Are you making the most out of Google Search? (by guest blogger Ashish Mohta)
This post is by a guest blogger.
Ashish writes about security and technology at Technospot.net
Quick Tips on how to Search Using Google
One of the major complaints people have is “I can’t find this on google.” Which is surprising, because it’s the best search engine. It all comes down to knowing how to search. Here are some quick tips to help you become better at searching.
Lions, Tigers and Managers Oh My – The IT Animal Kingdom (by guest blogger logtar)
This post is by a guest blogger.
John Guzman aka logtar is a computer programmer that rants about daily life, movies and culture. He was born in Colombia and also does translation and interpretation.
Now that I have liberated myself from the last zoo I worked at, I feel that it is my duty to document the IT (Information Technology) ecosystem for those that happen to enter it. I’m intending this as a good PSA (Public Service Announcement) for all the non-IT people out there. It is no accident that I have made all of the managers predators. You may find yourself fitting one of the animal profiles.
The Eager Beaver
I think there is a little Eager Beaver in all of us when we start in a new department. This character is the one that is always coming up with new innovative ideas that, while brilliant, will never be implemented. There are many varieties of this beaver, from the one that eventually gets beat down and controlled to the one that actually tells his boss he is just stupid. And, yes, to his face… and, yes, I have seen this one in the wild. Eager Beavers know what they are doing when it comes to technology; however they spent too much time on new ideas and not enough on actual production.
An Introduction to Reputation Management (by guest blogger Tim Nash)
This is a post by a guest blogger.
Tim Nash is a reputation management consultant, co-founder and primary consultant for Venture Skills a “New media” IT company which specialises in search engine optimisation, reputation management, and technical side of online marketing. When not working at Venture Skills, posting site reviews on forums he can be found teaching at a local university where he lecturers in Search Engine Optimisation and Information Retrieval.
My name is Tim and I’m a reputation management consultant. I’m helping engtech out by doing a guest post for his blog.
But what is reputation management?
Let us start with a formal quote:
Reputation management is the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, but that need not always be the case. Other examples of entities include animals, businesses, or even locations or materials. The tracking and reporting may range from word-of-mouth to statistical analysis of thousands data points. — Source: Wikipedia
This is a very dusty but surprisingly accurate description of reputation management, be it in commercial business analysis or on a personal level. There a three basic areas to reputation management:
- Finding out what people are saying about you
- Creating a persona or brand image
- If needed defending this image
How to design a variable sidebar WordPress theme with widgets (by guest blogger Daria Black)
This post is by a guest blogger.
Daria Black is a freelance writer and web designer. Visit her website Webernet Architect located at for information and tutorials on web design, blogging, social networking and a general guide to having fun on the internet. To learn more about Daria visit her personal weblog at Lexicon Indigo.
When I first heard of WordPress widgets, I was appropriately disgruntled. ‘Widgets? We don’t need no stinking Widgets,’ I grumbled. I was resistant towards the notion of widgetizing my themes because it meant having to change my style of design from using divs to separate the content in my sidebar to placing everything in an unordered list.
But when I saw how they make the end user’s life a little bit easier and how they can make an already powerful content management system even better, I can’t praise the creators of the Widgets plugin enough. So to show you just how creative one can be with the plugin, I’m going to share with you a way to create a template where you can have different widgets on each of your template’s page views; the index, single post and Pages.
This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of WordPress themes and prefers that you know a little bit about PHP as well. However, knowing how to follow directions and cut and paste is just as good.
Best of Feeds – 17 links – blogging, blogs, code, blog, google, search
Best of Feeds is a weekly series where I link to the stuff I found interesting from my feed reader. Links are sorted based on how many people have bookmarked them on del.icio.us. They are posted on Twitter as they happen and then collected together in a single post on Saturday. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.
This time I have 17 links from: 10e20, avc.blogs, bigsquaredot, erald, copyblogger, douglaskarr, drnicwilliams, geek24, googletesting, headrush, lostgarden, problogger, scripting, seomoz, tvo, valleywag
From the Vault: Life in the Trenches
//engtech is in auto-blog mode for the next week as I won’t have internet access. But don’t unsubscribe yet because there’ll still be content coming down the pipes thanks to several readers who helped me out with posts.
But for the moment I’d like to direct you to a post by my first guest blogger, my friend AJ.
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For Those Who Are New to the WordPress.com Support Forums (by guest blogger Sulz)
This is a post by a guest blogger
Sulz is 21 year old Chinese Malaysian college student. She blogs at her whim and fancy, which is almost every day, but mostly about her life and what issues that provoke her thoughts. Blogging is her only cathartic outlet for expression. Devours books like food and devours food like a non-eating-disorder person. You can read more of her writing at Bloggerdygook.
