// Internet Duct Tape

CSS Tip: Building 3D Buttons with CSS for the Sandbox Theme

Posted in CSS and Web Design, Technology by engtech on June 26, 2007

Yes, it’s another post on CSS design with Sandbox. Feel free to skip.

One of the nice/painful things about designing for the Sandbox WordPress theme is that it forces you to use CSS to do the things you want to do. There’s no sneaking in there to tweak the underlying structure to get more convenient selectors, it’s CSS or nothing.

An often requested tip is how to do 3d buttons for the menu bar at the top of the page. It’s done using the common “sliding door” technique where one image is the front plus middle, and another image forms the end. I’ll be using the images and technique from the Dark Liquidcard 2.0 theme by Jori Avlis in this example, along with the Sandboxed example blog.

Image Is Everything

The starting point is to create two graphics for your 3d buttons. One image will have the left-and-middle portion and the other will have only the right portion. If you want the button to look different when it is highlighted (or when that page is selected), then put the highlighted version in the same image file right underneath it! That way the entire image is downloaded once and there isn’t a delay the first time a user hovers over the button.

3d menu button for blog theme

3d menu button for blog theme

In these images the button is 46 pixels high.

Getting Started

Here is what the menu looks like without any CSS:

sandbox theme menu unstyled

We’ll start off by applying some basic styles: turn off the list style, remove any padding that might get in the way.

div#menu ul {
	list-style: none;
	margin: 0px;
	padding: 0px;
	width: 100%;
	height: 46px;
}

sandbox theme menu unstyled

Adding the 3d Buttons

Now we’ll add the 3d buttons as background images. We’ll start with the left-and-middle button first. It will attach to the list element (LI). You will have to adjust the padding so that the text is centered properly with respect to the image. Float left will change the orientation of the list. (Note: I changed the text color to white so that it would show up against the image)

div#menu ul li {
	float: left;
	background: url(http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/engtechwp/website/left.png)
		no-repeat left top;
	padding: 10px 0px 12px 10px;
}

add 3d button to menu using css in wordpress theme

Now add the right button. It will attach to the link anchor within the list element (LI A). Again, take care with the padding so that the text is centered properly.

 div#menu ul li a {
	background: url(http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/engtechwp/website/right.png)
		no-repeat top right;
	padding: 10px 25px 12px 10px;
}

add 3d button to menu using css in wordpress theme

Adding a Hover Effect

Now we want to show the hover effect. This is done by shifting the background image down 46 pixels. We’ll also disable the underline effect by turning off text-decoration.

div#menu li:hover {
  background-position: 0% -46px;
}

div#menu li a:hover {
	text-decoration: none;
}

div#menu li:hover a {
	background-position: 100% -46px;
}

add 3d button to menu with hover effect using css in wordpress theme

Download the CSS File

You can download the code for this CSS example

1 comment

And we have a winner…

Posted in Contests, Technology, Tshirts by engtech on June 26, 2007

Never has there been a truer mantra than “those who can’t, teach.” I might write posts about using online calendar applications, but I think by now we’ve all realized I don’t use them. That’s why I’ll do things like schedule a contest to end the day before leaving on vacation… knowing fully well that I won’t get around to judging it until a month later.

The Winners

The Entrants

  1. “What is your secret indulgent movie” by sulz (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  2. “Remaking Back to the Future” by Collin (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  3. “Favorite Movies” by Jan (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  4. “TShirt Slogans That Could Get You Kicked Out of School” by Gary Rodgers (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  5. “My Favorite Tshirt Slogans” by Gary Rodgers (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  6. “What Hollywood Has Taught Me” by Gary Rodgers (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  7. “5 Most Memorable Movie Adaptations” by loricat (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  8. “5 Favorite Movie Soundtracks” by azahar (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  9. “5 Favorite Movie Musicals” by azahar (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  10. “15 of the Funnies Money Tshirt Pics” by ispf (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  11. “Tips to Winning Tshirts” by valkrieangel (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  12. “5 Truly Absurd Movies” by loricat (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  13. “Movies Teaching Management Lessons” by Ketan (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  14. “Triumph of Imperfection Making Tshirts for Kids” by Juggling Frogs (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  15. “Books To Movies Do they make sense” by ish (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  16. “My Favorite Movie Quotes” by Collecting Tokens (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  17. “7 Musical Movies not necessarily musicals” by Collecting Tokens (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  18. “Nerdy Shirts Should Be Covert” by Cory OBrien (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  19. “10 Great Movies with Kick Ass Women Who Didn’t Necessarily Kick Anyone’s Ass” by Collecting Tokens (Save this post at del.icio.us)

