The Bar Corporation's Space: BlogShares

More on voting Twitters

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:08:29 GMT

My first - and only, thus far - article on Blog$hares for the Bar Corporation was about voting your way to the top. This one is as well.

More specifically, it's to provide you with an example of approximately how many chips you can make by taking a Twitter and voting its incomings and outgoings.

The blog that I was looking and - and know, I don't recall which one that was - had a total of 60 links, both in and out.

I started with the incomings and voted my way through each of them, as well as adding any blogs that I might find linked through the "Web" portion of the blog. I haven't yet started adding the additional Twitters - that can be a mission for another day.

I then moved onto the outgoings where I, again, voted my way through each of them, as well as adding any blogs that I might find linked through the "Web" portion of the blog.

I also, of course, reported any dead twitters that I found (ie those with no new posts in the past six months) whilst going through both the incomings and outgoins.

All up, this took about an hour and a a half, including the breaks to chat with Mr Kid in IRC, upload videos of Cracker Night, catch a few drops et cetera.

And... the good bit: added 7 new blogs, reported 10 and made 150 votes, which will work out to at approximately 2000 chippies in 1.5 hours. Not bad for an evening of laughter.

Twenty-threes member of The Bar Corporation and leader in B$ Karma

How to make those elusive ideas drop

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:20:42 GMT

Do you find yourself sitting in front of the computer, hitting refresh over and over, wondering why you never get those ideas that you have reindexed for? Or worse still, do you not know how to make the ideas you need drop?

1. You must reindex a blog to make ideas drop.

2. The blog *must* have incoming links in order for the ideas to drop.

3. The industry you want to drop *must* be in the top 5 industries on that blog.

So maybe you knew all that and you’re still having trouble getting them. Maybe your connection isn’t too fast or maybe you’re just not as fast as those snipers out there (*cough*). Make it a habit to check out the bonds needed page http://blogshares.com/needbonds.php or take advantage of the players market making sure to advertise your bids in the trading floor of the forums http://blogshares.com/yabbse/index.php?board=4.0

MissMelville
Member of The Bar and B$ Index Manager

Important information about the B$ player market

Sun, 25 May 2008 09:46:14 GMT

The player market works like this:

1: It attempts an exact match and if found fills/partially fills your offer with the first placed bid of that amount

2: It checks for higher bids and if found fills/partially fills your offer with the highest amount (s)

3: It places your offer for filling later

As long as there's an exact match(1) you should have no trouble provided you placed that match first. That's why I never put a bid on of eg. 10,000,000 as there is a high chance that someone else has that bid in there before you do.

My tips for the player market are

1: use silly numbers, anything is good here that's not a multiple of 1M I reckon, even throwing in a 1,001,010 is better than 1,000,000.

2: check for other bids and be aware that if the persons bid has already been filled you might well sell to someone else!

3: keep your bids/offer publications up-to-date so (2) doesn't apply!

Remember this for when the Turbo PM bidder thing comes your way (Stay tuned, see here). Use a stupid number (I used something like 10,000,579 on mine and every one was filled nicely.

BillyTheKid waiter of The Bar

Voting your way to the top!

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:07:56 GMT

Voting blogs into their appropriate industries is an excellent way to improve your Karma, your Sigma

and, thus, the number of chips that you hold. In less than two months, I've managed to increase my Karma by almost 8,000 - and you, too, can do the same.

Obviously, Karma is increased by correct voting but you can also increase your Sigma as well, by using the techniques described below.

First off, you need to find a blog that hasn't been voted, preferably one with at least 50 incoming links. I suggest you start with *any* Twitter blog as they are numerous and many have incoming links that haven't been touched.

Second, once you've found your blog, go to the incoming links and start at the very bottom of the list. Select the bottom-most blog and load its blogshares profile page. Immediately confirm language, gender and location (ie Blog Demographics). Vote all of them as appropriate. If the blog happens to actually contain other content, vote that as well.

If the blog does not have the right title or is dead, report as appropriate, thus increasing your Sigma (and chippies!). You can also increase your Sigma (and chippies!) by adding any incoming or outgoing blogs that you may find during this process (don't forget to go back and vote them once they are added to the system).

Third, move up the list of incoming links and vote them as well, until you get to the very top of the list of incoming links. Don't forget to vote the original blog that you found as well.

Fourth, repeat step one.

Fifth - sit back and watch your Karma, Sigma, Chips and, thusly, Composite rankings rise as high as you want to go.

Sixth - enjoy.

twenty-threes
Member of The Bar and leader in Karma

Tips for advancing in the game of B$!

Sun, 11 May 2008 02:30:49 GMT

Some of this may be old news to players, but I'm hoping it will be helpful to others.

