into the project.

As for what will be happening with the framework, I hope the guys will either sell it off or give it to someone that are willing to put effort into running such a service. I feel with the right amount of effort and time dedicated to such a project it can be a huge success.

To Justin and the guys, thanks for helping us make an extra buck every month and I believe not just me but every blogger out there are sad to hear about the closing down of Adgator. Good luck with your other ventures.

If you still have some cash left in your Adgator account you can log in here and generate an invoice.

Since Google acquired publishing platform Blogger in 2003 nothing much has really changed when it comes to looks for the 11 year old blogging platform, but Google has big plans.

Blogger may be the sixth largest websites in the world but when you compare it to the likes of WordPress, the blogging platform does not stack up very well. Taking into consideration how well the adoption of WordPress has taken up with online publishers one might even argue that WordPress has overtaken Blogger.

Seems like Google is feeling the threat from WordPress and announced in a blog post that 2011 will be an exciting year for the Blogger platform with the introduction of a brand new next-generation user interface that will go live later this year.

Below is two screenshot Google shared of how the new Blogger dashboard and post editor will look.

So what do you think? I think it looks pretty cool and refreshed.

Since WordPress launched its first mobile application for the iPhone in 2008, the popular blogging platform has also released apps for Blackberry and the Android platforms. Now two years in WordPress has officially reached 1 Million users making use of their mobile applications.

With cellphones becoming the new personal computer this is not just for huge landmark for WordPress but for blogging also. The WordPress mobile apps allows you to express yourself no matter where you are, saw something worth sharing with the world just snap a picture with your phone and blog it right there and then.

To celebrate this huge milestone WordPress has released an app for one of two new platforms in its scope, WordPress for Nokia is the latest platform to get the WordPress mobile app.

You can, of course, write and edit posts and pages, manage your comments queue and keep an eye on your blog’s statistics while on the move. If a seagull just snatched your hot dog and is making a run for it, you can snap a picture of the commotion or even record a video describing how it felt and how much you’re suing for. All from within the app.

There are two version available for WordPress for Nokia, one for new Symbian^3 devices like the Nokia N8 and then another version for older phones like the X6-00, C6-00, N97, and 5800 XpressMusic.

You can grab your copy of WordPress for Nokia here or from the Nokia OVI Store.

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on the planet, in fact it is not just popular for blogging but many developers use it for so much more than a blogging platform.

One nice thing about WordPress is the fact that there are mobile applications available for it, but up until now it was limited to Android, iPhone and Blackberry users.

A while ago I helped the guys over at RLabs set up a WordPress blog to enable the authors to blog from their mobile phones, unfortunately I had to go the email route and later on the MXit to WordPress application was born due to the fact that the authors was not holders of smartphones but mostly low end Nokia phones.

WordPress has now released the beta version of WordPress for Nokia. WordPress for Nokia allows you to post new posts and pages, edit existing content on your blog, manage comments, check stats and more on the go for your WordPress.com or self hosted WordPress 2.7 or higher blogs.

WordPress for Nokia is currently supported by S60 or Maemo powered Nokia devices and is Open Source allowing developers to be able to modify the application.

For more information or to download WordPress for Nokia head over to the OVI Store or visit the WordPress for Nokia page.

Last week I had a request for help from the guys at RLabs about blogging from mobile phones to a WordPress blog. Now I knew about the WordPress apps available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, but the problem is these people that wanted to blog did not have access to smartphones.

I eventually helped them set up an Email to WordPress system, but then the idea came to me. Wouldn’t it be nice if these people would be able to blog from MXit. MXit supports almost any mobile phone on the market and in a country like South Africa where the only way most people are able to access the Internet is through their cellphones, this could be the cheapest way for them publish to the web for all to see.

I mentioned the idea on Twitter and then Paul Scott replied that he already has most of the basic code for this seeing as he helped developed the MXit bot RLabs uses for councelling.

