The Real Blogosphere

I was talking to a friend this week about who I consider to be the core target audience of Performancing, the people that really matter to us, and the people that define who we are. I like to think of this group as “the real blogosphere”.

It’s not about a small group of noisey people in palo alto that think they’re at the center of the universe. It’s not about big media houses jumping on bandwagons. It’s about real people, quietly getting on with the business of blogging. It’s about people from all over the world striving to write about subjects they’re passionate about, using tools that help make their lives easier and wanting to earn money from their weblogs.

It’s about you, and it’s about me.

It’s about real people.

One thing that came up is how quickly Performancing has grown. With well over 12,000 members now, our combined influence is not inconsiderable right? We got there by ignoring (mostly) the blog snobs and the pretenders, and focusing on the real blogosphere, by promoting our members and their interests and by listening to the community.

Now though, it’s time for some more direction.

With work on the upcoming ad network going well, I wanted to find out what more we might do to help the community. What features, services or products we should look at developing.

One thing that came up a little while ago, suggested by Ahmed I think, was a forum for commercial exchanges. People looking to buy/sell service and start/join blog networks for example.

Let us know what you think, and what you’d like to see eh?

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Best Advice for Combating Comment Spam

There’s a ton of advice out there for dealing with comment spam, but when it comes right down to it, the best advice is pretty simple. Darren has an outstanding post on spam this morning that talks about the cost of ignoring trash on your blogs. In it, he says this:

My main piece of advice for bloggers is to use up to date blogging software and to use the built in spamming solutions that many of them have built in or available with plugins.

And there you have it, it’s not foolproof, far from it, but it IS good advice. So, if for no other reason at all, make sure your software is up to date, and that you subscribe to whatever update mechanisms your software/plugins have for keeping you current.

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AOL Muscles in on Financial Blogging

In what can only be seen as a “tip of the iceberg” move, AOL have finally made their next play in the blogosphere. Tipped off byHeather Green posting for BusinessWeek I see AOL’s new BloggingStocks.com, a weblog about, yes you guessed it, stocks.

Heather has the details:

Bloggingstocks.com is a unique idea. AOL hired bloggers to write about product announcements, earnings releases, and commentary on 8 stocks initially. On its first day, the network will do live blogging of the Microsoft earnings call, for instance. (Good luck!)

So, what about the $64,000 question? Can the bloggers hold the stocks they are writing about?

Indeed. In fact, AOL encourages them to be stockholders, if not necessarily in the companies they’re writing about.

It’s the first big move since they bought AOL and like Heather, I’d expect to see a lot more. The fact that the “big boys” are starting to move into lucrative keyword areas in the blogosphere means that it’s probably only a matter of time before regular commercial bloggers start to really feel the pinch. And that IS interesting. What’s more interesting right now though, is if those “sponsored links” they have on the right (currently empty) are going to be straight, or condomed?

Afterall, GOOG now own 5% of AOL right? So we wouldn’t want anyone doing anything as dreadful as shoing text links for other sites now would we?

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Why Should I Care?

Not all blogs are about pictures of cute cats, our latest hairstyles, tips on this or that. Sometimes we post on issues we really care about hoping in our own small way to make a difference and change minds.

I notice a lot of earnest pleas for attention in blogs that miss one vital ingredient. Some of the best blogs and bloggers are guilty of it. The mistake? Believing everyone already thinks the same way and just need to be provided the facts in a succinct and accurate manner. Problem is, the truth is we all have our own issues to think and care about.

If you want people to care about your issue you have to help them understand.

This is particularly true of political blogs but I actually notice it more in technical blogs. Perhaps the political folks have to learn this lesson to stay around in the game for any length of time without burning out through lack of progress. I read yet another security alert, another diatribe on the evils of copy protection, yet another shock-horror story about how our privacy is at risk. In all of these posts the blogger assumes we know exactly what the issue is and where this all might lead.

If people who want to make big important political changes can’t get this right, then there is little hope for the small company putting out yet another press release. The same issues are present. With your press release you want people to take notice and pass on your news right? Well, that means persuading someone that what you have to say is important, just the same as the “change the governments policy” guy.

You must MUST answer two questions at least if you want to not only be understood but you want people to feel something

1. What the heck are you really talking about?
2. Why should I care?

Without answering those two questions well and early on you have lost your audience.

When you are talking to friends over the water cooler they can turn back to you and say “DRM, RFID, whatsthatnow?”, on blogs people don’t want to look foolish so you don’t get those sorts of comments as often. It is not enough to just link to the definitions also, very often definitions are written in an impartial way and do not refer to all the pros and cons or debate.