The Bonus Round

These weren’t included in the contest because they were never submitted, but I still think they’re pretty nifty.

  1. “A Geek’s Complete Lack of Style” by Webomatica (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  2. “My Ten Favorite Star Wars Moments” by Webomatica (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  3. “Movie Sequels I’d Really Like to See” by Webomatica (Save this post at del.icio.us)
  4. “Comic Book Movies Without the Superheroes” by Webomatica (Save this post at del.icio.us)

7 comments

Best of Feeds – 26 links – blogging, tips, writing, comics, comments

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on June 23, 2007

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. I post them on Twitter as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.

Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

  • WordPress CSS Tip: Design for Sandbox Theme in a sandboxIn case you missed the last post, there is a CSS design contest using the Sandbox theme for WordPress. That post will explain what the heck it is all about. I’ll be the first to admit that I only know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to CSS design, but one ‘workhack’ that easily […]
  • Win Cash Prizes for your CSS Design for SandboxWeb pages (ie: what you are looking at right now) are composed of many things. If you think of web pages as a house, HTML is the foundation and structure while CSS is the aluminum siding, brickwork and paint. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. A…
  • Gone Fishin(photo by alex)I’m gone for the next two weeks without internet access. I was too busy to line up guest bloggers this time, so you’ll just have to go through the past posts to get your fix. Most popular postsRandom postsAll posts by titlesTag cloud Shout Out to the CommentersI’d like to give a…
  • Best of Feeds – 21 links – programming, code, development, geek, lolcatsTags: blogging, book, code, development, geek, humor, lolcats, programming, web2.0

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5 comments

WordPress CSS Tip: Design for Sandbox Theme in a sandbox

Posted in CSS and Web Design, Technology, WordPress by engtech on June 22, 2007

In case you missed the last post, there is a CSS design contest using the Sandbox theme for WordPress. That post will explain what the heck it is all about.

I’ll be the first to admit that I only know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to CSS design, but one ‘workhack’ that easily applies to any kind of programming activity is rapid development. The concept is simple: reduce the time between action and result to the shortest amount of time possible so you can get more done. My number one tip for doing a fast CSS design is to do it all on your own machine instead of doing it live on the Internet (or wordpress.com). It will save you lots of time and headaches.

I’ve taken the sample blog and example CSS template provided by Scott Wallick and made a very easy to use downloadable archive. It contains nothing but the HTML files, image files and CSS from the sample blog. It can get you redesigning Sandbox in less than a minute.

Getting Started

  1. Download the Sandboxed zip file
  2. Unzip it
  3. Open index.html in your web browser
  4. Edit style.css
  5. Refresh your web browser
  6. Repeat #4 to #5

I find it easier to work on HTML files saved on my computer than creating a dummy blog on a fresh WordPress installation. If you feel the same way then downloading this archive is right for you.

Pick The Right Tools

There are several requirements for any tool that makes designing CSS easier:

  1. editing with syntax highlighting plus auto-completion
  2. showing you what CSS selectors are available on the page you are editing
  3. inspecting why a design looks the way it does

I heartily recommend the combination of the Firefox web browser with the Firebug extension. The learning curve for Firebug is a bit steep, but it will save you a lot of time in the long run because it is chock full of goodies as can be seen on this page.

Testing in Multiple Browsers

One of the hardest things I find in web design is getting something to look the same in multiple browsers. Having multiple browsers on hand to check out your changes locally is a must if cross-browser compatibility is important to you. Here are the top browsers to consider. Market share numbers are from w3counter (thanks Daniel).