Paul quickly put some code together over the weekend and that is how MXitPress was born. MXitPress makes use of the MetaWebLog API to publish posts to WordPress and Chisimba blogs through the use of the XMPP Jabber protocol.

Using MXitPress is real easy, all you need is a XMPP client like MXit or GTalk, add the jabber contact chisimba.mxitpress@gmail.com and that’s it, you are now ready to publish blog posts straight from MXit.

To make posts you will need to enable Remote Publishing on your blog at Settings > Writing and ticking XML-RPC, then you need to register your blog with the bot by issuing the register command like so: register:www.yourdomain.com /xmlrpc.php user pass replacing www.yourdomain.com with your blog url and user and pass with your username and password you use to log into WordPress.

Once you have register your blog you can go ahead and start making posts by using the following command: Blog Post Title#Blog content goes after the #

This new method for blogging from MXit opens up a whole new market to blogging, and with the new MXit API to be released on 29th of October 2010 this could make blogging in Africa accessible to just about everybody. Imaging live blogging from an event from your mobile phone, take a snap with phone of the presentation, add some text and send it straight to your blog.

When it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) WordPress comes standard SEO ready, but if you are looking for that extra exposure on search engines, and lets be honest who doesn’t? Here is what I think are 5 of the best SEO plugins for WordPress that can help you get that better page rank.

---

Platinum SEO Pack

---

Platinum SEO Pack for WordPress is an all in one solution for managing all aspects of SEO on your WordPress blog. This is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress with features such as automatic 301 redirects for any permalink changes, Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines, helps you avoid duplicate content and add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noodp, noydir, noarchive, nosnippet meta tags to any post/page.

Download Platinum SEO Pack

---

Google XML Sitemaps

---

One of the most essential tools in getting your content on search engines is this plugin, lets face it the quicker search engines know about your content and index it the better for you. Google XML Sitemaps generates a sitemap for your site and then pings major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to notify them of new content on your blog.

Download Google XML Sitemaps

---

Remind Me

---

Remind Me is a SEO plugin for WordPress developed by local blogger Chris M. Remind Me makes deep linking on your site a breeze by showing all relevant links related to the article you are writing and then allows you to easily link to another post with a simple click.

Download Remind Me

---

PubSubHubbub

---

This plugin has got a weird name, but apart from that it does a wonderful job at notifying the web that you have new content. Everything nowadays strive to be real-time, and PubSubHubbub makes your WordPress blog real-time by announcing to the web that you have new content on your blog, blog aggregators like MyScoop and Afrigator can then now when you have new content and then immediately publish it.

Download PubSubHubbub

---

SEO Smart Links

---

One of the ways of getting more content on your WordPress blog indexed by search engines is by deep linking to other posts on your blog. Doing this by hand can be tedious so this is where SEO Smart Links comes in. It automatically links keywords and phrases to URLs you would like it to link to.

Download SEO Smart Links

If you have any suggestions to SEO WordPress plugins you use or recommend, feel free to post them in the comments.

We have made it to the next round of the 2010 South African Blog Awards, I am saying we as I could not have made it without the support of everybody that nominated iGeek.

A big thanks goes out to everybody that nominated iGeek for the South African Blog Awards, iGeek has been nominated in the categories of Best New Blog and Best Science and Technology Blog.

The next step before victory is claimed is for you to go and vote, voting for the South African Blog Awards will be open until the 17th of September 2010, from there the judges will also have a vote and then the winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on the 25th of September.

To vote for iGeek follow this link or simply click the South African Blog Awards badge on the right of the site. You can place a new vote every 24 hours with the same email address, so remember to place your votes every day.

Thank you very much for your loyal support.

It’s that time of the year again where the blogsphere are filled with posts from blogs on how much effort they put into the site and promising to post more regularly if your vote for them etc etc, yea you guessed it, it’s SA Blog Awards time.

