// Internet Duct Tape

Best of Feeds – 35 links – design, programming, blogging, socialsoftware, javascript

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on September 01, 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. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr 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

  • Using Mind Maps to Explore User Interaction
    • I’m “fortunate” to work at one of those companies where meetings are a way of life. Not only do meetings happen daily, but everyone and their dog is invited. Well, until one of the dogs bit an intern. Now the dogs are free to keep working on their projects, but everyone else is still…
  • WordPress.com Command Diagrams
    • I’ve created two useful diagrams for WordPress.com bloggers and more important for people who offer support in the WordPress.com help forums.
  • Digest for August 2007
    • Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape.
  • Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
    • One of the strangest things about growing older is coming to terms with the idealism and certainty you had as a teenager compared to the reality of who you’ve grown into. I grew up in a house full of books on what I’d now refer to as lifehacks: books on happiness, psychology, time…
  • Canadian Marketing, Media, and Digital Blogs Tournament
    • Internet Duct Tape is proud to be a part of the 1% Army Canadian Blogging Tournament. I’m part of division A: Online/Digital/Tech/Web 2.0. As part of the tournament I need to submit a three example posts from 2007. Can you help me decide?
  • Best of Feeds – 37 links – lifehacks, tips, productivity, programming, blogging
    • Tags: advice, blogging, design, development, geek, hacks, happiness, humor, internet, lifehacks, paulgraham, productivity, programming, rss, search, software, tips, workhacks, writing

This Week at IDT Labs

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

5 comments

Using Mind Maps to Explore User Interaction

Posted in Programming Tools, Software, Technology by engtech on August 31, 2007

I’m “fortunate” to work at one of those companies where meetings are a way of life. Not only do meetings happen daily, but everyone and their dog is invited. Well, until one of the dogs bit an intern. Now the dogs are free to keep working on their projects, but everyone else is still stuck in needless meetings. The only good thing that has ever come out of these meetings is that I’ve developed a passing familiarity with mind mapping software.

Mind mapping is a technique for taking notes. You start with a central keyword or idea and then build up an ever expanding structure from around that starting point. I might have learned this before in grade three, but the Internet seems convinced that it’s the latest and greatest new thing. Note to self: go through kindergarten notebooks and search for ideas that haven’t been copyrighted. Mrs. Nelson, you will be my goldmine. Now I feel bad for falling asleep during story time.

mind map example

You can do mind maps easily by hand, but you can also use free or pay software to build them. It is a great technique for capturing the minutes and action items in a meeting because it is so freeform yet structured. But you don’t have to take my word for it, LifeHacker has given examples of writing mind maps for meetings, and Kathy Sierra has given mind maps a big thumbs up.

Back to the meeting.

I’m putting an appointment on my smartphone that I hate, and as usual I’m frustrated by how needlessly complicated their user interface is. Sell stock in Nokia and buy stock in Apple — you won’t go wrong. That’s when I remembered something I wrote in a blog post about how their UI design wouldn’t have hit the ground if someone had just drawn it out and realized that it takes 10 user interactions to place a phone call. I looked up at the projected mind map on the wall and I realized that I was looking at the perfect software for doing something like that.

Mind mapping begins with a central keyword, but instead you can think of that as the first screen in your application. Each depth in the mind map will represent a user action. One you have mapped out all the actions you can see the overall cogitative load of your program clear as day. Take a second to look at a mind map I did of the WordPress.com blog interface.

mind mapping a user interface

Once the big blob of your UI is mapped you can at a glance look at the most common actions a user would have to perform and see how many interactions it takes to get there. You could even use a mind map to design how content is linked on your blog and how hard it is to use. Admittedly, drawing out a UI like this is nothing new, but using mind mapping software for it is so damned convenient.

Key Points

  • Mind mapping software is not just for note taking and meetings
  • It can be used for mapping user actions
  • The finished diagram can be used to optimize the most important actions and clearly see what actions are redundant or unnecessary
  • The finished diagram makes a great 1 page tear sheet to help users remember where everything is

More Information About Mind Maps

25 comments

WordPress.com Command Diagrams

Posted in Technology, WordPress.com Tips by engtech on August 30, 2007

WordPress Tips and Tricks

I’ve created two useful diagrams for WordPress.com bloggers, and more importantly, for people who offer support in the WordPress.com help forums.

WordPress.com Blue Bar

WordPress.com blue bar diagram

WordPress.com Dashboard

WordPress.com Dashboard

5 comments

Digest for August 2007

Posted in Monthly Digest, Technology by engtech on August 30, 2007

Monthly Digest

Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape. Here you go! You can also see the digest for July 2007.

One Year Ago

Here are some articles that are still timeless.

Monthly Digest

LifeHacks

  • Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success
    I’ve been all touchy-feeling and self-discovery lately. I ponder what are the key qualities to be successful at anything.
  • What is Your Opportunity Cost?
    We’re taught to stay productive and keep busy, but busyness for busyness’ own sake will make you miss out on what could be great opportunities.

Web Browsers

Online Identity and Anonymity

Blogging and RSS

Best of Feeds

Popular Posts

What’s hot this month.

IDT Labs Software Updates

IDT Labs is where I track free software I create.

  • [WORDPRESS.COM] Open 5 Blogs at Random
    I’ve created a short little script that will open five WordPress.com blogs at random when you press ALT+SHIFT+W .
  • [RSS PIPE] Stupid Feed Rewriter
    • Here’s another weird one that I might be the only person interested in. It republishes a title/description/link whenever there is a new post in the original feed. I have two twitter accounts at http://twitter.com/engtech and http://twitter.com/et By using Stupid Feed Rewriter I can advertise that I have two accounts.
  • [WORDPRESS] Akismet Auntie Spam v2
    • This is a complete re-write of my Firefox add-on that makes the Akismet Admin Panel about 1 million times more useful. Expect a full post on Internet Duct Tape with all the features some time next week. Rewrote from scratch using IP filtering idea from Donncha.
  • [WORDPRESS.COM] Find Blogs to Comment On
    • This is a dumb little Greasemonkey script that displays a banner message when a WordPress.com blog has the Recent Comments widget installed. The idea is to spend a few minutes a day commenting on lesser known blogs and meeting new bloggers.
  • [GREASEMONKEY] Show popular scripts on Userscripts.org
    • Userscripts.org is a website for hosting Greasemonkey scripts. This script makes it easier to see how popular scripts are when looking at search results.
  • [RSS] Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
    • I’ve create a Greasemonkey script to make cutting-and-pasting from Yahoo Pipes into a WordPress blog look nicer.
  • [RSS] Recent Blog Mentions
    • I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that filters your Technorati recent mentions. It removes all the ones with low authority (most likely spam) changes the title and link to go to the root of the domain name IE: if I linked to you from http://internetducttape.com/2007/08/12/hello-world it would show internetducttape.com
  • [RSS] Facebook Status Feed Filter
    • I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that that will take the RSS feed URL for your Facebook status, filter out your name, and add (from Facebook status) to the end. This makes it easy to repost your status in Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, whatever.
  • [WORDPRESS] Search the WordPress.com Blog
    I’ve created a small script for Firefox that adds a search form to the WordPress.com Official blog.

