// Internet Duct Tape

Best of Feeds is a weekly series where I link to the stuff I found interesting from my feed reader. Links are sorted based on how many people have bookmarked them on del.icio.us. They are posted on Twitter as they happen and then collected together in a single post on Saturday. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.

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This time I have 36 links from: 37signals, bertc, labnotes, .feedburner, compsci.ca, dailyblogtips, dilbertblog, doshdosh, douglaskarr, haacked, labnol, leggnet, lifehacker, lorelle, m3solutions.co.uk, neomeme, netbusinessblog, pcweenies, pcworld, plagiarismtoday, problogger, pronetadvertising, publishing2, secretgeek, stumbleupon, thecodist, valleywag, vgcats, webworkerdaily, winextra

• [GMAIL] Lifehacker Code: Better Gmail (Firefox extension) (lifehacker.com, 706 saves)
  • (firefox, gmail, extensions, lifehacks, greasemonkey)
  • I like the direction Lifehacker is going in if they’re going to start providing their own extensions.
• [GMAIL] Hack Attack: Supercharge your Gmail (lifehacker.com, 590 saves)
  • (gmail, firefox, lifehacks, productivity, greasemonkey, tutorial)
  • More gmail-love from Lifehacker.
• [UBUNTU] Seven Post-Install Tips for Ubuntu 7.04 (pcworld.com, 579 saves)
  • (ubuntu, linux, feisty, fawn)
  • I need this guide so bad. I killed my last ubuntu install trying to set the resolution.
• [CATZ] For Sale: One Useless Cat (bertc.com, 406 saves)
  • (Funny, cat, mouse, humor)
  • Let’s be friends.
• [GAMES] VG Cats mashup of 300 and Super Mario (vgcats.com, 71 saves)
  • (mario, 300, comic, nintento, humor)
  • This is Spaaaarttaaaaaaaaaa!
• [WEB2.0] Busyness vs. Burst: Why Corporate Web Workers Look Unproductive (webworkerdaily.com, 46 saves)
  • (productivity, business, work, web, economics, career)
• [WORDPRESS.COM] Stumbleupon StumbleThru wordpress.com blogs (stumbleupon.com, 44 saves)
  • (wordpress, wordpress.com, stumbleupon)
  • StumbleUpon has a *great* new feature that lets you stumble through specific sites. One of the options is to only stumble through wordpress.com blogs.
• [SPAM] Why WordPress.com is Virtually Spam Free (plagiarismtoday.com, 35 saves)
  • (WordPress, spam, blogging, blogger)
  • From the article: ” It seems as if nearly every major free blog hosting service has been either overrun or nearly overrun with spam. However, one services stands alone, a relative oasis of spam cleanliness, Automattic’s WordPress.com.”
• [CODE] Introducing Buildr, or how we cured our Maven blues (using Rake) (blog.labnotes.org, 23 saves)
  • (make, maven, ant, rake, ruby)
  • Assaf compares experience with modern build systems: Maven, Ant and Rake. I might start playing with Rake for my personal builds and to learn some Ruby.
• [CODE] All I Need To Know To Be A Better Programmer I Learned In Kindergarten (thecodist.com, 20 saves)
  • (programming, humor, tips, coding)
  • EXCELLENT interpretation of “all I needed to know I learned in kindergarten” through the eyes of a programmer. Must read, hell must print and put beside the coffee machine.
• [WEB2.0] Cumulative Advantage Explains Web 2.0, MySpace, The A-List, TechCrunch, Digg, And So Much More (publishing2.com, 14 saves)
  • (attention, social, socialsoftware, digg, myspace, web2.0)
  • From the article: ” All of a sudden it’s crystal clear what Web 2.0 really is — the greatest platform ever for harnessing randomly imitative social behavior. Before Web 2.0, achieving utterly arbitrary results took time and effort.”
• [DEVELOPMENT] Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good to do (37signals.com, 14 saves)
  • (gtd, product_management, programming)
  • From the article: ” You agree that feature X can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re still only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think –but I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent four hours on this!–.”
• [PHOTO] Lowlight Photography Tips (leggnet.com, 14 saves)
  • (photography, tips, digital, lighting)
  • When taking pictures I almost always want to do it at night. Here’s how to do it properly. Good tips for anyone like using a beanbag or a cord as an instant tripod.
• [RSS] Feedburner Favors Full Feeds (blogs.feedburner.com, 11 saves)
  • (feeds, rss, feedburner, fullfeeds)
  • FeedBurner recommends full feeds over partial feeds. Their stats say that partial feeds don’t get more click throughs than full feeds. If you’re still running partial feeds you’re just hurting yourself.
• [CODE] Write Readable Code By Making Its Intentions Clear (haacked.com, 10 saves)
  • (code, programming)
  • If you are going to focus on one area to fix when programming, the first should be the interfaces to your functions.
• [DESIGN] Blog Optimization: Manta SEO Blog (dailyblogtips.com, 9 saves)
  • (blog, design, analysis, optimization)
  • DailyBlogTips dives into some blog design analysis tips.
• [RSS] Do not send your subscribers directly to Feedburner (dailyblogtips.com, 8 saves)
  • (feedburner, tips, rss)
  • Good hack on redirecting your main feed to go to FeedBurner instead of getting people to subscribe to the FeedBurner feed. Wish wordpress.com supported it.
• [COPYRIGHT] The Infamous Underpants Analogy (dilbertblog.typepad.com, 7 saves)
  • (copyright, scottadams, dilbert)
  • A copyright owner (Scott Adams) chimes in on why copyright is important and an artist might not want to give away / lose control of his work.
• [TECH-BLOG] Living in a bubble - a blogosphere reality check | WinExtra (winextra.com, 6 saves)
  • (blogging, echochamber, tech)
  • From the article: ” There is a very fine line between being relevant and being the boring old uncle puffing on a pipe in an wingback chair by the fireplace. The tech-sphere walks this line on a daily basis but fails to see thatpeople have stop listening.”
• [CODE] Why Accurate Estimations Are Just Not Possible (secretgeek.net, 6 saves)
  • (geek, humor, development, code, estimation)
  • Funny, but true.
• [CONTEST] Win $500 at Amazon for showing a picture of your workspace (lifehacker.com, 4 saves)
  • (lifehacker, contests, free, amazon)
  • From the article: ” snap a few pictures of your favorite workspace - your home office, desk, studio, etc. - and send them into Lifehacker HQ. Over the next several weeks, we’ll feature our favorites every Thursday on Lifehacker.”
• [VASHOOTINGS] Silence is a Memoriam (lorelle.wordpress.com, 4 saves)
  • (articles, history, life, respect, memorial, tragedy, georgiatech)
  • Lorelle shares some life experiences about the meaning and power of silence to pay memory to a tragedy.
• [GAMES] Play The Most Influential Amiga Games Now (haacked.com, 3 saves)
  • (amiga, games, gamers, roms, emulation)
  • Phil looks back at the Amiga along with links to amiga emulators and roms.
• [WEB2.0] How to Create Communities (neomeme.net, 3 saves)
  • (web2.0, socialsoftware, community)
  • It’s all about communities — here’s some tips on creating them.
• [BLOG HUMOR] 25 Signs You Might have a Problem Blogging (douglaskarr.com, 3 saves)
  • (blogs, humor)
  • From the article: ” #1: Your closest friends know the easiest way to communicate with you is by submitting a comment.”
• [DIGG] How to Get Digg Frontpaged (netbusinessblog.com, 2 saves)
  • (digg, smo, seo, howto, linkbuilding)
  • Net Business Blogs explains how they hit Digg front page around 7 times in a couple of months.
• [WEBOLOGISMS] Wilfing - What Was I Looking For? (labnol.blogspot.com, 2 saves)
  • (wilfing, webologism, neologism)
  • Wasting time surfing the web has a new name.
• [TECH] CODGERS: Aging ace-fully: The cool and uncool old men of tech (valleywag.com, 2 saves)
  • (nickdouglas, valleywag, tech, guru)
  • It’s diggbait, but I like it.
• [MUSIC] last.fm player for cellphones (m3solutions.co.uk)
  • (symbian, s60, mobile, cellphone, last.fm)
  • M3 has put together a tiny python app for running last.fm on Symbian S60 cellphones with a data connection.
• [WRITING] Are we running out of real ideas and thoughts? (winextra.com)
  • (originality, publishing, content, writing)
  • From the article: ” We decry plagiarism and infringements of any type but in the world of nanny states where we are being coddled through our daily lives is it any surprise that we are finding ourselves being sucked into the vacuum of repetitiveness.”
• [TWITTER] Cartoon (pcweenies.org)
  • (twitter, cartoon, humor)
  • So true.
• [CODE] Educational flaws: Programming with the Waterfall Model (compsci.ca)
  • (compsci, programming, code, waterfallmodel)
  • The waterfall model was intended to be an example of what NOT to do.
• [TECHNORATI] Import your Google Reader Feeds into Technorati Favorites (douglaskarr.com)
  • (technorati, favorites, GoogleReader)
  • How to import your RSS subscriptions as Technorati Favorites.
• [TECHNORATI] Dosh Dosh’s Ultimate Technorati Favorites Exchange: An Interactive Experiment (doshdosh.com)
  • (technorati)
  • Dosh Dosh about to break Technorati Favorites. Film at 11.
• [SEO] How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words! (problogger.net)
  • (seo, google, blogsearch)
  • Analysis of how Google Blogsearch works from digging through the patent filing. RSS subscriptions and social site submissions count.
• [FACEBOOK] Utilizing Facebook to Network Yourself and Your Content (pronetadvertising.com)
  • (facebook, smo)
  • Facebook has an “import a blog” feature that will convert your blog posts into notes.

