The year 2008 is almost over. The year started with a bang for me, but it got a little bit slow towards the end. Now that I think about it, this year has been awfully short. I don’t know about you but it seems as you get older, the days start going much faster. 2009 promises to be an interesting year to say the least. The state of economy is expected to get worse before better, and the job market will be even tougher than it has been in 2008 (as a self-employed person, I’ve got to always be alert when things are not working out). But I can’t be more excited about the prospects in the new year. It’s still fun to go over things that did go right in 2008.

Here is the list of what I am thankful for 2008:

1. Thankful for still being in business so far. The year has been tough on many folks, so I am thankful that I can still provide for myself and my family.
2. Glad to be still healthy. Another year has passed, and I am not getting any younger. And while I am not exactly in the best shape of my life, I am still healthy! Yay!
3. Thankful for somehow managing to stay on top of most things going on in my industry. Some folks start becoming stagnant as they age. Hasn’t happened to me yet, I hope
4. Grateful for Facebook and Twitter. The amount of stuff I have learned from folks on these communities are just astronomical.
5. Still single and going strong. I am still glad that I can take risks without thinking twice about it.
6. Thankful to my previous company for offering me a chance to work with them. Those guys were great, and I made great friends there, but I moved on, and they did too. Every-one’s happy!
7. Wordpress is a big part of my life, and I owe those guys a lot. I don’t know most of them, but that doesn’t mean I can count them as my friends.
8. Thankful I got to hear about the God particle experiment. Science has always been my first love, but I never got to pursue it as a full-time career. But I keep up with the most important developments, and that was one!
9. I am lucky to have had the chance to attend a few events earlier this year. Hopefully, I’ll go to more conferences next year.
10. And I am extremely blessed to have my close family members healthy, alive, and kicking for 2008. Hope for the same in 2009.

Probably missed a bunch of things as I had a lot to be thankful in 2008. What are you thankful for this year?

Well, if you haven’t heard the news yet, then you should know that Google is pretty much close to buying Digg for about $200m (Kevin, can you spare a bother a mil?). So what does it all mean for people who have used Digg to drive traffic to their sites?

It’s tough to say. I don’t think Google with follow no follow links on Digg. Having said that, I still expect sites to get indexed quickly using Diggoogle. But Digg will be in good hands. Google will take care of Digg for now, and I am sure the algorithms will get better and the whole gaming thing that is going on with Digg will diminish. The interesting thing to watch is whether Google finally get the YouTube - Digg integration right.

I am truly glad that the Digg guys are getting paid for all the effort they put in. Not quite Facebooish money but $200 mil isn’t that bad either.

Well, finally decided to add Digg functionality to SEOABC after preaching it for quite some time now. I didn’t want to get down and dirty with Wordpress’ PHP code, but it turned out that Digg integration is fairly simple and straight forward except you want to pick the right color. The moral of story here is to implement these social media widgets earlier than later on your website to get traffic and precious links from Digg and other social media sites. Let me know if you need help with the code. Happy new year everyone!