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7 ways to market your blog

by Scott Bird
10 Jan 2007 You've just written a blog post you're really proud of, and you'd like to show it off. Perhaps you'd just appreciate a bit of feedback, or maybe you're hoping to generate a bit of revenue. Whatever the case, here are a few things to consider. 1. Social media Your first port of call should be the larger social news and bookmarking sites. If your post reaches the front page of any of the following sites, traffic will immediately follow. NB : this will most likely take the form of a large traffic spike, followed by a gradual increase in your site's traffic over the following months. Make sure you're ready for it.

• DIGG
• del.icio.us
• Technorati
• Boing Boing

2. Submit to major sites In addition to the social news and bookmarking sites are several high-traffic sites which routinely take user-submitted content. The list includes sites such as :

• Lifehacker
• Engadget
• Slashdot
• TWiT (Podcast)
• MacBreak Weekly (Podcast)

Submission can take the form of an email (Lifehacker, Engadget, Slashdot), a del.icio.us 'for:' tag (TWiT, MacBreak) or a ping (Technorati). 3. Blog carnivals A blog carnival is a site which gathers good content from a number of blogs in a particular niche, publishing it in a regular newsletter, ezine or link-filled blog post. The content for each of these is often user-submitted, and then reviewed by the blog carnival site owner. To find out which blog carnivals are best suited to your site's content, head over to blogcarnival.com. 4. Competitions No matter whether your blog contains great writing, photography, podcasts or other media, competitions are a great way to drive traffic. Here I'll briefly look at two main types, writing and photo competitions. Writing competitions For blogs with a literary bent, writing competitions are the way to go. Regardless of the topic, if you write well, writing competitions are well worth a look. These fall into two main categories - pre-written and challenge. Pre-written : as you've no doubt guessed from the name, these competitions look at content you've already produced. It's time to show off your best work. Challenge : these competitions are for newly-created content only. They pose a challenge, which is generally something posted on your site after the competition start date. A few personal favourites :

• ProBlogger - Reviews and Predictions
• Successful Blog - Birthday Challenge
• Real Estate Investing for Real - Goals for 2007
• Jeff Pulver - Save the Internet

For more writing competitions head over to Competizione (thanks Liz). Photo competitions Similarly, if you're handy with a camera, photographic competitions are often the way to go. As with writing competitions, these fall into two main categories. From the archives : the photos you really want to show the world may be the ones you took a while ago, and a number of competitions allow for this 'best of' approach. Challenge : regardless of whether you're looking at a weekly photographic meme or a competition from a monthly magazine, a photographic challenge takes the same format. A topic or theme is stated, and the best photographs to be submitted (matching that theme) are published. A couple of personal favourites :

• JPG Magazine
• The Digital Story : the monthly competitions (themed) and the grab shots (any time, any topic) are both superb.

For more, head over to the Photo Competitions site. 5. Does Google know who you are? Search for your own name (in quotes) on Google. Make a note of the sites listed above yours. Also make a note of which of your own sites ranks highest. One of your long-term goals is to take over the first page of results. Ideally, everyone searching for you by name should see your best work before everyone else's. The ways to do this will be discussed separately, but just keep this goal in mind for now. 6. Comment on other blogs In addition to the 'sites above yours' list you just created, jot down a few sites which you find interesting, and which have more traffic than yours. Try to keep this list to sites which are related to yours in some way. The next part is simple. For both lists (the 'sites above yours' and 'interesting sites'), go through and open them all up. Add the feeds (if available) to your favourite feed reader (I still can't go past Google Reader, largely because I love the keyboard shortcuts) and read a few posts from each site. Leave comments on them. This will often encourage the owners of those sites to look at yours, starting with your most recent post (if you're quick, this will be the one you're proud of). Google will like the links, and you'll like the traffic. 7. Keep doing it In order to continually grow your traffic (and feedback, and income), keep performing the above steps. Keep producing great content, keep submitting entries to competitions and blog carnivals, and keep commenting on other blogs. You'll be well rewarded.

