You Voted Best Entertaining Tip - Entertaining Guru Announced 364

I have had an overwhelming response to my previous "You Be The Judge -Who Wins Best entertaining Tip", the current comment count is 155, but I have about 212 comments that await moderation.

I would like to thank everyone who voted, or who noted their choices and especially to those of you who added your own entertaining tips. This was a pretty successful contest, and I plan to do more like this.

As a recap I wanted to give you a snippet of the original post that spurned this contest.

The most successful host & hostesses have an arsenal of tricks they have tucked away in their little entertaining hats. Cabinets and pantries stand at attention year-round, stocked with dinnerware, decorations and edibles. These entertaining geniuses can layout their hospitable spreads within moments of a surprise pop-in or short notice dinner party.

If you are one of these people - lucky you, you have mastered the art of snatching a mini quiche from the masters' hand ^IMDB. For those of you who aren't entertaining gurus - you have much to learn, and remain the grasshoppers ^W of social hospitality. - Dec. 11 2009

That was really the spirit behind this contest -  with 12 bloggers inputting a total of 16 entertaining tips, I asked readers to vote for their favorite tip. The tip that stood out among the rest  for readers was YESIamblond's second contribution.

YESIamblond

"Buy Fortune Cookies. Have each guest read fortune out loud to group adding "in bed" at the end of reading their fortune, as in "You will find much prosperity...in bed". Makes for a funny gut-busting mixer, really gets the party rolling."

YESIamblond has won a coupon for a  free Nancy's Frozen Appetizer. Congratulations & thanks so much for participating in the "Entertaining Guru" contest!

The view expressed here are mine & mone alone.Please read more about Renaissance Culinaire's Disclosure Policy

Stumbleupon Lashes Out Against Bloggers 18

What is Stumbleupon? It is a social networking site, which allows people (i.e stumblers) to submit pages, or video or photos on the web that people can review and post whether they like or dislike the content, members can also build up a network of friends or fans that can subscribe to a stumbler's reviewed content.

Stumbleupon.com is one of the more powerful tools used for SEO, and can launch your sites into popularity by giving other stumblers the chance to view your link by referral of another stumbler - if that particular stumbler has allot of subscribers , or is highly regarded on the site - this can mean basically the equivalent to Internet gold for your site in the form of traffic. Search engines seem to love pages that are added to this service. And having your pages reviewed gives your site a better web presence.

By far stumbleupon.com has been one of the more popular sites for bloggers' to social network and get their content known, and helps to increase page views in turn adding to revenue from advertisements placed on blogs. By adding badges, stumble links and merely stumbling the very articles that fill up Stumbleupon's site, this has basically inundated Stumbleupon.com with traffic, which in turn gets them sponsors and huge advertising revenues.

Then WHY you ask is Stumbleupon.com targeting bloggers? These very same people who hurled the SU site into popularity ? How do you ask is Stumbleupon.com lashing out at bloggers?

Apparently it started with Entrecard.com. What is Entrecard? Entrecard is a blogging service that allows a widget to be placed on your blog, where people can give you Entrecard "credit" in exchange for advertising on your site., and vis a versa. Entrecard members signed into Entrecard get credit for visiting other members sites and "dropping" their ad card, by pushing on the widgetbutton that says "drop" - which lands the user's blog ad in the "recent droppers" section of the user's dashboard at Entrecard.com, or by clicking & visit the blog who's ad currently is displayed by the widget and also by adding comments to other Entrecard members' blogs.

Apparently, it started with some nefarious dealings involving bloggers posting to a forum about exchanging Entrecard credits for a stumble of their recent blog posts. Stumbleupon.com reacted by banning ALL posts referencing Entrecard from being stumbled on SU. If you do try to submit a post to stumbleupon.com , you will get redirected to this page of Banned Sites. The below pictue is a screenshot of what it says.

O.k, you may be wondering why am I posting about this? At 8:35 a.m this morning I received an email from Stumbleupon.com:

from StumbleUpon
to renaissanceculinaire (at ) gmail.com
date Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 8:37 AM
subject Your StumbleUpon account has been frozen
mailed-by stumbleupon.com

Your StumbleUpon account privileges have been restricted and the account is under review.

Accounts are placed under review for breaching our Terms of Service, which may be found here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms.html

The most common cause for account suspension is a contravention of the clauses which forbid the use of personal accounts for the promotion of a business, product or service, and also with regard to the sending of 'spam' messages to other members.

If you wish to appeal this suspension, having first reviewed the TOS, then you may contact us here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/feedback.php but be aware that we will only have imposed the suspension if we believe it to be warranted.

I immediately responded that I had done nothing to violate the TOS . I was NOT a business owner using SU for promoting a business; Nor was I spamming members with messages, I rarely used the message system.