So you want to advance in the composite ranking, but you're not moving. What do you do?

B$ is a game of ladders: wealth, ideas, artefacts, chips, karma, sigma. In order to advance, you need to work on all of these ladders. Work on each every time you play. Look ahead and see how much you need to move to advance.

1. Artefacts: A lot of newer players always question the need to build artefacts, particularly for the expensive ideas. It is true that you take a hit when you build an artefact, but in the long run, it's worth it. You will be able to use the artefact for shares play; you move up in ranking; and it may mean you can raid for profit.

2. Ideas: it's not the number of ideas you have, but rather the number of industries. Don't waste money if you don't have it buying up thousands of ideas. You only need 1 per industry to climb that ladder. Now, if you do have the money, that's another story (and another article).

3. Wealth: Cycle your blogs; raid and then sell; look into issuing bonds; get into making offers on the player's market or filling bids.

4. Sigma: Add blogs, report deads, title changes. Use the bookmarklets http://ray.got.net/blogshares-bookmarklets.html to make this process easier. I also like to look at the holdings of inactive players. Quite often I find blogs to report (or acquire).

5. Karma: Vote. Vote the obvious stuff (demographics). Vote your portfolio or vote someone else's. See above about inactive player holdings.

6. Chips: be judicious in how often you cash them in. If you're low ranked every where else, then maybe this is an area where you can use chips as a method of generating cash.

Chances. I owe a lot of my holdings to playing Chances. This becomes a less productive method of game play as you advance. But if you're low or mid ranked it can be really good strategy to play a bit each day. Sell and report the deads. Vote the active ones. You often get rares or artefacts. It's the one time where gamblign does seem to pay.

Miss Melville
Member of The Bar

Effective Blogs' Cycling by sharing 50% with a partner

Sat, 10 May 2008 14:30:15 GMT

Effective Blogs' Cycling by sharing 50% with a partner - it's been recommended by Sage in the past and I found that it's really effective to keep or cycle blogs. What are the benefits of sharing blogs:

a) After either 1 of the partners has sold his 50% shares, the resultant p.e. would be higher that it's around 110-130 (most of the times) , instead of 50-70 after selling if you're the sole owner.

b) In case of point a), you can use less artes to hype pe to 200-250. Save artes up for cycling after 6 hours.

c) Higher resultant pe and faster process in hyping up pe to 200-250 would minimize the risk of being rst/hto by opponents during cycling.

d) If your opponent rst/hto your shared blog, he needs to spend more artes to complete his attack as it's a shared blog.

e) Then either 1 of the partners can take the blog back easily afterward. In general, after several failure of attacks by your opponent, he would give up soon. Then you can keep these big blogs again.

e) Finally, it's most important to have a partner whom you trust, since you both need to gift to each other sometimes. Both partners shouldn't mind their loss after gifting.

Carlos & I have been good partners in holding ,for long periods, the blogs below:

Yarn Harlot

Flickr

CrazyAuntPurl

The Jawa Report

Your comments are mostly welcome.

Cheers :)

Eric Kwan
Member of The Bar and teacher of the RPI Corp

How to get to #thebar IRC channel

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:24:24 GMT

If you have mIRC (or another IRC client) then you can use this link : irc://irc.wyldryde.org/thebar . How easy is that?

If you don't have an IRC client you can use the blogshares IRC page . Once connected you'll automatically join the #blogshares main channel. You can get out of that by clicking the x in the top right of that window (not the main red x, this ones blue!) or you can leave it open. In either case, at the bottom of the window you will have a command line. This is where you type everything. Firstly type /join #thebar use the / and the #. All commands are prefixed with a slash / and all channels (IRC 'rooms') are prefixed with a #. You should now be confronted with #thebar chat channel.

At the bottom of the blogshares java chat there are two lines, Public and Private. Public will show the channels you are chatting in, to move between channels click the channel in that line. Private will show "Status" and any private chats you are involved in. If you need to do anything like registering your nickname do it in the "Status" window. This is where all messages from the IRC server itself go.

I've written a couple of guides for mIRC users at my blogshares blog and also in my wikihelp page. So feel free to check those out too.

Hope to catch you all on IRC soon!

BillyTheKid Waiter of the Bar and IRC guru

The Bartender extra tips to build artefacts

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:55:19 GMT

Jay Guinness wrote us a great article (click here to read it) about artefact hunting, well below some extra tips about it from a player who has built over 910 of them:

* As Jay wrote you can only get ideas to drop from blogs that has that particular industry in the top five, however, remember that you can always make a "tactical vote" (check first that the blog is still alive and belongs to that industry) to move it up.

* Additional to the above point only blogs who have at least one incoming link will drop ideas, however if you have a blog yourself , remember that you can always link it to those blogs orphan of incoming links lol.