Digest for July 2007

1 comment

Do Anything: 3 Steps for Success

Posted in Lifehacks, Technology by engtech on August 28, 2007

Lifehacks and Productivity

One of the strangest things about growing older is coming to terms with the idealism and certainty you had as a teenager compared to the reality of who you’ve grown into. I grew up in a house full of books on what I’d now refer to as lifehacks: books on happiness, psychology, time management, career development and how to influence people. From my post-adolescence surety I always looked at those self-help books with distain: “Why would you need someone else to tell you how to live your life?”

It’s funny how times change. If I’m honest to myself then I have to admit that I read far too many blogs that could fall into the category of self-help. I learn how to be a better blogger with DBT, Problogger, Copyblogger, and Skelliwag. There’s always programming and high tech tips to be learned from Joel, Jeff, Giles, Rands, Reg and the guys at 37signals. And let’s not forget about all the life tips from Gina, Leon, and Leo. It’s very easy to spend all of my time learning and not enough time doing.

Today I’m going to take a break from the usual Internet Duct Tape goodness, and share with you the ultimate time saving lifehack. After learning this secret you’ll be able to put down your self-help books, unsubscribe from all of those tip/learning blogs (I’m lying — don’t do that), and use all that freed time living your life, or just catching up on reruns of the O.C. I won’t judge. Success in any endeavor can be yours as long as you keep these three things in the front of your mind.

1. Be Happy

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. — Hugh Downs

I don’t mean listen to that irritatingly catchy song. If you start a task happy then you are coming from a position of strength. You’ll feel more energetic, more calm and be able to handle anything that life throws your way. People want to be around relaxed, happy people. You’ll have better relationships with friends and co-workers. You will be more aware of the chances and opportunities around you.

I’m not going to give you platitudes about how to find your happiness. There isn’t any one answer that suits all situations. Recognize that no one in your life can make you happy except for yourself, and if you don’t start from a position of happiness then everything else becomes so much harder. Irritation and constant complaining are the little yellow canaries in the mineshaft that you’re losing hold of your happiness. Keep hold of your happiness, it is the best asset you have.

2. Know What is Important

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life — Leo Tolstoy

Any advice on time/life management can be broken down to this essential idea: focus on what is important to achieving your goal and ignore all else. Stuff in your house you don’t use? Get rid of it. Features in your app that aren’t going to land the customer? They’re only adding complexity and tying up your developers. Cut unnecessary time sinks and distractions out of your life mercilessly and suddenly everything else becomes much more manageable.

Doing less as a way of achieving more is quite simple, the really hard part is figuring out what you want to accomplish, and then identifying what is truly important to get there. Don’t confuse urgency with importance. In any task only 20% of the activities around it are truly important, the other 80% are trivialities that can be ignored. One of the most important skills you can have in life is figuring out which is which.

3. Be Disciplined

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. — Jim Rohn

When you know what your goal is, and you have identified the 20% of tasks that are important, then it is only a matter of execution. Discipline, like patience, is more a muscle than a skill. You gain discipline by exercising that muscle, instead of letting it atrophy by following distractions and procrastination. The greatest productivity comes from achieving flow. Exercising your discipline is the road to being able to enter flow at will.

Like Chuck Jazdzewski says, programming is fun but shipping is your job. It doesn’t matter how much work, time and effort you put into something if your don’t achieve your goal. Discipline helps you always be closing on your goals.

Summary

Time and resources can play a big factor in success, but they are external factors. If you start from a position of strength (happiness), identify what gets you the most bang for your buck (know what is important), and execute (be disciplined) then you will always achieve the results you are looking for.

Related Posts

46 comments

Canadian Marketing, Media, and Digital Blogs Tournament

Posted in Group Writing Projects, Internet Duct Tape News by engtech on August 27, 2007

Internet Duct Tape is proud to be a part of the 1% Army Canadian Blogging Tournament. I’m part of division A: Online/Digital/Tech/Web 2.0. The other divisions are B: Media/Social Media/PR/Culture, C: Marketing/Communications/Research/Design, and D: Quebec. Yes, they’re that distinct! You can read more about it on the 1% Army Facebook Group.

Photo by sookie

I have to submit three posts written in 2007 that will be judged on:

– overall impact (20%)
– clarity of thought (20%)
– did it make me want to think/act differently (20%)
– did it want me to comment/participate (20%)
– originality (20%)

What Do You Think?

I’m going to rip a page from Ben, co-founder of Standout Jobs — a Montreal-based job search start-up, and ask my readers what they think my three best posts were under the criteria of overall impact, clarity of thought, call to action and originality. Name your three favorites in the comments section, or write about them on your blog and leave a trackback. I have to submit my three best by September 8th.

Something New

One of the posts has to be written since August 11th.

Something Old

The other two posts can be from later in the year.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

10 comments

Best of Feeds – 37 links – lifehacks, tips, productivity, programming, blogging

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on August 25, 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. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr 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

  • Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey (with screenshots)
    • A greasemonkey is a mechanic who works on your automobile. He gets his hands dirty, and goes under the hood to find out why your car is making that clunking noise. Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that does much the same thing, but without the ridiculous fees.
  • Google’s Social Network Orkut Gets a New Look
    • The social network Orkut that Google launched in January 2004 (based on a personal project by a Google engineer) is launching an updated look.Remember the first time that you logged into orkut? Maybe you received a coveted invitation from a friend, heard about it in a blog, or stumbled upon it when…
  • How to Install a Firefox Extension (with screenshots)
    • One of my favorite features of Firefox is that users can modify it with extensions. No matter what it is you want to do or change about a web page, there is undoubtedly an extension out there already that does it for you. Someone has gone to through all the hard work and now all you have to do is…
  • Tip: Send Amazon or iTunes Gift Certificates Anonymously
    • Have you ever wanted to send a gift certificate to someone anonymously? One of the problem with electronic transactions is that quite often they tell the recipient exactly who you are. This isn’t a problem when it comes to gifts for your family or friends, but it can be more tricky if you are…
  • What is Your Opportunity Cost?
    • Focusing on one area of your life to the exclusion of all else can be great for short term gains. But sometimes it backfires…

This Week at IDT Labs

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1 comment

Revolutionizing the Web with Firefox and Greasemonkey (with screenshots)

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Popular Posts, Technology by engtech on August 24, 2007

Web Browser Tips & Tricks

A greasemonkey is a mechanic who works on your automobile. He gets his hands dirty, and goes under the hood to find out why your car is making that clunking noise. Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that does much the same thing, but without the ridiculous fees.

