How to Import Your Twitter Contacts to Friend Feed
I’ve commented before that Friend Feed makes for a really sweet Twitter client because of the way it threads replies and how easy it is to reply to another user. The only problem is trying to find all of your Twitter contacts on Friend Feed.
I’ve written a program that uses Google’s social graph to find the links between Twitter users and Friend Feed users. Download the program, run it, enter your passwords and watch it find and subscribe to all of your Tweeps on Friend Feed.
It keeps track of who it has added over time. If you unsubscribe from someone using the web interface, they won’t be added again by the program.
How to Get an RSS Feed for your XBOX 360 Gamertag
My geek want of the day is getting an RSS feed of my Xbox 360 game activity so that I can use it with lifestreaming services. For once I’m not the only person who feels this need. There’s at least two of us! :)
I’m not sure why Microsoft doesn’t make an RSS feed of your Xbox Live activity available. The information is all there, they publish it as a gamercard. But they don’t give you access to the raw data to do with as you please unless you’re a member of the Xbox Community Developers Program. Here are the various ways you can access your Xbox 360 Gamercard to use with other websites.
Greasemonkey Scripts: Friend Feed Auto-Pagerization, Resharing Links and Even More
It’s the last day of my week of Friend Feed and I have 5 more Greasemonkey scripts for you (for a total of 8). I think I’m done writing scripts for Friend Feed for the next little while. I might put together something for importing your Twitter contacts as friends (update: here it is) but if I wait long enough I’m sure they’ll do it as an official service.
As usual you’ll need Firefox and Greasemonkey to use these scripts.
Greasemonkey Scripts: Friend Feed Twitter Client and Remove Visited Links
“Friend Feed” week seems to be continuing at IDT. But don’t worry, there’s a team of trained attack Bonobo monkeys prepared to take me into a dark alley and beat me up and make me suffer if I don’t stop talking about Friend Feed. What can I say? This is what it looks like when a web app gets people excited. I’ve put together two more Greasemonkey scripts to add features I want in Friend Feed.
Greasemonkey Script: Filter FriendFeed by Service
I’ve sipped the Kool Aid and I’m really liking Friend Feed as a lifestreaming aggregator. One feature that is a bit hard to find is filtering by individual services. I’ve created a Greasemonkey script that sticks a huge bar of icons at the top of the page to make this accessible.
- It remembers the context you’re in.
- If you’re browsing within friends, then clicking on the icons will filter by that service on your friends.
- If you’re browsing within a specific user, then clicking on the icons will filter by that service on that person.
- If you’re browsing the public timeline, then clicking on the icons will filter by that service for the public timeline.
- It returns 100 results per page instead of 30.
- It will automatically update itself if I update the script.
Building an RSS Templating System
The blog posts might have been slow lately, but that’s only because there’s been an accumulation of interesting projects piling up on my hard drive. Here’s a few things that are in the pipe (which I’m talking about to stop my procrastination and force me to release them):
- Sandbox Theme for Tumblr so that you can use Sandbox CSS themes on tumblr.com
- Tumblr Theme Templates to make it easier to develop themes for tumblr.com without having to upload your theme to tumblr.com
- Tumblr automatic backup + restore
- WordPress.com automatic backup
- Twitter There Will Be Followers – program to automatically follow back anyone who is following you on Twitter
- PostMaster html2blog – automatically post formatted HTML to Tumblr, Blogger or WordPress
- rss2html – powerful templating system for converting an RSS feed into HTML
It’s the last one I want to talk about. I’ve gotten tired of using Yahoo Pipes + Pipe Cleaner to build digest posts. It’s kind of a pain in the butt. So I want something that can take an rss feed, convert it to html so that I can use another program for automatically posting it to the blog. I’m not going the plugin route because of WordPress.com’s inability to support javascript or PHP plugins.
This is what I’ve come up with.
How to delete your Tumblr tumblelog with TumblrCleanr
Tumblr is rapidly becoming my favorite free blogging platform (more so than Blogger/WordPress.com) because of all the things they do correct:
- RSS feed importing (up to 5)
- free domain name support
- free CSS/theme support
- Google Analytics support
- javascript widget support
- keeping it simple
(You can read more about Tumblr’s Pro and Cons in this post I wrote for Lorelle on WordPress)
However, there’s one feature that’s missing: how do you delete your Tumblr? At some point you might want to destroy all traces of your tumblr (privacy concerns, or you want to use it for something else) and there isn’t an option to do that — other than click the delete button on every individual post. I wanted to repurpose a tumblr I had been using for feed aggregation and it had over 18,000 posts. That’s a lot of clicks.
Enter the TumblrCleanr. Provide it with your tumblr domain name as well as your username and password and it will delete up to the latest 3000 posts at a time. You can keep running it until your entire tumblr is clean as a whistle.
This script will DELETE ALL POSTS ON YOUR TUMBLR WITH NO BACKUPS. If that isn’t what you want to do then please don’t use it. :)
Digest for December 2007 and January 2008
Every two months I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. You can also see the Digest for November 2007.
One Year Ago
Here are some articles that are still timeless.
