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Saturday, January 7, 2012

Seeking NH buzz, Romney hits Obama; rest swat him (AP)

SALEM, N.H. ? Reaching for a big New Hampshire boost, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney ran down President Barack Obama's economic policies on Thursday as his GOP rivals leveled a one-two-three punch at any notion of inevitability for the former Massachusetts governor.

At a senior center in Plymouth, Newt Gingrich told reporters that Romney wouldn't "come anywhere near enough voters per state to become the nominee."

At a former train station in Tilton, Rick Santorum told voters: "Don't settle for less than America needs."

At a printing press company in Durham, Jon Huntsman told employees: "We can't afford to have a coronation for president. We can't afford to have the establishment stand up and say, `Here's your guy: Mr. Romney, from Massachusetts.'"

Romney, who eked out the slimmest of victories in Iowa's kickoff caucuses and who leads polls in New Hampshire, is reaching for a decisive victory here next Tuesday to solidify his standing. At a morning stop in Salem before heading to South Carolina, Romney looked past his GOP rivals and labeled Obama a "crony capitalist," invoking a theme that Rep. Michele Bachmann had used before dropping out of the race.

Keeping his focus on the president, Romney aired a new TV ad in South Carolina that criticizes Obama for adopting "un-American" economic policies that hurt workers in the state and faults him for packing a government labor panel with "union stooges."

Romney was to appear later Thursday in South Carolina with the state's governor, Nikki Haley, and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the former GOP presidential nominee who endorsed Romney Wednesday. McCain, who remains popular in New Hampshire, where he won in 2000 and 2008, said Thursday it's time for the party to unite behind Romney and "get into the main event" of defeating Obama. He spoke on CBS' "The Early Show."

Romney's Republican rivals had no intention of heeding McCain's calls for a quick end to the GOP nomination fight.

Gingrich, the former House speaker, rolled out his first TV ad aimed at Romney. In it, Gingrich labels his rival's economic plan "virtually identical to Obama's failed policy" and says "timid won't create jobs, and timid certainly won't defeat Barack Obama."

Gingrich also gave a dismissive assessment of Santorum when asked to size up the former Pennsylvania senator, saying that "in historical terms, he would be a junior partner." Gingrich questioned whether Santorum has a "track record" for running a large-scale national campaign, as Gingrich did when he engineered the Republican takeover of the House in 1994.

The Iowa caucuses did little to clarify what has long been a fractured GOP field, with Romney and Santorum battling almost to a tie in that state and libertarian Texas Rep. Ron Paul placing third. The result demonstrated anew the difficulty Republicans have had in choosing between Romney, a former business executive who governed as a moderate, or a more dynamic, conservative alternative.

Santorum is itching to fill that role. The former Pennsylvania senator lost by just eight votes to Romney in Iowa, a strong showing due to a socially conservative message and dedicated politicking across the state's 99 counties. His challenge now is to raise money and build a strong enough organization to cement his status as a durable challenger to Romney.

Santorum, offered himself as "the conservative alternative" to Romney and claimed he's got the momentum to propel his campaign beyond New Hampshire after a surprisingly strong showing in Iowa's leadoff caucuses. "Our office is buzzing," Santorum said after an appearance in Manchester. "We're the folks that people are getting excited about." He dismissed Obama as "a president who doesn't understand us."

Taking note of the ever-changing list of front-runners for the GOP nomination, Santorum told voters: "Don't defer your judgment to the pundits. They're on their seventh `this race is down to two people' scenario."

Santorum, of course, wants to be half of the last such duo.

His aides reported raising $1 million Wednesday alone, largely through a surge in online donations that crippled the campaign's website shortly after the Iowa results were announced. Campaign manager Mike Biundo has said the campaign's fundraising pace tripled over the last week.

Paul is taking some time off at home in Lake Jackson, Texas, where he has been resting, riding his bike, and preparing for two weekend debates. He will return to New Hampshire on Friday and stay through Tuesday's primary. As recently as this week, Paul said he could not see himself becoming president.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also went home after saying he would reassess his candidacy following a weak fifth-place finish in Iowa, but he later announced he would carry on. He planned to test his sputtering candidacy in South Carolina, which holds its primary Jan. 21. Perry also was expected in New Hampshire for the debates.

