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.
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- [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
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Delicious Links – 20 links – google, blogging, wordpress, twitter, 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] 6 Ways That Bloggers are Like Rappers, copyblogger.com
- Are you down with the B.L.O.G.? Yeah, you know me!
- [BLOGGING] How to Target the Right Social Media Sites, problogger.net
- Howto guide for bloggers on using sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon to generate traffic.
- [BLOGGING] the thorny issue of blog comment ownership, nbrightside.com
- Who owns a comment?
- [CODE] Google REST Search API, blogoscoped.com
- This could be useful for web apps.
- [CODE] We need a Wikipedia for data, bret.appspot.com
- Where is the open source database for map info, whitepages, movie times, music info, etc.
- [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.”
- [GEEK] My Cat Bubba Posts Videos and Twitters using an EeePC and Ubuntu, fsckin.com, via:webomatica.com
- It’s a pretty static video of the cat eating, but nice hack.
- [LIFEHACKS] From 10000 to 0 Emails in an Inbox in 24 Hours, problogger.net
- Switching to Gmail to become more productive with email.
- [LIFEHACKS] Just say NO to crap!, squawkfox.com, via:skelliewag.org
- The ultimate decluttering tip is not to consume.
- [STARTUPS] We Need A New Path To Liquidity, avc.blogs.com
- From the article: ” what happens when a company gets purchased: The service languishes. The team leaves. It stops getting better. And often gets worse.”
- [STARTUPS] What the New York Times “death by blogging” story got right., calacanis.com
- From the article: ” In some ways I think I’ve realized that life is just a big video game and if one game doesn’t work out you put another quarter in and try again.”
- [TWITTER] Improving Twitter, kungfugrippe.com
- Merlin Mann’s ideas for how to improve twitter. He’s one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter
- [TWITTER] Twubble, crazybob.org
- Twitter friend of a friend finder.
- [WEB2.0] AppEngine World: your one-stop resource for Google App Engine, appengineworld.com, via:marshallk.com
- AppEngine news aggregator. I wish I had an AppEngine account :(
- [WEB2.0] Google App Engine, code.google.com
- Google releases blogspot for web applications.
- [WEB2.0] Mulling On Google App Engine, al3x.net
- Alex Payne (of Twitter)’s thoughts on the new appengine
- [WORDPRESS] Coming Soon: My Personal WordPress Theme Starting Point, themeshaper.com
- Ian is releasing his Sandbox-plus-plus theme with some stuff from BluePrint CSS. I’ve been waiting 9 months for this. :)
- [WORDPRESS] The Great WordPress Attack, psionmark.com
- If you aren’t running WP 2.5, your site is probably hacked.
- [WORKHACKS] The Case Against Overtime, caffeinatedcoder.com
- Compelling arguments as to why you shouldn’t work overtime as a programmer.
- [WPDESIGN] Raising Personal Standard for Paid WordPress Themes, wpdesigner.com
- What a WordPress theme should include.
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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] 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.
- [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.
- [CODE] Programmers At Work, programmersatwork.wordpress.com
- New website about the 1980’s book.
- [COMICS] Rampant Plagiarism, mightygodking.com, via:io9.com
- The rampant plagiarism of the comics industry is revealed!
- [FRIENDFEED] 10 Ways to Get More Out of Friendfeed, blogoscoped.com
- Some quick tips for the new service that everyone’s blogging about.
- [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.
- [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.
- [HUMOR] Mobile Desktop, improveverywhere.com, via:codinghorror.com
- Improv Everywhere brings their desktop computers to Starbucks.
- [HUMOR] Stuff White People Like, stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com, via:gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
- Recursion at its best. White people like Stuff White People Like.
- [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.
- [LIFEHACKS] Your Brain Is In 10 Kinds of Trouble, secretgeek.net
- No solutions, but a discussion of the information overload we’re all experiencing.
- [MUSIC] The Filter Releases New Version of Music Recommendation Software, readwriteweb.com
- Playlist generator from your iTunes library
- [SOCIALSOFTWARE] FriendFeed Changelog, changelog.friendfeed.com
- wth? A web app that publishes its new features via it’s version control changelog.Brilliant.
- [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.
- [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.
- [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.”
- [WORDPRESS] Installing WordPress Locally Under Windows XP, geeksaresexy.blogspot.com
- I don’t know why I never did this before.
