// Internet Duct Tape http://internetducttape.com blogging / programming / technology / lifehacks Thu, 15 May 2008 20:59:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU en Weekend Reader - programming, lifehacks, code, blogging, funny http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/10/weekend-reader-programming-lifehacks-code-blogging-funny/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/10/weekend-reader-programming-lifehacks-code-blogging-funny/#comments Sat, 10 May 2008 14:57:20 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1480

Weekly Links

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.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

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

  • Become a Greasemonkey Ninja with jQuery
    This is for all the Greasemonkeyers in the house who want to learn how to be much more productive when it comes to hacking together Greasemonkey script by using my favorite Javascript library: jQuery. jQuery will turn a 700 line Greasemonkey script into a 12 line Greasemonkey script. I learned about jQuery through all of the Greasemonkey scripts I created to work with Friend Feed.

    This is advanced stuff that is of interest to people writing Javascript. If you’re just a Greasemonkey user then you can safely skip this one.

  • Weekend Reader - twitter, blogging, usability, webdesign, bsg

This Week at IDT Labs

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

    Tags: , , , , ,

    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/10/weekend-reader-programming-lifehacks-code-blogging-funny/feed/ engtech Weekly Links     Become a Greasemonkey Ninja with jQuery http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/08/greasemonkey-ninja-jquery/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/08/greasemonkey-ninja-jquery/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 17:17:01 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1477 Programming Tips

    This is for all the Greasemonkeyers in the house who want to learn how to be much more productive when it comes to hacking together Greasemonkey script by using my favorite Javascript library: jQuery. jQuery will turn a 700 line Greasemonkey script into a 12 line Greasemonkey script. I learned about jQuery through all of the Greasemonkey scripts I created to work with Friend Feed.

    This is advanced stuff that is of interest to people writing Javascript. If you're just a Greasemonkey user then you can safely skip this one.

    ]]>

    Programming Tips

    This is for all the Greasemonkeyers in the house who want to learn how to be much more productive when it comes to hacking together Greasemonkey script by using my favorite Javascript library: jQuery. jQuery will turn a 700 line Greasemonkey script into a 12 line Greasemonkey script. I learned about jQuery through all of the Greasemonkey scripts I created to work with Friend Feed.

    This is advanced stuff that is of interest to people writing Javascript. If you’re just a Greasemonkey user then you can safely skip this one.

    What is jQuery?

    jQuery lets you very concisely access any element on the page through the use of normal CSS selectors and custom selectors specific to jQuery. If you can access it with CSS or XPath then you can access it with jQuery. It gives you more options for selecting elements than CSS or XPath.

    It also support method chaining which makes for some stupidly concise javascript code compared to the normal pain of walking the DOM or calling XPath that you see in most Greasemonkey scripts.

    
    function ff_show_domains() {
        $("a.main").each(function() {
            var uri = $(this).attr('href').replace('www.','').split('/');
            var domain = uri[2];
            …

        });
    }

    The other thing I love about jQuery is that it has plugins you can grab and import into your Greasemonkey scripts. Check out this concise plugin that lets you call Firebug’s console.log from within a jQuery method chain. That’s a perfect example of how powerful jQuery is.

    jQuery Makes Me Happy

    The hardest part of using jQuery with Greasemonkey is importing it. There are several ways to include jQuery into a Greasemonkey script. I’m going to walk through three of them. I would love it if jQuery became an official component of Greasemonkey, and I think that would greatly increase the number of useful Greasemonkey scripts being created.

    Technique #1: Site already uses jQuery

    If the site already uses jQuery (friendfeed.com, wordpress admin) then you’re in luck: you don’t have to import it.

    
$ = unsafeWindow.jQuery;
console.log( $('p') );

    You can find out if the site uses jQuery by running ‘alert($)‘ in the Firebug console or by looking at the imported scripts.

    Technique #2: Import from Remote Host

    If the site doesn’t already use jQuery (boo, hiss) then you can import jQuery from jquery.com.

    Joen Piedra has example code and a script showing how to do this.