  1. Internet Explorer 6 – 50% market share
    • Click on that link to get the completely standalone version of IE6 that you can run side by side with IE7
  2. Internet Explorer 7 – 17% market share
  3. Firefox 2 – 15% market share (and 9% market share for FF 1.5)
  4. Safari 2 – 2% market share
    • Finally available for Windows users
  5. Opera 9 – less than 1% market share

The market share should give you an idea of which browsers to spend the most time designing in. I find Firefox the easiest to work with. Jalaj gives a few other suggestions.

One highly recommended technique is “reseting” CSS properties at the beginning of the file to remove slight differences between browsers.

Some people like doing a Global white space reset by zeroing both margin and padding for all elements at the top of their stylesheets. Eric Meyer’s Global Reset, Christian Montoya’s initial CSS file, Mike Rundle’s initial CSS file, Ping Mag’s initial CSS file. [Roger Johansson]

More explanation of Christian Montoya’s initial CSS

Know What Size to Design For

It is important to test your design in different screen resolutions. Market share numbers are from w3counter. Something else to keep in mind is that those big old CRT monitors and those funky new LCD monitors display colours differently.

  1. 1024×768 50.43%
  2. 1280×1024 17.03%
  3. 800×600 8.89%
  4. 1280×800 8.38%

I recommend the Window Resizer extension for Firefox for rapidly switching resolutions. Firebug may be able to do it as well, I am by no means an expert.

Advanced Design Considerations

There’s a lot out there to learn about CSS design, here are some highly recommended links with more information. If you have any other suggestions, drop them in the comments.

21 comments

Win Cash Prizes for your CSS Design for Sandbox

Posted in Contests, CSS and Web Design, Technology, WordPress, WordPress.com Tips by engtech on June 20, 2007

Web pages (ie: what you are looking at right now) are composed of many things. If you think of web pages as a house, HTML is the foundation and structure while CSS is the aluminum siding, brickwork and paint. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. A passing knowledge of both of them is essential if you want to run your own website.

HTML Example

CSS Example

The whole idea behind HTML and CSS is that you use HTML to format your web page (or blog post) with things like headers, bold, lists and tables. Then you use CSS to style those elements so that they look the way you want them to. The whole idea behind it all is that you can build the structure with HTML once, and then change the look of it whenever you want to using CSS.

WordPress, Sandbox and CSS

If you want to change the way your WordPress blog looks there are two ways to do it. The first way is to change your theme. This changes the underlying HTML formating structure. The second way is to leave the theme alone and change your CSS. If you are running a blog hosted on WordPress.com, then the only way to customize your theme is to buy the CSS editing upgrade, choose a base theme, and then use CSS to redesign it. The preferred WordPress theme for CSS designing is Sandbox because it gives you so many things to play with.

Internet Duct Tape is hosted on WordPress.com using the Sandbox theme and a custom CSS design by yours truly. If I can find the time, I will be participating in the contest.

Win Prizes for Your Sandbox Theme

The creator of Sandbox is running a theme design competition with monetary prizes. The pot is getting pretty big right now, and the top six designs can win between $50 to $750 US. Even if you’ve never tried your hand at designing CSS before, this is the perfect time to give it a shot.

Scott has put together sample blog content for designing CSS for Sandbox and he also has a template file with all of the Sandbox CSS selectors.

Free Sandbox Designs

There are several free Sandbox designs available:

People Are Talking About It

More coverage about the competition can be found at

weblogs tools collection: “I thought it was a good time for a new theme competition—or rather a “designs” competition. It has been around two years since the last successful WordPress theme competition (participants of the competitions in 2006 will roll their eyes and would include me).”

wank: “I’m hoping this’ll be as successful as last year’s Style Contest, and that Automattic will be as generous with their support as Six Apart were with theirs. (Matt has already thrown in $500 prize money, which is a good start, but a little linkage wouldn’t hurt.) “

Adam: “Scott’s organizing a wordpress design competition, purely in CSS. which means it’s open to:
* wordpress.com users
* anyone who can use CSS, since PHP and javascript won’t be judged”

Small Potato: “Conveniently for Scott’s Sandbox theme and WordPress.com’s Custom CSS Upgrade service, WordPress.com users will not be left out of the competition because Sandbox will be added to WordPress.com’s collection of themes. By the way, you can enter as many designs as you want. Surely, that’s not because this competition wants to promote Sandbox even more, but because entering multiple designs will give you a better chance at winning.” (read the comments)

Binary Moon: “And what do you have to do for the money? All that’s required is for you to design a skin for the sandbox theme. You don’t need to do any php or html, it’s entirely css and image based.”