* Ideas drop at random but in the range between 12 to 19 minutes, now you can see when was the last drop by clicking here and then you know that after 12 minutes then you will need to refresh your browser every minute in a page when you are ready to buy the drop.

* Of course if more than one player is waiting for the ideas to drop and each know all the tricks then the player with faster finger will get them lol. I have ran into players with faster finger and/or better tactics than myself but they normally move on after they built their artefacts and of course I am always improving myself too ;)

Carlos
The Bartender & Teacher of the RPI school

Blog Shares As a Non-Premium Newbie Player-Roadmap to Success

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:12:33 GMT

Many of the people here on Blog Shares are far wiser than I, and thankfully, very giving of their time and advice. This reality, senior player’s generosity of spirit perhaps more than any other reason accounts for my success in climbing the Blog Shares composite rankings as a Non Premium Player, as a newbie to the game here at Blog Shares. There is still much to learn, but I’ve picked up some pointers along the way that might help others new to the game in succeeding, even without the luxury of a Premium Membership.

For the new player, perhaps the most important commodity to concentrate on is chips which open the door to many other aspects of the game…primarily because they give you access to two important areas of the game as a new player. Cash and the Chances game, where you can win some really great things, including Premium Membership privileges for a period of time. There are two primary ways, three if you count begging to gain access to chips. The first is voting on blogs. Click on blogs, slide down and click on newest additions , or recently indexed which will bring up a new page with lots of blogs listed. Go to the blog, study it, and then (as a new player) vote on the easy stuff, such as language, sex of blogger and location. These votes will win you Karma and Chips. While you are doing this, you will find some blogs that have not had an entry in at least 6 months…don’t vote on these, but instead report them as a dead blog, which will win you Sigma and Chips. (More on Sigma and Karma later on.) With this voting, you should have three immediate goals:

1. Build up some chips that you can sell in the Chips Market. 2. Build your Karma with the goal being 750. 3. Build your Sigma up over 100…when the Dead Blog Locator is back up and functioning, you’ll be glad you did.

Make sure while you are at it to go to the message boards and introduce yourself…you might be surprised at some of the gifts you will receive…such as CASH, which you will have to build to move up the Composite Ranking, and to purchase both Blog Shares, and ideas in the idea market.

At this point, it is highly recommended you join a few corporations, and find one you really like to pick as your primary corporation. Once you have joined, scroll down and send out a message to everyone introducing your self as a newbie. Again, this is a great way to get some NEWBIE GIFTS, and find a mentor or two.

Once you get $5 Billion Dollars, it’s time to start shopping for ideas…trust me, at a nickel each for many of them, you can accumulate a whole lot of ideas very quickly…the idea is to purchase at least 10,000 in each industry which will allow you to build artifacts. For now, don’t worry about artifacts, just BUY BUY BUY in the idea market. It was recommended that a good goal is 10,000 ideas in 300 industries before concerning yourself with artifacts, and this is sage advice. As you gain and sell more chips, you can start collecting some of the more expensive ideas…I currently have ideas in over 2000 different industries.

Once you have $20 Billion in Cash Reserves, it is recommended that you keep at least half of that in your primary corporation so that you are earning interest on cash…as I have built up my own cash reserves, I tend to keep $1 Trillion and Change in disposal cash, and keep the rest of it in the corporation. There is certain reasoning to this…as a non Premium Member, you are limited to 20 transactions, and 20 purchases in the ideas market a day. Get these 40 transactions out of the way, and then spend the rest of your time allotted for game play voting on or reporting blogs to build up your Karma, Sigma and Chips.

Now, lets say you have 1000 chips…you are a newbie, spend them as you can always get more as there is no limit on how many blogs you can vote on or report each day. As a non Premium Player, find someone willing to cash in some of your chips for you. The going price for chips on the chip market has been running steadily over $750 Million per chip since I arrived! Sell 200 chips and you suddenly have some $150 Billion dollars in your account, which represents quite an improvement on the $500 you started with. Take some of the other chips and play chances…Blog Shares tends to be more generous to the newer players…not good for me, but GREAT for the newbie trying to get ahead. You can win rare artifacts, shares in dead blogs (which you can report to win more chips), money, and ideas that you can hold on to, or sell…I recommend you hold on to them. Most importantly, you can win some FREE Premium Member Time…when you win this time, MAKE THE MOST OUT OF IT. Spend a couple hours buying blogs…I click on ideas I own and buy up shares available in an industry’s top 100 list if they are available.

