Harry's List Architect the future

feed facebook your blog

Import your blog into facebook!  This can be a great marketing tool.

There are two ways of importing into facebook.  To have facebook update your Mini-Feed with activity from other sites, such as last.fm, pandora, hulu, youtube, etc.. just visit your facebook profile page and click the “import” link at the top of the Mini-Feed section, select your service and enter the appropriate information.  Facebook will now automatically post your updates on these services to your Mini-Feed.

If you have a blog, the best way to announce your new posts are as notes.  Go into notes and you will see import settings in the middle of the right-hand side column.  Or click here.  What you need to enter here is your blog’s rss feed.

What is an RSS feed?  It is what allows facebook access to your updates on all those other websites.  It is an xml file, automatically generated by your blog, that delivers updates to anyone that subscribes to it.

Where is my RSS feed?  You can easily find it by going to your website and clicking the radio icon that should appear in your location bar.  This will provide you with the address of your feed.

For those just getting into RSS, please see my screencast on RSS and Google Reader for tips on how I use RSS efficiently.


Further Reading/Viewing:

Facebook Blog Import Screencast

moving to wordpress

Update 8-29-2013 – I no longer have strong feelings for wordpress.

There are many benefits to having a blog on WordPress.  Most people enjoy the beautiful interface and plethora of plugins.  I like that the software is open-source and free to download.  This means that you can have a WordPress blog on your personal domain for free.

Have a Blogger account but want the functionality of WordPress? It’s easy to make the switch, let me show you.

First, you need to understand that there are two ways to use WordPress: .ORG and .COM  wordpress.ORG provides the free download of the WordPress software, while wordpress.COM provides free hosting for your blog with a variety of paid upgrades.  If you have your own server, you’ll want to download the software and ftp it.

If you just want a blog and don’t know what I’m talking about then head on over to wordpress.COM!

Click the big ‘sign up now’ button to get started.  Enter in all of your information and you’ll be registered and delivered to your admin page.

From here you can quickly import your information from Blogger.  Just click the Import under Tools on the left-hand side column.

You’ll see that WordPress can also import from LiveJournal, Movable Type, and Typepad.  Just click on the blog you want to import and follow the prompts to give it access to your information.  They make it really easy.

blog usability - rss, spyware, comments and spam

According to a study by Catalyst Group Design, mainstream consumers typically do not understand RSS, what it stands for or what it does.  They recognize the brightly colored xml or rss buttons, while not knowing the intended use.

In addition, when explained the concept users were fearful of having to installing anything, spyware, as well as being wary of having to pay for this service.

I found this observation interesting:

The fear of spam and spyware cannot be underestimated, as it seems that mainstream experience with the web is teaching users to be extremely wary of persistent or automated functions that are not enabled through trusted sources.

Spyware used to be a major issue, but with modern browsers becoming extremely secure there is not as much to worry about.

I posted a screencast on how to use RSS and Google Reader.  According to statistics from addthis.com, it is easily the most popular reader.  There are millions of people subscribed to blogs through Google Reader.

As RSS is a major component of the blogging system, it is beneficial for any blog to have instructions on how to use its syndication and how safe it is.  Likewise, as email updates are useful it is always good to inform the user that their email address is safe with you.

Another way to make RSS on your blog more accessible is to subscribe to FeedBurner, a service that makes your rss feed viewable in a browser.  It also provides you with statistics.  Check out the Wordpress FeedBurner plugin.  Tweet your blog updates automatically through RSS with twitterfeed.

The Catalyst study points out that most users understand how to submit a comment, provided that the comment box is open at the bottom of the post.  But there was confusion as to the comment itself, its magnitude and how the blog published it.

It is important to take into account the design and moderation of the commenting field when creating a blog.

Usability can be interfered with by spam. Spam mucks up a website and nobody wants to sift through it to get to content. Personally, if I recognize spam I will stop reading a website.  Unfortunately, spammers have been targeting blogs

A way to avoid their wrath is to initialize a CAPTCHA, or disable comments from unregistered visitors. The latter would hurt usability on a mainstream blog, so let’s take a look at the CAPTCHA.

What is a CAPTCHA? Come on, you all know what it is.

Of course you do. A CAPTCHA is a system for detecting if the user is human. The acronym stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.  Computers can actually get past CAPTCHAs like the one pictured above, so that’s why you see the crazy ones with lines and colors that are sometimes illegible.

Sure, usability takes a small hit with these, but the user is only prompted with the CAPTCHA after their post is written.  If it was a good post you can be sure the user will try and submit it.  Keep in mind the obvious problem with handicap accessibility.  Here is a report on usability issues in CAPTCHA design.

Another type of CAPTCHA that I like, which is handcap accessible, is math related.  This wordpress plugin will generate an encrypted math problem that the user has to solve.

Free (popular) wordpress plugin Akismet checks comments and filters those that look like spam.  The plugin is easy to install through your wordpress dashboard, and to activate it you need an API key that is given to you for signing up on wordpress.com.

Probably the most important comment related plugin you can install is Subscribe to Comments.  This plugin provides the user with a checkbox by the comment field to subscribe to email notification of other comments to the post.

mobile gmail - offline labeling

A week or so back, Google announced offline support for Gmail. With Google Gears installed and Offline turned on in your Gmail labs, you can actively read and create emails while disconnected from the internet. In addition, if you are connected to laggy internet, you will notice that your Gmail is fast as ever.

Now, still beaming about this ‘milestone’, Google shows off the new mobile interface for Gmail. Get this, offline support! And labels! Using technology introduced with HTTP5, the Safari browser is able to cache your Gmail.

Props to AndroidCommunity.com for this sneak peek.



It’s lookin’ good people. That is, google’s support of the iPhone. In a previous post I mentioned that google added official support for push calendar and contact synchronization. What that means is that when you make a new date or edit a contact, the information is instantly synchronized to and from google’s servers. So if you make a new contact using Google’s Contact Manager, it should show up in your phone instantly. Same with your events on Google Calendar.

week in links

cancer.  damn cancer.  lucky for us there are scientists.  a routine urine test for sarcosine can detect prostate cancer.  a ‘danger recepter’ that may kick-start an immune reaction to cancer.  a missing link in the way cells protect themselves against cancer.  something tells me were going to end up on top of this one.

one man’s dream to free the public access of the court electronic records.  tell governor paterson and the state legislature to stop stealing from SUNY students.  1970s space colony artwork.

if you’re a fan of old-school video games like sonic, mario, metroid etc.. check out these awesome renderings of what those originals could look like with today’s hardware.

mario batali and anthony bourdain talk about essential ingredients, baby food, and sex.

edit google spreadsheets on your iPhone and remotely set off farts.

john cleese is on twitter and making new funnies.

verizon says 100GBS by 2010.

google accused of invisibly deleting music blog posts.  google ajax APIs.

firefox extension add-art replaces advertisements with art.

and here’s a great iPhone screencast showing off reddit’s new app