- On Wikipedia, Blogging and the Anti-blog Bias
Wikipedia is out to get us - Cory Doctorow on Building an Audience
Getting them to buy the cow even though the milk is free. - How to fix the Firefox memory leak (Firefox hack)
Memory problems in Firefox? Change these settings. - You Can Be a Good Example or a Horrible Warning – How NOT to be a Successful Blogger
featured on problogger.net - Switching back to real full feeds
Because partial feels make you feel icky (like walking home in a prom dress at noon). - 107 t-shirts for geeks that do not suck
hit front page of digg and del.icio.us - 81 movies for geeks that do not suck (GGG7)
hit front page of digg and del.icio.us - Tech and Blogging Predictions for 2007
This is my long list of everything that I predict will happen in 2007. - Top 10 Resolutions That I Will Not Feel Bad About Not Keeping (2007 Edition)
Why make resolutions in the New Year that you’re going to feel bad about not keeping? - Wikipedia Loses the Google Juice
Wikipedia makes a change that will keep their results from influencing search engines — why it won’t work and what they should have done instead. - Why Posting Your Email Address in Plain Text is Never a Good Idea
TechCrunch readers (unsurprisingly) get spammed — what TC should have done differently.
Monthly Digest
Tips and Tricks
- How to Play Downloaded Videos on Your iPod, Xbox 360, or DVD Player
Everything you need to know about the big scary world of video codecs. - CoinStar — Is It Worth It To Convert Your Spare Change?
You’ve seen the machines. Is the time saving worth the service charge? - Fat Blogging 101 – Weight Loss Tips
engtech’s guide to not being a fat bastard. - 7 Tips to Optimize Windows XP for Gaming — Playing The Witcher on Minimum System Requirements
Have an old machine you want to play new games on? Here’s how. - Windows XP – Disable dumpprep when programs crash
The only thing worse than having an application crash is waiting five minutes for it to FINISH crashing.
Software and Programming
- The Canary in the Coal Mine of Open Source Code Re-use
What’s the quickest and easiest way to see if an open source project is worth checking out? - How to Install the Exception Notifier Plugin with Ruby on Rails
This is the one Rails plugin *everyone* needs. Get emails when your app breaks. - Yahoo Pipe: Sub-Reddit Feed Filter
How to subscribe to the best of ruby.reddit.com (or any sub-reddit) - Free Idea: Outlook Calendar Screensaver
I want: a screensaver that shows when I’m in a meeting. - 9 Ways to Know When to Jump Ship at a Startup
When is it time to hit the open seas? When is it time to stick to your guns? - Why Open Source Software Sucks – Software Simplicity Isn’t Simple
The number one thing I hate about not-for-profit coding. - Getting Started with Ruby on Rails – Week 3 – Testing
He said unit. Hee hee.
Music
- Stupid iTunes Tricks – How to Burn a MP3 CD with Folders
Because trying to fast forward 11 songs while driving is a pain in the ass. - My Favorite Albums of 2007
This is what I’ve been listening to.
Blogging and Writing
- Online Survival Guide: 9 Tips for Dealing with Idiots on the Internet
Things I’ve learned from spending too much time in front of computers. - Rules of Thumb for Writing
Quick writing advice.
Book Reviews
- Book Review: Halting State by Charles Stross
My favorite programmer/gamer/geek book. Highly recommend. - Book Review: Everyware by Adam Greenfield
If your interested in the future of ubiquitous computing, when your floor will be smarter than you. - Book Review: Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
Is pop-culture making us smarter?
Navel Gazing
Delicious links
My weekly link posts. Lots of gems in here.
- Delicious Links – 20 links – programming, community, development, twitter, lisp
- Delicious Links – 20 links – blogging, programming, ruby, photography, copyright
- Delicious Links – 20 links – writing, programming, javascript, jquery, testing
- Best of Feeds – 19 links – blogging, inspiration, writing, design, apple
- Best of Feeds – 23 links – programming, music, photography, psychology, rails
- Best of Feeds – 20 links – geek, movies, blogging, programming, xbox360
- Best of Feeds – 14 links – security, gmail, google, testing, dns
- Best of Feeds – 13 links – photography, business, photo, copyright, comics
- Best of Feeds – 7 links – geek, humor, funny, games, windows
- Best of Feeds – 11 links – facebook, blogging, google, reader, stupidity
Popular Posts
What’s hot.
- 7 Tips to Optimize Windows XP for Gaming
- Fat Blogging 101 – Weight Loss Tips
- Why Open Source Software Sucks
- Online Survival Guide: 9 Tips for Dealing with Idiots on the Internet
- Stupid iTunes Tricks – How to Burn a MP3 CD with Folders
- 9 Ways to Know When to Jump Ship at a Startup
- Rules of Thumb for Writing
- My Favorite Albums of 2007
- How to Play Downloaded Videos on Your iPod
- The Canary in the Coal Mine of Open Source Software
Software
Free software I’ve been working on.
