Google Blogoscoped presents these ten rules of Good Blog Writing Style:

1. Use descriptive headlines.
2. Write in "inverted-pyramid" style (get to the point at the beginning, elaborate in later paragraphs)
4. The first link is the one people click on, so make it the main link of your article.
5. Reintroduce core ideas in longer posts.
6. Use lists, images, tables and anything else that will make your artiles easier to scan.
7. Use simple language if you're writing for a global audience.
8. Credit your sources.
9. Mark updates and changes.
10. Spellcheck your posts and re-read them for clarity.
11. Note that all these rules have exceptions; know when they apply!

The next month is going to be a busy one for many of us here at Tucows. In additional to the usual work stuff, some of us will be making appearances at the following conferences:

CASCON 2006 (Toronto)

I got a last-minute invitation to IBM's CASCON 2006 conference, which runs from October 16th through 19th, where I'll participate in the Social Computing: Best Practices panel. I'm thinking of catching the "Introduction to AJAX Technologies" workshop on Monday and the "Rails/DB2" workshop on Tuesday afternoon. Note that admission to this conference is free, including the food!

The Ajax Experience (Boston)

Here's a good one -- Brent Ashley, who will lead the Ajax Transport Layer Alternatives session, gave me a complimentary pass to The Ajax Experience, which runs from October 23rd through 25th. This looks to be a very meaty conference for techies and I plan to take copious notes and share them with the developers here at Tucows as well as you, the readers.

ISPCON Fall 2006 (Santa Clara)

ISPCON Fall 2006 is the premier conference for internet service providers, wireless providers, VOIP providers and internet businesses. Tucows people will be all over this one -- on the exhibit floor, doing the opening keynote and leading a couple of sessions! For the full details, check out this entry; to get a free pass to the exhibit floor and the keynote, see this entry.

SitePoint has recently published the State of Web Development 2006/2007 report, a 53-page document based on a survey of 5,000 web developers. Read on to find out what questions the developers were asked and to get a taste of the results.

Rather than use words, let me let the graph below do the talking:

This graph comes from SitePoint's report, The State Of Web Development 2006/2007 -- 53 pages of "results, analysis and commentary on the state of Web Development in 2006/2007" based on a survey of 5,000 web developers. If you can't pony up the $795 single-user fee for the report, there's a free preview of the report as well as an article on the graph shown above.