tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55731082024-03-23T14:17:17.732-04:00FreshblogBlogger Hacks, including Categories for Blogger and other Blog Tips, Tricks & Tools.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.comBlogger1782125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-15764012344882233522008-07-27T10:43:00.002-04:002008-07-27T11:10:07.877-04:00Fun with 2D Barcodes on Your PhoneHave you noticed those strange black and white grids - like demented crosswords - popping up around the place? In newspapers, flyers and the like? No? Well, I have. And I dare say if I lived in Japan I'd have seen them on T-shirts, coffee mugs and a whole lot more.<br /><br />They're <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode#2D_barcodes">2D barcodes</a> for your mobile device (primarily phones). You take a photo with the built-in camera and the onboard software automatically extracts some text, a phone number or a link. (If your phone is a bit older, you can download the software from your manufacturer.)<br /><br />I've been playing around with these mobile codes (QR codes and Datamatrix) for the past few weeks, thinking of things to do with them. As a starting point, <a href="http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/create.jsp">Nokia's handy webservice</a> for creating the images needed to meet our friends at <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/">Yahoo Pipes</a>.<br /><br />The result is <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/Mbarcode">Mbarcode URL</a>. It's run along the same lines as <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/embiggen/">Embiggen TinyURL</a>: there's a page where you can see it working, plus a bookmarklet for browsers and a button for publishers.<br /><br />Go on, give it a click! (Click anywhere on the popup to close it.)<br /><br /><center><a id="button" href="javascript: Mbarcode={'popup':'true', 'format':'qr', 'size':'L'}; var s=document.createElement('script'); s.type='text/javascript'; s.src='http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/Mbarcode/Mbarcode.js'; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s); void(0);"><img src="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/Mbarcode/Mbarcode-badge.png"/></a></center><br /><br /><br />One of the limitations with the QR and Datamatrix codes is there's a limit to how much you can pack in. As it gets bigger, the blocks get smaller and the decoding error rate grows. This limits the effective size of a URL to around 50 characters - even less if you want to be robust.<br /><br />So behind the scenes, Mbarcode uses <a href="http://tinyurl.com/">TinyURL</a> to shorten the target link into something much more compact. Now you don't have to worry about the size. As a result, you can use the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data:_URI_scheme">data: URI scheme</a> to pack as much into your mobile codes as you want. I've "compressed" a 10K PNG image into a QR code using this approach, effectively achieving far higher resolution than you deserve with a mobile phone camera. Neat.<br /><br />What's the point? Not sure, really. Here's a couple of ideas:<br /><ul><li>You're browsing along on your desktop and you want to send a link to your phone for when you're out and about later. Click the bookmarklet, point your phone at the screen, take a snap. Done. It's in your phone.</li><br /><br /><li>You're out with a cool friend who owns an iPhone with GPS. She's checking out nearby bars on Google Maps. You'd like to look too, but while your phone has a web connection, it has no GPS. What are you going to do? Laboriously type the address or longitude/latitude into Google Maps? No! You're friend clicks the bookmarklet, it creates the QR code, you snap her screen with your phone and now you're both browsing the current location!</li></ul><br /><br />Yeah, it's not a lot, but it's still fun to play. Maybe more uses will come later, especially if I figure out what to do with the cool <a href="http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx">experimental online barcode decoder at ZXing</a>.<br /><br />Suggestions?<br /><br /><span class="technoratitag" style="font-family:arial;">Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/webtech" rel="tag">webtech</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/hacks" rel="tag">hacks</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/tinyURL" rel="tag">tinyURL</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/bookmarklets" rel="tag">bookmarklets</a></span>Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07749796777534219331noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-80907539186879767992007-06-10T03:46:00.000-04:002007-06-10T04:03:20.442-04:00Embiggen Those TinyURLsIf you use a lot of <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com">TinyURLs</a> on your blog, you might want to checkout this new tool - <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/embiggen/">Embiggen</a>. It expands those cryptic TinyURLs (eg <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2dfmty">tinyurl.com/2dfmty</a>) to their full version, allowing your readers to make an informed decision about following a link. (That's <a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/web-surfing/tiny-url-etiquette-132763.php">good URL etiquette</a>.)<br /><br />It's available as a button to insert into any page eg <a href="http://www.blogger.com">Blogger</a>, but it's especially handy for micro-blogging services like <a href="http://www.twitter.com/">Twitter</a>. You can also get it as a bookmarklet for when you're browsing around and come across a mysterious TinyURL.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/embiggen/">See demo and get buttons</a></center><br /><br />The hack works by using <a href="http://www.dapper.net/">Dapper</a> to <a href="http://www.dapper.net/dapp-howto-use.php?dappName=ExpandTinyURL">grab the URL</a> from the <a href="http://preview.tinyurl.com/2dfmty">TinyURL preview page</a> and munging the resulting JSON object with regular expressions.<br /><br />I cobbled this together as part of another project on URL manipulation and tagging, but thought it might be useful enough to release on its own. There's no reason why this approach couldn't be applied to other common-yet-cryptic URLs, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</a>, so watch this space.<br /><br />Any other suggestions, feedback, bug reports etc? Please leave a comment.<br /><br /><span class="technoratitag" style="font-family:arial;">Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/webtech" rel="tag">webtech</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/hacks" rel="tag">hacks</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/tinyURL" rel="tag">tinyURL</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/bookmarklets" rel="tag">bookmarklets</a></span><div style="clear:both; padding-bottom:0.25em"></div>Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07749796777534219331noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-47606642751575782252007-04-29T08:22:00.000-04:002007-07-23T11:48:25.640-04:00Blog Update Feed and Sidebar DisplayOne question that arises regularly with my blogging is the update dilemma - what should to do with those little scraps of information that pertain to an earlier post? This article outlines an approach to dealing with this common issue.<br /><br />When I'm following a breaking news story or there's delayed developments or even a random thought occurs, I want to inform my readers in the most convenient way. If it's big enough, a whole new post may be warranted (with a link back to the earlier post). Otherwise, I ask myself: should it be done with a comment or with a manual update to the bottom of the original post? Thanks to <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/07/sidebar-comments-and-hearsay.html">Hearsay</a> (and other recent comments hacks), a comment will have visibility across all blog pages, informing all visitors (but not subscribers). If there's a lot of comments on a particular post or a high rate of commenting on the blog, important updates can get lost. Alternatively, appending an update (or follow-up, postscript, addendum, errata or correction) to the post may not get out to subscribers and visitors who are interested.<br /><br />I've tried to get the best of both worlds by using <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2007/02/mashups-for-rest-of-us.html">Yahoo Pipes</a> to automatically generate an update feed for my blog. This feed consists of the most recent updates (to any post on my blog) and can be offered to subscribers, much like a regular post or comment feed. It can also be combined with <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/07/sidebar-comments-and-hearsay.html">Hearsay</a> to produce a friendly sidebar panel to display the most recent updates to your site visitors.<br /><br />The rest of this article introduces the Blogger Update Extractor pipe, explains its operation and how you can use it in your blog. I conclude with some possible alternative uses and pointers on future developments.