This guide is intended for beginners

In my previous guide I explained how to install a Firefox extension, and hopefully sparked some interest in why you would want to extend your web browser in the first place. I used the Greasemonkey extension as an example for a very good reason. Sometimes you want to extend your web browser in a big way, like putting a new room in your house. That’s where an extension comes in (it’s like hiring a construction company). Other times all you want to do is repaint a room or re-hang a door; something you could do yourself over a weekend. That’s where Greasemonkey comes in. There are many small jobs and minor tweaks to web pages that would be overkill for a full Firefox extension.

Greasemonkey is a unique extension in that it lets you install these things called user scripts. User scripts are much smaller than extensions, and are often targeted to much more specific tasks than extensions. There is a web site called UserScripts.org that is devoted to these small tiny hacks people have created to make the web work more like the way they want it to.

It can be complicated to create your own user scripts (it requires understanding the Javascript programming language), but it is dead simple to install and use scripts other people have created. And let me tell you that a *lot* of people have created scripts. There are over 7500 user scripts on UserScripts.org. If something on a web page has annoyed you, there is undoubtedly a user script that fixes it.

What Can Greasemonkey User Scripts Do?

  • Remember information
  • Remove parts of web pages
  • Change how web pages look
  • Automatically download information from other web sites and put it into the current page
  • Cross-reference information from other web sites
  • Speed up common tasks so that they require less clicks

Because user scripts use the Javascript programming language there is really almost anything that they can do. Or at least, that would be the case if they weren’t restricted. One of the nice things about Greasemonkey user scripts is that they’re restricted in ways that regular Firefox extensions aren’t. User scripts won’t change your Firefox toolbars, add things to your right click menu options, look at files on your computer or rub your cat’s hair the wrong way.

Useful Greasemonkey User Scripts

Install Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey installs like any other Firefox extension. This guide shows you how to install Greasemonkey in a step by step process with screenshots.

How to Find Greasemonkey User Scripts

userscripts.org logo

The best source for finding Greasemonkey scripts is userscripts.org. To find scripts for a specific web site, type its name into the search box and hit enter.

userscripts.org help search end hit enter

The left hand side of the screen will return a list of scripts. Unfortunately there is no way to sort them.

userscripts.org search results

If you click on the script name it will take you to a page with more information about the scripts. The easiest way to tell if a script is any good is by the number of times it has been installed, and how much effort the author goes into explaining what the script does and how it works.

example of good script documentation

To install a script click on the “install this script” link in the right hand column.

Hot Tip: I’ve created a script that highlights the most popular user scripts and makes it easier to find the best scripts on userscripts.org.

Lifehacker.com and Lifehack.org both often feature Greasemonkey user scripts.

Installing a Script

All user scripts end with the .user.js extension. If you do not have Greasemonkey installed, or Greasemonkey is disabled, then your web browser will try to download the file instead of installing it.

use download count to see how popular a script is

Click on this link to start installation of my Akismet Auntie Spam script.

A box will pop-up that gives a short description, tells you which web sites the script runs on, and offer to install it. Click on the Install button.

firefox greasemonkey extension install script dialog

A message will appear temporarily in the lower right hand corner of your web browser telling you that the installation was successful.

greasemonkey firefox userscript install

Turning Greasemonkey on and off

You can enable and disable Greasemonkey temporarily by clicking on the little monkey icon in the lower right corner of your web browser. This is a great trick for when a script isn’t doing exactly what you want – you can turn off all of your scripts and interact with the web site normally as if you didn’t have Greasemonkey installed.

turn greasemonkey on and off

Advanced Users – Managing Scripts

greasemonkey script management

If you click on Tools >> Greasemonkey >> Manage User Scripts it will open up a windows that lets you:

  • Control which web sites the script does or does not run on
  • Enable or disable specific scripts
  • Uninstall scripts
  • Directly edit the script (it will ask you which text editor to use the first time you try it)

greasemonkey userscript firefox edit disable manage

Heading to the management panel is a really useful way to further tweak scripts, or just change the web sites they run on.

Advanced Users – Configuring Scripts

I can’t tell you how to configure a specific script, but I can give you a general overview of the various ways it can be done.

Editing the Script

Example: Find images that are too wide

This is the sign of a lazy programmer. It isn’t that hard to edit a script, but it is still a pain in the butt when they tell you to change settings directly in the script. I usually won’t bother installing scripts like this.

  • Click on Tools >> Greasemonkey >> Manage User Scripts
  • Choose the Script
  • Click on Edit
  • Make the change
  • Save

Running User Script Commands

Example: Pagerization

User scripts can only modify the Firefox menu in one place, under Tools >> Greasemonkey >> User Script Commands. It may be grayed out if you don’t have any scripts installed that register commands.

greasemonkey firefox user script commands register

Hot Keys

Example: Facebook photo album keyboard navigation

Some scripts use hot keys to perform actions. You’ll have to read their documentation on how to use them. When you’re on the web page that the script works with, hitting keys on your keyboard will cause the script to do things.

Changing Settings Interactively

Example: Pre Fill Comments

Smart scripts configure themselves through dialog boxes the first time you run them. This is by far the recommended and most painless way for scripts to configure themselves. Hint.

firefox greasemonkey install guide prompt for settings

Troubleshooting

Q1: Greasemonkey is cool! Is there anything else out there like it?

Stylish is a very similar extension that lets you apply user styles (not scripts to web pages). Stylish is to CSS as Greasemonkey is to Javascript. It lets you change the CSS of any web site to improve the way it looks, or get rid of annoyances. Greasemonkey user scripts will let you do more than Stylish, but if all you want to do is change the appearance of something then Stylish is the right tool for you. You can find styles that other people have created at UserStyles.org.

Q2: I want to create a Greasemonkey script, but I don’t know how to program.

Platypus is WYSIWYG editor for Greasemonkey scripts. It will let you create Greasemonkey scripts by moving around and interacting with parts of a web site.

(WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get)

Q3: What about Internet Explorer?

Yes Virginia, it is possible to use some userscripts with Internet Explorer. Watch this space.

