Lost In Cyberspace

Archive for the ‘Plugins’ Category

In the Official Google Reader Blog today there was an interesting post that mentioned that Michael Bolin had created 'Your Page Here', a gadget for iGoogle that allows you to embed the Google Reader, Calendar or just about any web page on its own tab in iGoogle. This seemed like a pretty nifty idea to me so I thought I would give it a whirl, and it seems to work very well. You can only have six tabs on the iGoogle homepage (though there is a hack . . .) so if you are already at maximum you may have to have a bit of a sort out, you can't really have anything else running in the same tab. I now have my Google Reader and Calendar along with Docs and Spreadsheets running in their own tabs, as well as a tab with this blog in it which allows me to run this site without ever leaving iGoogle. There were a few problems getting Gmail to work in its own tab, but that may just have been me, feel free to give it a whirl yourself and let me know how you got on. With the Remember The Milk now working offline via the Google Gears application I thought I would see how well that worked too, so I added that into a tab as well and it synchronizes fine when you go back online. All in all I think that the addition of Michael Bolin's'Your Page Here' gadget will go a long way to helping me be more productive, especially if I can work out how to get Gmail to work! What uses do you think you can make of it? Do you think this will increase your productivity? Let me know in the comments.

A topic I have been following recently is that of whether to use the “rel=nofollow” command, which by default most blogging software adds to all links in comments. Undoubtedly the intentions behind this are good - to prevent spammers benefiting from the link juice they could gain from commenting on your blog. But with the arrival of such anti-spam plugins as Akismet and Bad Behavior is there any real need to keep using this command? Many feel that it is time to move on, that it is time to allow those that comment on our blogs the opportunity to share some of the SEO benefits that Google can give through those links. Having read the article over at MiLienzo calling for more bloggers to join the "revolution" I have decided to try out the plugin from Semilogic that should override the default setting. That's if I have installed it right, anyways. If you notice a problem with this plugin please let me know and I will do what I can to correct it. I have added the U COMMENT I FOLLOW badge to my sidebar to let people know that this is now a "Do Follow" blog, it was originally created by Randa Clay and she has made it available in several colours to suit your blogs design. If you are not sure about whether to change your blog over, take a look at the 13 reasons given to do so by Loren Baker on his blog Search Engine Journal.

Over at Performancing they have relaunched their pMetrics service, this looks as though it could be very useful little service. I have been using a couple of plugins to monitor my site and so far they have been pretty useful, especially Counterize II, but I realize if I want to expand my blog at all I obviously need to look at something a bit more powerful. Having taken a brief look at the service it definitely seems to one of the more comprehensive out there, even more so than Google analytics that I have been considering trying out. The basic service is free, you just need to have set up an account with performancing.com, but this is not the full package and limits you to only 1000 page views per day, though that's hardly a problem for a site of my size. The main benefits of paying out the $14.99 for a year (or $1.99 a month) is having an allowance for 10,000 page views per day, acess to your statistics via RSS, "Spy", outbound link tracking, and download tracking. You also get to have the text ads removed from your pMetrics homepage. No doubt as new features are introduced they will mainly be for premium users, but lets hope there will also be some additions for the basic users. This is hardly a complaint though as the service they provide for free is already excellent. Performancing have also allowed all new users a 21 day trial of the premium service, a very good way to find out which service is best for you. They are also offering a free 12 month upgrade to the first 100 blogs that post a review of pMetrics, making sure it is of adequate length (250+ words) and is left up for the duration. All in all this seems to be a very good service that I would recommend to any bloggers that are serious about their stats. Thanks to the Blog Herald for the heads-up.

I came across the iMP Auto Slimbox in my Google Alerts yesterday, and it was a plugin that immediately caught my interest. I have tried a couple of Lightbox variants for my images over the last couple of months and must admit to having failed to gain any real success in using them. But they do look really cool, so I hadn't yet given up all hope. The first big advantage I saw I could gain with this particular lightest of the light Lightbox clones was that it would automatically add the "rel" attribute (rel=”lightbox”) to my images, even working retroactively to add the values to all my previous attempts. This was a bit problematic as I had fiddled quite a bit with some of the code for these images, some having the rel=”lightbox” attribute already added which I think caused some confusion. Having added it to my Sandbox site and finding it very easy to set up and use I have now added it to this site. This post is in part a test, I am writing it via BlogDesk and I will test this time whether the plugin will add the values to the picture in this post or if it only works in the online "Write" page of the blog.