    
// Example from http://www.joanpiedra.com/jquery/greasemonkey/

// Add jQuery
    var GM_JQ = document.createElement('script');
    GM_JQ.src = 'http://jquery.com/src/jquery-latest.js';
    GM_JQ.type = 'text/javascript';
    document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(GM_JQ);

// Check if jQuery's loaded
    function GM_wait() {
        if(typeof unsafeWindow.jQuery == 'undefined') { window.setTimeout(GM_wait,100); }
    else { $ = unsafeWindow.jQuery; letsJQuery(); }
    }
    GM_wait();

// All your GM code must be inside this function
    function letsJQuery() {
        alert($); // check if the dollar (jquery) function works
    }

    It’s a similar technique to the jQuerify bookmarklet that lets you add jQuery to any site in one click so that you can play around in the Firebug console.

    Technique #3: Embed in Your Script

    This is my preferred method because it reduces the number of external dependencies of your script. You can put all of the code for jQuery directly into your script so the user only has to download it once. This will reduce the load time of the page you’re Greasemonkeying since it is always faster to load local files than to load a Javascript library over the internet.

    1. Copy the packed version of jQuery into your script

    2. Use jQuery :)

    Here’s an example of one of my scripts where I use the embedded packed jQuery as well as an embedded image file. That script runs on Soundamus (a very cool site if you’re a Last.FM listener, check it out) and adds links to search for the artist/album on an different site.

    Here is the active javascript code that uses jQuery to do all the magic.

    
$('.post').each(function(i) {
		  var artist = $(this).find('a:eq(0)').text();
		  var album = $(this).find('a:eq(1)').text();
		  var search_link = SEARCH_URL+encodeURI(artist+" "+album);
		  $(this).prepend('<div style="clear:both; float:right;"><a title="Search for '+artist+' - '+album+'" href="'+search_link+'"><img src="'+data+'" /></a></div>');
		  $(this).css('clear','both');

});

    Actually Related Posts

    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/08/greasemonkey-ninja-jquery/feed/ engtech Programming Tips     Weekend Reader - twitter, blogging, usability, webdesign, bsg http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/03/weekend-reader-twitter-blogging-usability-webdesign-bsg/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/03/weekend-reader-twitter-blogging-usability-webdesign-bsg/#comments Sat, 03 May 2008 15:30:30 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1476

    Weekly Links

    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.

    This Week at Internet Duct Tape

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

    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: , , ,

    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/03/weekend-reader-twitter-blogging-usability-webdesign-bsg/feed/ engtech Weekly Links     How to Unminify Javascript Code http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/02/how-to-unminify-javascript-code/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/02/how-to-unminify-javascript-code/#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 19:36:58 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1472 Programming Tips

    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.

    ]]>

    Programming Tips

    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.

    Minifying is a process where all the comments, whitespace and variable names of a file are removed so that it is smaller in size. This is better for the users because it takes less time to load the site. It’s worse for Greasemonkey hackers because all you get is a mess of gobblety gook.

    1. Install this javascript beautifier Greasemonkey script
    2. Cut-and-paste the minified javascript from the site you want to work with
    3. Visit nopaste.voric.com and cut-and-paste the code from the site
      1. Click the Javascript option
      2. Change “Save until” to 1 day
      3. Cut and paste the code from the site
      4. Click “Save”
    4. Click the Beautify link

    Now you have a copy of the source code you can work with! I usually save it to a local file at this point so that I can annotate it with comments.

    There are probably simpler ways to do this with other javascript beautifiers, but I haven’t found any other ones that do as good of a job at deminifying code as this trick.

    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/02/how-to-unminify-javascript-code/feed/ engtech Programming Tips     Really Simple Syndication http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/01/really-simple-syndication/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/01/really-simple-syndication/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 16:31:07 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1471 Lifehacks and Productivity

    What is RSS and what can it do for you?]]>

    Lifehacks and Productivity

    What is RSS and what can it do for you?

    RSS is a way for web sites to publish their content into a format that a computer can understand.

    • Date published
    • Title
    • Description
    • Link to the original source

    What Problem Does RSS Solve?