Spend some serious time buying up ideas in the idea market…at five cents each, you can accumulate 10,000 ideas in 300 industries in a matter of a few hours. My suggestion…at a nickel each, buy every single idea you can get your hands on…I own some 30 million ideas in certain common industries, my eventual goal to own one billion ideas. Once you have gone on this idea shopping spree, click on ideas in the right hand sidebar, and a new page will pop up showing all of your ideas. If you own at least 10,000 ideas in an industry, you can build an artifact. This is an easy task…you’ll see a tab on the right hand side of each idea you own that says Build Artifact…CLICK IT! You will have just built an artifact. As you progress in the game, work towards the Karma goal of 750, it is recommended you accumulate at least 300 artifacts that you will use in more advanced play.

There is so much more to share, so much more that I need to learn, but this is a good Cliff Note version of the game for Newbie’s looking to get ahead. It you follow this basic formula, feel fairly certain you can climb into the top 500 in the Composite Rankings in a short amount of time, and have a GREAT TIME doing it.

Cosmic Rabbit
Member of The Bar

So stud, what's that about?

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:58:04 GMT

Stud is my IRC bot. He's named stud after the arte for the male industry, he's a boy bot! He holds a number of uses for game play open to everyone in the game with IRC access, he hangs out in #thebar IRC channel. Stud also resides in his own channel #stud where you can have him all to yourself for ten minutes at a time. That channel is limited to 2 users, stud plus one. So if you can't get in, try again in a few minutes. He automatically kicks the other person out in ten minutes and bans them FOR ten minutes to give others a chance. Nobody else can see what goes on in #stud except you and stud so it's good for those times you don't want people to know what info you're requesting...

GAME INFO YOU CAN REQUEST

There are a number of things stud can offer you in IRC with regards to Blogshares. Some things are pretty powerful and can save you a LOT of time, other things are just quick ways of getting info without having to open up your browser.

You can find out who's having a BS birthday by typing !birthday You can find out when corporation interest was last paid (along with the current game time) by typing !int You can find out how much you (or anyone else) are worth by typing !total [userid] (eg. !total 55024) You can find out where you (or anyone) stand in the composite rankings by typing !comp [userid] (eg. !comp 55024) You can find out how much you should price each idea in a bond to make x amount of profit by typing !profit industry percentage (eg. !profit 1234 250% to make 250% profit in the Surfing Industry) You can go straight to the buy ideas page of any industry (even those without ideas yet) by typing !ibuy ind-number (eg. !ibuy 1234) You can go straight to the available bonds part of the industry page by typing !ibond ind-num (eg. !ibond 1234) You can find out what date 6 months ago actually was by typing !dbf You can find out what date 3 months ago actually was by typing !lbf (I'm sure you'll remember those!) You can get a list of links to an entire industry by typing !links ind-num web (see even more options for this by typing !linkshelp)

An example of how I use stud to help me in my game is visible right now in the game. If you check out the top outgoing links page (http://blogshares.com/major_old.php?type=outgoing) you'll possibly see at least 4 or 5 of my blogs in there with over 1000 outgoing game links. I've linked to all the blogs in all the industries I require the arte for, using the !links command. How long would it take you to manually add 1200 links in 5 blogs? Took me about an hour using the !links thing. I can do it once per minute so that's up to one hundred links per minute easily added to a text file here. When I'm done I can paste the whole text file into my blogs and reindex them for a sudden thousand strong jump in outgoings.

Now every blog I want to reindex is guaranteed to have incomings (which you need to make the ideas drop) There is a side-effect, helpful when collecting ideas, that, mostly, the industry prices go down with these indexings, but that's a different article.

Stud has a number of non-game commands available including a real-life email system using !email nick message (eg. !email billy you totally rock!) A bot admin needs to manually add you to the list of people allowed to send emails but that's no trouble. You also need to give us your email address to add to the bot if you want to use it to receive emails. It's good because nobody else sees your email addy except the bot. Admin can't see it (except for me but that's coz I actually have access to studs databases on this machine - I WILL NOT USE YOUR EMAIL FOR ANYTHING ELSE!)

There's also a few fun commands (!hug !strip !pamper !8ball !euph !uslotto !uklotto !asshat !goldblend and !buy a round) as well as the !twitter command to update stud's twitter page (http://twitter.com/studbot) and the !tiny command to give the tinyurl equivalent of a longer url (eg. !tiny http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?checkid=11765090 would spit out http://tinyurl.com/4jq8w7)

Well that's a basic run-down of stud's uses, some more productive than others. I'm sure you'll all have fun with those. I'm always open to suggestions for additions to this so feel free to PM me with those in IRC or in the game.

Cheers.

BillyTheKid
Waiter of The Bar and IRC Guru

PS: Please note that any of studs commands that make contact with the game are limited to one use per user per minute. This is to stop him from being able to abuse/flood the game. It's also the only way I can get game Admin to pass the scripts!