33 comments

Google’s Social Network Orkut Gets a New Look

Posted in Humor by engtech on August 24, 2007

The social network Orkut that Google launched in January 2004 (based on a personal project by a Google engineer) is launching an updated look.

Remember the first time that you logged into orkut? Maybe you received a coveted invitation from a friend, heard about it in a blog, or stumbled upon it when searching for a social network on google.com. But no matter when your first login was, whether yesterday or 3 years ago, you were greeted by the simple blue site with a friendly purple logo that remains the same today.

I was lucky enough to come across leaked pictures of the revamped social network.

(more…)

4 comments

How to Install a Firefox Extension (with screenshots)

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Technology by engtech on August 23, 2007

Web Browser Tips & Tricks

One of my favorite features of Firefox is that users can modify it with extensions. No matter what it is you want to do or change about a web page, there is undoubtedly an extension out there already that does it for you. Someone has gone to through all the hard work and now all you have to do is install it to reap the benefits. I know it is arrogant of me to say so, but I do not understand how people surf the Internet without using extensions that simplify common tasks and improve the way websites work.

This guide is intended for beginners

Why Use Extensions?

Firefox extensions help you get things done. They can reduce repetitive tasks to something simple and improve your web experience. Here are some examples of popular Firefox extensions:

The real power of Firefox is in the user community around it who builds all these cool toys. If you only use one extension, Ad Block Plus will revolutionize your web surfing. I’m always so surprised when I access web sites on a browser without Ad Block Plus and see all of the crap that gets in the way. Installing extensions can be addictive, but it’s a good idea to pick 5 to 10 of the best ones and stick with those.

Installing a Firefox Extension

I hope I’ve convinced you of the value in Firefox extensions. A little goes a long way. Here is a walkthrough of how to install them.

1. Find an extension you want to install

greasemonkey firefox extension install mozilla add ons

Most extensions can be found on the Mozilla Add-ons website. For this example I’ll be installing the Greasemonkey extension. Greasemonkey is a bit different than other extensions, in that it’s kind of a parent extension. With Greasemonkey installed you’ll be able to install all other kinds of baby extensions (called userscripts) to tweak web sites even more.

2. Click on the install link

firefox greasemonkey installation guide

Firefox extensions end with the .XPI suffix. When you click on an .XPI file, Firefox knows how to open and install it for you. The official Mozilla Add-ons page shows all of the links with a green Install This button. If you are installing an extension from somewhere else it might look different.

3. Click on the Install Now button

firefox greasemonkey install click install button

When Firefox recognizes that you are installing an extension it brings up a box asking you if you want to install it. Click Install Now.

4. Restart Firefox to Finish Installation

mozilla firefox click restart to finish installation

The installation will not be complete until you restart Firefox. The good news is that Firefox will remember all the pages you are viewing right now, so go ahead and click on the Restart Now button.

Conclusion

Now you’ve installed your first Firefox Extension. You can find more useful extensions at Mozilla Add-ons or on popular blogs like Lifehacker.

Troubleshooting

Thinks don’t always go the way you want them to. Leave a comment if you have any other further questions and I’ll expand this section.

Q1: How do I find out what extensions I have installed?

firefox find out what extensions are installed and uninstall some

If you go to Tools >> Add-ons you’ll find a list of all of your installed extensions. From that list you can configure, enable, disable, check for updates, and uninstalled individual extensions.

Q2: I click on the .XPI file but it downloads the file instead of asking me to install. Help!

This is because the web server with the .XPI is improperly configured. Save the file to your computer and then open it using File >> Open. You will get the normal prompt to install the file.

Q3: I want to download a file from somewhere other than Mozilla Add-ons.

downloading from a site other than mozilla firefox add ons

Here is an example of downloading an extension from the popular technology blog Lifehacker.

firefox lifehacker install problem guide

After you click on the download link Firefox will display a yellow status bar at the top of your web browser (but still underneath your toolbar) because it doesn’t know if you trust extensions from lifehacker.com.

install firefox lifehacker guide allow blocked site

Click on the Edit Options button and it will bring up a window asking you to confirm if you trust this site for installing add-ons. Click on the Allow button followed by the Close button.

Then click on the original download link again and your install will proceed as normal.

Related Posts

36 comments

Tip: Send Amazon or iTunes Gift Certificates Anonymously

Posted in Marketing and Promotion, Music, MP3s and Internet Radio, Online Privacy and Reputation Management, Technology by engtech on August 22, 2007

Have you ever wanted to send a gift certificate to someone anonymously? One of the problem with electronic transactions is that quite often they tell the recipient exactly who you are. This isn’t a problem when it comes to gifts for your family or friends, but it can be more tricky if you are running an online contest for your blog.


photo by lilit

Why Anonymously?

There are several non-creepy reasons why you might want to send an anonymous gift certificate. Perhaps you are blogging pseudoanonymously? Or it could be that your PayPal / Amazon account is registered to an email address that you don’t want to share/publicize? There are many reasons why you might want to keep your Amazon or iTunes account information private but still send someone a gift certificate.

Use a Proxy

If you wanted to surf the web anonymously you would use a proxy that would act as a intermediate between your web browser and the web sites you are visiting. The same technique works for buying gift certificates. There is an online service called Prezzle that will let you send “wrapped” gift certificates to other people. If you use Prezzle to send someone a gift certificate, the recipient will see the sender as Prezzle instead of your real identity.

There is a small service fee for using Prezzle.

Hot Tip: Make sure the gift certificate matches the country of the person receiving it! Often companies like Amazon and iTunes won’t let them transfer the gift certificate to the store for their country.

8 comments

What is Your Opportunity Cost?

Posted in Lifehacks, Technology by engtech on August 20, 2007

Lifehacks and Productivity

Sensible people live their lives balancing their focus on what is important to them.

Work life balance

In the opposite end of the ring are people like me who have no concept of balance. I will work in high stress jobs that require lots of overtime and still try to maintain isolationist hobbies that also require a lot of time and effort. The rest of my life gets squished into the edges with no slack time at all.

work life unbalance

Living such a lifestyle can have great temporary gains in the areas you focus on, but they are quickly counterbalanced by the other areas in your life that you aren’t paying attention to. Any slack time is immediately taken over by the need for sleep, need for exercise, or often unrecognized need for genuine human contact. What many people don’t consciously think about when they are squishing their lives to focus on one thing is the opportunity cost for the areas they are ignoring.

