Social Media — What is it Good For?

I took a three month break from blogging and social media sites so that I could focus 100% on a critical project at work. Strangely enough I didn’t miss the flow of information; I was still able to find interesting links for coffee break time by browing Hackers News. Here’s a break down of my experience from leaving for so long and rejoining it.

Blog

Blog traffic went down -26% (vs -12% for the previous period).

Feed subscriptions up 9% (vs 12% for the previous period).

My blog email address is inundated with press releases and the very occassional question about an old post or tool.

My blog comments are a horrible nightmare of spam that I still have yet to wade through. WordPress has an annoying bug that when you click “Mark As Spam” it always returns you to the start. There’s been 20 pages of comments. It’s likely that most are spam.

It makes me wonder how much time a day I was spending on blog maintenance. The time sink in blogging isn’t writing posts; it’s all the related activities.

News

Surprisingly, I didn’t miss out on much by not having my lips attached to the news firehouse. Some crazy PM is trying to put me in jail with a new Canadian copyright bill that someone needs to question him about how it benefits his constituents. The iPhone is finally available in Canada, and the data plan is almost-but-not-quite liveable. Facebook has a redesign in the works. Xbox has some cool ideas for release next fall.

I’m sure there were plenty of things happening that I could have gotten worked up about, but nothing happened that directly affects my life that I would have found out about on the Internet.

LinkedIn

I’ve had a strict policy of only using LinkedIn for people I’ve actually worked/went to university with, and it’s been a good tool for contacting ex-coworkers years later about new job opportunities. Spam free.

Facebook

I try to keep Facebook to “real life people only”, and that works well for me. I only use it for group emails, and for photo sharing. Spam free once you get rid of those people who invite you to use applications.

Google Reader

I’m oversubscribed still. When you check your RSS feeds once a month, it becomes much more about the people who consistently keep you thinking or providing good information. Of course, information is only useful if it has impact on your life.

We, the information overloaded, collect new information but I wonder how much of it is retained and has lasting impacting on our lives?

Twitter

I didn’t feel any pain of Twitter downtime because I didn’t log into it. I need to cull my friendslist to make it more useful. But I found Kathy Sierra on twitter and if that’s the real thing then it’s a good sign for twitter having the potential for making me think vs phasing it completely out of my life because of the constant self-promotion.

I still like twitter for chatting with other bloggers that I respect.

Friend Feed

Still not sure if I like rooms or not. The Friend Feed hacking community is kicking even harder lately with a ton of new greasemonkey scripts thanks to Hao Chen. It looks like Lou Cypher is getting involved in Friend Feed as well which means even more cool little hacks.

Nothing new has been happening with ffapps or friendfeedwatch though.

Delicious

It might be time for me to abandon delicious for something new to use for bookmarking. The future does not look peachy for delicious with Josh leaving Yahoo. Maybe it’s time to look at Google Reader shares as an alternative.

Last.FM

I’m still using it, still finding great music because of it. I do like The Filter for making lastfm-esque playlists of my own music collection.

Real Life

I’ve been enjoying the summer and having more time for family, friends and non-Internet hobbies like reading, movies, and games. I really appreciate the knowledge I’ve built up with the programming I’ve done. I plan to continue that in that direction: releasing useful free software and delving into creating my own web apps. I want to spend less time participating and more time creating.