___

Fouhy reported from New York. Associated Press writers Shannon McCaffrey, Kasie Hunt, Steve Peoples and Holly Ramer in New Hampshire and Chris Tomlinson in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Beth Fouhy on Twitter at http:// www.twitter.com/bfouhy

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter at http:// www.twitter.com/Philip_Elliott

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120105/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign

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Trouble followed German mother, son in 3 countries

FILE - In this courtroom sketch, Dorothee Burkhart appears in federal court on fraud charges Tuesday Jan. 3, 2012 in Los Angeles. Burkhart is the mother of suspected Los Angeles arsonist Harry Burkhart. Burkhart is scheduled to again appear in federal court Friday Jan. 6,, 2012 on fraud charges. (AP Photo/Bill Robles, File)

En este boceto de la corte, el alem?n Harry Burkhart es sujetado por los guardias, en un momento en que tat? de levantarse durante su audiencia en la corte superior de Los Angeles, el mi?rcoles 4 de enero del 2012. Est? acusado de perpetrar varios ataques incendiarios a finales de diciembre (AP Foto/Mona Shafer Edwards)

Judge Upinder Kalra presides over the arraignment of Harry Burkhart, a German national suspected of starting a rash of arson fires in the Hollywood area, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012 in Los Angeles. Burkhart a German man was charged Wednesday with 37 counts of arson in connection with a rash of fires that terrorized Los Angeles over the New Year's weekend. (AP Photo/Luis Sinco, Pool)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Wherever Dorothee and Harry Burkhart went, trouble followed the mother-and-son duo.

Arsons in Los Angeles, Germany and possibly Canada. A daring escape through a German hospital window. A claim that fascists were trying to kill them. Skipping out on a bill for a breast augmentation surgery.

The 24-year-old Harry Burkhart became an internationally known figure after he was arrested this week in dozens of Hollywood arsons that left a string of torched buildings and cars and caused millions of dollars in damage. Authorities said they believe the motive behind the fires was anger at the U.S. government for arresting his mother on a German warrant.

But it's not his first encounter with an arson investigation. He is suspected of starting an arson fire late last year at a German house that belonged to his family, shortly before the Los Angeles fires. And Vancouver police said this week they are looking to see whether the Burkharts were living in the area when there was a series of suspicious fires.

A phone message left for Vancouver police was not immediately returned Friday, and the Burkharts have not been officially linked to any fires there.

The Burkharts' strange personas and odd behavior were noted at each stop as they hopscotched from their native Germany to British Columbia and finally California, and Los Angeles police believe, ultimately led to Harry Burkhart's arrest.

His anti-American outburst last week during a detention hearing for his mother cemented his likeness in the mind of a deputy U.S. Marshal, who recognized him after police began circulating a video showing the man wanted in the arson spree.

Court documents show Dorothee Burkhart's legal problems date back to at least 2000, when she rented out apartments in Frankfurt but failed to return the security deposits. She engaged in that scam several years later, according to German officials, and also didn't pay about $10,000 for a 2004 breast surgery.

She was arrested in mid-2007 and was taken to a hospital in Frankfurt for cardiac problems. She escaped out a window after prison guards took off her handcuffs and allowed her to use the restroom, said Michael Koch, who was appointed as her public defender. The 53-year-old is being held on a provisional arrest warrant.

She and her son landed in Vancouver shortly after her German escape. The pair applied for refugee status in Canada, contending they would be tortured and killed if they were sent back to Germany, The Vancouver Sun reported.

She told immigration officials that a right-wing fascist group had infiltrated the German government and police were after them because of their Russian origin, the paper said. The refugee claim was denied two years later.

In medical records from March 2010, a doctor said she suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks and her son suffered from autistic spectrum disorder since his childhood.

The younger Burkhart's name surfaced as a suspect in the German arson case after he filed an insurance claim shortly after the fire, Marburg prosecutors' spokeswoman Annemarie Wied said.

A search of his Hollywood apartment following his arrest turned up news articles about the Los Angeles fires along with some car fires in Frankfurt last September. German authorities said there was no active investigation of Burkhart in Frankfurt.

Twelve days after the German house fire, Burkhart was in Los Angeles, according to court documents, visiting the German consulate with his mother to try to renew his passport. His nonimmigrant visa is set to expire Jan. 18, authorities said. His mother last entered the country lawfully in January 2007, and she left four months later.

It's unclear if either Burkhart worked. A website offering appointment-only sensual massage is registered to Dorothee Burkhart, though her name is not mentioned on the site.

Their lives unraveled last week when the younger Burkhart caught the attention of court officials at his mother's hearing, yelling "F--- the United States!" or "F--- all Americans," authorities said.