- [GREASEMONKEY] The Pirate Bay + Rotten Tomatoes = Crazy Delicious
This script will create links to Rotten Tomatoes while browsing the Pirate Bay. - [PIPES] Filtered Technorati Recent Mentions
My Filtered Technorati Recent Mentions pipe works again. It can give you an RSS feed of the latest blogs that links to your blog. - [GREASEMONKEY] Userscripts.org Popular Scripts v0.2
Updated my script for identifying the most popular Greasemonkey scripts on userscripts.org - [WORDPRESS] Category Resizer v1.0
WordPress Category Resizer 2008/01/02 – v1.0
- BUGFIX: newer versions of WordPress.com broke this script
- BUGFIX: will run on any WordPress install, not just WordPress.com
- BUGFIX: now works when you have less than three categories
- added automatic update check - [WORDPRESS] Comment Ninja v0.5
Comment Ninja v0.5 2008/01/02 – 0.5
don’t display comment ninja in mass-edit mode, since it doesn’t work on that mode
wordpress.com added avatars to the comment display and they were being sent in emails
on multi-author blogs it grays out the comments you can’t edit
Year in Review – Most Popular Posts of 2007
The second year of Internet Duct Tape found me settling down into my blogging rhythm. It went from an obsession to an integrated part of my life, which was important because there were many weeks where I’d be lucky to even check my stats because I was so busy at work.
2007 Highlights
- Finally got my own domain name, which I think really fits
- I was featured in the book Blogging Heroes. It’s pretty neat to see your name on the written page.
- My cat was lol’d by the readers of icanhascheezburger.com (easily the post of the year on IDT)
- Best of Feeds has been going strong with around 10-20 new links a week on the subjects I find most interesting.
- Tried doing a web comic for a bit, but it was too time consuming and I stopped in May
- Hovering at around 2.5 million page views
- A solid 6,000 page views a day even when I don’t write new content
- Learned about different aspects of web design/programming: javascript, css, rss, and ruby on rails
2007 Software
- Created a new blog documenting my dirty little hacks at IDT Labs
- Tag Cloud Generator brought tag clouds to WordPress.com before they were official, and is still used on icanhascheezburger.com
- Auntie Spam became even more useful
- Comment Ninja has let me reply to reader comments with ease
- Technorati Favorite Your Fans made scratching each others backs even easier
- Delicious and StumbleUpon are now joined at the hip for me because I submit links to both sites at the same time
- I showed bloggers how to easily create a digest post, create a link digest, and create a blog command center
- It’s easier than ever to cut-and-paste an image from Flickr into a blog post and give credit attribution
Most Popular Posts of 2007
- Top Romance Movies: 76 Romantic Flicks
- How to Earn a Six Figure Income from Blogging
- How to use Facebook without Losing Your Job
- Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey
- How to Create LOLCats
- This is Harold
- 7 Tips for Learning the Declutter Habit
- Windows XP Logon Screen with No User Account
- Distraction Free GTD: 32 Todo List Web Apps
- Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
- How to Install a Firefox Extension
- The Secret to Finding the Perfect Valentine
- Getting Started with Google Code Hosting
- 14 Tips to Get More Done in Less Time
- The Missing Curriculum for Programmers
You can also see the break down of most popular posts per month
Top Sources of Traffic for 2007
| stumbleupon.com | 50.6% | |
| lifehacker.com | 6.2% | |
| joel.reddit.com | 5.3% | |
| del.icio.us | 4.6% | |
| digg.com | 4.0% | |
| www.dansdata.com | 2.5% | |
| wordpress.com | 2.4% | |
| icanhascheezburger.com | 2.3% | |
| reddit.com | 2.2% | |
| blogs.chron.com | 1.9% | |
| popurls.com | 1.4% | |
| meneame.net | 1.4% | |
| clicked.msnbc.msn.com | 1.1% | |
| linuxtoday.com | 1.1% | |
| gawker.com | 1.0% | |
| userscripts.org | 1.0% |
The number of RSS subscribers has been climbing steadily, and I’m impressed that I have any with the way I jump around different topics.
Thank you for reading my little spot on the interweb.
Shameless Self-promotion
The Canadian Blog Awards are on again. You can also vote for Internet Duct Tape in the Sci/Tech category. Thanks to WinExtra for letting me know about the competition.
You can vote for Beats Entropy in the Humor category and Best Group Blog category
and I’d like to publicly thank my Dad for voting for me and letting me know that the contest was afoot. :)
Digest for November 2007
Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. You can also see the Digest for October 2007.
One Year Ago
Here are some articles that are still timeless.
- Book review: JPod by Douglas Coupland (favorite quotes)
- What to buy Little Johnny for Christmas
- Gift Guide for Geeks Part 1 – Tis the Season for Receiving
- North America’s Next Top Blogger? – Be a celebrity first
- Blogging Getting You Down? Try Something New and Interesting
Monthly Digest
Blogs
- Internet Duct Tape featured in Blogging Heroes
- I’ve been published in a book… does this mean I get a wikipedia entry? :)
- Add to Google Reader in Internet Explorer 7
- Google Toolbar button for one-click subscribing to feeds
Tips
- Avoid Prime Real Estate for Live.com Email Address Landrush
- Tip: having an uncommon email address can help you avoid lots of spam
- People Are Computers Too – How Improving Applications Can Improve Your Life
- The technique to make a software run faster can be used to improve your life
Programming
- How to Profile Greasemonkey Scripts with Firebug
- If you code greasemonkey scripts you’ll want to read this
- Programming Best Practices: Profiling
- When was the last time you profiled one of your apps?
- Why Open Source Software Sucks – Software Simplicity Isn’t Simple
- Why my code sucks
Ruby on Rails
- Getting Started With Ruby on Rails – Week 1
- Getting Started With Ruby on Rails – Week 2
- Getting Started with Ruby on Rails – Week 3 – Testing
- Book Review: Ruby on Rails for Dummies
Best of Feeds – weekly round-up
- Best of Feeds – 7 links – geek, humor, funny, games, windows
- Best of Feeds – 11 links – facebook, blogging, google, reader, stupidity
- Best of Feeds – 12 links – blogging, blogs, google, mashup, comments
- Best of Feeds – 13 links – geek, marketing, blogging, software
- Best of Feeds – 19 links – blogging, tips, google, opensocial, community
Popular Posts
What’s hot this month.