    We all have different sites on the Internet that we like to visit again and again. Usually we save this sites in our bookmarks and click on the bookmark to return to the site. Then we start reading, stopping when we reach stuff that looks like we’ve read it before. It’s something we all do, and it works perfectly fine unless you’re trying to read a lot of information — then it can be slow because you don’t know when a site has updated, and you don’t know where you stopped reading before.

    RSS solves this problem. Every website that supports RSS has a list of new information (with a title, description and link back to the source) and the time when it was published. We can use computer programs called RSS readers to keep track of the websites we want to follow and what we have and haven’t read on those sites.

    Your RSS reader program gives you a one-stop place to visit all of the sites that you think are important on the Internet. You follow a site by subscribing to its RSS feed (like subscribing to a newspaper, but with less clutter). Then instead of using your bookmarks to visit the site you use your RSS reader to keep track of what’s new.

    This video explains RSS better than I ever could. You can view a better quality version of the video here.

    RSS Readers

    The first thing you need to use RSS is a program that can read RSS feeds. I recommend:

    How Do I Know If a Site Supports RSS?

    Look for the RSS icon. If you’re using Firefox, you’ll be able to see the RSS icon in the address bar for RSS enabled websites.

    When you see the icon click on it and you’ll be prompted to subscribe to the site. Try it:

    Advanced Users

    So you’ve got a way to keep up to date on your favorite websites. Instead of visiting the websites or getting them email to you, you can read them in your RSS reader. Here’s a few other things you can do with RSS.

    Activity Streaming or Lifestreaming

    As you use different websites on the Internet, it’s really easy to take all that information you’re creating (uploading photos, commenting on sites, sharing links) and put it all in one place. If you’ve ever used Facebook, it’s like the Facebook mini-feed but for the entire Internet. I recommend Friend Feed for lifestreaming.

    Filtering Information

    RSS is a way to manage more information. Yahoo has released a really nifty tool called Pipes that lets you create filters on any RSS feed. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to create a pipe unless you’re already a geek. But it’s easy to search for a pipe that already does what you want.

    Aggregating Information

    This is where you start to really see the power of RSS: people can take all those RSS feeds and build interesting services on top of them.


    Photo by kk

    www.staticphotography.com

    RSS Awareness Day

    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/05/01/really-simple-syndication/feed/ engtech Lifehacks and Productivity RSS Awareness Day     Competition http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/29/competition/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/29/competition/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:35:39 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1469 Marketing, Branding, and Promotion

    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.

    ]]>

    Marketing, Branding and Promotion

    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.

    Know The Enemy

    Who would Superman be without Lex Luthor? Who would Batman be without Joker? Every great superhero has one thing in common: a great villain.

    When developing a product, one of the key factors is having a concrete competitor. Motivate your employees by giving them a concrete “foe” to strive against. It solidifies your goals and a great competitor defines who you aren’t just as much as they define who you are.

    Keep It Real

    Competition is a healthy sign that you are addressing a real market. Customers often aren’t interested in buying something unless they know there’s an alternative solution available [1]. People might not even realize you’re addressing a real problem if you’re the only one trying to solve it. Showing a list of competitors and why you’re better than them is a great way to build confidence in your service when you’re trying to get funding.

    Competition makes for a better experience for the customer. Competitors keep you from being complacent because if you fall asleep at the lead you’ll soon find yourself at the back of the pack. Competitors spur innovation as you both try to reach the best solution.  [2]

    He who helps his users kick the most ass wins.

    Keep Your Friends Close…

    Keeping a close eye on your competitors can be a great source of information. Make their strengths your strengths and avoid their weaknesses. How do you differentiate yourself from them? How do they differentiate themselves from you? What are the threats to their business? These are threats to your business as well, or opportunities for you to grow your market.

    Your competitors can be your best friends because they are the people who know the industry you are working in and the problems you face better than anyone. It often becomes a symbiotic relationship where you team up at times to address new opportunities.

    There’s much talk about using the Internet to find out what people really think of you product. Don’t forget to do the same level of monitoring for your competition! [3] [4]

    But Don’t Close Your Eyes!