Weekend Reader – javascript, friendfeed, google, lifehacks, web2.0

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] Zemanta – First Impress Review, problogger.net
  • Blogging software plugin that automatically suggests links and videos.
• [CODE] Why hackers FLOSS, blog.milkingthegnu.org
  • Thoughts on motivating IT workers based on why people contribute open source code.
• [CSS] Timelapse CSS, matthewbuchanan.name
  • Javascript for playing CSS rendering in slow motion.
• [FRIENDFEED] Blame FriendFeed, techcrunch.com
  • Not sure what to make of this. Vaguely entertaining.
• [FRIENDFEED] How To Find FriendFeed Rooms With Google, andybeard.eu
  • Google query to search for public rooms
• [FRIENDFEED] Keep Your Eyes On FriendFeed: It May Be The Google Of Social Networks, webomatica.com
  • Why Jason things Friend Feed is one of the social apps to watch for 2008
• [GOOGLE] goosh.org – the unofficial google shell., goosh.org, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • unix-like shell for google search in the web browser
• [JAVASCRIPT] Announcing AJAX Libraries API: Speed up your Ajax apps with Google’s infrastructure, ajaxian.com
  • This is pretty huge for webdevs. You can let Google handle your jquery, prototype, etc libraries.
• [JAVASCRIPT] Vote! How to Detect the Social Sites Your Visitors Use, azarask.in, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • Uses the same CSS hack I use for one of my Greasemonkey scripts to intelligently sense which social sites a visitor uses.
• [LIFEHACKS] An Engineer’s Guide To Weight Loss, teddziuba.com
  • The simple and to the point guide to not being a fat ass engineer.
• [LIFEHACKS] How to Recycle Electronics and Get Cash Back, friedbeef.com
  • I might have to try this out as I downsize my garage
• [SLEEPHACKS] Easy way to reset your sleep cycle: Stop eating, parentingsquad.com, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • Temporarily adjusting your diet can be a quick way to ensure when you’ll wake up.
• [WEB2.0] Scaling Fast, lukasbiewald.com
  • Scaling your web app when you’re linked to by the most trafficked page on the internet.
• [WEB2.0] StikiPad – When software in the cloud goes sour, mentalized.net, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • Good reminder — only use web apps that let you backup your data
• [YOUTUBE] YouTomb, youtomb.mit.edu, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • Track YouTube in real time videos as they are removed for copyright infringement.

Tags: friendfeed, google, javascript, lifehacks, web2.0

Weekend Reader – friendfeed, blogging, technology, programming, wordpress

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] Exposed – Blog-Post Confidential, nytimes.com
  • From the article: ” I kept coming back to the idea that I had a right to say whatever I wanted. I don’t think I understood then that I could be right about being free to express myself but wrong about my right to make that self-expression public in a permanent way.”