Sleep hygiene - 10 ways to get to sleep quickly

by Scott Bird
17 Dec 2006

The first step on the road to a good night’s sleep is the ability to get to sleep quickly. Once you have this, the other aspects of a good night’s sleep fall into place fairly readily.

How do you get to sleep quickly then? Here are a number of things to consider when preparing for that ideal slumber.


1. What’s stopping you?
Take a moment to consider the thing (or things) that’s holding you back from getting to sleep quickly. Perhaps you just don’t feel tired when you first climb into bed, or you lie there thinking about things. Maybe you’re hungry. Whatever it is, identifying the cause will help enormously.


2. Awake at a fixed time
Regardless of what time you go to bed, wake up at the same time each day. Naturally there are limits to this - if you’re out partying until 5am, a 5:30 wake-up just isn’t going to happen. But the more regular your rising times are, the better you’ll sleep.


3. Make weekends the same
As far as your sleep routine’s concerned, treat Saturday and Sunday the same as the rest of the week. This means waking up at the same times - no more Sunday lie-ins.


4. Try to avoid a major caffeine hit
I tend to drink several cups (perhaps 5 or 6) of high-caffeine green tea per day. This, however, doesn’t seem to have any negative impact on sleep - although an intense coffee session does. If you like your coffee (and I really can’t blame you for that; I certainly love the stuff), spread it out a bit. No bingeing at the nearest cafe.


5. Exercise at the right times
Regular exercise (no matter what type) can certainly help you sleep, but the timing of your workouts is something to think about. A short session of something moderate will help you sleep, and can be done shortly before bedtime; a longer session (or a more intense one), however, can actually keep you awake for a while. If your schedule permits it, keep these longer/more intense sessions away from your intended sleep times.


6. Avoid slow-digesting foods shortly before bedtime
If your digestive system’s working overtime while you’re trying to get some sleep, it’ll win every time. The simplest thing to do is to hold off on that piece of cheese, spicy foods or anything covered in sugar until after you wake up.


7. Remove distractions from your sleep environment
Get rid of as many items with noise or changing light from your bedroom as possible. TVs, computers and rechargeable devices with flashing lights should all go. If you can’t get rid of them, switch them off when you’re trying to sleep. Minimise distractions.


8. Don’t take your worries to bed
A couple of years ago I discovered that I’d spend an hour or two each night simply lying there thinking, unless I wrote the problems down. A quick to-do list containing the main things on my mind (and the action I planned to take - even if that was ‘not sure what to do’) worked wonders. If you’re in a similar situation (lying there thinking about things each night), try it.


9. Comfort
Comfortable bedding and room temperature make a big difference. Making the bed isn’t just to keep your mum happy. It’ll help you sleep better.


10. Physiological factors
Health conditions such as arthritis, heartburn, menstruation and headaches (and many other things) are known to affect sleep. If you suspect the problem stems from your health, discuss this with your doctor. As some medications have sleeplessness as a side-effect, there are sometimes changes which can be made.

What's your best iPhoto tip?

by Scott Bird
14 Dec 2006 For the past few weeks I've been gradually immersing my dad in the world of digital photography. As it's his first Mac, iPhoto seemed like the perfect choice. iPhoto is quite a powerful tool behind that deceptively simple exterior. Although he's mastered the basics admirably, I'd still like to squeeze a bit of extra mileage from this great application. To that end, what's your best iPhoto tip?

7 Essential Front Row tips

by Scott Bird
10 Dec 2006

Front Row seems in many ways to be one of Apple’s forgotten children. Underneath the simple exterior, however, is quite a powerful beast. Here are 7 ways to squeeze a little more out of it.

1. Sync the remote with only one computer.
If you’ve got multiple Macs and their corresponding remotes (as in a store, school or even home setup), you’re probably growing tired of the fact that a click on one remote opens Front Row on several machines. To prevent this, pair each remote with its intended machine by pointing the remote at the usual target (Apple logo for iMacs, left of the latch for MacBook Pros) and hold Menu + Next for 5 seconds.

An icon of two chain links will appear to indicate that the pairing was successful.