How to organize your B$ ideas folders

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:50:58 GMT

The most important thing i have ever done to improve my game play was to organize my Idea folders. When i realized that owning every single idea in the game AND owning every artefact in the game were two major composite rank factors, i began my journey. After I learned how to build Ideas from the ground up ala Sage Enterprise's wise lessons, it was unbelievably easy to find any idea and effectively build my wealth through trillions of investments in ideas.

My system has evolved over time, and i am constantly rotating ideas in and out of certain folders, creating new folders, renaming them to sort in the best order, etc etc. The maintenance and upkeep of the folders is half the battle, this is a system, not just a one time deal. I will explain the folders in different sets, based on the purpose of them for me. You can do whatever you want, use your own style, names, etc... the purpose of each folder is the important thing to get down.

If you don't know what i mean by industry building, i will try to explain the high-level concept. there is much to learn about making money in ideas, lots of ups and downs to keep track of.... ideas that are green will not always stay green, ideas that are red can always be brought into green, and there are always exceptions to both these rules :) I personally work a wide wide variety of industries, so i have several folders created for my cause. They are always open in separate tabs, and they are always sorted by available so i can buy them as often as possible.

First up....

Main Folder This folder should be constantly cleaned and cleared of every idea EXCEPT artefacts you have not built. while you are working towards owning every arte and 1 of every industry, you will have a huge influx of ideas that get put in this folder by default. anything that does not have a red A- by it should be moved into the other folders i am about to describe. Cool?

Next, the artes....

Artefact Folders These folders will contain two things: Artes you have built that are worth a lot and Artes you have built that are not worth anything. Once you deem an 'arte' industry worthy of working, and you have built it, you will move the ideas into the next section of folders. These folders are really for worthless arte storage, and raiding purposes for top valued ideas. if you like holding quantity of artefact ideas that are cheap, in case you have a thing for helping noobs, you can create a 3rd folder for this.

1) Worthless Artes Folder Criteria: - you have already built the arte - they are <> 1M-5M per idea in value (depending on how rich you are) - you are getting a majority of these ideas by raiding - you own a small quantity of these after you build (10,001 or less?)

10,001 Folders These will be two specific folders... some people dont care about owning 10,001 of every idea and some do. But if you want to start building ideas, i would say a good base is 10,001. if the ideas are cheap and not worth it to build, you can store them here in hope of an arte being created in that industry.

1) Worthless 10,001 Folder Criteria: - no arte - you own 10,001 or more - the price is very cheap or not worth building, you just like having it in case

2) Expensive 10,001 Folder Criteria: - no arte - you own 10,001 - price is in the millions and you are NOT going to work these, unless they are workable :)

Worthless No Arte Folder The majority of the nickel industries will go in here. Any idea that is penalized with no arte should go in here. Any idea where the #existing is high and the price is low should go in here. these are literally worthless ideas in the game that can never be brought up.

Rare Idea Folders These folders will contain all the non-arte ideas that are also not on your list of working. The parameters of rare ideas are not scientific, but newly released industries, ideas where the #existing < style="font-weight: bold;">Working Folders This is all based on you and which ones you want to work. i cannot get into specifics of idea math, but suffice it to say if you know how it works, you are constantly rotating ideas through these folders. Since i cant go into detail, i will just tell you how my cycle works. These are the ones i constantly keep open 24-7, sorted by available, buying them at any point.

1) Working To Transition Folder- Ideas where d2 is high or avg10 is high and you have sold off all but 10,001 (or whatever your base is). dont buy these until its worth it.

2) Working Red To Green Folder- Ideas where you own a lot and you're trying to pull them out of the red. d2 is low and value is high.

3) Working to Profit Folder- Ideas where you own a lot and you're just banking on the price going up up up. once it goes red, you move it into #2 or you sell off and move to #1.

4) Working to Get Some- Ideas you want to work, but you want more quantity before you start working.

5) Working from Scratch- Ideas you want to work, you own a lot of quantity but price is low. perhaps some rares, some artes, low low D2, etc.
===============
Thus endeth the lesson. Hope it was logical. Half of the battle in getting to the top in Ideas is organization. This is a constantly changing and evolving process that works best for you. My first goal was to get a 'marker' for every idea, and when i reached it recently, i realized i could find any idea i ever wanted to. Once i had markers for all the arte ideas, i just constantly went through my Main folder until i owned every artefact. Last but not least, i am always hunting down ideas i deem valuable or ideas i am working to get more value from. it is crucial that my folders are rotated, cycled, maintained, and kept up with. i hope these major points will help you in some way.

