Month: September 2007

NetScape Nav Contest Winner Announced

Netscape has officialy announced the winner of their NetScape Navigator 9 Splash Screen Logo Constest. The winner is Mario Herbert who designed the following graphic.

Mario Herbet Designs Winning Entry

This winning entry will end up being the default splash screen for Netscape Navigator 9. I can’t believe people still use Navigator as their browser. Someone explain that one to me.

If you ask me, the text on this splash green design is just a bit too blurry. I would of preferred to see a sharper looking design although the ships wheel and the logo do have a nice touch to them.

MyBlogLog Buzz Tracker Explained

MyBlogLog LogoThe What’s Hot In My Communities section of your MyBlogLog Profile is an easy way to track buzz worthy info but, how does MBL decide what’s hot and what’s not?

Simply put, the links you see within this area of your user profile represent the most popular links within YOUR MYBLOGLOG COMMUNITIES. If you are seeing links to porn sites or sites you deem unacceptable, the only way to remove them, is to find out which community your apart of that is posting that link, or information related to that link and leave that community.

If your thinking that tracking down the culprits within your large number of communities would be nothing more than a hassle, your in for some great news. MyBlogLog has added an interesting feature to their buzz tracker in the form of a question mark. This question mark will finally give MyBlogLog users the ability to figure out where those buzzworthy links are coming from.

Figure Out Where Those Links Are Coming From

For instance, let’s say you don’t want links such as Fox.com to show up in your list. You would simply click on the (?) and figure out which sites are posting this link and leave their community.

Search And Destroy

According to the question mark, the site Casual Keystrokes, is the culprit behind this link. As an MBL user, you would look for that community within your list of favorites and click on the LEAVE COMMUNITY button.

It’s really neat to see how this all works and it’s nice that Robyn Tippins has finally published an article that easily explains the process. I have to agree that, clicking on these questions marks is half the fun in trying to figure out why they are creating so much buzz. Give it a shot and let me know what you’ve discovered.

Migratr Adds Phanfare Support

Migratr.com LogoMigratr, the software program which I covered in this article, Migratr – Backup And Migrate Your Online Photos has released a new version which adds support for Phanfare. The newest version contains three bug fixes as well as three new features. One of those features includes the resume download/upload option which is now functional.

The three bug fixes worth noting are listed below.

  • SmugMug was not authenticating properly.
  • Faces.com support is now fully functional: There was an issue where the API didn’t return photos that weren’t in albums. The Faces.com team were very helpful in fixing that and keeping me up to date.
  • Exporting to Picasaweb would create albums even though ones with an identical name existed.

If you’ve been waiting for support for Phanfare, or want to backup your online photos, be sure to download Migratr 0.9.0

My WordPress 2.3 Upgrade Experience

I’m writing this post within the new fancy WYSIWYG editor which is nothing more than the same editor with the exception of a new button. The new button shows me quite a few new formatting features but my favorite one is the UNDO button.

So far, my WordPress upgrade experience has been pretty good. I did encounter an upload problem in which a few folders were uploaded into other folders. In other words, some folders were not overwritten like they were supposed to be. I fixed this and re-uploaded the files which allowed the WordPress upgrade script to properly update my database.

I believe there is a bug that was created after my WordPress installation was upgraded. As you can see below, the area of my dashboard which would normally show incoming links to my site from outside sources, is now showing my own blog posts from my front page. I’m pretty sure this is not supposed to happen. This never occurred during any other WP upgrade I have performed. I have since created a forum post about it on the official WP forums to see if it’s a bug or not.

WordPRess 2.3 Bug

I knew about the tag importers being added to WordPress 2.3 but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where they were. I eventually located them within the MANAGE-IMPORT area of my WordPress admin panel. After clicking on the importer for my Ultimate Tagging Warrior plugin, all of my tags were imported into the native tagging features implemented into WP 2.3 I also experienced numerous wordpress.wp_post2cat does not exist errors which were being generated by the UTW plugin, so be sure to disable it once you complete your upgrade.

I want to give a very big thank you to everyone responsible for the automatic update notification feature. This is an invaluable time saver. After my upgrade was complete, I discovered 5 plugins which had an update available for download. The notification window provides a direct link to the plugin on the wordpress.org site where additional information along with the plugin files can be located.

Last but not least, if you are experiencing trouble with WordPress, the best place to find help is the WordPress.org forums. However, before creating a new post, be sure to perform a search to see if your question was already answered. There is nothing more annoying on a forum than seeing 50 different forum threads on the same topic which has already been answered.

You’ve read my experience, now it’s time to share yours by leaving a comment below.

WordPress 2.3 Released Codenamed Dexter

Wordpress.org LogoWordPress 2.3 has finally been released to the public. This is a major release and users of WordPress are encouraged to update as soon as possible. Before you do anything, make sure you create a full backup in case things go bad. I’ll be updating this blog throughout the night and hopefully, I’ll still be around when you wake up. If not, you know what happened to this site.

Time to review the change log to find out why we should upgrade.

