Anywhere.

After an extremely fun couple of months writing for ReadWriteWeb (thanks again for making that possible, Richard! Your team is absolutely the best folks to work with!) I found a full-time job working for CyberSource, working on the operations/support piece for a new product they (we) are developing for electronic payment processing. Sounds boring, doesn’t it?

In fact, I am learning and applying new technologies at a prodigious rate. I’m using Linux admin and deployment skills that, frankly, have gotten a bit rusty in the year I spent immersed in new media. And it is challenging me.. which also means that when I meet goals and deadlines, I feel good.  Also, I am writing a lot – but now in the form of documentation around the project. That combined with just wanting to come home and relax after a hard day has definitely made me step back from the active role I had on various social media sites and blogs.

But there are still times I find myself with an hour here or there, and I fire up Feedly or Google Reader, hit GA (go-all) and start skimming from the top. And the blog-o-sphere continues apace, weaving its own curiously compelling tapestry of news, insights, discussion, and often overwhelming coverage of larger events, and it makes me a bit nostalgic (if such could be said for something that I’ve only been away from for a couple of months).

In any case, these changes have made me see my own works from a fresh perspective. I’ve decided, for now, a fancy blog theme is not important. A lot of bells and whistles are not important. I just want something simple, maybe even too simple, that I can use as a framework to build upon.  To that end, I have chosen a theme that is fast and doesn’t waste a lot of time with CSS. I’m hoping with its limited potential for distracting eye-candy, it will also help me to focus on content.

I do need to figure out how to show the number of comments a post has on the front page though.  That’s a big omission.  For now, you can click on an article title to get to the comments (if there are any).

I don’t know if there’s still a lot of you out there cheering Scribkin on, or even just patiently (or bemusedly) waiting for a new post to appear, but if you are, thanks. I’ll try to write here at least every weekend.

Update: I figured out how to add a comments link. Time for a nap.

However, I’m mostly writing this today for two reasons:

1. To figure out if writing a post will ‘reboot’ my broken FeedBurner feed into working, and
2. To gloat a little about just how much I’ve been blogging over at RWW recently.

Of The First Part

So, starting with the Google FeedBurner issue.  I have no idea what it is, and I honestly haven’t had much time or motivation to futz with it recently.  I suspect it is similar to something that happened to Louis Gray recently (which you can read about here), but I’m not sure at all. If I view the RSS feed in Mozilla, I get something that looks like this:

But if I look at it in Chrome (which strangely has absolutely NO support for viewing RSS feeds), I get this:

So, I’m not sure what’s going on.  I’m going to post this, and if that doesn’t fix it I guess I’ll go into the Feedburner "hit it with a hammer" section and see if I can knock something loose.

Of The Second Part

They’ve been keeping me busy over at RWW. Generally, three posts a day, every weekday. That’s 15 posts a week, and I’ve been doing it for several weeks now. There’s actually a handy little RWW link that lists all the posts I wrote, and the number of comments on each.  So, that’s awesome. 

Plus, week I went to SXSW Interactive on a press pass, and that was a total blast!  It was so amazing to finally meet everyone that I have been reading and following in online, I forgot about blogging at all until a couple of days in. Sorry, RWW.

Update: I figured out the RSS feed issue.  It was a plugin called GooseGrade.  Updated the plugin and the feed is fixed.  Yay!

I’m all about trying out new social services, applications and tools. I love learning about a new product and getting around inside it to figure out its capabilities and features.

Perhaps recognizing that fact, Mike from Chat Ventures contacted me recently and offered to let me beta-test a new WordPress plugin they were developing called Qwidget.

What is Qwidget? It’s simple. Think of it as a easy yes/no poll box that’s been pumped full of social media goodness. On the surface, you will see a simple question, to which you can (without registration and hardly any thought) answer yes or no. Your answer is recorded.

Next, Qwidget offers you the chance to register (in the widget, it’s free and quick, you don’t even leave the site) and provide more details about why you chose your answer. Also, you will see other comments from other folks on the same question.