Some helpful links that i always have on my front page to accomplish these things include:

Ideas 1 at a Time- this is a link from ideas market of any idea you own 0 of. http://blogshares.com/ideas.php?sort=price&order=asc&filter_empty=yes&filter_noa=no&filter_own=yes

Risers- this is a link from ideas market of ideas sorted by price change. http://blogshares.com/ideas.php?order=desc&sort=change&filter_empty=yes&filter_noa=no&filter_art=yes&filter_ten=no&filter_own=no&filter_pen=yes

Unowned Artes- this is a link from ideas market of all the artes you dont own. you can show/hide empty to toggle ideas you need and ideas that are actually on the market. http://blogshares.com/ideas.php?sort=price&order=desc&filter_empty=no&filter_noa=yes&filter_own=yes

Recent Ideas Drop- this is the most recent drop time. drops are random but usually in the 12-20 minute range. http://blogshares.com/idea_drops.php

If you keep these links open when you are: - Hunting Artes - Hunting Ideas - Building Ideas and you keep open your organized Ideas Folders from above, you will be on top in no time.

The Ixxperience
Member of The Bar

The new shares math and cycling blogs tip

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:14:28 GMT

Old Shares Math

Ticks happened every 0.15 minutes, 4 times an hour. If you hype a blog at .06 to 600P.E, it'll crash on the 0.15 tick.

New Shares Math

Ticks happen every 0.15 + 1-5 minutes.

Therefore a safe time to cycle blogs is after a 0.15 + 5 tick. Or to cycle it just before the 0.15 tick to allow the share price to rise immediately after you cycle.

Reindexing you blog will cause the P.E to stop rising automatically. Therefore the best time for a reindex would be just before you cycle your blog. This will ensure that your blog's P.E rises without interruption.

Raymond (Froggie)
Waiter of The Bar and founder of the RPI School

Hildy's top tips for making the index a cleaner place

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:12:55 GMT

I've been playing the game for over 3 years now. Some people are ideas and artefact collectors... some are share buyers..... and me? Well I get fanatical over hunting down dead blogs and getting them out of the B$ index. And of course the chip and sigma bonuses also help. ;-)

So here are Hildy's top tips for making the index a cleaner place.

1. Look in your own shares portfolio, are you sure that that every single blog in there is a live and valid blog? (but of course sell the shares first if you are going to report it).

2. Incoming/Outgoing links. On your own blogs, someone elses blogs... a random blog... Sometimes there are a lot of hidden deads in there just waiting for you.

3. Checking those chances wins. The majority are dead blogs.

4. Using random.php - pulls up a random blog and quite often they are dead. Or lead to deads.

5. Searching by blog title - type in any (4 letter or greater) word you can think of. Or if you are lacking in ideas... try typing in the name of a blog service (eg. blogspot.)

And last but not least... don't forget that the dead blog finder is an easy 400 per day.

And soon you'll be rolling in chips you didn't have to buy on the market. Or cash you made by selling them. Or even moving up a place or two on the leader board. ;-)

Brunhilde Esterhazy (Hildy)
Member of The Bar

Finding Blogs for Blogless Demographic Industries 101.

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:21:19 GMT

So you're either trying to get ideas in an as many industries as possible to move up or you've been bitten by the collecting bug. How to get at those pesky red industries--the ones with no blogs in them. Not sure where to start?

The good news is that in most cases, this is doable. The bad news is that it requires patience, some digging, and more patience.

The way I tend to begin is to do a search on Google or altavista. For example:

location impossibletofindtown site:blogspot.com

impossibletofindtown site:wordpress.com

Sometimes you find what you need right away. Then all you need to do is to check and see if the blog is in the system. If it is, you can vote and reindex (asssuming there are incoming links). If not, you can add the blog, vote, and reindex.

Sometimes it's a bit trickier.

Another method is to search through the blog host's site. Live Spaces, for instance, has a search feature (bottom right hand corner, click "more options"). I'm not crazy about about this particular search feature, but it's good for certain countries, particularly asian locations. Different blog host sites have their strengths and weaknesses.

And then there are sites like this one http://www.consumingexperience.com/2007/08/blogger-profiles-how-to-search-blogger.html, which allows you to search blogger profiles.

Some other general tips:

* Look for alternative spellings of the location.

* Does the location have a different name?

* If appropriate, search for the location using not only an English language name, but also in the language of the country.

* Sounds obvious, but do a title search in the B$ search engine. See what pops up. It can't hurt to look.

* Try doing searches with the diacritical marks and without.

Happy Hunting!

Miss Melville
Member of The Bar

A Zen(??) of B$

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:53:06 GMT

Although I have been playing the game of B$ almost daily since I joined in August, 2004, I have never played in the capacity of premium player status, not even for a single day. My game experience and knowledge are accordingly extremely limited. So my apologies in advance that there will be absolutely no useful game play tips in what follows, only very personal remarks that I came to have while participating in the game and being in the game community.

