Blazing Minds

I know it’s been a while but never fear it’s time for the return of this weeks Saturday Six and this week topic was chosen by myself and inspired by the review of Alice in Wonderland here on my blog so this week there is only one question with six answers..

1. Name your favourite 6 books that have been made into a film that you enjoyed watching?
   

There we go, one question with six answers for you to have fun with…

Ok, that’s it, thanks for taking part and I’m looking forward to everyone’s answers. Don’t forget to hit the “Tweet” button in the SexyBookMarks to ReTweet this weeks Saturday Six.

Anyone using Twitter can be part of the process by tweeting me a topic, I will then pick one randomly and the chosen topic will be used and the tweeter will have a DoFollow link to their website or blog as a thank you.

If you would like to nominate a topic then simply tweet me @Blazing_Minds with your nominated topic and the hash tag #Sat6

Also if you take part in the Saturday Six you can join the Saturday Six Twub..

Now this is a controversial point for a lot of bloggers and readers of blogs, the dreaded word “Toolbar“, but hang on a minute let me finish, those of you who visit my blog often will know about the Wibiya Toolbar that runs at the bottom of Blazing Minds and I have personally found that it has helped reduce my bounce rates since it was installed.

I have tried to make it match the colours of the site and it fits nicely at the bottom the blog, not bothering anybody, but for those that look a little closer at it will notice that I have some handy little featuring running on it and recently I add some of the newer features that Wibiya have added to their site for Toolbar users to use.

My Wibiya Toolbar now has a Digg button, which hopefully should start showing visitor how many time a post has been Dugg as well as the option to Digg the post themselves, once clicked it opens anew window, so the readers doesn’t have to leave the blog, nice.

Secondly I have added a Content Timeline, now this is my favourite, when clicked a new overlay will appear allowing visitors to search though the blog for blog posts as quick as a flash.

Though you are limited to the amount of posts in your blogs RSS feed, 15 for mine, it is still great for quick access, clicking on any of the posts will bring up an information box showing you some details about that post.

Also not forgetting some of the other button on the toolbar such as Sharing posts on social networks, a Twitter Dashboard, FaceBook Page integration and several more options, which I’m going to let you explore

So just by adding these options with a Wibiya Toolbar you could reduce your bounce rate on your blog as well as get some more going on with your readers of your blog, it’s working for me so why don’t you give it a shot

We probably all get “That Friday Feeling” every once in a while, it gets to the end of the week and you just feel like you can’t spend another day in work before the weekend so what do you do?

“The Friday Feeling” costs companies around £50m a year, with employees calling in sick, or skipping off in the afternoon to just get back home and do something else, it’s like kids bunking off school, come on we’ve all done it, admit it

So when it’s near the weekend do you keep going through the Friday and persevere the day, knowing that the weekend is just around the corner and you’ll get two days to just do whatever you want to, or do you pick up the phone and call in sick with a few coughs here and there, saying “I don’t know it just crept up on me over night *cough* I really don’t think I should be coming in today!” or do you just grin and bear it and think TGI Friday (Thank God It’s Friday) and just go in to work!

This is Sponsored Post, which is sponsored by Ebuzzing, all opinions in this post are mine and are not influenced by the sponsor

Many of us from time to time have tried price comparison websites in the past, maybe looking for that new TV or gift for a family member, and these days trying to find that item at a cheaper price is our main goal. But sometimes you also want to find a place that has a good online reputation, so that when you buy your product you know that you are getting exactly what you have paid for. So this is one of the reasons you can try Wikio Shopping; you can search for your product, find the best price available and buy it, and not only that, but Wikio Shopping also offers a vast range of products for your every need in one handy place. Now Wikio Shopping has launched in the UK and is giving us "Brits" the option of using this well-tailored website ourselves.

I’ve been asked the question “What puts you off from following people on Twitter?” many times by friends who join Twitter and want to increase Twitter followers, but are weary of who they follow back, so I thought I would take the opportunity to let you know what puts me off from following people on Twitter.

So I’m going to start this list with just the basics on what really put me off following someone on Twitter.