- Powered by Delicious Links Pro
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 …
Best of Feeds – 14 links – security, gmail, google, testing, dns
RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).
- [MUSIC] David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars
- The history and future of the recording industry
- (wired.com 489 32 17 )
- [GMAIL] Creating a Backup for Your Google Account
- How to create a second gmail account with full access to all your Google services
- (googlesystem.blogspot.com 298 8 6 )
- [GMAIL] WARNING: Google’s GMail security failure leaves my business sabotaged
- Hacker found a backdoor and used it to take over David Airey’s website.
- (davidairey.co.uk 120 9 3917 )
- [BUSINESS] Joel Spolsky’s Travel Survival Guide – Business Travel – Software Demo’ing
- How to give good demo
- (inc.com 116 2 )
- [SPAM] Blacklists Don’t Work
- It’s guerrilla warfare and the spammers have more troops
- (codinghorror.com 39 92 )
- [CODE] 8-year-olds should test my code
- (cs.nyu.edu 31 3 )
- [MEME] Chuck Norris sues, says his tears no cancer cure
- Possibly the best headline of 2007
- (news.yahoo.com 25 2179 )
- [SOCIAL] 51 Favorite StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Twitter & Facebook Posts of 2007
- Top posts of 2007 on social media
- (socialdesire.com 20 2 2 )
- [SOCIAL] Social Networks: Stop Designing Out The Fun
- (mechanicalrobotfish.com 19 2 )
- [LIBRARY] Threatened by the Internet? Music Biz Should Rock Like Librarians
- So true, I use the library at least twice a month.
- (readwriteweb.com 12 14 )
- [GAMERS] Portal… in lego
- (brickshelf.com 8 2 )
- [GMAIL] Collective effort restores David Airey.com
- More of David Airey’s loss of control over his domain name.
- (davidairey.co.uk 4 )
- [PIRACY] Disasters of Commerce: HDCP
- The HD-DVD / Blu-ray copyright protection schemes can break your hardware permanently
- (fishsupreme.livejournal.com 3 )
- [LEARNING] Get Educated.
- links to several online learning resources
- (web1979.com 2 2 )
Legend
- saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
- inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
- diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com
This Week at Internet Duct Tape
- 7 Tips to Optimize Windows XP for Gaming — Playing The Witcher on Minimum System Requirements
- One of the lures of the holiday season is to be able to hopefully squeeze in some time between eggnog, family and friends to exercise your vices. No, not heroin, but that other life consuming addiction: gaming. PC gaming is quickly going the way of the dodo, with console gaming taking over because…
- Windows XP – Disable dumpprep when programs crash
- One tip for improve Windows XP that I absolutely love is turning off that annoying “do you want to send an error report” message when programs crash. The sad truth is that those error reports rarely reach anyone who could fix the problem, so it’s a colossal waste of time — especially…
Best of Feeds – 11 links – facebook, blogging, google, reader, stupidity
RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).
- [SEO] The Blogger’s Guide to SEO
- (seobook.com 1152 100 100 )
- [IDEAS] The Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas
- (skelliewag.org 635 67 902 )
- [FACEBOOK] Deconstructing Facebook Beacon JavaScript
- Technical look at Facebook Beacon aka “how the hell did my Xmas gifts for Timmy show up in my Facebook news feed?!”
- (radiantcore.com 236 80 59 )
- [RSS] Sink or Swim: Managing RSS Feeds with Better Groups
- Google Reader tip
- (43folders.com 100 35 6 )
- [MUSIC] thesixtyone – a music adventure
- an online game where you increase in levels by picking out music that will become popular
- (thesixtyone.com 51 9 187 )
- [STARTUPS] Ruthless enough for a startup?
- Interesting look that a lot of startups that are now common names did some shady stuff in the beginning to get users.
- (glinden.blogspot.com 45 32 )
- [CODE] PHP in contrast to Perl
- Completely trashes PHP
- (tnx.nl 40 31 )
- [FACEBOOK] Facebook, you owe me one Christmas Present.
- Because of asinine privacy settings, buying christmas presents for other people on sites completely unrelated to facebook can be broadcast to all your friends — including the intended recipients.
- (weblog.muledesign.com 27 18 )
- [CATS] Social Marketing Intern
- I Can Has Cheezburger is hiring an intern
- (centernetworks.com 18 26 1674 )
- [SOCIAL] Twitter and the Twits
- People reveal the truth with status updates
- (ricksegal.typepad.com 12 9 )
- [MOVIES] Movie Sequels We Need
- I found it funny.
