EU Visitors: How Cookies Are Used on This Blog

Google's suggestion of notification: "We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners."

Denny Lyon's message:  I find the use of cookies annoying and invasive of my privacy as much as yours.  Yes, I use AdBlocker when I surf the web.  Now that the EU won against Google, any one with a simple blog, like here on Blogger, is required to suddenly understand all the legal ramifications and legal language.  

Of course, Google just dumped this on bloggers with nothing but confusing messages of how to notify you of their cookies you already knew existed.  Look below for the links to Google of all their "privacy" notices and other goodies. I'm in the process of figuring out how to install cookie consent notices on all my 26 blogs so this page is the starter for cookies notification.

We all get followed all over the web and reported back to the NSA and other intelligence agencies, collecting data globally.  Use Opera as a free and excellent browser (from Germany) for no reporting at least to the NSA.  Use duckduckgo as your search engine instead of Google or Bing because it comes out of The Netherlands and they do not report your browsing data.

Well, friends, consider yourself "cookie" notified.  Surf the web wisely and don't let these annoying Big Business types spoil your fun.


Cookies notification in European Union countries

Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features

How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps

Key Privacy Terms

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Dennys Global Politics
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Blogging with Ads and a Blog Store

Image via Wikipedia

From Denny: Whew! I've been blogging for nine months now (on the oldest blog The Social Poets where I started all this craziness) and am just getting into learning about ads. There are so many options and it takes a while to absorb it all. Mostly, I've waited to develop my content on each blog and then see what people find interesting.

You can develop your own aStore with Amazon Associates though it sure takes some time to develop the look you want to best complement your blog in color and design. Of course, I just wear it out trying different combinations so it takes me longer. :) I finally got around to developing this blog's own store.

Amazon is a trusted company for both the customer and the blogger. I prefer an ad company with a good reputation since it's my reputation on the line as well.

Anyway, there are ads for MP3 Music, Free Music, Sale Books, Video, Cell phones, and the The Healing Waters Store as choices. Take a look and browse through it all for ideas. If you are like me you just enjoy window shopping! :)

What's fun about some of these ads is they add visual interest to what could be a static blog so I thought I'd try it out and see what appeals to everyone. At least they are tasteful unlike what some companies offer. The ads are placed at the top, sprinkled in the sidebar and above and below the posts area.

Oh, yes, for new bloggers, you definitely want to get Google ads. Why? Forget about making money from them as it's a joke unless you get a million hits. The only sites and blogs that get hits like that are porno and I'm not interested in writing garbage. You only make $1 for every 1,000 hits so it could take you a year or more to make $100.

When you go to join up with Google just make sure you have at least 60 to 90 posts of content. They might turn you down for less. What they are looking for is enough content to analyze to know what ads to place with you. If you post daily it won't take long to develop a theme or trend that Google will find attractive. Once you have been at blogging for a good six months and are not overwhelmed, upgrade for free to Google Analytics. Analytics goes deeper into analyzing how you are doing and what posts are the most popular. They let you know if your traffic is from search engines or direct because people already know about you.

The real reason you want Google ads is because they keep track of your numbers for you to let you know if folks are actually reading your blog. That was the real reason I activated Google ads. I wanted to see if anyone was interested in what I was offering since I was a newbie to blogging. Previously, I always kept private journals and then finally decided to go public. It was a pleasant surprise to learn the level of interest out there in web land! :) Thanks for your support, everyone!

New Regular Feature: Thought for the Day!

From Denny: Just added a regular feature here on The Healing Waters, thanks to Nina over at Nina P's Thoughts and Musings blog! I've been looking for a good daily inspirational thought widget for some time now and this one is of superior quality in what they offer. If you are a blogger you can get the code for this feature and place it on your blog or site.

The Thought for the Day! is located just after the posting area, so just scroll down and you will see it, enjoy! Thanks, Nina!

Photo by Krikit @ flickr

Past 200th Post!

