There are many scary places to be on Haloween, but the scariest would definitely be the birthplace of Dracula, a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler, the Valach prince born in Transylvania.

And that birthplace has a name:  Sighisoara. You can see how this medieval city looks today via some beautiful panoramas made by Zdeto, a fellow Blogzoner.

So here we are: Sighisoara panoramas and some more panoramas and a little bit of history.

Next in our top 3 is the Bran Castle. As Elizabeth Miller, a renowned expert says: it never belonged to Dracula, but is still the most visited place by Dracula-fans, and it surely is scary in itself.

And finishing our top comes a fortress built by Dracula’s family high in the Carpathian mountains, Poenari, where his wife found her demise hurling herself from the top of the fortress when hearing the Ottoman troops approaching.

Next year, be sure to plan a trip to these places. You have nothing to fear, though. Or do you?

And a Blogzoner member!

Joel Libava is recognized as The Francise King in the U.S. because of his expertise regarding franchises. A powerful blogger, he’s #77 on the top 100 Business Blogs list.

We’re honored to have Joel on our map, so we asked him some questions regarding blogging. He was so kind to answer us, so here they are:

1. What takes to be a successful business blogger?

One must be willing to follow business trends. I read a lot of business magazines, network with other business bloggers on the internet, and keep my ear to the ground. The most important thing however, is to write posts 2-3 times a week. It IS a commitment! Keeping new content up very search engine friendly.

2. Name three things that a blogger should do to increase his visibility and authority
As I mentioned, posting new content is crucial. Also, I recommend commenting on other business blogs, and befriending other bloggers. They will get to know you, and you build cred.

3. What do you think about social networking websites and their business effects?
The social networking sites are really innovative. I do have concerns about the predators that may hang out on some of these… Business wise, companies that target young techy folks can do well!

4. What do you think about Blogzoner?
I liked the “look” right away. I am not sure if you somehow researched the colors that you use, but they are outstanding.
I like to geo-mapping, also. Nice concept and I hope you do well.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us Joel and we do hope your blog will be in top 50 next time we’ll check it out :).

And Mashups

If you wonder what’s the prime resource for Google Maps, here it is: Googlemapsmania.

An unofficial blog  analysing everything about Google Maps. And Mashups.

WARNING: if you click on the above link you will be immersed in a totally cool blog, which will suck you in for at least 2-4 hours. Don’t tell us we didn’t warned you!

Ok, from now on we’ll start to pick a blog from Blogzoner each day, among the most interesting submittals in our system.

In the menu today: elzo valugi. Nice design, great header photos and above all very interesting subjects. Through his blog I discovered why do we have an appendix (a long-term creationists/evolutionists debate), I stumbled upon Geni, a nice site to build your genealogy, and I chuckled at his $50 million offer for a good photo from a black hole.
Nuff said, enjoy it!

http://valugi.ro/en - feast yourself with the english version.

We added yesterday the Help feature, and we will endeavor to create links to the help page for every action that you can take on the site.

Now, we have a lot of features in development for the next couple of months, but we would like to hear from you about what should be developed first.

For example, we will add an advanced Search box, which will let you search blogs filtering them by language and categories, and eventually by tags.

This will enable you to select for example all the blogs written in English, or all the marketing blogs written in Hungarian, or all the design-related blogs talking about CSS, and so on.

We hope that this feature will be available somewhere in November.

We also have a long list of features we’re thinking to add, but we would like to hear from you about them. So, what should we develop first?

Hi guys!

We’ve just launched our blog. It will be a constant connection between you, our users and Blogzoner’s development and management team. We are looking forward for your opinions, ideas, feature requests and bug findings.

So, have you spotted any bugs yet ?