At each of their subsequent court appearances, both Burkharts made a spectacle. Dorothee Burkhart constantly asked for her son, apparently unaware he had been arrested. She also wondered if the Nazis knew where she and her son lived.

The next day in court, her son was surrounded by sheriff's deputies as he alternated between sitting and standing. He often arched his head and body backward, looking up to the ceiling with his mouth agape.

On Friday, the elder Burkhart was ordered to return to court Tuesday with the hopes she will have hired an attorney. During a hearing, she denied the charges against her and suggested Nazis, not her son, were responsible for the recent rash of fires.

"One little mentally ill child cannot do fire like this," she said in broken English.

She stood up at one point and claimed she had been abused while in custody.

"Ma'am, sit down. This is not a show," said U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle.

Her son has been charged with 37 counts of arson and is expected to return to court Jan. 24. He's being held on $2.85 million and could face additional charges, prosecutors said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-06-Los%20Angeles%20Arson/id-034078d2dca04e78b91bcf5aeabfe12e

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Friday, January 6, 2012

CES Preview: Ultrabooks to Dominate the PC Landscape

At last year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, you couldn't throw your schwag bag across the show floor without hitting a 3-D television or Android tablet. This year's hottest gadget? It looks like it will be the ultrabook.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/8EnhUBDYvFE/

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Down to the wire for silicon: Researchers create a wire four atoms wide, one atom tall

ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2012) ? The smallest wires ever developed in silicon -- just one atom tall and four atoms wide -- have been shown by a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales, Melbourne University and Purdue University to have the same current-carrying capability as copper wires.

Experiments and atom-by-atom supercomputer models of the wires have found that the wires maintain a low capacity for resistance despite being more than 20 times thinner than conventional copper wires in microprocessors.

The discovery, which was published in this week's journal Science, has several implications, including:

For engineers it could provide a roadmap to future nanoscale computational devices where atomic sizes are at the end of Moore's law. The theory shows that a single dense row of phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon will be the ultimate limit of downscaling.
For computer scientists, it places donor-atom based silicon quantum computing closer to realization.
And for physicists, the results show that Ohm's Law, which demonstrates the relationship between electrical current, resistance and voltage, continues to apply all the way down to an atomic-scale wire.

Bent Weber, the paper's lead author and a graduate student in the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of New South Wales, was thrilled with the finding.

"It's extraordinary to show that Ohm's Law, such a basic law, still holds even when constructing a wire from the fundamental building blocks of nature -- atoms," he says.

The innovation of the Australian group was to build the circuits up atom by atom, instead of the current method of building microprocessors, in which material is stripped away, says Gerhard Klimeck, a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology.

"Typically we chip or etch material away, which can be very expensive, difficult and inaccurate," Klimeck says. "Once you get to 20 atoms wide you have atomic flucuations that make scaling difficult. But this experimental group built devices by placing atomically thin layers of phosphorus in silicon and found that with densely doped phosphorus wires just four atoms wide it acts like a wire that conducts just as well as metal."

The goal of the research is to develop future quantum computers in which single atoms are used for the computation, says Michelle Simmons, director of the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of New South Wales and the project's principal investigator.

"We are on the threshold of making transistors out of individual atoms," Simmons says. "But to build a practical quantum computer we have recognized that the interconnecting wiring and circuitry also needs to shrink to the atomic scale."

Hoon Ryu, a Purdue graduate who is now a senior researcher with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology's Supercomputing Center, said the practicality of the research is exciting.

"The metallic wire is in principle quite difficult to be scaled into one- to two-nanometer pitch, but in both experimental and modeling views, the research result is quite remarkable," Ryu says. "For the first time, this demonstrates the possibility that densely doping wire is a viable alternative for the next-gerenation, ultra-scale metallic interconnect in silicon chips."

To assist the Australian researchers, Klimeck's research team ran hundreds of simulations to study the variability of these nanoscale structures.

"Having the throughput capability for a highly scalable code is important for doing that, and we have that capability here at Purdue with http://nanoHUB.org," Klimeck says. "We ran hundreds of cases to understand the potential landscape of these devices, so this was computationally intensive work."

Klimeck says that in addition to the project's scientific and engineering implications, he found the collaboration the most rewarding aspect.

