Having purchased a new camera, I was honored to take pictures of my first model… At least, he sat still during the session.

OK. Yes, it’s ‘Orange Bear’… OK. It’s difficult to find good models at 1:00am. But I would like to share my first photograph with my readership!

On a more serious note, I’ve found a good review of the Lumix I bought. It says a lot of interesting things:

Plus points: Good wide angle lens, small form, don’t need to reset the time every time I change the battery (bad, Kokak, BAD!). Overall, its interface is much quicker to get to know than my previous cameras, and some of the quirks of the Kodak are gone: themes (who cares!), sound themes (why?), and it starts *very* fast and quietly.

I haven’t found any negative points yet, but I’m sure I will. No camera will be perfect.

My article of the day goes to this article that examines Google’s stance on paid links and asks if Google is being reasonable or not.

Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On GoogleMore and more, I’ve been seeing people wondering if they’ve lost traffic on Google because they were detected to be selling paid links. However, Google’s generally never penalized sites for link selling. If spotted, in most cases all Google would do is prevent links from a site or pages in a site from passing PageRank. Now that’s changing. If you sell links, Google might indeed penalize your site plus drop the PageRank score that shows for it.

It is well worth reading this piece of news, and considering for yourself what to do. In the face of Google’s slow PR rank update, flipflop on paid links, and general high handedness in all things search, some companies are now exploring other metrics as a way to figure out what their audience’s worth. And some bloggers, like John Chow, seem particularly unphased by the issues, despite still not ranking well, after his penalty by Google.

I’m not an SEO expert, so I’d appreciate some feedback on that one!

Well, I don’t quite get the title, but perhaps that’s because I’m not 23 or 33! Jerry has volunteered to be #3 in this month’s buzz your BlogFest. His blog focuses a lot on the outdoor life, esp. with his interest in sports, skiing and is well worth skimming through. Here are some of the posts I found and enjoyed especially:

• Just a few moments to think can make all the difference! (I can relate to that sentiment)

• Hey! Put me down before you jump through that! (It’s just amusing!)

• Digital cameras are the way to go (I lost mine!)

• Bend it like Pele (Beckham’s an interesting character)

Couple of suggestions for Jerry: Do consider the visual aspect of your blog and how that will impact your readers. This will affect how long people stay on your blog:

1. Do please consider changing your theme and make it more distinctive;

2. don’t put light colored text against a dark background (It doesn’t make for easy reading);

3. and your sidebar has more than 25 individual elements in it, trim that number, if you can!

4. Do consider trimming the sheer number of posts on the front page, I stopped counting when I got past fifteen posts. Most people place a maximum of ten posts on the front page.

Hope you find these suggestions useful. Overall, I like the bold pictures that you include from time to time, and, though I’m not a football fan, I was intrigued to read about David Beckham’s career. That was interesting how you put paid to the notion that Beckham was all washed up in soccer! I’m always the optimist but I was puzzled about Beckham’s career move.

If you’d like a blogbuzz, like Jerry’s, then hop on over to buzz your BlogFest, read the instructions, and sign up today. There are only 27 buzzes to go, and 23 days!