This is a guest post by Matt Moran...

Google Slides (formerly Google Presentations) has added the ability to embed "Unlisted" YouTube videos into your presentations. This has tremendous implications and usefulness for content publishers. In effect, presentations can be maintained and kept up to date without having to republish all of the content.

Let me explain...

I am a business coach... and a consultant... and an author... and a speaker... Plus I write & perform the occasional song. Content is my domain. Content is King!

One set of tools I use is Google Drive (Google Docs). If you are NOT using Google Drive... Create a Google (Gmail) account and start today!

We've put in a shopping cart for a client that's not working, and we need some help!

The cart is currently using the WP-ecommerce plugin. Even the developers of this plugin admit this thing needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch. Yeah. Anyway, the products on the site require a very sophisticated level of functionality that affects shipping based on country and zip code.

We've hacked the plugin to pieces to make this work, and there are still errors that are costing her sales. It would be easy to limit shipping on a product-by-product basis, but that's not the way her store works. Like on Cafe Press: I want the slogan that says "My mom can beat up your dad." Once I select the slogan, I can choose to purchase that slogan on a t-shirt, mug, or bumper sticker. However, if I live in London, I shouldn't even be offered the bumper sticker, for example, since it can't be shipped.

See our problem? Got any WordPress solutions for us??

I have some mp3 audio files I've recorded and would like to have people who visit my site be able to listen to the audio without popping up new windows or having to download the files. Is there some easy way to accomplish this?

Hi Dave. I'm a big fan of your site and love that you're doing so many reviews now. I've noticed, however, that there are some other people who contribute reviews too. Nice. How can I become a guest reviewer for your site?

I have two accounts set up for my WordPress blog and I'd like to be able to have all my posts from a single account. Every so often I forget which one I'm logged in as, however, and post as the wrong WordPress user. Is there a way to change authors after the fact?

I have a wordpress blog that was using categories in the url structure like this:

/category_name/post_name/

Then I had read somewhere that if you change it to just /post_name/ that it will automatically redirect the old to the new.

It does that, however, somehow Google Webmaster Tools is reporting both and giving us warnings about duplicate title tags, etc.

Do you have a solution for that?

I like your website and got great info on disclaimer [[ ed: they even wrote about my disclaimer in BusinessWeek ]], so I decide to ask you about what to worry about when creating a blog to include others ideas?

Specifically, I work with people with disabilities and want to create my first blog with the goal: " Everyone's ideas and resources on participation of individuals with complex communication needs in society. "

What kind of rights disclaimer do you suggest? Should I have them send me their ideas and I post it on the site or should they write it in comments or another section? In addition, what permission do I need if they send me photos/video?

I'm about to migrate my blog from one server to another and a wordpress guru friend of mine said it's important that I disable commenting on my blog before I do so. What's he talking about and how do I turn off comments on my site, then turn them back on?

This is super frustrating, Dave! I just hooked up the RSS feed from my WordPress blog to show up automatically in my Facebook fan page using the slick RSS Graffiti application. Problem is, nothing ever shows up and I see the error Missing publication date in 10 items in your feed. What the heck? How do I fix it?

I've just set up my first WordPress blog and I'm pretty psyched about it, but I want to let a few other people have permission to publish too, as contributing writers. I've seen people do this on other WordPress blogs. How do I give them permission to add content on mine, without them being able to monkey with everything else behind the scenes?

Hi! I love your website askdavetaylor. I keep going back in search of ideas for my own site. I am in the processes of re-design (getting rid of copyrighted materials, such as game sites, etc). This may be a strange question to ask, one you have most probably been asked a few times before, but do you have any suggestions on topic ideas I could include on my site based around the Nintendo 3DS system?

I notice that sometimes on the Google search results that the author of the article is displayed next to the match in the search. Sweet. How do I do that? Is it tied to the addition of the new rel=author attribute?

My online business has recently started receiving unsolicited orders from clients in a couple of foreign countries, so I've decided to create translated websites for each of those countries to see what the demand is like. The problem is, I'm not sure exactly how I should optimize these sites properly so they'll rank in the foreign language search engines, especially since I don't speak either language! Any advice?

I've been diligently working on my blog for a year or so now and am getting some decent traffic but I'm still curious about where I can expand and grow with an interest in better serving my reader base and gaining even more traffic. One thing that's caught my attention is the search on my site. Specifically, I realize that there's no way to know what searches people enter on Google that should lead them to my site, but what about when the search is actually on my site? And more importantly, what searches could they be doing that produce zero results? Is it even possible to figure out empty search results on my blog?

After the recent 25+ hour outage on the Tumblr site, thousands of bloggers had a chance to think about what it would be like to lose everything on their site, all their entries, all the comments that others have left, all the effort and work. Gone. Fortunately Tumblr came back up after fixing its database problems, but imagine if it hadn't, or had to back up a few weeks -- or longer! -- to get things working. This leads to the obvious question: Can you backup, save or archive your Tumblr blog? Turns out, you can...

I've been inspired by your Facebook fan page, Dave, and have one of my own. Now that I have it, though, I'd like to be able to inclue a "like" box on my blog so that people not only see a link to the fan page, but see a few members, etc. I have seen it done on other blogs but can't figure out what they did. Is it a Wordpress plugin?