• [BLOGGING] Stop asking, start filtering, a.wholelottanothing.org
  • Filter out the PR companies, for they are dumb and don’t let us unsubscribe.
• [BLOGGING] Video Comments? Blow Me., expertidiot.com
  • Video comments are the stupidest feature ever and this sums up my opinion of them.
• [CODE] Blogging Horror, girtby.net
  • Has Coding Horror jumped the shark? Jeff responds in the comments.
• [DIGITAL CULTURE] Gilligan’s web, roughtype.com
  • Counter argument to Clay Shirky’s pro-internet piece from last week.
• [FRIENDFEED] FriendFeed Friday Tips #1: Five Ways To Use the Hide Function, louisgray.com
  • How to use hide as your information filter
• [FRIENDFEED] FriendFeed Friday Tips #2: Using the Bookmarklet, louisgray.com
  • More ff tips from lg
• [FRIENDFEED] Keep Your Eyes On FriendFeed: It May Be The Google Of Social Networks, webomatica.com
  • Why Jason things Friend Feed is one of the social apps to watch for 2008
• [FRIENDFEED] On FriendFeed, We’re All TV Channels, bhc3.wordpress.com
  • Great analogy. I wouldn’t worry too much about your ‘channel’ — just be yourself and they people who find that interesting you probably share interests with.
• [INFORMATION OVERLOAD] Too Many Choices, Too Much Content, readwriteweb.com
  • Dear Internet, give us a better way to filter information than “turn off the computer”.
• [LIFEHACKS] Grocery List Templates For Healthy People, smarterfitter.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Great little Excel template for those often shopped for items
• [PIRACY] Understanding Anti-Piracy Enforcement, torrentfreak.com
  • An attempt to clear up some of the FUD.
• [SOCIALMEDIA] Summon Monsters? Open The Door? Heal? Or Die?, gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
  • Are social media sites useful for anything other than sucking up your time?
• [SOCIALSOFTWARE] Designing for the Social Web: The Usage Lifecycle, bokardo.com
  • Your users are at different stages in adopting your software, make sure you target each stage in your messages.
• [STARTUPS] How to be authentically fake, ricksegal.typepad.com
  • Don’t use stock photography and claim its team shots of your employees. This is the future of visual search engines.
• [TECH] Early Adopters Are Useless, technosailor.com
  • Needs more meat, but has some good links.
• [TECH] Looking back at mesh 2008, mathewingram.com
  • Collected links to the Mesh 2008 conference
• [WEB2.0] How to Build a Social Web App, simon.incutio.com, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • These are the most amazingly concise notes I’ve seen of social web app best practices by the guy who made delicious.
• [WORDPRESS] 13 of the best WordPress plugins, davidairey.com
  • Plugins for Self-hosted
• [WORDPRESS] How To Protect Your WordPress Theme Against Upgrades, themeshaper.com
  • I didn’t know that you can essentially derive a new theme off of an existing WordPress theme.