Notice that I did not say anything about the other folks having answered the question on this blog! In fact, Qwidget keeps a keyboard-based library of questions available for all Qwidget-enabled blogs to choose from. This means that blogs with the same sort of content (and resultingly, the same sort of questions) will be able to pool their discussions and answers via Qwidget.

Although still in beta, I think Qwidget has a ton of potential and I’m proud to be one of the early beta-testers of the service.

So, I will put my first poll question at the end of this post and I invite you to at least click yes, no, or maybe. If you are reading this article in your news reader, hop on over. My site doesn’t have ads so you don’t have to worry about making me 1/100th of a cent.

If you really like the way Qwidget works, and you run your own self-hosted WordPress blog, feel free to contact me at the information provided in my sidebar or visit the Qwidget ‘get this’ link and fill out the form expressing your interest in the beta.

TweetSuite

First, there’s TweetSuite by Dan Zarrella.  This is a err.. sweet little self-contained plugin that makes your WordPress blog aware of the Twitterverse.  There are four main components that make up TweetSuite:

1. A tweet this button that can be floated in the upper-left or upper-right portion of a blog post.  Very similar to a Digg button.
2. An area below the post that tracks tweets about the article and lists them, complete with the optional ability to include a re-tweet button next to them.
3. Four fun Twitter-related widgets that can be dropped in the sidebar: Most, Recent, Last, and Favorite Tweets.
4. Last but not least, TweetSuite will optionally update Twitter when a new entry is posted.

I am not so invested in Twitter that I can tell if TweetSuite is catching all the Twitter buzz surrounding my entries.  It did detect one tweet on my last entry and a couple more on older posts.. but that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this post!  To see if it works.

FF2Disqus

Second, I am using a cloud-based app called FriendFeed-to-Disqus (or FF2Disqus).  This little utility is by Carter Rabasa, the guy who wrote Twitter2FF, a handy utility for synchronizing your Twitter and FriendFeed friends.  Anyway, this web app isn’t a plugin, and in fact hooks in to FriendFeed and Disqus, so it isn’t specifically bound to WordPress blogs at all!

What it does is monitor a service on FriendFeed (say the RSS feed for your blog) and utilizes the Disqus API to push any new comments on the relevant entry in FriendFeed to your blog entry.  So in effect what this does is bring the comment activity back in to your blog.

There have been a rash about this utility and the value that it brings to blogs and FriendFeed.  I have to admit that I share a few reservations about deploying it full-time on my blog.  But I decided, I would jump in with both feet and see how everything turns out.  Hopefully, everything will be great.

Final Note

I have disabled Glenn Slaven’s excellent FriendFeed Comments plugin for the moment in order to avoid redundancy.  But don’t think I don’t like it – far from it!  If FF2Disqus doesn’t work out I’m going straight back to using this plugin!

Media RSS extensions allow one to describe different types of media, such as embedded music and video clips, directly in an RSS stream.  These extensions are technically optional, so traditional RSS parsers can safely ignore them.

Disqus for WordPress 2.03 released.: This release includes trackback/pingback and pagination support as we.. http://tinyurl.com/5z98kh

That was enough for me!  Disqus’ lack of PingBack support in WordPress was really something that I missed, as you can probably tell from this article’s title.  So, without wasting another minute, I followed the link to the blog entry, and downloaded the new version of the plugin, 2.03.

And, I’m happy to report that it does indeed support trackback and pingback support!  I’ve included a screenshot below.

Disqus TrackBacks

Thanks for your hard work, Disqus team!

I’d like to thank Colin Walker (FF), Sarah Perez (FF), Corvida (FF & Twitter), Steven Hodson (FF),  Louis Gray (FF), Shey Smith (FF) and Mike Fruchter (FF) among many many other great people for being enthusiastic about the development and direction of my site. 

Also, I’d like to thank SheGeeks, Google Tutor and LouisGray.com for giving me the opportunity to guest-post on their sites.  I consider it an honor and a responsibility when writing content for another site, I always try to do the best I can.