<br /><br />First of all, to get a clearer idea about the problem I'm talking about (and my solution), have a look at this post about <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/speccy/2006/05/afl-drug-takers-named-and-shamed_24.html">a court case I was following</a>. As you can see, there were five updates (each about two paragraphs) over the twelve months after the original post. This is fairly common with my posts - perhaps a quarter of them feature one or more updates like this.<br /><br />I have long adopted the convention of using <span style="font-weight: bold;">*** UPDATE ***</span> to indicate that the subsequent text has been appended to the original post. I also use a named anchor (eg <span style="font-style: italic;"><a name="update1"> ... </a></span>) on each update heading. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, it gives me a unique URL for each update (ie <span style="font-style: italic;">http://...#update1</span>) in case someone wishes to bookmark it. Secondly, my <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/blog-nav">Blog-Nav</a> system picks up anchors so that users can jump up and down the page (use the up/down arrow in the top right to see).<br /><br />What the <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/person.info?eyuid=xsCLCj8noGbRPBRXKLJXQNjAMQ--">Update Extractor</a> pipe does is gather <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Speccy">my blog's RSS feed</a> (not Atom - see below) and parse out the updates, returning a new RSS feed that consists of <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpeccyUpdates">just the most recent updates</a>. This works because of handy feature in Blogger's RSS feed that is not present in Atom: when you update any post it automatically goes to the top of your RSS feed. The rest is just straightforward regular expressions in Yahoo's Pipes.<br /><br />With this new feed, you can offer it to readers (perhaps after burning it through <a href="http://feedburner.com/">FeedBurner</a> for stats) and/or display it in your blog's sidebar to let all readers know. The links will point to the actual update, not just the post (eg <span style="font-style: italic;">http://...#update1</span>)<br /><br />Now, the latest Blogger has support for displaying arbitrary RSS feeds: you can simply use that. Or, you can create a "special" feed that will work with the <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/07/sidebar-comments-and-hearsay.html">Hearsay</a> hack to give you a bit more control over presentation.<br /><br />If you want an RSS feed of your recent updates, use this URL:<br /><br /><a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?BlogID=xxxxxxxx&_id=pAQ35A322xGwxdeMouNLYQ&_run=1&_render=rss">http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?BlogID=<span style="font-weight: bold;">xxxxxxxx</span>&_id=pAQ35A322xGwxdeMouNLYQ&_run=1&_render=rss</a><br /><br />(replace <span style="font-weight: bold;">xxxxxxxx</span> with your blog's Blogger ID)<br /><br />If you want a Hearsay-style sidebar panel of your recent updates, insert this code into your Blogger template sidebar:<br /><br /><div id="recent-updates" ><center><br/><br/><br/>Please wait ... <br/>loading updates.<br/><br/><img src="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/snake_transparent.gif"/></center></div><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/hearsay/hearsay-v01c.js"></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />hearsay("http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?BlogID=<span style="font-weight: bold;">xxxxxxxx</span>&_id=Ik9FeAz22xGZT18tqWIyXQ&_run=1&_render=json", "recent-updates", true);<br /></script><br /><br />(Again, where xxxxxxxx is your blog's Blogger ID.)<br /><br />The Update Extractor comes in three flavours: "Full" grabs all the text following an update (ie to the end of the post); "Partial" grabs just the next (substantial) paragraph and "Hearsay" grabs the partial feed but prepares it for display by the Hearsay script. Please feel free to clone and modify the pipes as needed; I'd appreciate it if you could put a comment here so I can have a look.<br /><br />NB: Using more Pipes, your blog's update feed can be merged easily with your blog's comment feed if that would make more sense for your blog.<br /><br />One downside of this solution is when there are multiple updates to a post: it will only "see" the most recent (ie physically last) update. This is okay for low-frequency updates but completely inadequate if you put your updates at the top of the blog.<br /><br />The problem is that the feed doesn't contain any information about the time of all the updates, just the first publication timestamp and the most-recent update timestamp. To deal with this, I'm now using a new convention whereby instead of naming my anchors "update1", "update2" etc I'm using a timestamp "update1177829961000". Future versions of the pipe will be able to see this and handle multiple updates per post intelligently.<br /><br />Rather than typing all that in each time, I've made a bookmarklet to help out. (See below for code.) The automatically generated update heading looks like this:<br /><br /><center><a title="Sunday, 29 April 2007 04:59:21 PM" name="update1177829961000"><span style="font-weight:bold;">*** UPDATE ***</span></a></center><br /><br />This same basic approach - mark out content with an anchor, process the RSS feed through Pipes and display via JSON - can apply to other content too. For example, I quote heavily from newspapers in my blog posts, so I could create a feed just of quotes. You could also make a feed for <a href="http://www.blogossary.com/define/hat-tip/">hat-tips</a>, code, links, images, citations, headings or pretty much anything else.<br /><br />So there you have it: blog update feeds for your subscribers and visitors. As usual, comments, criticisms and suggestions are most welcome.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Timestamp Anchor Bookmarklet Code:</span><br /><br /><code>javascript:var insert_date= new Date(); insert_timestamp=Date.parse(insert_date); insert_html='<center><a title=%22'+insert_date.toLocaleString()+'%22 name=%22update'+insert_timestamp+'%22><span style=%22font-weight:bold;%22>*** UPDATE ***</span></a></center>'; document.forms.stuffform.htmlPostBody.value+=insert_html; void(0);</code><br /><br /><center><a title="Monday, 30 April 2007 01:03:46 AM" name="update1177859026000"><span style="font-weight:bold;">*** UPDATE ***</span></a></center><br />It occurs to me that maybe a live working example on this page might help. This is what I mean by an update - some content added some hours laters. If you mouseover the update heading thingy above, you'll note that it gives you the time of update. At the risk of inducing recursive madness, here's <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?BlogID=5573108&_id=pAQ35A322xGwxdeMouNLYQ&_run=1&_render=rss">Freshblog's update feed</a>. Note that the embedded link in the feed doesn't just point to this post, it points to this update (via the named anchor).<br /><br /><center><a title="Tuesday, 24 July 2007 1:44:36 AM" name="update1185205476000"><span style="font-weight:bold;">*** UPDATE ***</span></a></center><br />After noticing "something screwy" going on, I've modified this Yahoo Pipe to append the now-required <span style="font-style:italic;">orderby=updated</span> to the feed fetch module. Props to <a href="http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/2007/06/blogger-feeds-now-sorted-by-published.html">Phydeaux3</a> for the explanation and syntax.<br /><br /><span class="technoratitag" style="font-family:arial;">Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger-hacks" rel="tag">blogger-hacks</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/feeds" rel="tag">feeds</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/how-to" rel="tag">how-to</a></span>Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07749796777534219331noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-54699510244148640262007-04-26T02:20:00.000-04:002007-04-26T03:34:59.529-04:00BuzzFlux: Recent Search QueriesIn my ceaseless quest for content to clutter up my blog's sidebar, I have found a rich new source: reader search queries, or "buzz". <span style="font-weight:bold;">BuzzFlux</span> allows you to retrieve and display these search queries in near-real-time, right in your sidebar, for the amazement of your readership. It also signals my return to blog-hacking after a six month hiatus.<br /><br /><h3>Should I Do This?</h3><br />First things first: is it a good idea to display your readers "live" search queries on your blog? On the plus side, it gives readers a good idea about what kinds of content your blog has (at least, as far as search engines and their users are concerned). In that sense, search queries may be considered as micro-content, a bit like tags. It may also help keep readers on your page, especially if coupled to your built-in blog search (see below).<br /><br />On the downside, it may disturb some readers to see their recent queries displayed like this and some may be sensitive to the privacy side of things. Also, you have no control over what readers type into search engines, so you may be displaying potentially defamatory, profane or otherwise inappropriate content on your blog.