- (wilshipley.com 6 4 2 )
Legend
- saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
- inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
- diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com
This Week at Internet Duct Tape
Getting Started With Ruby on Rails – Week 2
I’ve fallen for the hype and started using Ruby on Rails for building database driven web applications. You can follow along with my weekly experience discovering gotchas with Ruby on Rails.
Book Review: Ruby on Rails for Dummies
I don’t have anything against the for Dummies series (one of my friends is an author), but they’re only good when you want a very general understanding of a concept. I wouldn’t recommend the series for technical books. But my local library happened to have a copy of Ruby on Rails for…
Best of Feeds – 12 links – blogging, blogs, google, mashup, comments
RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).
- [IMAGES] VectorMagic | The Online Tool for Precision Bitmap to Vector Conversion
- Transform GIF/PNG/JPG to vector images that are suitable for resizing and printing big.
- (vectormagic.stanford.edu 11455 100 2995 )
- [DESIGN] How To Destroy The Web 2.0 Look
- Minimalist vs grunge
- (snap2objects.com 506 25 21 )
- [TORRENTS] PickyPirate – A Metacritic-Bittorrent mashup
- Interesting concept.
- (pickypirate.com 465 51 )
- [HUMOR] What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
- Putting gmail through the Microsoft filter.
- (blogoscoped.com 351 100 156 )
- [BLOGGING] Cascades Project
- University paper on blog ranking
- (blogcascades.org 62 1 )
- [BLOGGING] Haiku Blogging
- Less is more. Use constraints to focus yourself on the blogging activities that will net your goals.
- (problogger.net 33 18 7 )
- [BUSINESS] 7 Ways to Guarantee Customers Never Buy From You Again
- How to piss off customers with by trying to sell to strongly
- (instigatorblog.com 24 2 4 )
- [RUBY] Why I Program In Ruby (And Maybe Why You Shouldn’t)
- Ruby was designed to make you happy.
- (gilesbowkett.blogspot.com 21 5 )
- [GEEK] 10 Tech Pioneers: Where Are They Now?
- History lesson for geeks
- (pcworld.com 9 3 547 )
- [WORDPRESS] WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk
- Long list of tips for getting started with WordPress. Auntie Spam and Comment Ninja are mentioned.
- (lorelle.wordpress.com 7 3 )
- [WORDPRESS.COM] Making money with Adsense – without annoying your users: WordPress.com
- How ads work on WordPress.com
- (pascal.vanhecke.info 4 6 )
- [BLOGGING] comparison of coComment, co.comments and commentful
- Which comment tracking service works best?
- (nbrightside.com 2 )
Legend
- saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
- inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
- diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com
This Week at Internet Duct Tape
- Getting Started With Ruby on Rails – Week 1
- Rails is a framework for building web applications: stuff like blog software, instant messaging, to-do lists, web magazines, and your favorite web comic. Word on the street is that ROR is a resource hog but the resource consumption is balanced out by how much more productive it is to develop with.…
- Best of Feeds – 13 links – geek, marketing, blogging, software
- tags: geek, marketing, blogging, software, joyent
Best of Feeds – 30 links – programming, google, tips, agile, facebook
RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).
- [MOVIES] Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time
- about 8 on there I haven’t seen yet
- (snarkerati.com 1227 100 2012 )
- [CODE] The Future of Software Development
- Very fluffy discussion of waterfall vs agile with the hypothesis that small teams are the future.
- (readwriteweb.com 617 54 734 )
- [DESIGN] Top 100 User-Centered Blogs
- centered around the user experience
- (virtualhosting.com 558 72 45 )
- [HIRING] 100 Resources to Attract, Retain and Utilize Rock Star Programmers
- Great list of resources for hiring programmers
- (hrworld.com 343 16 109 )
- [RUBY] 10 Reasons to Learn Ruby
- I’m drinking the koolaid.
- (cyberarmy.net 342 17 1028 )
- [RAILS] Zero to Riding the Rails in Four Months
- Experience getting started with a Rails app.
- (hackd.wordpress.com 301 17 3 )
- [BLOGGING] Top bloggers reveal how to build traffic off-blog without spending a dime
- Guest posting and building relationships are the top two ways.
- (jonathanfields.com 269 27 708 )
- [SOCIAL] NOSO
- Online web app that is focused on getting people off of their computers and interacting in meatspace.