• Default Twitter Logo
  Now this really does annoy me, if you are serious about using Twitter then before you even attempt to follow someone, add an Avatar, it just looks so much better.
• Complete Your Twitter Bio
  Another easy and simple thing to do, by adding a bio on your Twitter profile, people will know what you tweet about etc, this will give them an incentive to possibly follow you back. Make sure that your link for your website is to your website and not a short URL or back to your Twitter page, people want to know what you do on your website. Add your location, even if it’s just the county you live in.
• Upload A Custom Background
  There are so many Twitter Tool out there now that will allow you to design a custom background, doing this will not only make your Twitter page look more professional, but, you can also use this opportunity to add a little more info about yourself on the left hand side of your Twitter page.
• Watch Your Follow and Followers Counters
  Speaking from experience, if a fellow twitter sees that you are following a large amount and hardly anyone is following you back, then they are going to be a bit dubious about you, either try to keep a healthy follow ratio or have more following you, if you have a lot following you, it usually shows that you are interesting enough to follow
• IMPORTANT – Don’t Spam
  This is one thing that everyone hates, once someone is followed they usually don’t mind a DM saying thanks for following, but constant DMs saying “buy this”, “get on of these free” and “is this you” will get them to unfollow you in a heartbeat, so just don’t do it.
• Be Yourself
  This is one thing that people don’t seem to do these days, I don’t mean tweeting things like “in the kitchen”, “watching TV”, “took the dog out”, “just had a drink” but, if you are going to tweet thing like that then add a bit of information to them, like where you are etc. eg “In the kitchen making a brilliant recipe, I’ll blog it for you all later”, “Watching a brilliant new program on TV starring @Schofe”, “Just had a drink with my good mates at the new club in London” if you are taking the dogs out, tweet some interesting photos, TweetPhoto, TwitPic or even Flickr.

So there you go, just some of the things that I follow and if you are new to Twitter then following this may improve your tweeting and hopefully your followers admiration for what you tweet about

The other day I got an email, telling me about a new site that will allow Twitter users to tweet about music they like and rate it, so I thought I would take the plunge and check it out.

The site is called Musicvault.fm and it’s just so simple to use, you can use the search engine that they have on the site, or even just do a direct tweet which they will pick up, all you have to do is tweet in this format “Group/Album” XX% your comment @musicvaultfm i.e: “Muse/The Resistance” 90% Awesome record! @musicvaultfm

Then once Musicvault.fm catch your tweet they publish your opinion on their website, it’s really that easy, so I gave it a try and did one for one of my favourite albums by Royksopp, Melody A.M. and then searched for another album, this time I tried my own band, Remergence and it didn’t find anything, but, you can also search via Last.fm and this did produce the results I would have expected..

Now I’m not entirely sure how often I would use Musicvault.fm, but saying that, it is a handy little Twitter website that I think a lot of music fans out there will use to spread the word about albums that they enjoy, maybe I should start using it to promote some of those many artists out there that I personally know that would love the extra links back to their albums to help them show off their talents, hmm.

It’s all a bit of fun, something that you may or may not take seriously, but at least your Twitter followers will know what music you like

As always Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland was going to see a lot of Hype, let’s face it, with films such as Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd in your catalogue, it is hard for anyone not to be excited about the latest movie that Burton has been imagined up.

After reading a few of the reviews, I have to say I was slightly disappointed as at the very most I had seen this film coming in at 3 stars from all the big reviewers. Nevertheless I cannot say I am the one for agreeing with the newspapers so I thought I would actually go and see this movie myself.

After the first ten minutes I was not impressed at all, that is until Alice once again found herself falling headfirst into the deepest hole and landing in Burton’s amazing rendition of Wonderland.

The leading lady Mia Wasikowska had no complaints from me as she played an older version of Alice perfectly keeping that innocence that the character is so famous for. As always it would seem Burton spent no expense on the costume creations with each being crazier than the last. The real life acting and animation is seamless and arguably just as good as seen in the blockbuster Avatar.

Although I first thought that Depp would be the favourite character here playing the Mad Hatter who has always been my personal favourite, I was very impressed with Matt Lucas as Tweedle Dee and Dum. However the March Hare had to be my favourite even though he only had a couple of lines which mostly consisted of the word SPOONS!

The only issues I had with the film are really just the beginning and end sequences which are very dull and almost an insult to the usual madness that we are so used to seeing in a Tim Burton film.

Only Burton could make a story such as Alice In Wonderland even stranger than it already is and he does it with his usual dark and mysterious storytelling ability that works even better with something like this. A great movie overall and I would recommend taking the entire family to go and see this.
The verdict- 4/5

Picture source Wikipedia