There’s more good discussion in a WordPress.com Support Forum thread

15 comments

Gone Fishin

Posted in Internet Duct Tape News, Technology by engtech on June 03, 2007


(photo by alex)

I’m gone for the next two weeks without internet access. I was too busy to line up guest bloggers this time, so you’ll just have to go through the past posts to get your fix.

Shout Out to the Commenters

I’d like to give a big thanks to the people who leave comments on this blog. Why not give them a looksie?

(I sorted commenters by email address, so if you showed up twice… welp, that’s why)

Hope you guys enjoy the next two weeks as much as I plan on doing.


(photo by elasticcamel)

Cheers!

41 comments

Best of Feeds – 21 links – programming, code, development, geek, lolcats

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on June 02, 2007

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. I post them on Twitter as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.

Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

 

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Comments Off on Best of Feeds – 21 links – programming, code, development, geek, lolcats

Digest for May 2007

Posted in Monthly Digest, Technology by engtech on June 01, 2007

Every month I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips.

Subscribe to this digest using RSS.

I finally got my own domain name! http://internetducttape.com

Opinion and Reviews

Harold Is a Robot

Memes

Blogging

Aggregated Links

Last time: Digest for April 2007

2 comments

Create Buzz by Doing the Unexpected and Being Remarkable (Puzzle Quest Case Study)

Posted in Games, Marketing and Promotion, Technology by engtech on June 01, 2007

puzzle quest nintendo ds screenshotA game company called Infinite Interactive have a break-away hit on their hands with a new game called PuzzleQuest. Their success has come from two key differentiators:

  • Mashing the puzzle gem (IE: Bejeweled) genre with the old school Japanese RPG (IE: Final Fantasy) genre.
  • Releasing a demo for PCs over the Internet even though the game was only available for the Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable handheld consoles
  • (and possibly) very limited available at game stores causing scarcity and a lot of buzz around how hard it is to find a copy

The Heath brothers [wikipedia] rate unexpectedness as one of the six rules of sticky, memorable, and interesting ideas. Seth Godin recommends that products be remarkable in his book the Purple Cow [wikipedia]. The qualities of being unexpected and being remarkable are most successful when they are intertwined.

Being Unexpected

puzzle quest nintendo ds pc game demo downloadInfinite Interactive has reached a new audience by offering a PC demo of the Puzzle Quest. Demos, or free limited-play sample versions of games, are a tradition in the PC gamer domain, but are relatively new to the console market. The Xbox 360 with its built-in internet connection and hard drive is a perfect marketplace for try-before-you-buy game demos. The Nintendo DS hand-held console has been experimenting with downloading game demos at supported stores, but their severely limited demos still don’t give you a good feel for the game.

PC video gaming is in a slump. Between World of Warcraft and the many choices on the console market, as well as an ever increasing number of HD-TV home theatre setups, console gaming has been taking an ever increasing marketshare away from PC gaming. There just aren’t as many quality computer video games being made anymore. Puzzle Quest recognizes that most console gamers are former PC gamers and that a PC connected to the internet is by far the easiest way to distribute a demo for a handheld console without a hard drive.

Most games are written to work on multiple platforms these days, so offering a PC demo for a console game isn’t as hard to do as you might think. I’m surprised it isn’t done more often.

Being Exceptional

PuzzleQuest is an excellent gem matching puzzle game AND an excellent RPG. They might not meet the depth of story of a Bioware roleplaying game, but they have solid game mechanics that are quite addictive.