Finally, I’d like to say that I am receptive to requests for those who would like to try guest-posting here on Scribkin.  I know my site isn’t huge by any stretch, but everyone likes to see their name outside of their own blog, and you may reach a different group of folks than you might otherwise..

Let me know if you are interested!

I love to explore new software. New social media web applications are no different – I like to learn about them, try them out, and be inspired by them. Some, like FriendFeed, become a tool that I use every day.

Especially in a field named ‘social media,’ most of you are the same as me in what you want to get out of it, but perhaps for different reasons. I am guessing that most of you are more interested in the social side.. you are on FriendFeed because there are interesting people there. And that’s cool. But that’s only half of the interest for me. I also love to explore and understand what makes software tick.

I’m not saying I don’t like people; far from it. I’m not a misanthrope! I’m just saying that my outlook on going to a party, mixer, networking seminar or other social event usually registers somewhere between uneasiness and dread.

The point with all this is to say that I know myself fairly well: I’ve always been a loner. It takes work for me to maintain social contacts and be suitably reciprocal and engaged with a lot of people. Frankly, it wears me out, probably a lot faster than for most of you, where I’m guessing it is more like second nature.

And that is what I mean by the burden of social media. For me, even when it is a joy, sometimes it is also a burden.

Applications like LinkedIn, Plaxo, not to mention social community sites like MySpace and Facebook are all about enabling networking and expanding your community of friends and acquaintances. When I started using these sites in earnest after SXSW Interactive in February, I was positive they would completely fill in the gap where I came up short in networking and socializing.

After 6 months of using one social app or another every day, I can safely say that none of these tools is a panacea for the introverted man. It’s not that they don’t work, they do provide a lot of leverage in different ways for those willing to put in the effort. But they do in fact require effort.

In some ways, the playing field is not leveled by these tools. For example, If I put in effort, that effort is magnified on a social media site. I may go from making 5 or 6 contacts in a certain industry or social circle to making 15 to 20. And that is great. But someone who could easily make 25 to 50 contacts without a social media tool would see their work multiplied ten times or more. They could easily have 250 or more contacts.

My point here is that, I have been putting in a lot of effort, and for a reclusive shlub, I think I’m doing really well in this funny online universe of FriendFeed and Facebook and Twitter. I can’t complain. In fact I want to thank each and every one of you who look for me on a new social media site and make the effort to link to me there! But I need to make sure that I am directing my energy toward creative endeavors as much or more than building a social network.

Therefore, I am going to make some changes to this site, Scribkin. I am going to re-dedicate it more toward writing what I am good at, which is more primers and tech-based stuff, and not fret so much about the social side. If an article warrants linking to an awesome article or other bit of writing that someone else wrote, fantastic. But if I feel like my energy is driving me toward writing something more introspective, I will run with it. My ultimate goal with this site is to become a better writer, to write more proficiently and clearly, and to provide a service to my readership.

So you will be seeing the site going in new directions as I discover new technologies that fascinate me, or topics that I feel I have something interesting to write about. I am also going to try to not worry so much about readership, page counts, etc. I think investing my attention in those things draws energy away from writing.

They say that most book writers are extremely interoverted, and masochists to boot. I believe it. More, I can empathize with it.. I seem to draw more clarity of purpose and more energy when I step back and gather my thoughts together. So, this might mean you will see me less active on FriendFeed especially, but I think in the long run it will be good because I will be giving back more worthwhile and interesting content to my subscribers this way.

I apologize for the personal tone of the article, and I hope you all choose to follow me on my path of self-improvement, but I completely don’t blame you if you do not.

I’m really excited.  I’m not sure if I am going to do a lot of blogging, though.  I don’t plan to bring a laptop to the conference.  However, I am going to bring my trusty Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 with the Eye-Fi Explore SD card and spare battery.  So hopefully you will be seeing a bunch of pictures from the expo after I get back to the hotel room!

Anyway, I hope I will meet a few of you while I am there!  There is a picture of me on the contributors page in case you are in fact going and want to look out for me.  Or, if you live or will be in the downtown Seattle area any time next week, feel free to call me at 512.961.6189 or email me at phil@scribkin.com.