- Why Open Source Software Sucks
- People Are Computers Too
- Password Recovery
- Getting Started With Ruby on Rails
- Overtime Considered Harmful
Software
Updated versions.
Internet Duct Tape featured in Blogging Heroes
When bloggers like Gina Trapani, Mark Frauenfelder, Chris Anderson, and Phillip Lennsen are honored to be collected in New York Times’ bestselling author Michael A. Banks’ new book, Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers I can’t even begin to describe how exciting it is to be included in the list. “Someone must be making a mistake,” went through my head several times.
From the cover of the book you can see a list of a many of my blogging heroes: Frank Warren (PostSecret), Gina Trapani (LifeHacker), Merlin Mann (43folders), Peter Rojas (EnGadget), Chris Anderson (Wired), Michael Arrington (TechCrunch), Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel
Several other sites are posting previews from their chapters in the book, so I will as well: Blogging Heroes Preview Chapter – Internet Duct Tape
Preview the Book
Here’s a list of some of the other free chapters that are available online:
- Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder
- Wired’s Chris Anderson (author of the Long Tail)
- Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani
- TechDirt’s Mike Masnick
If you spot any other chapters in the wild, drop me a comment on this blog post and I’ll add them to the list.
On Writing Blogging Heroes
Michael Banks is talking about the experience of writing Blogging Heroes.
Pick Up Your Copy
Amazon: Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers
Digest for October 2007
Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. You can also see the Digest for September 2007. This month marked a big milestone for IDT — hitting the 2 million page view mark.
One Year Ago
Here are some articles that are still timeless.
- How to access Gmail when it is blocked at work or school
- Life in the Trenches – Getting Out Alive (by guest blogger AJ Valliant)
- Web Anonymity 101 – Digital Breadcrumbs
- Web Anonymity 103 – Online Privacy
- WordPress.com Domain Registration – From the User’s Point of View
- Is he a programmer or a terrorist?
Monthly Digest
Blogging Tips
- How I Use Google Reader
- Blog Action Day: Save Paper when Readers Print Your Blog
- Blog Tip: Create a Link Post in 3 Seconds
- Distraction Free GTD: 32 Todo List Web Applications
(mentioned on LifeHacker) - Password Recovery — The Achilles Heel of Your Online Security
Working for the Man
Geeking Out
- The Attention Age: Accelerando, Software Agents, Filters and Gatekeepers
- What I’m Playing: PC, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360
- Magazine Review: October 2007 Issue of Inc. Magazine
Best of Feeds
My weekly best of the net link round-up.
- Best of Feeds – 9 links – humor, microsoft, productivity, visualization, comics
- Best of Feeds – 30 links – programming, google, tips, agile, facebook
- Best of Feeds – 26 links – programming, webdesign, javascript, design, tips
- Best of Feeds – 34 links – programming, google, lifehacks, ruby, funny
Popular Posts
What’s hot this month.
- 7 Tips for Learning the Declutter Habit
- Distraction Free GTD: 32 Todo List Web Apps
- Coworkers Considered Harmful
- Overtime Considered Harmful
- How I Use Google Reader
IDT Labs Software Updates
IDT Labs is where I track free software I create.
- [WORDPRESS] Extract Comments or Trackbacks
- I’ve created two Yahoo Pipes for building filters of the comments feed on your WordPress blog so that you can see comments only or trackbacks only.
- [RSS] Tagosphere
- Tagosphere is an example of Yahoo Pipes I created for Jon Udell that builds an RSS feed around a specific tag using delicious, flickr, technorati, and wordpress.com.
- [DELICIOUS] Delicious Link Builder
- Build a list of links using your delicious account to bookmark them. Works great with my Yahoo Pipe Cleaner script.
- [RSS PIPE] Stupid Credit Builder
- This is a clone of Stupid Feed Rewriter that backdates the entry to January 1st, 1970. Useful for adding a credit link at the end of a list in an RSS feed.
Digest for September 2007
Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. Here you go! You can also see the digest for August 2007.
One Year Ago
Here are some articles that are still timeless.
- Making a mountain out of a molehill (of bugs)
- Windows Genuine (Dis) Advantage — Why buy when a crack works better? (WGA sucks)
- Internet Address Book – Web anonymity down the drain
- Startup Lessons – Viral and Scaling
- Web Too.Many: The Internet has no clothes
- The Dirge of iPod
- My First Greasemonkey Script: WordPress.com Category Resizer
- Guide on How to Setup Two or More Gmail Accounts to Use One Account (Create, Forward, Link)
- Using Perl on Windows: Installing ActiveState Perl
- Book Review: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Monthly Digest
Lifehacks
- 7 Tips for Learning the Declutter Habit
- How Procrastination Dashes Made Me a Better Worker
- Adopting Getting to Done
- Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
Blogging and RSS
- Blog Tip: Creating a Blog Maintenance Start Page with Netvibes
- Managing Spam Maintenance with Akismet Auntie Spam Version 2
- WordPress.com Command Diagrams
Social Web Applications
- Delicious Stumbles – Post to Delicious and StumbleUpon at the same time
- Do You Make These Mistakes with Wikis? 9 Ways To Build a Wiki That Doesn’t Suck
- Using Mind Maps to Explore User Interaction
- The Problem With Social Web Applications
- 9 Techniques to Promoting Your Social Web Application
Books
Best of Feeds
My weekly best of the net link round-up.