Okay, so I know that the Apple iPad is supposed to be the savior of the Western world and all that, but I am a simple blogging sort of guy. My question: if I am running Movable Type (MT), not Wordpress, can I create new blog entries from the iPad itself?

[This is a guest submission...]

Perhaps the biggest compliment a blogger can receive is more traffic (an increase in the number of visitors) to their site. It creates a feeling of accomplishment and high credibility. Any blogger would enjoy the reputation of having their opinions and information spread across the Internet, reaching thousands, if not millions of people.

This question (more like a desire) consumes the minds of most bloggers and it's quite legit. In fact, every time I talk to someone who blogs, the first thing they ask me is "How can I improve my SEO" once they find out I'm an SEO guy.

I have a writer who produces content for me on a weekly basis, content that includes photographs or other pictures. Very helpful, but he submits his material in Apple Pages format and I have no idea how to get the image out of the document and into a separate file when I want to save it to my blog.

Hi Dave. Do you have any advice for a Web site that's primarily user generated content, some of which has affiliate links embedded? Do I need to highlight each and every link or can I use a blanket disclaimer to meet the FTC web disclosure guidelines?

I have an accessory line that I have started and will also be putting my canvases up for sale. I need to create a way for people to contact me and also make them able to purchase my products off the Internet. People have told me to start a blog, others said a website. I know it costs money to keep a blog and a website, but I am completely clueless. How much should I be paying to have a website and a blog? Which is better for my business?

A friend pointed out to me a few days ago that if I were to have a data hiccup or have my system crash that I could lose everything I've ever written - and what everyone else has added as comments - from my Wordpress blog. Definitely not good. Is there some easy way to back up my blog so that I can insulate myself from this danger?

I've been diligently working on my blog for a year or so now and am getting some decent traffic but I'm still curious about where I can expand and grow with an interest in better serving my reader base and gaining even more traffic. One thing that's caught my attention is the search on my site. Specifically, I realize that there's no way to know what searches people enter on Google that should lead them to my site, but what about when the search is actually on my site? And more importantly, what searches could they be doing that produce zero results? Is it even possible to figure out empty search results on my blog?

After the recent 25+ hour outage on the Tumblr site, thousands of bloggers had a chance to think about what it would be like to lose everything on their site, all their entries, all the comments that others have left, all the effort and work. Gone. Fortunately Tumblr came back up after fixing its database problems, but imagine if it hadn't, or had to back up a few weeks -- or longer! -- to get things working. This leads to the obvious question: Can you backup, save or archive your Tumblr blog? Turns out, you can...

I've been inspired by your Facebook fan page, Dave, and have one of my own. Now that I have it, though, I'd like to be able to inclue a "like" box on my blog so that people not only see a link to the fan page, but see a few members, etc. I have seen it done on other blogs but can't figure out what they did. Is it a Wordpress plugin?

Okay, so I know that the Apple iPad is supposed to be the savior of the Western world and all that, but I am a simple blogging sort of guy. My question: if I am running Movable Type (MT), not Wordpress, can I create new blog entries from the iPad itself?

[This is a guest submission...]

Perhaps the biggest compliment a blogger can receive is more traffic (an increase in the number of visitors) to their site. It creates a feeling of accomplishment and high credibility. Any blogger would enjoy the reputation of having their opinions and information spread across the Internet, reaching thousands, if not millions of people.

This question (more like a desire) consumes the minds of most bloggers and it's quite legit. In fact, every time I talk to someone who blogs, the first thing they ask me is "How can I improve my SEO" once they find out I'm an SEO guy.

I have a writer who produces content for me on a weekly basis, content that includes photographs or other pictures. Very helpful, but he submits his material in Apple Pages format and I have no idea how to get the image out of the document and into a separate file when I want to save it to my blog.

Hi Dave. Do you have any advice for a Web site that's primarily user generated content, some of which has affiliate links embedded? Do I need to highlight each and every link or can I use a blanket disclaimer to meet the FTC web disclosure guidelines?

I have an accessory line that I have started and will also be putting my canvases up for sale. I need to create a way for people to contact me and also make them able to purchase my products off the Internet. People have told me to start a blog, others said a website. I know it costs money to keep a blog and a website, but I am completely clueless. How much should I be paying to have a website and a blog? Which is better for my business?

A friend pointed out to me a few days ago that if I were to have a data hiccup or have my system crash that I could lose everything I've ever written - and what everyone else has added as comments - from my Wordpress blog. Definitely not good. Is there some easy way to back up my blog so that I can insulate myself from this danger?

Dave, I have heard that writing guest posts for other people's blogs is a good way to get more readers to my blog. Sounds good to me, but I am finding that it isn't easy to find bloggers who are willing to publish my stuff. Got any ideas that can help me?

I wanted to reach out to a local movie theater to see if they woud pay me a small fee to keep a banner ad for their films/theaters on my movie reviews site. Even if it's a few pennies I'd be ok with it ... better than nada. I have their pr contact for the ad divsion ... any tips on proceeding?

I've been noticing over time that I have a lot of subscribers to my content on Friendfeed. That's cool, but now that I look at the service, there's a lot it can aggregate, including the items I mark as shared in Google Reader, my RSS reader of choice. What I can't figure out is how to tie the two together!

