An online notebook
Dave Google’s Coop cusomised search engine now provides usage statistics. This is undoubtably a Good Thing.
My customised search engine is LGSearch, one which searches local government websites. Sounds dull, but when you work for in local government, it’s useful. Obviously others think so too.
As well as the basic numbers, it also lets you know what the top searches have been:
Interesting stuff, and a great feature.
[tags]google coop, lgsearch[/tags]
Via the 901am blog, I came across a post on Kineda outlining the tools every blogger should have:
You’ve started your blog and you’re up and running, but do you have the
essential tools necessary to be a blogging pro? Here’s a list of tools
I personally use that will improve your blogging experience and
productivity. Being well equipped will make you a better blogger, and
being a better blogger means gaining the respect and affection among
your weird and fuzzy blogging peers and readers.
Let’s have a look at some of the stuff recommended. Photoshop CS2. Dreamweaver. Mint. MacBook Pro. Hmmm – beyond the ability of this blogger to afford that kind of stuff, and many others too. Fair enough, WordPress (obviously!), Thunderbird and Firefox are also mentioned, so it’s not all a proprietary free for all.
Still, this got me thinking, and here’s my list. It’s my view that the democratising nature of blogging and social media should be reflected in the tools that can be used. So, my list is comprised of software and services with no charge, and open source where possible.
WordPress – the best blogging platform there is. And it’s free.
The GIMP – incredibly powerful open source image editor. Will do everything (and more) that a blogger could want to do.
Audacity – want to have audio on your blog? Edit it with ease and feel good that the software you are using is free as in speech as well as beer.
Ubuntu – why shell out for a Mac when an easy to use , quick and ultra secure alternative is available for use for nothing? Breath new life into your PC.
gFTP – an FTP client for Ubuntu. No frills and a very quick way of getting files online. Windows users can use FileZilla.
Firefox – the only sensible browser option. Use IE only for checking how your blog is rendered.
Gmail – I’m yet to see a better interface for webmail. Masses of storage mean you can sign up to as many mailing lists and email RSS feeds as you like. Spam filtering top notch, so you can leave your email address on your blog at will. Why accept the limitations of a desktop client?
Google Reader – suddenly the best RSS aggregator around. Takes your feeds wherever you go.
These are the tools I use on a regular basis, and they serve me well enough. I personally don’t think having wish lists of expensive gear helps anyone – if anything, the thought of having to shell out on stuff for blogging is going to put people off.
It’s better to keep things free.
[tags]blogger tools, kineda, 901am[/tags]
Just chucked up a slew of posts on Hyprtext:
[tags]hyprtext[/tags]
As Nick Wilson writes on the Performancing blog: ‘Wow, what a start to the year‘. Let me try and get this in some kind of order:
It sure has been a crazy time, and Performancing has almost been like a mini blogosphere soap opera. I’m sure the guys there are gutted about this, and it is a shame. Why?
Performancing was/is/will be again a great site. It was a proper community of bloggers, giving an example of how Drupal can be used to forge great togetherness online. The blog editor is a super tool and an example of software written by bloggers for bloggers – not forcing functionality upon users. Furthermore, those involved, like Nick Wilson and Chris Garrett are good people, and it would be a shame to lose them. As Darren Rowse notes:
I loved Performancing the most when it was just a blog. They produced amazing content and generated wonderful conversations. Perhaps it’s time to go back to that?
The idea appears to be to go back to the days of Performancing as a blogging community. This is Good News. It looks like ScribeFire will remain separate, which is no bad thing, but it will be cool if the Performancing community looks after it. In Wilson’s words:
- We are still interested in talking to potential partners that could help us relaunch our adnetwork – there is a ton of functionality never released and I’d love to have conversations with serious players re the possibilities.
- ScribeFire also needs some help. Jed Brown has gone MIA and we need some hlep talking it further.
- We still plan to open source Metrics, but there is no firm time frame
- And lastly, but by no means least. I intend to correct some of the mistakes I’ve made with community functionality and management here at Performancing, and again, am entirely open to suggestions and partnerships that will take us forward in 2007
Wilson was obviously unhappy with the direction Performancing was taking in his absence, and all credit to him for stepping in and trying to sort things out. Let’s hope Performancing goes on to bigger and better things in the future.
Technorati Tags: performancing
Wikipedia is never far from the news, and the last week is no different.
First up is the decision to make outgoing links from Wikipedia include the nofollow tag. This basically means that the links are worth nothing in terms of search engine juice. They’ve done this as an antispam measure, but that’s no guarantee that it will work, as many commentators have pointed out. Just from my point of view, the fact that WordPress sticks nofollow on comment links on my blogs does not stop spammers attempting to post comments anyway. As Matt Mullenweg points out:
Wikipedia has decided to nofollow all external links to help offset people spamming the service. In theory this should work perfectly, but in practice although all major blogging tools did this two years ago and comment and trackback spam is still 100 times worse now. In hindsight, I don’t think nofollow had much of an effect, though I’m still glad we tried it.
There are also issues around the fact that Wikipedia is a link-attracting behemoth. Everyone links to it. So they’re taking all this inward traffic and search engine juice, but not giving anything out in return. That’s bad.
Mike Arrington notes another Wikipedia scandal-in-the-offing – Microsoft paying Wikipedia editors to do their bidding. On the face of it, that sucks, but when you read into it, Microsoft appear to at least be trying to do the right thing. As Rick Jeliffe (the Wikiwonk in question) writes:
…I was a little surprised to receive email a couple of days ago from Microsoft saying they wanted to contract someone independent but friendly (me) for a couple of days to provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning ODF/OOXML. I am hardly the poster boy of Microsoft partisanship! Apparently they are frustrated at the amount of spin from some ODF stakeholders on Wikipedia and blogs.
I think I’ll accept it: FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see. If anyone sees any examples of incorrect statements on Wikipedia or other similar forums in the next few weeks, please let me know: whether anti-OOXML or anti-ODF. In fact, I already had added some material to Wikipedia several months ago, so it is not something new, so I’ll spend a couple of days mythbusting and adding more information.
Needless to say, Jimmy Wales and the other Wikipedia fans aren’t too pleased. Arrington notes that
It’s clear that the only way to safely clear the record on Wikipedia when you are involved party is in the discussion area of a page. Paying others to make direct changes isn’t smart, even if you tell them they are free to write their unbiased opinions (as happened in this case). And making direct changes yourself is likely to get you in hot water, too.
It’s a tricky situation. Microsoft tried to find a positive way through the mire of editing Wikipedia pages to right what were, in their eyes, wrongs. In turn, they got it wrong. Arrington’s way forward, of using the Talk page, might be one way through.
Edit: Weird. I just went back to the TechCrunch article to snaffle the link to Arrington’s article, and it’s gone. Not sure what this means about the story…