I’ve been finding myself searching Twitter for information as of late. There was not a decent Twitter search button for the Google Toolbar (only a couple that use the Google Custom Search Engine), so I created one. It’s simple and easy to use, just like my Google Reader search button.

• Click the link below to install it
• When you want to search Twitter, type a search term into your Google Toolbar
• Click the Twitter button on the Google Toolbar
• You are taken to the Twitter search result page for your search term

Install the Twitter Search Button

Related posts

• The Brilliance of the Izea Kmart Campaign (3)
• New Version of Google Toolbar for Firefox (0)
• Google Reader Search Button for the Google Toolbar (4)

I had a very frustrating experience recently. I could not for the life of me find My Saved Locations on Google Maps. I knew they were still there, because when I started typing in the search box, Google started suggesting them. But I couldn’t find the link to edit/view all of them.

Although there were people that actually lost their saved locations, this was not the problem I was experiencing. I just couldn’t find the freakin’ link! As an experienced computer geek, this was especially frustrating. After much searching, I finally found a blog post that informed me that the Google Maps saved locations feature had moved.

I was disappointed I had to resort to searching for the solution, rather than figuring out the link was in a little upsidedown triangle next to the search bar. In my defense, the Google Maps help was no help (it still mentioned the old location of the feature) and I had to resort to searching the web. Finally when I searched for something along the lines of “google maps saved locations link move“, I found the post on Search Engine Roundtable.

Related posts

• View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools (4)
• Update to Google Webmaster Tools Greasemonkey Script (4)
• Track the Mention of Your Blog or Website with Google Alerts (0)

Google acquired Picasa nearly 4 and a half years ago, and they finally managed to release Picasa for the Mac. I for one am glad to finally see it, although I’m still puzzled as to why it took so incredibly long. 4.5 years is a very long time in computer years, the equivalent of about half a lifetime in human years.  I hope it does not take them nearly that long to release Chrome for Mac.

Related posts

• Where Did Google Maps Saved Locations Link Go? (0)
• View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools (4)
• Update to Google Webmaster Tools Greasemonkey Script (4)

There are a number of PageRank plugins for WordPress, but it seems that all of them involve manually editing the template to incorporate them. With the lack of a better option, I took it upon myself to develop a WordPress plugin to display PageRank in a widget. And thus, the PageRank Widget for WordPress was born.

The options are very simple, as there is only one. You can display your PageRank either at a top-level (http://www.yourdomain.com) or display it at a page level (http://www.yourdomain.com/the-page-level). By default, the PageRank will be displayed at the page level.

Installation is very simple:

• Download the PageRank Widget plugin
• Extract the contents to your plugin directory
• Activate the plugin
• Navigate to Appearance > Widgets
• Add the PageRank Widget
• Select the display option (Individual Pages or Top-Level)
• Save Changes

I like the option of being able to display PageRank with a standalone widget. It makes it very simple to use and does not involve having to edit any HTML code or load images/JavaScript from another website. Try it out, and feel free to make any suggestions as to how I might be able to improve it.

Update (01/06/2009): Per a user request, I’ve also added a feature to display the pagerank within a page/post. To use it, place the following comment where you wish for it to appear within the page:

<!--pagerank-->

Related posts

• WordPress Plugins (0)
• Disqus vs. Intense Debate (2)
• Two WordPress Plugins That Will Make Your Life Easier (2)

My wife, kids, and I spent this past Christmas at my parents’ house. It wasn’t long after we arrived before I gravitated to their computer to check my email, read the news, check the stock market, etc.

Much to my dismay, I found a barrage of malware, spyware, and rogue software had made its way onto their machine. I searched around a bit, and found the perfect solution: Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

By far the most annoying type of software that had been installed on their machine was rogue antivirus software. The worst and most persistent offenders were Spyware Guard 2008 and Antivirus 2009. Both of these programs (and many similar ones) are designed to deceive a computer user into believing they are legitimate, by informing the user that spyware and malware has been detected on the system.

Unwitting users click away at the dialog boxes and pay to register the programs, although in reality the programs themselves are the nuisance. Although my parents appeared to have acquired these programs with relative ease, I had a very hard time finding them to intentionally install them (on a virtual machine) for taking screenshots of them in action.