    The problem with letting your competitors influence your business strategy is that it can cause myopia. History is filled with tales of two rivals competing neck and neck only to be eclipsed by a third company who can see the bigger picture. One of my favorite recent examples of this is the console war between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft and Sony keep battling for the market of hardcore video gamers while Nintendo found a way to appeal to casual gamers.

    Nintendo rapidly soared to number one by ignoring the cutthroat battle of better graphics and faster hardware and focusing on a different approach to a larger market. Knowing your competitors can provide valuable insight, but don’t let it drag you into a game of “me too”.

    Footnotes

    1. Try getting a design win in a big company like IBM when you are the only product in your class. It’s not going to happen. There’s such a thing as being too far on the cutting edge.
    2. As long as you avoid featuristis. Happy users can find what they want to do.
    3. Of course, other bloggers aren’t your competition. Relevancy of content is your competition. There are useful tools for identifying relevant blogs in a niche though.
    4. One of the problems with the fragmenting of conversation is it becomes harder and harder to find out where people are complaining about you. TweetScan is a good bet because Twitter is powered by bitching. Competitious looks like a great app for monitoring competitors and their features.

      I know I don’t do this enough. I make the assumption that people will try to contact me through the channels I do monitor.

    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/29/competition/feed/ engtech Marketing, Branding and Promotion     Fixing the WordPress.com Possibly Related Feature http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/27/fixing-the-wordpresscom-possibly-related-feature/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/27/fixing-the-wordpresscom-possibly-related-feature/#comments Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:36:00 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1467 WordPress Tips and Tricks

    You might want to skip this post if you aren't hosted on WordPress.com.

    You may have heard talks about how "Related Posts" was going to become an integrated feature in the WordPress core. Last friday they released a feature called "Possibly Related". They use Sphere.com's technology to analyze what posts are related to the current post and add links to the bottom of it. Doesn't sound bad, right? Wait for it...

    For WordPress Multiuser (like WordPress.com) they're including links to other "related" posts by other people.

    ]]>

    WordPress Tips and Tricks

    You might want to skip this post if you aren’t hosted on WordPress.com.

    You may have heard talks about how “Related Posts” was going to become an integrated feature in the WordPress core. Last friday they released a feature called “Possibly Related”. They use Sphere.com’s technology to analyze what posts are related to the current post and add links to the bottom of it. Doesn’t sound bad, right? Wait for it…

    For WordPress Multiuser (like WordPress.com) they’re including links to other “related” posts by other people.

    This is supposed to be a community feature, but as you may guess there’s already been crosslinks created between people who blog about racism/feminism and white supremacists.

    My example above is on a post I wrote about “doing something important to change your life” and WordPress.com inserted links to

    • an on-topic post about rethinking the time spent blogging
    • a post talking about friends he’s known
    • a post about illnesses in classrooms
    • a baseball post.

    Wow, the power of modern computers, eh? I wouldn’t have included any of those links by hand, and I would delete them if I could. Lorelle nails what’s wrong with this:

    This is bad for many reasons, which I’m sure you’ve already thought of. No control. Implied recommendation or endorsement. Inappropriate links. And a lot of confusion for our readers who believe we choose these links or that they will lead to links on our blog related to what we blog about. I’m sure I missed some other bad reasons for not liking this new feature.

    It’s important that we link to other bloggers, especially others within the WordPress.com community to support and encourage them. It’s wrong to do so without some control.

    And let’s not even think about the SEO implications this is going to have on WordPress.com. These automatic links are not rel=nofollow’d. How long until Google treats WordPress.com as a link farm and devalues all of our blogs?

    It is uncertain whether or not paid links will ever be inserted this way.

    UPDATE: According to a Sphere representative, the links to mainstream media sites aren’t paid for.

    Turning Off Related Posts Permanently

    thx Lorelle

    1. Go to the Administration Panels > Design > Extras.
    2. Check Hide Related Links.
    3. Click Update.

    Hiding Other Users Posts

    If you have the CSS upgrade you can still use the related posts feature to point to your own blog only by hiding the links to the other blogs using CSS.

    
.entry-content > div > div:last-child li {
	list-style-type:none !important;
}

.entry-content > div > div:last-child li > a {
	display:none;
}

    When I posted that solution to the WordPress.com forums my comment was deleted by a moderator. YMMV.

