Kick back with a few cold beers, and smoked almonds, and think outside the box. See you next week!

Darren, I just got my copy of Conde Nast Traveller today and they’ve published their 2006 readers’ travel awards. That might be summat worth writing about, eh?

pull something out of the hat - that’s key thing with bloggers block.

like our, admittedly, woeful post yesterday about travelodge.

i put my hands up: we were scraping around a bit.

Try to have a good weekend yourself, Darren. I can identify with the “block”…….usually happens to me at work!!:)

Darren, perhaps you could write about Video. Have just returned from a holiday in Mauritius and as well as having some great Photos, we also have some great Video footage.
I spent all day yesterday with Pinnacle Studio downloading and editing. Went to download 8 Minutes onto Google Video. The size of the file is 1980 mb and I thought 8 Minutes wouldn’t take to long to download. Started at 17.30 yeasterday and as I write at 12.35 on Saturday, it’s still downloading and is up to 1480mb.
I am going to be more than hacked off, if when it finally downloads a message comes up saying download failed.

Any tips on downloading Video? It’s our first atempt and we are dying to see how it will work on the blog, Perhaps Travolution has the answer? Help needed darren or Kev?

avi. it took 26 hours to download, I now have to go into google and add titles, descriptions etc, I just hope Google doesn’t then reject it. Am also looking into dropshots as I know someone who uses this, You can upload up to 5 Minutes and no more than 950 mb. Although tried a test of this and it seemed to be telling me an 18 hour download and it failed after 2%. My Friend tells me they load up to 3 Minutes and about 128k which loads in 20 to 30 minutes, So I guess the answer is to keep the Video Short and perhaps have 5 or six seperate downloads in the same blog.

Well What do you know, Google has accepted it so we now have our first Video on our blog
Can you let me know darren, if you have problems seeing it? We have loaded it onto http://www.selectworld.travel
Still amazed that 9 Minutes of footage takes 28 hours to upload onto Google.
Will keep the footage below 3 minutes I think next time.

Rants: you still having probs with dot-travel domains??

Hi Darren,

I know the feeling. Don’t worry. I think it happens for everyone of us who is passionate about the blogging phenomenon. Especially when blogs are about a specific subject. It is much harder to write this kind of blog than do the personal journal / diary blog.

All the best.

Guillaume Thevenot
Founder of http://www.hotel-blogs.com

PS: it must be the posting with the most comments no ???

surely it’s the greatest irony that the post with the most comments is actually one about being unable to write a blog entry because of bloggers block.

km, ed, travo

Darren, the writer’s block scenario is interesting to people as it provokes us into giving you advice/help/encouragement/kick up the jacksy * delete as appropros

The blog I’m working on right now offers no chance of writer’s block, mainly because of the approach it’s taking within the travel genre (is there such a thing? I’m originally from the music biz, we’re obsessed with genres!)

Darren, you’re right, I was being too absolute but meant to say ‘little’ chance of writer’s block owing to the nature of the blog.

I was thinking, have you thought about contacting PR firms specialising in the travel industry? By letting them know of this publication they can then keep you in the loop with news from their clients, that owing to the nature of the web vs tradtional media, means you’ll have chance to publish stuff before the papers/magazines. Just a thought, forgive me if you’re already doing that.

mikeyboy: you are still avoiding to tell us anything about what you do!!!

Sorry Kevin but the projects I’m working on launching are not ready just yet but watch this space