The game has all the features of modern RPGs:

  • Branching storyline based on player actions
  • All combat is done by solving gem matching puzzles against an opponent AI
  • Matching gems builds up mana that lets you cast spells that affect the game board
  • Different skills affect how you gain mana, gold and experience during puzzle combat
  • Different classes gain skills at different rates and can cast different spells
  • Different items give you different modifiers for puzzle combat
  • Acquire different companions who help you during combat
  • Capture enemies to learn spells from them
  • Capture enemies to gain mounts
  • Capture runes to craft items
  • Capture cities to increase your income

I was really surprised at the depth of activity available, and more importantly how fun it is.

puzzle quest action screenshot

The Proof is in the Pudding

Since being released on the Nintendo DS and PSP, Puzzle Quest has found an ever increasing audience. The buzz that has grown around their game has led to announcements of future releases for Xbox Live Arcade and the PC. The biggest problem I had after playing the was trying to figure out where I could get a copy of the game.

  • Found out about it on Penny Arcade (Puzzle Quest comic 1, Puzzle Quest comic 2)
  • Hours spent playing PuzzleQuest PC demo (I replayed it three times)
  • Spent at least 30 minutes trying to find a torrent for the full PC game… before I realized it was for the Nintendo DS.
  • Tried to find it in no less than 8 local game stores (ended up using Amazon)
  • Picked up a copy of one of their PC games in the bargain bin (Battlecry 3)
  • Got my own Nintendo DS so I’d stop hogging my girlfriend’s

My own experience with Puzzle Quest shows how successful it has been. Infinite Interactive has done an amazing job jumping from the flagging PC game market to handheld games, and I look forward to a day soon when they overcome the distribution issues and the game can be found at your local store. But why wait until then? You can download it and give it a try now.

7 comments

The Programmable Web – Yahoo Pipes

Posted in IDT Labs Software Development, Perl, Technology, Yahoo Pipes by engtech on May 30, 2007

Duct tape is a great tool because it is so shiny and sticky. You can use it to glue so many things together, even if they end up looking like Frankenstein by the end of it. All you need is a camera, a cellphone, an MP3 player and a piece of duct tape to get yourself the only mobile convergence device worth having. The programming language Perl has quite often been called “duct tape for the internet” because it lets you easily transform text and interact with web sites.


(photo by philgarlic)

Here is a simple Perl script that downloads an RSS feed and bookmarks each entry to del.icio.us:

my $delicious = Net::Delicious->new(
				    {'user'=>$user,
				     'pswd'=>$password},
				    'updates'=>'.',
				    'xml_parser'=>'simple',
				    'debug'=>1);
my $feed = XML::FeedPP::RSS->new($rss_url);
$feed->normalize();         # Sort by pubDate and remove non-unique
foreach my $item ($feed->get_item()) {
  my $description = $item->description();
  $description =~ s/<.*?>//g; # remove HTML
  my %args = ('url'=>$item->link(),
	      'description'=>$item->title(),
	      'extended'=>$description,
	      'tags'=>"from_feed",
	      'replace'=>'no');
  my $retval = $delicious->add_post(%args);
}

The problem with Perl is that you have to either run it on your own machine, or buy web hosting that lets you run your own Perl scripts (or Python/Ruby). This is a real pain in the butt.

Enter Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo created one of the most innovative web tools I’ve ever seen. Yahoo Pipes lets you do all kinds of conversions and filtering on the web without requiring a web host to host your programs. If you want to convert XML/RSS data to other XML/RSS then look no further.

There’s still room for improvement:

  • Scraping web sites that do not have information in XML/RSS. There are other companies that let you do this, but they’re even harder to use than Pipes (IE: dapper.net).
  • Notifying you when your pipes don’t work. That makes finding existing pipes and mashing up multiple pipes tricky as best. It’s hard to use a tool when things constantly change underneath you.
  • It would also be nice if allowed HTML in the Pipes descriptions as it is hard to describe how to use them sometimes.
  • Better debugging messages when developing your own Pipes

Yahoo Pipes is targeted towards programmers, not casual users, but there is still a million and one things you can do with it. Here are some of my pipes that are free for other people to use.

Simple

Social Sites

Personal

Got Pipes?