…

Now on comments throughout DISQUS, you can find a reblog link where you can publish a quotation of the comment to your blog. This quote is cited with the original author, the blog where it originally appeared, and a link back to the original comment to give the discussion full context.

At the moment, we’re supporting publishing to Wordpress, Movable Type, TypePad, and Tumblr with more platforms to come.

So next time you see a comment that everyone really needs to read, give it a whirl. We’re excited to see more good content bubble to the surface.

Originally posted as a comment by Devin on A VC using Disqus.

Hope you all (or as we say in Texas, ya’ll) have a great week!

You can probably guess the reason why. 

Yes, I got an iPhone.  A white 16GB model to be specific. I love it.  And I’ve been using it pretty much to the exclusion of all else.

iPhone Unboxing Gallery, "Video Games Live" Concert Gallery

More About the iPhone

I have seen so much press for the iPhone 3G already, I won’t contribute too much to it myself at the moment.  I might weigh in with my thoughts, favorite apps and other stuff later.  For now, let me just throw these things out:

• No iPhone, original or 3G, supports A2DP.  This is a Bluetooth specification for allowing stereo music playback and remote control of the music stream.  It has been proven the hardware in the iPhone can easily support A2DP, but so far, Apply has deliberately ignored it.  Why?  I also asked people about this on FriendFeed.
• I definitely miss cut and paste, a lot.
• The camera works better than many folks bitch about.  Try living with the 1.2 megapixel crapola toy camera on the Sidekick 3 and LX for a while.  You basically stop taking pictures, they are so bad.  Here’s an example.
• Sure, the iPhone isn’t a Nokia n95.  It’s also not 800 bucks, 3/4ths the size of an ACME brick, or burdened with a laggy interface.  And the browser.. even without flash.. magnificent.
• The screen gets dirty really easily.  I’m cleaning it all the time.  And I’m glad I got a white one, because the black back shows dirt and oil as much as the front.
• Where is video recording?  Surely they are working on this.

Moderately Tasteless Ad

I have to apologize for the ad in my sidebar too.  You see, on a lark I decided to offer ad space on my site for a ridiculously low price, thinking I could be selective about the ads.  Even then, nobody was buying.  Well, a few days ago I got a bite, but it wasn’t an ad that I wanted.  I must have misunderstood the terms of the agreement though, because I thought, if I didn’t approve the ad, I didn’t have to run it. 

Apparently, you have to specifically not approve an ad because, guess what, the ad network accepted it for me and then yelled at me for not having the ad code on my page.  Oops.

Now, it’s not a completely tasteless ad, but it isn’t what I normally would have chosen and I have an email in to ask about changing or removing it, maybe refunding the money.  But for now, enjoy.

New iPhone Support

I’ve been using MoFuse for a few months now to support folks that are using the iPhone.  MoFuse is a great, free app (there are premium feaures you can get too) that takes your RSS feed and makes it into a mobile-optimized site for the iPhone and an alternate “light” site for other phones.  Corvida has written a more thorough article on MoFuse here.

I already was using a WordPress plugin (WP Mobile Edition, that I listed in this article) that is quick and clean for mobile phones, but today I looked deeper into direct iPhone support and I found the WPtouch plugin.  Although there are several caveats (like not being able to use it with WP Super Cache) it works great on my site and exists nicely with my other mobile plugin, appropriately only redirecting only iPhone users to its special theme.

So enjoy it, and let me know if you run across any problems.

Update: Do you want to see the new iPhone theme?  I’ve included a screenshot below.

However, for some reason Feedbooks was having trouble with my RSS feed for a while, so I dutifully flagged it for consideration and waited.  I checked every day.  And today, I can proudly say that the problem has been resolved!

The upshot of all of this is here, a little widget I can display in my sidebar. →

More About Feedbooks

Ok, so probably the most publicized feature of Feedbooks is its ability to take an RSS feed and convert it into a number of other eBook formats as well as a customizable PDF format.  Obviously, that is what I am using the service for.

But I believe this is a side business for them.. perhaps what you would call a loss-leader.  They know, smart marketers that they are, that if they provide a unique service for free to potentially millions of blogs out there, their name gets out there.