Photo by tanakawho @ flickr

From Denny: I'm well past the 200th post here at this blog. OK, so I'm not exactly the anniversary wonder girl. It's actually 227 posts now - close enough! :)

Just wanted to take the time to thank everyone for subscribing to the feed and following on Blogger and other sites. You are much appreciated! Blogging is so much more fun when you have company and such good company you all are, thanks! Thank you for your support and hope you are enjoying your time here learning right along with me.

Ready Reference: Health News Links and Google Swine Flu World Map

Photo by Igor Zenin

From Denny: Considering how nervous people are getting with the growing negative news about the current (now global) pandemic of the swine flu outbreak, I've started a place of Health News Links and the new Google Swine Flu World Map above the posting area for your ready reference so you can stay up to date. As I continue to find more quality reliable news links they will be added.

Follow Fellow Bloggers!

Image via Wikipedia

Most of the folks who follow this blog (THANK YOU!) and all my other blogs subscribe to feeds from feedburner, MyBlogLog and several other sources, even email. Not too many have ever used Blogger's Follower function. Maybe it's perceived as Old School?

A couple of weeks ago I dumped as many gadgets as I could from these blogs in order to speed up the page loadings. So, added back in is the area where if you are a fellow blogger on Blogspot you can follow this blog too.

(In proper circus barker loud voice) Step right up, folks! Join up on a rising popular blog! OK, now, no pushing and shoving to the head of the line like this is a 95% off sale...! :)

Seriously, thanks everyone for supporting all my blogs. It's been a blast to start them a few months ago just out of curiosity to see what would happen. Besides the fact I have learned a lot, and still learning, it's been fun to watch the blogs' traffic rankings go from the cellar skyrocketing upward toward the heavens! Every day lately every blog has grown by 100,000 or more in global traffic ranking according to the Alexa software. Pretty cool!

I have no idea where all of us are going but one thing is for sure - we will all enjoy the rocket ride! Thanks for becoming part of my growing community. You are well loved.

Just scroll on down toward the bottom of this page near the visitors count and you will find the Blogger followers area. Thanks for joining! I'm currently carrying over 5,000 feeds (mostly in Bloglines) so let me know and I'll be glad to join yours too!

More April Fools Day Funnies

For more April Fools Day hoaxes from the math and science geek crowd, hike yourself on over to one of my other blogs: The Soul Calendar - go here.

On that blog I place a lot of articles about the mind, how the brain works, some astronomy (killer eclipse photos) and anything else mildly geeky I enjoy when I read magazines like Discover. Enjoy!

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar @ flickr.

Feedburner Glitch

Now I know why my feed counts have been going up and down wildly. Turns out Feedburner keeps deactivating them: on all 7 blogs! So, apologies, if you have found this maddening; join the club. Guess it's taking Google and Feedburner longer to merge and work out the gremlins than they are telling the public, oh, well... Meanwhile, rest assured I will be now manually monitoring these feeds twice a day to keep them activiated. Thank you for your patience everyone!

Don't you just love this photo of an ass? Such a good fit when things go wrong because that's how you feel and look to others! Might as well have some fun with screw-ups, right! ;)

Thanks go to the folks over at flickr who place their photos in the Creative Commons area for online writers and bloggers like me, much appreciated! They can be so funny.


Photo by gidibao @ flickr

Thank you to new Feed subscribers!

From Denny:

Hi, everyone! Thanks for taking this The Healing Waters feed, much appreciated!

Apparently, Feedburner is having count issues. A while back they were bought out by Google. It looks like just now they are making the change over of accounts and the like. The numbers have been looking downright screwy the past few days so am unable to know exactly how many have signed up or remained. Go figure. Feedburner has a notice of basically to wait it out for the next three days as the current stats are far lower than is true. Guess telling people to expect good things keeps the beasties away! :)

Either way it turns out, if one person or 50 folks have signed up, just know that you are most welcome here and well appreciated! Let me know if you have any info to pass along that pertains to this blog and I'll be glad to include it or write about it - even link to it.

Thanks for the listen and keep on coming back to visit! I think this calls for a group hug! (huge grin)

Photo of rolling happy dog by g-hat @ flickr