I couldn't believe it. I had used, promoted and encouraged others to use Stumbleupon.com. Now my account was frozen? I went to twhirl, my twitter client that I use to post tweets to twitter, starting with "I am really tired of Legit, talented bloggers getting bullied by sites like Digg.com & Stumbleupon", because there was a slew of banned bloggers from both sites recently. Here are my typed series of tweets:


My contacts were like What? And sent replies such as "I wasn't aware there was a problem with SU", or "DDOS attack?", Some, not regular users weren't sure where I was going with the tweet.

Then I got a Direct Mail from another contact, who asked "what? Your Su account was frozen this morning?", I answered back and got his reply which said:

"everyone in the comments of my post was banned from SU this morning"

What?! That is right - because I merely posted a comment on a random blog (which was NOT a banned site on SU), I was banned from Stumbleupon.com. I hadn't even stumbled ANYTHING related to Entrecard.com, nor had I participated in receiving EC credits for stumbling any sites. Stumbleupon.com had found that random post and banned every blogger that commented on the post, from the Stumbleupon.com site.

Yes, because I am an Entrecard user, I was targeted this morning by Stumbleupon. Yesterday I noticed a tweet from one of my contacts on Twitter that mirrored the spirit of The Problogger Love-in, a social networking experiment and experience that connected bloggers using various social networking sites to each other.

I thought it was a great idea, retweeted it to my own twitter stream, and then added the first comment for that particular post. I had referenced that I had 2 blogs on Entrecard, and noted that this blog, Renaissance Culinaire, was one of them and proceeded to link to my stumbleupon profile, within the comments. I had NO idea that SU had banned Entrecard.com.

ImpNerd owner Gary Hess, the original blog where the post I had commented on, is here. All the previous comments of the recently banned members have been removed. You can view what SU's support said in response to Gary's questioning here.

Stumbleupon has gone too far. Bloggers are the life blood of SU. I was unfairly targeted, for commenting on a post related to Entrecard. I, like many other bloggers are being unfairly punished for a sketchy forum post that included a few participants. Most people do NOT even know about the ban. How long will SU be combing the Internet for linked SU profiles that are randomly, somehow by coincidence, tied to a post that references Entrecard?

This Blog Has A Comment Form 8

This blog is still revealing it's self. Slowly emerging into something I can be proud of. If it seems like I have put the food writing and blog writing on hold it is because of all the stuff going on right now. Unfortunately due to the nature of all of it, it is far too personal to throw it out to the web. If you follow me on twitter you might wonder, well you pretty much tweet about everything else in your life - why not shout out what's all happening?

These things have no words I think that would encompass what I truly feel, and might come off as cheapened if I blog about them. It would be like setting my troubles on a balance scale and match them against a million much more tragic events happening to the masses.

Because of these happenings I will be working on slowly getting back up to speed in the world of foodie postings. Bare with me.

In the meantime I wanted to update everyone on some of the new features to Renaissance Culinaire. I have been working hard to tweak this blogger template to the very max of it's capabilities.

I have added a comment form! No more redirects to blogger - if you want to comment on a post, you can now do it on my blog under the post, in a comment form - similar to wordpress blogs. The comments will still be moderated by me, same as usual. But hopefully having a comment form spawns a new influx of commenting people for this blog. Comments are also displayed in a recent comments widget on the sidebar.

Above is a picture. You can find out how to add a comment form to your own blogger blog here.


So not only have I made it easier for you to comment, but I will featuring the best comments w/ link to your profile /blog in a comment carnival, similar to this former post: Reader Comment Carnival. So what are you waiting for, grab yourself some blogger karma - give me some comment love, it encourages me to keep writing.

There are allot of useful archived posts, so poke around.

2nd Place for Best Hobby Blog at the 2007 BOBs Awards 7

Some of you have been wondering if your vote(s) made a difference for BOBs results. And I would say a resounding, YES! Renaissance Culinaire placed 2nd in the Best Hobby Blog Category.

I really am appreciative for everyone who rallied for me on digg and Blogcatalog and stumbleupon, and some of the mom blogging sites I am apart of - your willingness to help another blogger was great! It made being nominated for this award a whole lot sweeter! And for everyone who voted for this site - You are awesome and THANK YOU!

I am awaiting my official winner button from them, and once I get it, I will add it to my sidebar. It's cool to think that my relatively small blog had a chance to win a Best of Blog Award.

2008 started out very well and my momentum was really good, even with things going on in my personal life - I still put out some great posts, that attracted some great comments.

But if you have been wondering why the posts have started to get spaced further apart, and the foodie aspect of this site has been lagging - well I am experiencing some health problems right now that are very debilitating, and down right frightening.I have an appointment to see a doctor on the 8th.

I have been debating whether I should note this, but I decided you readers should know I haven't lost my passion for blogging or for food, I just am feeling so terrible most of the time - it hasn't left me wanting to talk about food.