E-Books

And their name isn’t feed-to-PDF.  It’s Feedbooks.  Think e-books.  They are working hard to be your first stop for electronic books from any source.. public domain, news, RSS feeds.   In fact, here is the quote from their front page:

“Feedbooks is a universal e-paper platform compatible with all e-paper devices where you can download thousands of free e-books, publish and share your own content, and create customized newspapers from RSS feeds and widgets.”

So they are in the e-book business, pretty much.  Download them, read them, share them.  If you have written a book online perhaps, submit it to Feedbooks to have them convert it into an e-book, quickly and stylishly.

Newspapers

Basically, this takes individual feeds (like mine linked above) and aggregates them together into one, larger e-book format.  A good example is the BBC News Full Content Newspaper, which mashes together 4 different BBC feeds to bring you the news of the day.

Subscriptions

Once a newspaper, or single-feed e-book has been created, Feedbooks allows people to subscribe to the paper as well, invaluable if you are using a e-paper reading platform like the Kindle or the Sony e-book reader (or maybe their very own e-ink reader!).  This means when an updated newspaper is created, you are always on top of it.  Great for those devices that have less-than-stellar native RSS readers built in to them.

Conclusion

Feedbooks has neatly filled a niche that was lacking (either from the newness of the technology, the ineptness of the hardware manufacturers, or some deliberate oversight) in getting RSS feeds on your electronic reading platform.  They also have a nice platform for searching for great public domain books.  Definitely worth a look.

Besides, you should go and download the PDF version of my feed.  It’s simply gorgeous, it makes me feel like a real writer! The link is here:

In fact, I think it’s absolutely amazing how last.fm built clients for the Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows platforms, and then does all the heavy lifting: cataloging song titles and artist names, playlists, and recently played tracks. Lay on top of that its ability to carefully keep track of what you are listening to (a technique they call audio scrobbling) and tie that all together on the back end with the ability to compare and listen to other people’s catalogs, and you have a killer app.

There is one thing I tripped over, though. Being the brilliant hacker that I am, though, I found a workaround. But when I pondered why the limitation was there, I could see their logic but I still believe it’s annoying and bone-headed on their part.

The fault has to do with the flash radio player widget that they offer. Here is the problem in a nutshell:

• If your web browser is logged in to the last.fm service (i.e. has a web cookie) you can create a flash-based radio station widget that you can place on a web site or blog so that other people can listen to tracks you enjoy. No problem so far.
• If you have not upgraded to their $3 a month subscription the widget creator will mysteriously fail to render your custom flash widget.
• If you dig around a bit, you will discover that you cannot, in fact, listen to your own radio station unless you subscribe.

Ok, so I can follow this reasoning, I guess.. they don’t want you listening to your entire library of scrobbled songs via the internet for free. If they allowed this, everyone would do it. Why get an iPod?

However, they leave the door open for you to create a flash widget with any other last.fm user’s radio station, including people who also do not have a current subscription.

Again, I can follow the logic, they want you to love the service so much that you will subscribe. How do you love the service? By listening to other people’s music, and finding new awesome music. Great! Love it!

Only one little catch guys: I want other people to listening to MY radio station on MY site! The way they have it set up, I can’t freaking use their own awesome widget to do that! I’d have to have some other last.fm user log in and create a widget for me. Or, I guess, get a subscription.

Baaah. I am leet.

So what I did, is I went ahead and created the widget with Steven Hodson’s radio station. Then, I took advantage of the open nature of the widget to search and replace for every instance of his name, and put my last.fm user name in. Poof! I got my widget!

You can see (and listen to) it on the scribkin contributor page.

Of course, I can’t actually listen to it myself.. unless I log out of last.fm or use a browser without a last.fm cookie. Yeah, I believe they need to re-think their artificial limitation here, but I’m not going to complain too loudly as long as I get my widget.

PS – I did want to add that I am seriously considering getting the subscription anyway, because the service is simply really great. And I don’t mind paying for great.