    UPDATE: They’ve updated the feature so that it no longer has a CSS class to make it even harder for users to style this automatically generated content. The code I posted works with the Sandbox theme, it might not work with your theme.

    Fixing the Feature

    #1: We need to have two levels of disable:

    • No related posts
    • Related posts within our blog
    • Related posts within WordPress.com

    #2: Let us control the title

    Yes, this is fixable with CSS, but I would prefer it if it said: “You Might Also Like” instead of “Possibly related posts:”. I’m sure everyone has a different idea of what they would like that title to be.

    #3: Suggested Blogs

    Want to build a community? Use Sphere’s analysis in the dashboard to tell me about blogs I might be interested in.

    #4: Whitelist, not blacklist.

    In the next few days we’ll have an update that allows you to block specific blogs from showing up, and eventually that setting will also apply to the tag surfer, blog surfer, and top blogs so when you block a blog you should never see it again.

    You have one million active blogs on WordPress.com. Do you really think blacklists are going to be manageable? If you have the related posts come from the blogs we’ve subscribed to using the Blog Surfer, then all of a sudden you have a really cool community feature that will automatically link posts to our friends.

    Being able to ban blogs from tag surfer / top blogs is still a great feature, but it is not a solution to the related posts problem. Use the blog surfer as a whitelist of blogs to chose from and this feature will become highly usable because it will leverage the small communities that already exist on WordPress.com instead of trying to create some kind of global community. There is no global community on WordPress.com and there can never be because the only thing that we all have in common is our choice of blogging host.

    I’m not adverse to having the related posts feature link out to other bloggers, but I want it to be from the blogs I choose:

    Not to mention several others I enjoy that also happen to be hosted at WordPress.com.

    Using the “Links” as a whitelist would work as well and has the benefit of working with self-hosted WordPress as well as WordPress Multiuser.

    Fixing the Longterm Problem

    I often feel like WordPress.com is the red-headed step child of Automattic, but that may just be because I am so far removed from whomever their target user is. I’m the type of person who should be using self-hosted WordPress, and I can’t fault them for targeting who they want to target. But I also wouldn’t recommend WordPress.com to anyone because of the lack of control you have over your own blog. This is just one example of the systemic problem of WordPress.com where users don’t have the freedom to do what they want with their blog [1].

    Not enough of the people working on WordPress use WordPress.com as their primary blogging platform. Have more developers using (non-VIP) WordPress Multiuser full time and you’ll see better features come out because they’ll understand the constraints users have to face. Eat your own dog food.

    Why are experimental features always released on friday afternoons? Don’t release features on Friday, release them on Monday so you have all week to tweak and fix them.

    I’d also strongly suggest targeting some bloggers they feel are a good example of the WordPress.com demographic and having them try out new features before everyone else. Their feedback could go a long way to improving everyone’s experience.

    Footnotes

    1. What can’t WordPress.com bloggers do? Can’t edit themes (only CSS), can’t use FeedBurner, can’t use Google Analytics, can’t use alternative comment systems like Disqus, can’t add javascript widgets… our tag links point away from our own blog and advertising is shown on our blogs that we have no control of.
    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/27/fixing-the-wordpresscom-possibly-related-feature/feed/ engtech WordPress Tips and Tricks     Delicious Links - 20 links - blogging, windows, codinghorror, amazon, shopping http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/26/delicious-links-20-links-blogging-windows-codinghorror-amazon-shopping/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/26/delicious-links-20-links-blogging-windows-codinghorror-amazon-shopping/#comments Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:37:37 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1466

    Weekly Links

    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.