As a volunteer providing free support for WordPress.com in the Support Forums, every now and then it’s hard not to get frustrated with the new users who ask questions without taking the time to read or search the FAQ and past forum threads. On the other hand, you can understand somewhat the feeling of being overwhelmed by the mountain of information in past threads or the FAQ that it totally turns one off from searching for an answer.
Posting elementary support questions in the forums is an easy way to get an answer. But is it the best way?
Digest for March 2007
Every month I publish a digest for subscribers who are would rather take their //engtech in infrequent chugs rather than frequent sips. This one is kind of large because it’s been six weeks since my last Digest.
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Group Writing Project #3 — Theme = T-shirts or Movies (Win Free t-shirts contest for bloggers)
Group writing projects are a way to connect with other bloggers and increase your readership. Every two months I run an on-going group writing project where bloggers can write around a similar theme. I offer prizes and freebies as incentives for participating (past prizes include Amazon gift certificates, free web hosting, and WordPress.com upgrade credits).
Last December I reached the homepage of Digg.com twice with posts about movies for geeks and t-shirts for geeks. I want to see what you have to say about similar themes. Write a post loosely themed around t-shirts *or* movies to participate in this project (click for some ideas).
On June 20th, 2007 I’ll be picking three (3) of the participants at pseudo-random to win prizes.
- First prize will be two (2) t-shirts of their choice from dirtymicrobe.com ($30 value)
- Second prize will be one (1) t-shirts of their choice from dirtymicrobe.com ($15 value)
- And of course, one lucky wordpress.com blogger will win $15 worth of upgrade credits.
This is Harold
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Dedicated to the 300 entry on encyclopedia dramatica and the This.Is.Meme. Unsure who did the “This is DATAAAA” image.
Harold likes to read Passive Depressive, althought he doesn’t always understand the jokes.
Subscribe to comic: RSS, email. Subscribe to blog: RSS, email.
Link to this comic:
<a href="http://internetducttape.com/2007/04/04/this-is-harold/" title="Harold is a Robot #7 - This is Harold">Harold is a Robot #7 - This is Harold</a>
Copy this comic into your blog, LiveJournal, Xanga, or MySpace:
<a href="http://internetducttape.com/2007/04/04/this-is-harold/" title="Harold is a Robot #7 - This is Harold"><img border="0" class="comicblogger-comic" src="https://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/harold_007___this_is_harold_spartan_300.png" title="Harold is a Robot #7 - This is Harold" alt="harold is a robot, comic, cartoon, web comic, robots, robot 300, sparta, this is meme, this is sparta, tonight we dine in hell, movie, gerald butler, data, star trek, zack snyder, frank miller"/></a><br /><a title="Harold is a Robot" href="http://internetducttape.com/tag/harold-is-a-robot">Harold is a Robot #7 - This is Harold</a>
Tags: harold is a robot, comic, cartoon, web comic, robots, robot, 300, sparta, this is meme, this is sparta, tonight we dine in hell, movie, gerald butler, data, star trek, zack snyder, frank miller
5 Things Draws to an End
The Five Things contest/meme has drawn to an end. The winner of the Amazon gift certificate is Azahar and the 15 WordPress.com upgrade credits goes to TheShortFatKid. The next contest/group writing project will be announced in the next two days. In 3 to 4 weeks I’ll be listing my favorites from this round.
Here are all the entries. If you have a del.icio.us account you can bookmark the entries you like best to it. The entries with the most saves will be collected together as the reader favorites.
The Biggest Mistake a Blog Can Make is Not Owning Its Own Name
Daniel of DailyBlogTips is doing a group writing project on mistakes bloggers make. Four months ago I wrote a post outlining all of the mistakes I’ve made in blogging and there’s one that still sticks with me: not buying my own domain name.
There are many reasons why you’d want your own domain name:
- Ability to move with no hassles.
- More professional to have your own name.
- Building a recognizable brand identity.
How to Create LOLCats aka MemeCat aka Kittah aka Cat Macros
LOLCats are pictures of cats with funny sayings on them (wikipedia page for LOLCats). On their own they aren’t so funny, but for some reason a page full of them can really get you going.
Website Analysis – Phil Gerbyshak’s Make It Great
SOAP stands for Scratch One Another Program for bloggers to help other bloggers improve their blogs by the same guy who brought us Blogtipping.
For SOAP I’ll be reviewing Phil Gerbyshak’s Make It Great! I have to apologize in advance for my brevity. I’m up to my eyeballs in stuff to do. If anyone would like more explanation for some of the advice I’ve given then please leave a comment and I’ll expand that section. If I focused on the room for improvement suggestions more than on what was done right it was only because of my time constraints — sorry. I focused on technical issues rather than the content of blog posts for the same reason.