- (nosoproject.com 227 100 6 )
- [GTD] Top 10 Distraction Stoppers
- They included my “distraction free gtd” web app pack
- (lifehacker.com 100 20 22 )
- [GAMERS] I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome (Spoilers)
- From the article: ” Who watches the watchers? The gnome does. He watches everyone, unblinkingly.”
- (kfj.f2s.com 83 35 2946 )
- [CODE] Free Programming Tips are Worth Every Penny.
- I think I’m developing a blog crush.
- (wilshipley.com 66 19 24 )
- [DESIGN] What about research, interviews, and documentation?
- Throw it at the wall and see what sticks. Good advice.
- (37signals.com 33 3 5 )
- [WORKHACKS] Remember, This Stuff Is Supposed To Be Fun
- Work should be something that you enjoy.
- (codinghorror.com 28 15 15 )
- [SEO] What if Google had to design for Google?
- What the Google homepage would look like if they had to design for SEO.
- (meangene.com 24 28 )
- [STARTUPS] ‘Un-sexy is good business,’ and other rules from Scott Rafer
- MyBlogLog founder on how to survive the market bust that’s coming in 5 months.
- (foundread.com 23 9 )
- [HALLOWEEN] Animal Halloween Costumes
- Impressive number of Star Wars costumes.
- (nynerd.com 11 6 10 )
- [BLOGGING] The First Month: Building Something From Nothing
- Skellie’s building traffic from nothing guide. Great tips in there, must read for beginner/intermediates.
- (skelliewag.org 8 3 3 )
- [SMO] Targeting StumbleUpon Users
- How to build a stumbleupon community
- (dailyblogtips.com 7 7 )
- [IPHONE] Video Game Ideas: iPhone SDK edition
- A ton of ideas for iPhone games. Really cool stuff.
- (wilshipley.com 7 8 )
- [COMICS] Missing!
- The disappearance of Calvin and Hobbs
- (clevescene.com 5 4 )
- [OCD] On Being Crazy
- From the article: ” Then I’ll have a week so dark that simply taking mail out of the mailbox seems like an epic struggle. And I remember, oh yes, right, you aren’t going away. Because you’re my brain. You’re my chemistry. You’re me.”
- (wilshipley.com 2 7 )
- [STARTUPS] The Wheels on the Bus
- Why buying a bus ticket and hanging out with REAL PEOPLE might be the best thing for your startup idea. And it’s true — normal people don’t have nearly the same problems I try to fix in my own life.
- (ricksegal.typepad.com 2 2 )
- [FACEBOOK] Inner Circle App
- Facebook application that lets you build custom groups of friends.
- (facebook.com 2 )
- [GOOGLE] Ad Blindness? How About Ad Repulsion?
- Interesting.. make the real content look like AdSense and it becomes immediately repulsive.
- (franticindustries.com 2 )
- [OPENID] Automattic,Gravatar, and the Elusive Unified Identity
- Automattic is making a move to providing single-sign-on using your wordpress.com IDs. Good business idea, but still scary considering I managed to lock myself out of sites using because of my wordpress.com openID.
- (neomeme.net)
- [FACEBOOK] Google scared of Facebook? Puh-leeze
- Matt skewers business 2.0 :)
- (mathewingram.com)
- [PATENTS] Amazon patent foiled by lone gunman
- That’s awesome.
- (mathewingram.com)
- [MICROSOFT] Ballmer to Web 2.0 Execs: You Have a Pulse? We’ll Give You At Least $50 Million For It.
- developers, developers, developers. Ballmer is such an idiot.
- (parislemon.com)
- [REDDIT] the reddit toolbar: taking social news one step closer
- Hidden setting on reddit that puts a toolbar on outgoing links… very useful for voting without using the bookmarklet.
- (muhammadsaleem.com)
- [GEEK] Star Trek Cast
- (blog.logtar.com)
Legend
- saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
- inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
- diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com
This Week at Internet Duct Tape
- How I Use Google Reader
- “How I Use” is a new series I’m starting about the software I use on a day-to-day basis. I want share tips and tricks and to learn tips and tricks from readers sharing with me in the comments. Google Reader is a web-based RSS reader. Because it’s web-based I can access my Google…
- The Attention Age: Accelerando, Software Agents, Filters and Gatekeepers
- Last night I finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross. Like many of the books I read these days, I heard about it from another blogger. It feels like a spiritual sequel to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, John Brunner’s the Shockwave Rider and Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan. It is…
- Blog Action Day: Save Paper when Readers Print Your Blog
- Today is Blog Action Day with a focus on the environment and I’m going to teach a quick CSS trick for how to save paper by reducing what gets printed when someone prints an article from your blog.