I am not talking about dumbing down, you don’t have to treat your reader like a child. Just make sure there is clearly articulated what the issue is and why it is important. You need to give your audience the tools to form an opinion. If you don’t, nobody will care.

Without Net Neutrality, Would Blogs Exist?

How would it feel if after all the time you’ve put in on your blog, it suddenly disappeared from google altogether? And loaded at a crawl if someone actually did know where to find you and wanted to read your posts?

How would you like to pay more money for slower internet?

If that sounds good to you, say, $60 a month for dial-up speed access then DON’T click the link below and sign the petition. If you liked TV better when there were only 2 or 3 channels, DON’T click the link. DON’T sign the petition. If you wish that the only businesses you could shop at were big box stores, DO NOTHING. Because it’s easier to ignore stuff and wait for it to go away. A smaller internet will certainly be easier to keep track of. We won’t need to worry about googlejuice, technorati rankings or SEO if Congress passes this bill.

On the other hand, if you ever buy from small businesses, like to find
new music or video online, sometimes read stories or news from sources
other than the networks, or have ever wanted something unusual that you
just couldn’t find nearby, the Please Do sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality.

To be honest, I don’t believe in petitions and have lost most faith in
our political process, but if this bill is signed into law I could very
well go out of business. And so will a lot of the other people and
websites that you may currently enjoy. I don’t know if we can make a
difference, but I would feel foolish for not at least trying.

Several telecom and media companies have decided that they would like
you to pay more for the internet than you already do. More importantly,
they would like to achieve this in part by auctioning off what you can
see online to the highest bidder. For instance, if you go online to buy
a fire pit right now, you’ll find a link to my Great Bowl O Fire pretty
near the top of google. But if AT&T or Time Warner are able to get
this bill through congress they’ll be able to sell control of search
results to companies like Target or Walmart. I’ll still be online, but
good luck finding me.

These companies are also lobbying for the right to slow access speeds
to sites that don’t pay them off. So, the high speed internet access
that you pay a premium for will only load sites quickly if they are big
enough to pay the extortion fee. All the other sites you visit will
load as though you’d decided to switch back to dial up modems. Are you
okay with that? Because I’m not. Same with news… Do you want all Fox
all the time, or would you rather choose which sites you use to find
out what’s going on in the world?

I’ve tried really hard to ignore this issue. But the more I learn about
it the more I realize that it affects us all. The internet is something
that we have recently learned to take for granted, but believe me, if
the web becomes as limited as TV was before satellite and cable, we’ll
all miss the freedom we allowed Congress to take away. The fact that
it’s all about greed just makes it worse.

Below is a message from Moveon.org with more info and a link to an
online petition that will be read before congress when they convene to
vote on this bill. Please go sign the petition. It really does matter.

Do you buy books online, use Google, or download to an Ipod? These
activities will be hurt if Congress passes a radical law that gives
giant corporations more control over the Internet.

Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard
to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Net
Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most
easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon.com
doesn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more
properly on your computer.

Politicians don’t think we are paying attention to this issue. Many of
them take campaign checks from big telecom companies and are on the
verge of selling out to people like AT&T’s CEO, who openly says,
"The internet can’t be free."

The free and open Internet is under seige—can you sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality? Click here.

A list of all the ways you might be affected by Net Neutrality is available here.

To learn more, and get involved, you can do several things:

1. Educate yourself about the issues.  Read Doc Searls article from last year
   on the topic (this is what first alerted me to the issue, and allowed
   me to spread the word a bit, most notably to Liz Strauss, who took the ball and ran with it).
2. Visit the Save the Internet website and blog to learn more, and to send a quick and easy letter to Congress voicing your opposition.
3. Spread the word.  There’s a huge viral marketing campaign

   going on right now to spread awareness and galvanize support. Help
   spread the word with your blog, by email, or come up with a viral video concept.
   I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that if the big telcos and cable
   companies get their way, grass roots viral marketing will be a thing of
   the past.

   (list cribbed from Brian Clark at CoppyBlogger. You should be reading his posts on how to write copy. I know because I’ve seen about 400 articles on the net neutrality issue and his was the one that finally kicked me into gear!)

They WILL win if we are apathetic.  Do something, or find a way to earn a living that doesn’t involve the Internet.

Web2.0, WebOS, WebOffice, We… Whatever.

