Glogster – You In A Poster

Glogster.com Logo

Finally, a somewhat different and unique approach to social networking. Check out Glogster.com Glogster.com lets you network with your friends via posters. These posters can contain graphics, text, images, videos, sound, and wallpapers. You can either select from a number of predefined templates for each section or, you can upload your own video, image or sound. The uploading feature allows you to upload up to 100MB per file. Whoever would upload a 100MB video file to a poster is insane.

Glogster Poster Creater

No registration to the site is necessary to create a glogster. So, I decided to give it a try to see what I could come up with. I was surprised to see all of the different preset images and frames that were built into this web app. One thing I noticed during my test is that, when you hover over the editing icons, there are no tooltips. This makes me wonder what it is that particular tool or button does and that is not good when you think of usability. Another thing I didn’t like is the constant need to move the main editor window around. It always seemed to get in my way.

Element Editing

This is what the element editor looks like. The arrows represent scaling while the circular arrow represents rotation. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the icons next to the word EDIT are supposed to do. I know for certain though that, the trash can deletes the element from the poster. All of the predefined elements are vector images meaning, they can scale to a very large size while still maintaining quality. If you upload a custom image that is not vectorized and you increase it’s size within Glogster, you will see a drastic decrease in image quality.

After I was finished creating my (Glogster), I clicked on the Save and Publish button. The publish dialog box popped up which gave me the ability to give my (Glog) a title, specify an address for the glog, assign tags, and choose a category. Glogster also gives you the option of making your Glogs public, or private. Thank goodness they have a WTF category because thats precisely the reaction you’ll have when you see this thing.

Once I clicked the publish button, I was greeted with a register page so that I could publish and share my glog to others. Apparently, you don’t need an account to create a glog. However, you need to have an account to publish and share the glog with others which makes sense, considering the social networking aspect of the service. So for this reviews sake, I created an account.

MyGlog After Registering

The good news is, if you register an account after you create your glog, it will be accessible as if you created it with a pre existing account. Good move on Glogster’s part.

There is much more involved with Glogster than what I covered, but I wanted to highlight the poster creation part as I think that it’s a pretty cool idea. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a social network that uses a different method of being social. Hopefully, if other social networks are coming down the pike (you just know they are) they will have a way of doing things that is outside of the box. A little ingenuity never hurt anybody.

Oh, and before I let you go, kiss your chances of embedding your Glogster into your blog. I gave it a shot and the damn this is over 900 pixels wide. So, you’ll most likely have to link to your Glogsters instead.

Enough with the review, time to see my WTF poster! Take note Mike. If you create a Glogster, be sure to let me know and send us a link.

Migratr 0.9.3 Released

Migratr.com Logo Migratr 0.9.3 has been released which fixes numerous bugs which were discovered after importing a large photo collection. These fixes include, SmugMug importing, Crashing on the beginning of export, and some other wacky stuff. Alex has also posted a feature poll where users can tell him what features they would like to see added to the program. Download the latest release here.

The Disposable Webpage

Have 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.

LocateTV Opens To The Public

LocateTV.com Logo

LocateTV, the TV Guide like service that I reviewed here, LocateTV – TV Guide On Steroids has announced that they will be opening to the public on Monday, October 1st. The closed beta will be disabled and users from all over the world will now be able to give this service a try. Considering LocateTV Redesigned Their Embeddable Widgets, it will be interesting to see how many of them appear on various blogs within the blogosphere once LocateTV goes public.

Kontactr Adds Pop Up Feature

Kontactr, the service that gives users an very easy way to provide a contact form on your site for readers to contact you and in which I covered here, Easy To Use Contact Forms Via Kontactr has added a new feature called Kontactr Pop Up or KPU. KPU trys to make it easier for your readers to contact you by opening up a contact form without having to load another page.

KPU comes in three flavors, text link, small button or a larger contact button. Whenever a user clicks on one of these new links, the background of the webpage turns dark and a contact form appears on your screen. This means that, users won’t be required to load a separate web page to view your contact form. This should decrease the load on your server as that is one less page that has to be processed.