<br /><br />I'd be interested in Freshblog's readers' views on this one, so please chime in with your own thoughts on this question.<br /><br /><h3>How Does BuzzFlux Work?</h3><br />Most blogs worth their salt employ some sort of web stats service. Typically, you put a bit of code into your template that "phones home" to a central server every time a page is hit. Among other things collected is the <a href="javascript:alert(document.referrer)">referring URL</a>, which contains the search query if the reader used a search engine to find your blog. <br /><br />I think all stats services report on search queries. I use <a href="http://blogflux.com/">BlogFlux</a> for some of my web reporting. They make some (though not all) of their stats available via RSS, which is handy for hacking. Unfortunately, the search queries page isn't one of them. To get the search page info in a useful form, I made a simple <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/09/dapper-content-integration-for.html">Dapp</a> to retrieve the <a href="http://mapstats.blogflux.com/1413-breakdown-search-week.html">target page</a>. (<a href="http://www.dapper.net/dapp-howto-use.php?dappName=BlogFluxQueryGrabber">Here's the Dapp</a>.) Once the contents are returned as a JSON object (an array of the top search queries), the BuzzFlux script just formats the results for display in the sidebar.<br /><br />If there are more search queries than space permits, BuzzFlux "rotates" the queries every few seconds. (That is, it swaps in other queries at random).<br /><br />As a nice add-on, readers can click on a search query of interest and my <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/05/recursive-backlinks.html">sidebar searching hack</a> will scour your blog for that query, displaying the results in your sidebar too. By showing readers <span style="font-style:italic;">other people's</span> queries and the results on the page, it's hoped that it will help readers find relevant content without leaving your site. (NB: This extension requires you to install the <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/05/recursive-backlinks.html">Recursive Backlinker</a> hack.)<br /><br />Check out the magic in action on <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/speccy/speccy.html">The Speccy</a></span> (scroll down to "Catch the Buzz" in the sidebar).<br /><br /><h3>How Do I Install BuzzFlux?</h3><br />First, go and register with BlogFlux and install their stats counter on your blog. (This hack doesn't <span style="font-style:italic;">have to</span> rely on BlogFlux, but that's how it is at the moment.)<br /><br />Next, put this in the header of your blog template:<br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />// BuzzFlux<br />Buzz = {"divid":"BuzzFlux", "limit":"15", "timer":"2000", "blogid":"1413", "period":"hour", "scan":"", "queries":[]};<br /></script><br /><br /><script type="text/javascript" src= "http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/buzzflux/buzzflux.js"></script><br /><br />The parameters are as follows:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">divid</span> = the ID of the div in your sidebar where all this content will be displayed.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">limit</span> = the number of queries to display at any given moment<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">timer</span> = the delay (in milliseconds) between rotating queries<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">blogid</span> = the BlogFlux ID number for your blog. Found in the URL of your results pages.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">period</span> = the period over which search queries are drawn. Allowable values are month, week and hour. Only use hour for high-traffic blogs since you want a reasonable number of queries to display (ie less than five search hits an hour and it will look a little sparse).<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">scan</span> = the ID of your in-blog search field. Leave it as "" if you're not using the extension.<br /><br />Now, edit your blog template to put this in your sidebar:<br /><br /><div id="BuzzFlux" style="text-align: justify"> ... loading recent search queries ...</div><br /><br />Finally, you might consider throwing some CSS styling in. Either add these to your CSS file, or put them in the <style> part of your template header:<br /><br />.BuzzList{ height: 9em; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px;} <br /><br />a.BuzzItem{ text-decoration: none;} <br /><br />a:hover.BuzzItem{ text-decoration: underline;}<br /><br /><h3>Where To Next?</h3><br />This opens up a range of possibilities. Not least is that FreshTags has for some time <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/01/freshtags-v-05.html">supported tag extraction from search queries</a>, providing a means for some sort of query/tag cross-over. Another thought would be to use <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2007/02/mashups-for-rest-of-us.html">Yahoo's Pipes to merge, sort and process buzz</a> from <span style="font-style:italic;">other</span> (related? or rival?) blogs too.<br /><br />As alluded to before, there are also pitfalls too. For example, who owns the copyright on a collection of search queries? Who's liable for publishing them? Of course, it's anonymous - to a degree. Without the aggregation effect of a <a href="http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html">Google Zeitgeist</a>, it may be more like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal">AOL's search debacle</a> from last year. <br /><br /><span class="technoratitag" style="font-family:arial;">Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger-hacks" rel="tag">blogger-hacks</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/search" rel="tag">search</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogsearch" rel="tag">blogsearch</a></span>Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07749796777534219331noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-16970437262243505142007-04-01T18:16:00.000-04:002007-04-01T18:27:59.306-04:00Google offers free wireless broadband to your home<h4>Solution for the last hundred yards</h4><br /><br />For those who haven't seen the news yet, Google has announced <a href="http://www.google.com/tisp/">TiSP</a>, a free in-home wireless broadband service. It's in BETA, and those wishing to participate must apply <b>TODAY</b>, April 1, 2007. <br /><br />Installation couldn't be simpler: Remove the spindle of fiber optic cable from the installation kit, activate the patented "GFLush" system which connects the cable to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes, where Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) complete the access point connection. <br /><br />Drawbacks: Google Toolbar <b>must</b> be installed, presumably so Google can serve up their ads on this advertising supported service. <br /><br />Don't forget, incidentally, that today is <a href="http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bltune-up.htm">Internet Spring Cleaning Day</a>.Yokota Fritzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04808661100114872654noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-86912692884886450062007-03-17T03:15:00.000-04:002007-03-17T03:59:37.534-04:00Pipes, JSON, and code for your websiteAlthough there's still quite a bit going on with Yahoo Pipes, interest in the gee-whiz user interface seems to be waning around the blogosphere. While the drag-and-drop interface is cool, I think one of the more useful and interesting features of Yahoo Pipes is its ability to export data as JSON data.<br /><br />Yahoo makes all of its data -- including Pipes feeds data -- available as JSON. JSON -- Javascript Object Notation -- is just data presented as Javascript code. That means you can write Javascript to work directly on the data without any XMLHttpRequest objects to open, get and parse. And because Yahoo provides a nifty callback mechanism, you don't run into the cross domain security issues that plague Ajax developers -- <b>everything runs on the client</b> and Yahoo Pipes enables some truly interesting mashup possibilities that go way beyond the "aggregate 200 feeds and filter on my keywords and pull in some Flickr photos" examples that dominate most blog discussion on Yahoo Pipes.<br /><h3>Code for your site</h3> The most frequently asked question I see on the Pipes discussion boards seems to be "How to I put Pipes feeds on my website?" Here are code examples showing how you can pull data from a Pipes JSON feed and display it automatically on any web page.<br /><br /><ol><li><b>Get the JSON feed data.</b> Here's the code to do that. Replace "PipeID" with the feed you're interested in. Be sure to retain "_render=json&_callback=pipeCallback". More about the callback parameter later. Make sure this script is someplace it will be executed when the HTML page loads.