Technoranting

I've just found at Technorati that Boing Boing is no longer the most popular blog. Instead we should welcome Relocate, on top with 52,629 links (16,913 for Boing Boing).


Actually, Relocate is not a blog but a personal webpage owned by Mike Little. Mike, who has been a lead developer on WordPress, also has a blog: Mike Little's Journalized (52,337 links!).

So, what's happening here? Mike? David? Anybody?


Update: it seems that new WordPress templates include links to WordPress team personal pages. For some reason Technorati is not filtering those links for Mike's blog. On the contrary, Matthew Mullenweg's blog (more than 36,000 links) doesn't show in Technorati's ranking.

17 millionth picture

On Thursday Flickr got its 17 millionth photo. It is supposed to be a view of the Bulgarian Parliament building but some Flickr user, Badger Swan, thinks the picture shows the Bulgarian Central Bank in Sofia. I looked for some pictures on the Internet and found he was right. First take a look at Flickr's 17 millionth photo. Now see these other two pictures:

Bulgarian Central Bank building.

Republic of Bulgaria National Assembly building
(Bulgarian Parliament).

Ribs and Barbie dolls

I read at Boing Boing:

Mattel is suing to shut down a BBQ joint in Quebec called "Barbie's," on the grounds that very stupid children might wander alone into the bar/restaurant and order ribs under the mistaken impression that they have something to do with the Barbie dolls. Mattel: "we think our customers are morons(TM)".

I guess I understand Mattel's concern.
What if people find out that ribs sold at Barbie's are floating ribs (that is, false ribs) previously removed from Barbie dolls? Haven't you noticed those small waists?

Choosing the copyright name for your business

Take a book in your hands and open it. Look for the copyright information and you will find a legal notice such as this^*:

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

Now look at these pictures I took in my hometown (Pontevedra - Spain). Copyright is a funny name for a photocopy shop, don't you think?

More pictures at this photoset (Flickr).

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(*) Taken from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling.


Categories and Technorati tags: Flickr, catInternet, Pontevedra, catTechnology.

Flickr as a hosting service

Flickr is a very popular online service. Most of their users are individuals, but there are also some digital media that relie on Flickr to manage their pictures. For instance, Periodista Digital¹, recently described at the New York Times and International Herald Tribune as "[...] one of the most widely read digital dailies in Spain, with 115,000 registered subscribers", is also an advanced user of Flickr.

Apparently from March Periodista Digital is using Flickr for hosting, managing and publishing images at their website. Here you have some examples:

News - Picture at Flickr
News - Pictures at Flickr: I, II.
News - Pictures at Flickr: I, II, III.
News - Picture at Flickr
News - Picture at Flickr

Note that not every image at Periodista Digital website is hosted by Flickr. Most are hosted by Periodista Digital itself.

So, think about it. Visiting Periodista Digital's Pro account at Flickr you may take a look, in advance, to some pictures that will be posted on their site and get a preview of what the next news can be. As usual you may do this by subscribing a feed of their photostream, available as RSS 2.0 and Atom.


On terms and conditions
Flickr states in its terms of use that its service "[...] is intended for personal use and is not a generic image hosting service. Professional or corporate uses of Flickr are prohibited." (thanks, Diego). Could this apply to Periodista Digital?

Users are also supposed to include a link back to Flickr when displaying images hosted on Flickr to outside websites: "[...] pages on other websites which display images hosted on flickr.com must provide a link back to Flickr from each photo to its photo page on Flickr." Periodista Digital is not doing this so far.


Finally, do you know of any other popular online media that use Flickr as a publishing tool?


An Spanish version of this post is available at my personal weblog:
Periodista Digital también es usuario de Flickr and Más sobre Flickr y Periodista Digital.

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(1) According to OJDInteractiva, main Spanish auditing service for online media (a IFABC member), Periodista Digital got last month (april 05) the following:

unique visitors - 451865
visits - 1798874
page loads - 5611919

Here you have a list of audited online newspapers. Periodista Digital is ranked 12^th on unique visitors, 10^th on visitors and 17^th on page loads.



Categories and Technorati tags: Flickr, catInternet, Periodista Digital, catTechnology.

Creating categories at Blogger

The idea is simple: using Technorati site search for category keywords placed at the end of every post. First, you need to name categories using specific words you won't use when writing your posts. As an example for this blog I have chosen a combination of 'cat+category word'¹. Then you only need to use Technorati site search to look for those special words (check links at sidebar: Post by categories). And, if you are adding Technorati tags in your posts you may do as shown at the end of this post (here also). You'll be killing two birds with one stone².