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.

Delicious Links – 20 links – friendfeed, blogging, javascript, psychology, startup

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can see me add them in real time on Friend Feed.

• [BITTORRENT] Protect Your Privacy When Downloading, lifehacker.com
  • Two tips for not being caught as the nasty pirate that you are.
  • (bittorrent, torrents, 31 inbound links)
• [BLOGGING] 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider, problogger.net
  • Great examples of how to use the WordPress page feature. I wish I didn’t have so many damn problems with it on WordPress.com (can’t remove it from my theme head, trackback prob).
  • (blogging, wordpress, tips, 581 saves, 46 inbound links, 21 diggs)
• [BLOGGING] 7 Blogging Statistics Rules – There is Life After Page Views, hanselman.com, via:raganwald.com
  • From the article: ” If you post a Gallery or a List or anything post with a Prime Number and the word “Rules” in the title, you’ll get traffic. You post smart, compelling content, you need to be wicked smart before folks take note.”
  • (blogging, statistics, 16 saves, 8 inbound links)
• [BLOGGING] A Caffeine Inspired Interview with Jeff Atwood from CodingHorror.com, caffeinatedcoder.com
  • “The only difference between good and great blogs is that the good bloggers kept writing until they became great bloggers.” — Jeff Atwood
  • (blogging, writing, tips, codinghorror, 3 saves, 6 inbound links, 6 diggs)
• [BLOGGING] Group Interview: What Do Online Advertisers Look For in a Website?, dailyblogtips.com
  • Daniel gets the skinny on how to sell ads on your website.
  • (advertising, blogging, 20 saves, 8 inbound links, 3 diggs)
• [FRIENDFEED] A Few FriendFeed Treats Out There, jeffisageek.net
  • A list of the cool little hacks people have made for FF so far.
  • (friendfeed, 5 saves, 5 diggs)
• [FRIENDFEED] Friendfeed 2018, blogoscoped.com, via:winextra.com
  • The future of Friend Feed.
  • (friendfeed, humour, web2.0, 5 saves, 3 inbound links)
• [FRIENDFEED] Share that link on FriendFeed using FeedDemon, winextra.com
  • Share items on FF using Feed Demon.
  • (rss, friendfeed)
• [FRIENDFEE] The FriendFeed Playground, ffapps.com
  • Avi put together a FF apps site for pointing to the cool apps people are building around FF.
  • (friendfeed)
• [GEEK] Wired’s Geekster Handbook, a Field Guide to the Nerd Underground, wired.com, via:reddit.com
  • Which geek are you? I’m 1-5 but thankfully not 6.
  • (geek, 2 saves, 3 inbound links, 10 diggs)
• [GREASEMONKEY] How to play nicely with jQuery and Greasemonkey, joanpiedra.com
  • Tips on accessing jQuery inside your Greasemonkey scripts.
  • (greasemonkey, jquery, javascript, programming, 46 saves, 15 inbound links)
• [JAVASCRIPT] Great JavaScript presentation by John Resig, lazycoder.com
  • I started using jQuery a lot this week and its friggin awesome. I must watch this video.
  • (jquery, javascript, 2 saves)
• [MARKETING] Polarize Me, fastcompany.com, via:37signals.com
  • The ‘Made to Stick’ guys talk about how in order to have people love you, you have to decide who will hate you. No walking the middle line.
  • (marketing, branding, 43 saves, 36 inbound links, 1 diggs)
• [SOCIALSOFTWARE] Why I will never get another date, jennifer-mccarthy.blogspot.com
  • The truth of social web apps exposed.
  • (socialsoftware, humor)
• [STARTUPS] How To Use Perks and Rewards in Startups to Get The Best Talent, instigatorblog.com
  • Anywhere could hire me away if they offered me the best-of-breed source control, chat, backup and allowed me to attend conferences.
  • (startup, hiring, 6 saves, 7 inbound links, 37 diggs)
• [STARTUPS] The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6, blog.pmarca.com
  • Long read, but the section on incentives/disincentives are particularly interesting and applicable to all aspects of your life.
  • (entrepreneurship, psychology, startup, 304 saves, 54 inbound links, 13 diggs)
• [WORDPRESS] FriendFeed Comments WordPress Plugin, blog.slaven.net.au
  • Display the Friend Feed discussion on your WordPress blog.
  • (friendfeed, wordpress, 9 saves, 8 inbound links)
• [WORKHACKS] The KJ-Technique: A Group Process for Establishing Priorities, uie.com, via:labnotes.org
  • The KJ-Technique is a method for getting the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ as fast as possible without getting bogged down by borderline cases.
  • (workhacks, psychology, 234 saves, 23 inbound links, 1 diggs)
• [XBOX360] REST API for Xbox Gamertag Data, duncanmackenzie.net
  • Public rest API for Xbox Gamertag. Gives you an XML file.
  • (xbox360, rest, 7 saves, 5 inbound links)