- Coworkers Considered Harmful
- I hit a realization this weekend that I’ve hit many times before. There’s an inordinate number of times when I’m in the office late not because of my own time management failures but because of the people I work with.
- Best of Feeds – 26 links – programming, webdesign, javascript, design, tips
- Tags: blogging, design, fun, javascript, lifehacks, programming, rails, tips, usability, web2.0, webdesign, writing
This Week at IDT Labs
- [WORDPRESS] Extract Comments or Trackbacks only from the Comments Feed
- 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 I created for Jon Udell that builds an RSS feed around a specific tag using delicious, flickr, technorati, and wordpress.com.
Tags: agile, blogging, career, facebook, funny, games, google, ideas, marketing, programming, rails, startups, tips, traffic, usability, webdesign
How I Use Google Reader
“How I Use” is a new series I’m starting about the software I use on a day-to-day basis. I want share tips and tricks and to learn tips and tricks from readers sharing with me in the comments.
Google Reader is a web-based RSS reader. Because it’s web-based I can access my Google Reader from multiple places (home PC, home laptop, work PC, visiting family, etc) and all of my information is stored and updated in one place. I use the Firefox web-browser with the Greasemonkey extension.
Google Reader is an RSS reader
RSS can be best described as a stream of news. Instead of visiting different websites at a time, you subscribe to them and you get all of the updates from the websites you follow in one place. For me that one place is Google Reader. This video will describe RSS and why you would want to subscribe to an RSS feed.
Subscribing to a Feed
I subscribe to feeds either by clicking on the feed link directly or by using the autodiscovery feed option in Firefox.
The first time you subscribe to a feed, Firefox will display the feed in a nice, human readable way, with a yellow box asking you what you want to use to subscribe to this feed. Choose the Google option and chose the option to always use Google to subscribe to feeds.
Unfortunately, Google isn’t smart enough to remember your preference between Google Reader and Google Homepage — so you have to always chose the red pill or the blue pill. There is a handy Greasemonkey script to fix that though: always subscribe to Google Reader.
Accessing Google Reader
I access Google Reader by typing reader.google.com into my address bar or by clicking on the Google Reader icon in the Google Toolbar.
Setting Up My View
Google Reader lets you save your view settings which ever way you like them. I like to view all items at a time instead of sorting them by tags (I’ll switch to tag view if I don’t have time to read all my feeds and I want to focus on a specific subject).
I click on the Expanded view tab in the top right hand so that I can see titles and the body of each item.
I turn off the left sidebar by clicking the left margin or pressing ‘u’ on the keyboard.
Then I click on the View Settings drop-down and choose sort by newest and set as start page.
Now Google Reader will remember these settings every time I log in.
Navigating Feeds
I read feeds by
- using the middle mouse wheel to scroll down the page with my right hand
- my left hand hovers over the ‘j’ and ‘k’ keys on my keyboard
- ‘j’ jumps past a post that I don’t find interesting enough to read completely
- ‘k’ jumps back to the previous post if I decide that I do want to read it
I find quickly scanning through full posts like this lets me read many more feeds than if I have to click on the titles I find interesting.
Opening Links
I open links I want to read by
- clicking on the link with my middle mouse button to open it in a background tab
When I get around 10 links I take a break from reading feeds and go through all of those open tabs, closing them as I’m done with them.
Read a Post Later
If I come across a blog post that’s too dense to read at the moment I’ll use the Readeroo extension to save it to delicious with the toread tag. Readroo will let me fetch it later, and mark it as read.
Leaving a Blog Comment
When I find a blog post I want to comment on
- I hit the ‘v’ key to jump to the post on the blog
- hit the ‘end’ key on my keyboard to go the bottom of the post
- press ‘alt+c’ to fill in my name / email address / blog url thanks to the handy prefill comments Greasemonkey script
- write my comment and click send
- press ‘ctrl+w’ to close the tab and return to my Google Reader tab
Bookmarking a Blog Post
When I find a blog post I want to save for my ‘Best of Feeds’ series
- I hit the ‘v’ key to jump to the post on the blog
- click on the ‘TAG’ button in my toolbar to save it to delicious
Google Reader has it’s own mechanism for sharing and bookmarking posts but I don’t find it nearly as useful or as fast as delicious. That might change with time.