Antivirus 2009

I was able to find a website that generates a very convincing screen that indicates it has located malware on the computer. The webpage and application even use the Windows Security Center Icon, which enhances its appearance of legitimacy.

The Windows Security Center icon.

In reality, the webpage does not perform any scan on the system although it claims to have done so. Upon completion of the bogus scan, the page displays a dialog box that will install the program no matter what you click (if you download and run the EXE installer). Once installed, Antivirus 2009 constantly displays warnings in attempt to have the victim purchase the full version of the software (fortunately my parents had not done this).

Antivirus 2009 Screenshots

Initial view of a webpage that installs Antivirus 2009.	"Popup" that appears after the bogus scan takes place.
Antivirus 2009 initial scan on a clean system.	One of many annoying and incessant nags from Antivirus 2009.

Spyware Guard 2008

Spyware Guard 2008 is very similar to Antivirus 2009, in that it also attempts to have the user pay to register the product. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a website that attempts to lure me into installing the program so that I could provide screenshots. However, I was finally able to find the install exe (SpywareGuard2008.exe) on a filesharing site.

Spyware Guard 2008 Screenshots

Spyware Guard 2008 installer	Bogus warning dialog from Spyware Guard 2008.
Spyware Guard 2008 application showing bogus infections.

Removal of the Rogue Software

Fortunately, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware makes it relatively quick and easy to remove this horrendous software. Just download the program and run a full system scan. When the scan is complete, click the Show Results button and then the Remove Selected button.

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware scan results for the aforementioned rogue programs.

If there are still active programs once the removal has taken place, Anti-Malware will inform you and request a reboot to complete the removal process. Upon reboot, the system will have been disinfected.

It is important to note that although the free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware does an excellent job of detection and removal, it will not provide prevention. If you would like to prevent the installation of malware in the first place, you will need to purchase the full verison.

Photo Credit: Chris Dewey

Related posts

• Useful Applications on the Go (1)
• Recover Lost Windows Keys (0)
• Encryption: Never Leave Home Without It (1)

Are you wondering what the hell Busby SEO Test is? The other day, I received a comment on one of my posts that went like this:

Busby SEO Test!!! it’s a nice post. thanks for informing

It was obvious it was just some comment spam to obtain a backlink. Mostly out of laziness or perhaps indifference, I didn’t even bother to moderate the comment or visit the site linked.

A few days later my curiosity piqued, and I took a look at the site. The comment spammer was a participant in some sort of SEO contest. It took some time to find the actual contest website, but I finally managed it with a few different Google searches.

Initially, when I searched for Busby SEO Test on Google, I got a ton of hits on pages with that exact title. Funny enough, none of them actually provided me the information I was seeking, although they all made mention of the contest.

However, rather than linking to the official contest page, for SEO purposes they would simply link back to themselves. It quickly became apparent it was going to be somewhat challenging to find the official contest page. Finally I discovered that the contest is being sponsored by Busby Web Solutions.

The contest is the Busby SEO World Cup 2. The objective is to achieve the top spot in a search on Google for Busby SEO Test. There are cash prizes for the top five spots in the search results:

First Prize: $5000
Second Prize: $2000
Third Prize: $500
Fourth Prize: $250
Fifth Prize: $100

The contest began on October 1, 2008 and will end on January 31, 2009. There is also a Midway prize ($1000) being offered to the entrant with the highest average ranking as of January 5. At the time I wrote this post, there were 536 registered entrants in the Busby SEO World Cup 2 contest.

Other than writing this post and soliciting for backlinks, I will not put forth any further effort. I thought it would be fun and interesting to enter the contest with minimal effort. Rather than feverishly attempting to manually generate my own backlinks to my contest entry, I’d simply write an informative article that would provide the exact information that others may be seeking regarding the contest.

My entry into the contest is rather paradoxical. On one hand I’m attempting to win the contest by providing the best information about it. On the other, I’m encouraging competition against me by providing others the information they need to find out what exactly Busby SEO Test is.

If you like my approach, you’re not interested in joining the contest yourself, and you’d like to help me win, feel free to link back to this article with the words Busby SEO Test. Otherwise, if your’re interested in competing against me and the other 500+ participants, you can register for the contest yourself.

May the best SEO specialist win!