2. Open and close Front Row using keyboard
The default key combination used to open Front Row is Command-Escape. To change this, enter your System Preferences, open the Keyboard and Mouse Panel, and navigate to the Keyboard Shortcuts Tab. Scroll down to the Front Row section and change to the desired combination.

If you want to quickly exit Front Row using the keyboard, press F11 or F16. Other options are to press the Home key (which will leave the music and video playing, just exit Front Row) and the key combination Command-Option-Escape, which will quit Front Row (and everything playing) instantly.

3. Installing Front Row on any Mac running Mac OS X (10.4.5 and above)
Andrew Escobar has detailed instructions on this on his website. As long as you have a PowerPC Mac (the Intel Macs all ship with Front Row and a Remote), with a minimum of the items listed below, installation is a straightforward affair.

You’ll need :

• Mac OS X 10.4.5 or later
• iTunes 6.0.4 or later
• iPhoto 6.0.2 or later
• Core Image capable graphics card

4. Use the Front Row Remote to control other applications
The Front Row Remote can be used to control many things within OS X Tiger, including :

• Pause the song currently playing in iTunes, advance to the next one or return to the previous one (Play/Pause, Next and Previous buttons respectively)
• Hold down the Play button to put the Mac to sleep (and press any button on the remote to wake it again)
• Control the volume of your Mac using the +/- buttons on the remote
• Control DVD playback
• Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate slides in Keynote
• Use Next and Previous buttons to move through iPhoto’s Source pane
• Press the Play button to create and start an iPhoto slideshow beginning with the selected image

5. Play Xvid, DivX, and 3ivX using Front Row

The logic behind this one is simple. Front Row’s multimedia capabilities lean heavily on Quicktime, so just installing the various codecs on your machine isn’t enough. You’ll need to install the Quicktime compatible versions of each.

Links to each of them - as well as a detailed explanation of their installation and use - can be found at Paul Stamatiou’s site.

6. Using Front Row to play media on external drives

Let’s face it, transferring everything to the internal drive of an iMac isn’t too bad; but the novelty wears off quickly if you’re using a MacBook. Storing your massive media collection on an external drive not only makes sense, it’s possible for Front Row to see it.

How? Aliases.

An alias is just a pointer to another location (if you’re making the switch from Windows, think of shortcuts). To make an alias, open the Finder window for the external drive, locate the folder which contains the media you wish to play via Front Row, and drag it to the relevant Front Row directory (such as ‘Movies’) whilst holding down the Option and Command keys. Alternately, select Make Alias from the File menu, and drag the resulting folder across.

7. Play movies from VIDEO_TS folders

Although Front Row itself doesn’t support movies in VIDEO_TS folders, DVD Player does. Squished Squirrel’s DVD Assist (an Applescript ‘stay open’ applet) bridges this gap by closing Front Row upon selection of a video in a VIDEO_TS folder and opening it in DVD Player. Glorious.

Organisation in iPhoto

by Scott Bird
3 Dec 2006 In the two weeks I've had the new MacBook Pro I've been quietly ignoring the piles of DVDs sitting on my desk. These don't contain movies (those are elsewhere); they are simply backups of several years of digital photographs. To say I've got quite a few pictures there is an understatement. My first thought when picking up the laptop was to accompany it with a copy of Aperture; however I quickly decided to give iPhoto a serious run instead. After all, it was bundled with the Mac, and I really didn't know anything about it. Today was designated a photo-sorting day. A few hours' copying photos to the iPhotos library (from the backup DVDs) took me about a third of the way through the first pile; nowhere near completion but it gave me around twenty thousand images to play with in iPhoto. The first thing to do was to organise them a bit. This organisation incorporated several techniques, a few of which are outlined below. Behind each of them was the idea that it must be a simple, easily repeatable process as well as being automatic wherever possible. Smart albums iPhoto's Smart albums operate in the same way as Smart playlists do in iTunes. The album is always automatically generated based on the current contents of the library, based upon criteria you define at the start. Of particular benefit were the 'recent roll' Smart albums as discussed in Macworld. From the article :

In particular, I find the last roll album quite useful when I want to see just my newest pictures. However, sometimes I’d also like to see the second or third newest. You might think you’d be able to do this by just telling iPhoto to show two or three albums in the last roll album, and you’d be right. If you want to have the five newest rolls always available in their own albums, though, the preferences setting won’t help—Smart Albums will.

