Jul 12 2007

A Few Blog Related Tips

Published by at 3:56 pm under blogging,blogsearch,StumbleUpon

I’ve been writing a list of blogging and IT related tips – chances are you may well know most of these but I thought I’d write them up into a post.

1. FireFox

For those obsessed with interested in Alexa rankings, there is indeed an Alexa toolbar extension available for FireFox and Mozilla. I’ve been happily using it for some months now, and it can also provide you with some funky search related options (like highlighting nofollow links on a website, meta tags, back links, robots.txt, Alexa Rank, Google PageRank etc). It sits unobtrusively on the main menu bar (no need to have a whole new toolbar). You can read more about it at SearchStatus.

D’oh, I’ve been using FireFox for about 18 months, but only recently realised that clicking the track wheel on the mouse, when positioned on a link, opens the link in a new tab (I used the right click and select “open link in new tab”) .

2. Feedburner Pro

If you’re using FeedBurner to burn your feed (as I do) , you can now upgrade to their pro-stats for free. If you’re confused about which stats options to choose – Andy Beard had a great overview entitled Important Tips on Using FeedBurner Pro.

I notice you can now integrate FeedBurner easily with Blogger powered blogs.

3. Co.mments

Having trouble tracking your conversations on other blogs? Thanks to Ben who left a comment here, he pointed me to a website called co.mments.com. Here you can quickly create an account and “drag and drop” a bookmarklet onto your toolbar. I’ve only just got around to installing it – so I can’t provide much in the way of feedback, but it seems to be a really useful application.

4. Need some SEO help?

Rob over at YackYack is offering to give some free SEO advice to a worthy cause. Now I don’t want to go suggesting that any particular website is in need of this advice, so if you’re interested you can pop over and put your hand up. Or alternatively, blog about a website you think needs help. Rob’s most interested in a website (as opposed to a blog created on mainstream blogging software).

(PS Rob – not copping out, but in terms of your 5 things to avoid or resist the temptation on when blogging tag – I think my Blog Karma series should suffice)

5. StumbleUpon

This isn’t a tip per se, but I’m having lots of fun with StumbleUpon, but I’m just wondering if people actually “get it”. Do you understand StumbleUpon? Would an overview and “how to” help you?

6. Blog Search

I was looking at Ask.com yesterday, and noticed they have a pretty groovy looking blogsearch, which is a lot more “feature packed” than many of the standard ones. The main landing page has a funky web 2.0 feel, with customisable “skin” (aka background).

Ask.com

And of course I did the obligatory “ego search” 😉

Blogpond Search

There are advanced search options, filtering of results by relevance, recency and popularity, and the ability to search blogs or feeds. You’ll also notice they’ve included an easy “subscribe” button and a “post to” button (e.g. bloglines, blogger, digg, reddit, del.icio.us, newsvine). Pretty groovy functionality.

7. Dodo

My last tip is a “beware”. I noticed an ad for Dodo offering free ADSL2 internet. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because for the vast majority of people it probably is.

The deal goes like this – you pay for the phone line rental ($32.90) each month, and this entitles you to the free super fast ADSL2. So what’s the catch? The download limit. You get a 150 MB (yes megabytes) download each month, AND 50% of that allowance is allocated for “off peak” usage (off peak is 1am to 9am). So you get 75 MB a month to use between 9 am and 1 am.

After you’ve used this up (at my house that would probably be about 2 hours if we were lucky), excess is charged at 18 cents per MB. In their wisdom, they have fortunately added a $29.99 cap, which would buy you an extra 167 MB. So once you hit your 317 MB (assuming you had significant insomnia to use up your off peak allowance), your internet speed is then throttled to 64kbps. Not so super fast after all. Now I’m sure there would be a minuscule percentage of the population who could work within those download limits, but I daresay it wouldn’t be many.

8. I need help

I’ve just installed Norton Internet Security 2007, and I have no idea how to configure the anti-spam filter. I can’t find an option to integrate with Outlook Express anywhere. Consequently, my inbox is chockablock with spam for Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium, and of course v1agra. Any ideas? Please!

16 responses so far

16 Responses to “A Few Blog Related Tips”

  1. # robon 12 Jul 2007 at 4:26 pm

    Nice post Meg,

    Thanks for the shout out and referencing that post of mine. :)

    I use most of those things you reference there, I just love searchstatus and feedburner is just totally cool, even if its now owned by ‘the man’ :(

    I hadn’t seen that ask.com blogsearch thing…off to check that out in a bit.

    >(PS Rob – not copping out, but in terms of your 5 things to avoid or resist the temptation on when blogging tag – I think my Blog Karma series should suffice

    No worries Meg and having read your Blog Karma post it is certainly of the same theme and vain. Its certainly bang on topic with some of the more murkier offerings in blogland today (buy comments).

    Sorry to hear of your norton problems. Wish i could help :(

  2. # Megon 12 Jul 2007 at 4:37 pm

    Thanks Rob :)

    Re Norton – I’m sure there’ll be someone who can help!

  3. # Luke McCallumon 12 Jul 2007 at 5:03 pm

    Hey Meg,

    Help re point 8. get rid of Norton!
    The best firewall, spam blocker that i have found is ZoneAlarm which also includes antivirus.

    However personally i am a user of Google Apps for your Domain and you just cant beat the Gmail spam filter!

