Aaron is holding a contest for WP users who want to show the most effective use of the WP ‘Custom Fields’ feature.

Read details of the competition at WordPress Custom Fields Contest. I’m one of five judges (no bribes will be (publicly) accepted).

There are already some good prizes up for grabs including cash and goods at Amazon.

I think the competition is such a good idea that I’ve put up $100 of products from Amazon (winners choice). I think the more we support and celebrate innovative uses of features like custom fields the more we’ll improve collectively as bloggers.

Aaron would love to get more sponsors – so if you have a prize to offer shoot him an email.

• Zedomax has a post about Blogging as a Tax Deductable Home Business. I’m not sure it applies to every country but in some it definitely will.
• The Probabilist writes about the 10 Most Misspelled Words in Blogs
• Liz writes 10 Ways to Start a Blog Post
• Nick rants a little about why he dislikes the Snap Preview tool on blogs. I have to say that I agree with him. I put it on ProBlogger here as a test and had so many complaints from readers that I took it off again within 24 hours. It really disrupted the flow of the blog.

I’m excited – this afternoon I was informed that Guy Kawasaki is going to be speaking at Elite Retreat.

It’s not up yet on the main site (very recent news) but it’s official.

Guy’s a great speaker (I’ve seen him on numerous videos) – but from what I’ve seen he usually speaks at some pretty big conferences and to have him speaking in such an intimate setting (there’ll be no more than 40 of us in the room – 30 attendees plus other speakers) is a real opportunity.

Guy’s mantra is “empower entrepreneurs” and he’s got a list of entrepreneurial experiences that make him the ideal person to do it. I’m really looking forward to the time I get to learn from him alongside others at Elite Retreat.

I’m told that seats are selling quickly for the weekend and expect that this latest news will even more snapped up.

My own session is the first one on Day 2 – I love the morning sessions at these things so hopefully will be able to pack a fair bit into it. If you’re attending shoot me an email with any questions you’d like me to consider including some teaching on. If I don’t get to it there will be plenty of one on one time – but I’ll try to put as many answers into my presentation as possible.

I’m back from a very quick 36 hours away to make the most of the long weekend here.

While I was gone there was plenty of action around the blogging community. Here are a few of the stories that have caught my eye so far as I’ve scanned my RSS feeds.

• Andy Wibbels shares how to add Google Analytics to your Blogger Blog.
• One of the biggest stories over the weekend was Robert Scoble’s posts regarding big blogs linking habits. The story has been widely commented upon – follow it via Techmeme.
• Jeremy from Shoemoney is being sued for a comment that someone else left on his blog. This is an interesting test case that could have significant ramifications. Apologies/Update – Jeremy has ben subpoenaed to appear in court to testify in a case where someone else is being sued over a comment left on his blog.
• UK blog network – Shiny Media – has secured $4.5 million in funding according to Paid Content and their blog. Congratulations to the team – I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of them and they’re a great bunch of people.
• It looks like YouTube will be moving to a model where it shares it’s revenue with users uploading video (see video below). Those experimenting with video blogging might just have a new way to monetize their blogs in the coming months. (via Lifehacker and BBC.

• Lorelle’s post Fear Not WordPress 2.1 and WordPress Plugins is an essential read for those WP bloggers scared of upgrading for fear os losing plugin functionality.
• David from Blogging Pro writes a post – Making it Easy to Subscribe to RSS feeds on your blog.
• Lorelle from Lorelle on WordPress covers a similar topic in Understanding, Using and Customizing WordPress Blog Feeds
• Lifehack.org shares 7 Ways to Track the Internet’s Trends and Popular News via Steve
• Inside AdSense shares a few tips on Custom Channels – why they’re useful and how to use them. NB: This isn’t a new feature as many are reporting today. It was actually announced back in November. My suspicion is that most publishers found it too complicated to use or didn’t see the point and there probably wasn’t much of a take up in using it – which is probably why AdSense are now writing about it months later on their blog.
• Net Business Blog writes 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Make and ‘I Got Dugg’ post – not a week goes by when I don’t get someone emailing me to tell me about a post they wrote about being Dugg. While I’ve done it myself I think it’s probably a post we’ve seen enough of.
• Cornwall SEO writes a clever (but also insightful) post titled How to Get Darren Rowse to read your blog.
• The Australian Blogging Conference is definitely on on 8 March. I’d love to make it but I’m not sure I’ll be able to justify another trip up the coast so shortly before we leave for the US a week later.

• Akismet have launched a new plugin – version 2.0. It has some great new features which should enhance it’s performance including a search feature (something I’ve been testing the last few days – it’s great), the ability to to discard spam on old posts, a spam counter widget (so you can brag about how much spam you get), recheck moderation queue and a lot more (most of which is too technical for my little head at this time of night). All I know is that if it improves Akismet’s performance then I’m happy!
• Allen Heat does a little reflecting upon 5 aspects of blogs to revise in 2007 (part II) For someone so young Allen has some wise words to say.
• Andy Wibbels has put together a post that talks us through the steps that he and a client took in launching a blog – taking a website and moving it to be a blog. It talks through a number of important decisions that new bloggers need to consider when starting up.
• James has written a post titled How to Increase Blog Traffic with YouTube that will hopefully be useful for those of you experimenting with video on your blog.
• Forgetting to renew your domain name can happen to us all – even Google.

If you’re in Sydney or will be there for adTech – Sara from the Bargain Queen has mobilized the Sydney Weblogger Meetup Group for a get together at the Arthouse Hotel on 7 February from 7.00pm.

Details of the Meetup are here. I’ve already RSVP’d.

Hope you can make it – should be a fun night!

Bill Belew at The Biz of Knowledge puts together a list of 66 Successful Bloggers and What they can teach you (taken from a book by Ted Demopoulos titled What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting – aff). There’s some great blogs there if you’re looking to improve your blogging!