I am a big fan of both your blog and problogger, and both of you seem to be fans of the Chitika ad network, in addition to various other ways that you make money. Darren says that it's a big revenue stream for him, and you've written that minor tweaks in how you have things set up on your blog have resulted in some major bucks coming your way too. I'm in! But, how do I get started?

I've been using a separate application to keep track of all my RSS channels on my Apple iMac, but now that I just downloaded the shiny new Safari 4 browser from Apple, I'd like to switch over to using its built-in RSS reader. Problem is, I can see how to read an RSS feed, but I can't see much else of how to work with RSS within the browser.

I've been trying to figure out whether there's a way that I can automate digging through the "referrals" on my site so I can see what searches people did to end up on one of my Web site pages. I'm running a Linux server and have Apache installed, so I get a huge log file with tons of info. But what I'd love is a simple script that will let me get email once a week with a sorted list of what searches people did to get to me. Doable?

I've been using Movable Type almost as long as you have, Dave, and just noticed that the way you name your blog entry archives is pretty different to how Movable Type 4 does it by default. I'm setting up a new blog for my sister and would like to see if I can mirror your archive filename format. My question is: how do you change the template file naming scheme in MT4?

This might be the last idiotic question you'll see for the next twelve months, but I still find myself bookmarking weblogs so i can go back and read them again. I have an RSS reader configured, but don't know how to subscribe to blogs. I use Firefox: is there a shortcut?

As per your recommendation, I use Google Reader to track all of my RSS feeds and since I read a lot more than my colleagues, they've asked if there's some way for them to see what I think is most important. I know that the "shared" feature is what I want, but I don't see how to actually tie it into anything.

At Blogworld last week, I heard loud and clear from a number of people that it's a good idea to have my Facebook friends notified when I have new blog entries published. Cool. But how the heck do I do that?

I've been using Wordpress for a while now and it's very easy, which is cool, but I want to branch out and start including photographs and other graphics in my postings. I tried dragging and dropping images onto the edit window and it was a fail. How do I add graphic pictures to my blog entries, Dave?

I just joined a new company here in Boulder that's started to gain some national attention. That's cool, but the problem is, we don't always get positive publicity. As it's my job to manage our corporate reputation (well, that's not actually my title but it's part of my job responsibilities) I need to find some tools that will help me monitor mentions of the company and how it affects our reputation online. And did I mention that we have no budget for this task?

I have heard you talk more than once about how you write blog entries and schedule them for future publication so that you can space things out and work ahead, rather than having to create a new blog entry every day. Nice, but how do I do that in Wordpress?

I've heard from a lot of people - including you, Dave - that interviews are a great way to add high-value content to your blogging efforts, and while I have a pretty good idea how to interview someone, I don't know how to find people to interview. Do you have any suggestions?

A geeky friend of mine just told me that he's been seeing hackers slip a few lines of code into their Apache web server configuration and have all their traffic redirected to porn sites. Now I'm paranoid! How can I detect if this has happened to my own server?

Hi Dave. I'm a follower of your blog..its wonderful that you answer so many questions. I'm in a trouble and hope you will help me. :-)

I have a blog on Blogger. Recently I discovered that whenever I post in my blog a copy of my post is being copied into a website automatically and that I am losing all my traffic. Not only me but also the same problem persists with another blogger...

I'm getting depressed & feeling very sad. What to do?

Hi Dave, love the blog. My question for you is what is the best way to get bloggers to utilize and write about my research. I work for a company called VideoBloom and I do a lot of research on online video that I'm trying to get bloggers to write about. I read your response on how to get bloggers to write about your company, but does that approach change when you have research to offer them? Thanks!

I was visiting a friend's Livejournal blog and to leave a comment I needed an "OpenID". But I have no idea what that is and where one registers for an Open ID. Does it cost money?

I want to get into blogging, but I hear from my friends that it's really hard because after a few weeks you start to suffer from writer's block. I generally like to know what I'm getting into before I dive in, so do I need to be worried? How do you avoid writer's block as an author or blogger?

I'm running a weblog for my company and we have some people from the business community who are adding comments after our blog entries, which is great. Other people who we don't know put in incorrect or off topic remarks and I want to just delete them, but I'm not sure whether that's okay or not. Specifically, isn't it censorship if I delete the remarks people leave on our site?

I own ledzeppelintickets.com and have 50,000 tickets to the concert that never happened. The story is on the home page. How do I harness the blogsphere to create a buzz for this item that is so targeted to a genre? I know that there must be a way to really jump start my sales with this method. Your resume is impeccable and I trust your input.

I read your earlier article about adding users to an MT 3.3 Movable Type blog, and am wondering if you can also share how you schedule blog postings for the future? I have heard you say more than once about the benefit of being able to write a week's worth of blog entries in a day or two...

I'm running Movable Type for my blog, as you are with Ask Dave Taylor, and I want to let some friends add content and new articles, but don't want to have them messing things up. How do I set this up?

Dave, I have a client who is considering using Kontera to insert keyword ad links. Our recommendation to them was to create internal linking, not keyword ads in the text. I remember you discussing removing the keyword ads. Was there a reason for this in regards to SERPs, or was that purely due to expert credibility?