Crunching the Friend Feed Stats to Find the Most Popular Web Apps

One of the nicest things about the Internet is that if you sit on your ass for long enough, someone will code up whatever little side project you’re thinking about starting. In my case, I was interested in finding out general statistics about Friend Feed as a tape measure of how popular certain social bookmarking sites are. Enter Friend Feed Stats. Thank you, lazyweb.

What Is the Most Popular Web Service?

Delicious Links – 20 links – friendfeed, lifehacks, blogging, programming, wordpress

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

• [BLOGGING] The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere, readwriteweb.com, via:friendfeed.com
  • Examples for bloggers on where to find and how to manage all the conversations that are happening OUTSIDE of your blog about your blog content.
  • (blogging, 90 saves, 71 inbound links, 26 diggs)
• [CODE] Google Code University, code.google.com, via:lazycoder.com
  • Google is putting together tutorials about programming subjects for university level. Good refreshers.
  • (programming, google, code, tutorials, 2628 saves, 100 inbound links, diggs)
• [DIGG] 12 Must-Have Tools for Active Digg Users, doshdosh.com
  • This is a *KILLER* list. The extensions I’ve already tried on the list are must haves, and the rest look even better.
  • (digg, tools, 72 saves, 28 inbound links, diggs)
• [EMAIL] Do Not Reply, donotreply.com, via:codinghorror.com
  • Many companies use @donotreply.com for their automatic emails. What they don’t realize is that donotreply.com is a real web address and he’s posting the contents of the emails! IT security at its worst.
  • (email, 138 saves, 82 inbound links, 8 diggs)
• [FRIENDFEED] FriendFeed is for Lurkers too, oracleappslab.com
  • How FriendFeed is becoming a user generated content repository for the parts of the web that people are actively creating.
  • (friendfeed, 2 saves)
• [FRIENDFEED] Friendfeed Grid, blogoscoped.com, via:louisgray.com
  • A random look at the people on Friend Feed.
  • (friendfeed, visualization, 30 saves, 8 inbound links)
• [FRIENDFEED] Hack to Get an RSS Feed from FriendFeed Search Results, lifestreamblog.com, via:techcrunch.com
  • FriendFeed is a lifestreaming aggregator. Here’s some tips for getting RSS feeds from it.
  • (friendfeed, 4 inbound links)
• [FRIENDFEED] How FriendFeed Became Internet Famous, runningwithfoxes.com, via:friendfeed.com
  • An analysis about how FF became the “IT” webapp of 2008.
  • (friendfeed, 4 saves)
• [INTERNET] George Clooney, esquire.com
  • Esquire sits down with Clooney and goes through a Google search of his life. Interesting from the geeky POV of all the information that is out there, and how accurate is it, really?
  • (interview, humor, via, 120 saves, 72 inbound links, 25 diggs)
• [JAVASCRIPT] EJS – JavaScript Templates, embeddedjs.com, via:gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
  • I might be able to use this with rss2html to work with Yahoo Pipes formatted data
  • (javascript, programming, erb, 36 saves, 8 inbound links, 20 diggs)
• [LIFEHACKS] 5 Tools to Track How Much Time you Waste while Online, makeuseof.com, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • I recommend RescueTime out of the list they have. The best suggestion might be “unplug your internet connection when you’re trying to get work done”
  • (lifehacks, timetracking, 223 saves, 26 inbound links, 959 diggs)
• [LIFEHACKS] The Top 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs, collegedegree.com, via:readwriteweb.com
  • Huge list of lifehack blogs organized by topic.
  • (lifehacks, 596 saves, 71 inbound links, 6 diggs)
• [LIFEHACKS] Wisdom from the way-out edge, theage.com.au, via:chipsquips.com
  • From the article: ” Reward risk, risk is good. Trust crazy people. Believe in yourself, everyone else is faking it. Find the real problem to solve.”
  • (innovation, technology, software, lifehacks, 7 saves)
• [MARKETING] Nomadic Growth: Moving to Greener Pastures, skelliewag.org
  • In order to keep expanding your audience you have to keep reaching out to new plateaus.
  • (marketing, blogging, 6 saves, 2 inbound links, 16 diggs)
• [SOCIALSOFTWARE] Relationships are complicated, factoryjoe.com
  • What works better: asking users to explicitly list their relationship with people, or viewing how they interact with people and deducing the relationships from there?
  • (socialsoftware, relationships, 2 saves, 6 inbound links)
• [STARTUPS] How To Use Perks and Rewards in Startups to Get The Best Talent, instigatorblog.com
  • Anywhere could hire me away if they offered me the best-of-breed source control, chat, backup and allowed me to attend conferences.
  • (startup, hiring, 4 saves, 2 inbound links)
• [TWITTER] favotter, favotter.matope.com
  • It’s like twitter.com/popular — a list of tweets that have been favorited a lot. Pretty entertaining.
  • (twitter, mashup, socialnetworking, 43 saves, 17 inbound links, 5 diggs)
• [WEBDESIGN] 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site, insidecrm.com
  • If you run a website then there’s some gems in here you haven’t thought of in a while. In depth advice on each item is available.
  • (webdesign, 1378 saves, 86 inbound links, 1749 diggs)
• [WORDPRESS] 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.5, technosailor.com, via:andybeard.eu
  • I can’t wait until we get some of this stuff on WordPress.com
  • (wordpress, blogging, 60 saves, 46 inbound links, 8 diggs)
• [WORDPRESS] More WordPress Theme Viewer Screenshots, winextra.com
  • Preview screenshots of the new WordPress theme viewer
  • (wordpress, themes, 4 inbound links)
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Delicious Links – 19 links – tips, google, music, code, blogging