- Best of Feeds – 30 links – programming, productivity, code, socialsoftware, socialnetworking
- Best of Feeds – 22 links – programming, blogging, tips, javascript, rails
- Best of Feeds – 55 links – programming, firefox, blogging, tips, lifehacks
- Best of Feeds – 22 links – lifehacks, blogging, facebook, firefox, productivity
- Best of Feeds – 35 links – design, programming, blogging, socialsoftware, javascript
Popular Posts
What’s hot this month.
- How Procrastination Dashes Made Me a Better Worker
- Blog Tip: Creating a Blog Maintenance Start Page with Netvibes
- 7 Tips for Learning the Declutter Habit
- Using Mind Maps to Explore User Interaction
- Delicious Stumbles – Post to Delicious and StumbleUpon at the same time
- Managing Spam Maintenance with Akismet Auntie Spam Version 2
IDT Labs Software Updates
IDT Labs is where I track free software I create.
-
[DELICIOUS/STUMBLEUPON] Delicious Stumbles crossposting tool
Last Greasemonkey script this week :) With Delicious Stumbles I get all of the super-useful features I like about delicious (speed, recommended tags) but I also teach StumbleUpon more about what I like without having to spend all that time cutting-and-pasting between two accounts. Submit a page…
-
[WORDPRESS] Comment Ninja
My WordPress Comment Ninja extension is available for beta test. Try it out and let me know what you think! Respond directly from the comment administration panel on your dashboard Respond by comment, email or both (without having to cut-and-paste your response!) Respond using your email…
-
[AKISMET] Akismet Auntie Spam Helper for Akismet v2
Version 2 is out, but you probably already know that. Read more about it. Akismet Auntie Spam is a maintenance script for WordPress administrators. One of the problems with the Akismet spam protection service is that sometimes it misidentifies a real comment as spam. WordPress has a spam recovery…
-
[FLICKR] Cut-and-paste to blog with CSS classes and credit link
Makes it easy to do an OLE cut-and-paste Flickr photos to your blog (ie: WordPress using TinyMCE) and give the proper attribution This script makes it easy to cut-and-paste photos from Flickr into your blog while still including a credit link to the photographer. creates CSS classes around images…
-
[PHOTOBUCKET] Log Me In Already!
Takes you directly to your album if you visit http://photobucket.com while already logged in. Because it’s too annoying to have to click “My Album” every time. IDT Labs is a blog for news announcements about software, tools or blog themes created by InternetDuctTape.com . Subscribe…
-
[GMAIL] Quickly Open Compose Mode
Turns off clutter when directly composing gmail messages (IE: clicking on a mailto link) One thing that annoys me about Gmail is how slow it can be to load. This becomes a real problem when you force all mailto: links to open in Gmail. Gmail Quick Compose redirects all “compose mode” links…
-
[WORDPRESS.COM] Stats for Pages
This is a Greasemonkey script that adds stats to the Edit Pages panel on WordPress.com. IDT Labs is a blog for news announcements about software, tools or blog themes created by InternetDuctTape.com . Subscribe to InternetDuctTape by RSS or subscribe by email .
When is it time to get a new iPod?
Death Clocks use statistical information to let you know when you are going to die based on your habits (with smoking and obesity being the worst factors). The iPod Death Clock (via) is an interesting little web app that figures out how much longer your iPod has to live based on the serial number (how old it is) and how you use it (while running, on the bus). Needless to say my 3rd generation iPod is getting on in years.
I happened upon a blog called Contester the other day that tracks Internet freebies being given away by other bloggers. Blog contests are a great grassroots way to advertise your blog (if you aren’t too spammy about it — some of them are). They’re usually worth entering because you have a 1:20 to 1:50 to 1:200 chance in winning depending on how popular the blog running it is. A few people are giving away iPods, and hope I win one as my iPod is on it’s last legs.
- Future Shop Canada is giving away an iPod Touch
- Success for your blog is a blog about making money through blogging and they’re giving away the new iPod video nano
- It’s Write Now is a blog about writing tips and they’re giving away an 8GB red iPod video nano
- Darin’s Search Marketing is giving away a Free iPhone
- FiddyP is giving away Vmoda Vibe headphones (he’s the guy who does the Hello Stumblers! plugin)
One of the downsides to owning an iPod is the iTunes music store. The music has DRM copying protection measures that are a huge pain in the ass. Enter the new Amazon MP3 store that sells music for cheaper than iTunes without any copying protection — you’re free to do whatever you want with the music you own. Luckily there are also quite few blogs giving away Amazon gift certificates or straight up PayPal.
- Mac’s Money Blog is offering $50 gift certificate (he also does FinanceFavorites.com, a digg-like site for financial tips)
- Anton is offering $50 over at his Halloween Blog
- Ryan444123.com is offering $75
- John Cow make money online and micfo web hosting are offering $500 (that’s a lot of songs)
- Blog Contest and Black Stork action sports are offering a chance to win $75
- Nanashi-Inc is offering $50
- Live Learn Invest and climb kilimanjaro are offering a $50 Best buy gift card
- NutsAndMilk tech news & online tips & tricks are offering $250
Becoming a Better Blogger
There’s also a couple of sites offering books for bloggers that I want to read.