If you operate a blog, and that blog supports sending a trackback, I have a simple request for you.  I have adjusted the trackback URL on this article to point to (what I think) the Disqus service will use.

Next time you post, please include a link to this article (no need to link to anything other than the standard article URL) and we will see if the Disqus trackback feature works as advertised.

Thanks!

Related articles

• Disqus Now Includes Trackbacks with Commenting System

PS – Shey Smith is doing something similar on his blog.

PPS – According to this article I am not doing the trackback correctly.  Trying again.

The FeedFlare

Before I get too deep, if you have a err.. burning desire to use my feedflare, it can be found here:

http://www.scribkin.com/viewable/yacktrack.xml

With a bit of luck however, you will soon see an announcement by Rob, the creator of YackTrack, with the new permanent location of this feedflare with instructions.  It will probably show up here:

http://www.yacktrack.com/tools

So, feel free to use mine if you must, but switch to the new one once it is up.

Background

A little history first.  I already use several FeedFlares on my site, I’m sure you have seen them:

I have been able to work the style sheet to get these included nicely on my site.  However, the YackTrack widget that already exists just was a bit clunky for me, for a few reasons:

• I couldn’t easily put the widget in my RSS feed.
• The widget is a combination of an icon and text, and I couldn’t get the text to vertically align nicely with the icon.  This was solved by keeping just the icon and dumping the rest.
• The javascript is written in a way to grab the name of the article from the titlebar.  This means that it would only work with WordPress on single pages, not on the front page (the big loop).

I did manage to get the widget incorporated on my site.  If you are looking at this article with comments, you will see the icon in the upper-right-hand corner next to the print view.

Still, I decided the FeedFlare was needed to kill three birds with one.. err.. flare.

Ok, so how did I make a FeedFlare?

First, I started by turning to the FeedFlare Developer Guide, now hosted by Google Code.  This page had a really nice step-by-step tutorial. However, I never really got past step 2.  Why?  Well, here is the step two example:

   1: <FeedFlareUnit>

   2:     <Catalog>

   3:         <Title>See Related Pages at Google</Title>

   4:         <Description>A static FeedFlare unit that links to a Google page that shows

   5:         pages that are similar to the current item</Description>

   6:     </Catalog>

   7:     <FeedFlare>

   8:         <Text>Hello, see related pages</Text>

   9:         <Link href="http://www.google.com/search?as_rq=${link}"/>

  10:     </FeedFlare>

  11: </FeedFlareUnit>

And now, here is my code:

   1: <FeedFlareUnit>

   2:     <Catalog>

   3:         <Title>Track This at YackTrack!</Title>

   4:             <Description>This FeedFlare will take the current URL and submit it to the YackTrack search engine.</Description>

   5:         </Catalog>

   6:         <FeedFlare>

   7:             <Text>YackTrack This!</Text>

   8:             <Link href="http://yacktrack.com/home?query=${link}"/>

   9:         </FeedFlare>

  10:     </FeedFlareUnit>

See any similarities?  How about the whole thing! Yeah.  As I said, dead simple.  Had I known it was this easy to whip up a FeedFlare when I started blogging, scribkin would have like a dozen custom ones by now.

Moral

Don’t be afraid of a little code, or to try new things.  Sure, often you can get in over your head.  You can always bail if you have to.  Other times, you might the just the right thing done at the right time and get a lot of enjoyment out of it besides.

You can find the new YackTrack FeedFlare in operation, below.

Tonight, I was chatting with Corvida, and the topic of RSS feed overflow came up.  We were both frustrated because there was so much new (potentially great) content being produced every day, that we couldn’t keep up!

A radical new plan was hatched that we both agreed to abide by, starting today.  We would dump all our RSS feeds out of Google Reader and only add new feeds based on a set of rules:

1. Keep feeds that track web site buzz (business-impacting).
2. Allow feeds such as Disqus, Intense Debate or other low-volume feeds that are necessary for timely work decisions.
3. Allow adding as many Google Reader Shared Items feeds as needed.
4. Allow adding of aggregate, smart or keyword-filtered feeds such as RSSmeme FriendFeed Friends or TechMeme.
5. Allow adding smaller site feeds.  We set the upper limit for a small site to be 200 at the time of adding.  This can be re-visited if the number is too small.
6. Allowance process: If a site feed is so unique that it is not being covered by the processes defined above, an allowance will be made to subscribe to a direct feed to any site.  The number of allowances can not exceed 10.