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

• [BLOGGING] The Benefits of Keeping a Private Journal, doshdosh.com
  • Brilliant tip and way to keep mindful of your goals.
  • (blogging, 7 saves, 20 inbound links)
• [BLOGGING] What’s it Like to Run a Popular Blog?, skelliewag.org
  • Skelliewag talks about her meteoric success and what’s different about having 3500 readers vs the 100 or so she had just a few short months ago.
  • (blogging, success, tips, 7 saves, 9 inbound links, 3 diggs)
• [BOOKS] Inside Google Book Search: Your library, my library, booksearch.blogspot.com
  • You can keep track of the books you’ve read with Google library, and limit your book searches to only the books you’ve already read.
  • (google, library, books, 2 saves, 13 inbound links)
• [CODE] Programmers At Work, programmersatwork.wordpress.com
  • New website about the 1980′s book.
  • (code, 26 saves, 11 inbound links)
• [COMICS] Rampant Plagiarism, mightygodking.com, via:io9.com
  • The rampant plagiarism of the comics industry is revealed!
  • (comics, photoshop, 12 saves, 22 inbound links)
• [FRIENDFEED] 10 Ways to Get More Out of Friendfeed, blogoscoped.com
  • Some quick tips for the new service that everyone’s blogging about.
  • (friendfeed, tips, socialnetworking, 35 saves, 19 inbound links, 2 diggs)
• [GMAIL] Gmail Tips and Tricks – 35 Cool Gmail Hacks, botw.org, via:doshdosh.com
  • Yes, we’ve seen a lot of them before. But a good collection.
  • (gmail, tips, lifehacks, 368 saves, 15 inbound links, 67 diggs)
• [GOOGLE] The Real Story: Why ComScore’s Google Clicks are Flat, seoblackhat.com
  • Google Adsense changes are why adclicks are down. Buy Google stock because the market is full of idiots.
  • (google, 11 saves, 26 inbound links, 3 diggs)
• [HUMOR] Mobile Desktop, improveverywhere.com, via:codinghorror.com
  • Improv Everywhere brings their desktop computers to Starbucks.
  • (humor, geek, 130 saves, 100 inbound links, 3059 diggs)
• [HUMOR] Stuff White People Like, stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com, via:gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
  • Recursion at its best. White people like Stuff White People Like.
  • (funny, humour, 2364 saves, 100 inbound links, 104 diggs)
• [LASTFM] Build Last.fm: Extend your Last.fm experience, build.last.fm, via:del.icio.us
  • Last.FM is promoting community created tools that use the service.
  • (last.fm, music, tools, mashup, 386 saves, 82 inbound links, 17 diggs)
• [LIFEHACKS] Your Brain Is In 10 Kinds of Trouble, secretgeek.net
  • No solutions, but a discussion of the information overload we’re all experiencing.
  • (productivity, overload, 12 saves, 10 inbound links)
• [MUSIC] The Filter Releases New Version of Music Recommendation Software, readwriteweb.com
  • Playlist generator from your iTunes library
  • (itunes, LastFM, music, mp3, 17 saves, 3 inbound links, 27 diggs)
• [SOCIALSOFTWARE] FriendFeed Changelog, changelog.friendfeed.com
  • wth? A web app that publishes its new features via it’s version control changelog.Brilliant.
  • (friendfeed, transparency, code, socialsoftware, 16 saves, 8 inbound links)
• [SOCIALSOFTWARE] This Psychologist Might Outsmart the Math Brains Competing for the Netflix Prize, wired.com, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • Interview with the guy who is building a better recommendation engine using psychology instead of math.
  • (psychology, algorithm, netflix, datamining, 71 saves, 35 inbound links, 7 diggs)
• [SOFTWARE] Rethinking Recommendation Engines, readwriteweb.com, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • Damn good point in this one. The human psychology behind recommendations is what makes recommendations fail. Instead of telling use what we like, just remove what we’re NOT going to like.
  • (recommendations, personalization, 135 saves, 35 inbound links, 6 diggs)
• [TWITTER] Nearly a million users, and no spam or trolls, russellbeattie.com, via:news.ycombinator.com
  • From the article: ” Twitter, however, has almost a million members, a thriving community, lots of discussions and yet doesn’t have spam or troll issues. If you step back for a second and think about it, that’s pretty amazing.”
  • (twitter, community, spam, 80 saves, 51 inbound links)
• [WORDPRESS] Installing WordPress Locally Under Windows XP, geeksaresexy.blogspot.com
  • I don’t know why I never did this before.
  • (wordpress, windows, 361 saves, 92 inbound links, 7 diggs)
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This Week at Internet Duct Tape