Keyword Manager Bullstorm's Keyword Manager is a great iPhoto plugin that succeeds in performing one task extremely well. As you've no doubt guessed from the title, Keyword Manager greatly simplifies and enhances the task of assigning keywords to photos. Not only is it fast and straightforward; the ability to create your own hierarchical keyword structures is superb. NB: Keywords are shown using View -> Keywords. Ratings The ratings feature of iPhoto is a powerful tool which I can't help thinking is often overlooked. After all, assigning a rating to each photo is not exactly as exciting as life gets. However, having the photos rated allows a more creative use of slideshows and the creation of powerful Smart Albums. At the very least, a 'Best of' smart album containing only photographs with a 5 star rating is great for showing to friends, relatives and potential clients. An automatically updated portfolio if you will. With this last thought in mind (an automatically updated portfolio) I created a simple smart album which contained only 5 star photos, taken anywhere at any time. It was then time to quickly scan through the various collections and pick out the cream of the crop, with fingers poised over the CMD-5 keys. A little effort, but well worthwhile. This smart album now forms the basis of a desktop image, screensaver and slideshow. NB: Ratings are shown using View -> My Rating. Titles When it comes to tagging photos en-masse with great searchable information, Titles are right up there with Keywords. For each album my process is :

• select all photos taken at a particular location
• use the 'batch change' feature (Photos -> Batch Change) to set the title to the name of the location
• select a few images at a time and further refine these titles

For example, an album may start with all photos being given the title 'Australia', some of which are then called 'Sydney, Australia', a few of which are called 'Hyde Park, Sydney, Australia', 3 of which are called 'Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park, Sydney, Australia'. You get the idea. NB: Titles are shown using View -> Titles. Now, time to look at a few external hard drives - several piles of DVDs to go.

Installing Win XP on Parallels (Mac OS X)

by Scott Bird
25 Nov 2006 My recent purchase of a shiny new MacBook Pro - as great as it is - left me with a large pile of Windows-based applications. Whilst the inbuilt functionality of OS X made up for a couple of them, and there were quite a few that rarely saw much use; the few remaining ones were enough to grab Parallels, and install XP on the Mac. Before you get too upset, XP certainly doesn't replace OS X - Parallels is a VMM (virtual machine manager). XP runs in its own window, and switching between it and the main OS X desktop is only a keyboard shortcut away. A very good setup. On to the setup itself. I'll cover the installation of various Win XP applications later, but for now a basic XP setup will get you going. Time to grab a couple of discs (the installation discs for both Win XP and Parallels), a cup of coffee and put aside 15-20 minutes or so. The installation itself takes the form of 6 stages, which are as follows : Software update First things first. Make sure your Mac is up to date ( -> Software Update). Download and install any firmware or OS updates. Install Parallels The Quick Start Guide that comes with Parallels should be enough to complete a standard installation (it really isn't more complicated than inserting the CD and following the instructions). Don't bother creating a new VM yet, we'll do that it a minute. Update Parallels Before creating a VM and installing XP, check for any updates to the Parallels software (Help -> Check for Updates). Download and install them as directed. Install XP Create a Typical VM as per the Quick Start Guide. Select your CD/DVD drive as directed. Insert the XP disc, follow the instructions at the start, and sit back.
Clone default XP install Once the XP install is finished, use the Clone option (VM -> Clone VM) to duplicate the basic XP install. This will save you having to reinstall XP if/when it requires a clean start. Install Parallels tools The tools allow you to share folders between the XP VM and the Mac OS X desktop; in addition to improving mouse and video performance in XP. Install them using VM -> Install Parallels Tools. That's it. You now have a fully functioning (and fast) XP installation on your Mac.