<br /><pre> <script type="text/javascript" <br /> src="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=pipeID&_render=json&_callback=pipeCallback"><br /> </script></pre> If you need a real life example, try this:<br /><pre> <script type="text/javascript"<br /> src="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=lLJMf7HH2xGlUlFRJjBjOg&_render=json&_callback=pipeCallback"><br /> </script></pre><br /></li><br /><li><b>Write some CSS.</b> To keep my example simple, I'll use <div> to put things where I want to go. Because this is a callback function, you can't just use document.write because you don't know where the text will actually end up unless you use CSS to place the text. You can define this however you want, but in my sample code I'll use a CSS ID called "leftside" and define a left sidebar.<blockquote><pre><br />#leftside {<br /> position:absolute;<br /> left:10px;<br /> width:180px;<br /> border:1px solid black;<br /> font-size:0.8em;<br /> padding:8px;<br /> margin:8px;<br />}</pre></blockquote><br /><li><b>Create the callback function.</b>The <b><HEAD></b> section of the HTML page is as good a place as any to put this code. <pre><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />function pipeCallback(obj) <br /> document.write("<div id=leftside><h3>My Pipes Feed</h3>");<br /> var x;<br /> for (x = 0; x < obj.count ; x++)<br /> {<br /><br /> var buildstring = "<b><a href=" + obj.value.items[x].link + ">" + obj.value.items[x].title + "</a></b>. <span id=desc>" + obj.value.items[x].description + "</span><br />";<br /> document.write(buildstring);<br /> buildstring = null;<br /> }<br /> document.write("</div>");<br /><br />}<br /></script></pre><br /><li><b>Some explanation.</b> The function <i>pipeCallback</i> is called by the JSON method that you loaded in Step (1) above. Note that the name of the function matches the <i>_callback</i> parameter you used in calling the first script. <i>obj</i> is the JSON object with one or more members. I'll describe the members in the next step. You can modify this function to change how the link text looks and where the text is placed, but in this example the Title will be a link to the URL of the original article, and the description is also displayed. In real life, you may want to limit the number of items that are actually displayed. <br /><li><b>Arrays and fields.</b> <i>obj.count</i> is the number of members that are in the object. obj.value.items is an array of the members. These members may have different elements depending on how the Pipe was constructed -- you'll need to look at the actual JSON data to see what's specifically available -- but typical RSS feed things will be there, including <ul><li>obj.value.items[x].title -- the title of the article.<br /><li>obj.value.items[x].description -- the text or summary of the article.<br /><li>obj.value.items[x].link -- the URL to the original article.<br /><li>obj.value.items[x].pubDate -- the publication date of the article.</ul><br /></ol><br />If you're able to make use of this code, please feel free to post your example in the comments.Yokota Fritzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04808661100114872654noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-3161471456617595962007-02-26T17:16:00.000-05:002007-02-26T17:56:41.198-05:00Stem the flow but find what you needTechnorati has their <a href="http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs/">top 100 blogs</a>, with popularity based on the number of links to the blog. These popular blogs are high volume and tend to be heavy on geek-tech subjects, though a number of political blogs are also featured.<br /><br />These blogs are linked to because the content tends to be pretty good, but the busy blogger may not have time to follow these feeds effectively. If you blog about a niche topic, you've probably been scooped by some of your friends who caught a mention of your favorite subject on BoingBoing or engadget.<br /><br />I've created a handy, <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/6GVYfd7F2xGjAcsvFG_cUw/">subject-filtering tool</a> just for you. Enter the keywords you're interested in and you'll have your own, custom RSS feed that search for those keywords from many of the most popular, English-language blogs. Subscribe to that feed and you've narrowed your view of these high volume blogs to just the topics you're interested in.<br /><br />For example, I blog about bicycling. I watch for the terms bike, cyclist and bicycl. With these words, I get bikes, bikers, bicyclist, bicycling and so forth. I tried "cycle" at first, but I got a lot of posts about recycling, budget cycles, and the water cycle. You may need to experiment similary.<br /><br />Let me know if you find this tool helpful. I've created it with Yahoo Pipes; if you need more than four keywords or you need some flexibility in where the searches are done, it's not difficult to copy my Pipe and create your own.<br /><br />Try out the <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/6GVYfd7F2xGjAcsvFG_cUw/">user provide keyword search for top blogs</a> tool.Yokota Fritzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04808661100114872654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-87800684895609084742007-02-26T12:50:00.000-05:002007-02-26T12:51:15.839-05:00How to watch for Diggs to your siteI plan to post a series of tips on how to use RSS to help with your blogging. This first one comes from howtogeek.com.Digg.com can be a great source of traffic to your site. If you want to know if an article has been Dugg, follow the link and read the post.<br></br><br></br><a href='http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/blogging/how-to-get-alerted-when-somebody-has-dugg-your-article/'>read more</a> | <a href='http://digg.com/software/How_to_Get_Alerted_When_Somebody_Has_Dugg_your_Article'>digg story</a>Yokota Fritzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04808661100114872654noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-34871431609480399322007-02-15T18:25:00.000-05:002007-02-15T20:03:40.342-05:00Post every 90 secondsMedia Guerrilla has a provocative post on <a href="http://www.mguerrilla.com/media_guerrilla/2007/02/24hour_news_cyc.html">the 90 second news cycle</a>. The secret to media exposure and worldwide fame, then, is to post something good every 90 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's over <s>9000</s> 350,000 blog posts a year.<br /><br />Alternatively, you can create <a href="http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070208-140546">good quality relevant content</a> and maybe get somebody's attention.<br /><br /><a href="http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001470.html">Via Hyuku</a>.<br /><br /><b>Update:</b> Correction to a simple arithmetic error.Yokota Fritzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04808661100114872654noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-57742577436334869772007-02-10T18:14:00.000-05:002007-02-09T06:37:12.582-05:00Mashups for the rest of usYahoo calls it <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/">Pipes</a>, but I call it drag-and-drop mashup creation. Absolutely no programming knowledge is required to create Pipes with Yahoo's new tool.<br /><br />With Pipes, you start with one or more sources of data. These can be search results from the web, from a map location, or from Flickr; or the data can be an RSS feed like from a blog or news site.<br /><br />After you create your inputs, you can massage the data with Yahoo's secret sauce -- modules that you can drag in to filter, translate, and otherwise modify the incoming data.<br /><br />An example of a Pipe you can create is <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/RhDowme52xG72_B4e_gC8A/">this one where I combined</a> the posts and comments feeds for Freshblog into <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/RhDowme52xG72_B4e_gC8A/run?_render=rss">one aggregate feed</a> using the "Union" module.<br /><br /><a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZLw7d2i52xGWpld6e_gC8A/">In this simple example</a>, I've taken the Freshblog feed and run it through the BabelFish module to quickly create <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZLw7d2i52xGWpld6e_gC8A/run?_render=rss">a Spanish language version of Freshblog</a>. You can conceivably expand the audience of your blog by providing a separate feed for each of the 12 languages Babelfish supports. <br /><br />A great way to learn Pipes to to start with the simple examples above and modify them. Have fun with it!Yokota Fritzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04808661100114872654noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-87086318801387784562007-01-27T10:31:00.000-05:002007-01-27T10:50:41.772-05:00Forced MigrationSo, after noodling around in beta in response to a reader's question about using Haloscan's new auto-import system with the new blogger, I was greeted with an arm-twisty hammerlock (I exaggerate for comic effect, of course!) in my old account and encouraged to make the move, thus Freshblog now resides in Beta.