This year will be the first year I will be taking part in the SA Blog Awards and have already been nominated in the categories of Best New Blog and Best Science and Technology Blog, the precise categories I was aiming to be nominated in.

If you are a blogger and have hopes to get somewhere in the 2010 SA Blog Awards, Chris over at iMod did a nice post on 5 things you can do to help you win the SA Blog Awards. Chris has some very valid and good suggestions, so go give it a read.

The main reason for this post is to explain to you how the nomination process works, as its currently a bit misleading on the SA Blow Awards site. Before you even submitted your nomination you are already greeted with message “Thank you! You have nominated www. yourdomain .com” which in fact is not true because there is still a confirmation process to go through.

Here is how to nominate your favorite blogs for the 2010 SA Blog Awards:

1. Head over to SA Blog Awards nomination page or click on the badge on the blog you’d like to vote for.
2. If you clicked the badge your nominations should show on the right hand side, otherwise simply choose the category and enter the blog URL or click the green thumbs up if the blog is already nominated. You must at least nominate 2 blogs.
3. Once you are happy with your selection, enter your email address in the box on the right hand side and enter the captcha security code and submit.
4. You are almost done, wait for a confirmation email from the SA Blog Awards, inside the email there is a confirmation link, follow it and your nomination is complete.

That is, you have now nominated for your favorite blog in the 2010 SA Blog Awards, remember this in only the nomination round. You can vote up until the 27th of August 2010 and then the judges will choose the top nominations and then the voting round will start. Once public voting in completed the judges also get to vote and then the total vote works out with 70% from public vote and 30% from judges.

Go on, go nominate your favorite SA Blog.

I read an interesting article the other day about resumes and it got me thinking, is the resume busy dying a slow death?

A resume is normally a list of all your qualifications compiled into a document, and this is what employers look at when making their decision whether you are qualified or suitable for the job. The problem with the resume is that is can also be a document that can exclude you from the job position.

This is where the personal blog comes in. Blogging is definitely not dead, and in today’s social media boom it can in fact help you become more exposed and show off your talent. Being revolutionary is always impressive.

Start building a personal blog where you can showcase how good you are, put as much info on it as you can and update it on a regular base. This is your place to show off what you have done via a visual representation.

Personally I would recommend setting your personal blog up on a domain that represents your name, so yourname.com or yourname.co.za would work fine. You can also opt for the free method by registering a free blog with a blogging platform like Bundublog.

Remember you are building your own personal brand to show off, so try not to post irrelevant stuff on it like the latest gadget you got, you can set up another blog for that. Use this blog to promote yourself, if you want to make it more personal add a personal stream to it like your Twitter account. Just make sure your stream presence won’t harm your image you are trying to portray on your new online resume.

Add links to projects you have completed, people and technologies you have worked with, and displaying a few recommendations made by others won’t harm as well.

Start building your own personal brand now by creating your online resume blog.

MyScoop, South Africa’s youngest blog aggregator is again leaving competitors in the dust, this time by doing a revamp of their home page.

MyScoop is the brainchild of Nick Duncan, SEO consultant by day and Web Entrepreneur by night, who first started MyScoop as a social link sharing site but later changed it over to a full blown blog aggregator as competitor blog aggregator Amatomu was busy dying a slow death.

MyScoop was the first South African blog aggregator to introduce real-time aggregation, just showing how commited MyScoop are to being inovative and offering its users the best possible exposure.

This time it’s no different, MyScoop has overhauled their home page look and layout. The new layout includes a featured author section that shows information about an random author that has their name, bio, twitter details filled in and uploaded a picture. They also included a featured blogs section that showcases random blogs from the top 100 listed blogs blogs on MyScoop. For more features check out the official MyScoop post.

It’s evident that MyScoop values its blogs and are doing allot to bring more exposure and traffic to them, so if you’re blogger and your blog is not yet signed up with MyScoop I would urge you to do it. It’s free and you will get allot of exposure for your blog, so what are you waiting for? Go sign up now!