MacBook Pro

by Scott Bird
19 Nov 2006 After around two years of regularly pestering my parents to buy a computer, I found myself - at the mighty age of 13 - the proud owner (OK, user) of an Apple IIe. When the time came to upgrade to something more powerful I ended up on the Windows path, on which I stayed for all home computing for the next two decades. Last week I looked around me to see that I owned 5 computers, all of them running Windows and only one of them fully functional. When this last one died - at least the primary hard disk did - I decided to rejoin the Apple path. The logic was simple: it was another thing to learn. The simplicity, aesthetics and suitability for my needs were only minor considerations; nice to have but nowhere near as important. The major factor was that I could run Windows on a Mac, but not (as least not yet) run OS X on a PC. I ended up getting a shiny new MacBook Pro, which has just been upgraded to the Core 2 Duo. Together with double the RAM (now 1gb by default) and a host of minor improvements - notably to the DVD burning capabilities, which is ideal - it's a great, beautiful and exceedingly fast machine. I love it. One of the planned uses is the running of Win XP in a virtual window, largely because I already have a few high-priced (and paid for) applications for that OS; but also so I can keep up to date with that and other operating systems (I play with various flavours on Linux from time to time). I'm about to install Parallels and XP, and will post up a summary of the experience once I've had a chance to test them both out properly. The same thing goes for the MacBook itself, but at the moment I find it hard to believe that it's going to be anything less than a glowing review. It really is a superb machine.

Commenting: keep the entry barriers low

by Scott Bird
14 Nov 2006 I recently noted a quote from No-one Listening which stated :

I’ll only say it once: A lack of comments does not equal a lack in readership.

That said, feedback can be a wonderful thing. In particular, comments on a post provide an immediate discussion on your site (and I'm not talking about spam here - which will certainly be dealt with). In order to elicit comments from your readers, keep the barriers to entry low. Make it easy for them. As with all things on the web, the user (leaving a comment in this case) and the webmaster (looking after the site) can see things very differently. The trick is to align the two visions. From the point of view of the commenter : The post is of interest, and they would like to contribute information to the discussion. From the point of view of the webmaster : This is one more piece of information that must be manually checked for possible spam or undesirable content. Note that 'undesirable' does not just mean a comment that disagrees with the webmaster's own opinion; it refers to language or statements which other readers are likely to find objectionable. With these aims in mind, there are several ways in which a webmaster may set up commenting on his/her site. These are : Unmoderated, unapproved Anyone can post a comment on this site at any time, and it appears on the site immediately. This makes life easiest for the commenter, although it allows spammers unfettered access to the site. Moderated, unapproved Anyone can post a comment, however the webmaster has an opportunity to review them prior to their appearance on the site. This still makes life extremely easy for the commenter, gives the webmaster control over the material on his/her site, and is the recommended option. Unmoderated, approved Only registered site users are allowed to leave comments (either via a site-wide registration process or an authentication service such as Six Apart's TypeKey); though the comments appear immediately on the site. Although this reduces the burden for the webmaster, it increases the work required by the commenter. Moderated, approved This is the tightest level of control, and only registered site users (see above) may leave a comment. All comments are still held for review by the webmaster, and do not appear immediately on the site. NB: comment-specific mechanisms such as CAPTCHA devices (the alphanumeric codes often seen beside the comment 'submit' button) may be used with any of the above setups. More on moderated, unapproved This is the recommended option, as it most closely aligns the commenter's and webmaster's requirements. The commenter can easily say whatever is on their mind, and the webmaster has final say over what is published on their site. Win-win. Unfortunately this is not always the default configuration when it comes to the numerous free - or cheap - blogging tools available. For example, I have been forced to create an account (or not to comment at all) on the following services :