I guess there will be lots of ways to create categories at Blogger, easier and more elegant. I'll be glad to hear about it.

You may read this post in Spanish here.

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(1) For best effect you may hide text from view matching font colour with background
(2) My first idea was to take advantage of tags and Searchlet but people at Technorati told me that 'it is currently no way to restrict your tag search to a given weblog'.


Categories and Technorati tags: cattips, Blogger, Technorati

Inserting a Technorati Cosmos link at Blogger

As a way to follow conversations many blogs insert at the end of their entries a link to Technorati (check Boing Boing or Joi Ito). To do this at Blogger you only need to add this code in your Blogger template:
<a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>" title="Technorati Cosmos">Technorati Cosmos</a>

You may read this post in Spanish here.


Categories and Technorati tags: cattips, Blogger, Technorati

Links in your Bloglines subscriptions

Why nobody insert a link when subscribing a feed at Bloglines? Am I the only one? Some people write comments in their notes when subscribing, but take a look at public subscribers for feeds with more than 10,000 subscribers:

1. Slashdot - Bloglines subscribers
2. Wired News - Bloglines subscribers
3. Boing Boing - Bloglines subscribers
4. Dilbert - Bloglines subscribers
5. Gizmodo - Bloglines subscribers
6. Google Weblog - Bloglines subscribers
7. Engadget - Bloglines subscribers
8. New York Times Home Page - Bloglines subscribers

You will see that I am the only one to insert links (look for pmagsa among Bloglines subscribers for Boing Boing, Dilbert, Slashdot and Wired News). And adding a link is a very easy thing to do. You just need to edit the notes field (click on picture):

It puzzles me why nobody does it. On the Internet links are of the essence and they have quite a few applications at Bloglines.

You may read this post in Spanish here.


Categories and Technorati tags: cattips, Blogger, Bloglines

Inserting links at your blog / feed description

This tip was originally posted at Bloglines Forums:

I would like to make a suggestion it may be interesting for you guys.

Have you thought about including links in your blog/feed's description? Most of people don't do it, I guess because they don't know about it or don't realize of potential uses. In my case I have set up a text that links with a "greatest hits" post (inspired by a post from Seth Godin: Are blogs backward?), my Blogger profile, LinkedIn profile and Creative Commons license.
Look at my original blog: Abundando
And then look at my blog's description, as seen from Bloglines: Abundando's feed viewed from Bloglines
In my case I use Blogger to publish my blog so I included those links in Settings/Basic/Description, but I guess you may do the same with other publication tools.

So, people who find my feed at Bloglines (by looking at someone's subscriptions, getting personalized recommendations, related feeds or just googling), are one click away from my "greatest hits" post. Think about it. Instead of stating a mantra or slogan, or in addition to this you may use it to give valuable information to your visitors. It is a chance to send a message to your readers / commentators, to contact with them, whatever the message may be. And you may also change the subject every now and then. Finally it may even help you to turn casual visitors into regular ones.

There are countless uses. For instance:

1. Other blogs you have.
2. Last company / project.
3. Another blog or website you like.
4. email address.
5. Blogger profile.
6. Networking profile.
7. CV link.
8. Bloglines subscriptions.
9. Technorati results.
10. Some campaign or initiative you support.
11. Google bombing.
12. Amazon wishlist.
13. Stuff on sale at eBay.
14. Etc.

Hope you may find this tip interesting

You may read this post in Spanish here.


Categories and Technorati tags: cattips, Blogger, Bloglines

Gravida euismod

Nisl libero id. Adipiscing in eget, tortor commodo. Enim ut vitae, orci proin nullam, gravida et. Vitae accumsan, proin magna, ultricies mauris. Donec amet, parturient sed. Tortor ipsum, tincidunt vestibulum nulla. Nullam ullamcorper donec. Libero velit magnis, wisi consectetuer, ac dapibus morbi. Est laborum rutrum, eu eros.

Ridiculus id cursus, vehicula dolor. Conubia tincidunt. Fusce duis ultrices, interdum duis, vestibulum orci. Tellus et nostra. Rhoncus pellentesque, purus a eu.


Categories and Technorati tags: catsociety, cathumour, catinternet