Great tip from Gabe Weatherhead over at MacDrifter about the new Do Not Link service:1
You can easily use the service by appending the target URL as follows:
The purpose of the service is to allow you to link to a website without helping that website's “Google Juice.” ↩
Dave Caolo just posted a tremendous workflow that helps gets RSS items into WordPress by using [IFTTT](http://ifttt.com). It takes about 5 minutes to implement[^fn1] and should really help queue up articles that you want to post to your blog. I cannot say enough about how impressed I am with this.
[^fn1]: 5 minutes, assuming you already have an IFTTT account. Signing up for a new account might make things take a little longer.
A post from Marcelo Somers titled [The Linked List Cancer](http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/forkbombr/rss2/~3/ut8-DK8qpeQ/) has spawned a lot of discussion this week about the art of blogging. The most frequently quoted part of Mr. Somers’ post seems to be:
> The problem is, we can’t all be Daring Fireball – we can’t get away with posting a witty headline and a blockquote 5-10 times a day. We’ve adopted John’s concept of linking, but not the idea that we need to tell a bigger story on our sites.
Various bloggers have since followed up. [Kyle Baxter seems to pretty much agree with Somers](http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/forkbombr/rss2/~3/ut8-DK8qpeQ/):
> There’s no reason to link to something unless it’s something readers probably haven’t come across already or you can provide a unique perspective on it. Only link to something when you’re adding some value.
while, [Marco Arment seems to take a different approach](http://www.marco.org/2012/08/09/linkblogs):
> Rather than letting my links tell a story arc with minimal commentary, I use link posts as a formatting convenience when I have a paragraph or three in response, but not enough material or time for an article. If I don’t have anything meaningful to say about a link, or if Gruber already did a better job of commenting on it, I’ll usually pass on it.
Personally, I agree most with [Stephen Hackett’s take](http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/forkbombr/rss2/~3/ut8-DK8qpeQ/)
> A link is my way of saying to you, the reader, that I think the article is worth your time and attention, and here on the Internet, those are everyone’s two most important possessions.
That sounds very similar to what I want to do with my links.
The discussion about linked list posts also made me think back to the excellent [SXSW presentation from Merlin Mann and John Gruber](http://www.43folders.com/2009/03/25/blogs-turbocharged) about “turbocharging” your blog. The thing I remember most about that talk was that a site creator should think about who their audience is. When I started this site, I imagined my audience as being someone who wants to sit down, open the site in Flipboard, and see a mix of stories about tech, sports, comics, general news, and entertainment. In other words, it would be a site that collects all of the columns, stories and news that I would want to read myself.[^footnote] The linked list format allows me to accomplish this while [giving proper attribution to the content’s original authors](http://www.marco.org/2012/07/03/stop-not-linking). For that reason, I anticipate continuing to post linked list posts for quite some time.
[^footnote]: I have my site in my RSS reader to make sure that posts show up at the proper time time (and give them an extra last second proof read.) I frequently see a link in my reader and think “Ooh, that looks awesome. I want to read that,” only to find out it is a link from my RSS feed.