My wonderful friend Jean has an interesting discussion going on her blog on blog worth.  It is extremely important to increase the value of your blog because that determines traffic and for those of you who have advertising, your income.

Many bloggers are complaining about the absence of backlinks, which has a huge role to play in pagerank, traffic, and worth.  Here is the problem.  The bar on your blog that you have for links is useless because while a human can see your links - a search engine robot can't.  Tblog uses a special code or tag (nofollow) that tells the robot not to follow it.  In other words, it does not register as a link.  There is another problem with tBlog.  It does not have a clearly marked permalink.  On the contrary, it has a comments anchor.  So you have to clean up the URL to find the permanent link to a post.  Smart bloggers and search engine robots don't like this approach.

So what can you do get backlinks?

1. Link in the body of the post iteself to other blogs, the way I have linked above to Jean's and other posts.
2. Make sure that you use the permalink rather than the comments anchor page.  Just delete #comment_anchor.
3. And when you link to others, others will link back to you.
4. Linking is the core of the web.
   

I have written in the past about thongs for men and have also admitted that I do wear thongs myself. Let me say, though, that people who complain that thongs are not comfortable are right to some extent - poorly designed ones do. I bought some at Target and they were horrible - I threw them away. This Black Friday, I shopped at WalMart and found a box of three for just $10 from Life Underwear. The picture is below. There is a third one in dark blue. So guys, enjoy thongs - they are fun and flirty.

Recommended: Read more on thongs.

Let me continue to build on my ongoing weight loss adventure.  While I continue to eat healthy and exercise at least 5 times a week, I have plateaued - which is not too bad.  I am just about 140 lbs.

But there is some interesting research from Saint Louis University's Doisy College of Health Sciences.  According to Edward Weiss, while the way to lose weight is to eat less calories and burn more, the right way to do is through exercise.  Indeed, you can go on a diet and eat less calories but you will lose muscle mass (not good) .  Those who exercise tend to be stronger, have more muscle mass, and an increased aerobic capacity.

So how do you lose weight?  Diet or exercise or both? 

Exactly as I had predicted earlier today, Emmitt Smith was crowned the champion.

Congratulations, Emmitt!

Cheryl Burke deserves special mention because she was also the champion last year helping Drew Lachey become the champ. 

Congratulations to Mario Lopez and Karina Smirnoff to for putting on such a great show. 

I followed Dancing with the stars last year and very much enjoyed the initial victory of Kelly Monaco and the subsequent dance-off in which she lost the trophy.

This year, it is even more exciting - both Mario Lopez and Emmitt Smith are too good to pick a winner at this point.

So this season, I am predicting that Emitt Smith will be the winner and this is why:

1. He got the perfect score last night.
2. He is the under-dog; he almost got eliminated early on while Mario has been a consistent performer.
3. He has a huge fan base who will vote for him in huge numbers
4. His approach to ballroom dancing is so fresh - he brings that charm and grace that you don't see in those Hollywood types.
5. His accomplishment is much greater - he was never an entertainer while Mario is.

Imagine being able to play arcade video games right in your home?  Wow, that is so cool.  Well, a company called BigGames has done exactly that.  Their arcade machies are designed for home use that play the full versions of Arcade classics and current hits. All units include built-in full color monitors, require no electronic set-up, and are available at major retailers for less than $500.

The photo shown here shows their Golden Tee(TM) Clubhouse Edition which plays the full and complete arcade version of Golden Tee(TM) 3D - one of the most popular arcade games of all time.

I just need to come up with $500 (after spending money on a PocketDish and Nintendo Game Boy in August last year) - hey, send them my way if you have some spare money lying around.

Recommended:  More on arcade video games. 

The debate over which diet is best is endless.  In my opinion, the best diet is the one that works for YOU and makes you happy.

However, some interesting research from Harvard School of Public Health (conducted by Thomas L. Halton) finds that a low-carbs diet (which does not mean Atkins Diet) is as bad (or good) as a carbohydrate-rich diet insofar as heart disease is concerned.  What is important to note, though, is that people who consumed more vegetables and fruits to get their protein and fat had lower risk of heart diseases.

So what is the take-home message?

According to Halton, "Both have strengths and weaknesses. However, you can get the best features of both diets and eliminate the negative features of both diets by choosing healthy vegetable sources of fat and protein."  In other words, become a vegetarian, or even better go on a raw diet.

I have had problems with both tBlog and Technorati and I have written extensively about both. 

Technorati problems 

In June last year, I wrote about problems with Technorati tags, which we fixed by switching to Wordpress.  In August I wrote about how tBlog and Technorati were not compatible.  In July, we even dumped tBlog to take advantage of tags.

tBlog problems

In February, I wrote about the challenges of monetizing your tblog blog.  And for a while, these guys were putting popup ads, which are such a no-no these days.

The good news

About six months ago, while Technorati tags wouldn't work, but our posts were still indexed by Technorati and people there could find my blog in a search.   Then one fine day, no matter how many times you pinged Technorati, nothing would happen.

Guess what, today, you can see that Technorati is once again indexing tBlogs.  I have no clue if it was Technorati or tBlog that fixed the problem, but it means I might stick around here a little longer.  Take a look at my listings.