I'm trying to figure out all this blogging stuff, but I'm a bit confused about two aspects of blogging: pings and trackbacks. What's the difference?

I have a couple of blogs (using Blogger) that are monetized using Google. But, the ads that appear are often completely unrelated to the content - sometimes embarrassingly so. Is there any way of getting the ads to be more relevant? I do use tags, but that doesn't seem to help. Sigh.

I want to add photos to my blog, and a buddy told me that I can use images from the Yahoo Flickr site. I don't want to get in trouble, though, so can you tell me if there's some way to identify those photographs and other images that are legal for me to republish?

I've been blogging for a few weeks now and have taken to heart the advice you gave about trying to include graphics, images or photographs in blog entries. Problem is, I can't figure out how to have the text flow around the graphic and it's getting really annoying. How do you do that on your business blog entries?

I know you have shown how to add a Google search box and such to my site (see Add Google search to your site) and even saw that you've written about how to utilize Google Custom Search (see Add Google Custom Search to your site), but I want to implement a cool widget I saw on another site from Lijit. Do you have any info on that?

I am about to open a new business (hopefully) and was told that blogging can really help - not only with website rankings but for more interest. So, my question comes to this:

If you do a business blog, should you ever delete or edit a customers bad entry about the business? If so, under what circumstances? If no, what if you could tell he was from a competitor and just trashing your business?

Second question, when should you open a business blog? Immediately when your business opens or after some time? Any suggestions here?

Now, the big question: do you need to do this for your business to be more successful as we move into 2008 and beyond?

You know you do.

The problem is, who do you turn to for trustworthy, accurate and honest answers, advice that can help you rise above the noise of your marketplace?

And how the heck can you get a free holiday in Hawaii out of the deal?

My answer to you: The Aloha Social Media Summit.

In the interest of gaining more visibility for my new cat blog, I want to have a link on the blog itself that will easily let people "favorite" it on Technorati. How do I do that?

The biggest thing I want to get out of my blog is to leverage it in every way possible, and I thought part of that was by "syndicating" posts to other sites. I got the impression that that is possible on more than just other sites you may own. Is it possible to syndicate titles of new posts to other sites?

For example, when you make a new post on apparenting.com, or askdavetaylor.com, your site Intuitive.com also updates on the home page, sending a link to that newest post. Is it possible to do the same with other sites that you recommend using to help get extra exposure such as myspace, facebook, squidoo, digg, technorati, etc. or am I mixing things up? (In other words, are all of those additonal sites able to automatically update with snippets of new posts, or is that a manual process?

I love your site. I learn a great deal from you. But I am stumped and need some help: I publish a small blog that I hope to monetize. With blogs I subscribe to, I like to read the content in a feed reader and rarely click through to a site. I would like to insert my own banner ads in my feed but have not figured out a good way to do so. I use typepad for my blog. (An arrangement similar to what self-help guru Steve Paulina does in his feed with product recommendations is what I would like to do.) Can you help?

Just bumped into the latest bit of blogging jargon: a "tumbleblog". What the heck is it, something out of the old west?

Well, mine is an online lingerie store. A healthy one, ok ?! My level of HTML is simple one... things like css, php, still don't know how to use.. What kind of contents of article should i have?

What are your thoughts about putting an email/contact address on a blog?  Sometimes people don’t want to leave a comment and send me long letters through the ‘conversation’ function at my Etsy shop, which is really strange, because they have to go to a whole different website and set up an account.   I don’t want the email addy to be harvested but I think I need a way for people to get hold of me aside from the comments.  What’s your recommendation?

I notice that about two weeks ago your site changed subtly, Dave. Before, I'd click on "POST" to submit a comment and then wait and wait while it processed. Now it's still as slow (sorry!) but as soon as I click on that POST button it grays out so I can't click on it again. Cool. How do you do that?

Over time I've managed to create a bunch of different blogs, some of which are live and others that have been relegated to the digital recycle bin. Except they're still in my Movable Type installation. How do I actually delete a blog from MT?

You mentioned that Google Reader was the only reader that you use. The R.S.S. reader I've used, FeedDemon has been annoying me with frames that I don't want, and stories I've deleted coming back. I've just started using Google Reader because you mentioned, so I thought I give it a try. However, not to say I'm completely clueless, but I can't figure out how to delete a story from Google Reader when I'm done reading it.

Okay, so I read through your earlier blog entry about how to change default page view in Google Reader and was struck by one thing: Your link on the bottom of the article to "subscribe to this blog in Google Reader". How did you do that?

I keep reading from people like Robert Scoble that there are all sorts of keyboard shortcuts that make Google Reader one of the fastest for reading lots of RSS feeds. All that I've figured out is the space bar, however. Can you share them all for us?

Okay, I'm dabbling with Google Reader and am finding it pretty cool except for one big issue: every time I start up the program I have to read their "helpful hints" and am forced to click on "All Items" to see my news. Surely there's a solution?

I've been using NewsGator Online to read my RSS feeds for years, but with the beta of their new "Ajax" interface, I think it's time to move to something else: Google Reader. Can you step me through exporting my RSS subscription list (in OPML, I guess) and importing it into Google Reader?