The WebOS Market Review by Richard MacManus delves into the WebOS market, which is currently being played by small-timers like YouOS, eyeOS, XIN, etc. A WebOS is an OS on the Web that allows you to browse, eMail, chat, etc. Basically, the online counterpart of your desktop OS.

Ok. Stop. Let’ go back to that last one. Online counterpart of an OS? uhh, erm…

Hmm. Let’s try Wikipedia. Wikipedia defines WebOS as:

More generally, WebOS refers to a software platform that interacts with the user
through a web browser and does not depend on any particular local
operating system.

What? Let’s go through this one more time, step-by-step:

I boot my desktop OS. I fire my desktop browser. I connect to the World Wide Web. I access the WebOS. I see my WebDesktop. Now what? I fire up my WebBrowser and access the Internet again?

Er, excuse me, but isn’t that where I am already? So, which one is my, ‘true’, definitive OS? The one I booted to fire the (desktop) Browser, or the one that I accessed on the web? Moreover, how would you access such an OS in the future, given this logical inconsistency?

When I put forth this question, AutomanG replied with the following:

One solution would be to have something, say…, linux embedded into a box that’s sole purpose is to fire up a browser and initiate a tunnel to a remote server (where your webOS of choice is located.) It would be a borderless browser so to you, it would look just like you booted a computer arriving at a desktop.

This sounds really weird! No offense meant, but I just want to explore this a bit further:

Currently, looking at the larger picture, we have three OSes in the Desktop Market. Windows, Linux and MacOS. With this proposal the intention to make Linux a standard (irrespective of whether all people want it or not). Or Windows or MacOS. Some OS which can be universally accepted and moulded as and when need be. Which inevitably brings us back to Linux.

Agree though, the argument that Automan provides makes some sense on some level. Okay, it doesn’t matter what boots the embedded browser as long as what they see on their screens is the same all throughout. Interesting point, I admit.

But again, then there are many options for WebOSes now. There will come a time when we will have to choose one of them as a standard, or maybe, define some standard specs for a WebOS. How do you do that, then?

And if you were to do it later, why not do it now for the desktop OSes? And if you intend to write embedded software to run the necessary hardware, it still is an OS!

I still can’t fathom the need for a WebOS. The ability to store data online, more than makes up for the inability to access my personal desktop everywhere. After all the applications that you intend to put on the Web will be run by their desktop counterparts. What is the point?

Ok, I guess, I oughtta stop. I sound almost desparate now!

Technorati Tags: WebOS, ZDNet, OS

5 Yahoo Search Hacks

Quite some time back I wrote about Google Search Hacks that you could use to check the health of your blog. I promised at the time to look at Yahoo hacks but never got around to it. Well, lets put that straight now shall we? Here’s a short list of some of the more fun things you can do with Yahoo Search…

1. Use the Real Interface

Just so that we’re all on the same page, search.yahoo.com is the url you need.

2. Find ALL Your Links

Finding links to your blogs is easy enough in part. Google will show you some of them, but only to specific pages, and technorati will also show you some of them, though they’ll arguably be a little fresher than Google. What you can do with Yahoo though is better, much better:

Enter the linkdomain command in the search box like this: linkdomain:mydomainsanswww.com. You can see how it works in the image below:

3. Yahoo Blog Search

You can do a Yahoo blog search by hacking at Yahoo News. Try the Search box below:

If you want to put that code on your own site, just paste the code below onto a blank html page or put it on a post.

</p> <div id="#yahooblogsearch"> <strong> <span style="color: #C00;">Yahoo!</span> Blog Search</strong></p> <form action="http://blog.news.search.yahoo.com/blog/search" method="get"> <input type="text" name="p" size="30" /></p> <input type="hidden" name="fr" value="moreblog" /></p> <input type="submit" value="Search Blogs"></input> <p> </form> </div> <p>

4. Search Creative Commons

This made a big splash when they first announced it, but i’ll bet it’s news to some of you reading this right? You can search for only material licensed under creative commons, which means that if you’re looking for content to mix into topic then you can do so without fear copyright violation.

You have to go to the advanced search page and tick the appropriate box. Easy eh?

Tip: The advanced search page is only one click away, and can REALLY help you search better.

5. Get Search Results as RSS

Unlike Google, Yahoo make it possible for you to subscribe to regular search results. There is no button on the page, but if your browser does not pick up the RSS via auto discovery, you can check the souce for a url like this: http://api.search.yahoo.com/ WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml?appid= yahoosearchwebrss&query=performancing&adult_ok=1 (note i put a couple of spaces in there so the line would break).