    This Week at Internet Duct Tape

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

    • What Have You Done For You Lately?
      For Earth Day this year I decided I was going to try to make a real change by commuting to work under my own power instead of using my car. I’ve been riding a wave of endorphin high as my body goes through the shock of experiencing exercise again for the first time in a long while. I can feel the winter doldrums lifting [1], and I asked myself: when was the last time I did something that makes a positive change in my life?
    • Lifestreaming 101 - Don’t Cross the Streams

      History has a tendency to repeat itself, mostly because the inventors weren’t old enough to have been around the first time. Having a blog is the same as having a BBS twenty years earlier; using Twitter is the same as using IRC. Of course there are differences [1], but progress is built on the shoulders of giants.Like how 2007 was the year of microblogging, 2008 is the year of lifestreaming. People are becoming more comfortable with the idea after learning to swim in Facebook’s pond [2], and they’re ready to start swimming into the raging rivers of the public Internet. But before these neophyte tadpoles start eating flies, there’s one thing they need to learn:

      Don’t cross the streams.

    • How to Import Your Twitter Contacts to Friend Feed
      I’ve commented before that Friend Feed makes for a really sweet Twitter client because of the way it threads replies and how easy it is to reply to another user. The only problem is trying to find all of your Twitter contacts on Friend Feed.

      I’ve written a program that uses Google’s social graph to find the links between Twitter users and Friend Feed users. Download the program, run it, enter your passwords and watch it find and subscribe to all of your Tweeps on Friend Feed.

    • Delicious Links - 20 links - blogging, google, webdev, marketing, lifehacks

    This Week at IDT Labs

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

    • [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.

    • [FRIENDFEED] Tweak Refresh Rate

      This was a request from Tony because he wanted to change how often Friend Feed autorefreshes and reloads the page. The default setting is 2 minutes, but I’ve created a Greasemonkey script where you can tweak the value (to over 2 minutes).

    • [WORDPRESS] Big Excerpts

      I’m not quite sure on what planet having a 4 line text entry for the Excerpt field on WordPress blog posts is usable. On my planet you need to be able to see what you’re typing. Especially when you have to enter the HTML by hand.

    Tags: , , , , , , ,

    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/26/delicious-links-20-links-blogging-windows-codinghorror-amazon-shopping/feed/ engtech Weekly Links     What Have You Done For You Lately? http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/24/what-have-you-done-for-you/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/24/what-have-you-done-for-you/#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:51:43 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1465 Lifehacks and Productivity

    For Earth Day this year I decided I was going to try to make a real change by commuting to work under my own power instead of using my car. I've been riding a wave of endorphin high as my body goes through the shock of experiencing exercise again for the first time in a long while. I can feel the winter doldrums lifting [1], and I asked myself: when was the last time I did something that makes a positive change in my life?

    ]]>

    Lifehacks and Productivity

    For Earth Day this year I decided I was going to try to make a real change by commuting to work under my own power instead of using my car. I’ve been riding a wave of endorphin high as my body goes through the shock of experiencing exercise again for the first time in a long while. I can feel the winter doldrums lifting [1], and I asked myself: when was the last time I did something that makes a positive change in my life?

    Life is full of actions you can categorize as important or urgent. Important activities hold long term improvement while urgent activities scream DO IT NOW but only exist in the moment. A year from now you’ll have a hard time remembering the urgent activities even happened, whereas you might only just be starting to see the benefit from the important activities.

    Quoting Stephen R. Covey from 7 Habits:

    Activities that time should be spent on:

    • prevention
    • increasing production capacity
    • relationship building
    • recognizing new opportunities
    • planning
    • recreation

    These are things that are not urgent, but important. Things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation - all those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren’t urgent.

    As an internet addict, you can really see this in action with the web sites you visit. Portals like Twitter, Facebook and Friend Feed [2] all demand your attention RIGHT NOW and all the time. They can be tools for relationship building, but much like how the instant nature of the communication reduces the content of the message, the instant nature of the relationship reduces the strength of the relationship.

    In a recent post Giles put page views in perspective:

    It’s awesome to get a free burrito every 11,429 times somebody decides to read your blog. But that awesomeness doesn’t translate well to full-time careers, because it’s all too easy to get 11,429 people to visit your blog even though every single one of them realizes they should know better. There are a lot of people reading blogs when they should be chasing their dreams, and there are a lot of bloggers more than happy to waste your whole day. [3]

    I’ve been running Internet Duct Tape for two years now, and this week the blog counter hit 3 million pages served (or 262 burritos). This week I also did something that has a noticeable impact on my life instead of following my routines on cruise control. It felt like it was the first time I’d done that in a while.

