Reviews

VectorMagic – Turning Rasters Into Vectors

Vector Magic Logo

VectorMagic is an interesting site that takes raster images and turns them into vectors. Raster images are made up of pixels. A general rule of thumb to remember is that, anything created out of pixels can not be enlarged while maintaining quality because to maintain the quality would require more pixels. However, you can downsize pixel images and maintain an acceptable level of quality because of the number of pixels available for the downsized image.

Vector based images are those that are made out of lines. Think of vector images as one large shape or a series of shapes. An example that seems to make sense to me is that, think of a square as four lines. No matter how you resize the square, the square still ends up as four connected lines. This is one of the primary advantages to using Vector based images. You can make them as big as a skyscraper and they would look the same as if they were the size of a stamp.

VectorMagice works on the basis of tracing the outermost pixels of a raster image and transforming the image into a shape. To test out this service, I am going to use Mike’s avatar that he uses on this blog.

Here is Mike’s avatar as a raster image:

Mikes Raster Based avatar

Here it is after going through VectorMagic:

Mike Vector Image

As you can see, it didn’t do a terrible job but it didn’t do a perfect one either. I don’t lay all the blame on the website though as Mike’s avatar image is somewhat complicated and at the pixel level, contains numerous artifacts that affect the outcome. As I was going through the conversion process, VectorMagic provided me with a few questions such as the number of colors in the image, the quality of the image, and whether or not it was simple or somewhat complicated. Then, it did the best it could to turn the raster image into a basic shape. I’m going to go ahead and try a few other images to see if I can get the two to look alike. Until then, if you have a simple pixel based image or logo and don’t have the Adobe Illustrator skills to turn it into a Vector image, give this site a shot.

Please report back with your findings!

Use WordPress Like Tumblr

QuickPost Plugin LogoWhile browsing around the WordPress.org plugin database for something completely different, I happen to stumble upon a plugin that was inspired by the Tumblr bookmarklet. It doesn’t have every feature of the Tumblr bookmarklet, but it doesn’t have to.

The plugin is called QuickPost and was developed by a company called Twelve Horses. After downloading, installing, then activating the plugin, you’ll have to go into the QuickPost options area and select a default category for each bookmarklet tab.

Setting Default Categories

The bookmarklet supports the following types of posts: Quotes, Text/Links, Photos, and Videos.

QuickPost Tabs

For those that are using FireFox, installing the bookmarklet is as simple as dragging a button to your bookmark toolbar. The process is a little more complicated if your using Internet Explorer.

Dear Internet Explorer Users: Yours is a harder path to walk.. Right click the bookmarklet below and select “Add to favourites”. Your IE will probably tell you that this is an “Unsafe bookmark to add”. Ignore your smart arse browser and click OK. The setup will thus be completed.

Although the bookmarklet doesn’t support every thing the Tumblr version does, I don’t feel as if it needs to. I think this bookmarklet covers the majority of content most people post to their Tumblr blog or regular blog. One thing about this plugin is that it does not allow you to preview the post before it’s published.

There is a checkbox that is part of the plugin options that allows you to use the WYSIWYG text editor but I ‘d rather see the option of choosing between both when making a post. The reason being is that, it’s pretty difficult to post YouTube Embed HTML codes into the WYSIWYG editor without it screwing up. I get around this by switching to the CODE view of the post and making sure that embedding the video is the last thing I do when creating the post.

Thanks to this plugin, I’m seriously considering disbanding my Tumblr account and using this blog as my Tumbelog and everything else blog. After all, lifestreaming seems to be where everything is headed so perhaps setting the site up this way allows me to get a head start on the trend.

P.S. The blog post before this one was actually me testing the QUOTE function of the QuickPost plugin. Apparently, it works.

Tumblr Makes Some Changes

Tumblr.com Logo

Looks like someone at Tumblr was home after all. Today is November 1st which is the date Tumblr promised would show off some new goodies while also making a few announcements. They have delivered on this promise in more than one way.

Tumblr now sports a brand new Dashboard design. Looky there! Tumblr now supports audio. Audio files can only be posted to your Tumblr account through the dashboard. The Tumblr bookmarklet currently doesn’t support the Audio feature. Tumblrs can only post one audio file per day and the file has to be under 5 MB in size.

New Tumblr Dashboard

The addition of channels. Taking a page out of Jaiku’s book, Tumblrs can now create private channels. The channels allow you to create mini cliqs within the Tumblr network. Once you invite someone into your channel, they can then invite someone else into your channel. Not exactly what I call great control, but a nifty feature none the less.