The popup contains everything that the original form has with the exception of the an additional command to close the popup window which can be initiated by pressing ESC on your keyboard.

What’s nice about this new option is that, bloggers that use Kontactr now have an option to provide a contact link directly within a post. This means that readers will be able to click on a link within an article to contact you without having to perform any extra steps, such as browsing to the static location of your form which in my case, is found at the top of this site.

As with the majority of things on the web these days, this popup will not work if you have Javascript disabled in your browser. So keep that in mind if it does not work.

Migratr Adds Phanfare Support

Migratr.com Logo Migratr, 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

Is The BlogRush Over With?

When I initially became aware of BlogRush and it’s associated claims of rushing traffic to blogs, I became extremely interested. As a blogger myself, I’m always looking into new ways to generate traffic. As we now know, BlogRush has itself experienced a rush, a rush that I believe is bigger than any smalltime blogger currently using their widget, has experienced. Their system is simple and at face value looks like it would work for everyone, but after reviewing my stats, it looks like it won’t work for me.

Out of 2,401 impressions or appearances on various sites, only 4 people have clicked a headline attributed to my site. If you ask me, that’s not exactly a rush of traffic. Now I know it could be possible that the headlines to my articles suck, but is that really the case? My blog is currently competing within the Computers and Internet category and I myself have clicked on a few of the links within the widget on and have found some really cool sites. However, till this day, I have yet to see any of my posts appearing on anyone else’s widget. I even spent half an hour, clicking on various posts from one widget to the next, and I never saw one post from my site.

It’s also worth mentioning that I have checked both my Entry pages, and my Exit pages for the widget url. As we’ve seen earlier, at least 4 people have used the article headline on the widget as an entrance page to my site. However, there are 25 hits for the widget url being used as an exit page. Although I don’t know how many of those exits are attributed to myself, I really feel as if I’m doing everyone else a favor, by having this widget published on my site versus helping myself out.

The only people that seem to be benefiting from this service are the big blogs who most likely have quite a few referrals. BlogRush has stated in their latest email that:

We’ll soon be adding a bonus credit system that gives certain bonuses only to our low traffic members since they need the help the most!

That may be enough to help us small timers out, but only time will tell. So far, I’m experiencing lack luster results with BlogRush and apparently, these people are too although I’m not sure why Darren is using Blogrush as his blog gets enough traffic as it is.

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Texty Rolls Out Anticipated Updates

Texty.com Logo The easy content creation service known as Texty which I reviewed here, Simple Content Creation Using Texty, has rolled out some anticipated updates. One of those updates fixed the Google SEO problem so many users mentioned.

In each Texty edit object under “Advanced Secret Options” you can now input the URL where you plan to post your Texty. Texty claims their indexing techniques will ensure your content will be crawled by search engine spiders which was a missing feature that turned quite a few newcomers away from using the service. They have also added a privacy feature in case you wouldn’t want your content to be indexed. Before you publish your Texty Note, click the “Private” button.

New Texty Features

One of the other updates that were featured in this release is the ability to add a DIGG function to anyone of your Texty notes. This control can be found within the Advanced Options tab. I’m not sure if you’ll ever see a Texty reach the front page of DIGG but hey, it’s worth a shot.

BlogRush What Is This New BuzzWord

Theres a new buzzword in town that is sweeping across the blogosphere like wildfire, but what is it? That word is, BlogRush. A new way of generating traffic to your site or blog.

As I was monitoring my RSS feeds on a very early Saturday morning, I read a post that discussed BlogRush and what it was suppose to do. I saved it in my news bin as I was interested and wanted to give it a try. Here we are, two days later and this BlogRush widget is appearing on just about every site that can be considered a blog.

Background Info:

BlogRush in it’s simplest form is a content syndication network. If you add the widget to your blog, your own site will appear on other blogs with the widget installed. I know it may sound like one of those other blog advertising deals but this service dives into the equation a bit deeper.