Weekly Stats

MyBlogLog Community Members: 95 (+5)
Twitter friends/followers: 75/69 (+5/+8)
FeedBurner RSS Readers: 531 (+25)
Technorati Favorites: 143 (+108)
Technorati Rank: 2021 (dropped 30)
Technorati Incoming Links: 2,885 (+237)
Page views (total): 1,109,004 (+30,161)
Hot New Post By Traffic (week): How I learned to shoot the engineers and ship the product 1,742

Tags: 300, Funny, GoogleReader, WordPress, amazon, amiga, analysis, ant, articles, attention, blog, blogger, blogging, blogs, blogsearch, business, career, cartoon, cat, cellphone, code, coding, comic, community, compsci, content, contests, copyright, design, development, digg, digital, dilbert, echochamber, economics, emulation, estimation, extensions, facebook, favorites, fawn, feedburner, feeds, feisty, firefox, free, fullfeeds, gamers, games, geek, georgiatech, gmail, google, greasemonkey, gtd, guru, history, howto, humor, last.fm, life, lifehacker, lifehacks, lighting, linkbuilding, linux, make, mario, maven, memorial, mobile, mouse, myspace, neologism, nickdouglas, nintento, optimization, originality, photography, product_management, productivity, programming, publishing, rake, respect, roms, rss, ruby, s60, scottadams, seo, smo, social, socialsoftware, spam, stumbleupon, symbian, tech, technorati, tips, tragedy, tutorial, twitter, ubuntu, valleywag, waterfallmodel, web, web2.0, webologism, wilfing, wordpress, wordpress.com, work, writing