Interesting fact: in order to hide the Google Streetview car from view in Google Maps and Google Earth, it looks like the "ground" below the car is composited from the shots immediately before/after each other and projected over the car's outline.

As a result of this process, you can usually detect a rough outline of the car by seeing where the road texture is elongated and tracing a border around it.

.. I wonder if anyone is bored enough to catalogue this information and see what kind of cars Google Streetview contractors prefer to use? I sure hope they're not gas-guzzlers ;]

Somewhere along our path, the novel concept of "Web 2.0" and mainstream blogging became big business, or rather - the number of people blogging about blogging reached a critical mass.

One can aspire to create blog content and make a fortune in ad-revenue and premium content. In reality though, this will never happen. Why? The signal-to-noise ratio is astronomically low - there are simply too many people talking about nothing.

If you want to try really hard, you'll undoubtedly read the blogs of successful bloggers to get their hot tips about how to make your blog popular. There are so many of these that you won't have any trouble finding them.

Wait, back up a second - successful blogs about making successful blogs? Look at the number of readers hitting these sites compared to that of a site with their own home-grown content.

The truth is, anything worth talking about has nothing to do with you - and will already be covered by a number of specialty sites. If you want to go from rags to riches by creating a successful blog, write about how to be one.

So without further ado, here are my tips for writing a successful blog about writing successful blogs:

• Lie - Your opinions on global warming might not matter much if you're some sixteen year old emo kid, but if you're an environmental biologist, who's going to prove you wrong?
• Cheat - Once you've gotten your site set up, don't wait for it to become popular! Subscribe to a blog spam service and force it down everyone's throats!
• Steal - Have you ever seen a successful person working hard? Neither should your readers - Google for whatever you want to write about and claim it as your own!

So there you go! Take these tips and start your own blog about blogging and being a success about blogging. Don't forget to use keywords. Remember, it's practically impossible to do worse than what's already out there!

So I haven't posted for a while. Things have been far too busy to think about it, and I don't want all my posts on here to be completely self-obsessed rants - I'd like to think I'm better than that. Wait... I just went there, so I guess I'm just as bad as everyone else... :grin:

Also, on the awesome front (Harry Potter spoiler!)... I was so right about the RAB thing in Harry Potter.