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

• How to Explain RSS to Normal People – 2008 Edition
  • As a geek who enjoys spending too much time on the internet, I like RSS almost as much as delicious toast. As a blogger, RSS is the shiznitz because it lets you consume a lot more information and it makes it easier for other people to read your blog without having to drop by every few days to see if…
• I Can Has Ruby?
  • I have a new tumblelog for ruby stuff.
• How to delete your Tumblr tumblelog with TumblrCleanr
  • There’s one feature missing on Tumblr: 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…
• Delicious Links – 13 links – programming, lifehacks, productivity, geek, games

This Week at IDT Labs

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

• [TUMBLR] Regular Post Digest of the Last X Days
  • Build a list of the last X regular posts from your Tumblr account in the past Y days. Useful for doing weekly digest posts with Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
• [TUMBLR] Delete your Tumblr with TumblrCleanr 0.0.1
  • There’s one Tumblr 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…

This Week at Ruby, eh?

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

• Rake RDocTask with all of the options stubbed out
  • http://pastie.caboo.se/159372  Rake::RDocTask.new(:rdoc) do |rd| # rd.external # run the rdoc process as an external shell # rd.main = “name” # ‘name’ will be the initial page displayed # rd.rdoc_dir = “html” # set the output directory # rd.rdoc_file = [] # List of files…
• Rake: Recursively parse a list of all the requires from a source file
  • There’s probably an easier way to do this. http://pastie.caboo.se/159362  # Recursively parse a list of all the requires from a source file def local_requires(source) results = [] File.open(source,’r’).each_line do |line| if line =~ /require ['"]([^'"]+)['"]/…
• I Can Has RSS?I’ve switched to FeedBurner for RSS support . And set up full feeds, thanks to Alex . (I had no idea that they were turned off!)
• Bulk updating Gem sourcegem install allison Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org I swear to god that rubyforge is actually a humongous peer to peer network made up from stealing our bandwidth when we do a gem install.
• Rake Tip: force tasks to run based on operating systemhttp://pastie.caboo.se/158812 task :windows_only do raise “Must be run from Windows, not #{RUBY_PLATFORM}” unless RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /mswin/ end task :linux_only do raise “Must be run from Linux, not #{RUBY_PLATFORM}” unless RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /linux/ end
• Rake TipBAD: s.gsub(/.rb$/,’.exe’) GOOD:  File.basename(s).ext(‘exe’)
• Rails: how to delete ActiveRecords to a recycling bin
  • The contenders: acts_as_paranoid – 2005-09-17  Creates a delete_at column and overrides finders to ignore columns with deleted_at set. Last release was 2005-12-20, about 1600 downloads. Around ~100 blog mentions. This guy is using it instead of acts_as_trashable   Reported not working on…
• validates_presence_of and validates_length_of
  • Pick one : validates_presence_of :snausages validates_length_of :snausages, :maximum => 3 OR validates_length_of :snausages, :maximum => 3, :allow_nil => true I broke my app because of not including allow_nil grep validates_length_of app/models/*.rb | grep -v allow_nil // engtech  …

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