- Male Wail (a blog about men’s gripes) is giving away a copy of the 4 Hour Work Week
- John Cow make money online is offering Purple Cow, SEOBook, and BlogMastermind
There’s also a contests for professional logo design
- The Prize Blog is offering logo design by SOS Factory
It’s crazy how this idea of promoting your blog via holding a contest has taken off like hot cakes. It makes me a little sad though that it seems like some people are losing their focus and writing/participating in contests all the time instead of writing blog posts that share information, help people, or at the very least entertain.
And on a slightly different note, someone is finally doing one of these contests for a real cause instead of personal gain:
Ultra-runner Tim Borland is running 63 marathons in 63 days in order to raise funds and awareness for the A-T Children’s Project in their quest for a cure or life-improving therapies for ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T). A-T is a rare, neurodegenerative disease that affects children, giving them the combined symptoms of cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, and cancer. Children with A-T — born seemingly healthy — are usually dependent upon wheelchairs by the age of 10 and often do not survive their teens.
To run with Tim, join a tailgate party, or make a donation, please visit the A-T CureTour website. There, you can also view the daily video blog produced by filmmakers who are making an independent documentary on the A-T CureTour and enter a contest to Win a Nintendo Wii.
Hard not to participate for something like that.
Only Two Days Left to Win Graphic Design Services for Your Blog
In 3 Surefire Ways to Advertise Your Blog on a Shoestring I recommended running a blog contest as a great way to create buzz, build links, and get the attention of potential new readers. It sounds like David Airey Graphic Design was listening because he is running what has to be the biggest blog giveaway contest I’ve ever seen (click to see rules). The prize pool is large enough that I thought it was a Problogger contest at first glance.
Running through the contest sponsors is a good list of blogs I already subscribe to: David himself, DoshDosh, I Love Typography, ProBlogger, Daily Blog Tips, InstigatorBlog, Business Blogwire, Andy Beard Niche Marketing, Make It Great! and Lorelle on WordPress (where I am sometimes a guest blogger).
This is a great idea and I’m very impressed with how he has managed to rally a community around him to provide prizes. If you run a blog yourself then you should enter the contest in the next two days.
You could be a winner. I got my new logo from a contest on Daily Blog Tips.
Delicious Stumbles – Post to Delicious and StumbleUpon at the same time
Delicious and StumbleUpon are two different social networks that let you save websites you like. Delicious Stumbles is a time saving tool for the Firefox web browser that will let you update your StumbleUpon account easily when you bookmark pages on delicious.
This video explains social bookmarking using delicious.
Yesterday Muhammad Saleem announced the Social Media extension for Firefox that lets you quickly browse how a site is saved between delicious/digg/reddit/stumbleupon. I’ve been hitting the same problem from another angle — how to quickly submit from one social bookmarking site to another.
I’m a hardcore delicious user. I use it to save everything. That’s how I build those “Best of Feeds” posts on Saturday. One problem with being a hardcore delicious user is that it means I’m not as active on other social networking sites. If I like something I save it to delicious and then get back to whatever I was doing.
I find delicious to be the quickest site for tagging and the easiest site for searching through pages I’ve bookmarked before. The problem is that I also wanted to submit my saved sites to StumbleUpon. As a blogger, StumbleUpon is a great source of traffic — not to mention a great way to find interesting sites to share and find people who have similar interests. Dosh Dosh has a great post on why StumbleUpon isn’t just a source of traffic — it’s a great tool for anyone. By crossposting the sites I find interesting to StumbleUpon as well as delicious I improve StumbleUpon’s ability to find pages I like.
Delicious Stumbles
With Delicious Stumbles I get all of the super-useful features I like about delicious (speed, recommended tags) but I also teach StumbleUpon more about what I like without having to spend all that time cutting-and-pasting between two accounts.
- Submit a page you’ve saved to delicious to StumbleUpon using the same URL, title, tags and description
- Use delicious’ super-quick tagging features instead of StumbleUpon’s really slow tagging
- Stumble any of your existing bookmarks
- Stumble a page while you’re saving it to delicious
How to Install
- You need the Firefox web browser – Download and install
- You need to install Greasemonkey – How-To
- You need to know how to install a Greasemonkey script – How-To
- Install Delicious Stumbles
Delicious Stumbles works best with the “old” Delicious extension.
Show Me How It Works
Save a page how you normally would on delicious. But before you click Save, click on the Submit to Stumbleupon link.
This will open up a new tab to submit on StumbleUpon with all of the information already prefilled.
You can even go back to any pages you have saved before on delicious and quickly stumble them.
What Are You Waiting For?
If you use both delicious and StumbleUpon then this script can save you at least a minute every time you submit a site. How many sites do you submit a week? Install it now.
Related Posts
Managing Spam Maintenance with Akismet Auntie Spam Version 2
Akismet Auntie Spam is a maintenance script for WordPress administrators. One of the problems with the Akismet spam protection service is that sometimes it misidentifies a real comment as spam. WordPress has a spam recovery console that I like to call the spam inbox.