If a city decides to build a hospital on vacant land it owns, the opportunity cost is the cost of some other thing which might have been done with the land and construction funds instead. In building the hospital, the city has forgone the opportunity to build a sporting center on that land, or a parking lot, or the ability to sell the land to reduce the city’s debt, since those uses tend to be mutually exclusive. Even the possibility of inaction is a lost opportunity (in this example, to preserve the scenery as-is for neighboring areas, perhaps including areas that it itself owns).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Even though you may feel like you are gaining in whatever short term goals you are focusing on, you may be missing out on much more important opportunities because you don’t have the attention to notice them or the free time to spend on them.

  • Letting family members feel loved and nurtured can greatly reduce the stress in the rest of your life.
  • Deepening friendships can provide you with a support network for when you really need it.
  • Focusing on hobbies that are creative/social outlets rather than “time wasters” can enrich your life without taking needless attention away from other endeavors.
  • Regular exercise can improve energy levels, increase your health, and give you a reservoir for dealing with conflict.
  • Getting enough sleep leads to better health, proper eating, and less crankiness.
  • Quitting jobs that require all of your time and leave you feeling drained.
  • Slack time is essential for being able to recognize and act on opportunities that come your way.

In the Luck Factor, Professor Richard Wiseman details a study where he asked participants to count the number of photographs in a sample newspaper. Subjects who had described themselves as “lucky” were much more likely to notice a message on page two, disguised as a half-page advertisement with large block letters: STOP COUNTING–THERE ARE 43 PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS NEWSPAPER.

Obviously some measure of luck is based on chance, but this experiment and many others have led Wiseman to conclude that a significant portion of one’s good fortune is not random, but rather due to one’s state of mind and behaviors. He concludes that luck is an artifact of psychology, where a person is lucky not because of cosmic accidents, but because one achieves a particular mindset which precipitates and amplifies “lucky” events. While this observation may seem obvious, there are many interesting particulars in his findings.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=483

Over the past month I’ve had the following opportunities related to blogging that I haven’t been able to fully capitalize on:

Those are just the missed opportunities related to my hobby of blogging. They do not including the opportunities I may be missing in the rest of my life from spending so much time on blogging. Having your finger in so many pies leaves no room to try more of the other delicious pies out there. It seems so counterproductive to cultivate having slack time in your schedule, but it is what is needed to be able to recognize and respond quickly when opportunity comes knocking.

7 Habits for Highly Effective People deals with this subject in the chapter “Put First Things First”.

“Effective people are not problem-minded; they’re opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.”

What opportunities are you missing by focusing on the urgent instead of focusing on important? What lucky coincidences have you missed by not being open to them?

15 comments

Best of Feeds – 30 links – blogging, humor, geek, problogger, design

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on August 18, 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. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr 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

  • Universal identity and single sign on using openID? No thanks
    • One of the holy grails of web technology is single sign-on: the ability to use different web applications from one user account. Instead of having to remember 20 login credentials, you’ll only have to remember one. OpenID gives the sweet promise of being able to have a universal identity and a…
  • Greasemonkey Script: Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
    • Yahoo Pipes can create automated lists that you can cut-and-paste into blog posts. My only real complaint is with the HTML markup they create. It doesn’t look good when you cut-and-paste it into a WordPress blog. This is where Yahoo Pipe Cleaner comes in. It is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox…
  • Best of Feeds – 26 links – video, blogging, web2.0, google, css
    • Tags: blogging, css, design, google, programming, socialsoftware, tips, video, web2.0, webdesign, wordpress

This Week at IDT Labs

  • [RSS] Yahoo Pipe Cleaner
    • I’ve create a Greasemonkey script to make cutting-and-pasting from Yahoo Pipes into a WordPress blog look nicer. — Please link to this post instead — IDT Labs is a blog for news announcements about software, tools or blog themes created by InternetDuctTape.com . Subscribe to InternetDuctTape…
  • [RSS] Recent Blog Mentions
    • I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that filters your Technorati recent mentions. removes all the ones with low authority (most likely spam) changes the title and link to go to the root of the domain name IE: if I linked to you from http://internetducttape.com/2007/08/12/hello-world it would show…
  • [RSS] Facebook Status Feed Filter
    • I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that that will take the RSS feed URL for your Facebook status, filter out your name, and add (from Facebook status) to the end. This makes it easy to repost your status in Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, whatever. — Please link to this URL instead — IDT Labs is a blog…

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

Comments Off on Best of Feeds – 30 links – blogging, humor, geek, problogger, design

Universal identity and single sign on using openID? No thanks

Posted in Technology, Web 2.0 and Social Media by engtech on August 15, 2007

Universal standards and open data formats are the holy grail of modern information technology. With different vendors creating competing products they always try to lock users into walled gardens where they use their product and only their product. Or you get hybrids like Facebook applications where you can use other products provided they play by our rules. Companies have no incentive to work well together. After all, it’s only the consumers who suffer.

Radio Shack's evil EULA - by buying this, you waive your consumer rightsPhoto by doctorow

In an ideal world the consumer would be able to use whatever application they want to and move our data from one app to another with minimal hassle. We want to be able to use the email application of our choice in any context. We want a single synchronized calendar of our choice and still be able to share events with other people. We want to maintain one list of contacts and use them in every “social” web application. Consumers want to maintain control over our information, not spend all of our time maintaining applications and trying to get them to talk to each other.

One of the holy grails of web technology is single sign-on: the ability to use different web applications from one user account. Instead of having to remember 20 (or more like 30-50 in this web2.0 social app environment) login credentials, you’ll only have to remember one.

Every few years it seems like there’s another attempt at creating a universal login. Microsoft had Passport (now Windows Live ID). Google has unified its services to all use a single Google Account for authentication. Yahoo has never been great at integrating all of its services under one umbrella, but they certainly try (Flickr and Pipes use the Yahoo account, but del.icio.us and MyBlogLog don’t). People are saying that Facebook may be the future “universal account” since so many people use it. But the problem with all of these choices is that each of them is run by a centralized company. Do you trust them? Will you always trust them?

Photo by thelastminute

OpenID is the most popular decentralized system for single sign-on and maintaining a universal digital identity. It’s a very cool concept. Instead of having to worry about maintaining multiple user accounts and passwords (which should be different on different sites), openID lets you maintain one account and one online identity – without having that identity dependent on one company. At least that’s what the purple koolaid wants you to believe. If you stop to thing about it, you’re still dependent on whatever company you are using as your openID server.

The decentralization that is openID’s strength is also it’s biggest weakness. If your openID server goes down then you’re locked out of *all* of your other web accounts that used that login. WordPress.com supports openID but I’ve had problems with it [1] that have prevented me from using it to login to other accounts. It’s never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, but it’s much better to have one basket that works well than to have multiple baskets that have to work together properly or they won’t work at all.