  • Native Tagging Support: You can now user tags in addition to categories. 2.3 includes a set of tag importers for tag plugins that existed prior to 2.3 These importers include Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins. Matt states that the new tagging system is pretty fast which should please a number of webhosting companies.
  • Update Notifications: WordPress 2.3 introduces a way for users to be notified when a new release of WordPress is available or when an update to a plugin has been released. This feature works by sending your sites URL, plugins, and version information to the wordpress API.ORG service which compares the information to their internal database.
  • Canonical URLs: Canonical URLs enforce no www-preferences, redirect posts with changed slugs, redirect URLS that get cut off in emails similar to the correct post. According to WordPress these new URLs should help users as well as providing more SEO options.
  • Pending Previews: Those who use multi-user blogs or WordPressMU will appreciate this feature. Authors can submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before, they would have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.
  • Advanced WYSIWYG: WordPress has somehow manage to stuff more features into the Visual Text editor. This update now shows off more features that in TinyMCE that were previously hidden. Dave, looks like your secret is no longer a secret.

In addition to these new features, developers will have a host of new things to deal with such as Atom 1.0 support, jQuery, a new taxonomy system, new importers, hooks and filters and much more. The WordPress community has also helped contribute to over 351 trouble tickets that were closed in the Trac.

You can view the Codex for more information about the release and some screenshots. And of course the place to download is always the same. Before you upgrade you may want to check out our Preparing for 2.3 post.

Matt is hosting an upgrade party within the San Francisco area but I figured I would host one of my own on Skype. If you are awake and care to upgrade your WordPress installation along with me and a few other people, be sure to add me jeffr0e to your Skype contact list and let’s get this party started.

Google Powered 404 Page Update

Askapache.com LogoI was curious as to who was making the money via the sponsored ads that are displayed on the first tab and the web tab of this plugin.

As it turns out, the sponsored ads are for Google because the Ajax powered API is so new. Here is the 411 on the issue.

That is a really great question that I had to search awhile to find. The answer is because this Search API is still so cutting-edge new, Google is the only one making any money from these Ads. It is still pretty beta now, but in the future it will very likely have the features we want. It is against the TOS to remove the ads, and currently you cannot hook your own AdSense account into the Search API. You can however use css to re-position the sponsored links.. like:

.gsc-control .gsc-ad-box {padding-top:100px;}

Does the AJAX Search API contain advertising?

Yes. The Web Search results may include up to 2-4 clearly marked sponsored links. There are currently no ads displayed among the News, Video, Maps, or Blog Search results. If you’re interested in earning money for displaying relevant Google ads on your site, you can do so with Google AdSense.

Thanks to AskApache for clearing this up.

Rock Me Rock You

Did you get a chance to check out the RockMe music festival playing live at www.rockme.dium.com yet? The first three days were a huge success. We jammed out with…

  • Rose Hill Drive’s Jake Sproul, chatting live with fans
  • The premier of a Rose Hill Drive performance filmed during a tour with The Who
  • Pandora.com CTO, Tom Conrad
  • Rose Hill Drive manager Brian Schwartz
  • Jambase’s Dean Herman
  • The New Pornographers’s Todd Fancey
  • Rotary Downs’s Zack
  • Daily activities with The Fiery Furnaces, The Jeffrey Lewis Band, Gosling and The Willowz…

Want to help us rock the final day of the festival? Scalp your concert tickets on eBay because all you need is your computer and this code (your specific code I provided) to catch all of the action. Insert the code directly into a post or the sidebar of your blog, try it out and let us know what you think.

Today, the festival ends with a live webcast of Rose Hill Drive’s performance at the Fox Theatre, a surf through Me.dium with rock music legend, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr.

You Comment I Follow

You Comment I FollowI just wanted to let everyone know that after reading Brad’s post on getting rid of the “No-Follow” attribute within comments, I have installed the Do-Follow Plugin.

This plugin removes the No Follow attribute that is usually attached to links that commenter’s leave. Since that is no way to treat a commenter, those links can now provide you with a few more drops of Google Juice. If your a fellow blogger, do your audience a favor and install the Do-Follow plugin, which gives people one more reason to stop by and leave a comment.

BloggerTalk The Bloggers Podcast

BloggerTalk.TV Logo

Each Tuesday at 8pm Eastern time, join a panel of expert bloggers as they discuss the latest and greatest blogging related news. Each show is performed live on Talkshoe where listeners can call in with their questions or stories related to the blogosphere. Whether it deals with monetizing your blog, RSS, generating traffic, or blogging news, rest assured, this 60 minute show will be packed with content.

After my successful stint on episode 3, the lost episode Anthony Feint was kind enough to bring me back on the show for a full hour with David Peralty where we discussed a number of topics. Ironically, BACN was not one of them, although that was the name of the episode. At any rate, here is what we covered.

Davids Pick for this episode was the news related to WordPress 2.3 which will be a major release. My pick dealt with the blog, Readers Appreciation Project and all three of us actually go into a little more detail in regards to reader appreciation. Anthony actually didn’t have a pick this week, or perhaps David and I took up all of the free time left in the show. At any rate, please give this show a listen and I would love to hear your feedback in regards to my performance or anything related to the show.

To listen to this show without leaving the page, click the PLAY button.