Lijit Wijit makes a useful Search Landing Page November 21, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Site News, Podcasts, TV, Netvibes, Trends, Standards, Wordpress, Virb, phone , add a commentA nice follow-up to my last post about SEO and Landing Pages, Lijit!
Lijit is a Google Personalized Search wrapper that helps you add all your sites and content to one search box. People can also search your MyBlogLog and LinkedIn networks, Ma.gnolia bookmarks and Twitter updates. Someone searching for “Jenny K Surrounded by Wolves” on my blog will see a search results page, but then when they return to my blog, Lijit picks up on the referrer and tries to suggest other stuff. Cool!
This page is a video I made about a local band, but if you look in the sidebar, you also see that we’ve referred to them on OrlandoScene.TV, so the person who came here looking for Jenny K might find what they were looking for on another one of my sites.
Mark Baratelli and I have talked about this problem before - we both blog in 23 places, so how can someone search all of our stuff? Do any of you fair readers use personalized search engines? I’m interested to see what else is out there.
Bug Labs, Chumby, Neuros, Netvibes, Facebook July 31, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, News, Blogging, Podcasts, Netvibes, Trends, Standards, Facebook , add a commentBug Labs, Chumby, Neuros, Netvibes, Facebook — what do they all have in common? Open platforms.
Bug Labs is developing BUG, an open, modular, consumer electronics web services hardware platform. Designed for the general audience, not just the technically inclined, BUG is intended to bring to the world of hardware gadgets what the Internet, open source, XML and web services have brought to the world of software and media.
(blank) is developing (blank), an open, modular, web services platform. (Insert name of company here)
I was saying today that a possible future step for Facebook will be to release the FBML interpereter as a platform you can install on your web server and integrate into your app. Now they have a dead-simple web services framework. Will they do it? Is it smart? Can they make money? Keep hold of their audience? Achieve “Web OS” status?
BUG is supposed to have Wi-Fi, a GPS, a screen, USB, and the processor. Dave Winer had the first mention I saw of the device. He was one of the guys pushing the open-source podcast device a while back, so I’ll bet he’s pretty excited about this.
More thoughts on this later, for now I have to get back to work.
Video - Netvibes New Features March 1, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Links, HowTo, Video, Netvibes, Trends, Web Sites , add a commentA sampling of new netvibes features, like animated feed reading, thumbnails, enclosures and “more details” for feeds.
Pluggd Search is Interesting January 7, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, Links, Video, Reviews, Netvibes, Trends, Liberatr, Radio, Web Sites , 1 comment so farI must start this post by giving a plug to Netvibes, my favorite personal homepage. One of the features of Netvibes allows one to add a widget to a page that searches multiple podcast directories at once - ODEO, iTunes, Podemus (a French directory) and Pluggd.
I noticed Pluggd right away because of one simple fact: when I searched for Orlando, I actually got relevant results. iTunes did a decent job, and ODEO was so-so, but Pluggd showed me lots of things I hand’t heard of, but would like to listen to. In addition to searching individual shows, you can also search Channels, which is the word I like to use when talking about podcasts.
Here is where it gets cool (and disappointing): apparently Pluggd has a service called HearHere, which lets you interactively search inside a show for a keyword, and they even use semantic matching to try and determine relevance. If you watch the video by PodTech.net, you’ll see what I mean.
Here’s the disappointing thing: it looks like you can only do this on the ESPN show. The pop-up player for all of the other shows doesn’t have the extra tabbies to let you search inside the show… sigh. Guess I’ll stick with Podzinger for now.
Firefox 2 and Netvibes October 29, 2006
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Blogging, Netvibes, Browsers , add a commentFirefox 2 now has support for external RSS subscriptions instead of stupid Live Bookmarks. This means I can use my favorite reader Netvibes whenever I see the happy little orange icon in my address bar.
Netvibes is not one of the default RSS subscription engines, but this post includes a one-click update that couldn’t be simpler.
I also dig the new notification style that just kind of appears at the top of the viewport. I know pop-up blocking and plug-in notifications have been appearing in this space for a while now, but I like this a lot better than an alert window.
Firefox has supported RSS since (I think) version 1.0, but this allows me to consume RSS in exactly the way I like. Why is this important? If I don’t read feeds at all, the old school Live Bookmarks feature at least lets me know they exist, and lets me check them out if I am a bookmark whore. Firefox also provides 3 default choices to subscribe, being Bloglines, My Yahoo, and Google Reader; arguably the 3 most popular feed readers, and 3 of my least favorites. Because I know that Mozilla makes money by all sorts of content partnerships, I can imagine that they somehow got sponsored to include these three, and not any others.
Another lowered barrier to entry is the way the browser “skins” unskinned RSS, instead of displying raw XML. NO web browser should display raw XML, but there should be a developer hack to override the default, always.
Apparently Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista will have support for RSS. Hooray. Sadly, not for podcasts or netcasts, boo. More on this later.
Oh, and View Source doesn’t exist in IE7. Why?
‘Add to Netvibes’ bookmarklet « thought.less.ness October 18, 2006
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Links, HowTo, Netvibes, Browsers , add a commentUpdate: With the release of Firefox v2.0 this week, you can now customize your feed subscription engine. Netvibes is not one of the choices, but this post on the Netvibes blog shows you how to set it up.
I have ben on the lookout for a Firefox plugin for Netvibes lately - simple things like adding a feed to my page (and being able to choose the tab perhaps?), especially installing something in the context menu (read: right-click menu) to help me click on a link and add that URI to my dashboard. Sadly, I don’t think such a thing exists. Instead, I found a ‘Add to Netvibes’ bookmarklet — pretty cool.
This is a service provided by netvibes that examines all the feed links on a page and gives you a list of subscription options. If you have a Netvibes account, you’ll be asked to log in. All of my blogs also have a handy “+Netvibes” chicklet as well.
Add to Netvibes
Just click and drag this link up into your bookmarks toolbar and you’re all set!
Netvibes adds Meebo and Alexa July 26, 2006
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, News, Blogging, Links, Reviews, Netvibes , add a commentThey pretty much say it all here on their blog.
Netvibes is an AJAX dashboard and homepage, similar to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s offerings, with a rich set of powerful modules. I like the organization of widgets into separate tabs (for the most part). It lets me keep all of my important feeds, email and a calendar on a frontmost widget, and lesser feeds and views elsewhere. I even have Liberatr.net feeds so I can make sure they are all running smoothly.
Adding Meebo to your Netvibes is accomplished by adding an entire tab that the AJAX-based mult-platform IM client lives inside. There is support for AIM, YIM!, MSN Messenger (even though Y! and MSN work together now) and Jabber/GTalk out of the box. Since meebo lives inside a browser anyway, this is a great match.
Alexa is a well-known publicly available web ranking and traffic site with an API which allows for widgets like the one being supported by Netvibes. Alexa’s data is not widely regarded as the most accurate, but the fact that it is free and public makes it some of the most referred to information on the web. The Netvibes tab allows you to track the traffic of up to 5 sites on a graph. This wil be great if I ever get a site listed there. Right now, I have my Feedburner stats in a widget to let me get a quick glance at how my feeds are doing today. I wonder if anyone makes a Mint widget…?
Netvibes is the best April 25, 2006
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Links, ryanprice.org, Reviews, Netvibes , add a commentEspecially love the RSS reader. I have tried Google’s and Bloglines and a few Dashboard/Konfabulator widgets, but none of them can match what Netvibes is doing.
I also like getting updates on both my gMail accounts right there, and how they let me discover the IceRocket search engine, which gives you thumbnails and preview panes for websites inside the search engine (but I think it is a Google mashup).