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1168408743490718212007-01-10T00:38:00.000-05:002007-05-31T02:18:12.036-04:00Re: Scripted Re-Mark Re-ReleasedReaders may be interested to know that the <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/re-mark/">Scripted Re-Mark del.icio.us bookmarking utility</a> has been updated. Previously <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/08/scripted-re-mark-batch-editing-your.html">launched on Freshblog</a>, I've taken onboard the <a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/06/23/freedbacking/">freedbacking</a> therein and the re-hashed Scripted Re-Mark now sports the following features:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight:bold;">It works again.</span> Yes, changes in the delicious interface crippled it. Sadly, I was travelling and unable to fix it. Thanks to those for pointing out <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/08/scripted-re-mark-batch-editing-your.html#c116305271101422578">the problem</a>, and even better - <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/08/scripted-re-mark-batch-editing-your.html#c116335532936010217">the solution</a>!</li><br /><li><span style="font-weight:bold;">Supports functions-as-parameters.</span> Strictly for the <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/08/scripted-re-mark-batch-editing-your.html#c116042082804956625">hard-core</a>, this means you can now get it to operate on your titles, tags etc with JavaScript <span style="font-style:italic;">functions</span>. Eg use toUpperCase() on your text. Or whatever you like. Dangerous in the wrong hands, please <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/re-mark/help.html#function">read the instructions</a>. I'm curious to know what people will make of this.</li><br /><li><span style="font-weight:bold;">Zip through.</span> Faster operation since it will now only use that pesky del.icio.us-mandated delay on the bookmarks that it changes. If no rule changes the bookmark, it will jump straight to the next one without waiting. Now you can ruin your bookmarks even faster!</li></ul><br />As always, I love getting comments so please send 'em in: horror stories, bugs, fixes, extensions, navel-gazing, use-cases - and especially your regexps and (shudder) functions.<br /><br /><center><a name="update1"><span style="font-weight:bold;">*** Update ***</span></a></center><br />I've bolted more bells and whistles on to this power tool. It now supports <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemming">tag stemming</a>. Suppose you have similar tags like <span style="font-style:italic;">blog</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">blogging</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">blogs</span>. Scripted Re-Mark can detect that these are similar (ie share a common stem, <span style="font-style:italic;">blog</span>) and rename accordingly. Great for rationalising your tagspace, especially with plurals, tenses and the like.<br /><br />There's also new support for a <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/re-mark/help.html#touched">"touched tag"</a> ie a tag that is added to all bookmarks that are updated. This is handy for multi-stage processing and manually reviewing edits.<br /><br />I'm always looking out for more ideas, so please send them in!<br /><br /><center><a title="Thursday, 31 May 2007 4:10:23 PM" name="update1180591823000"><span style="font-weight:bold;">*** UPDATE ***</span></a></center><br />Bowing to public pressure, <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/re-mark/">Scripted Re-Mark</a> now features a <a href="http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/re-mark/help.html#delete">mass delete option</a>. Wanna make some bookmarks drink the grape-flavoured Kool-Aid? Now you can ... <br /><br />Please, be careful with this as it has the potential to inflict much sadness.<br /><br /><span class="technoratitag" style="font-family:arial;">Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/tags" rel="tag">tags</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/bookmarklets" rel="tag">bookmarklets</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/bookmarks" rel="tag">bookmarks</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/del.icio.us" rel="tag">del.icio.us</a></span>Greghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07749796777534219331noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1167511282172781842006-12-30T15:14:00.000-05:002006-12-30T15:41:22.276-05:00Hacks Wiki UpdateMajor kudos to <a href="http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/2006/12/blogger-hacks-wiki-update.html">Singpolyma</a> for putting in some significant effort at the <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Main_Page">Blogger Hacks Wiki</a>, updating the navigation and sorting the hacks by platform. Now you can see the hacks as follows:<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:New_Blogger" class="external text" title="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:New Blogger" rel="nofollow">New Blogger</a> | <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:Blogger_FTP" class="external text" title="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:Blogger FTP" rel="nofollow">Blogger FTP</a> | <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:Blogger_Classic" class="external text" title="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:Blogger Classic" rel="nofollow">Blogger Classic</a> | <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:Platform_Unknown" class="external text" title="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:Platform Unknown" rel="nofollow">Platform Unknown</a></div><p>The goal of Stephen's restructuring of the Wiki is to keep the content relevant, as well as providing a dedicated hub for all of the great new hacks that have been generated for the new Blogger platform. This is great work!</p>So over to you.... If you've got a great hack (whether for Beta or Classic), and you want to ensure maximum exposure for your work, as well as placing your hack up against similar ones to allow users to make comparisons, make sure you're <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Bloggerhacks:Create_Page">adding your hacks</a> to the wiki.<br /><br />If you're working on your template (whether in Beta or Classic) and you want some extra features for your blog, borrow a hack or two from the wiki and test them out. As Stephen notes, it would be particularly useful to the Wiki community if you'd road-test hacks from the (currently rather large) <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Category:Platform_Unknown">platform unknown</a> collection so that they can be cataloged appropriately according to platform.<br /><br />Check out Stephen's <a href="http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/2006/12/blogger-hacks-wiki-update.html?&tags=blog">wiki update</a> to get the latest on the <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Request_Hacks">request hacks</a> process and page.<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger-hacks" rel="tag">blogger-hacks</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/wiki" rel="tag">wiki</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/beta" rel="tag">beta</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1166136649948052602006-12-16T15:31:00.000-05:002007-01-12T06:33:17.030-05:00Pressure to make the Beta Switch<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4232/204/1600/360328/miniinvite.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4232/204/320/102229/miniinvite.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Now that team blogs are able to make the transition to Beta, my Google interface has a couple of new and highly suggestive arm-twists to encourage the move... Are these new, or just new to me?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4232/204/1600/977228/invite.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4232/204/320/30471/invite.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/beta" rel="tag">beta</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1166135222704774682006-12-14T17:15:00.000-05:002006-12-16T12:26:36.973-05:00New Hub for Hacks<a href="http://vlehmann.blogspot.com/">Volker Lehmann</a> has developed a <a href="http://hemdenmeister.de/betafeeds/">very cool feed hub</a> for Blogger hacks that pulls feeds from 9 of the usual suspects & displays the content all on a single page. Click the magnifying glass / plus sign icon to expand the post you're interested in. You can see what's hot in the hackosphere with one click. All v. non-plagiaristic too, since Volker asked permission, links to both source blog & source feed in each box's header, and doesn't carry links over into his reproduced posts. A fine resource, w/ space for expansion & the addition of other sources.<br /><br />Oh, and another great incentive to write descriptive, explanatory post titles!