I’ve seen a Greasemonkey script that lets you bookmark the post from within Google Reader, but I prefer using the official delicious extension to bookmark posts because of other enhancements I’ve made to it.
How Do You Use Google Reader?
The reason for writing a post like this isn’t only because I want to share how I do something, but because I also want to learn tricks I might not know about. Got a trick I’m missing out on? Please leave it in the comments, or write your own blog post about it and send a trackback.
Best of Feeds – 34 links – programming, google, lifehacks, ruby, funny
RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape to see this every week (or get it by email).
- [LIFEHACKS] The Printable CEO
- Collection of PDFs for task/hour tracking.
- (davidseah.com 949 100 7 )
- [BOOKMARKING] toread – an email-based bookmark service
- Simple service to use to track stuff ‘to read later’. They store the top 10 for each day. It’s like having an archive of the delicious popular list.
- (toread.cc 938 100 440 )
- [RUBY] The Little Book Of Ruby
- 85 page guide to the ruby language syntax, free ebook
- (sapphiresteel.com 492 38 28 )
- [CODE] Software Is Hard
- *Excellent* article about software estimation and Rosenberg’s Dreaming in Code
- (gamearchitect.net 449 68 15 )
- [STARTUPS] The Future of Web Startups
- Paul Graham on how web startups will start to be standardized and easy to do… which will change everything.
- (paulgraham.com 443 100 671 )
- [LIFEHACKS] Top 100 Productivity Blogs
- I’m not on the list, but many there’s a lot of great finds on here.
- (whitepapers.org 440 44 53 )
- [RUBY] Ferret – full text search engine
- I’m wondering if this could be a replacement for intranet text search?
- (ferret.davebalmain.com 429 )
- [JAVASCRIPT] The Elements of JavaScript Style
- Everything you need to know about writing good javacsript.
- (javascript.crockford.com 336 30 )
- [ESTIMATION] Web Worker 101: Estimating Basics
- Nothing new, but good round-up for people who have trouble estimating.
- (webworkerdaily.com 296 36 6 )
- [JAVASCRIPT] Learning JavaScript resources
- Good collection of tutorials and links about Javascript
- (juixe.com 289 4 6 )
- [CODE] Software Branching and Parallel Universes
- One of the best explanations of software branching in revision control that I’ve ever read.
- (codinghorror.com 274 34 3 )
- [GEEK] Flo Control Cat Door
- Image recognition to prevent cat from coming inside with a mouse. Why do I enjoy every link Coding Horror sends me so much?
- (quantumpicture.com 228 80 )
- [RAILS] Rails Rumble: 92 Web Apps Created in 48 Hours
- Winners from the 48 hours Rails Rumble
- (readwriteweb.com 169 28 681 )
- [FIREFOX] A Visual Guide to the Firefox Web Browser – Learn Firefox
- via: rooster
- (learnfirefox.cybernetnews.com 167 100 17 )
- [RAILS] Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications
- Free e-book for next 60 days. Probably not as good as Agile Web Development.
- (sitepoint.com 151 100 6 )
- [VIRUS] Gathering ‘Storm’ Superworm Poses Grave Threat to PC Nets
- Your antivirus software is completely useless. This is scary.
- (schneier.com 104 62 14 )
- [CODE] Inheritance is evil, and must be destroyed: part 1
- Using the strategy pattern vs inheritance with dark jedi examples.
- (berniecode.com 76 9 )
- [IPHONE] If wishes were iPhones, then beggars would call
- If you want to hack your phone (dvd player, etc) then buy a phone that lets you hack. Don’t complain about Apple’s lockin when everything they do revolves around lockin.
- (diveintomark.org 60 61 9 )
- [LIFEHACKS] 6 Rules for Dealing With Habits vs. Tasks
- Good ideas about how to build habits
- (zenhabits.net 54 8 58 )
- [BLOGGING] Blogging is Dumb, Stupid and Successful
- Rant against blogging about blogging and ‘quick tip’ type posts.
