Archive for the ‘Blogging Tools’ Category
Thursday, December 13th, 2007 |
If you don’t already know the founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg recently saw a survey from Google, in which the search giant examined all of the http headers of Web. He found that .8 percent of those pages were powered by WordPress. Considering there are more than 100 million websites on the internet a 0.8 percent would mean an incredible reach for any platform that started just a few years back.
This could be as a good a time as any for any service to capitalize on the reach of WordPress, and Yahoo! has just jumped in. After Yahoo got together with Adobe for PDF Ads, Yahoo has just released a plugin for WordPress users called as Yahoo! Shortcuts, which creates small pop ups containing relevant information linked to the term. It works something like the Snaps from Snapshots.com. However the content that is displayed in these shortcut pop ups is that of Yahoo itself.
As you type the content for your blog post, this plugin looks for Flickr Photos, Maps to any locations that you might mention in the post, any products that are listed or even related news to your blogs post.
If your content regularly mentions some companies regularly, Yahoo shortcuts can bring up latest financial information related to that company.
Relevant search results would also come up for certain terms like in the image shown UNIX Pipes would pop up a Yahoo shortcut with relevant contextual search results. Some bloggers may find some shortcuts annoying and irrelevant to their blogs content, but some might really find it useful. It all depends on what you blog about.
However the best feature I think is the auto detection of relevant images to your blog post. Images can really enlighten the posts and make them more interesting.
Best Yahoo Shortcut feature: Relevant photos for your Blog Post.
Yahoo shortcut comes up with the most relevant images for your post. As mentioned in the image above the images are licensed images and when you insert a related image in the blogs post the credit is provided to the owner automatically. This feature is quite useful and can save you some time hunting around for images on the web. Also attribution issues are taken care of automatically.The Creative Commons license aggresments for these images can be found here.
Another faeture is the various size choices that one has while adding a photo to the post. It has been displayed in the image below.
Images below display the small pop up that comes up when you hover the mouse pointer on a location or address. There is a feature called as “Badges” in this plugin using which you can embed the entire map as an image in the blogs post.The users have complete control over which links should show up and if required they can just remove all the links from the option that comes up in the writing pane of the blog post.
These two images display Yahoo short cut as a pop up and the actual Badge as embedded in a post. As you can see both of them contain information from Yahoo database from yahoo maps.
In a way yahoo has found a use of WordPress while helping bloggers find relevant content for their blg posts.
Use of Yahoo shortcut Images and other contents are under a BSD License. You can read more about BSD license here and here. The terms of use for Yahoo shortcuts is here.
Get a T-Shirt for using this plugin.
Since the plugin is new, yahoo is promoting it by offering T-Shits to bloggers who use this Plug in. You can get a Charcoal gray T-Shirt with “Pimp my Blog” written on the front and “shortcuts.yahoo.com” written on the back.
I would like to have this T-Shirt as I already started using this plugin and find it useful for getting blog images. However, its only for guys who live in USA. Unfortunately for me, since am not in the US I can’t get it.
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You can see the Irony of the situation. Yahoo has released a plugin for WordPress which requires the version of WordPress to be 2.2 and since Yahoo powered hosting is still using Wordpress2.0.2 the Yahoo shortcuts plugin is not compatible with yahoo hosting itself.
Details of Yahoo hosting are here.
I think this plugin would draw mixed reactions. Flickr users would most probably like it. However bloggers who prefer to look for images themselves and have a source of getting images for their blogs would not use it.
You might wonder why my links are not Yahoo shortcuts enabled,even though I am using th plugin? An update for Yahoo shortcut guys, my blog breaks the Yahoo shortcut images and pop ups, so it looks kind of messy and so I had to remove all the links. I guess that is a part they need to work on and might soon need to send an Update.
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Posted in Blogging, Blogging Tools, WordPress, Yahoo | 12 Comments »
Saturday, November 24th, 2007 |
rssHugger is a new service developed for blogs who want more exposure for their Rss feeds and help them reach readers who are interested in their niche. You can get your rss feed listed on rssHugger and it would get its own page. According to John Chow, this website is being dubbed as the technorati without the spam, as every blogs entry would be manually reviewed.
The initial plan was, one would get a 10 year listing for $20 and if you blog about the service then the same page would be available for your blog for $10. However on advice from John Chow, rssHugger is now letting any blog which posts about them, to get your own page for free.
From the rssHugger blog itself :
The community has spoken, and we have listened! We have removed the $10 registration fee. Write a blog post reviewing rssHugger and get a 10 year listing absolutely free! We feel that in order to allow the smallest blogs that write quality content to join, we needed to offer a free solution.
This is actually an excellent idea as now the service would get good exposure and has a great chance of going viral. If you own a blog and would like to get listed, you can write about rssHugger and get more exposure for your blogs feed!
Update:
Collin the man behind the website rssHugger personally checked my blog and the feed and then approved it. He commented on my blog to let me know my blogs feed is a part of the
system. You can find my rssHugger feed page here.
Join in and get your own page now!
Posted in Blogging Tools, Online Services | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 |
An important aspect of any blog is its design and placement of elements. Good content and bad design don’t go well together and also vice versa. At times some elements need to be adjusted to fit in a widget that you like or design needs to be tweaked, may be a request for a specific size of an advertisement.