Are there any specific RSS feeds mashups you’re looking for but don’t have the Yahoo Pipes expertise to create? Leave a comment on this post and I’ll see what I can come up with.

See the full list of free software I have created.

You can get frequent updates about all of my new software, tools or blog themes by subscribing to IDT Labs by RSS or by email. Or you could just subscribe to my main blog, Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to feed

12 comments

Best of Feeds – 29 links – code, humor, google, books, geek

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on May 28, 2007

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. I post them on Twitter as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.

Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

5 comments

Opting Out of Technorati – The Break-up

Posted in Humor, Technology, Technorati by engtech on May 24, 2007

Dear Technorati,

I’m writing to say goodbye. With time I hope I’ll have more good things to say than bad, but this hasn’t been the case of late. I know you have plenty of other suitors paying attention to you, and I doubt you’ll even miss me. But I thought I’d write you a note to explain my absence and what went wrong between us.

I’ve decided to follow in the footsteps of Jason Kottke (from 2005) and stop calling you. It was fun watching my rank improve until I was in the top percentile of your favorite people, but I’ll never be one of the top one hundred you lavish your attention on… so why am I bothering? One of the key principles of time management is to put your attention and focus on what gets the maximum return on investment, but you haven’t been giving me anything more than a number and a lot of frustration.

goodbye technorati rank

Technorati, I fully appreciate the magnitude of what you’re doing with only a 45 person team behind you. I think focusing on search makes sense because you’ve already wasted too much time courting bloggers for links. Bloggers truly are such a limited part of the all the people who could be using you. We’re also fair weather friends who are the first to turn on you and complain when things go wrong.

But I’m leaving you Technorati, and I have the following grievances that you don’t seem to care about. I’m glad you’ve shed some pounds, and your dressing better, but looks aren’t everything. It’s the way you treat me that matters in the end.

Problems I’ve had with Technorati

  1. You lost the last month of my blog posts even though they were pinged and indexed before your new cosmetic changes. Because I only show the very latest blog post on my front page you’ll never find them again, even though the last 40 entries are all nicely showing up with full text in my RSS feed. Why don’t your spiders use my RSS feed? This is not the first time we’ve had this problem.
  2. You are inflexible when it comes to my blog URL. My latest posts must appear on https://engtech.wordpress.com, and your spiders will become confused if I ever change it to something like engtech.wordpress.com/blog. I can go from …com/blog to …com but not the other way around.
  3. My Technorati favorites page does not show the latest posts from ALL my 500 favorites – only a small subset of them. It is much better for me to track them with Google Reader or to use a Google Custom Search engine then to use Technorati favorites.
  4. The Technorati API should be a great way to grab information about blogs, but if you are under high traffic you will often fail to return any data at all instead of a standard error.
  5. You ask for entirely too many links back. I’m supposed to tag my posts with links back to you and add big “favorite my blog on Technorati” links on every page of my site in the hopes I can climb the top 100 favorites list, which no one really uses anyways.
  6. You do nothing to fix the long standing ping bug where anyone can ping a permalink post on a blog and have it show up as a new blog. I have to log a support ticket whenever I want to fix this.
  7. You cannot handle domain changes. It is very common for bloggers to start out on *.blogspot.com or *.wordpress.com and then eventually buy their own domain name. Every other search engine understands the 301 redirect just fine, why can’t you? This is by far your biggest limitation.

This isn’t to say you don’t have good people working for you. I’ve seen you help out friends and send them free t-shirts. I fully appreciate how difficult bloggers are to deal with, and how big of an achievement indexing that many blogs is. I appreciate all of the times you’ve gone out of your way to contact people who are having problems.

But there’s no denying that I’m having a very bad user experience with Technorati. Instead of being able to use you how I want, I’m pigeon-holed into trying to get you to display my blog properly and track the other blogs who are linking to it. All for what… a few meaningless numbers?

Technorati Rank got a lot of attention before it was replaced with Technorati Authority, but it can easily be deep-sixed. Google has bought FeedBurner and can combine the data from FeedBurner subscription counts and Google Reader. While you were busy determining authority by blog links, authority by RSS readership is going to come along and wipe you out with a metric that makes so much more sense.