Anyone Else?

I’ll be the first to admit that my search skills aren’t what they once were, so I’d love to see any other hacks you can come up with specifically for Yahoo search!

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Powered by Performancing Firefox

Dammit. I just went on a little post frenzy and totally forgot about a small feature we built into the new PFF 1.2: Namely the “powered by performancing firefox” attribute you can enable in the settings tab.

A small thing for sure, but for anyone kind enough to want to help us spread the word, a simple way to do it without even thinking about it….

Keen observers will note that the html actually gives the “powered by” a CSS classname aswell, so you can conceivably style it any way you wish. And if you manage to do something neat with it, do post a link here…

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Digg in a Hole

So if you hadn’t realized what a complete bunch of arse this whole “wisdom of crowds” bollocks was previously, you can see it in action as Digg takes a slamming due to nothing more than its own popularity.

My friend Peter sums it up well:

The lunatics invade, the system breaks, authoritarianism replaces democracy. Eventually, your founding mission statement becomes rather comic

Apparently Digg have taken steps, but is it just an interim measure, what happens next time?

Performancing Firefox 1.2 Final!

    After a great beta run, we are pleased to announce the release of Performancing for Firefox 1.2.

    We hope you enjoy this release, as it brings some more key functionallity and stability to performancing to make your blogging even better.

As always, once you’ve given it  a spin, head to the forums and let us know what you think.

Update: I’ve added a section on getting inline spellchecking in Firefox and PFF.

New features in 1.2

1. Image FTP Upload
2. Basic Metrics Chart viewing
3. Blogger.com improvements (Currently there are issues with the blogger.com service)
4. API url autodetect
5. Much improved stability and performance.
6. Fixed PFF from promting password on firefox startup (for masterpassword users)
7. Optional “Powered by Performancing” tag insertion.
8. Better category support for other blogging platforms.
9. Quick File FTP upload (under Performancing in the context menu).
10. Bug fixes for trackbacks.

Install

Install Performancing Firefox 1.2

Image Upload

In PFF click on the Image Insert button on the toolbar.

You will then be prompted with the following window:

Click on the “Upload to FTP” Option and click the ‘browse’ button to locate the image you would like to upload.
If you haven’t done so yet, click on the ‘Settings’ tab and configure your FTP settings.

Now go back to the ‘General’ tab and click on “upload image” to start the upload process

Once successfull your new URL will be generated.
You can either Copy the URL manually or click on the ‘Insert Image’ button to add it to your current posts content.

Note:
Image and File FTP uploading is currently limited to one FTP profile
configuration, multiple profiles will be added to the next beta or
version release.

API Autodetect

A new addition to the Account Wizard is ‘autodetect’.
While you can still manually configure your blog account, PFF will try and find your API URL and settings for most common blogs.

First enter your blog URL into the textbox:

Then click next or “Check URL”

If your blog settings were found, you will presented with the API URL and blog settings.

Note: Please
note that autodetect support may not work on many different blog
platforms, specifically Drupal, Old MovableType installations, and a
few others.

Quick File Upload

Along with FTP Image upload, we have added a very usefull utility called “File FTP Upload”.
You can access it from the main Firefox context menu under “Performancing -> FTP File Upload”.

Once launched you will be presented with a dialog very similar to the ImageFTP Upload dialog.
Click on “Browse” to select the file you would like to upload.
Once uploaded you can either copy the URL that was generated, or click the “Copy URL to Clipboard” button.

Blogger.com improvements

In previous version of PFF, you would frequently get an error returned from the blogger.com service called Error #3.

We’ve fixed this, and you should now have a much more seemless interaction with blogger.com. Thanks to our community member Theo for helping us with the fix.

Installing Spellcheck

Many have expressed their interest in Spellcheck integration with PFF, please follow the following steps to successfully get inline spellcheck to work in Firefox 1.5.x and PFF.

1. Uninstall any version of Spellbound you have installed then restart firefox.
2. Install this version of spellbound (spellbound-dev_20060108.xpi)
3. Restart Firefox
4. Try typing into a text field and misspell a word, it should now be underlined.
5. It it is, hold the ‘Ctrl-key’ down and left-click on the word to see the suggested spellings
6. If it didn’t work (no red underline), go into the extension manager (Tools->Extensions) and go into the Spellbound preferences and make sure you have a dictionary selected. If you don’t have any dictionaries installed then go HERE to install more dictionaries.

Let us know if you run into any issues.

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