"It is an exciting collaboration," he says. "We were doing simulations of experimental work, which was based on a theoretical model. So we were bringing the three legs of modern science together in one project. Plus, our graduate students are able to stay in contact and work with each other despite working in various locations around the world. It's hard to think of a better example of how science is done today."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Purdue University. The original article was written by Steve Tally.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

B. Weber, S. Mahapatra, H. Ryu, S. Lee, A. Fuhrer, T. C. G. Reusch, D. L. Thompson, W. C. T. Lee, G. Klimeck, L. C. L. Hollenberg, M. Y. Simmons. Ohm's Law Survives to the Atomic Scale. Science, 2012; 335 (6064): 64-67 DOI: 10.1126/science.1214319

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/zB8N6FIc5gk/120105161826.htm

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Thursday, January 5, 2012

New Guidelines Issued for Combining HIV, Seizure Meds (HealthDay)

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 4 (HealthDay News) -- Physicians need to take care when prescribing seizure medication to HIV/AIDS patients to prevent harmful interactions between drugs, experts warn.

The cautionary note from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) has led to the issuance of a new AAN guideline, which was developed in consultation with the International League Against Epilepsy.

"It is important that patients know exactly which drugs they are taking and provide that information to all prescribing health care providers caring for them," lead guideline author Dr. Gretchen L. Birbeck, of Michigan State University in East Lansing, said in an AAN news release.

"Doctors may need to watch and adjust drug doses in people with HIV/AIDS who take seizure drugs," added Birbeck, who is also an AAN fellow.

Seizures and related disorders are not uncommon among HIV patients, according to Birbeck and colleagues. It is estimated that at least 10 percent of HIV patients experience seizures, they noted.

In the new guideline, which is published in the Jan. 4 online editions of both Neurology and Epilepsia, the research team cautioned that effectiveness of either set of drugs can be compromised when specific seizure medications are taken alongside certain HIV/AIDS treatments. Increased toxicity is another potential issue.

For example, levels of certain seizure medications -- such as phenytoin, phenobarbital and carbamazepine -- actually drop off when they come in contact with seizure drugs. The risk: an HIV drug regimen might fail, the authors pointed out.

One way Birbeck's team hopes to mitigate against such risk is to outline the correct dosages of seizure drugs. They noted that dangerous drug interactions may be avoidable if medications are prescribed in the right amounts.

The team also acknowledged that the threat of harmful drug interactions is highest where drug choices are the most curtailed. That means that patients in poorer countries, where most HIV/AIDS patients now live, are particularly vulnerable to this dynamic.

"Future research should target epilepsy and HIV/AIDS drug combinations where choices are limited, such as in developing countries, to better understand the risk of these drug interactions," Birbeck said in the news release.

More information

For more on seizures, visit the Epilepsy Foundation.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/diseases/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20120105/hl_hsn/newguidelinesissuedforcombininghivseizuremeds

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NBC's Gregory: Isn't GOP To Blame 'For Not Doing More to Make Government Work Better'?

On Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory urged Rick Santorum to blame congressional Republicans for Washington gridlock: "...approval of Republicans in Congress, stands at 26%. That's far less than the President's approval rating....Do you fault Republican leaders in Congress for not doing more to make government work better, through more compromise with the President?"

In response, Santorum observed: "You have to have someone you can work with. And this president has done more to divide than any other president that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime....who I don't believe has met with Boehner or any of the Republican leadership, in now six months, hard to compromise and work with someone who won't meet with you." Gregory dismissed that fact: "Clearly they've met with him. I mean, even the debt fight over the summer was a constant set of meetings. So that can't be accurate."

Gregory also cited The Washington's Post Dan Balz, who proclaimed the GOP's supposed "checkered record in the past year" that has left Americans wondering, "Are the Republicans really ready to lead?"

After Santorum refused to accept Gregory's invitation to attack the House GOP, Gregory pressed further: "You don't fault Republicans for intransigence on taxes or spending or other areas of potential compromise with the President?"

Santorum concluded: "We have an explosion of spending....I think Republicans are right to stand and fight on this. And the President seems to be absolutely disinterested in listening to what the American public said in the last election, which is we want more limited government. He did not get the message. I guess he's going to have to get this message, hopefully, in November."

Here is a transcript of the January 1 exchange:

10:54AM ET

(...)

DAVID GREGORY: One of the things you look at as an insurgent party trying to beat an incumbent president ? you've said that a second term for President Obama would be dangerous for the country ? is that you look at the party that's making the challenge. And here's the reality, disapproval for the Republican Party right now in Congress, I should say, approval of Republicans in Congress, stands at 26%. That's far less than the President's approval rating.