It reminds me of those stupid wireless headphones for iPods. You can replace the small, portable earbud headphones that come with the iPod with larger headphones in order to be free from wires. But you greatly increase the dependencies needed to listen to music. Not only does your iPod have to be charged, but your wireless headphones and wireless transmitter ALSO have to be charged. The chances that they’re all going to be charged at the same time is much less than the chance that your iPod will be charged. The end goal of being free from wires isn’t worth the complexity the solution adds to the system – the solution introduces more things that can break and go wrong.

wireless headphones for ipod

This is the problem with openID. In order to login to a web app with openID the web app needs to be working AND my openID server needs be working. The greater number of interconnecting parts decreases my chances of getting everything to work together much more than the benefit of not having to manage multiple user accounts. OpenID is easy enough when it works, but if your server is having issues then it can be frustrating to know that you could login just fine if only the stupid server was up and working.

It works ok if you’re openID account is your own domain name because you can use delegation to point it to another server, but if you use someone else’s openID server then you’re screwed. It’s a very cool hack to use your web url as your login ID, but I’d only do it if you own your own domain name and plan to own it for as long as you’ll be using it to access those accounts.

The sad truth is that we already have an open identity that works — our email addresses. Smart web applications use our email address as our login identity. Almost all web apps allow us to recover our password using that email address [2]. Email is the only login identity we really need to remember; every other identity can be found by searching our email or using the password recovery feature.

Photo by jblndl

Updates and clarifications:

The scenario I’m talking about is when you don’t have full control over your openID URL. It doesn’t matter who your openID provider is as long as you can redirect your URL to another provider if it goes down. Many sites have been advertising that they support being an openID provider, telling you to use their URL as your openID. They make no mention that you should use them as a provider, not as your URL. You should *always* have full control over your openID URL.

Neomeme hits openID from the point of view of how it can be used to easily stalk someone over the Internet.

Jan Miksovsky notes that openID is too confusing for first time users.

  1. When I try to use my WordPress.com openID it says that I’m not logged in even though I can access my dashboard. I’m not sure if this is a cookie issue, custom domain names, or if it’s related to peak usage times (always seems to happen at noon or 5pm), but it’s been hard to get to the bottom of.
  2. How do you recover your from your openID server going down if you don’t own the domain name? I couldn’t find any information on how to do it. Your openID should not be an account. You should be able to keep your account but change your openID login credentials, much like how you can change the email address your account is registered to.

27 comments

Greasemonkey Script: Yahoo Pipe Cleaner

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Technology, Yahoo Pipes by engtech on August 13, 2007

Hacking RSS with Yahoo Pipes

I’m a very big fan of Yahoo Pipes. It’s an amazing service that lets you take information from websites (using RSS, XML, JSON) and then do all kinds of filtering and manipulation with it. It is all done with a slick graphical user interface but it is not for the faint of heart — it is much easier to create new pipes if you have a programming background. But once a pipe is created it is simple for other people to use it. For example, this is how you can create a blog digest post using a Yahoo Pipe I’ve created for you.

Yahoo Pipes can create automated lists that you can cut-and-paste into blog posts. My only real complaint is with the HTML markup they create. It doesn’t look good when you cut-and-paste it into a WordPress blog. This is where Yahoo Pipe Cleaner comes in. It is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that fixes the Yahoo Pipe output so that it looks nicer when you cut-and-paste it into a WordPress blog.

  • removes any H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 headers
  • dofollows the links (removes rel=nofollow)
  • replaces paragraphs with list elements
  • removes all class/id CSS selectors

Without Yahoo Pipe Cleaner

 

  • Facebook Tip: Broadcast your Facebook status as RSS

    RSS is one of the most useful tools out there for moving information around on the web. Recently the concept of “micro-blogging” status updates has become very popular with applications like Facebook, Twitter and Pownce. The only problem is that it is a pain to update many sites at the…

  • How Do People Use Google Reader with Internet Explorer?

    Any computer geek worth his salt has been through the drill: you go to visit a family member for dinner and eventually they mention some arcane problem they’ve been having with software you long ago expunged from all of your computers. Common culprits are the Unholy Triad: Microsoft Outlook,…

With Yahoo Pipe Cleaner

  • Facebook Tip: Broadcast your Facebook status as RSS
    • RSS is one of the most useful tools out there for moving information around on the web. Recently the concept of “micro-blogging” status updates has become very popular with applications like Facebook, Twitter and Pownce. The only problem is that it is a pain to update many sites at the…
  • How Do People Use Google Reader with Internet Explorer?
    • Any computer geek worth his salt has been through the drill: you go to visit a family member for dinner and eventually they mention some arcane problem they’ve been having with software you long ago expunged from all of your computers. Common culprits are the Unholy Triad: Microsoft Outlook,…

Get Yahoo Pipe Cleaner

You can find installation instructions for Yahoo Pipe Cleaner here.

4 comments

Best of Feeds – 26 links – video, blogging, web2.0, google, css

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on August 12, 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. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr 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

 

This Week at IDT Labs

  • [RSS] Facebook Status Feed Filter

    I’ve created a new Yahoo Pipe that that will take the RSS feed URL for your Facebook status, filter out your name, and add (from Facebook status) to the end. This makes it easy to repost your status in Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, whatever. — Please link to this URL instead — IDT Labs is a blog…

  • [WORDPRESS] Search the WordPress.com Blog

    I’ve created a small script for Firefox that adds a search form to the WordPress.com Official blog . IDT Labs is a blog for news announcements about software, tools or blog themes created by InternetDuctTape.com . Subscribe to InternetDuctTape by RSS or subscribe by email .

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

5 comments

Facebook Tip: Broadcast your Facebook status as RSS

Posted in Facebook, Technology, Twitter, Yahoo Pipes by engtech on August 08, 2007

RSS is one of the most useful tools out there for moving information around on the web. Recently the concept of “micro-blogging” status updates has become very popular with applications like Facebook, Twitter and Pownce. The only problem is that it is a pain to update many sites at the same time. It is better to pick one and broadcast RSS to the others. I’m going to show you how to broadcast your Facebook status to Twitter.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The Twitter Facebook App now lets you control your Facebook status from Twitter. This tip lets you posts your Facebook status in Twitter. Using them together is a very bad idea.

How to Find the RSS Feed for Your Facebook Status

This is actually the hardest part.

  1. Login to Facebook
  2. Click on Profile tab
  3. Under the Mini-Feed heading click on See All
  4. Click on Status Stories from the right hand column
  5. Right click on My Status and copy the link

facebook rss status

Filtering Your Status with Yahoo Pipes

I’ve put together a Yahoo Pipe that filters your status. This isn’t necessary, but it makes the status updates look a little bit better in other applications like Twitter. It removes your name, and changes the link to go to your profile instead of the individual status. Feel free to clone it and tweak it some more.