Tumblr Channels

Tumblr has also teamed up with Vimeo. Vimeo users can now connect Tumblr to their account which allows them to upload videos via their phone. The theme designer has become more user friendly, there is now an archive link at the bottom of Tumblelogs that makes browsing previous posts much easer than clicking the PREVIOUS link 500 times and last but not least, Tumblr has yet to add support for Podcasting feeds.

All in all, it looks like things are starting to look up for the service. I don’t use Tumblr as much as I used to but I’m sure this update and redesign puts them back on the radar. I hope that at some point, they add a stats feature which shows me who is reblogging my Tumblr content. When the reblogging feature was implemented, it was suppose to allow Tumblrs to see how their content would spread across the network. So far, this hasn’t been the case and in this latest incarnation of Tumblr, those features are still missing.

Do you use Tumblr? If so, how do you use it? Lifestreaming? Linkblog? Your one and only blog? Let us know in the comment section.

Google Image Search vs Iconlet

Iconlet.com logo

Iconlet is a search engine for you guessed it, icons. The front page of iconlet looks as simple as the Google homepage and seems to be just as functional. Iconlet appears to have a large database of icon images but I was disappointed when I only discovered 11 search results for the term RSS. However, other searches for ARROWS and HOME provided me with hundreds of results.

Iconlet Search Results For RSS

If you are looking for something in particular, Iconlet provides an advanced search which gives you the options of typing in an icon name, specified image resolution, .gif or .png extension, and various licensing types. I guess no one uses .JPG as a file extension for icons as it was missing from the advanced search file extension choices.

One of the biggest issues I can see with iconlet is the fact that it has Google Image search as competition. I’ve used Google Image search in the past to locate icon files and it’s proven to be a useful resource for this sort of thing. It also appears as though iconlet has it’s own home grown database of icon files, whereas Google Image search has the entire Internet at it’s disposal. If iconlet can increase it’s database selection while adding additional search features, they may eventually be a compelling reason to switch from using Google Imagesearch. Until then, I’ll stick with Google first,

Highlight Blog Author Comments

For a long time, I’ve been looking for a plugin that would change the commenting area for the blog author so that regular commenter’s or visitors would be able to tell at a glance when the author of a post or blog replied to a comment. Thank goodness the search is over. Thanks to the recent mention on the WeblogToolsCollection blog, I have found Highlight Author Comments.

Highlight Author comments was exceptionally easy to install. Once you download the plugin, unzip the contents to your desktop or a folder of your choosing. Upload the highlight-author.php file into your plugins directory and activate the plugin.

The plugin options were located on my install by clicking on the OPTIONS link and then HIGHLIGHT COMMENTS. There is only one configurable option for this plugin and that is the CSS styling. This is where knowing CSS helps. All I wanted to do was change the background color of my comments. Here is a screenshot showing how I did it.

My Highlight Author Options

The plugin homepage actually contains a few examples of CSS code that you can edit, copy and paste into this box. One thing worth noting is that you don’t need to place a { or } at the beginning and end of your CSS. The plugin does this automatically.

I have this plugin installed and running. You’ll notice my comments now have a shade or two darker grey when compared to everyone else’s comments. I think it’s a good plugin for every blog to have. It’s nice to browse through a post that may have 100 comments and being able to pick which ones were from the article author at a glance. It also let’s visitors do a quick Who’s Who.

I suppose I can set my unreplied forum topic requesting this plugin to RESOLVED. Thanks goes out to Rob Marsh for creating this plugin. I and many others really appreciate it.

Share Blog Traffic Via CLIQ

CLIQin.com Logo

Background Info:

Just the other day, I noticed this service come across my FeedReader. It’s called CLIQ but the domain is actually CLIQin.com CLIQ is a service that allows bloggers to work together in order to share their collective readership as well as audience engagement. Members who are part of the same CLIQ share links to featured, popular and related posts on their own site through the CLIQ Widget. Users can manage which posts are featured on the widget as well as see reports about which blogs and posts are getting the most views and driving the most referrals around the CLIQ. By the end of this review, your going to be sick and tired of seeing the word CLIQ.

First Things First:

When you register an account with CLIQ, you’ll be presented with two options. Starting your own CLIQ or joining a pre-existing CLIQ. For the purpose of this review, I have created my own called Jeffro2pt0 A CLIQ Covering SEO, Blogging and Web 2.0. When creating your own, you’ll be presented with a number of options. These include the name of your CLIQ, Description, username, email, password, BLOG URL, and CLIQ Enrollment where you can choose whether to make your CLIQ private (invite only) or public. I have chosen to make my CLIQ private because I want to have complete control over who joins my group. Since I’ll have complete control over who joins my CLIQ, I can ensure that only relevant blog postings and URLs are displayed within my widget.