Have you ever stuck your hand as far back at you can into the crannies of your couch and pulled out what you found? That’s kind of what going into the default Akismet spam inbox is like. It’s a dark and evil place, filled with things that will make your eyes burn. You only wanted to find the quarter you lost, but before you know it your hand is stuck and something is touching you back.
Akismet Auntie Spam is a kind old lady who will come to your house and give it a thorough cleaning. She’s not afraid of the dark corners, particularly the spam inbox because she knows exactly how to handle the creepy crawlies hiding out of sight.
Akismet Auntie Spam is not a WordPress plugin. It is a script for the Firefox web browser that will work with any installation of WordPress or WordPress Multi-user — that means you can use it with WordPress.com, Edublogs.org, Blogsome.com and any site that is running WordPress with Akismet. Version 2 is a complete rewrite from scratch, and it is much less complicated now. There are no knobs and buttons for users to twiddle with — it works out of the box, the same way for everyone. Auntie Spam is here for one reason and that’s to save you time.
Akismet Auntie Spam is in no way affiliated with WordPress or Auttomatic — it’s a script I created to make it a hell of a lot easier to watch out for false spam.
How to Install
- You need the Firefox web browser – Download and install
- You need to install Greasemonkey – How-To
- You need to know how to install a Greasemonkey script – How-To
- Install Akismet Auntie Spam
Slight gotcha: if you are an old time user of Akismet Auntie Spam (from before August 2007) then you’ll want to uninstall your old version before installing the new version of the script. Find out how to uninstall a Greasemonkey script.
What Does Akismet Auntie Spam Do?
Much less time is spent navigating your spam inbox. You can see it all on one page, and it doesn’t take nearly as long to scroll through as it would without Akismet Auntie Spam installed.
- Fetches all of your spam comments and displays them on one page.
- Sorts spammers by the amount of spam they’ve sent.
- Shows only the first line of spam, so less time is spent scrolling.
- Completely hide obvious spam.
- Automatically checks for a new version of itself every two weeks.
- Install it once into your Firefox browser and it will work with *ALL* your WordPress blogs.
Show Me How It Works
Go to your spam inbox on your WordPress dashboard console.
Auntie Spam will immediately kick in and download all of the spam at once — no navigating between 10s to 100s of individual pages of spam.
You can do something else like check your RSS feeds while she grabs all of your spammy comments and organizes them.
Spam is sorted from newest to oldest and categorized from most spammy to least spammy. She groups spam by identifying the computer it came from, so surprisingly enough the more spam you have the easier it is to look through it all. She even summarizes it all by only showing the first line.
Auntie Spam hates those idiots who keep sending you spam again and again. They can be completely ignored.
As you read through all the comment summaries, you may come across one that looks like it isn’t spam. Click on the ‘# comments’ link and Auntie Spam will show you the full text of the comment and give you the option to mark it as not spam.
Once all the spam is loaded there no need to reload it all because you want to search for something specific — hit Ctrl+F and use Firefox’s built in page search.
When it comes to de-spamming marked comments, or deleting all comments, Auntie Spam gets out of the way and things work the same way they always have.
If Auntie Spam is doing something you don’t want here to, you can return to way things have always been with a single click on the Greasemonkey icon and reloading the page.
What Are You Waiting For?
If you’re running WordPress and you’ve ever had to go dumpster diving for a comment that was accidentally marked as spam then you need Akismet Auntie Spam.
Related Posts
Digest for August 2007
Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. Here you go! You can also see the digest for July 2007.
One Year Ago
Here are some articles that are still timeless.
- 5 Habits for Writing for the Web
Technical tips you need to know when writing online - Stupid Windows Features: Disabling Filter Keys
Filter keys is useful if you have a disability, not so useful if you don’t - Stupid Windows Features: Monitor Turns Sideways
- 9 Tips for Buying Glasses
I had a bad experience buying glasses, here’s how you can avoid the same thing happening to you. - Web 2.0 Time Tracking in a Nutshell
Quick list of websites you can use for time tracking - Holy Grail of Synchronization
This is my first post that “won the Internet” - Why Can’t I use Last.FM on my cellphone?
… and someone sends me a solution on how to do it - How to read web pages offline on your cellphone
My cell provider charges too much, but I found a quick way to convert/sync web pages on to my cellphone. - Signs of the Blogamageddon
Humorous post about how blogs are going to die and what we can do to prevent it.
Monthly Digest
LifeHacks
- Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
I’ve been all touchy-feeling and self-discovery lately. I ponder what are the key qualities to be successful at anything.
- What is Your Opportunity Cost?
We’re taught to stay productive and keep busy, but busyness for busyness’ own sake will make you miss out on what could be great opportunities.
Web Browsers
- Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey (with screenshots)
Using Greasemonkey to enhance web sites and make them easier to use.
- How to Install a Firefox Extension (with screenshots)
Beginners’ guide on how to install your first Firefox extension and why you’d want to.
- How Do People Use Google Reader with Internet Explorer?
Ranting about an incredibly frustrating time try to subscribe to feeds in Google Reader.
Online Identity and Anonymity
- Universal identity and single sign on using openID? No thanks
OpenID and single sign on is an interesting idea, but it means having a single point of failure. - Tip: Send Amazon or iTunes Gift Certificates Anonymously
Use a proxy to hide your identity when sending gift cerficates online.