How to add a comment box in my blog? This is my blog: www.sillydrunkfish.blogspot.com. I would love to have a comment box that open for public to comment about my blogs, but i don't have one.

I have a wordpress site. My challenge? I wish to have my home page display only my latest 5 entries, yet want to have categories for my blog (when clicked upon) display all of the previous posts for that category, not just 5. I am not a programmer so I don't know or understand much about coding. However, I have been told that this is not possible. Is that really the case? Is the program as inflexible as this? Or is it just a matter of taking time to program in a different number of posts for the homepage versus the other page displays.

I am a bit frustrated that my ISP lets me do whatever I want to the software in my account, but doesn't make my actual log files available from my server. This effectively means I can't track my traffic. Or can I? Are there solutions for tracking site traffic without being able to install software on my server?

Hi Dave. I work at a small, new company and I've been hounding the CEO to start a corporate blog. He mainly interested in increasing Pagerank and I've explained that a corp-blog will help with Pagerank, page views, branding, et al. (That is correct, isn't it?) Well, he's warming up to the idea and I want to give a roll out plan, but my tech knowledge only goes so far.

Ideally I'd like propose something that means nobody else has to do more work, so I can own it. When I saw that Blogger is now offering custom domain names (or whatever it is), I thought that might be my ticket. Would that be a quick solution to what I'm trying to do? What exactly happens behind the scenes there? The URL shows our site, but the blog is actually on Blogger's servers? Will that undermine the Pagerank goodness we'd get from (the inenvitable) in-bound links to our (high quality content) corporate blog?

I dunno if you can help me out, but I've been using Typepad for quite a while now and it's time to move to my own blogging solution on my own server. My question is: how the heck do I actually cancel my Typepad account?

I manage a Movable Type blog that has a number of different authors and one of my less prolific writers just emailed me saying she can't log in any more. Is there a way I can change her password as the MT administrator?

I just purchased Growing Your Business with Google and can't wait to start reading it. Here's my questions. What are the major differences between Blogger and WordPress and why would I want to use one rather than the other?

I'm a big fan of the book reviews that Thomas Duff writes on Amazon.com and was suddenly struck with the question: can I actually get his reviews mailed to me so I can keep up on what he's recommending? For that matter, there are a number of other reviews I've found that have very similar tastes to my own, so I'd really like to have some way to keep track of what they're recommending too.

I'm kinda stuck, Dave. I really want to learn how to really focus my blog efforts so I can gain more business advantage, but I haven't been inspired yet. Worse, I am stuck out in the boonies and don't have any Internet folk or bloggers in the area who can help me advance. So, help, what do I do?

I'm pulling out my hair! I want to include images in my blog entries and have those images show up in the RSS feed too, but either I end up with no image showing up at all, or I end up with the text abutting the image, which looks terrible. What's the best practice with this, Dave?

I have a problem with my Google Adsense, I have placed it on my blog as per your directions [see Get Started with AdSense]. The thing is when I place the code in my template and preview it, is all ok, but when I publish it I get the PSA adverts instead (I changed it now to a white fill). The strange thing is that when I click on the individual posts the adsense adverts appear all ok.

I just read about a new blog for money service with the exceptionally weird name of CREAMaid. What's it about, how does it work, and can I really make a few bucks signing up for its service? Thanks!

I have a pretty long list of sites that I ping but only recently realized that I have no way of pinging the new Google Blogsearch service when I have a new entry on my MT blog! Is there a way to do this that I just haven't bumped into?

I don't get it. From my statistics, it appears that I have a pretty good readership for my weblog, about 200-300 people per day, but no-one ever comments on what I'm writing. I just don't get it, what's wrong? is there some design error on my site, or ... ?

I was reading through some of your myspace help and it's great. thanks so much for letting me tweak my background without having to slap a bunch of stupid adverts on for your site! :) While I was reading your profile on myspace [dave's profile on myspace], I noticed you had a nice effect with some text that you somehow put into a box. How did you do that??

I'm a big fan of Google News - http://news.google.com/ - and want to know how some blogs have become news sources! How can I have my blog become part of the elite Google News source feed list?

My daughter is a complete Neopets fanatic and has asked me to help her keep track of what people are saying about neopets in the blogosphere. I tried using NewsGator [see Searching the Blogosphere with NewsGator Online] but its search feed had too much junk included. Is there a better alternative?

One thing I really like about your blog, Dave, is your little links to both Digg and Del.icio.us. Simple, neat, but I'm baffled, how the heck do you do that within a Movable Type template? Do you mind sharing with us rabble? :]

I read a ton of blogs every day and sometimes I see a video from YouTube that someone's included on their entry. I know how to do that [see Add YouTube Video to your Blog for a tutorial] but how do I easily copy a video from one page to another?

I'm really getting into blogging, but am starting to get a bit paranoid (especially after I read about how Robert Scoble lost years of his blog entries after 9/11 [ref]) and feel like I really need to create my own backup of my blog, not rely on someone else to manage it. How do I do that in Movable Type?

I keep finding these great videos on YouTube and want to include some of them in my Typepad blog but I have no idea how to do that. I tried dragging and dropping while I was composing an entry, but was totally unsurprised when it didn't work either. Can it be done?

