The bloggies is sort of like the Oscars, but for blogs! Last year, The Modern Nomad was nominated for best-design and best travel. Sadly, we didn’t win anything. But with your help, we can reclaim 2012’s glory where we won Best Travel, hell, we could even win Blog of the Year!

The more nominations we get, the better the chance that we’ll be one of the finalists. Ready to help out? Awesome! Here is the  process.

1. Got to http://2014.bloggi.es
2. Nominate ‘The Modern Nomad’ for the following categories: Best Travel / Best Blog of the Year/ Best Design / Best Writing / Best-Kept Secret
   (URL: https://www.themodernnomad.com)
3. Nominate two other blogs in two other categories of your choosing. (Lost for ideas? Check out the 2013 Bloggies winner in the categories you find interesting.)
4. At the end of the page, click the ‘I would like a chance to be on the panel of voters who choose the finalists’ checkbox, enter your email address and submit your nomination!
5. Click the link in the verification e-mail that is sent to you.
   These emails often end up in spam folders, so make sure you check it.

Nominations close 26 January.

I can’t enough thank you for your support in this. I know I’ve already inspired some people to break out of lives that did not suit them, and the Bloggies is a great opportunity to help even more people!

SO THANK YOU! You are awesome!

Whhiiippppeeee!!!!!

Exciting news everybody! With your kind help, The Modern Nomad has been nominated in two categories in this year’s Bloggies Award: Best Travel Blog and Best Designed Blog!

First, I want to say a sincere thank you to all who helped me get nominated. This competition means a lot to me and the future of the blog. The growth of readers has stalled lately and I hope that winning these honours will get us back on track!

If I may ask for two minutes of your time, I would really appreciate your vote! Simply go to http://2013.bloggi.es and find me under ‘Travel’ and ‘Design’.

THANK YOU! You really are awesome!

The bloggies is sort of like the Oscars, but for blogs! Last year, The Modern Nomad was voted best travel blog, and this meant a huge surge of new readers. This year, we (yeah, we! You readers deserve all cred for last year’s victory!) will hopefully not only defend our best travel blog title but add a few new ones!

The more nominations we get, the better the chance that we”ll be one of the finalists. Ready to help out? Awesome! Here is the  process.

1. Got to http://2013.bloggi.es
2. Nominate ‘The Modern Nomad’ for the following categories: Best Travel / Best Blog of the Year/ Best Design / Best Writing / Best-Kept Secret
   (URL: https://www.themodernnomad.com)
3. Nominate two other blogs in two other categories of your choosing. (Lost for ideas? Check out the 2012 Bloggies winner in the categories you find interesting.)
4. At the end of the page, click the ‘I would like a chance to be on the panel of voters who choose the finalists’ checkbox, enter your email address and submit your nomination!
5. Click the link in the verification e-mail that is sent to you.
   These emails often end up in spam folders, so make sure you check it.

Nominations close 27 January.

I can’t enough thank you for your support in this. I know I’ve already inspired some people to break out of lives that did not suit them, and the Bloggies is a great opportunity to help even more people!

SO THANK YOU! You are awesome!

Chimp, my new mailman… mailmonkey.

I’ve long suspected that my last newsletter provider, Feedburner, often misplaced my emails. Since you are reading this through RSS, it doesn’t much matter I guess, but it was a constant horn in my side. So, I’ve switched over to MailChimp.

This might be a great time to ditch the RSS and switch over to email updates. Who knows, there may even be special content sent out to those who subscribe there. *wink wink* Or just keep on with the RSS goodness. The important part is that no matter which method you use, you’ll be notified when there is a new article on The Modern Nomad!

Readr Board

Screenshot of the article reaction menu.

Pride is one of the big sins (trust me, I’ve done far worse sins than that!) and so I am going straight to hell when I die. Why so prideful? Because I have the best comments the net has ever seen. You guys are awesome, through and through. Sure, there is the occasional hater but the quality of the comments is gold standard. No, better, unobtanium standard. Thank you and keep ’em coming! I read everything.

But I know that there are loyal lurkers who don’t like leaving comments but who still have opinions on my writing. Well, for you guys, I’ve installed something called Readr Board. At the end of each article, you can now pick one or more pre-selected reactions or make one up yourself!

Think of it as the Facebook Like button, but on steroids and without all those nasty privacy issues.

Screenshot of in-line text reaction.

But wait, it gets better! You can add reactions to any piece of text or image in the article itself. Just hover over the image or select the text you want to react to and get busy!

Readr Board is in beta, which means that it is … a bit unstable. It’s unlikely to make you impotent, but if you see some issues, do let me know. (I love dancing on the bleeding edge!)