<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/beta" rel="tag">beta</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/feeds" rel="tag">feeds</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger-hacks" rel="tag">blogger-hacks</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1163366480341089432006-11-12T16:14:00.000-05:002006-11-25T06:56:28.016-05:00Widgets on Main / Archive / Label PagesVivek writes to point out his <a href="http://stubborn-fanatic.blogspot.com/2006/11/only-on-comment-label-search-and.html">latest beta how-to</a>... Conditional code for your widgets. Using this info, you can tell a widget to only show up on the main, post, archive or label page, and thusly customise your beta blog. All good stuff. While we're zipping through a new beta hack or two, check out <a href="http://instant-messengers.blogspot.com/2006/11/show-recent-referrers-on-blogger-beta.html">Deniz's</a> repackaging of the good ole' referrer script for beta blogs. If you're looking for a recent referrer list, this is the way to go.<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger-hacks" rel="tag">blogger-hacks</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/beta" rel="tag">beta</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1162653925675445122006-11-04T10:22:00.000-05:002006-11-06T17:26:21.420-05:00When is a Draft Not a Draft?When you know the Post ID#.... Richard at <a href="http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2006/11/blogger-bug-makes-drafts-public.html">Philosophy, Etc</a> points out that the comments page for a draft post can be accessed by anyone who knows the post ID. This presents an interesting (though not 100% secure) option for using the non-beta version of Blogger as a private discussion board, by circulating the post ID / URL of the comment page to members of the discussion.<br /><br />Interesting to note that the comments feature gets attached to the post before publication, & that the "full" comments page appears when you do this, even if the blog you're (not) publishing to has pop-up comments enabled.<br /><br />All good stuff....<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/drafts" rel="tag">drafts</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/comments" rel="tag">comments</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1162563737565810332006-11-03T09:22:00.000-05:002006-11-03T09:22:18.016-05:00Blogger Beta Feed TipsThere's some good stuff happening over at PurpleMoggy's Blog. Check out the <a href="http://purplemoggy.blogspot.com/2006/09/blogger-beta-feeds.html">Blogger Beta Feeds</a> post for a full catalog of available feed links, & spend some time in the notes section where there are all sorts of great tips & tricks for customising your feeds in beta.<br /><br />In the PurpleMoggy sidebar you'll see that the labels widget has a feed icon next to each label, leveraging and advertising the label-feed subscription option to your readers in a clear and obvious way. PurpleMoggy has a <a href="http://purplemoggy.blogspot.com/2006/09/adding-label-feeds-to-your-template.html">how-to</a> for that as well. Very cool! Let the label subscriptions increase and multiply...<br /><br />(well, er... increase, at least...)<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/beta" rel="tag">beta</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/feeds" rel="tag">feeds</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/labels" rel="tag">labels</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1162503237927675102006-11-02T16:33:00.000-05:002006-11-02T16:33:58.290-05:00Blogger Beta now fully loaded<a href="http://buzz.blogger.com/2006/11/blogger-beta-feature-complete.html">Blogger Buzz</a> reports that the beta is done cookin' and that all systems are getting towards go on wider migration / rollout. Note that (for now) this says that migration will be possible for all users, but not compulsory. I guess the whole "team blog" deal must be mostly fixed now too, then?<br /><blockquote>The addition of FTP to the beta means that account migration will soon (like Really Really Soon) be available to all Blogger users -- it's currently just enabled for blogspot users. </blockquote>Let's see what's next! (<span style="font-style: italic;">Really really soon</span> would tend to suggest hours to me in terms of a timescale....)<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/beta" rel="tag">beta</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1162251745394524392006-10-30T17:38:00.000-05:002006-10-30T18:42:34.363-05:00ClipClip revives Clipmarks DebateMy previous post was recently clipped to a new service called <a href="http://www.clipclip.org/skwan/clips/detail/9722">ClipClip</a>. As <a href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/22/clipmarks-and-copyright/">Darren wrote</a> last December in regard to <a href="http://clipmarks.com/">Clipmarks</a>, I'm curious to know when a clip is more than a bookmark, especially since ClipClip reproduces the post template n' all, includes existing Freshblog comments, and offers the opportunity for users to add comments that will sit on the complete reproduced post, not on the original.<br /><br />So... Clipping. What's up with that? Here's some ideas for discussion pro & con:<br /><ul><li>What if all clips sat in a private user's account, & were not publicly visible?</li><li>What if the ClipClip default "whole page is bookmarked when no text is selected" was actually "<span style="font-style: italic;">nothing</span> is bookmarked when no text is selected?<br /></li><li>How about an intro phrase for the link at the top of the page. "This content clipped from...." or similar.</li><li>What about clip technology that doesn't reproduce the template? Is that more acceptable? Clipmarks appears (at least based on my quick refresher visit) to work that way.<br /></li><li>Is there a Search-Engine penalty here, since this is 100% duplicate content at a different URL?</li><li>Where's the benefit of a "clip" over a web-based bookmark w/ limited notes, such as those at Del.icio.us?</li><li>What if there was a way (either on the source page or the clipping service) to limit the amount of a post that could be clipped, so that it was truly an extract, & not the whole thing?</li></ul>Clipmarks looks a bit like Google Reader now, with a nav-pane of multiple posts on the left and a window that displays the whole text on the right. This seems to me to be a bit more feed-reader-like than ClipClip, although of course the "river of news" that is being fed is a composite of multiple users' selected content, rather than the account-holder's selected feeds.<br /><br />I'm still making up my mind (insert Whitman quote here.... the one about Multitudes...) but I think my ultimate issue here is the risk / possibility of a "rival focal point" developing for the conversation. If there's action around one of my posts / ideas, I'd like it to either be on the post, or link directly back to the post, rather than coalescing at the clip. See section 3 "Parallel Microspheres" of my <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/09/challenge-of-blog-community.html">Community Participation</a> post for an earlier and broader statement of the same psychosis. Ok, so I have issues....<br /><br />Hit the comments / trackbacks (or the comments on the <a href="http://www.clipclip.org/skwan/clips/detail/9722">clip</a>?) to set me straight!<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogging" rel="tag">blogging</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogosphere" rel="tag">blogosphere</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/microspheres" rel="tag">microspheres</a> <span class="technoratitag"><a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/clipmarks" rel="tag">clipmarks</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/feeds" rel="tag">feeds</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/readers" rel="tag">readers</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/bookmarking" rel="tag">bookmarking</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/clipclip" rel="tag">clipclip</a><br /></span>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1161446853061879982006-10-22T14:15:00.000-04:002007-01-12T08:44:01.366-05:00Social Searching with URL.comThere's an interesting innovation in the search field that is an effort to leverage social participation for search result relevance. <a href="http://www.url.com/">URL.com</a> is a search engine with a difference. The goal of the service is to harness the social power of the search community in order to increase the relevance and usefulness of results.<br /><br />To see it in action, let's try my default comedy test search for <a href="http://www.url.com/search/meta?query=chickens&commit=Search">chickens</a>. You'll notice that URL.com returns a consolidated set of results derived from the top 10 results on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Interesting so far, esp. w/ the ranking for each engine displayed there on the left, and the small icons at the top of the ranking columns that let you jump direct to those results, but nothing that blows your socks off....<br /><br />So what's new? Well, let's <a href="http://www.url.com/account/signup">sign up</a> and see. If you sign in before you search, then click a result, the result loads in a frame, which gives you the chance to rank your result.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4232/204/1600/url.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4232/204/320/url.