Your CLIQ Widget:

After you register your CLIQ, your given the chance to invite others via email. Unlike Quechup, your friends won’t be bombarded with invite spam since this is a manual process. Once your done with the invites, you can then give your CLIQ a public avatar image. This image will represent your CLIQ and will be seen within the CLIQ directory.

ShinySilver Bold Black GoofyGreen

At the time of this writing, CLIQ only supports three different color schemes for their widget. Those are: Shiny Silver, Bold Black, and Goofy Green. I would imagine that there will be additional color schemes available sometime in the future but I wonder, why don’t services that offer a widget give users the chance to colorize the widget themselves via CSS or HEX codes? It can’t be that hard to implement. The minimum width of the widget is 160px but will scale to fit the width of your blogs sidebar.

Once you choose your theme and move on to the next step, CLIQin will automatically try to recognize the blogging software attached to your domain and provide you with the appropriate code to copy and paste into your blogs sidebar. Here is some detailed information from the CLIQ support forums in regards to which blogging platforms are currently supported.

In order to fully support a blog platform, two things have to “work” :

1. CLIQ has to be able to ‘read in’ information about the posts (Title, Tags, etc.)

2. The CLIQ widget (which is JavaScript) has to display on the page correctly.

Currently, we fully support blogs with standard templates on TypePad, WordPress and Blogger.

Blog templates with customized fields and names for data elements require some manual set-up from our team, which we can do on a case-by-case basis.

Due to their JavaScript limitations, the CLIQ Widget does not currently work on Hosted WordPress blogs. If you’d like to see JavaScript on Hosted WordPress, contact your Senator…

We are looking into ‘slimmed down’ versions of the CLIQ Widget that would offer (likely limited) functionality on the platforms we don’t yet support…so stayed tuned!

Configuring The Widget:

There are a few options in which you can use to configure what is displayed within the widget on other blogs. You can choose to feature your most RECENT post which is updated daily. You can choose to feature your LONG TAIL which shows one of the five posts with the least total views, this also rotates daily. Or you can choose the manual option and select an article from the list of articles that are presented to you. This is a good feature if you want to pump some Google Juice into a specific page.

Configure The Widget

There are a few things that I don’t like about this widget. The first is that, it doesn’t look good if you have a skinny sidebar for widgets. The text appears cramped and at times, the content within the widget looks like a mess. The second, there is no link displayed that allows visitors to JOIN the CLIQ or at least REQUEST TO JOIN if private.

CLIQ Reports:

Since I created an account yesterday, the reports section of CLIQ is pretty bare. The reports section displays a dynamically generated graph that highlights views that were contributed through CLIQ. You can choose to view stats from your own blog, member blogs or, all blogs. The stats timetable is broken up into three sections: The Last 1 Day, Last 7 Days and Last 30 Days. Alternatively, you can select ALL VIEWS or how many times your CLIQ Page was viewed within the CLIQ Directory.

One Of The CLIQ Report Views

Conclusion:

Overall, this service reminds me of old fashioned web rings from way back when. Web rings were essentially a group of websites that were all related towards a specific topic. Maybe I’ll coin a new term here and say that CLIQ is WebRings 2.0. Unlike MyBlogLog, BlogRush, or any other community based widget I have come across, this one gives site owners full control over who is part of the group which means, you can really create a targeted CLIQ and share each other’s traffic. Because most if not all of the posts within your CLIQ will be related, there is a higher probability of someone clicking on your blog post, thereby gaining you a new visitor.

I would compare this service to BlogRush but that is for another post. If your a blogger currently using BlogRush, I strongly advise you to check this service out and create your own CLIQ. Work on inviting high traffic blogs that are related to your content and build a small niche network where everyone within your CLIQ benefits. As it stands, I currently have my own CLIQ. If your blog covers the topics of SEO, Web 2.0, Blogging or WordPress related material, your welcome to request an invite to join the group.

As always, I look forward to hearing your feedback whether it be about this review, grammatical corrections or questions.

Lifestreaming Service FriendFeed Reviewed

FriendFeed.com Logo

Company Background:

FriendFeed is one of the newest startups to come swinging out of the gate, that promises to streamline your myriad of web activities into one, easy to digest stream. This is sometimes referred to as, Lifestreaming. FriendFeed was founded by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Sing Prior to Google, Bret worked at Reactivity, Paul worked at Intel and Sanjeev worked at Thirdvoice.com. Bret, Jim and Sanjeev hold Computer Science degrees from Stanford University and Paul holds a Computer Science degree from Case Western Reserve University.

