// Internet Duct Tape

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can follow this list of links as I post them on Friend Feed or on Twitter. Or you can get the weekly update by subscribing to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

• [BLOGGING] 10 things you MUST know before you register a domain name with anyone, domainwarning.com
  • Tips for picking out where to host your domain names.
• [BLOGGING] Google Analytics for Blogs, googlesystem.blogspot.com
  • Google Analytics will report daily readers, incoming links, popular posts, comments added.
• [BLOGGING] Warning Labels for Bloggers, geekculture.com
  • hahah… so on point.
• [CODE] The Perfect Job Interview Question, noop.nl
  • How to interview programmers: “what do you not like about other people’s code?”
• [CREATIVITY] 17 Obscure Creativity-Sparking Websites, lifedev.net
  • List of interesting websites that stand out from the crowd.
• [CULTURE] Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, herecomeseverybody.org
  • From the article: ” However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.”
• [FRIENDFEED] Proposal to Clean Up the FriendFeed Clutter, bhc3.wordpress.com
  • Some great ideas on making FriendFeed more useful.
• [GAMERS] Grand Theft Auto IV Activity Book For Kids, the-minusworld.com
  • And they thought Mass Effect was bad…
• [GEEK] Battlestar Galactica Backstory in 8 Minutes, io9.com
  • Spoilers, of course.
• [JAVASCRIPT] Guarding in JavaScript, thoughtworker.in, via:lazycoder.com
  • Very brief look at using && and || to simplify your code.
• [LIFEHACKS] 5 Productivity Nutjobs Explained, thegrowinglife.com, via:doshdosh.com
  • This made me laugh. :)
• [LINUX] The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment, contentconsumer.wordpress.com
  • How hard is it to switch from Windows to Linux?
• [MEDIA] The Wire as Simpson Characters, periscopestudio.com, via:kottke.org
  • artist renditions of scenes from the Wire as Simpsons characters
• [PERL] Ten things I hate about Perl, pozorvlak.livejournal.com
  • I absolutely hate Perl’s OO, all the referencing, and the ugliness of embedded POD. It’s hard to go back to Perl 5 after Ruby.
• [STARTUPS] Why I love working with family people, 37signals.com
  • If people have the constraint of “having a life outside of work” it makes it harder to hide poor management.
• [TWITTER] The Twitter Blacklist, twitterblacklist.com
  • Tool with API for identifying Twitter spammers. It works by analyzing the ratio of followers to friends with some manual intervention.
• [TWITTER] Twitter Less, Blog More!, dailyblogtips.com
  • From the article: ” Why? Because your blog is your property. It should be the single most important location for you on the Internet. It should be the place where people go to when they think about you. Your blog, not Twitter”
• [TWITTER] TwitterSnooze! v0.13, twittersnooze.com
  • Stop following someone for a few days.
• [WEBDESIGN] Five More Principles Of Effective Web Design, smashingmagazine.com
• [WEBDESIGN] Khoi Vinh, nytimes.com
  • Interview with one of my favorite web designers.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

• How to Unminify Javascript Code
  As websites have moved away from static pages to interactive updating displays, the modern Greasemonkey hacker has been forced to learn new tricks: namely interacting with the Javascript on a website. Sometimes that’s harder than it looks because the Javascript on the site you want to modify has been minified.
• Really Simple Syndication
  What is RSS and what can it do for you?
• Competition
  When we look at technology we use everyday, the great success stories all have one thing in common: competition. They all achieved their success despite healthy competition, or perhaps because of it.
• Fixing the WordPress.com Possibly Related Feature
  You might want to skip this post if you aren’t hosted on WordPress.com.
• Delicious Links - 20 links - blogging, windows, codinghorror, amazon, shopping

This Week at IDT Labs

IDT Labs is where I announce new software tools I’m working on.

• [FRIENDFEED] Who Are You? v0.4

  This is a massive update to the Who Are You? script. This script is insanely useful for browsing your friends and strangers on Friend Feed.

  • shows who they are on all of their servicesshows which friends you have in commonshows which friends you don’t have in common

  Adds a “Who are you?” link on profile pages AND on that little popup box when you hover over a name.Clicking on the link

  If you use the script from someone’s profile page, you’ll get the little user popup on all of their friends (which you can then use to browse all of THAT person’s friends).

• [FRIENDFEED] Show Usernames

  Because I find it annoying as well having 12 friends with the exact same first name and no last name.

• [FRIENDFEED] Import Your Twitter Contacts v0.0.4

  I’ve updated my Twitter importer to v0.0.4.The new version does a better job of guessing who your Tweeps are on Friend Feed.

  It also supports setting up the username / passwords on the command line so that you can make a schedule task to run the program.

• [REDDIT] Rusty Pipes Are Flowing Again

  Some of my old pipes for Reddit.com are working again.Reddit Feed Redirector will make the links in a reddit RSS feed go to the comments page instead of the item linked.

  Social Site Submission Watchdog keeps track of when your site is added to Digg/Reddit.

Tags: blogging, twitter, usability, webdesign