Instagram

It’s easy to glamorize the nomadic lifestyle. It is pretty neat, but as I said in the Nomad ≠ Tourist article, I also have an everyday life full of grocery shopping (as if I could cook…), work (I wish…) and other mundane events. But this side is difficult to present on The Modern Nomad as I try to make each article deal with a specific concept or location. The Travel Updates at the end of the articles help, but not enough.

Enter stage, left: picture of the day, the latest entry in things-that-eat-up-all-my-free-time! Each day, I will take a picture of what I get up to, and post it on a time line for you to browse while waiting for the milkman.

I’m using Instagram to take these photos. Eventually I will develop something to show these photos on The Modern Nomad. Until then, you can follow me on Instagram.

Me in the Battle of the Blogs?

Hello my dear subscribers!

First, I want to say a big great thank you for your on-going interest in The Modern Nomad, no matter if you are subscribed via mail or RSS. It is an honour to write for you.

Lately, I’ve been hard at work re-programming parts of the blog. There are countless little changes throughout, but the big one is the navigation system on the front page. I think that it is a fun little improvement, but I would love your input, good or bad. Feel free to play around with it and let me know what you think.

You can switch back to the old navigation if you like that better by clicking the link in the top-right corner of the page. (But if you do, please let me know why you don’t like the new system so maybe I can improve it.)

In other news, The Modern Nomad is currently fighting it out with a fellow travel blog over at The Battle of the Blogs. It is a fierce battle for the amusement of the online mob (think Gladiator, Russell Crow and the Coliseum) and I need your support if I am going to win this thing. So please spare 15 seconds to vote for The Modern Nomad!

Many thanks!

Gustav, t.m.n.

I am sad to announce that there is no new blog post this week. However, I am thrilled about a whole lot of other stuff that I want to share with you, so keep reading!

Site Changes

No one days imaged walls as Banksy.

The reason that there is no post this week is that I’ve been working on some site changes.

• I’ve rewritten parts of the About page, and included a video where I introduce myself. Bit twee, but I thought it was a bit more personal of an introduction than just text.
• You can now navigate to the next and previous blog post by using the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard. Pretty nifty huh?
• The big new thing, however, is the Image Wall. It is a new page where you can… Well, it is hard to explain. Try it out for yourself and you’ll see. Consider it a beta version, and if anything blows up, please let me know!

The Bloggies

OK, the Bloggies may not quite be the Oscars, but I'm still excited!

I am super-excited to tell you that I’ve been nominated in two categories for the 2012 Bloggies Awards: ‘Best Travel Blog‘ and ‘Blog of the Year‘!

Assuming that you subscribed to this blog because you like it, I hope that you can find a minute to go to the bloggies and vote for it to win. All you have to do is select ‘The Modern Nomad’ in those two categories and someone else in at least one other category, enter your e-mail address at the bottom and hit send.

http://2012.bloggi.es/

I’m struggling a bit with growing the blog reach, and I hope that winning the Bloggies might be a turning point. Many sincere thanks for you help in making this happen! It really means a lot to me.

Regards,

Gustav Andersson, t.m.n.

I have created a new page called ‘Suggestion Box‘. I hope to encourage my readers to suggest places to go, things to do, ways to travel and things to write about. You can find the new page either in the menu.

I’ve also improved the navigation of the blog. If you now go to view a particular category or tag, the next/previous links stays within the selected category/tag. I’ve also created a new tag called ‘Highlights‘ which shows the ‘best of’ blog posts. Good a place as any to try out the new navigation. You can find the tag in the menu under ‘Navigation’.

Many thanks for your ongoing subscription!

Gustav Andersson

This first notification is a selfish one. I am hoping to promote The Modern Nomad by running for the 2012 Bloggies Award. If you can spare 5 minutes to nominate my blog for the competition, then I would be eternally grateful.

The procedure is very simple.

1. Go to http://2012.bloggi.es
2. Nominate The Modern Nomad for the Travel, Designed, Humorous Writing, Secret, New & Weblog of the Year categories.
3. Nominate two other blogs of your choice, preferably in other categories.
4. Click the button saying you’d like the chance to be on the panel of voters for the finalists.
5. Enter your e-mail and submit the form.

That’s it. The nomination period is open until January 15.

For those of my readers with a keen moral sense, don’t worry. I e-mailed the people behind the bloggies and they assured me that it was OK to ask my readers for help like this.

Many many thanks for your help! It is hard to get traction as a new blog, and I hope that the publicity of the bloggies will help.

Kind regards,

Gustav Andersson