This plan will be in effect for 1 month.  We will be dumping our current profiles on Toluu and will make sure it stays in sync with our new OPMLs.

In addition, I will make sure any feed I add gets sent as a tweet from Toluu and I will try to re-visit my feed list week during the month and explain any additions or changes.

I am completely open to suggestions for small, quality site feeds inside or outside the realm of social media as well as links to any google reader shared items feeds!

I’m looking forward to this excitement, both because it hopefully will make my RSS feed reading more manageable, but also because I am adding a huge social filter in to the mix.  I am expecting the best reads to be more visible, while still keeping an eye on the little guy.

FeedBurner

As you probably know, FeedBurner feed stats aren’t extremely reliable. FeedBurner tries to separate what is a subscription from what is a bot or a browser, but it’s mostly an educated guess. The means that the numbers can swing up and down, sometimes wildly.

But I took a screenshot, so if it never gets this high again, hey, at least it was for one glorious day!

Here’s a look at my recent subscriber stats.

Other Stats

I took some screenshots of my Ultimate Google Analytics WP plugin. This should give you a taste of my recent blog stats.

My percentage of new visitors has remained in the 70% – 80% range consistently.

My daily visits vary greatly on if I have posted an article that day, or late the day before. The blog is new enough, that I see a huge jump after I post an article, especially if the post is stumbled.

FriendFeed being on top is new. StumbleUpon was the big traffic-bringer, but along with my increased activity on FriendFeed, comes more clicks! And I welcome them. By the way, Twitter has never sent me jack sprat for traffic.

Rising Sources is sort of a silly stat for now — the biggest percentage differences are from entries that go up a click or two. Woo.

People apparently love the bookmarklets.

Falling content is another somewhat-useless stat for now.

Up until recently, my top page was always the most popular. But I guess recently links from other blogs directly to my bookmarklets and FriendFeed posts have superceded that.

Update

After Louis linked up a stat article of his from December last year, I thought I’d add my own FeedBurner graph showing growth over time.

I was just reading an article from Louis Gray about how to use the very cool and capable FriendFeed bookmarklet.

That got me thinking about just how many bookmarklets I have gathered in the past couple of months, and what they all do. You can see them in the screenshot over there.

Social Media Bookmarklets

Ok, be careful clicking on these.. the bold text (in most cases) is the actual bookmarklet. Just drag them into your bookmark toolbar or a folder to use them:

• Add to Mixx
• Share on Tumblr: A custom bookmarklet to clip pictures and quotes to a Tumblr tumblelog.
• gReader Comments: A fantastic bookmarklet from Paul Arterburn that lets you create/participate in a Disqus discussion on any web URL.
• Share on Facebook
• Share on FriendFeed
• Subscribe in Google Reader via Toluu: Use this bookmarklet instead of adding feeds manually to GR and you will also get them in Toluu, which will alert your friends on the service.
• Add to S|B: This is a bookmarklet for the lifestreaming app Second Brain
• Diigolet: Brings up a cool javascript Diigo bar, handy if you are using a browser that does not have support for the Diigo addon yet, like Safari.
• Twurl this!: Drop a link into Twurl.
• Note in Reader: The latest bookmarklet for Google Reader, highlight a section of an article and then click on this. Also allows you to add a personal note.
• Clip to Evernote: Handy way to save parts of the web to Evernote, a web-based image and html storage and search utility.
• Tweetshot: A special utility for making a consistently-perfect screenshot of a Twitter tweet.
• View in Google Earth: Highlight an address or some co-ordinates and use this to bring up the location in Google Earth.
• Clip it! on s|m: A Social|Median bookmarklet, used the same way as the Mixx one.