Dave, I'm impressed! My review of Growing Your Business with Google hadn't been up for much longer than an hour before you had already commented on it -- and posted the review on your own website. (Embarrassingly before I corrected a few typos in my own article.) You have this blogging thing down to a science! Which leads me to my question: What secret weapon (or weapons) do you use to keep so up-to-date on who is writing or blogging about you on the web?

Can you give me the rudimentary HTML tags that I need to be able to create bold, italics, change font colors and include both hypertext references and images to my blog entries? Thanks!

Ever since you recommended it at a conference a while back, I've been a big fan of NewsGator Online as my RSS reader. As you said, being able to catch up on my feeds from any Web browser anywhere in the world is darn convenient. However, there's a dark cloud: I have been using various "smart searches" to keep track of our company, our competitors, my wife, etc., and find that I get the same match again and again in the reader. Is there some way I can create a more sophisticated search?

Dave, I'm awful curious about how exactly you have the PSP book advert that shows up on your pages related to the Sony PSP, but nowhere else on your site. Is that some fancy trick you're doing with Movable Type, or is that some separate bit of programming wizardry you've done?

I've been using Blogger for a while and have grown to really like, especially after I read your note about changing templates (How to change your Blogger template). My question now is that I have a new design that's mostly reds but the Blogger NavBar is blue. Can I change its color?

I have been blogging pretty happily at Blogger.com for a while, but now I have decided it's time for a bit of a facelift, and I've heard that Blogger just added a bunch of new templates. Nice! How do I get to the template setting and change my appearance?

I've been blogging for a while now and am having a good time, but I'm now a bit puzzled about how to expand into the next wave of content: video. Specifically, I bump into funny or informative videos on Google Video but have no idea whether I can embed it on my own page and if I can, how to do that. Can you offer some pointers?

I'm interested in watching how the online world responds to the release of the brand-new Volvo c30 coupe, and am wondering what tools are out there to make it easy to accomplish. I know that I can use something like Google, but that seems pretty inefficient. Also, I'm imagining that this is probably a more general question.

Dave, I host my images on my own server, but I hate using some of the more primitive tools to work with it, especially FTP. So, tell me, is there a way to add images to my blog entries if I'm using Wordpress without using the file transfer protocol software?

I've just started blogging and am fascinated by the recent announcement of PayPerPost.com, a site that appears to offer me money to write favorably about products from specific advertisers. Even without any traffic to my weblog at all, I can now make at least a few bucks to pay for hosting and perhaps even a nice dinner once a month with my g/f. What's your take on the service, Dave, and are you going to sign up?

I heard that eBay's announced a new blogging tool, and I want to use it, because, well, I think it can help drive traffic to my eBay store and would be a fun additional marketing tool too. Not really too sure about blogging in general, actually, but it seems like it'd be cool and goodness knows, my kids have been talking about blogs and blogging for years now!

I've been using SixApart's Typepad blogging system for a few months with good results, and it's now time for me to stop being "something".typepad.com and use my own domain instead. I skimmed some of the tutorials on the Typepad site, but they're baffling. Can you help me out?

Bit of a crisis: I have been dabbling with creating an RSS feed of a private discussion group I'm in, and somehow Feedster has found it and indexed it. The rest of the list members are in an uproar and I really need to remove the data from Feedster, but I don't see how to do that. Help!!

Dave, I've bumped into a new service that claims to pay you for simply adding specific links to your weblog entries, which seems like a darn easy way to make some money as a blogger. The service is called Blogitive and I'm just wondering if it's legit or not?

I have a blog, www.globalcctvhub.com and I have set up tags to link through Technorati.

The problem is none of my tags register on Technorati, I have asked them for help, but many weeks later still have recieved no response.

Should I adjust the blog I write for my company so it appears correctly when accessed via RSS readers? Is there a standard format in which the layout and content is delivered to RSS readers that I can use to ensure that my blog appears the way I want?

I'm a bit baffled, to be honest. I'm getting comments left on my weblog that kinda/sorta seem like they're relevant, but don't entirely make sense and aren't relevant to the actual discussion, though they're more or less on topic. Is it the work of some semi-incoherent blogosphere denizen, or is it actually some sort of subtle comment spam?

I have a blog on blogspot.com (also known as Blogger) and I have noticed that many people have gotten rid of the navigational toolbar at the top of the page when one views their blog. I would like to do the same. How can I get rid of it? You can view the blog but please don't publish the address on your website. Thank a billion! Trevor

I hate to sound like a groupie or something, but I love your site, Dave, and I'd love to be able to include a little box somewhere on my own site that featured your latest entries! Is this doable, and if so, how do I do it?

I'm thinking about creating a new weblog ezine where I'd invite a bunch of bloggers to contribute their best articles to my site for republication. I've looked around and found a bunch of different multi-author blogs, but my big concern is managing the editorial quality: I don't want everything to be under the control of the authors, I want to be a "managing editor" for the site. How do existing sites manage this?

I have set up a blog using WordPress and it works well, though, unfortunately, it doesn't write itself. :-)

My question is two-fold. First, what do you use to set up your weblog, or what service do you use? And, second, is there any way to keep *##@ texas hold-em spammers from leaving comments without shutting off the comment feature? I haven't taken the time to research the support since I've been too lazy to dig, but it would be great if you had some solution.

