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The "How Up to Date is Your Blog" game

One of the consequences of generally waiting till games fall in price is that I am usually a few months behind the curve when it comes to blogging about them. That gave me the idea of trying to put a more scientific measure on just how up to date (or out of touch) is my blog. The process turned out to be relatively easy and you can apply it to you own blog if you like:

1. Look at all the posts you have made in the last month (if you are a very prolific poster you can limit it to your ten most recent entries).
2. For each post try to pick a date in time when this particular post would have been a "hot topic" worthy of front page placement on a major blog or news site. Wikipedia is handy for finding release dates while Google's "timeline" view (probably hidden under "more search tools") is also very useful. Remember that we are only considering timeliness here, not writing quality.
3. Once you have the "timeliness" dates of you most recent entries then just fire them into a spreadsheet and get the average to see how up to date your blog is.

Anything less than 1 month and I reckon your blog is a pretty up to date source of news.

Anyhow here is how it pans out for this blog ("Life is a Mindbending Puzzle")


Post Date when it would have been “hot news” Comment
Gogle Labs Introduces gXtortion 01/01/06 Concerns about Google abusing its power have been around for quite a while but there was a step increase in articles about the subject in early 2006.
Handing over my freedom to Google 23/09/08 Google releases Android operating system
Mafia II: Gutted about the lack of public transport 24/08/10 Mafia 2 released
Ambushed by Mafia 2 24/08/10 Mafia 2 released
Stop making Apps please just fix your web pages 10/07/08 Iphone App store opens
Gaming Update 03/03/09 Main game = Empire Total War
Only a few hours left for incredible minecraft deal 20/12/10 The post was pretty much up to the minute
Minecraft is a bit meh isn't it … oh wait 17/05/09 Minecraft classic released
Empire Total War: Guns Change Everything 03/03/09 Empire Total War release date
Are single player gamers more forgiving? Memories of Oblivion 16/01/07 Post is about Oblivion from 2006 but it does talk a lot about the 2006 mod "Nehrim" 
Metro 2033@ Moscow What has become of you? 16/03/10 Release date of game
Average 18/02/09


The 18th of February 2009! My blog is almost two years behind the times!. To be fair the results are skewed a bit by the 2006 date I put in for the Gogle article but whatever way you look at it "Life is a Mindbending Puzzle" isn't going to win any prizes for being up to date.
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Comments

Stabs said…
I think it's something of a false analogy. After all we have a hobby where the major games are WoW (2004), Eve (2003), Lotro (2006?) and Everquest 2 (2004). We're not really a cutting edge bunch of people.
8:10 am
mbp said…
Mmorpgs (usually) stick around for a while Stabs but they are always evolving. A post about Cataclysm for example would be current but a post about The Burning Crusade would be out of date.
10:24 am
Anton said…
Yar...now I'd better put up that post about Cataclysm that I promised a month ago. Ha.
3:44 pm
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