And Dan Balz writes this in The Washington Post in his column on Tuesday, "For GOP candidates, worries about the party's brand. A year ago, after their big victory in the midterm elections, Republicans were full of confidence and anticipation. As Americans look toward next November, the question that many will be asking is: Are the Republicans really ready to lead? In three political arenas ? Congress, the states and the presidential campaign trail ? Republicans have left a checkered record in the past year."

In Congress it was the debt debacle forcing a near shutdown of the government. The payroll tax debate that looked to go in the President's favor. You had the fights with the unions in the states like Wisconsin. Do you fault Republican leaders in Congress for not doing more to make government work better, through more compromise with the President?

RICK SANTORUM: You have to have someone you can work with. And this president has done more to divide than any other president that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. This president goes out and gives speech after speech after speech trying to divide America between class, between income group, between racial and ethnic groups. This is the great divider-in-chief.

And it's very difficult when you're being lampooned by the President on a regular basis, not just as a party but individually, to then ? and the president, who I don't believe has met with Boehner or any of the Republican leadership, in now six months, hard to compromise and work with someone who won't meet with you. Who won't sit down and try to negotiate things and try to talk. So I'm not surprised at all that Republicans are having a difficult time with someone who has no interest-

GREGORY: Clearly they've met with him. I mean, even the debt fight over the summer was a constant set of meetings. So that can't be accurate.

GREGORY: Well, if you look at it. The last time he's had meetings, I know it's been several months. And I know that President Bush, when I was there, and President Reagan, routinely met on a regular basis, with the other side. And developed relationships. You know, it's ? this is about trust. You don't build trust by going up and running around the country, beating up on your opponent. He's the president of everybody in this country. As President of the United States, I would be someone who would meet regularly, who would talk and try to build relationships of trust. And this president has not done that.

GREGORY: So you don't fault ? you don't fault Republicans for intransigence on taxes or spending or other areas of potential compromise with the President?

SANTORUM: Again, we go back to the basic fact. Federal government now is spending about 25% of GDP. That's historically the average is about 18%. We have an explosion of spending. And the problem in this country is, government oppression, spending, that's leading to huge debts and deficits. What the Republicans have said is, "No more." We are going to move in the direction of smaller government. And President Obama has no interest in doing that.

I think Republicans are right to stand and fight on this. And the President seems to be absolutely disinterested in listening to what the American public said in the last election, which is we want more limited government. He did not get the message. I guess he's going to have to get this message, hopefully, in November.

(...)

?
-- Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Kyle Drennen on Twitter.

Source: http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/2012/20120103033750.aspx

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6 Tips For Building a High Quality Blog Following (Mashable)

Shane Snow is a New York-based tech journalist and co-founder of Contently.com, a marketplace for brand publishers and journalists. In 2010, New York City startup, Birchbox launched a blog about beauty products before it had any customers. The beauty sample delivery service ? and its blog ? exploded in popularity.

[More from Mashable: Top 25 Most-Shared Stories in December]

Today, to keep up with its readers? appetite for content, Birchbox employs multiple editors and publishes half a dozen posts a day, along with an online magazine. According to compete.com, Birchbox.com traffic grew 6,500% in 2011, to over 110,000 monthly unique visitors at last count.

But raw traffic data doesn?t tell the whole story about the value of a publication. Birchbox?s blog drives customer acquisition and retention, which means its readers are loyal enough to become subscribers, followers and customers. At last count, the company had 44,000 Facebook Likes, 14,000 Twitter followers, and 9,400 Youtube subscribers. New blog subscribers ? people who had willingly opted in to Birchbox content ? pile on every month. (The company declined to release hard numbers on total blog subscribers).

[More from Mashable: What Job Seekers Need to Know in Today?s Digital Market]

Ironically, the hit-based nature of social media means many blog owners have difficulty cultivating long-term loyalty from their users. It?s easy to get excited when the occasional ?viral? post brings in a spike of traffic. But often that traffic melts away as quickly as it arrived.

Brian Clark, CEO of CopyBlogger Media, says a building a quality blog following means ?attracting the right people in order to accomplish your specific goals.? In other words, he says, ?you've got to put quality ahead of quantity.?

So, how do upstart blogs like Birchbox?s build such voracious followings? Here are six tips to attracting readers who stick around longer than the click of a StumbleUpon button:

1. Turn Existing Customers Into Readers

Current customers can be an excellent source of quality readers for a new publication. Often, they already identify with the target demographic. And they?re already familiar with you.

