I need to get back to the real subject here, but I will continue to spread out my Top 5 selections over the coming weeks.

I need to explicitly give thanks to a couple sites that have included me in their Top of the Top 5 postings:

• John Crickett’s Top 5s – Blog Posts About Business, where he categorizes all the business related selections. John also gave me a great idea which I’ve passed on to Darren Rowse… include a category field in the submission form next time he does a group writing project.
• Joe Rawlinson’s post, Weekend Reading – May 12th is another great selection of business oriented posts. Hey! These selections are turning out to be on-topic for this blog… funny how that works!
• Darlene McDaniel’s guest post, Top 5 Writing Project – Good Stuff! at Small Business Boomers, another small business oriented blog, lists her selection of posts focusing on blogging resources for small business. Darlene’s own blog, Tough Questions? Great Answers! is also another great resource. I see it’s a member of the b5Media Business Channel… Guess I’ll have to check that out, as should you!

Here are five more of my favorite selections:

• The Top 5 Ways To Appreciate Life More
• Top 5 WordPress Plugins That Help Increase Comments
• 5 Tips – Writing for Blogs
• Top 5 Tips for Achieving Success

Back to business tomorrow…

Well, I’ve just finished reviewing another ten great postings! I think Darren over at ProBlogger should be very proud of the quality he has inspired in his readers for the Group Writing Project. I don’t think I’ve seen a dog in the bunch! I’ve got those special links for you of my next top 10, but first here are the links back each individual day’s postings, including the fianl day four:

• Day One: Total posts, 132; I want to read 38!
• Day Two: Total posts, 242; My picks, 80!
• Day Three: Total posts, 222; I chose 74
• Day Four: Total Posts, 297! OK, I haven’t gone through this one yet… I’m still catching my breath!

For a total of 893 entries! Wow! It’s a good thing he was picking a winner by using random numbers…

My Top 10 of the Day

• Top 5 Not-So Boring Hobbies
• Hybrid Electric Cars, The Top Five
• How to find the person of your dreams
• My Top 5 Required Feeds
• Top 5 Reasons to Join a Blog Network
• The Top 5 Ways to Get Your Act Together
• Top 5  GTD Computer Tools

That is a great selection and I’ve added several to my feed reader. And had to start clearing out a few pieces of dead wood to make room!

Plus One Bonus

While checking out the links for  Top 5  GTD Computer Tools at Daily Iteration, I came across a comment by Kim Roach with a link to her posting of  50 Essential GTD Resources! That’s an awesome post and a lot of work to create! Thanks Kim!

Well, Darren’s had a great turnout for the ProBlogger Group Writing project! After reviewing the list of posts for the first three days, here’s the counts for the one’s I want to check out:

Day One: Total posts, 132; I want to read 38! That’s 29% of all the posts! I’ve made it through the first ten… check below.

Day Two: Total posts, 242; My picks, 80! That’s over 33%!!! Unbelievable…

Day Three: Total posts, 222; I chose 74… for exactly one-third!

I won’t be out of reading material for a long time… I saved the full lists to a separate file on my hard drive so I can load it in my browser and hop to them as I get a chance to review.  Several people have been giving me trackbacks from reposting the entire list to their site, however, I don’t agree with that technique. In general, that is called ‘link farming’ and can get you banned from search engines. There were only a couple, so I went ahead and approved them for now. Though they are subject to review.

My intention is to post only the links I’ve actaully visited and liked! I think that will give you a better filter to choose from. While there are a lot of high quality posts, they aren’t all the same level. However, while I’ve picked a diverse selection of subjects, I suggest you go back to the horse’s mouth links above to get the full lists. There might be others that you are interested in, that I was not.

Today’s Review

I was able to get through ten posts today, after compiling the overall list and selecting my favorites from the first three days. Here they are:

•  Top 5 Steps to Securing your Data
• My top 5 free development tools
• My Top 5 Favourite WordPress Blogging Tools
• 5 Cool Things You Can Do With Your DNA
•  The Top 5 Ways to Become a Millionaire
• Top Five Ways To Creatively Acheive Your Goal
• The Top Five Steps to Grow Your Net Worth  — I’m already subscribed, and you should be too!
• Top 5 Ways To Save Money Without Noticing
• How To Figure Out What To Read Next–Top Five Resources
• 5 Reasons A Custom Blog Script Is Better

That should keep you reading for a while… I focused on just checking out ther Top 5 posts… if I had started exploring all the archives, I’d never get this written! But, I’ll be back…

I was catching up on reading my favorite blogs this morning–see my blogroll on the lower right of this page–and discovered that I was sending several links to my boss that might be of interest to my readers here. So, I’m going to share them with you as well, and my boss will get less email. Everyone wins!

• We use Oracle in house with some commercial applications, and we sometimes leverage it’s data for other purposes on our web site, so I thought this post on improving PHP to Oracle response would be of interest: When a few seconds are important: improving PHP Oracle connection speed
• We’ve been investigating various IDEs and/or RAD applications to help our staff with the move towards more & more web applications. This morning I found that CodeGear (formerly Borland), now Embarcadero Technologies has released Delphi for PHP. Thanks for the lead from JASLabs: High Performance PHP.
• I’ve been working on developing a Subversion environment for web development and had previously come across an article from Karl Katzke on Best Practices for Managing Releases with Subversion. Today Karl directed us to Thomas Aylott on Web Development Environment and Workflow. Thanks Karl & Thomas!
• If you have not read The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt & Dave Thomas, you must! It’s essential reading for any programmer or web developer. It covers the core thought process & philosophy behind the code you should be writing. I will probably quote it often in the future! Today, I was reading Dave Thomas’ blog and found some interesting insights relating to the use of REST (REpresentational State Protocol) in relationship to the ATOM Publishing protocol using Ruby conventions for examples: The RADAR Architecture: RESTful Application, Dumb-Ass Recipient.

As I come across other interesting links, I’ll be sharing… Be sure to stay tuned!