• Blogger
• MySpace
• MSN Spaces
• LiveJournal

I should point out that I now use Blogger for several of my sites; however the initial reason for creating an account there was simply to comment on other blogs. As a side note, this is part of the reason for Blogger claiming that they run so many blogs - many of them were created out of necessity. Authentication services As I mentioned earlier, authentication services fall into two basic categories - site-based and CMS-based. Lets take a brief look at each. Site-based authentication As a commenter, my desire to leave a comment on a particular site must be quite high in order to register exclusively with that site. Although I occasionally do that for sites that I visit regularly, an identical approach taken by the webmasters of other sites is enough to turn me away from the site permanently. CMS-based authentication Perhaps the best known example of this is Six Apart's TypeKey service. TypeKey enables registered users to leave comments on Movable Type blogs which fall into either of the 'approved' categories listed above. Whilst reasonably simple, its mere presence creates a barrier between the commenter and webmaster which doesn't need to be there. Spam Many webmasters fall into the trap of believing that user authentication will magically make their site's spam burden disappear. Whilst user authentication can certainly reduce some types of comment spam, it also acts to dissuade users from leaving comments in the first place. If this is your intention, why have comments turned on at all? Further reading There are a number of resources covering comments and comment spam which may be of interest. The following is only a sample : Spam Fighting in Movable Type An excellent summary of the many Movable Type resources available for fighting comment spam. Blogging with or without comments? ProBlogger's Darren Rowse looks at how switching off comments actually increased traffic for Seth Godin (NB : this won't necessarily work for everyone), and asks 'Is a blog without comments still a blog?'. More on comments (Scobleizer) Comments were temporarily switched off due to a technical issue, but the last paragraph in this post is telling :

Personally I think this whole mess is just gonna go away. Everyone of you should have your own blog. If I say something idiotic, you should blog it, link to me. I watch my Technorati page and Feedster and Pubsub too. That's a much better way to comment on something I write.

More on blog comments (Steve Pavlina) This post delves a little deeper into the reasons for switching off comments (but retaining trackbacks) on stevepavlina.com. They have more to do with free time (for writing the site's content) than spam. Lifehacker's guide to weblog comments A bit of weblog comment etiquette.

10,000 words per day

by Scott Bird
7 Nov 2006 The acclaimed childrens' author Enid Blyton reportedly wrote up to 10,000 words per day in her wonderful career. This sounded reasonably high (as indeed it is), and I decided to take a brief snapshot of my own writing for comparison. My writing at the moment largely falls into two major categories: for the web and personal fiction work. Lets take a closer look at each. Web writing Although I run a number of sites, the two that comprise the bulk of my writing are this one, and Straight to the Bar. Taking yesterday as an example, the articles written for those sites were : Strains and sprains (1,052 words) Podcasts for writers (310 words) Output for the other sites varies, but at a guess it is unlikely to exceed more than 1,000 words on a typical day. Total: approx. 2,300 words Personal fiction work Most of my spare time this month is being channeled into NaNoWriMo (and I suspect I'm not alone in this); a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel (or novella) in a month. That's an average of 1,667 words per day, or around 2,000 if you want to have a few days' editing at the end of the month. Now, as I'm far more used to research and non-fiction writing, my fictional output isn't exactly great. I'm currently sitting on around 8,00 - 1,000 words per day, or around half of the number required. Total : approx. 900 words That's a grand total of 3,200 words - a number which pales in comparison with the abovementioned 10,000. Naturally I'm only considering quantity here, but the quality of Blyton's work isn't exactly low. How many words do you get through on a typical day?

Podcasts for writers

by Scott Bird
6 Nov 2006 There are a few podcasts which deserve a listen by anyone with a literary bent. The following are just a few of those that sit proudly on my own audio shelf : Podictionary This is a daily exploration of the etymology of a given word. The words covered are bounded only by one thing - they're interesting. Hosted by Charles Hodgson, Podictionary is a great way to spend a view minutes each day. Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing This is a great one, offering regular advice on ways to improve simple things in your writing. These range from matters of style (such as the preferred techniques for writing book titles, or whether to capitalise all words in an article heading) to ones of grammar (who vs whom, addictive vs addicting). Definitely one to add. The Secrets This podcast is the audio companion to Michael A. Stackpole's newsletter of the same name, and the current '21 days to a novel' series will give you a good idea of just what this podcast is about. In it you'll find tips including such things as inspiration, character development and length & editing - all superb and necessary information for the budding writer. There are many, many other podcasts on writing and wordplay. You may wish to check out a few of these :

• The Writing Show
  Author and researcher Paula Berinstein hosts a weekly podcast looking at various aspects of the writing world ranging from inspiration to publishing and marketing.
• The Kissy Bits
  A podcast about romance writing.
• Behind the Black Mask
  Interviews with Mystery and Crime writers.
• Scottish Writers' Podcast
  Author readings of new works from Dumfries and Galloway.
• Mom writers talk radio
  Discussion with various authors (who also happen to be mothers).