Eric is washing his cat.

becomes

is washing his cat (from Facebook status).

and the feed link is set to your Facebook profile.

  1. Go to this Yahoo Pipe
  2. Copy your Facebook status RSS feed
  3. Click Run Pipe
  4. Click on Subscribe
  5. Right click on Get as RSS and copy link

You can now put this filter RSS into TwitterFeed, your blog sidebar, etc.

Special Thanks

Related Posts

50 comments

How Do People Use Google Reader with Internet Explorer?

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, RSS Syndication, Technology by engtech on August 06, 2007

Web Browser Tips & Tricks

Any computer geek worth his salt has been through the drill: you go to visit a family member for dinner and eventually they mention some arcane problem they’ve been having with software you long ago expunged from all of your computers. Common culprits are the Unholy Triad: Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer and Norton Anti-Virus. But what’s much worse than when solving some niggling problem that is only caused by their choice apps is when you volunteer to enter the belly of the beast and perform some “improvements” of your own free will.

To all the computer geeks reading this I offer you a humble warning: nothing good can come from volunteering to “improve” a family member’s computer. Don’t fix what ain’t broke.

I was at my father’s house this weekend. A relaxing day of pool, reading and sun followed by a delicious barbeque left me content and sated. My normal cynicism when it comes to technology was at an all time low. He isn’t as technically minded as me, and for a long time I’ve been wanting to get him set up using an RSS feed reader. He has never used them before but he understood the basic concept: RSS is like getting email newsletters of website updates, but without clogging your email. RSS is a blogger’s best friend. It lets us keep track of each other’s updates painlessly and effortlessly. He has a blog of his own and using Google Reader would make it very easy for him to share posts and links on his blog using the Shared Items feature and a widget in his blog’s sidebar.

rss feeds the oprah way

Google Reader was an easy choice because it is the feed reader I use every day. It is the most widely adopted web-based RSS reader with 50-60% market share. The interface is similar to Gmail. It lets you quickly scroll through items, starring stuff you want to find again later and sharing items with other people. But the deciding factor for me is that it is the reader I use every day — always get your family members using the same software you do if you want to have any hope of troubleshooting problems later.

The initial steps were easy: create a new Gmail account for his blog identity that doesn’t use his real name (since that is displayed by your Google Shared Items), add that identity to his Blogger blog as admin, and add his Google Shared Items as a sidebar widget on his blog. It all went very smoothly until I started subscribing to feeds.

Internet Explorer 6 Sucks for RSS

He is still a die hard Internet Explorer 6 user, and it’s all my fault because of articles like this where I explain how to downgrade from IE7 to IE6. Internet Explorer 6 is really bad for reading RSS feeds because it doesn’t understand RSS at all. I so rarely use IE6 that I had forgotten that it doesn’t know how to automatically find the RSS feed for a page (“RSS autodiscovery”) and that when you click on an RSS link it displays crap like this:

interet explorer rss feed looks like crap

What are you supposed to do with something like that? The answer is that you cut-and-paste the feed URL and add it to Google Reader manually. Is someone new to RSS ever going to do that? No.

There is an easier way of doing it using a bookmarklet — a piece of Javascript that you save as a bookmark (or “Add as Favorite” in IE lingo). You can find a bookmarklet for doing that in Google Reader under Settings and then Goodies. Unfortunately it didn’t work properly because of either his Internet Explorer security settings or because of a conflict with Norton Anti-Virus. He likes to save his bookmarks on the desktop to access them instead of using the Favorites menu, so the chances of getting him to use a bookmarklet were already slim to none. Back to the drawing board.

google toolbar example

Instead of trying to figure out the conflict, I decided to add the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. Google Toolbar is a great little add-on for any web browser. You can edit the buttons to add all kinds of neat things like searching within the current website, notification of new Gmail messages, toggling highlighting of search terms on the current page and Google Reader notification of new posts in your RSS feeds. But what is missing is a way to one-click subscribe to the current site in Google Reader.

Screw this. One of the “advanced” features of Internet Explorer 7 is better RSS integration, so it’s time for an unplanned upgrade. 15 minutes and one reboot later we’re running the latest and greatest IE7 — and having the exact same problems!

How Do People Subscribe with Google Reader in IE7?

When you click on an RSS link in IE7 you at least get something you can read with an option to subscribe to it. But it only defaults to the built-in Internet Explorer 7 feed reader — it doesn’t give an option to subscribe to Google Reader. It’s much better than IE6 but it still doesn’t solve my problem: I want him to be able to add subscriptions to Google Reader with one click. The bookmarklet still isn’t working properly under Internet Explorer 7.

I’m tired, frustrated and desperate so I decide to pull out the big guns. Firefox has this amazingly little tool called Greasemonkey that makes it trivial to add additional functionality to your web browser. I know that there’s a Greasemonkey script to let you one click subscribe to RSS feeds in Google Reader. I know that it’s possible to manhandle IE to force it to be able to run Greasemonkey user scripts… Google tells me that a plugin called IE7Pro can do it, but after I install IE7Pro it doesn’t understand how to install Greasemonkey scripts.

WTF? THIS IS SO SIMPLE TO DO IN FIREFOX! Why in the world is everything so hard in Internet Explorer? How do people surf the Internet like this?

For any non-believers in the audience, let me show you how easy RSS works in Firefox land.

Firefox + Google Reader = Crazy Delicious

Firefox understands when a website has an RSS feed auto-discovery link. You don’t have to search through the entire page to find the stupid orange button, you can click on the button in your address bar.

Step #1: Click on the Orange Icon in the Address Bar

rss feed auto-discovery

Step #Who Cares: You Only Do This Once

The first time you use it, it will display the feed in a nice, human readable way, with a yellow box asking you what you want to use to subscribe to this feed. Google Reader is one of the options and you can set it up to *ALWAYS* use Google Reader from now on.

always use google reader to subscribe to rss

Step #Skip This With Greasemonkey: Choose Between Google Homepage and Google Reader

Unfortunately, Google isn’t smart enough to remember your preference between Google Reader and Google Homepage — so you have to always chose the red pill or the blue pill. There is a handy Greasemonkey script to fix that though: always subscribe to Google Reader.

one click subscribe with google reader

One click subscription to Google Reader thanks to Firefox and Greasemonkey. Quite a bit easier than:

  1. Right Click on RSS feed URL
  2. Copy shortcut
  3. Log in to Google Reader
  4. Click on Add Subscription
  5. Paste short cut into form
  6. Click Add

…which seems to be the only way to do it in Internet Explorer 6 that worked reliably for me.

