Delicious Links - 20 links - blogging, google, webdev, marketing, lifehacks

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can follow this list of links as I post them on Friend Feed or on Twitter. Or you can get the weekly update by subscribing to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

• [BLOGGING] 10 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less, problogger.net
  • good tips for when you’re blog is in the dumps
  • (blogging, tips, promotion, 264 saves, 34 diggs)
• [BLOGGING] 27 Thoughts On Blogging For The Artist, problogger.net
  • From the article: ” Though tempting, you’ll never crush your own mediocrity working only four hours a week.”
  • (blogging, funny, 27 saves, 26 inbound links, 6 diggs)
• [BLOGGING] Content Is Becoming a Commodity, readwriteweb.com
  • Lower barrier of entry causes flood of information causes devaluation
  • (media, blogging, 159 saves, 77 inbound links, 15 diggs)
• [BLOGGING] The Readers Point of View: The Irritating Side of Blogs, northxeast.com
  • Why your blog sucks.
  • (blogging, 7 saves, 5 inbound links)
• [BLOGGING] The Top 5 Ways to Generate Traffic With Less Work, skelliewag.org
  • Simple tips for bloggers
  • (traffic, marketing, blogging, 18 saves, 7 inbound links, 5 diggs)
• [CODE] Donating $5,000 to .NET Open Source, codinghorror.com
  • That’s pretty awesome. Still donating $5k to open source even though you’ve quit your day job to be a full time blogger.
  • (opensource, code, 6 saves, 17 inbound links)
• [FACEBOOK] Facebook Is Not Really That Special, mattmaroon.com, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • From the article: ” It’s a glorified Classmates.com. For all the hype about the –social graph– that’s the most it will ever amount to because there’s nothing social about the internet. The internet is the most anti-social invention of all time.”
  • (facebook, google, socialnetworking, 10 saves, 7 inbound links, 2 diggs)
• [FIREBUG] Firebug 1.2 Excitement, railsjedi.com
  • Firebug is hands down the best way to work with/develop web applications using javascript, HTML and CSS. If you aren’t using it then you’re effectively handicapping yourself.
  • (firebug, firefox, webdev, 66 saves, 18 inbound links, 6 diggs)
• [FIREBUG] Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar, microsoft.com, via:solotech.com
  • Firebug equivalent for Internet Explorer
  • (webdev, microsoft, 6 saves, 100 inbound links)
• [FIREFOX] Why downloading Firefox is like getting into college, sethgodin.typepad.com, via:avc.blogs.com
  • From the article: ” In the lingo of Nancy Reagan, Firefox is a gateway drug.”
  • (firefox, marketing, 85 saves, 91 inbound links, 23 diggs)
• [GEEK] stackoverflow, stackoverflow.com
  • New podcast by Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood and Joel Spolsky FTW
  • (podcast, codinghorror, joelonsoftware, 45 saves, 85 inbound links, 2 diggs)
• [GOOGLE] Play Googolopoly, the internet board game from Box.net, blog.box.net
  • Google is the new Monopoly
  • (google, games, humor, 87 saves, 100 inbound links, 12 diggs)
• [LIFEHACKS] 11 Odd but Simple Ways to Improve Your Health, dumblittleman.com
  • I can vouch for neti pots. I learned that one on Six Feet Under. :)
  • (health, lifehacks, 4 saves, 29 inbound links)
• [LIFEHACKS] 16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School, positivityblog.com
  • Lots of common productivity tips, but still a good read.
  • (productivity, lifehacks, 865 saves, 76 inbound links, 17 diggs)
• [RSS] ReadBurner Fired Back Up With Revamped GUI, Reader Integration, louisgray.com
  • ReadBurner looks like some nice sugar on top of Google Reader to make RSS more of a social activity.
  • (readburner, rss, google, GoogleReader, 3 saves, 10 inbound links)
• [SCREENCAST] Wink, debugmode.com
  • Free screencast authoring tool
  • (screencast, 9115 saves, 100 inbound links, diggs)
• [TWITTER] Twitter: The Web’s Playground, blowski.wordpress.com
  • The most concise explanation of the tech blogging scene on Twitter that I’ve ever read.
  • (twitter, 4 saves, 6 inbound links)
• [WEBDESIGN] Should Redesign? Cast Your Vote Now!, shouldredesign.com
  • Vote on web designs. Very addictive.
  • (webdesign, design, inspiration, 82 saves, 59 inbound links, 9 diggs)
• [WEBDEV] inursite, inursite.com, via:morethanseven.net
  • Spider for automatically checking your site for validation once a day.
  • (webdesign, webdev, 27 saves, 7 inbound links)
• [WORKHACKS] The Business, randsinrepose.com
  • How to negotiate your salary before accepting the job offer.
  • (business, negotiation, 70 saves, 21 inbound links, 1 diggs)

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

• Who Moved My Cheese? The New WordPress Admin Interface
  Two of my blogging heroes and inspiration Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky have joined together on a new venture called StackOverflow: overflowing with awesomeness. They are also doing a weekly podcast, and you can download the first 45 minute podcast here (8 MB). In the discussion, Joel makes a great comment: Windows Vista gives you change without giving you any value. As a Windows XP user there is no compelling reason to upgrade because you’re going to have to relearn where everything is, but you don’t get any new and compelling features or applications to offset that.

  This perfectly explained my resistance to the new WordPress 2.5 admin interface.

• Put a Copyright Notice in Your RSS Feed
  As a blogger, your content is going to end up being stolen and republished on the Internet. It’s a fact of life, there’s nothing you can do about it. One thing you can do however is put a copyright notice in your RSS feed with FeedBurner.
• Delete It – Tips for Managing Information Overload
  We’re deep into the beginning of the Information Age, as you can see from the propagation of information aggregators like Google Reader and the meta-aggregators like Friend Feed. There’s only one tip for handling information saturation that has any success: delete it.
• Delicious Links – 20 links – google, blogging, wordpress, twitter, lifehacks

This Week at IDT Labs

IDT Labs is where I announce new software tools I’m working on.

• [FRIENDFEED] Tweak Refresh Rate

  This was a request from Tony because he wanted to change how often Friend Feed autorefreshes and reloads the page. The default setting is 2 minutes, but I’ve created a Greasemonkey script where you can tweak the value (to over 2 minutes).

• [WORDPRESS] Big Excerpts

  I’m not quite sure on what planet having a 4 line text entry for the Excerpt field on WordPress blog posts is usable. On my planet you need to be able to see what you’re typing. Especially when you have to enter the HTML by hand.

• [FRIENDFEED] Hiding the Oldies

  Hides any entries older than a week from your Friend Feed.

• [FRIENDFEED] Put Alert Thingy and Twhirl to bed
  I wrote a script that humorously changed the ‘via Application’ messages on Friend Feed to say “in bed”.

This Week at Ruby, eh?

Ruby, eh? is where I blog/tumble about the Ruby programming language.

• Using InnoSetup to Build a Self-Extracting Shoes App on Windows
  I’m going to go into this one in more detail on the main blog sometime in the future. But I’m happy to say I was able to build Shoes app as a self-extracting Windows executable (~7MB)

Tags: blogging, firefox, google, lifehacks, marketing, webdesign, webdev