Well, not really tech support but it’s a very handy site that helps bloggers succeed. There are many sites out there that will help bloggers develop strategy to attract other bloggers. Can you name any that document and publish any HTML, CSS, javascript, template, or any other changes? I couldn’t until I came across Tips for New Bloggers on the Snipperoo blog (which is an interesting site that acts as a widget collection and management system for building widget panels that can be placed on any site).
Hopefully Tips for New Bloggers site will help many a blogger add style to their layouts.
Kristen Nicole of Mashable reports on a new web analytics tool that not only gives you detailed reports on website click data, but one that can actually record web visitors browsing activity and give TapeFailure users the ability to review the sessions later, tracking things like “distance the mouse has moved, average number of clicks per page, user site focus, etc.”
TapeFailure tries to differentiate itself from other Analytics packages by gathering detail on what a user does on a website instead of who the user is of what they use. TapeFailure Packages are typically targeting sites with more modest traffic, and not those with, say, 10,000 unique visitors per day.
Although I won’t personally be testing TapeFailure anytime soon, installation and use of TapeFailure seems pretty straightforward as Web Analytics users simply sign up for an account, create a unique identifier for each site to be tracked, and insert javascript into each page to be tracked. TapeFailure’s motto is “record, review, revise”. I wonder if the visual apsect of TapeFailure will be a fad or a useful feature that other Analytics packages will try to duplicate.
A long time ago, Luke Skywalker took down the mighty Empire. Today, that mighty empire in the search world is known as Google, and once again, the little guy aims to take the empire down. Today, it’s gonna take more than a couple of rebels to bring down the mighty Google, as the number of troopers following this empire greatly outnumber the backers of the revolution. If you think the empire will never fall…remember Yahoo…remember AltaVista.
In a move seemingly to avoid controversy before it happens, Reddit announced that they would be removing links on the front page that they didn’t agree with. It’s always great when a community centered site is at the mercy of those who operate it.
We got tired of having links appear on the front page that we didn’t agree with. Then we got fed up seeing comments about things we didn’t want discussed. Fortunately, Wired recently installed these fantastic new “memory holes” for us to use.
I wonder how many social media outlets out there actually leave the moderation to the users? I guess I would do the same if I was positioning my site as a newsworthy aggregator with an advertising reach to a certain savvy demographic (not that reddit would ever do that).
I originally saw this video on the Ning Developer Blog. It’s interesting to note that the original youtube video had over 2million views on youtube and was added a little over 2 months ago. While I don’t know if the project organizers are intending to bring about increased awareness of their project, it’s interesting to note that the youtube URL lists over 21,000 incoming links to the original video, while the YouTube project page of the Digital Ethnography Blog lists only ~115 links. Perhaps a story on Digg that linked back to the video hosted on the Digital Ethnography Blog would have been a better option. In any case, it’s a cool video.
With less than 14 months until our own JCC Maccabi Games, (Lawrence Family JCC, and Detroit host the 2008 games which is kinda like the Olympics for Jewish Teens) I figured it was time to get into full planning mode and actually look at viable alternatives to custom development for our Social Networking platform. To give you some background into the project, after attending last years Maccabi Games in Arizona and talking with numerous delegates from other JCCs throughout the United States, it was clear that the Games lacked a clear socially participative on-line presence for competitors. Although many of the competitors have their own myspace pages, as most of them are under driving age, there is no central place on the Web that users can share their ideas, opinions, experiences, etc. It was then that I had my first revelation —the JCC should have their own Social Network. After talking with fellow delegates about our experience, everyone was generally in agreement that this would be a cool idea.
Good idea Rick. You should build it.
I thought, “Great”…
Problem: What experience do I have in building this type of application? Answer, none whatsoever. Hmmm.. what to do now?
So that’s pretty much when I started really getting into the ins and outs of Social Media. Ok, so back to today. Today I looked at several sites that allow quick creation of Social Networks. (check the links for tomorrow for a couple of sites that I visited. The concept of the site is pretty simple - A typical social network that allows participants to build friend lists, share text, audio, video, participate in forums all for up to 1500-2500 users (potentially many more users if future hosts decide to utilize our social network), depending on how many athletes we’re hosting next year. Onesite.com looks pretty interesting.
ONEsiteis all about online communities. Our social network software platform includes built in blogging, photo and video sharing, messaging, forums, groups, and chat. Small groups, clubs, organizations, teams, families, fan clubs, and more can create their own online community with our basic tools for free. The network is customizable. Our easy-to-use tools mean anyone can create their network without knowing HTML or any programming. - blurb from onesite
The only problem is that there will be a recurring monthly cost that we won’t want to shell out. Although I haven’t tested the application, from a practical perspective it looks like something that would fit our requirements. Tomorrow I’ll start looking at open-source applications.
April 4, 2007
Posted by Rick Garcia in Web Design, Widgets, Tools and Applications, Development 
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