But every time this change is made we need to make sure that the blog or the website is being rendered properly on various browsers used on the Internet. May it be Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari or the Konqueror used in Linux. When we think about checking this, every user has some limitations. For example, I use a Windows PC and do not have access to a Apple PC with Mac OS which uses Safari, neither have access to Linux that uses Konqueror as the default browser. I would never know how my website looks in those browsers and if I can make any change that would make my Blog look better in those browsers too.
Well, here Browsershots.com helps us out!
What is Browsershots?
Browsershots makes Screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make Screenshots and upload them to the central server here.
Its a wonderful service. It gives you a chance to look at your blog the way it would on various browsers on different Operating systems. Its Open Source and is constantly improving.
I for one have never got a chance to work on a Linux computer, lest work on the Konqueror browser. However there are about 10-15 visitors everyday who use a Linux machine. I need to know if they see my blog the way I intended. Same is the case with MAC OS. With this service I am now able to see how my blog looks on these two Operating Systems on Safari and Konqueror.
Below are the Screenshots from Safari 2.0 and Konqueror 3.5 for Digital-Musings.com
Also the primary aspect of rendering of the blog is taken care of. After looking at 13 screen shots of my blog on 3 Operating systems on browsers like Firefox( Versions 1.5,2.0) , Internet Explorer ( Versions6,7) , Opera (9.23, 9.24) , Safari( 2.0 ,3.0) and Konqueror 3.5, I came to know that the Side Bar in my blog break only for one Browser, i.e Internet Explorer 6.0. Except that in every Browser things are looking great. So after this analysis, you know your website is rendering properly for 12 out of 13 browsers, and the only one that isnt working is IE 6.0, which isnt used much nowadays. This is pretty good.
In this way your design is now tested in almost every browser used by your visitors, and you know the Blog is being rendered properly. Any new changes can be checked as and when required and we have an idea how is it functioning on various browsers.
Highly recommended because of the ease of use and application it has, especially if you have recently changed or modified your Blog design !
Posted in Blogging Tools, Innovation, Online Services, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »
Thursday, October 18th, 2007 |
Lately I have been looking around the web for plug-ins that would allow me to get feedback from the visitors. Comments are a good way to get feedback or get into a discussions, but for new bloggers like me, comments are hard to come by. So getting a Plug-in or a widget to that allows visitors to give instant feedback was my best bet.
Among the ones I read about I found the Outbrain Rating Widget to be the best. Its simple compact look and quick response while rating makes it a must have for any blogger who wants to understand if the visitors like what they are reading. Visitors just need to hover the mouse on the five starts that are displayed and rate the post they are currently reading immediately.
The OutBrain Rating widget lets everyone know how many people have rated the current post and If one reads the post that he has already rated, it shows how had the person rated the post previously. The widget is available for all major Blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.
A few points about the Outbrain Rating Widget:
- No registration required
- Installation is super-easy… we adjust the widget’s design to your blog’s look& feel automatically
- It’s absolutely FREE
You can get the Ratings Widget here. And the Developer Blog is here.
And yes, Dont forget to Rate this Article! 
Update: I temporarily needed to remove the Out Brain plugin, as it may be conflicting with a new plugin I have installed. After running a few tests, if the new plugin works well , I would put the rating widget back on.
Posted in Blogging Tools, Innovation, WordPress | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 12th, 2007 |
For sometime now I have thought about using a desktop blogging client, as I had heard about the advantages of using one. After looking at a good amount of blogging clients (although, it was difficult to find the best of the lot), I decided that I.ll let everyone know the how can a blogging client benefit a blogger so that they can make use of the blogging softwares for making things simpler. I have listed the blogging clients I have worked with and listed the pros and cons, so that one can make the correct decision while selecting any client.
Now before I list the blogging clients that I have looked at, I would like to list the advantages of using a blogging client.
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Posted in Blogging Tools, Popular | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 |
On the blog the comments are the best medium to communicate with the author about the subject he has written upon and discuss regarding its various aspects. But recently, I have received comments on some posts where the visitor has asked me questions not related to the Post at all. No, Luckily it wasn’t Spam, but genuine questions asked by visitors. This made me realize there should be some other medium for the visitors to contact me. The obvious answer was a Contact form. Now there are several scripts and plug-ins available on the web to construct a contact form, but I wanted much more from a contact form than they could provide. Here Zoho came to the rescue.
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Posted in Blogging Tools, Tips and Tricks | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 |
There are times when you feel at the top of the world, when you look at your blog, you see all the elements, placed perfectly, where you want them to be. The posts, the archives, the Subscribe button and even the little widget in the corner! And why won’t you be? You have worked hard, went in that tangled HTML code and that messy CSS layout, tried many things, by trial and error, got some right, some didn’t quite work out the way you wanted, but at the end the blog just looks perfect!
But then, you get out onto the web, checking out the blogs of other bloggers, some whom you consider as an ideal, some who are your competitors(in a good way of course), and then you wonder, Why can’t my web page header look as cool as his, or hey cant I have a nice layout in the side bar as he has. (more…)
Posted in Blogging, Blogging Tools, General | 3 Comments »