- (cornwallseo.com 38 25 716 )
- [CODE] What I Learned From X That Made Me A Better Programmer In Y
- From the article: ” We go with Bob’s plan because Bob successfully asserted his dominance over Fred. If we’re lucky, Bob is good at making plans as well as asserting dominance, but if he’s bad at making plans but good at asserting dominance, his plan is still the plan”
- (gilesbowkett.blogspot.com 37 3 2 )
- [HUMOR] Microsoft Search
- Microsoft Press releases shows that Microsoft Live Search will finally read the state Yahoo/Google was in 7 years ago.
- (wdr1.com 25 11 )
- [LIFEHACKS] shoutingmat.ch (lifehack)
- Interesting agreggator for posts about lifehacks.
- (lifehack.shoutingmat.ch 22 10 )
- [SEO] SEOS : The Card Counters of the Internet
- From the article: ” “Google is a casino, and you are a visitor.””
- (johnon.com 19 24 19 )
- [HUMOR] Crackbook
- Facebook parody site.
- (theinternetnowinhandybookform.com 16 17 )
- [BLOGGING] The 7 Habits of Highly Defective Bloggers
- 7 habits inverted with a view on blogging — what not to do
- (lifetrainingonline.com 12 6 13 )
- [PRESENTATIONS] Keynote (The Software) Considered Harmful
- Do presentations and demos with nothing but a whiteboard. Much more interactive.
- (gilesbowkett.blogspot.com 9 )
- [SEO] How I reversed my Google ranking penalty
- More on how asking for links with specific anchor text can get your blog blacklisted by google. Contest bloggers be aware.
- (davidairey.com 6 15 14 )
- [HUMOR] 300: The Board Game
- I still enjoy the meme :)
- (defectiveyeti.com 5 4 )
- [GUESTBLOGGING] Get Your Guest-Posts Here
- Guestblogger for hire, Chris G.
- (chrisg.com 3 18 )
- [COPYRIGHT] Has And Belongs To Many: The Problem With Trademarking Rails
- From the article: ” Trademark rights are destructive to the cooperation and trust necessary for successful open source projects.”
- (gilesbowkett.blogspot.com 2 )
- [RUBY] When does ( ?? == 63 ) ?
- True dat. Successfully scared me away from Ruby :)
- (sob.apotheon.org)
- [SEO] A Google Allegory at Hamlet Batista dot Com
- Asking for links with specific anchor text can get your blog blacklisted by google. Contest bloggers be aware.
- (hamletbatista.com 8 )
- [COMMUNITY] Poisonous People
- OSCON PDF slides from the SubVersion guys. Read the poisonous people one!
- (red-bean.com 5 )
Legend
- saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
- inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
- diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com
This Week at Internet Duct Tape
- Distraction Free GTD: 32 Todo List Web Applications
- Web Runner is a tiny site-specific web application that runs using less resources than Firefox or Internet Explorer. The whole idea behind a site specific web browser is that you want to access a web application without being tempted to access other sites. You want to access a site without being…
- Magazine Review: October 2007 Issue of Inc. Magazine
- I came to a rather startling discovery in the past month: magazines are just blogs with the added luxury of being able to read them while on the toilet or in the bathtub (but hopefully not both). I picked up the October issue of Inc. magazine because Joel Spolsky of Joel On Software has joined the…
- Blog Tip: Create a Link Post in 3 Seconds
- One question I’m frequently asked is “how do you build those Best of Feeds weekly links?” The way I do it is pretty complicated, but I’ve found a much simpler way that I want to share with you all.
- Digest for September 2007
- Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape.
- Best of Feeds – 30 links – programming, productivity, code, socialsoftware, socialnetworking
- Tags: adsense, advice, blogging, career, code, design, development, firefox, gtd, lifehacks, productivity, programming, ruby, rubyonrails, socialnetworking, socialsoftware, tips, web2.0, webdesign
This Week at IDT Labs
- [AKISMET] Akismet Auntie Spam v2.04
- Our favorite Auntie has a new version. 2007/10/04 version 2.04 – Fixed (some) memory problems with v2.03 – Still slow, I need to get it working with a profiler, none of the hacks for Greasemonkey + Firebug seem to work.
- [DELICIOUS] Delicious Link Builder
- Build a list of links using your delicious account to bookmark them. Works great with my Yahoo Pipe Cleaner script . Example : [BOOKMARKING] toread – an email-based bookmark service Simple service to use to track stuff ‘to read later’. They store the top 10 for each day. It’s like…
- [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.
Tags: blogging, estimation, free, funny, google, gtd, javascript, lifehacks, productivity, programming, rails, ruby, rubyonrails, search, seo, tips
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