    I’d like to encourage you to break out of your rut and do something important instead of something urgent.

    • Spent time with someone who enriches your life.
    • Do something you’ll remember a year from now.
    • Listen to some new music you really enjoy.
    • Read a kick ass book that leaves you smiling or crying.
    • Laugh uncontrollably. [4]

    I’m not knocking computers either. Write a kick ass program or a write kick ass article. But do something out of your comfort zone. Step away from the urgent to do something important.

    Footnotes

    1. I hibernate from December to April.
    2. Make no mistake though, I *love* these services. It’s hard for them to stay relevant though if you follow to many people.
    3. But I don’t think it’s fair to compare Jeff and codinghorror.com to Mike Arrington and TechCrunch. Very different beasts.
    4. If laughing uncontrollably is your rut, then that’s a good rut to have.
    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/24/what-have-you-done-for-you/feed/ engtech Lifehacks and Productivity     Lifestreaming 101 - Don’t Cross the Streams http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/22/lifestreaming-dont-cross-streams/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/22/lifestreaming-dont-cross-streams/#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:02:40 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1462 Social Software and You

    History has a tendency to repeat itself, mostly because the inventors weren't old enough to have been around the first time. Having a blog is the same as having a BBS twenty years earlier; using Twitter is the same as using IRC. Of course there are differences [1], but progress is built on the shoulders of giants.

    Like how 2007 was the year of microblogging, 2008 is the year of lifestreaming. People are becoming more comfortable with the idea after learning to swim in Facebook's pond [2], and they're ready to start swimming into the raging rivers of the public Internet. But before these neophyte tadpoles start eating flies, there's one thing they need to learn:

    Don't cross the streams.

    ]]>

    Social Software and You

    History has a tendency to repeat itself, mostly because the inventors weren’t old enough to have been around the first time. Having a blog is the same as having a BBS twenty years earlier; using Twitter is the same as using IRC. Of course there are differences [1], but progress is built on the shoulders of giants.

    Like how 2007 was the year of microblogging, 2008 is the year of lifestreaming. People are becoming more comfortable with the idea after learning to swim in Facebook’s pond [2], and they’re ready to start swimming into the raging rivers of the public Internet. But before these neophyte tadpoles start eating flies, there’s one thing they need to learn:

    Don’t cross the streams.

    What Is Lifestreaming?

    As we use the Internet, we’re generating all kinds of information:

    • Writing blog posts
    • Listening to music
    • Talking to friends
    • Playing video games
    • Watching/reviewing movies
    • Reading/reviewing books

    Lifestreaming is taking all that information from different sources, and sticking it in one place so that people who find it interesting can see what I’m up to. It’s less stalking, and more “this person has similar tastes to me so I’m interested in what they’re interested in.”

    Producers and Consumers

    The easiest way to think about lifestreaming is that you have a bunch of websites that act as producers of information. Last.fm is producing what I’m listening to. Twitter is producing who I’m talking to. Delicious is producing what I think is interesting. GoodReads is producing what I’m reading. My blog is producing what I’m writing about.

    Then you have the lifestreaming software that consumes these sources and builds a lifestream. Sources/sinks. Sources/destinations.Generators/monitors. Inputs/outputs. You get the idea, no matter what the terminology is.

    You use some websites to generate original information, and you use other websites to take that information and combine it into something new.

    Friend Feed Information Polution

    Don’t Cross the Streams

    But here’s the thing: if you want other people to pay attention to your lifestream then don’t cross the streams. The internet is an attention economy [3] and anything you can do to make it easier for people to pay attention to you, the way they want to, the better it will be for your personal brand.

    • If you share items on Google Reader but also save those items to Delicious then pick one source for your lifestream, not both.
    • If you StumbleUpon the sites your saving in Delicious then pick one source for your lifestream, not both.
    • If you use Twitter to talk, and then set up a repeater for Jaiku and Pownce then pick one source for your lifestream, not both.
    • If you’re using multiple lifestreaming services then don’t feed them back into one another.