I've been running my new weblog -- blog.getyouhealthy.com -- for a few months now and as far as I can tell Google still hasn't stopped by to visit my site or index me. I've heard about something called a "sandbox" but I don't know what that is and whether I'm in it. If I am, how do I get out of it? If not, why else might I be missing from Google?

I really like how you have your weblog Ask Dave Taylor split into a question on the home page and an answer on the subsequent permanent page for that entry. I want to do something like that for my own weblog too, with the first paragraph or two on the home page and the rest of the article 'continued' on a subsequent page. I'm using SixApart's TypePad, however. is that doable?

This may seem like a basic question, Dave, but I've been reading lots of weblogs and I'm pretty motivated to get started with one of my own. But I don't want a diary and don't think anyone else cares about what movies I like or what restaurants I frequent, I want to write about topics of relevance to my customers so I can grow my business. Finally, I like classes much more than just reading Web sites. Suggestions?

My weblog is now showing up on Feedster, but it has a dumb "i" icon rather than my logo or something else cool and eye-catching. I want to change it, but I have to claim my blog? What's that all about and how do I do it?

Hi Dave, can you help me? I have a website and am partnering with a business blogger (Michael Pollock) on a new venture. But I also want to start my own blog.

I know a lot about text ads and pay per click and SEO and blogging and stuff and want to include "monetizing" links in my blog. BUT I am not tech oriented and don't have time to become proficient. What would you suggest as a blog platform? If I get a hosted type like TypePad it looks like I'd have to get the Pro version to monetize with text ads etc. but I've also been reading about TypePad's problems. Wouldn't have a clue how to use WordPress. Am I gonna have to learn code to have a flexible unique blog of my own? Thanks for any insight/advice!

I've been using NewsGator Online based on your recommendation, and so far I really like it. Except I subscribed to an RSS feed from a site and I really don't like what the author has to say and would like to delete or unsubscribe from that feed. How do I do that in NewsGator Online?

I have been blogging for a while and now want to take the next step and actually include images in my weblog entries. The problem is, my weblog host doesn't offer image hosting. A friend told me I should use Flickr to host my images, but I don't see how that works. Can you help me out? Thanks.

I've been experimenting with different advertisements on my weblog, including Google AdSense, and now I'd like to try using Pheedo, which I have heard from some folk does quite well. Can you talk me through the steps, please?

I was listening to your teleseminar on blogging and was intriguied by something you said: you mentioned that you use Google News to keep track of specific industry news with custom searches. How do you do that?

Help! I have a blogger.com weblog and recently I've been overrun by blog spam. Surely there's a way to minimize this problem? I've seen lots of sites that have "challenges", ranging from hard-to-read words to mathematical equations, but I have no idea how to accomplish this in blogger.

I notice once in a while in my RSS aggregator that I am getting feeds that are sometimes 2 months old. Why would the aggregator be lagging on such stale news.

I'm interested in setting up an internal blog for my small business but am not sure how to limit access to just those on the inside. What is the best way to create a blog that can only be read and commented on by a select group of readers?

Dave, I use two different versions of MovableType for my weblogs, one on each of two different servers, and am wondering what your best recommendations are in terms of limiting my comment spam? One is 3.17 and the other is the latest 3.2 release.

Hi, first of all, can you make my blog public? Also, can you walk me through how to publish e-mail to my blog? Keep in mind, I do not know my blog's address. I can access it through 'my journal', please help me. Thanks, Kimi.

I think I have my weblog set up properly, but someone recently emailed me saying that I haven't set it up for "RSS autodiscovery". But I have an RSS feed and I even have a little 'xml' button that links to the "index.xml" file that contains the RSS. So what am I missing?

I've been trying to figure out all the mysterious jargon of the blogosphere, and one that's got me stumped is blogroll. Dave, what's a blogroll?

Dave, I have noticed on other people's blogs that they have these nice permalinks that lead people to individual pages, one for each entry. But Blogger doesn't always seem to generate these separate weblog entry pages for me. Is there some way to fix this?

I've just heard from some friends that MSN Search now lets me look through RSS feeds to find information, in addition to its regular search capabilities? Very cool, but how do I do it?

Dave, I have read alot about RSS and XML feeds, and I daily use a RSS aggregator to subscribe to and read some feeds of interest to me.

My question is: Is there a security risk in using RSS feeds? I don't believe that my anti-virus programs scan my RSS, and I am not familiar enough with how the XML feeds work to know if it could pose any kind of security risk, i.e., viruses, spyware, hostile computer takeovers, etc.

Dave, I have an executive placement, coaching and consulting business in the Chicago market. In an effort to market and brand myself better I have launched a blog, but I'm unclear what I need to do to get more traffic and exposure to my blog. What do you suggest?

I'm running the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 beta and while I'm impressed with all its new features, I have no clue how to work with RSS feeds (Microsoft calls them 'webfeeds', of course) in the browser. Help?

I've been running Mac OS X Tiger for a while now, and when I encounter Web sites that have RSS feeds available, I've noticed that a blue "RSS" graphic appears in the address bar, but I haven't figured out how to actually subscribe to RSS feeds and use Safari as an RSS / syndication reader.

