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.
Comments Off on Weekend Reader – friendfeed, blogging, technology, programming, wordpress
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.
Comments Off on Delicious Links – 20 links – google, blogging, wordpress, twitter, lifehacks
Delicious Links – 17 links – wordpress, webdesign, productivity, google, search
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] 7 Reasons Why your Website Won’t Last Without Analytics, makeuseof.com
- This is in my “top 5 beefs with wordpress.com”. Blogging without Google Analytics sucks because you’re never able to self correct.
- [BLOGGING] How to Create a Rock-Solid Tagline That Truly Works, copyblogger.com
- Create your tagline by thinking about the problems you solve.
- [CSS] 960 Grid System, 960.gs, via:technospot.net
- Looks like Blueprint CSS, with more polish.
- [GREASEMONKEY] Google Gears + Greasemonkey to take Wikipedia offline, code.google.com
- Proof of concept on how to use Greasemonkey with Google Gears. I want to try this out, I think the combination of Gears, jQuery and Greasemonkey could lead to some awesome scripts.
- [LIFEHACKS] 10 Ways History’s Finest Kept Their Focus at Work, lifedev.net
- Look at the productivity tips of some of histories greatest figures.
- [LIFEHACKS] 12 Rules for Getting a Grip on Massive Email, problogger.net
- How to manage too much email.
- [MEMES] I Can Has Rezearch Papar?, cylegage.com
- Long article discussion internet culture, memes and anonymity.
- [MYBLOGLOG] FOAFster — Mashable FOAF, from MyBlogLog, kentbrewster.com
- Ok, this might be the mashup that gets me using MyBlogLog again.
- [PYTHON] Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python, python.net, via:benjamingolub.com
- Python style guide by the maker of Docutils.
- [RUBY] Announcing Ninja-Patching!, avdi.org
- How to patch code so that it will randomly kill other code.
- [SCIFI] Brasyl, Halting State, The Last Colony and Rollback: The 2008 Hugo Voters Electronic Editions, scalzi.com
- How to obtain electronic copies of this years Hugo award nominees.
- [SEO] I’m Getting Pretty Tired of Startup Advice that Doesn’t Include Any Mention of SEO, seomoz.org
- Most web startups are dumb about getting direct search referrals.
- [TWITTER] I’m Over Twitter, threeminds.organic.com
- From the article: ” With Twitter, each of us shouts into the void to the community at large, rather than taking the risk of speaking directly to one another.”
- [WORDPRESS] A Proposal for Theme Management in WordPress, themeshaper.com
- Make the footer easily customizable.
- [WORDPRESS] WordPress 2.5 usability review, noscope.com, via:archgfx.net
- Discussion of what the WP2.5 admin panel does wrong.
- [WORKHACKS] Meetronome, meetronome.com
- Online meeting minute generator that also calculates the average cost of the meeting
Presenting: Livejournal Theme for WordPress
You know the story. You’ve been using LiveJournal since 1999. It’s your home. You’re familiar with it. You’re on the list of notable LiveJournal users. But times they be a changin’. You’re friends are all leaving LiveJournal for WordPress because it’s a better C-M-S (whatever that is). You’ve switched to WordPress, but everything looks strange and confusing.
Don’t worry, as usual engtech has your back.
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.
- [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] 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] 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] 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.
- [FRIENDFEED] A Few FriendFeed Treats Out There, jeffisageek.net
- A list of the cool little hacks people have made for FF so far.
- [FRIENDFEED] Friendfeed 2018, blogoscoped.com, via:winextra.com
- The future of Friend Feed.
- [FRIENDFEED] Share that link on FriendFeed using FeedDemon, winextra.com
- Share items on FF using Feed Demon.
- [FRIENDFEE] The FriendFeed Playground, ffapps.com
- Avi put together a FF apps site for pointing to the cool apps people are building around FF.
- [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.
- [GREASEMONKEY] How to play nicely with jQuery and Greasemonkey, joanpiedra.com
- Tips on accessing jQuery inside your Greasemonkey scripts.
- [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.
- [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.
- [SOCIALSOFTWARE] Why I will never get another date, jennifer-mccarthy.blogspot.com
- The truth of social web apps exposed.
- [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.
- [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.
- [WORDPRESS] FriendFeed Comments WordPress Plugin, blog.slaven.net.au
- Display the Friend Feed discussion on your WordPress blog.
- [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.
- [XBOX360] REST API for Xbox Gamertag Data, duncanmackenzie.net
- Public rest API for Xbox Gamertag. Gives you an XML file.
(more…)
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.
- [CODE] Google Code University, code.google.com, via:lazycoder.com
- Google is putting together tutorials about programming subjects for university level. Good refreshers.
- [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.
- [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.
- [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] Friendfeed Grid, blogoscoped.com, via:louisgray.com
- A random look at the people on Friend Feed.
- [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] How FriendFeed Became Internet Famous, runningwithfoxes.com, via:friendfeed.com
- An analysis about how FF became the “IT” webapp of 2008.
- [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?
- [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
- [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] The Top 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs, collegedegree.com, via:readwriteweb.com
- Huge list of lifehack blogs organized by topic.
- [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.”
- [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.
- [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?
- [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.
- [TWITTER] favotter, favotter.matope.com
- It’s like twitter.com/popular — a list of tweets that have been favorited a lot. Pretty entertaining.
- [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.
- [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] More WordPress Theme Viewer Screenshots, winextra.com
- Preview screenshots of the new WordPress theme viewer
- Powered by Delicious Links Pro
Comments Off on Delicious Links – 20 links – friendfeed, lifehacks, blogging, programming, wordpress
Free WP Plugin Idea: Use Referrers Instead of Trackbacks
Blogs have a way of keeping track of who is linking to them using trackbacks or pingbacks. It’s a good idea in theory because it helps you follow the discussion as it spreads to new areas, but in practice it is mostly filled with spam because getting a well-placed trackback on a popular website can be a good source of traffic.
Trackbacks were designed without any kind of authentication mechanism whatsoever, not even the most trivial test that the person who is says they are linking to you really is linking to you. So screw spammy trackbacks. Screw them in their naughty place. Take them out of your blog themes and blog engines and let’s build something better.
Here’s the idea: instead of showing a list of trackbacks for spammers to abuse, show a list of referrers.
10 comments