    The #1 reason why I unsubscribe from someone’s lifestream is because they’re repeating themselves too often. This happens most often when they lifestream with Tumblr and then include that Tumblr lifestream into Friend Feed. They’re creating a feedback loop in their lifestream, and that creates noise. [4]

    I might not have the most evolved taste in music, but that doesn’t mean I want to listen to noise. [5]

    A quick rule of thumb is to get your producers and consumers straight. Am I using this site to produce original information or is it a copy of information I’m producing somewhere else? Don’t merge the copies back into each other. That creates information pollution.

    So take a look at your profile page to see how it looks on the outside. Is there a lot of duplication going on? Don’t cross the streams. [6] Do your followers a favor and turn off the noise. Make it easier for them to follow you.

    Footnotes

    1. Twitter is a kind of mesh IRC where instead of /ignoring the people you don’t like, you /follow to the people you do like.
    2. It’s a big pond.
    3. More information about the attention economy at Wikipedia, First Monday and ReadWriteWeb.
    4. The #2 reason is because they produce so much information that I can’t keep track of anyone else. #3 is because we don’t have that much in common.
    5. I saw one guy import his tumblr into friendfeed, his friendfeed into tumblr, and then twitter into both of them. Infinite loops.
    6. Unless you have to kill Gozer the Traveller.
    ]]>     http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/22/lifestreaming-dont-cross-streams/feed/ engtech Social Software and You Friend Feed Information Polution     How to Import Your Twitter Contacts to Friend Feed http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-friendfeed/ http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-friendfeed/#comments Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:51:13 +0000 engtech http://engtech.wordpress.com/?p=1460 Social Software and You

    I've commented before that Friend Feed makes for a really sweet Twitter client because of the way it threads replies and how easy it is to reply to another user. The only problem is trying to find all of your Twitter contacts on Friend Feed.

    I've written a program that uses Google's social graph to find the links between Twitter users and Friend Feed users. Download the program, run it, enter your passwords and watch it find and subscribe to all of your Tweeps on Friend Feed.

    ]]>

    Social Software and You

    I’ve commented before that Friend Feed makes for a really sweet Twitter client because of the way it threads replies and how easy it is to reply to another user. The only problem is trying to find all of your Twitter contacts on Friend Feed.

    I’ve written a program that uses Google’s social graph to find the links between Twitter users and Friend Feed users. Download the program, run it, enter your passwords and watch it find and subscribe to all of your Tweeps on Friend Feed.

    It keeps track of who it has added over time. If you unsubscribe from someone using the web interface, they won’t be added again by the program.

    Screenshot

    This first version is a text program. The next version will have a GUI and be more interactive.

    Twitter 2 Friend Feed Importer

    Privacy

    Twitter 2 Friend Feed Importer does not store your passwords in any shape or form, nor does it do anything else funky with them. I’ve being doing this too long to put my reputation on the line with something that shady.

    Self-Promotion

    The first time you run it, Twitter 2 Friend Feed Importer broadcasts that you’re using it. You can see the message here. The message is sent out at most once a month, and only when you’re running the program.

    It’ll also add me as a friend on Friend Feed, but if you unsubscribe I’ll never be added again.

    Download It

    The first version is available as a self-installing Windows application. The next version will be more interactive and you’ll be able to create imaginary friends for your Tweeps who aren’t on Friend Feed yet. Future versions will also support Linux and Mac (but for now you can run this in Parallels/Wine).

    Please use this link to share the program: http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-friendfeed/

    Technical Notes

    You can safely skip reading this section unless you’re interested in how I find out if a Twitter user is on Friend Feed. :)

    It uses Google’s Social Graph API to try and find connections between accounts on Twitter and Friend Feed (since Friend Feed doesn’t provide a good autodiscovery mechanism). You can play with the Social Graph API here. Unfortunately, this can be hit or miss. It works great on some people, but not so well with others.

    It comes down to whether or not the person has been setting up XFN and FOAF links between their services. It shows a big failure in the social graph API. People who have claimed their accounts using Technorati, Claim ID or MyBlogLog are easily linked — others, not so much.

    I’m planning on improving this in future versions, and moving away from Google’s API. Here’s hoping Friend Feed opens that information up more in the future.

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