BlogRush works like this. Users signup and install the widget and display it somewhere on their site. If your site receives 100pageviews a day, your blog links will appear 100 times on other BlogRush widgets across the network. That’s great and all, but here comes the juicy part. If a user who is browsing your site clicks on the tab underneath the widget that reads ADD YOUR BLOG POSTS FOR FREE and they signup for an account, that user is added to your own BlogRush account as a referal. Now, when that user installs the widget to their site, your blog content will appear on that users widget 100 times in addition to the 100 times your site would appear across the network. As you add more referrals to your account and gain more traffic to your site, your traffic grows exponentially.

What I’ve Noticed:

Throughout the day on Saturday, I noticed that the same links would appear on my BlogRush widget, no matter how many times I refreshed the page. I think this was due to the lack of websites that were added to the same category as mine. However, the links have changed each time I have loaded my front page today, so that problem appears to be fixed. I also want to let you know that I myself, have clicked on a few of the links that appear on the widget that is published on this blog because they have been relevant and interesting. So in a sense, I have demonstrated to myself how this syndication network works.

Since displaying the widget, I can attest to seeing at least 5 people who were visiting this site who were referred by a BlogRush widget. The reason for this varies. Either the headlines to my articles suck or, it was early in the adoption phase. Considering this widget is gaining in popularity extremely fast, I expect to see the referral links increasing as time goes by.

Improvements Needed:

I’d like the ability to edit the width of the widget. The one on this site is just a pixel or 2 too big and it’s crunching the left sidebar. Right now, there is no way to edit the size of the widget. There are also no reports or stats as of yet. Apparently, that part of the service is still under construction. At first, I wanted to suggest a way for us to customize which sites appear on the widgets based on tags, but I have to admit, the BlogRush algorithm seems to be doing a pretty good job displaying related content.

At times, there are blog headlines that appear in my widget which seem screwed up. The headlines appear as all question marks as if I don’t have the language pack the headline was written in. It could also be the case that the blog entry was spam. Speaking of blog spam, it will be interesting to see if BlogRush actually syndicates blogspam which in my opinion would send this service back to where it came from.

Conclusion:

This service has come out of no where and is really taking the blogging world by storm. John Reese hit the nail on the head with this service although, I’m not sure what the revenue model is just yet. If you own a blog or a website and you need traffic, definitely give this service a try. It’s free, it’s easy to install, and so far, it seems to be working. If you would like to take part in this blogging phenomenon, be sure to visit BlogRush.com and sign up for your own free account.

If you are currently using BlogRush, I’d be very interested in hearing your experience with it thus far.

Create Your Own Twitter Shirt

Reactee.com gives users of Twitter.com the chance to design a shirt where the text can be customized to suit your purpose. The shirts are $20.00 each and come in the following colors: white, light blue, organic, pink, silver, asphalt, olive and black. T shirt sizes range from small to extra large and are made out of 100% cotton, so you may want to purchase one size bigger than you need to compensate for shrinkage.

Creating a shirt is a 6 step process. Users begin by choosing a topic for their shirt. In my case, I chose Technology. The next step is to choose a slogan. Although Reactee provides quite a few slogan templates pertaining to the category, I decided to take the custom route and created my own. “Blogging The Webolution”

The next step requires me to provide a Reactee Keyword which is used for contacting my shirt. Not sure what that means yet but I’ll look into it as I’m sure, shirts can’t talk. Next to the Reactee Keyword tab is a Twitter tab. If you have a Twitter account, this is where you put in your Twitter username. Next, we have the option of choosing an image as we all know a picture is worth a thousand words. I chose an image of the United States. The last step in the process is to provide additional text which is also optional. I selected the text template “To Subscribe” for my additional text template.

Now it’s time to activate the shirt. Apparently, this shirt is alive. If users send a text message from their phone to my Reactee TShirt, they will receive a response with my Twitter Status. After completely activating the TShirt, Reactee then gives me the option to order the shirt.

Interesting service which gives users the ability to customize their own Twitter shirts. The idea of text messaging a shirt is rather strange but whatever floats your boat I suppose. I’m thinking about purchasing the shirt I created because I sort of like the design. Tell me what you think.

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