Load up your favourite mp3 player, sit back and enjoy.

Using Google Reader

by Scott Bird
2 Nov 2006

Lately I’ve become enamoured with Google Reader. There are several reasons for this, and I suspect a few of them apply to many web-based offerings - Google Reader just happened to be the first I tried. Let’s take a look :

Speed of loading

A standalone application draws attention to itself when loading - even via as simple an action as taking the window focus for itself. Google Reader (or any web-based feed reader) silently loads in the background, so the perceived loading time of the feeds is minimal.

On top of this, Reader’s homepage contains a few of the most recently updated feed items, and is ready to go. No splash page, no system messages. Just dive in.

Keyboard shortcuts

If you’ve been using gmail for a while you probably have a few keyboard shortcuts permanently in mind. Happily, not only does Reader have a similar interface to gmail, it has a similar set of shortcuts.

You can get a long way with j, k and v (next message, previous message and open message in new tab/window), but for a more complete look see this post on Smallwire .

Sharing

Yet another dose of public bookmarking. It works well, I use it quite a lot (there’s a sample of it in the sidebar); however I’m a little disappointed. There are a couple of other services in the Google stable that have a similar bookmarking capability (search results, Google Toolbar), yet the bookmarks provided by Reader don’t appear to be compatible with any of them. Yet.

The only aspect of sharing that I’m still pondering is the fact that public bookmarks are displayed in the order they were found, rather than sorted by the date of the article. Not sure if this is a good thing (I suspect it is) - only time will tell.

NB: if you’re looking to customise the display of the web clips, this post on Google Operating System will show you how.

Firefox integration

Firefox’s Live Bookmarks system works well, and is almost seamless in 2.0. Google Reader appears in the dropdown list of available readers, and its selection can easily be made the default. Overall a very good integration; except for the fact that during the process a page always appears asking whether the feed is to be added to the Google Homepage (not a Google service I use) or the Google Reader. If there is a way to bypass this through Reader’s settings it’s very well hidden.

Expectation

Perhaps the greatest ability of any software product is to do exactly what the user expects to happen. Google Reader does that. Navigation is simple, new windows open in new tabs (or new browser windows if that is your default) and moving through a long list of news items using keyboard shortcuts clears each one and moves up the next in the way you expect it to. Very nice.

Summary

The couple of shortcomings the offering currently has are easily outweighed by the usefulness of the service. As someone who relies heavily on information from RSS feeds, I’ve certainly never looked back after making the switch to Google Reader.

Further Reading

If you’re already using a web-based feed reader (such as Bloglines or NetNewswire), the following articles provide possible reasons for making the jump to Reader :

Switching from NetNewsWire to Google Reader

From Bloglines to Google Reader

Writing style changes over the years

by Scott Bird
29 Oct 2006 A recent post on Successful Blog directed me to an earlier scribbling, Love at First Write. In particular, point #2 really started me thinking :

Write simply, using the words that you think with.

Just how much has my writing style - and thinking style - changed over the years? Quite a lot it would seem - although the daily changes are far too small to notice. However, a glance at some of the my fairly recent writing (2001) shows just how big a change this is - at least to my eyes. For example, here's a piece from a 2001 journal entry :

We were all reasonably OK until the end of the sixth round, where I suddenly passed out at the table. I have vague memories of throwing up at the pub, and being dragged to a cab and taken back to my place.