  4. # Megon 12 Jul 2007 at 5:07 pm

    Hi Luke

    But I only just bought it! Actually that surprises me about ZoneAlarm. We were using that on one of the other computers in the office & it caused no end of dramas – had to turn it off. Google Apps for your domain eh? Will have to check it out.

  5. # Snoskredon 12 Jul 2007 at 5:43 pm

    1. If you say it’s ok, I’ll give it a go.

    2. I couldn’t work out how to actually upgrade? I looked at this the other day. Now I feel like an idiot typing that out loud.. :)

    3, I love it, I’ve been using it a few days, it ROCKS. Thanks again Ben you legend!

    4. I don’t have a standard site, I have a blog. :(

    5. Absolutely, I’d love that. I’m new to Stumbleupon. I’d like to know more about how I can use it better.

    6. Cool!

    7. How evil! But I’m sure it will make them plenty of money short term from all the internet n00bs out there who don’t know better. That’s how the 419 scammers work. So in reality, these guys are almost as bad in my opinion.

    8. Thunderbird? 😉 Get rid of those evil microsoft programs! 😉

    I know nothing about Norton – I use AVG because the other half is insane about free virus programs VS ones you have to pay for.. if he ever gets a blog I am sure he will amuse the internet for hours on that topic. 😉

    The Gmail Spam filter is now so effective I have stopped using Gmail for the most part, after it put a legitimate email from a fellow blogger into the spam trap and I didn’t see it for over a week until I happened to log in. Yes, I am a scambaiter, I have over 50 gmail addresses in my thunderbird and get the mails by pop3, and I don’t often log into the accounts. Now for all blogging stuff I’m using email addresses on my own domain with Thunderbird.

    Yes, there will be spam. Yes, I have a delete key and I am not afraid to use it when necessary. That’s my spam filter. And of course the 419 scammers get baited by my baiting software so I welcome their mails. 😉

    Love your work as always Meg. 😉

    Snoskred
    http://snoskred.blogspot.com/

  6. # Megon 12 Jul 2007 at 8:23 pm

    Snoskred

    2. Me either – just hit the FeedBurner Stats Pro button, and follow Andy’s advice (well, that’s what I did)

    5. Cool, that’ll be my next project.

    8. That’s what I love about presenting a problem, you get so many alternative solutions :)

    Love your comments, Snoskred – always good value :)

  7. # jenon 13 Jul 2007 at 11:40 am

    I’d wondered what the catch with Dodo was, and now I know. Don’t think I’ll be moving off my present provider.

    Thanks for the other tips. Some I knew some I don’t. PS: I don’t get StumbleUpon but I’ve not really tried very hard. I have recently started using Bumpzee which seemed more intuitive to me. I’d be interested to know what others think.

  8. # Megon 13 Jul 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Hi Jen

    I think I will work on a StumbleUpon guide – I agree it’s not particularly intuitive.

    Thanks for your feedback :)

  9. # Benon 13 Jul 2007 at 1:24 pm

    Co.mments.com is one of the web services I swear by. Use it for good, not evi! 😉

  10. # Megon 13 Jul 2007 at 1:35 pm

    Ben

    I’m not even going to ask how it could be used for evil….

  11. # Andyon 14 Jul 2007 at 2:30 pm

    Re: Dodo, that is absolutely shocking.

    I saw the ad late at night with a stupid looking bikini clad blonde talking about free broadband.

    This initially shocked me as Dodo were still advertising paid dial-up until quite recently.

    Noticing the 150MB limit in the fine print and I thought I was imagining it…until reading your post!

  12. # Sharonon 14 Jul 2007 at 6:13 pm

    Great tips – have to agree on Norton, it used to be great, but I switched to McAfee and have no regrets. I would really appreciate an intro to StumbleUpon as I haven’t really figured it out and just don’t have time to right now… Cheers!

  13. # Sephyrothon 15 Jul 2007 at 9:00 am

    Re Search Status – it will only tell you the rankings of a page, but not actually help your rankings. There’s also a toolbar called “Smart Toolbar” which claims to send the rankings to Alexa. One or both of these ideas must have worked (or someone who already had the proper toolbar on IE visited), because within about a week of installing them, I managed to get a relatively decent ranking – in the 2 million range.

    However, I still think that dependence upon Alexa is still a load of crud (I could use a stronger word here, but I’ll keep it clean ;))

    Re SEO – I’ll plead almost total ignorance on it, however I’m always willing to learn new stuff :)

    Stumbleupon – I’m looking forward to the guide; I used to stumble a while back, but I’m sure there are some nuances that I’m overlooking :)

    Sephyroth
    http://www.sephyroth.net

  14. # Megon 15 Jul 2007 at 10:45 am

    Hi Sephyroth

    According the the SearchStatus page “Alexa queries made do affect Alexa statistics…. The Alexa Rank display sends your current URL domain, your local IP address and a unique constant to Alexa Web Services.”

    So it would appear that having the SearchStatus toolbar would affect Alexa ranking, unless I’m reading this wrong.

    Got to get working on the StumbleUpon guide…

  15. # Sephyrothon 15 Jul 2007 at 12:34 pm

    Yeah, you’re right about that; I’ve been reading that wrong the whole time…whoops!

    And to think that I had my eyes checked just last Monday… 😉

    Thanks for straightening me out :)

  16. # Megon 15 Jul 2007 at 12:36 pm

    Hehe 😀 Glad to have helped.