Whether it?s getting a customer to subscribe to a newsletter, blog, or Twitter feed during a signup or checkout process, or requesting they subscribe in a follow-up email or call, happy customers are highly likely to become readers. Turning customers into readers gives you the opportunity to reach other potential customers ? your readers? friends ? through social media.

Birchbox benefits from this virtuous cycle as new readers become customers, new customers become readers, and readers share with friends.

2. Skip The Misleading Traffic-Boosting Techniques

Pageview-racking slideshows and catchy-yet-misleading headlines are commonplace in the blogosphere; many publications use them to increase traffic (and therefore advertising revenue). Unfortunately, however, these techniques often don?t result in quality readership growth.

?Headlines should be descriptive and tell readers what to expect,? says Chris Spagnuolo, Founder and Publisher of guyism.com, an independent men?s lifestyle site with 3.5 million monthly unique visitors.

Slideshows skew page views-per visit stats, making it more difficult to accurately gauge traffic stickiness; misleading headlines may put your content in front of new, unsuspecting readers, but those readers are less likely to stay, and may even have negative reactions to being tricked.

?We've always believed that the best way to get good quality readers is to create good quality content,? says Ben Lerer, Co-Founder of men?s city guide Thrillist. Lerer says Thrillist?s experiments with slideshows or tricky headlines never yielded valuable reader growth.

3. Speak to a Very Specific Audience

Casting a wide net can be good for generating traffic, but with a glut of reading options on the web, passionate blog followers gravitate toward hyper-specific publications. That?s one of the reasons many niche media sites are growing while mainstream publications bleed readers.

Thrillist benefits from targeting a niche audience, Lerer says, rather than broad categories like ?New Yorkers? or ?men.? The publication focuses on 20- and 30-something, nightlife-loving urban males, and it speaks to them as peers. Knowing its readers completely allows Thrillist to connect with them more effectively.

Often this means targeting a niche in which you ? the blogger ? already belong. ?We [are] really writing for ourselves,? Chen explains. ?And we never talk down to our readers.?

4. Guest Post and Use Guest Bloggers

Allowing guest bloggers to post on your blog brings twofold benefits: more content for your blog, and new reader exposure for your site. Guest bloggers often point their own followers to posts they?ve written for other publications (and you should encourage them to do so). Ideally, those readers start to recognize your blog and eventually subscribe to you, too.

?Our uniques have increased every month, in large part because we've been ? using more guest bloggers,? Chen explains.

Likewise, guest posting your own content on relevant blogs in your niche can help you attract new audiences.

?We've built a number of valuable partnerships with brands and other publishers who have helped us educate other guys about Thrillist,? Lerer says. ?But,? he adds, ?we know these guys wouldn't stick around if the quality of what we produced on a daily basis wasn't top notch.?

5. Encourage Loyalty Through Consistency

Giving readers something to expect helps them work your blog into their daily or weekly routine. As your audience grows, you should increase your content frequency; however, from the beginning, publishing on a consistent schedule will help build loyalty.

?We try to post between 6-10 times a day ? to keep people coming back,? Chen says.

Consistency also has to do with presenting readers with a unified voice or consistent approaches. Clark says fostering a quality audience means, ?taking an editorial stand for what you believe in, rather than watering things down to avoid offending anyone. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to try to be controversial. In this day and age, simply taking a position and standing behind it will bring people who agree, and people who don't.?

Clark continues, ?Don't be afraid of those who don't [agree with you]. They galvanize your supporters who do agree, which turns them into fans instead of luke-warm traffic.?

6. Be Timely And Relevant

Blog to connect with what?s currently on your readers? minds. This way, you?ll not be interrupting them; instead, you?ll enhance their routines.

?Be relevant, interesting, and digestible,? Chen says. ?By giving people stories that are easy to click and share ? you'll instantly increase your reach.?

It?s all about social relevance, Spagnuolo says. ?Think, ?Will one of my friends from high school think this is worth sharing on Facebook?? If the answer is yes, that's a good start.?

Shares, followers, bounce rates, and conversions can indicate whether a blog?s readership is engaged or simply transient. Any blog that?s tuned in to its audience can increase the above and grow loyal readers.

?To us, a quality reader is someone who stays or shares,? Lerer says. ?If they're engaged, they'll be more likely to come back. If they're sharing, they're creating value. Either way, those are the two best kinds of readers.?

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20120102/tc_mashable/6_tips_for_building_a_high_quality_blog_following

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