9 reasons blog, which features posts with 9 reasons for something, carries the post with 9 reasons why you should start to blog. Here are a few to give you the taste:

1. Improve writing skills
2. Form opinions on subjects
5. Learn to embrace criticism
8. Become acquainted with Internet technology

Overall, a nice selection. And while you are over there, check the 9 reasons why you should only register .com domain names post.

Via 901am.

Google Reader is one of the tools we here can’t live without. It’s useful, easy to use, and saves us tonnes of time. It’s also slick and geeky. And it’s made by Google.

We use Google Reader on a daily basis. In fact, it’s one of the applications that we never close. And with such extensive usage, there is a lot we can tell about it.

How about starting a Google Reader love blog? It’s a narrow enough subject to attract a lot of people, and it’s wide enough to cover several categories, like Bugs, Tips, Wish list and Third-party extensions. There is a lot of potential for heated discussions, as well as plenty of visitor contributions (in the form of comments, links, and posts).

Don’t like Google Reader? Well, you can still use the same idea for any other tool you can’t live without. Where do you spend most of your screen time? Is it in the email client (GMail, Thunderbird)? Or maybe it’s in the browser window (Firefox, Safari, Konqueror)? Do you IM a lot (ICQ, Skype, Google Talk)? Are you a programmer (Perl, Python, PHP)? Maybe you are heavy cell phone user (Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson)?

Just choose your tool and start blogging about it.

With many people reading many blogs, it’s useful sometimes to share the information and exchange links. Which are your favourite blogs? Which blogs do you read often (daily, weekly)? Which blogs are you subscribed to in your RSS reader? Which blogs do you often comment at? Which blogs inspire you?

Feel free to comment or link back to this post with your list of blogs. Bonus points if those blogs are about blogging. Extra bonus points if those blogs are about Cyprus or maintained by Cyprus residents. Most bonus points if those blogs are not linked to by Cyprus Blog Network.

If you have are reading many blogs, but don’t know how many of them to include in the list, try to limit your list to 5 or 10 addresses.

As part of our effort to promote blogging, we are starting a new series of posts here at Cyprus Blog Network. In the series we’ll be posting our ideas for new blogs - something that we want to start but don’t have the resources to. Or something that someone else might get interested in, and we could benefit from as readers.

For starters, there will be one post per week published for the series, and it will be online every Thursday morning. Come back tomorrow for the first one.

Also, if you have any new blog ideas of your own, feel free to share them with us, either via comments or the contact form. And if you know of any blogs that already exist for any of our new blog ideas, let us know by leaving the URLs to those blogs in comments to the post with the idea.

We have finally integrated our new logo with the Cyprus Blog Network web site. You can see it in several places.

First of all, we have a header image at the top of every page on the site, which kindly reminds you where you are, and also serves as a quick link to the main page.

Secondly, there is now a favicon, which appears in the address bar of your browser, as well as nearby any bookmarks that you have made to pages on this web site.

And thirdly, there are a few images that you can use to link to Cyprus Blog Network web site. You can find all those images together with instructions on how to use them at our How to link page.

We will be adding more images, logos, and banners for you to choose from. If you need any particular variation, please let us know.

Also, if you linked to Cyprus Blog Network from your web site, please, tell us. We’ll visit your site, and maybe even write about it and link back to you.