Please Tell Me I’m Wrong

When I’m writing rants about frustrating moments of needless computer complication there is always the nagging voice in the back of my head that I’m missing something obvious and making things much harder than they have to be. I hope this is the case.

I was surprised that someone hasn’t built a one-click “add auto-discovery feed to Google Reader” button for the Google toolbar. A little digging shows that it isn’t be possible because the kind of things you can do with Google Toolbar is actually quite limited. This is too bad because it would get more Google Reader users using the Toolbar and more Toolbar users using Google Reader.

My experience with Google Reader + Internet Explorer wouldn’t have been so bad if the bookmarklet had worked for me. But given the fact that 58% of people surfing the web are using some form of Internet Explorer (compared to 35% for Firefox) and that Google Reader is the most popular web-based RSS reader… well, it’s no surprise that more people aren’t reading RSS feeds. It’s hard enough to explain to people why RSS is useful when you can’t show them how to subscribe to an RSS feed consistently in one or two clicks.

If the best feed reading software doesn’t integrate seamlessly with their web browser of choice then why should they jump through hoops getting it to work when they’ve never even used RSS before? And it really doesn’t help that most of the mainstream news portals on the net still don’t offer full feeds. If you don’t read blogs then it’s hard to explain the power of RSS — mainstream sites still don’t get how RSS without full feeds isn’t worth reading.

41 comments

Best of Feeds – 34 links – blogging, greasemonkey, facebook, programming, wordpress

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on August 04, 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. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr 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

 

 

  • The Solution to Social Network Site Fatigue

    Social network site fatigue is when you’re sick and tired of trying to find your friends when everyone jumps ship to the Next Big Thing. The biggest problem with the web 2.0 revolution of “social network apps” is that there is no universal identifier. In real life, governments use…

  • Digest for June and July 2007

    Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape.

  • Community Starts with Communication: 5 Tips to Building Your Readership

    When I first started commenting over at okdork.com, Noah Kogan would personally reply to me by email. I thought this was a little strange, even after a year of blogging this was the first time it had happened to me. I thought it was just that he was bored and killing time. It’s only now that I…

  • Best of Feeds – 58 links – programming, tips, business, code, design

    Tags: blogging, business, code, comics, css, del.icio.us, design, development, digg, email, engineering, facebook, firefox, flickr, free, google, humor, inspiration, javascript, lifehacks, photography, productivity, programming, rss, socialsoftware, software, tips, tshirts, usability, web2.0,…

This Week at IDT Labs

  • [WORDPRESS] Akismet Auntie Spam update

    Ever have one of those weeks? Akismet has decided that all comments from me are spam and there’s nothing I can do about it, other than politely emailing the blogs I regularly post to and asking them to go dumpster diving for me. I’ve updated my Akismet Auntie Spam script for Firefox so that…

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

4 comments

The Solution to Social Network Site Fatigue

Posted in Online Privacy and Reputation Management, Technology, Web 2.0 and Social Media by engtech on August 03, 2007

Social Software and You

Social network site fatigue is when you’re sick and tired of trying to find your friends when everyone jumps ship to the Next Big Thing (Friendster to MySpace to Facebook, Twitter to Pownce, etc). The biggest problem with the web 2.0 revolution of “social network apps” is that there is no universal identifier. In real life, governments use social insurance numbers to tell the different between two people with the same name. If you look at the web as a big database, we’re missing a universal key that lets us know that engtech on Digg is also ninetimessix on StumbleUpon who is also Eric on Facebook and Internet Duct Tape on WordPress.com.This is an epidemic problem with all web services. Even in cases where there *IS* a universal common identifier there is no guarantee that every site will support it. Companies either lack the technical know-how, or they fear sending their customers to their competitors if they make it too easier to move data around.

The Universal Identifier for Movies

imdb logoEveryone can agree that IMDB is the #1 database for information about movies. They also provide an ID number for each movie and TV show. For example, Six Feet Under has an ID of 0248654 and you can access a lot of information on IMDB directly if you know that number corresponds to Six Feet Under the tv show. Rotten Tomatoes understands that IMDB is the #1 database for information about movies, and you can link to any movie on their site using only the IMDB number.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/alias?type=imdbid&s=0248654

brings you to

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/six_feet_under_the_complete_first_season/

Any web site about movies that doesn’t understand that the IMDB number is the universal identifier is shooting themselves in the foot because they are making it harder for users to mash their new site up with existing sites about movies. IE: If I had a blog about movies where I always linked to IMDB, I could trivially change those links to Rotten Tomatoes for all of my old posts because RT understands the IMDB number.

What is really surprising is that even though Amazon has owned IMDB since 1998, you cannot browse Amazon results using the IMDB number. Sure, there are nice hacks like the Movie Dude script for Firefox that will crosslink the movie sites for you… but it would be so much easier with universal IDs. The same would go for social network sites.

Facebook As a Universal ID?

facebook logoFacebook hype has been through the roof, with many pundits wondering if the closed garden of Facebook is going to become the official storehouse for online identity (at least for the next few years). Their ingenious apps platform lets other websites piggyback off of the Facebook social web, giving us a hint of social site nirvana: being able to maintain one set of friends on Facebook and use that same set on every other social site. But that is contingent to how well Facebook plays with other sites.

NetVibes has already shot the first volley against Facebook’s bow with their new application that exports Facebook data into NetVibes. It would be nice to see Facebook becoming a social network hub. ClaimID, the bright future of open identity, even has a Facebook application. My hope is that the ClaimID app will let me find the claimed identities of my online friends and act as a hub for my social network activities. One friendlists to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

claimid logo

But There Already Is a Universal Friendslist!

The silly thing about all this time we waste with friendslist management is that we already have a universal friendslist: our address book. Any social site worth it’s salt will let you batch import all of your existing friends by uploading a file or logging in to your web-based email account. Plaxo has been fighting to become the universal address book, it gives you the ability to automatically push out contact information updates to anyone who has you in their address book. They’ve even gone so far as to implement some killer developer tools like Javascript and REST widgets – I’ve seen a few startups add address book friendslist import to their web app in literally minutes by using the Plaxo tools.

plaxo logo

There are definitely some smart eggs at Plaxo, as they’ve been repositioning themselves with Pulse as an open social network where users can share contact information and their web presence easily.

universal synchronization

But who will win the battle of the social networks? Will it continue the same cycle of a new network being popular every two years? One thing is certain, as long as there isn’t an easy way to migrate data and contacts between these network, it will be the users who lose.

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