Well, with the craziness of the holidays, and my father’s recent knee surgery, I totally missed out on the group writing project, Internet Goals For 2009.  I only even thought to look in to this when I saw it had been a year since I wrote Blogging Goals For 2008, and I figure why not go ahead and join in the fun, even if I am late to the party.

The Goals For 2008

Daily Page Views – My goal was to increase my page views by 50%, and I am pleased to report that my average page views are up around 200% a day over the same time last year!  Again, we aren’t talking huge numbers, but quite a respectable gain.

Google Pagerank – I was a PR4, and I was aiming to be a PR5 by this time.  Well, didn’t make that one, I’m afraid.

RSS Subscribers – I had 30 RSS subscribers and I hoped to be at 54 by the end of December 2008.  Well, depending on how insane FeedBurner feels on any given day, I have seen reports as high as 90.

Social Bookmarking – I wanted to increase the amount of social bookmarking back to my site.  Well, Digg still alludes me to no end, but I have had quite a successful year on StumbleUpon, leading to my biggest post ever, Who Is The Best James Bond.  The numbers for that post were astronomical.

Finding my niche -Ha… yeah… right.  I think my niche is, “Sean is a cranky old man, and he complains… a lot.”

Improving my personal skills -I wanted to write better posts, and I think I have improved them some this year, but not quite as much as I would like.

New design -Well, the designer I was working with at the time of that post completely flaked out on me, and I ended up going with Blog Design Studio.  You are looking at the results on my blog currently, and I am quite happy with them.

Internet Goals For 2009 – Blogging

Measurable

Comments -The number of comments is very sporadic, I would love to see some more sustained conversation going on.

Daily Page Views – Again, I am hoping to increase my average over this year, and though I am still seeing slight growth, it won’t be easy.  I will again shoot for a 50% increase, and hope to do this through writing more general appeal posts that result in better search engine traffic.

Daily Revenue – Something clicked this year, and I am actually making a tiny bit of money with this blog now.  It’s not bucketloads, but enough to cover my hosting costs each month.  I don’t ever plan on seeing this blog being a steady source of income, but if I could increase the daily revenue by even 50%, I would be quite happy.

RSS Subscribers – As of right now, FeedBurner is showing 64 subscribers (I swear that service is insane, yesterday it showed 77), so I will be cautious and aim for a total of 120 subscribers by this time next year.  You can help me reach this goal by just going ahead and subscribe to SeanPAune.com right now!

Social Bookmarking – Just once I would like to see this blog make the front page of Digg.  I know people debate if it is really worth it, but seeing as I have made it there multiple times with other blogging work, I would like to see my own blog make it just once.

Immeasurable

Writing Skills – Still trying to improve those skills.

Internet Goals For 2009 – Other

Scattercast – Scattercast, my weekly podcast, currently averages about 10 listeners a week.  I am going to be wild and shoot for the moon here and say I’d like to see an average of 100 a week by this time next year.  I plan to do this by:

• Get more serious about booking guests
• Focusing the content on more broadly popular topics
• Increase the number of subscribers (again, you can help by subscribing via iTunes)

Twitter – I currently have 1,504 followers on Twitter, I would love to break through 2,000.  You can follow me on Twitter if you like, and help me reach my goal!

Conclusion

2009 will be a year of refinement for me.  Just trying to improve what I’ve already got out there, and making it the best I can.

Possibly one of the greatest heroes in American history has passed away.

W. Mark Felt was revealed to be the infamous Deep Throat of the Preseident Richard M. Nixon Watergate scandal back on May 31st,2005.  While some would say that Mr. Felt was nothing but a whistleblower, I don’t think any one would be hard pressed to convince me that Nixon didn’t need to be ousted from office as more and more information about his antics came to light.  Considering the tapes that have comes out in recent years, it is fairly obvious that Nixon was crazy as a loon bird.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein swore that they would not reveal Deep Throat’s identity until the person had passed away, but in 2005 Mr. Felt was suffering from progressively worsening Alzheimers, and when his family figured out who he was due to a visit by Mr. Woodward, they decided to reveal it to the world via Vanity Fair.  Luckily Woodward had The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat book ready to go, and it came out in short order.

The book revealed a man who became the snitch on the happenings of Watergate partially out of a sense of duty, but in large part due to bitterness over the fact he had been told he had little hope of ever heading the F.B.I., even after rising to the second-in-command spot after many long years of service to the agency.  While this revelation tarnished my opinion of Deep Throat some, he still had done what had to be done, and while it has never been addressed, no matter how he felt, I am sure it was not an easy decision for any one to reach that they should rat out their President for their actions.

Mr. Felt was 95-years-old, and I, for one, salute his memory.

It’s episode 22… Scattercast is facing the reality of the job market!

- An update on my dad’s surgery again

- People who create Malware should be strung up by their toes

- My generally sucky week

- Do you ever make people’s Christmas gifts, or do you always buy them?

Here’s

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

for those who wish to download it.