I teach high school journalism in an independent school and I am considering offering blogging as an option. What are the dangers?

Dave, I've been blogging for a while now - partially thanks to your inspiration with this great site of yours! - and would like to include one of those neat FeedBurner graphics on my site so I can track RSS subscriptions. How do I do it?

After having attended one of your great Blog Smart workshops, I've taken the plunge and am now starting a weblog of my own. What I'm not sure of, however, is how much to write in each entry. I've seen some weblogs that have one-liners, lots of them, and others, like your Intuitive Life that has much longer articles. What's your recommendation?

Dave, I've been working with Google's Blogger service for a while, running a weblog, but looking at your site and various others makes me want to have everything appear on my own domain, not theirs. So, how do I do it? Lots of people I've talked to say that it's not possible with Blogger, but I can't believe it.

Dave, not to ask a ridiculously obvious question, but what is a blog? And what's the future of blogs and blogging?

Hi Dave. From reading your earlier postings, I see that you too have been approved by Google for their new AdSense for Feeds program. What I don't get, however, is how to actually add their adverts in my RSS feed. I'm running Movable Type: can you help me figure this out?

First off, what is an RSS feed? I think I understand it, but I'm not sure. Also, how do I subscribe to an RSS feed and why would I want to?

Hi Dave! I'm trying to figure out how to change the publication date of articles already available in my Movable Type blog and can't quite identify what I need to do so that it works properly. Can you help me out?

Hi Dave. Like you, I'm a blogger, and sometimes I bump into other bloggers who have written about one of my postings, but somehow I haven't gotten my trackbacks to work on my site. I don't care too much about trackbacks, but tell me, how do you keep track of other bloggers citing your material on their sites?

Dave, I see that Google's just released AdSense for RSS and it seems like a great idea (though I'm a bit leery, based on your article about the dangers of RSS advertising) but it seems that there are some oddities in the Terms of Service. Have you read it? What are your thoughts?

Dave, I know that the NOFOLLOW attribute was introduced to prevent PageRank bleed through blog comment spam, but now that my site is automatically creating those NOFOLLOW links, I'm afraid that the search engines might assign some negative karma to the "linked to" domain, which would be my own. Is that something I should be worrying about? Thanks, Steve.

Dave, I've been hearing in the search engine optimization community about programs called "blog and ping" utilities. Supposedly, they are a real boon to getting top search engine ranking. What are they, how do they work, and what's your opinion of whether they're worth using?

Dave, after reading the latest issue of BusinessWeek, your Intuitive Life Business Blog and a bunch of other sources, I'm ready. I want to learn how to create, design and maintain a blog that's interesting, engaging, and helps me promote my business online.

The problem is, while I can find lots of classes and seminars about why to blog, there just isn't anything about how to blog. Any suggestions for me?

Dave, I've been reading all sorts of stuff on different weblogs about "character blogs", but I'm still not clear on what they are and whether they're a good thing or not. What's your opinion?

Over on the International Association of Online Communications weblog, Steve O'Keefe asks an interesting question this week: What are the pros and cons of author blogs? His response; "Yes, if the expense of maintaining the blog can be spread over multiple books or author projects. No, as a single-title project produced by publishers. Just as book companion sites aren't worth maintaining unless they're attached to an author, imprint or brand, single-title book blogs are seldom a good idea."

Is it possible to have a URL that if you reference it in a Movable Type weblog entry, will actually cause Movable Type to crash rather than add the article to your weblog? And if so, how do you get around that problem?

Dave, I keep hearing about RSS, XML and RSS feeds. I just barely have a clue what they are, but when people then start talking about RSS aggregators, what are they talking about and why would I want one? Do you use an aggregator, and if so, which one?

I'm just starting to move into the world of weblogs (oh, sorry, blogging. Or should I say "joining the blogosphere"? :-) and I've opted to horn in on a friend's Movable Type installation. I'm pretty computer savvy, but boy, this is one complex app. Any tips on how to wrap my head around it and be able to focus on my articles rather than the tool?

Dave, I was reading this evening that there's a new HTML attribute in town called "nofollow" and that it's supposed to prevent weblog spam somehow? Can you explain what it's about and how it can possibly help prevent spam appearing in Weblogs?

Dave, I've been looking at a lot of different weblogs in the last few weeks and notice that while some list "Trackback" or "Pingback" right on their index page, others have that information on individual entry pages, and yet others seem to have either hidden or completely removed trackbacks altogether. What are trackbacks and "trackback pings" and why would I want them on my blog?

If you were lucky enough to be with me here at Gnomedex in Lake Tahoe, California, then you already know that Paypal's Dave McClure moderated a panel entitled "The Future of Online Advertising".

If you run a weblog (aka "blog") you've probably already figured out that you can add Google Adsense to all your pages and make a few bucks from visitors (though don't forget to read some of the many articles on Free Web Money that talk about ad placement, etc. Start with Improving your Adsense Click Thru).

What you might not have realized is that there's sufficient traffic in the world of Weblogs that some new networks are popping up targetted specifically to the weblog-reading crowd.

For this experiment, I decided that I'd like to have a new sentence on the intuitive systems home page that always showed the two most recent entries in my intuitive life weblog...