I’ll update this post with more commentary later. But, for now, here it is!
Video courtesy of Fox59!
If you find yourself having difficulty blogging regularly, I’ve found that sometimes the key is to make the technical part of the act of blogging easier and more convenient. Integrating the ability to blog into applications or websites you normally use can not only make blogging easier, but encourage it.
flickr
My favorite photo sharing website makes it very easy to make a blog post using either one of your photos or someone else’s that is marked as reusable. At the bottom of the “Extending flickr” tab of the “Your Account” page there is a section to add details about your blog (or blogs). If you’ve never done this before, read the simple directions to set things up properly for your type of blog and you’re all set. Once you’ve added at least one blog, a new “Blog This” button will appear above the photos you look at on flickr. Clicking on this button lets you write a blog post about that photo and post it (and the photo) to your blog all from within flickr.com. Once your done, you’re right back to looking at photos on flickr.
Google Docs
I’ve been using Google Docs since it was called Writely and I love it. I store all kinds of information in Docs and having access to it from any computer is very convenient. Today, however, was the first time I noticed that the “Share” button also allows you to post a document as a blog post directly to your blog. There is a similar set up process like flickr and then your able to post. If you already use Google Docs, this is just another reason to keep using it. If not, using Google Docs in this way can allow for more structured storage of drafts (using folders), a more robust WYSIWYG layout interface for your blog posts, versioning and collaborative sharing/writing of your blog posts–to name a few reasons.
There are other great tools that let you interact with your blog such as Windows Live Writer and ScribeFire, which I’ll cover in a future post.
I’ve been playing around with the publisher tools for 4INFO.net and have put together a convenient way to search the “twit-o-sphere” for a keyword via your cell phone using a text message.
4INFO is a text messaging information service that lets you request and subscribe to a wide range of information from various publishers via your cell phone. I’ve signed up as a publisher and have reserved the keyword: TSCAN.
Here’s how it works:
Send an SMS/text message to 44636 in this format: TSCAN <keyword>
For example, if I sent a text message to 44636 with the message:
TSCAN obama
I would get back a short menu of the most recent “tweets” with the name “obama” in them. I could then reply to that message with the corresponding menu number to see the entire “tweet.” Seem confusing? Give it a try! It really works.
I have no idea if this is useful to anyone, but just thought it was a fun way to learn about 4INFO’s publisher services.
While I love Firefox, I’ve lately been using Safari (for PC) and finding it to be a guilty pleasure. For one, it sure seems to load pages much faster. It also displays text in a way that is very pleasing to the eye (ie. websites just look and read better). However, there is one simple difference that I’m really starting to take advantage of and it can really save time: default feed rendering. 
Default Feed Rendering, you say?
It likely won’t show up on anyone’s top 10 list of killer features for ANY browser. However, I’m finding the simple and useful way that Safari handles feeds to be very satisfying. I’m talking about how your browser displays an RSS or ATOM feed when you load it directly in your browser (as opposed to a seperate feed reader). An example of how this can save you time is by visiting the Smaller Indiana homepage. If you wanted to get a quick overview of the most recent activity on the site without spending a lot of time clicking around, just click the blue RSS button on the far-right side of the browser’s URL box. This will give you a dropdown list of all available feeds to view. If you click on “Forum - Smaller Indiana” you’ll see a nicely formated view of recent forum posts with some very nice filtering features.
As you can see in the above animated graphic, you’ll see a cleanly formated listing of recent posts. You’ll also get a very handy set of tools on the right to search and filter the feed dynamically. One of my favorite tools is the ability to reduce the amount of information displayed in the feed. For example, sliding the “Article Length” slider over to the left (as the animation demonstrates) will give you an email inbox-like view of the forum posts. This is an excellent and fast way to see what’s new on any website.
While feed readers are very effective at allowing you to subscribe and consume many different websites. This integrated feed display in Safari allows you to quickly and easily cut right to the latest content on any website or blog at supports feeds. Both Internet Explorer and FireFox also provide default views of feeds. However, neither are as robust as Safari (oddly, IE comes closest).
Just a quick word to the wise: AVOID NETWORK SOLUTIONS LIKE THE PLAGUE.
Sorry if I’m being a bit dramatic, but I tend to get a bit sensitive over companies that behave badly the way Network Solutions is. The DomainTools blog is covering the shady tactics that NetSol is now employing. It appears now that when you search for an available domain name at netsol.com, if the domain is unregistered NetSol will register it within minutes!
They will place a 4-day hold on the domain and then release it back into the wild. The major problem with this tactic is that it:
- Forces you to buy the domain from Network Solutions (they are expensive compared to most)
- Makes the domain you wanted available to any number of domain tasters and generally anyone watching expiring domain name lists waiting for good ones to drop.
If you lose a good domain name this way, the odds are against you that you’ll manage to recover it without having to buy it from Network Solutions.
I tried this just 10 minutes ago with a not-so-nice domain name with a few numbers thrown in. I made sure it wasn’t registered. I checked it’s availability on NetSol.com, and within 5 minutes it had been registered by Network Solutions. Unbelievable.
I’ve lost domain names by not registering them fast enough in the past, but this is to the extreme.
If you are using FireBug while using Gmail, it could be slowing down your browsing experience. If you’d rather not turn off FireBug completely, here are some simple steps to improve the speed of Gmail from the Gmail help files.
- Click the green or red icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window to open Firebug.
- Click the Console tab.
- Select Options.
- Uncheck Show XMLHttpRequests.
- Click the Net tab.
- Select Options.
- Check Disable Network Monitoring.
Unfortunately, there is no fix for Mac users other than disabling or removing Firebug completely.
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