.. and that’s just my set of social media bookmarklets. The reason I don’t have bookmarklets for certain things (like del.icio.us, Iterasi, StumbleUpon etc.) is because they primarily use browser addons. However, especially in the case of Iterasi, I would love to see a bookmarklet version.

Web Development Bookmarklets

If you are using FireFox (or, to a lesser extent Opera or IE), there is another group of bookmarklets that are really handy that you must check out. They are called web development bookmarklets and they can do magic with CSS.

I would call these essential if you do any sort of web development or are interested in CSS at all.

If you have any bookmarklets you find essential or really useful, please link them up in the comments! Especially a good Digg bookmarklet, for some reason it doesn’t seem to exist.

Feel free to skip right over this post unless you love this sort of stuff.

Preface

Before I begin, I have to state that a good real life (RL) friend of mine, Rob, cautioned me against writing about blog twiddling as I was just starting out. He calls it macdinking. I have tried to take that advice to heart, either not mentioning changes or additions I have made at all or working them in to review posts.

But recently I have seen several of my blogging friends write articles about MoFuse, a service that takes your site RSS feed and makes it in to a mobile-enabled mini-site. I’ve been using this service for over a month on this site, and I realized I had overlooked the opportunity to voice my thoughts about it.

In essence, it’s cool but I like the wp-mobile edition plugin slightly better. I am going to compare the two in an upcoming article.

What’s Under the Hood?

I’m running Wordpress 2.5.1 with a modified version of the Silver Light theme. In terms of UI tweaks, here are the essential ones:

• Changed the primary title and link color to #990000
• Added a custom logo
• Changed the default font from Verdana to Arial
• Changed the default body text back to Verdana

Ok, How About Plugins?

Oh boy, this will be a big list. I have probably installed and removed more WordPress plugins than I get visitors on a normal day. Here are the ones that have stuck. This list, of course, could be completely different tomorrow.

Wow! You Weren’t Kidding!

Nope.

Anything Else?

Well, I use a bunch of widgets in my sidebar. Here’s a list. These will change faster than my plugins, in all honesty.

• Text – Feedburner Subscription Widget
• Polls – Poll Widget
• RSS Feed – RSSmeme Top Shared Stories
• Adsense – Default Ad
• Archives
• Categories
• Text - Disqus Stats combined widget
• Text – Digsby chat widget
• Text – MyBlogLog widget
• Text – Twitter info
• Text - Twitter flash widget and Awesomesauce link
• Text – Gaping Void cartoon
• Odiogo Subscribe Button Widget
• Text – Blogged link

Are You Done Yet?

Maybe! Well ok, no. I’ve also customized some of my plugins so that they fit into the the theme better:

• The WP-print icon can be found in the upper-right-hand corner of each article
• The Odiogo listen now icon can be found under the timestamp of each article
• The CSS for my FeedBurner FeedFlares look more integrated
• The Add to Any button only appears on full articles, and under the FeedFlare
• The FriendFeed status text is more terse and avoids pluralization issues
• Added Jangro’s trackback hack to the Disqus plugin

Yeah.. that’s about it, I guess.

What About the Page Tabs?

Ohhh yeah, I have a lot of those. Let me break them down real quick.

• Home – This one is obvious.. takes you to the front page.
• About – About scribkin.
• Contributors – This is only me at the moment. I’ve taken the opportunity to modify the default page template to include the Profilactic Where to Find Me Online (WTFMO) module. And an obligatory flash Twitter widget.
• Polls Archive – self-explanatory.
• Lifestream – A tweaked version of the Profilactic plugin.
• Blogroll – A list of pages I find cool, generated by the Blogroll Page plugin.
• Promote – Right now mostly a placeholder that has an animated FeedBurner gif on it. Feel free to put it on your site! I won’t complain, promise.
• Bookshelf – An embedded widget from Living Social that lists current books that I am interested in or reading. I really need to get this current.
• flipside – Used to just be a link to my tumblelog flipside.scribkin, but I found a great site that makes custom RSS widgets called widgetbox. I now have the 10 most recent entries showing in this widget.

Now Are We Done?

Yep.