1) "For the sake of 'being there'": That's probably what kept me playing the game for well over three years. This may sound apathetic to many keen B$ players aiming for "the top", but it's true by me. In this case "there" is the web/internet, and in our game [y]our being is expressed through each player's personal profile page with lots of numbers.... And this leads me to my second remark.

2) "Change is being is change": Up or down, mostly networth-wise, but also ranking position-wise, particularly since the introduction of the composite ranking. You confirm your "presence 'there'" by checking numbers in your player profile, and any change in them from a previous value is a (literally) humble proof of your existence (in the web).

3) "Index": Another change that you can work to bring about in the game besides your networth/ranking is the blog index. Seeing less garbled blog titles in links/individual blog listing in the game makes me a little bit happier, even if they are written in the Arabic or Thai scripts (which I can identify as such but cannot read).

Yes, I am aware and sorry, this is ridiculous to most (if not all) of serious players. But it's still true that this is the basic attitude of my participation in the game. Competition abounds in increasingly "globalising" social environments around me (in real life), and all I truly want on-line is a little hide-away.

4) "Making friends": For a very long time, I couldn't believe this was possible in the game like B$, which I thought is basically a game of "greed" and "expansion/aggression". But here I am, and it truly was a pleasant surprise. (And as no doubt most of you already know, when you do make a personal contact, many players turn out to be actually quite nice)

This hopefully should wrap it up. I sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding. Thank you!

Moon Dial
Waiter for the Tokens at the Bar

Artefact Hunting Tip

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:38:09 GMT

Been waiting forever for that one particular industry to drop ideas? Don’t! Make it drop those ideas! Here’s how:

1. Go to the industry page of the industry whose ideas you want to produce.

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and open up the company pages of about 5 of the top companies in that industry.

3. At the top if the page for each of these companies, there will be a link to [Reindex] that blog. Click on that link.

4. Continue reindexing blogs until you have gotten through the 5 or so that you opened for that industry. (You have to wait about 10 seconds between each reindexing.)

5. Repeat steps 1 – 4 for each industry that you want to produce ideas. Keep checking on the Artefact tool page to see if the ideas have dropped. Make sure that the blogs that you are trying to reindex haven’t been reindexed in the past 24 hours. If you use Firefox, there is a very hand GreaseMonkey script that changes the color of the text in the industry page of blogs that can be reindexed to blue.

To get GreaseMonkey go here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

To get the reindexing script go here: http://blogshares.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=18751.0

Jay Guinness
Member of The Bar and B$ Editor

A Newbie’s Top Ten Suggestions For Playing Blog Shares

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:50:40 GMT

As a new player on Blog Shares who has managed in two weeks to break into the top 500 composites rankings to give other newbies some suggestions to succeed. A David Letterman Top 10 list of things to do early on that will help you enjoy the game, and be successful.

1. Visit the forum area, and say hello in the new members thread which is conveniently located close to the top of the General Topics section. You’ll meet some very friendly and generous people there that will give you a helping hand in getting started.

2. Take a couple hours to read up. The quick start found in the community tab is a great place to get a really good overview.

3. Read up on voting, as that is the quickest way to start building up two important commodities here on Blog Shares. Chips, which can be sold for cash which you are going to need lots of, and Karma. Start off with the simple votes, such as location until you get the hang of voting.

4. Join a Corporation, or two or three. The people in the Corporations are very friendly, and are always there via private message to answer questions for those just learning the game.

5. Once you have sold some chips, or been gifted some cash, start collecting ideas. You can find the ideas market my pulling down the industries tab and scrolling down to it. The goal is to get at lest 10,001 of each kind of idea that you start accumulating so you can build artifacts.

6. Use some of your chips to play chances, which is found by pulling down the games tab and clicking on chances. You can win blog shares, sometimes in a dead blog. Report this blog as dead or inactive, and you can win more chips, and sigma which you will need later on in the game. (Karma and Sigma are very important.

7. Hopefully by now you have several hundred million dollars, or perhaps have moved up into the billions. Start building your Shares Portfolio. You can do this by going several places. My favorite way to find worthwhile blogs to invest in, it to open up the ideas portfolio of your account, and click on the industry for each idea. Scroll down the top 100 blogs in each industry and you can usually find some very worthwhile blogs to invest in.

8. If your cash holdings are starting to accumulate, deposit some of them in your primary corporation. This allows you to earn interest on capital not invested in shares or ideas.

9. Once you have 10,000 ideas in any given industry, build a artifact. If you are doing really good, you can play a couple of them just to see what it’s like, but it is recommended for now that you save them, build up your arsenal for later in the game.

