The importance of competition

16 Replies Christopher Roberts

This is the forth in a series of articles in which I hope to share with you my knowledge of how and why Technology Bloggers has been so successful, so fast. Learn more about this series by reading our Technology Bloggers success article.

In economic terms, competition breeds quality, choice, low price, innovation and efficiency. In blogging terms its a great way to increase your long-term commenters and therefore your reader base too.

When starting up a new blog encouraging competition is one of the best ways to engage your readers and attract new ones; fast.

If my memory serves me right, from day 1 Technology Bloggers had a ‘Top Commentators’ widget at the bottom of every page on the blog, displaying links to those people who had commented the most. If you have never seen it, scroll down and take a look, or just take a look at this screen shot 🙂

Technology Bloggers top commenters in June 2011Last month Antonia was the top commenter followed by Adrian from Shed Plans, Pete, Anna and finally Diana from Elephant’s Eye. All the people mentioned have dofollow links on every page of Technology Bloggers, to a site of their choosing. But, it’s only the top commenters who get this privilege. This encourages people to visit the blog, to read and comment more to get links back to their site.

You could argue that people will just throw out any random rubbish in their comments and get to the top with ease, but I won’t allow this. Our commenters know (or they should) that I rigorously check through every comment on this blog – with a little help from our spam filters.

So basically what I am getting at is that if you want to encourage more people to comment, use a top commenters widget plugin. I have our widget reset every month as this means that someone can’t get so far ahead that they are almost impossible to catch up!

In the past I have thanked everyone who has contributed to Technology Bloggers success. This includes dofollow links to commenters and authors sites, further incentive to comment.


In the future I have plans to introduce competitions to the blog, where entrants will be rewarded in some way or another for participating. I believe that this will also encourage more people to visit the blog, as competition gets people excited, it gets people interested, and it makes people want to stick around.

Technology and sport

13 Replies Christopher Roberts

Should we use more technology in sport? Well it depends on the sport I guess, or does it?


I have been watching a bit of Wimbledon lately and it’s got me thinking about technology and sport. Go back 50 years and technology had a very small part in the sporting world. There was no Hawk-Eye technology in tennis or cricket, meaning that it was purely down to human perception as to whether the point was scored, or out.

Hawk-Eye at Wimbledon

Hawk-Eye technology being used at Wimbledon

This is still true of football. Some say that it “adds to the excitement of the game” but others say that it is time to move on. Last years world cup started serious discussions into the use of technology in the sport, specifically goal line technology. There were incorrectly awarded goals as well as goals not awarded.

England was cheated of a point against Germany when the referee decided not to award a goal. It was hard for the linesman to judge, due to where he was standing, however goal line technology and goal cameras could easily have verified the truth. This wasn’t the case for England though.

England's discounted goal against Germany in the 2010 South African World Cup

The ball clearly went in the goal, however the referee decided that it was not a goal

Many sports have now adopted the use of technology to improve the accuracy of scores/results, athletics, tennis and cricket are just a few. But my question to you is should other sports yet to use the technology, like football, make the switch too, or does technology just not have a place in every sport?

Who should get to use the internet?

24 Replies Christopher Roberts

I was reading an article the other day about whether people should ever be ‘cut off’ from the internet.


This got me thinking.

  • The right to have privacy
  • The right to live/exist
  • The right to have a family
  • The right to work for anyone
  • The right to free speech
  • The right to equal rights
  • The right to think freely
  • et cetera, et cetera…

Recognise any of them? They are some of the current human rights. They are the fundamental things that most countries around the world believe you should be entitled to. But, should the right to internet access if you want it become a human right?


The United Nations logo

The United Nations logo

If so this would probably only be passed as a human in more developed countries, but should it be someone’s human right to have access to the internet?

Obviously I am not on about technical glitches, but many governments can cut you off if they want, and in fact many do if you continually break copyright laws.

The internet is a fantastic method for self expression and communication, can we really take such a tool away from people?