So I’ve had enough of our relationship, Technorati. I know I haven’t exactly been kind to you in return (it would be polite to call me overly critical), so I think it is time for us to put this mutually destructive relationship to end. I’ve often complained that the biggest mistake a blog can make it not to own it’s own name. I’m moving on to internetducttape.com, and I know you’ll never find me. Even though I’m redirecting my little heart out, you don’t care to follow.

Sincerely,

Formerly known as Honeycakes

Over the top, but I couldn’t help it.

https://engtech.wordpress.com is now http://internetducttape.com, which means my Technorati Authority has dropped to 0. I’ve freed myself from my ball and chain and now I will focus on content and readers instead of traffic and links.

And of course, cool hacks, tricks and mash-ups of existing web services thanks to a little bit of internet duct tape.

51 comments

Using Comment Spam to Measure Blog Rank

Posted in Technology, The War on Spam by engtech on May 22, 2007

bambi baby adultUsing the Technorati Rank as a measure of blogging hierarchy is so 2005. Deciding if a blog is part of the top 100 purely by the number of other blogs linking to it is one way to measure popularity, but there must be other ways. In nature you can track the population increases of Bambi, Thumper and friends by the co-related increase the number of hunters going around killing their mothers. Could there be another way to measure blog worth other than Technorati?

If only there was some parasitic relationship that fed off the blogosphere the way predators feed off of prey?

Of course! Spam.

spicy hot blog comment spam

I’m joking about quantity of spam as a measure of blog worth. But what I’m not joking about is how much more spam I am getting now compared to a year ago. I’d like to think it’s because my blog is so much more popular now, but the sad truth is that spam is an epidemic that’s affecting bloggers from all walks of life. Even Robert Scoble.

penny arcade bob the door to door spam salesman

The War on Spam

Comments spam is an infection and it is spreading further and further. It attacks our blogs and stands out like a rash. There are several over the counter remedies to comment spam, but sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease.

  • Force users to login to a verified account
    • Which means no one will bother to comment unless the login is part of a larger network like a Google account or Typepad account
  • Captcha image response algorithms
    • Which means no one will bother to comment because they are impossible to read and a complete pain in the ass
    • (I’m talking about you, Typepad)
  • Simple captcha (math, unscrambled word)
    • Works except for the 90% of the time I forget to fill it out
  • Akismet filtering (what we use at wordpress.com)

Akismet says that 95% of all comments left on blogs are spam

Akismet – Building Spam into Haystacks

One of the limitations about being hosted at wordpress.com is that the only vaccine I have for fighting off comment spam is Akismet. Which is great when it works, but, uh, not so great when it doesn’t. Akismet does a very good job of identifying ham from spam, but the problem is that it doesn’t do anything to decrease the sheer volume of spam you get. Akismet will help you lead a normal day-to-day life, but it won’t keep you from having the occasional sore on your lip for all the world to see.

I get around 1500 spam a day now. Sometimes Akismet isn’t strong enough or isn’t vaccinated against a new strain and I’ll have between 5-15 spam sores to manually delete for that day. Other times Akismet gets overzealous starts attacking the valid comments as spam (which often happens on blog posts where I ask people to post links). It’s easy enough to correct the situation if I can find out it happened. But finding that one valid comment is like trying to find a beauty mark on a leper — it ain’t pretty no matter which way you look at it.

That’s why I created the Akismet Auntie Spam for Firefox extension to make the anti-spam (ham) stick out more from all the obvious spam. In an update I never officially announced, our little old Auntie will now mark all Akismet-marked comments that have common spam words in red so that we can completely skip over them while dumpster diving through the caught spam folder. Akismet Auntie Spam helps me heal the lepers.

Akismet Auntie Spam

How to Reduce the Volume of Spam

But that still doesn’t stop the fact that I’m getting 1500 spam a day. For someone who likes to write about productivity and making the most of your time I am wasting entirely too much time being a good netizen and monitoring spam. We often call it the War on Spam but it’s a war I’m not winning. The only intelligent decision is to stop wasting my time and energy and to pull out. Like any social disease the underlying problem is that I’m being way to promiscuous. Everything I’ve ever posted to my blog is tarted up in a short skirt on a dark alleyway, just waiting for trouble, with nothing but Akismet and hope to avoid the clap.

