I published my second Squidoo Lens this evening. I would call it a work in progress rather than a completed project. This lens is a ‘How To’ lens on using KompoZer, my normal web editor, to modify the code for inclusion in a Squidoo module. The things that can be done in the code are limited by the Squidoo editor, but KompoZer can be used to enhance the appearance of a lens project.

I learned some things about Squidoo along the way. I added an extra guestbook module to serve as an ask the editor space. I am offering to help others use KompoZer to do the things that they want to do with their lenses. I will need to fuss with this one a bit more, but I think that it has the potential to become a high traffic lens. Only time will tell. If you want to check it out go to see KompoZer for Squidoo.

I had heard about Squidoo lenses several times but did not really know what they were. I investigated Squidoo last week. I discovered that Squidoo Lenses are a cross between a wiki and a blog.

The Squidoo Lens is a page about a specific subject. Authors are free to write about nearly any subject that is not on the SquidDon’t list. That is the part that is like a wiki, but there can be any number of pages on any given subject like a blog.

My first lens is about the Software Audio Console. I talk a little about mixing in general and a little about SAC. I posted a few pictures that I have taken and have a comment section asking if my readers are ready to give up their hardware mixers. I also posted the youtube video about SAC live at Harrah’s in Los Vegas. The link to the page is http://www.squidoo.com/mixerinabox if you would care to check it out.

The site has a very interesting business model. The put advertising on the pages and distribute half of the proceeds to the publishers using the site. This allows them to have a great deal of content on the site that draws significant traffic and produces an income stream. Of their half they donate a percentage to charity off the top and pay the bills with the remainder. The half that they return to the publishers is devided according to a formula that they have devised that rewards the publishers with the most popular lenses. I am thinking of incorporating a similar system with my Here’s Our Site free site offers. They also pay for referrals so if you think that you might be interested in joining in the fun please click on my affiliate link embedded in this sentence.

The Update for MC-Rally is still in process, but I have gotten sidetracked with an idea for a new gallery for Symmetrical Backgrounds. I am processing images for a fabric background gallery. Some of these will be lightly textured and some will be heavily patterned. It is always interesting to see how an image comes out. The look will often change completely when the image is processed.

I use my photo editor and the built in panorama image function to produce symmetrical images. I have reduced the steps so that making the images is now faster than it was for the first images that I produced. I figured out that I did not need to make two of the components that I had been making. Each image used six components but I was duplicating work and only really needed four components to produce the same end product. By looking over the process I eliminated about half of the steps, so I can now produce the images in about half the time. I found a lot of samples for this gallery, so processing will take some time.

I modified the gallery software so that it produces a page with the image as a background some time back. Seeing the image does not really indicate what the page will look like, you need to see the image in a live situation to see how it will come across. The modified gallery software does this as it builds the pages.