Disclaimer: I am not a copywriter, SEO expert, web designer or even a software user interface expert. I do read a lot about those subjects though, and where possible tried to drop quick links to better advice. YMMV.
Best of Feeds – 20 links – blog, development, programming, blogging, technology, hightech
Best of Feeds is a weekly series where I link to the stuff I found interesting from my feed reader. Links are sorted based on how many people have bookmarked them on del.icio.us. They are posted on Twitter as they happen and then collected together in a single post on Saturday. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.
This time I have 20 links from: alistair.cockburn.us, angryaussie, logtar, codinghorror, copyblogger, landscape, mathewingram, mattcutts, nomorequo, northxeast, onemansblog, podtech, problogger, ryepup.unwashedmeme, sellsbrothers, sethgodin, surveylink.yahoo, webworkerdaily, worsethanfailure, zephoria
1 Million Page Views Served
Like McDonald’s and Paris Hilton, //engtech has now seen 1 million served. Page views, that is. Not bad for in under a year on a free blog hosted on wordpress.com. At the five month mark I was proud to have hit 50,000 page views.
But enough about me. My friends at Beats Entropy recently hit 105,000ish and put together a small clip show / introduction to their site. It’s an acquired taste but those who acquire it like it just fine.
5 Times 40 Things
You Could Win a $20 Amazon Certificate or $15 WP Upgrade Credits
“Five Things” is almost over. There are three more days to enter/contribute (rules here).
As a bonus the first ten people on who comment on this post saying “I want free hosting” will get a WordPress hosted accounts from wordly.org. It’s a new paid WordPress hosting service with 2 gigabytes storage, 6 gigabytes monthly traffic, and a free .org or .com domain (is that a free domain name? or something like engtech.wordly.org? I’m not sure)
Get RSS Updates when your Site is Submitted to Digg or Reddit (Yahoo Pipes)
I’ve put together an RSS widget that I like to call Social Site Submission Watchdog. It creates an RSS feed for when people submit your site to digg.com or reddit.com. The reddit results are tweaked so that they link to the voting page on reddit instead of the page on your site. The link title indicates which site the source is coming from. I’ve also created a Reddit-only version of the Pipe.
This is an essential tool for building a dashboard for your blog.
This is an essential way to keep track of your site so that you can prep a post for the potential wave of traffic heading towards it by doing things like adding a Digg This widget. It’s also a good way for a reader to keep track of specific sites they want to support.
Any feature requests? Leave a comment.
Digg Pipes
- mine: Pipe for getting merged/tweaked Digg/Reddit results for a site being submitted
- Pipe for searching within a specific user’s diggs
- Pipe for getting a Digg RSS feed based on category, number of diggs, and number of comments
Related Posts
- Yahoo Pipes RSS feed for Technorati Rank
- How social bookmarking sites should save URLs
- Tech and blog predictions for 2007
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.
Five Ways to Fix Digg’s Comment System
The Kathy Sierra story made Digg. Of course, the comments were to be expected. Robert Scoble is outraged by the comments (truly, there were some horrible ones there). MG@ParisLemon asks the question:
What role, if any, should Digg play in this? The comments could be a place for great discussions on the story, but usually they degrade into the musings of lunatics. When do comments stop being free speech and start being serious threats? These are the questions.
Cyber-bullying – Not just for teenagers
I’ve been thinking about featuring 31 bloggers over 31 days for my one year anniversary and Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users would be tops on that list. Which makes this even more saddening and sickening. I don’t know any of the people involved/accused so I won’t comment on the specifics of the situation. It constantly amazes me how “Just Add Internet” and people get up to the kind of actions and harassment they’d never do in real life.
Well, hopefully they’d never do in real life.
Scobles’ response was good, especially since he gets his fair share of internet death threats as well.
Quoting myself from a previous post:
When I was involved in the BBS/IRC scene as a teenager I was surrounded by flame wars; one-upmanship was part of the attraction. I thought it was because of the immaturity of the participants, but now I think it is a natural offshoot of digital communication. We lose all the visual and auditory cues that are a normal part of human dialog and instead focus on words that can be easy to misinterpret (especially if looking for a reason to fight).
Throw anonymity into the mix and it becomes a recipe for disaster. Becoming popular on Slashdot or Digg is equal parts excitement at the exposure and annoyance at the new commenters. To be fair this isn’t restricted to these two communities; for a large number of people getting into arguments on the Internet is a major source of entertainment.
But some people take that too far. Flamewars and oneupmanship is drastically different than harassment. I hope legal action is pursued and the WordPress.com staff do what they can to identify the source.
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