It’s not working.

So I’m following in the footsteps of many other members of the wordpress.community and I’ve turned comments off for all posts that are over 60 days old. It isn’t because Akismet doesn’t do the job, it’s because even with Akismet doing most of the work, that last little bit takes too much of my time. It’s time for me to take my blog posts off the street and into a private school and hope they start running with a better crowd.

If the spam rash clears up appreciably, I’ll create an automated program like my Tag Cloud Generator for disabling comments on older posts so that everyone can enjoy having one less thing to worry about.

43 comments

Best of Feeds – 45 links – blogging, business, startup, career, tips

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on May 19, 2007

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. I post them on Twitter as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Weekly Stats

MyBlogLog Community Members: 126 (+5)
Twitter friends/followers: 84/97 (+0/+1)
FeedBurner RSS Readers: 598 (-23)
Technorati Favorites: 301 (+13)
Technorati Authority: 1243 (+58)
Technorati Rank: 1428 (up 94)
Total page views (this week): 1,263,047 (+31,223)
Hot New Post By Traffic (this week): Slow week, nothing new with over 200 hits.

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13 comments

Friday Fun: Catptions of my LOL Cat

Posted in Contests, Technology, We Welcome Our Feline Overlord by engtech on May 18, 2007

captioning cats - lolcats
(xkcd)

A big thank you to everyone who participated in catptioning the photos of my cat. Free t-shirts from Dirty Microbe will go to BouncyCat and Bagel of Everything (check your email). Here are all of the finalists in no particular order. There were around 250-300 entries! Thanks be to the judges for helping with the judging.

Entirely too many pictures of my cat, after the break.

 

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20 comments

comic: The Spider-man Alien Symbiote Costume

Posted in Harold is a Robot, Technology by engtech on May 16, 2007

< Previous — << Back 5 — Archive >>

I’m sorry about the picture of the plantar’s wart.

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9 comments

Meme: Blogs that Make Me Think

Posted in Miscellaneous, Technology by engtech on May 15, 2007

I’m horrible at responding to memes, but I can’t start them with a good conscience unless I also participate. I was tagged by Jason and Elaine (and fjetsam) with the Thinking Blog meme. I may have been tagged by someone else as well (leave a comment if so!) but it got lost because I didn’t track it.

The Rules of the Meme

If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

What makes a Thinking Blog for me isn’t so much that it makes me think as that it has a distinct voice and challenges popular opinions. If you maybe think about why I don’t agree with you then that’s an A+ in my books.

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6 comments

Best of Feeds – 34 links – programming, productivity, lifehacks, firefox, google

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on May 13, 2007

Feeds are like cookies that are good enough for me. Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. I post them on Twitter as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.

You can subscribe to //engtech using RSS to see these links each week.

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5 comments

5 Reasons Blogging Leads to the Unemployment Line (You’re Fired!)

Posted in Group Writing Projects, Technology by engtech on May 11, 2007

We wait with excitement for Trump to say “You’re Fired” on TV, but it isn’t nearly as entertaining in real life. Building a blog with a large audience is hard work. It can be like moonlighting with a second career. It takes attention away from other aspects of your life, like your primary career. It can have negative consequences.

Mainstream media has documented several cases of people being fired for blogging. Here are five of the reasons why.

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63 comments

Book Review: Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers

Posted in Book Reviews, Programming and Software Development, Technology by engtech on May 10, 2007

programmers at work susan lammers bill gates charles simonyi butler lampson jef raskin quote quotationsI heard about Programmers at Work in the blog buzz surrounding the release of Founders at Work. Programmers at Work is a 20 year old book (1985) that interviews some of the top programmers of that era about the art of programming. It is not widely in print anymore, but it was easy to find a copy at my local library. When I picked it up at the library I wondered how relevant would it still be? The only constant with technology is how fast it changes.

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6 comments