It’s been just over a week since I’ve been back to blogging, I’ve missed it like crazy & slowly catching up with everything I want to talk about, it’s gonna take a while but I’ll get there!

I’ve been trying out a new visitor statistic software called Get Clicky & have fallen in love with it. I can see exactly who is visiting my site, when, what they look at, who refers them & where they exit. It will take a while to get my usual visitor number back up to where it used to be, but within the past week I’ve had just over 1970 unique visitors which is pretty good, just wish you would all start commenting now grrrr The only huge difference is now that the majority of my visitors are within the UK & USA rather than Kuwait or UAE which was the case for the past 6 years.

But, it’s not just from these places where I get visitors from, I get them from all over the world

& I quite like that

Shortly before Christmas, I took the huge leap of converting to Apple after Jacqui hounded me and hounded me with all things Mac! She has this power you know, to convert people to the dark side, so you need to becareful when you talk to her mwahaha!

I got the 13″ High End Macbook Pro, the 15″ looked too big for me when I saw them side by side & after a few months of using it, I’m hooked! I’d be lost without my little Macbook now, it feels weird using a PC!

I bought a little handmade sleeve to protect my Macbook from etsy so it doesn’t get scratched, I’m like an over protective mother hahaha. It’s slightly padded & it great for when I want to take my Macbook with me on the move.

Yes Macbook’s are more expensive than normal laptop’s but it really is worth every penny. As soon as a booted my Macbook up, I was blown away by the graphic & sound performance compared to my 3 yr old Fujistu-Siemens. And I had my Mac Guru Jacqui to help me with what programs I should install right away. It did take a little getting used to at first, the keyboard, OS and shortcuts are all so different but much quicker & easier!

I use a website called Wakoopa to keep track of what programs I use on my Macbook, so if you want to add me as well, please do so by clicking here! To date, I’ve used 167 different applications both Web & Mac based, I won’t list them all but I’d be lost without Growl, Quicksilver, Photobooth (yes I’m addicted!), Coda & Cyberduck.

I’ll leave you now with photos taken on my blackberry (sorry for the quality!) of me unboxing and starting up my new baby! I still need to come up with a nickname for my Macbook, I have no clue what to call it.

Any suggestions?

A while ago Jackie & I thought about starting our own blog design business because of the amount of requests we get to design for people. So, we thought why not & have now set up JAM Dish. Our little business based in the UK, Kuwait & New York.

Why JAM Dish? Well J & M are our initials so it was an easy choice, the Dish part came from trying to pic something that fitted with JAM. In the end we chose Dish because we dish out design creations all over the interwebz

We have already completed our first client which was a customized website & forum for Kuwait Crohn’s. A website which acts as an information point & support group for suffers of Crohn’s Disease and Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Kuwait.

Our own website has not been completed yet as we are building up our portfolio some more before launching our website in full but in the meantime you can go to JAM Dish & register your interest in the site which will subscribe you to all news when the site is live.

You can also join our Facebook Page to see what we are up to or you can good ol’ fashion email us at: jam[at]jamdish.com.

Ever since I started doing Customized Blog Designs with Jacqui, we’ve been emailed numerous times with requests & because we do them for free, its even better for the clients, plus it boosts our portfolio.

But, now we’re getting more & more and we’re starting to think we should start charging for them, why not make money out of something we love, especially since I’m jobless!

So the question is; how much would you pay for a custom blog design from Jacqui and me?

Would you still want a customized blog design from us if we charged you for it?

Please give us some feedback

This month, ananyah.COM has been around for 6 whole years and to help celebrate this occasion, starting tomorrow, I’m giving away 6 prizes in 6 days to celebrate 6 years of blogging *throws confetti in the air* can you tell I’m in a good mood?!

Prizes up for grabs within the upcoming 6 days include:
1. A customized blog design by moi including 1 years free hosting & maintenance
2. A years Flickr Pro account worth worth $24.95
3. A £20 gift voucher from Just-Eat (UK Entries only sorry) courtesy of David Buttress
4. A signed CD by Kelis & a deluxe box set CD/DVD set of Corrine Bailey Rae live
5. 3 of my favourite French Movies on DVD
6. A handmade bath produce gift basket customized to your choice, thanks mom :*

How will it work?
At 12 midday GMT, a new question will be asked and will close at 12 midnight on the same day. In total there will be 6 questions and all answers will be found within my blog, so make use of pages, archives & the search bar! Some are easy, some are a little bit more tricky but it’s all in good fun!

You can enter every days competition events, however, if you are a winner one day, you will not be able to win another day… making it fair to other participants!

How will I determine the winner & how do I enter?
Entries will be accepted by commenting on the individual blog post on the specific day. At 12 midnight each day, comments will be closed off. Once you comment your answer to the question, your comment number will automatically be your entry number, for example if you are first to comment, you’ll be Number 1 and so on.

You can also enter using twitter by tweeting the answer along with the hashtag #ananyah666 within the 12 hour allocated time. Your twitter entry number will be determined by counting the number of blog comments that have been entered. For example, if there are 15 blog comments and 10 tweets… the tweeted entries will be number 16, 17, 18 and so on.

Once all entries have been gathered, I will be using Random.ORG to determine the winner by inputting the total amount of entries and randomly generating the winning number. The winning number will be captured and posted to show that I’m not favouring one entrant over another

The winner on each day will then be posted on the entry after comments have been closed (so check for updates!) as well as on twitter, and will be emailed for contact details, so make sure you enter your correct email address if you enter by commenting. All prizes (excluding the Just-Eat voucher) are open to World-Wide entrants so no matter where you are, you’ll get your prize

The competition starts at 12 midday GMT on Saturday July 11th so keep a look out on Twitter, your RSS feeds & of course my blog for the first competition.

Good Luck & hopefully we’re around for another 6 years!

If you look over at the sidebar you may see some new additions, in particular the Gadget Boutique which is run by the cool people over at Visual DNA.

Visual DNA is a community-driven widget with picture based questions which will then automatically recommend relevant gadget products which are personalized for each visitor (yes you!) to buy on amazon

So go ahead, try the widget & let me know what type of person you end up being… because then, I can add more products to the lists to personalize it even more

I’m thinking to start doing some tutorials on Wordpress & CSS helping others out to customize their themes because I keep getting emails from people wondering how I did this & that, as well as people wanting me to design their blog.

So, do you think this is a good idea? If I do it, is there any specific tutorial you’d like to see?

Do you twitter? If you do, what’s your username?

I joined way back in 2007 & I’m addicted to it! I update ALL time time, literally! So if I’m not blogging, you can check out what I’m doing via my twitter page.

It’s the best thing since Wordpress