Lately I haven't been social networking except for twitter. I have been twittering allot lately - to keep my mind off my symptoms, so if you'd like you can follow me and chat a bit...about geek stuff, movies, music or whatever!

Food Blogger Blogoversary Calender 16

I had an idea I thought would be a fun way to support our fellow food blog authors. And help create a even closer community.

I started a calender for listing food blogger blogoversary dates. The date of your food blog's official launch or first post, is your blogoversary.

The calender will allow for clickable links in the description, so you can put your blog's title in the event title, and a description of your food blog, then any links you'd like such as : your blog's link, twitter account, face book page etc. If you click on the image below, you can view an example calender event.



I used google calender to create it. It's easily searchable in the google calendar database. So your readers can follow all of their fav foodies. All public calenders are indexed by google.

You can view it by clicking this link - food blogger blogoversary. There is a small button at the bottom right you can click to subscribe/ add it to your google calender account.

You don't need to have a google account to view the calender, or get updates for upcoming or newly added food blogs :

Click on this link to subscribe with any calender that supports iCal format. Here is a list from wikipedia of apps that support iCAL.


I also burned it through feedburner. So you can subscribe or use it to add to another feed you are aggregating on your sidebar etc.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/FoodBloggerBlogoversaryDates

If you would like to be added to the calender, please fill out this form:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pqxVEg3ssIfUbtGXjEx8DEg

If you have more than one blog, please fill out form for each blog.

I will set each event to continue to be celebrated yearly, so you will get updated every year.

I hope this can be something that is fun and usable for everyone . It gives another way to celebrate and promote your wonderful food blogs.

Reader Comment Carnival 9

Readers have left some great comments lately and I wanted to give thanks - In appreciation I will post some of them here, and continue to do it as a regular feature of the best comments every 2 weeks.

I am sorry I haven't kept up with my comments, I have been sick and the kids have been sick and we are dealing with a lot of personal stuff right now.

I wanted to thank you for taking the time to comment, so I have linked to your sites/profiles under your comments quotes. If you post and use a blogger profile - please make sure your blogger profile is enabled for public viewing, some of yours weren't - so I couldn't visit your sites.

Reader Comment Carnival

"These are some really high quality pictures, I especially like the one of the oil mixed with water on the ground."

David Spiele on My Photographic Mind

"Looks delicious...much nicer than what I used to watching on Edible Incredible!"

Amabaie on Food Photography : Banana - Midori Strawberry torte

"This is really great, I love the way you decorated the plate! I almost thought it was painted on :). BTW, I read your about section and I can completely relate :D!!! I have a BA in English (have a poetry blog too!), currently work as a food blogger, and plan on attending culinary school in the near future (only thing is, I can't decide if I want to be a pastry chef or a savory chef :D).

It's nice to meet you :)"

Sophie on Food Photography : Banana - Midori Strawberry torte

"Your plated desserts ROCK...stunning, each one of them!"

Passionate baker...& beyond on Food Photography : Banana Strawberry Torte

"Your dessert was absolutely delicious! Also David & Lee did a fine job capturing the image. Taking photos of food sounds easy, but it is a fine art just as creating the dish is."

teeth whitener on Food Photography : Banana Strawberry Torte

"I look here again and again in different times by and am pleased about the interesting and well written contributions. Cordial thanks and many greetings from the center of Germany."

Bernhard on Uncommonly Cute : Infant & Toddler Clothes

"In the first picture I see a ship struggling against a stormy sea, water spraying, wind tossing.

Great pic & thoughts, love your blog!"

Colleen on Saterday Soul Search : Food Poetry

"That look absolutely wonderful. It's amazing what you can create with a little bit of handy and imagination."

Fudge on Saterday Soul Search : Food Poetry

"Great post - we had a store down the road from us (I'm on the other side of the planet to you) selling loads of cute shirts like that.

We bought our friends two shirts when their son was born - Dad was a web developer, so his says "1.0" and the kid's says "2.0"

:)"

Jonathan on Uncommonly Cute : Infant & Toddler Clothes

"This is a very detailed review. All I can say is WOW!"

NDS Games on Game Review : The Tuttles Madcap Misadventures

"I wouldn't worry so much about getting the "right" picture on the blog. For me, a REAL plate with a meal on it is often better than all these "leaning tower of Piza" creations that no one in their right mind would create at home on a thursday night.

Your writing is excellent, and i would love to see what you are creating.

Anyone can make a Mignon taste decent, those that can make something good for less than $10 are the real chefs."

Erik Johnels on On Taste Memories and The Economy

Thanks soo much for contributing. And keep it up - read my posts and share your thoughts, your comment just might make it into a future Renaissance Culinaire's Reader Comment Carnival. It doesn't matter if you comment on newer or older posts - I will post according to the dates the comments were submitted.