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />The frame makes sure that you visit the page that you're evaluating, rather than expressing an opinion on the list of results page. In a sense, this relies on the same sort of social contract as a wiki. "First do no harm, respect the common good" etc. Of course, search engines aren't always the premier forum for this kind of ethical web-citizenship, & I'd be interested to see what sort of tools are employed to prevent an American-Idol style "Chickens Rock" campaign from taking over the universe. (Bwahahahahahah!) I'm growing my Bo Bice hair as we speak....<br /><br />Anyhow... (sanity returns...) there's a <a href="http://www.url.com/message/about_us">Techie About page</a> at URL.com that explains the weights and rankings that are assigned to results. There's also an <a href="http://www.url.com/message/faq">FAQ</a>, containing the nugget that votes are superceded... If there are multiple votes from a single account, then only the most recent will count. Thus, the universe would have to be conquered by committee!<br /><br />Privacy is also addressed at the FAQ. URL.com state that they only publicise the links that you vote or comment on... so I guess your personal search history is no <a href="http://news.com.com/Feds+Googles+privacy+concerns+unfounded/2100-1028_3-6043338.html">more</a> or <a href="http://adamhewgill.com/blog/2006/04/21/yahoo-privacy-concerns/">less</a> problematic than with any other search engine. The long & short of it, I think, is that searches shouldn't be regarded as private, whichever engine you use.<br /><br />Here's my thought / wish for the future. The evaluation of the page doesn't seem to get at accuracy or "aboutness" as clearly as you might wish for. Your vote for "good" & "not so good" results affects the way that results from that engine are interfiled with results from the other two. It does not unequivocally state "This page was / was not about Chickens..."<br /><br />Now I realise that we'd be talking 8,000,000 servers to do it this way, and that other engines approximate an "aboutness" voting system by boosting the juice of pages that are frequently clicked results for a given search, (the implication being that regular traffic = aboutness) but if you're asking for my vote, I'd like to be able to say "This page wasn't about Chickens" and have it affect the page in relation to the search, rather than the bulk of engine results in relation to the other engines.<br /><br />I'd eventually like the judgement to be about the page and not about the engine.<br /><br />Some challenging new issues, then, but an interesting combination of two different models / technologies, and one worth keeping an eye on.<br /><br />Filed in: <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/webtech" rel="tag">webtech</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/search" rel="tag">search</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/url.com" rel="tag">url.com</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1161210986540229002006-10-18T18:23:00.000-04:002006-10-18T18:36:26.670-04:00BloggerHacks Wiki Hack RequestsA whole bunch of <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Request_Hacks">new hack requests</a> were posted to the wiki in the last couple of days. If you've got some time to spare this weekend, and you're wearing your hacker hat (the one with the blue flashing light & space for a can of soda), take a look & see what you make of the requests:<br /><ol><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Merge Blogs:</span> Basically, I have 6 personal blogs on my Blogger dashboard. That's because I wanted categorization before Blogger Beta introduced labels. For a number of reasons, I want to merge my blogs into one. If there is a way to import all the posts from one blog into another, that would be an ideal solution. Please advise or create a hack to do this, thanks in advance. My blog is here at <a href="http://www.shan.ca.tf/" class="external text" title="http://www.shan.ca.tf" rel="nofollow">www.Shan.ca.tf</a></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blogsend: No Linkback to Main Blog:</span> I have a <a href="http://usurpingivy.blogspot.com/" class="external text" title="http://usurpingivy.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Blogger Blog</a> that I've been updating since the Dawn of time, but my friends are all on LiveJournal. Using the Blogsend function, I'm able to update the <a href="http://usurpingivylj.livejournal.com/" class="external text" title="http://usurpingivylj.livejournal.com" rel="nofollow">LiveJournal</a> without actually ever stepping foot on LJ, BUT the issue becomes that BlogSend automatically adds a footer with a linkback to the main Blog. I need to figure out a way to circumvent that, for privacy reasons on my main blog and to protect my guestbloggers. Any ideas? Thanks!! </li><li><a name="Pick_up_labels_in_adding_to_delicious_.28beta.29"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pick up labels in adding to delicious (beta):</span> I know there is a known hack to add capability to link to delicious from beta blogger posts. But right now it does not pick up labels of the post and create automatic tags for delicious bookmark. I know it should be not so difficult to include the tags for the delicious link. I am quite used to the current Greasemonkey method to tag my non-beta blog posts and am itching to move to the new beta, but this is one big roadblock for me. Any takers?<a href="http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com/" class="external free" title="http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow"> http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com</a> </li><li><a name="My_feeds_for_autodetection_.28beta.29"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">My feeds for Autodetection (beta):</span> Is it possible to add my feedburner feed in the beta blog so that autodetection is done on the feedburner feed rather than the default Atom feed or even the beta blogger RSS feed? <a href="http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com/" class="external free" title="http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com</a> </li><li><a name="Tag_Hack_for_Qumana"></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tag Hack for Qumana:</span> I want to use Qumana for my post editing for Blogger. It works much better with Blogger than Performancing. But I want to change the tagging option from Technocratii to RawSugar (as exists with the great BlogThis/Tag hack.) My guess it's a simple business of changing the url somewhere in the Qunama script. Where? How? </li></ol> To date, the convention for replying has been to edit the relevant section of the <a href="http://www.editthis.info/bloggerhacks/Request_Hacks">Request Hacks page</a>, and add your advice / recommendation under a bolded "solution" heading. Thanks for your input. Check out the Wiki & have fun supporting your fellow bloggers!<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogging" rel="tag">blogging</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger-hacks" rel="tag">blogger-hacks</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/webtech" rel="tag">webtech</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/wiki" rel="tag">wiki</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1161041039404370582006-10-17T08:47:00.000-04:002007-01-10T09:50:39.333-05:00Blogger Beta Hack Round-Up 2A whole raft of new hacks for Blogger Beta since the <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/09/blogger-beta-hack-round-up.html">last time</a> we cataloged your available options. Most of these are courtesy of your usual suspects: Hoctro, Ramani, Hans, Vivek, Singpolyma, but there's some other folks working on this good stuff too.... Here's the latest:<br /><ul><li>First, <a href="http://hoctro.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-but-useful-feature-of-beta.html">Hoctro</a> notes the new Beta feature that allows the mass-application of a single label to a number of posts by selecting the checkbox on a list (just like when you delete your e-mail!) Good call, Blogger! Update: See screenshots etc at <a href="http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/2006/10/bulk-label-management-in-beta.html">Phydeaux3</a>.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>Since we're talking labels, check out Ramani's mighty-fine multi-mode choose-your-own-format <a href="http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/2006/09/multi-style-labels-widget-for-blogger.html">label menu widget</a> for your beta sidebar. Would you like your labels in a list? A drop-down? A cloud? (Mmmmm... Clouds!) How about all three, with the option for the reader to switch between them? 'Tis done....</li></ul><ul><li>As I noted earlier in the week, Trackback for Blogger Beta is now available, using custom Haloscan code courtesy of <a href="http://logicalphilosopher.blogspot.com/2006/09/getting-haloscan-to-work-in-beta.html">Logical Philosopher</a>, modified by Pete from <a href="http://uttermuttering.blogspot.com/2006/10/now-wasnt-that-fun.html">Utter Muttering</a>. If you have Haloscan comments, you'll need 2 sets of the code... 1 for the comments and a second (Pete-style) for the Trackbacks.