Venimus, vidimus, potimus.

A good time was had by all. Thanks to Sobiks Subs for donating their tasty subs to the team.

Photo album or view as a slideshow.

Our little contest ended on Saturday. We've tallied up the votes and the winner is...

Nobody.

Nobody entered or contacted us for more information. We know this blog isn't popular but we had some help from Josh at Hyku which led to a mention on the Awakened Voice Blog so at least a couple blogs helped to spread the word.

I'm not surprised by the results due to the lack of reach we have but I was hopeful that at least one Orlando-area business would enter and take the prize. Back to the contest drawing board.

Blogware will be conducting a maintenance window on April 22, 2006 to perform system maintenance to upgrade the backend database software and implement caching (more info).

Date: April 22, 2006
Start Time: 10:00 PM ET
Duration: 8 Hours

Impact: During this window, the Publishers' Control Panel and blogs will not be accessible. Each interface will be made live as soon as it is available to minimize impact on end users.

The Blogzerk team will be sporting this new t-shirt design at the Corporate 5K next week. If you are going to be at the race, be sure to stop by the Red Rocket/Blogzerk tent. You never know what kind of goodies you'll find...

Today we added a new theme: Blogzerk - Brown Two Point Oh. You can see this in action in our template gallery.

The Orlando Sentinel featured blogging in the Central Florida Business section this morning. Josh at Hyku was kind enough to point Sentinel writer Tim Barker our way for information on how we use our blog at Red Rocket and blogging in general. Here's a few excerpts from the article:

"I have a feeling people don't know about it or how easy it is," said Chris Scott, an executive with Orlando-based Red Rocket Inc.

The small advertising agency, which also has a blog-hosting business called BlogZerk, has been using its blog (blog.redrocketinc.com) since late last year as a friendly and informal way of talking to customers.

"You don't get that feeling from standard corporate Web sites," Scott said. "You don't get to know the people behind it."

I think they did a great job on the article and explaining what blogs are and why businesses may want to use them. If you want to try blogging for your business (or for yourself), you can sign up for a free trial at Blogzerk.

Here's a scan of the article (click for a larger image):

Unfortunately, the online version doesn't have the photos from the print version so you can't see what the back of my head looks like...

UPDATE: Added a scan of the photo of the back of my head and scan of the entire article.

This is the first of what is hopefully going to be an ongoing series of articles where we highlight the way one of our customers is using Blogzerk for their business, club, or other use.

To kick it off, we are profiling RAM Radio. I asked Pam of RAM Radio some questions about the blog and using Blogzerk:

Is this a personal or business blog?

Business

What is the primary purpose of your blog?

Internet radio station

[ed. note: available on iTunes and Live365, see RAM Radio for more info.]

Who is your target audience?

Listeners of RAM Radio and potential listeners

What makes Blogzerk worth paying for?

Scalability. There seems to be nothing I can't do with the blog. It looks beautiful right out of the box, however it is very easy to create your own style. The posting interface is very intutive. It's perfect for the beginner right up to the more experienced developers. Forums are very helpful and Blogzerk staff are open to enhancement suggestions.

You are using your blog as your primary web site. What were your reasons for using the blog instead of a standard web site and what are the benefits?

My partners are not familiar with HMTL and Blogzerk lets them update pages easily, yet it allows me the freedom to create. There really isn't any limit on what you can do with the software.

Approximately what percentage of your visitors are via RSS compared to a browser? Do you promote the RSS feed or the subscribe via email feature of your blog?

Honestly I don't know what percentage of visitors are via RSS. I don't have many subscribers, but I have seen my content used on various sites via RSS. It has been great promotion for the bands and our station. RSS is a vital component to RAM Radio.

[ed. note: this month, approx. 33% of the visitors to this blog were via RSS]

Is there anything else you'd like to say about your blog, RAM Radio, etc?

As an independent internet radio broadcaster, my time is very precious since I am involved in all aspects of running the station. Blogzerk is a blessing because it organizes the pages automatically and is easy to update. I do not get bogged down with maintaining the website at all. I have the freedom to focus on the station's growth instead.

Pam's blog is a good example of how to use your blog as a web site and shows how easy Blogzerk makes it to create and update your blog's content.

If you have a Blogzerk blog and would like to be featured here, please send an email to info@blogzerk.com.

All Blogzerk blog hosting plans include a fixed amount of monthly data transfer (bandwidth). This limit has not been enforced in the past since the tools to allow blog owners to track and block bandwidth usage were not available. With the last few updates, Blogware now allows you to monitor transfer usage, block IPs from your blog, and disable linking to content on your blog. See the Managing Transfer Usage page of the help for details.

Beginning today, we will receive notifications when blogs are at 80% and 100% of their transfer usage. We will then notify blog owners of this and also what options are available for upgrading to another plan or adding additional transfer to their current plan to prevent the blog from going over the allowed transfer.

Beginning May 1, 2006 transfer overages will be enforced. When a blog reaches 100% of it's transfer usage, the blog will be suspended and visitors to the blog will receive a "Blog is not available" message. This suspension will last until either the blog is upgraded or the next calendar month begins.

During April, overages will not be enforced. Notifications will be provided to give blog owners that are over the transfer limit an idea of what their current transfer rate is and what upgrade will be needed to prevent their blog from being suspended once overages are enforced on May 1.

The Blogware Publisher's Manual has been updated to catch up with some of the recent updates. If you see any errors, please let us know.