I've started seeing quite a trend in blogs that have just too many widgets installed on them. The content of these blogs may be great but the amount of widgets, movies and music playing when you enter the blog page really slows it down. Sometimes your browser starts to hang as it tries to download all those plug-ins and widgets, before long you've got frustrated and just closed the browser window.

It makes me wonder if people actually visit the front page of their blog often or just post to the blog with a publishing tool.

Having spoken to friends who have read my previous post about MyBlogLog traffic trailing off after users where forced to sign-up for a Yahoo account after MyBlogLog joined the Yahoo network. I have discovered that many of them have noticed much the same stem in the flow of traffic. I am not entirely sure why this has happened but they still appear to be getting traffic from BlogCatalog so it must be a MyBlogLog thing, maybe people are taking a while to change accounts to Yahoo or they just don't want to?

To be honest I can't remember the last time I used my Yahoo account this has been the first time I have used it in ages in order to use MyBlogLog again. I think the reason I don't use Yahoo that much is that I mainly used it for its messenger program that started to get incredibly bulky my friends realised they were having the same problem with it and moved onto Google Chat. Yahoo Messenger takes up about 55 - 60megs of memory when it runs which is bigger than MSN messenger (only just). A number of my friends prefer to use Google Chat because it is just so simple and lightweight I think all the other messenger programs out there have tried to pack just too much into their applications. When ever I had a problem with my machine running slow I would usually kill Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and keep Google Chat running some of my friends have removed them all together and just use MSN and Google Chat. Maybe if makers of these messenger programs optimised their programs so they took up less space on peoples machines they'd stay on machines longer? I think Google has the right idea here producing something that is lightweight, so easy to use and just plain simple is definitely the right move.

I just have too much information to take in every day. At work I have about 50-100 e-mail's a day to cope with, then I have a constant feed of RSS traffic from just too many blogs coming into my RSS reader, Facebook traffic comes in at a constant stream and then my ISP email account and my GMail account never end.

You would just say I could turn off the RSS reader? The problem is the current project I am working on uses a Wiki for everything so every time people make changes or tag things for your attention my RSS reader goes nuts bringing in traffic. My work email account I have had for such a long time that I get all kinds of spam now and company emails going back and forth. As it takes me so long to read everything I just glance at it and use the Outlook flagging tool to mark it as important to read later. I don't think I could cope with another social network or information source and ironically enough when I want to get any work done at work I actually turn off all of these information sources. Its funny that all these information sources that are supposed to be such a "boost" and help in the workplace are actually a hindrance. Every hour at work I will start up Outlook and begin deleting the messages that are not important. Another interrupter at work is MSN messenger which we use for communicating across sites, I will also turn this off when I need to get work done and turn it on every now and again if I need to bother a colleague for help.

I realise a lot of organisations have blocked many of these "tools" and social networks on their firewalls to stop their staff from being distracted, I like to think I am good at self policing myself, but I realise why companies do this. Sometimes people just can't help themselves and I have friends who admit they have a weakness not being able to leave Facebook, Beebo or what ever social network they belong too alone while at work. I personally never use social networks while at work, as I know how distracting they are. Although one of things I say to people is while you are using them look at the clock on your PC when you first start and write it down. Then look at it again every now and again, you'll be quite amazed by how 2 minutes turns into 30minutes.   

Is it me or has MyBlogLog traffic started to drift off a bit? It all seems to be ever since people were forced to sign-up for a Yahoo ID to use the service...

I've just trying out a new blog writing tool by Microsoft called Windows Live Writer. I usually use Qumana however it doesn't allow you to add new categories to your blog however Windows Live Writer does. My only gripe with both products is the American English dictionary with no option for choosing any other type of dictionary. I am guessing these blogging tools are an American conspiracy to take over the world with their version of English :)

All in all nice tool guys just give us a choice of dictionaries please!