<br /></li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/2006/10/comments-on-mainarchive-page-peek-boo.html">Singpolyma</a> has developed peek-a-boo comment code for beta, so that you can have inline comments that pop out beneath the body of your post. Apparently he's now investigating the possibilities of an inline comment form that will peek-a-boo too!</li></ul><ul><li>Another goodie from <a href="http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/2006/10/feed-links-in-beta.html?&tags=">Singpolyma</a>... A feed-links widget for your sidebar, to get feed links up and away from your page footer, where they may not be having a lot of fun!</li></ul><ul><li>Mohammed at <a href="http://mohdmoyeen.blogspot.com/2006/10/blogger-beta-hacks.html">Daily Routines</a> explains how to add a third column to your Blogger Beta template, and suggests a strategy for adding HTML / Javascript elements to your template that are true page footers.<br /></li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://stubborn-fanatic.blogspot.com/2006/10/comment-feed-for-individual-posts.html">Vivek Sanghi</a> presents a workaround that will display "subscribe to comments" links on each post without displaying the default post-feed options.... Useful if you're on Feedburner or similar.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>Since Feedburner Feedflare is now post-footer legal, <a href="http://loupdargentonline.blogspot.com/2006/09/fwd-adding-feedflare-to-blogger-beta.html">Loup d'Argent</a> points to Feedburner's new Beta-friendly Feedflare insert code on the <a href="http://forums.feedburner.com/viewtopic.php?t=7192">Feedburner forums</a>. Flare your Beta Blog's Footer forthwith!<br /></li></ul><ul><li> More good stuff from <a href="http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/2006/10/author-comment-highlighting-and.html">Ramani</a>. He's upgraded a couple of pre-beta hacks for the new system. You can now highlight your comments on your own blog, as well as setting up your comments section with e-mail icons so that you can e-mail a previous commenter to notify them of your comment / response. Very cool, & an additional tool to use alongside the beta comment feeds.<br /></li></ul><ul><li> Hans at <a href="http://beautifulbeta.blogspot.com/2006/10/adding-menubar-to-your-blog.html">Beautiful Beta</a> has the scoop on creating a horizontal navigation menu between your header and your content on Blogger Beta. A useful & welcome addition.<br /></li></ul><ul><li> Hans also points to Gabriel Lau's <a href="http://freeyasoul.blogspot.com/2006/10/random-rotating-banner-hack.html">Random Rotating Banner</a> Hack for Beta. Change out your Beta header images automagically and in a random-type way! Grand.<br /></li></ul><ul><li> In a comment on Amit's <a href="http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/10/blog-hacks-add-javacript-code-in.html">Digital Inspiration</a>, Vin from <a href="http://widgetry.blogspot.com/">Blog Widgetry</a> explains how to add a second element field to the main body section of your beta blog (where the posts go) so that (for instance) your adsense stays where you put it instead of scrolling down with the posts.</li></ul><ul><li>While we're talking Adsense, <a href="http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/2006/10/blogger-beta-adsense-added-but.html">Improbulus</a> points out that the addition of Adsense to Beta blogs is now an officially sanctioned / supported activity, with official Blogger help etc, & that there might be an overload in the circuits due to the additional demand for accounts.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>Finally (for now)... If you still want to lose the Navbar from your beta blog, in spite of the new cool functions and the interface to your blogger acct when you're signed in, <a href="http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/01/remove-navbar.html#comment-115591735569475545">Epirater</a> has edited the <a href="http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/01/remove-navbar.html">Blogger Templates</a> nav-bar hack to make it work in Beta.</li></ul>Lots of great stuff, and more to come, I'm sure. Update: <a href="http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/2006/10/beta-tags-evolution.html">Phydeaux3</a> looks at the promise of more to come by evaluating beta code that hints at more features than are currently offered.<br /><br />For more, see our first <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/09/blogger-beta-hack-round-up.html">Blogger Beta Hacks Round-Up</a>, & watch for volume 3 in the series...<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger" rel="tag">blogger</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogger-hacks" rel="tag">blogger-hacks</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/beta" rel="tag">beta</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1161044992906493022006-10-16T20:14:00.000-04:002006-10-16T20:29:52.956-04:00Integrate Google Reader with GMailPhilipp at <a href="http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-10-16.html#n64">Google Blogoscoped</a> points out a nifty <a href="http://persistent.info/greasemonkey/gmail-reader.user.js">Greasemonkey script</a> that will integrate Google Reader capabilities into GMail, which comes to us courtesy of Mihai Parprita of <a href="http://persistent.info/archives/2006/10/13/google-reader-redux">Persistent.info</a>.<br /><br />The script will add star, share, e-mail, mark as read, & tag management tabs to feed-sourced entries that appear in the message list in G-Mail, & make it that much easier to view your e-mail feed subs in a full-fledged RSS reader, as we've <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-mail-for-feedreading.html">recently discussed</a> in relation to <a href="http://www.r-mail.org/">R-Mail</a>. A great way to consolidate two major streams of incoming information, & perhaps to save a bit of time? Philipp and Garett at ZD.Net's <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=358">Googling Google </a>speculate as to the eventual integration of the two products. Sounds good to me!<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/feeds" rel="tag">feeds</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/readers" rel="tag">readers</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/google" rel="tag"> google</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/gmail" rel="tag">gmail</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573108.post-1160696958356138472006-10-12T19:35:00.000-04:002006-10-15T15:58:37.033-04:00E-Mail for Feedreading<a href="http://www.r-mail.org/blog/?guid=20061012045830">Randy</a> notes that <a href="http://www.r-mail.org/">R-Mail</a> has passed 27,000 users and 68,000 subscriptions. Many congrats, Randy! A great service, which (among other, more significant milestones) is clearly impacting the distribution of Freshblog's content. <span style="font-style: italic;">Warning: Stats Ahead</span>.<br /><br />As you may recall, I was surprised <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-reach-of-feeds.html">last August</a> to see that 37% of our 929 subscribers accessed Freshblog via R-Mail. Well, the trend continues. 519 of Freshblog's 1180 subscribers, or 44% now use R-Mail. We're 8th on the <a href="http://www.r-mail.org/top.aspx">R-Mail top-blogs</a> list. This is our biggest single subscriber chunk, and we've piled on 172 new R-Mail readers since Aug. More than twice as many readers see Freshblog posts through R-Mail than through Bloglines, & we're 46% R-Mail - 54% All other Readers at this point, which is much heavier on the e-mail end of things than I would, off the top of my head, have thought.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4232/204/1600/freshblog.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4232/204/320/freshblog.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>So let's revisit my questions from Aug, & provide an opportunity for some <a href="http://blogfresh.blogspot.com/2006/10/lurkers-and-blog-participation.html">delurking</a> on the part of our e-mail subscribers. We want to hear from you! If you access Freshblog through R-Mail....<br /><ul><li>How many other blogs do you read that way? </li><li>What prompted your choice to read blogs through e-mail? </li><li>What e-mail program do you use, & have you crafted filters and such to help to sort the incoming content?</li><li>Was the prominence of the R-Mail widget here a factor in your decision?</li><li>Are you "new" to RSS?</li><li>Do you have a Feedreader account as well as some e-mail subscriptions?</li></ul>If you use R-Mail to read Freshblog (& we know there's 500+ of you) we want to know what you think! Please delurk forthwith.... Oh, & if you subscribe through a reader, feel free to chip in too!<br /><br />Filed in: <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/feeds" rel="tag">feeds</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/readers" rel="tag">readers</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/jrfj44/blogtech" rel="tag">blogtech</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11399892018986242488noreply@blogger.com4