*Edit: Apparently it only applies to images posted directly from the Admin area*

Like most WordPress users I quite often pop over to Lorelle VanFossen’s blog for news and tips, and one of the nicest things that I first noticed when I went there was her signature at the end of every post. I wished I could have the same on my site but I thought that this was probably something she had paid quite highly for as a special feature on her blog, something that I would never be able to afford. Well now I have something similar on my own blog, and it’s free! My Live Signature (aff.) allows you to add your signature to your blogs, e-mails and forums. There are plenty of fonts to choose from and you can select the colour that best suits your blogs stylesheet. There is a WordPress plugin that makes the addition of your signature to your posts automatic and retro-active. The static versions are provided free of charge, if you feel the need to go for an animated version their prices are pretty reasonable ($19.95), and if you want to have a template made specially from your own hand writing they also provide this service for $9.95, though I would advise against using the same signature as you use to sign your cheques! I think they make a nifty addition to the blog and add a little more personalization. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

clipped from www.mylivesignature.com MyLiveSignature offers the services of creating and animating personal signatures. You can use it to easily create your own signature using a set of templates or to allow our designers to create your signature based on a scanned image. At the same time, our animators will give you the true impression that you sign your message with your own hand in real time.Such signatures will allow you to easily and quickly breathe the energy of your personal presence into email messages, blogs, forums and websites and also they will serve as a pleasant present for your friends and relatives.

*EDIT: As an added bonus, there is a WordPress plugin that automatically adds your signature to the posts, thanks to Lorelle for pointing me to this*

There has been some discussion around the blogosphere of late about the need to add other languages to your blog, really allowing more people to "join the conversation"; see Lorelle Van Fossen's guest post at ProBlogger and catch up with what has been happening over at the "Weblog Tools Collection" site and "The Blog Herald". Well today I came across this plugin, Robs Translator, that does just that via the "Google" translator. This will allow you to add 11 languages to your blog and is based on the plugin created by Scott Trough, which can be found here. I will be adding this to my Sandbox blog at first and then hopefully adding it to my blog here if all goes well. Give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments, or if you are using one of the other translators out there for your site feel free to recommend it. :-)

According to sys-con media SplashCast will soon be available to use on WordPress hosted sites, sounds like very Shiny news indeed!

clipped from splashcastmedia.com clipped from www.sys-con.com SplashCast achieved the following milestones during its first 30 days: -- The company today announced a strategic alliance with Automattic, the company behind the popular WordPress hosted blog service http://www.wordpress.com/ . SplashCast subscribers can now easily publish their channels directly to a WordPress blog with a simple 'point and click' from their dashboard. Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic, noted: "SplashCast is pushing the envelope with their innovative rich media syndication solution. Having SplashCast integrated into WordPress.com helps our mission to empower our bloggers with the best content creation and publishing tools on the web."

What is Splash Cast? According to their site:

SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media 'channels' that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages 'tuned' to that channel.

I haven't had a chance to try it out myself yet, but you can bet I will be trying it soon!

The other day I had planned to write an article about divShare on WordPress, but being unable to get it to work in its Beta format I had to delay my article, but now they have released the full version 1.0 everything seems to be working right, for me anyways.

After three days of very productive Beta testing, the DivShare Uploader Plugin for Wordpress is officially moving up to version 1.0. Thanks to everyone who helped out!

So what is divShare? This plugin allows you to post your blog images directly from your divShare account or upload an image or file via a new interface on your admin "Write" page, as demonstrated in this capture: So far it seems to work better than the standard uploader that is provided with the WP install, though I will need to do a little more testing to see how I get on with accessing pictures on my account. Have you tried divShare? How have you got on with it so far?