Nice and casual, and I'm not sure about you, but I certainly want to read more. And a recent snippet from Straight to the Bar :

There are two major considerations here. The first is that the periods just prior to and just following sleep are always less productive. Think for a minute of all of the projects you’ve completed 2 minutes after waking up, or when you’re about to attain ‘qwertyface’ (passing out through tiredness at the computer). These periods vary from person to person and day to day, but around 15-20 minutes seems pretty typical.

Is it just me, or does that sound decidedly more formal? Yes, the subject matter probably led it in that direction to begin with, but it still sounds more like a lecture than a discussion to me. Whatever the case, I'd like to regain a little more of the earlier casual conversation nature. Despite the fact that the first example was drawn from a journal, it strikes me as being appropriate for the web. At least for most of the sites I produce. As for thinking style, well, that one's going to take a bit of pondering. It isn't exactly an easy one to gauge.

10 Biggest Computer Flops of all time

by Scott Bird
22 Oct 2006 On Miguel Carrasco's Real World, a nice bit of computer nostalgia. I'm not sure about his definition of 'flops' (some of the items made plenty of money, despite being relatively poor products), but it's an interesting list nonetheless.

Modify tab scrolling in Firefox 2

by Scott Bird
19 Oct 2006 I've been trying out the release candidates for the upcoming Firefox 2 for a couple of weeks now, and I have to say that I like it. Overall it's faster, better looking and fixes a couple of irritating things from 1.5 (such as bookmarking). However, one thing that was getting old in a hurry was the tab scrolling - any more than 8 tabs open and you'll need to scroll horizontally to get to the end ones. Luckily there's an easy way to disable this. I noticed this yesterday on Lifehacker, but I first saw it shortly after I installed this version and decided against making any rapid customisations (with the idea of discovering whether I'd get used to it - I didn't). If you want to switch off (or modify) the tab scrolling, here's what to do :

1. Type about:config into the Firefox address bar.
2. Find the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth key. The default value is 100.
3. To disable tab scrolling completely, set the value to 0. To make more tabs fit before scrolling gets activated, set that number to 75.

Ahh, that's more like it.

Re-download podcasts in iTunes without subscribing again

by Scott Bird
2 Oct 2006 For whatever reason, occasionally a podcast download in iTunes stops part-way; leaving you stuck with a partial file. iTunes merrily tells you that it has the entire download, though when an entire episode of Diggnation comes in at a whopping 2min 11secs you have to wonder. There's no obvious way (at least on the Windows version) to get iTunes to re-download the file. An anonymous poster to MacOSXHints found the solution (short of unsubscribing/resubscribing, which is annoying at best):
In the 'Podcasts' section of iTunes, click the arrow to expand the episode listing of the podcast in question. Select and delete (Windows: Delete button | Mac: Backspace key) the offending episode. If prompted to relegate your partial file to the trash, do so. You won't be needing it again.
Click the arrow again to close the listing. Now, this is the crucial part. Hold down the Shift | Option button whilst clicking the arrow to expand the listing. This will force an update of the podcast, and the formerly deleted entry will reappear with a shiny new Get button beside it. Simply re-download the episode, kick back and enjoy.

When is a blog not a blog?

by Scott Bird
13 Feb 2006 A long bet (made in 2002 and not finished until 2007) between Dave Winer (Scripting News) and Martin Nisenholtz (NY Times) started me thinking on the differences between mainstream media and online journals, or blogs. The bet was simple :

In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.

But how easy is it to tell blogs apart from commercial media sites? It's becoming increasingly difficult. In many cases, the authors of weblogs are paid (or simply earn money through advertising); several have multiple authors - including guest writers; some send reporters to cover trade shows and major events. A recent piece on kottke.org looked at how the Winer/Nisenholtz bet was progressing, based on a random selection of major news stories from 2005. The results present an interesting shift toward blogs as news sources; although this is perhaps as much to do with Google's ranking methods as anything else. It does, however, still pose the question - just what is a blog?

The Slanket

by Scott Bird
24 Jan 2006 This is one of those things that I definitely want; despite knowing that it's only contributing to the couch+laptop+TV thing. It's the Slanket - The Best Blanket Ever!!!. Essentially an oversized blanket with sleeves.

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