10. Lastly, but most importantly, HAVE FUN.

Cosmic Rabbit
Member of The Bar

Boom Boom New Math Shares in B$

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:19:47 GMT

The main difference with the "new math" in the B$ shares are that now the outgoing links are evaluated in separated and the blog do not get penalized for having more outgoing that incoming links , this made even more important as before the cross linking between blogs for valuation as far as the B$ game. This "New Math" has created at least two major booms so far, the first one made the volunteer B$ staff very rich due they had a big blogroll where they were cross linking each other, this power was transferred to the knitting industry mainly due the participation of one of the knitting blogs in the B$ volunteer staff blogroll, now this created some grieve in players which were reluctant in including their own blogs in this powerful blogroll , besides the point that most of the top 100 blogs were claimed by owners and out of the game.

The second major boom made players happier as another big blogroll came up: The Atheist one, mainly because not only was not any blog claimed by their owners or even B$ player but there were more than 350 and several of them no even indexed when it was very obvious their high valuation in the game. This boom is almost over, however I think that at the moment most players if not all are happy with the B$ CIG and their "New Math", they made the shares part of the game as relevant if not more as the ideas one to make cash which was their original objective. Congratulations Guys! Well done with this "New Math"

The Bartender

The Bartender BlogShares Tips

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:43:31 GMT

I have been playing BlogShares for just over two months however in that short period of time I have learned a few of important tips by either the hard way or by another experienced player:

- Before Hostile Take Over a blog check first the incoming links and do the math to see which way is going to go the valuation in the reindex. If it is going either stable or up then HTO it (Learned this the hard way)

- If you are engaged in a confrontation with another player for either taking over or defending a blog , check his transactions records to see what this gamer is up to (Thanks Eric Kwan for this tip)

- The first hype after the 0.25 clock cycle is the strongest (Thanks Froggie for this tip)

- In order to get the price up of an idea then reindex the blogs from that industry from bottom to up and one by drop and with a valuation no bigger than 90000 (Thanks Evil Princess for this tip)

- Slump or Buzz do not have the 15 second interval protection so you can buzz and slump as quickly as your fingers are able to(Thanks to Del from UT or should I say that I learned it the hard way lol)

If you have any other BlogShares tips please leave them as a comment :)

Geographical location of The Bar Corporation members

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:25:57 GMT

This BlogShare Corporation is really global as far as the physical location of the player members: 11 are in USA, 4 in UK and then the following countries with only 1 player each: Malaysia, Germany, New Zealand, Bolivia, Singapore, Argentina, India, Japan, Pakistan, Hong Kong, China and Australia.

More on our Corporation members statistics

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:51:41 GMT

We are now 27 members in the Corporation lol and they are great players as you can see in the table below:

Name	B$ Rank	B$ Job
Miss Melville	3
Boo	6
Sage	10
SWA	13
The Architect	20	Admin
Brunhilde	21	Index Manager
Patricia	23
Frogie	24
Tkey	29
Evil Princess	32	BSEC
Rach	35
Jason Mastaitis	40
Spacelord	41
Jim Wright	44	BSEC
Ixxperience	46
Island Tiffiney	48
Judge Fred	55
Eaglehawk	60	GIC
Moon Dial	64
Baron Orkid	73
Eric Kwan	78
Oldwain	83
Carlos Reyes	84
Beachtiglet	130
Finkdu	136
BillyTheKid	159
Panic	191

Let's see how this table change for next year ;)

Some of our B$ Corporation statistics

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:33:24 GMT

The Bar Corporation was founded by Carlos Reyes on the 29th of January of this year. There are 26 members as today:

Ladies	Men	RPI	L/P	Bears	Aliens	TNP
11	15	9	8	3	4	2

We are always happy in accepting new members

If you are a B$ player just click here

Karma over 750 in record time?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:31:32 GMT

My name is Carlos and I am "The Bartender" in this Bar lol. I have been playing blogshares since the 8th of December and some players get amazed of the things that I have achieved in such a little time. I started amazing people by reaching my Karma over 750 in less than a month. I did it basically only voting Demographics in the recently added blogs section and always voting when I was 100% sure ;)

Introduction to this blog

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:10:25 GMT

This blog is about "The Bar Corporation" in BlogShares (B$) which is a social place for members of the Corporations : Renegade Players inc , Bears, Aliens, Token Non premium and Love/Pain.

We will post entries in 3 categories: BlogShares , Fun and Drinks. In the category BlogShares, about this Corporation as well as we will provide tips in playing the game, in the category Fun, about jokes and entertainment stories and finally in Drinks about cocktail recipes.

This blog is mainly focused for blogshares players but it will contain some other entertaining material for non gamers.

Enjoy your stay

Carlos
The Bartender