Signing In:

Unlike most other services I sign up to beta test, FriendFeed actually sent me a an invitation code immediately after signing up. The signup process consisted of the usual information with one exception. Password, Email and Username were the usual culprits but you can also choose your Nickname which will also be the name attached to your FriendFeed sub domain. For example, mine is http://friendfeed.com/jeffro2pt0 with Jeffro2pt0 being my nickname. So far, FriendFeed does not support logging in via OpenID. Continue reading →

Is Ticketapp The Twitter Yappd Killer

TicketAppTicketApp compares themselves to Twitter but I’d say they are a lot more than Twitter. TicketApps is a Tumblelog, todo list, note taker, image publisher, bug tracker and so much more. While Twitter may lay claim to the word “Tweets“, Ticketapp messages or postings are simply called “Tickets” Because this new service is like so many others, there are a lot of similarities.

Like Twitter, Ticketapp offers a public timeline where users can see recent tickets. These recent tickets can contain any number of different forms of content such as images, text and links but one thing missing from the equation is the ability to publish videos.

Edit Your TicketApp Profile

Users can customize their profile by adding their own avatar and adding a background image to their ticket page but that’s about it in terms of customization. When are sites going to enable users to come up with their own color schemes? It can’t be that hard. One last note about customization. Ticketapp provides an option to make your tickets public or private.

How Does This Thing Work?

Unlike Yappd or Twitter but similar to Tumblr, The TicketApp text editor gives users the ability to post quotes, images, links, and snippets of code by allowing these specific html tags to be used. I must admit, typing in HTML code is annoying and these tags should be substituted with buttons that perform these functions automatically for highlighted text. These tags are generally allowed on numerous blogs within their respected commenting areas so it’s interesting to see a service pick up on the notion of Twitter and provide this additional functionality. One other thing that is worth mentioning is that there is no character limit. You can go way beyond 140 characters if you choose to do so.

Ticketapp Text Editor

Will this service take off?

It’s hard to say. It’s nice to see a time line which isn’t merely all text but, Twitter is well established and so are the likes of Tumblr and Jaiku. The notion of having a service which is a clone of another is quickly wearing off and it’s really starting to drive many people up the wall. Perhaps with a few more UI changes, a publicly released API for third party support, and more options for user customization, this service may stand a chance to gain an acceptable userbase.

If you end up creating an account and giving it a try, please report back to us with your feedback and give us your opinion.

The Disposable Webpage

Disposable Webpage LogoHave you ever wanted a temporary webpage? If so, now it’s possible thanks to DisposableWebpage which gives users the opportunity to create a temporary web page that will automatically expire in no more than 90 days. Once the countdown reaches 0, the page is automatically set for disposal. The page stays on the site for 2 more weeks and then is incinerated.

Before you are given the ability to create a page, you first need to obtain a master key. This master key enables you to edit the disposable webpage, create an editor key for friends or colleagues, and set the disposable date of the page.

Each disposable webpage contains the following feature set:

  • disposed within 90 days or less after creation
  • count down clock to show the time to disposal
  • history of revisions from the first edit to the current edition
  • bookmarking facility for readers follow the page
  • rich text editor for editing purposes

The first thing I was required to do when creating my own page was to give the page a title. That was followed up with entering a CAPTCHA security code. Unlike most of the other CAPTCHA security images I’ve seen, this one was pretty tough for me to figure out.

Step One Of Creating My page

After figuring out the security code, Disposable Webpage presented me with my own Login Master Key which is made up of 5 characters. I’m also given a link with a unique identifier which points to my disposable page. If you don’t like the master key that is generated for you, DW provides an option to set your own master key. Near the bottom of the page is a link where I can begin to edit my own disposable page.

Disposable Page Editor

The page editor is your standard text editor with all sorts of bells and whistles such as the ability to add video files, flash file, color coding, undo ect. One annoying thing I found was the lack of tooltip popups, which usually give a short description of what a button in the text editor does. This is very unfriendly in terms of interface design. It’s also worth noting that you are only alloted 15 minutes of editing time per editing session. However, each time you press the save button, the time is reset back to 15 minutes.

Final Thoughts:

The Disposable Webpage has quite a number of good uses. Some of those include short term collaboration, sharing of ideas in one place, can be used as a platform for any number of brainstorming sessions you may have ect. I think the best use of this site would be for those who are holding a conference or expo and need a temporary page to provide information related to the event. You can set a page up with all of the necessary information within 90 days of the event and once you have forgotten about the page, it will automatically be deleted.

Click here to visit my DisposableWebpage.

If you have used DisposableWebpage, why not let us know what your experience was like by leaving a comment below.