- The Solution to Social Network Site Fatigue
The social graph problem — how do we bring out friends list with use anywhere?
Blogging and RSS
- Canadian Marketing, Media, and Digital Blogs Tournament
Help me choose some of my best posts for a Canadian blog tournament. - Greasemonkey Script: Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
Make it easier to cut-and-paste from Yahoo Pipes output.
- Facebook Tip: Broadcast your Facebook status as RSS
Import your Facebook status into other websites using RSS.
Best of Feeds
- Best of Feeds – 37 links – lifehacks, tips, productivity, programming, blogging
- Best of Feeds – 30 links – blogging, humor, geek, problogger, design
- Best of Feeds – 26 links – video, blogging, web2.0, google, css
- Best of Feeds – 34 links – blogging, greasemonkey, facebook, programming, wordpress
Popular Posts
What’s hot this month.
- Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey (with screenshots)
Very popular on StumbleUpon! Why don’t you give it a Stumble? - Facebook Applications and Privacy
- How to Install a Firefox Extension (with screenshots)
- Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
- Community Starts with Communication
IDT Labs Software Updates
IDT Labs is where I track free software I create.
- [WORDPRESS.COM] Open 5 Blogs at Random
I’ve created a short little script that will open five WordPress.com blogs at random when you press ALT+SHIFT+W . - [RSS PIPE] Stupid Feed Rewriter
- Here’s another weird one that I might be the only person interested in. It republishes a title/description/link whenever there is a new post in the original feed. I have two twitter accounts at http://twitter.com/engtech and http://twitter.com/et By using Stupid Feed Rewriter I can advertise that I have two accounts.
- [WORDPRESS] Akismet Auntie Spam v2
- This is a complete re-write of my Firefox add-on that makes the Akismet Admin Panel about 1 million times more useful. Expect a full post on Internet Duct Tape with all the features some time next week. Rewrote from scratch using IP filtering idea from Donncha.
- [WORDPRESS.COM] Find Blogs to Comment On
- This is a dumb little Greasemonkey script that displays a banner message when a WordPress.com blog has the Recent Comments widget installed. The idea is to spend a few minutes a day commenting on lesser known blogs and meeting new bloggers.
- [GREASEMONKEY] Show popular scripts on Userscripts.org
- Userscripts.org is a website for hosting Greasemonkey scripts. This script makes it easier to see how popular scripts are when looking at search results.
- [RSS] Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
- I’ve create a Greasemonkey script to make cutting-and-pasting from Yahoo Pipes into a WordPress blog look nicer.
- [RSS] Recent Blog Mentions
- I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that filters your Technorati recent mentions. It removes all the ones with low authority (most likely spam) changes the title and link to go to the root of the domain name IE: if I linked to you from http://internetducttape.com/2007/08/12/hello-world it would show internetducttape.com
- [RSS] Facebook Status Feed Filter
- I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that that will take the RSS feed URL for your Facebook status, filter out your name, and add (from Facebook status) to the end. This makes it easy to repost your status in Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, whatever.
- [WORDPRESS] Search the WordPress.com Blog
I’ve created a small script for Firefox that adds a search form to the WordPress.com Official blog.
Canadian Marketing, Media, and Digital Blogs Tournament
Internet Duct Tape is proud to be a part of the 1% Army Canadian Blogging Tournament. I’m part of division A: Online/Digital/Tech/Web 2.0. The other divisions are B: Media/Social Media/PR/Culture, C: Marketing/Communications/Research/Design, and D: Quebec. Yes, they’re that distinct! You can read more about it on the 1% Army Facebook Group.
Photo by sookie
I have to submit three posts written in 2007 that will be judged on:
- overall impact (20%)
- clarity of thought (20%)
- did it make me want to think/act differently (20%)
- did it want me to comment/participate (20%)
- originality (20%)
What Do You Think?
I’m going to rip a page from Ben, co-founder of Standout Jobs — a Montreal-based job search start-up, and ask my readers what they think my three best posts were under the criteria of overall impact, clarity of thought, call to action and originality. Name your three favorites in the comments section, or write about them on your blog and leave a trackback. I have to submit my three best by September 8th.
Something New
One of the posts has to be written since August 11th.
- Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey (with screenshots)
Firefox and Greasemonkey - How to Install a Firefox Extension (with screenshots)
Firefox and Greasemonkey - Universal identity and single sign on using openID? No thanks
Web 2.0 and Social Media
Something Old
The other two posts can be from later in the year.
- The Solution to Social Network Site Fatigue
Online Privacy and Reputation Management, Web 2.0 and Social Media - Community Starts with Communication: 5 Tips to Building Your Readership
Building a Community - Facebook Applications and Privacy – How to Configure Facebook Applications
Online Privacy and Reputation Management, Facebook - Electronic Civil Disobedience
Digital Culture, Digg - How to use Facebook without Losing Your Job over it
Online Privacy and Reputation Management, Facebook - Getting to Simple – Engineers Have No Idea How Normal Human Beings Interact With Their Environments
Increasing Productivity and Simplifying Your Life, Programming and Software Development - Why Posting Your Email Address in Plain Text is Never a Good Idea
Building a Community, Web 2.0 and Social Media
Thank you in advance for your participation.
Most Popular Posts
Most Recent Posts
Site Map
Random Post
About Me
Subscription Options
Free Software
Wordpress Tools
73 comments