Photo Credit: Martineric

Related posts

• View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools (4)
• Update to Google Webmaster Tools Greasemonkey Script (4)
• Track the Mention of Your Blog or Website with Google Alerts (0)

What do you think of new year’s resolutions? I for one am not a big fan, but Chris Brogan had a good idea for setting goals in the new year. Since 2006, he has been using a few simple words to guide him towards achieving his goals.

The simplicity of such a strategy makes it easier to keep focused on the tasks at hand. It also makes it easier to know whether or not you have even reached your goals, because the measuring stick is very easy to read. I’ve decided to implore his strategy with these three goals in mind: listen, engage, and develop.

Listen

This is something that I began doing more of shortly after I created this blog. However, it is still an area of importance that deserves attention. Listening means finding more sources of information I find interesting and making note of them.

I also need to try to listen more on the social networks (Twitter, FriendFeed, and the like). This is an area where I’m having difficulty in filtering the signal from the noise. I probably need to start making use of some nifty tools like TweetDeck or PeopleBrowsr to help me to achieve this.

Engage

In the immutable words of Captain Picard (oh, wait, it’s actually just one word). Listening alone is not enough. I need to engage those who provide the words of wisdom I find fascinating. This is something I know I have not done enough of, so I’ve made it one of my goals this year.

Most of the discussions I had last year took place in comments on blogs. I don’t plan on abandoning commenting on blogs, as it is still a great way to remain involved. However, I will make more of an effort this year to try to increase my involvement in the social networks. Last year, the majority of my involvement on social networks came from broadcasting my blog and my Google Reader shared items to FriendFeed.

Develop

I will try to develop more useful tools and gadgets for whatever interests me at the moment. I’ve developed some nice free tools and iGoogle gadgets (most recently my Amazon Search gadget), and I hope to do more this year.

Development will not just be limited to programming. I also intend to develop more useful and interesting content for GeekLad as well as MakeUseOf. I would say I intend improve my own personal development as well, but I find that to be way too cliché and generic. This year I’ll just stick to programming and content.

Photo Credit: scottwills.

Related posts

• Display Your iGoogle Gadget User Count (0)
• Writing for Make Use Of (1)
• Two WordPress Plugins That Will Make Your Life Easier (2)

Here is my prediction for 2009: In December of 2009, there will be countless blog posts made about predictions for 2010. Technology changes so rapidly that it is very difficult to predict what will happen even within just a year. It may be possible at a very high level, but only those that are actually responsible for its evolution can predict it with any sort of precision.

New and exciting products and services will be introduced, and for me to try to provide any further level of detail would be a futile effort. The companies developing those products and services are capable of predicting the future. However, they will only share their predictions when the future becomes the present and their products come to market.

Nevertheless, it is sometimes fun and interesting to read what others are predicting will take place next year:

• Technosailor: Tech Predictions for 2009
• The Inquisitr: Blogging Predictions for 2009
• shawn farner [dot com]: 5 ballsy social media predictions for 2009
• The Altimeter by Charlene Li: Predictions for 2009
• The Marketing and Technology Blog: 2009 Prediction: Search and Mobile are the Future
• Louis Gray: 10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech
• ReadWriteWeb: 2009 Web Predictions
• VentureBeat: Ten tech predictions for 2009

Happy new year!

Related posts

• No related posts.

Do you use FeedBurner for your blog feed(s)? Are you annoyed that the article links are feeds.feedburner.com URLs rather than the URLs of the original articles? This bothered me for some time until I was finally able to figure out what was causing it and how to prevent it from happening.

The reason FeedBurner changes the title URLs for your articles is so that it can track clicks on them. If you are not interested in such stats, you can disable item link clicks. With this feature disabled, the links in the article titles for your feed will contain the URL for the original article. To disable item link clicks:

1. View your feeds in FeedBurner
2. Click on the feed title to jump to the Analyze tab for that feed.
3. Click on Configure Stats.
4. Disable the checkbox for Item link clicks.
5. Click Save.

Disabling Item link clicks

I’ve seen this process for disabling FeedBurner redirects mentioned on a number of other blogs:

• Using FeedBurner may hurt your PageRank!
• Disable the Feedburner Redirect
• Blogging Tip: Turn off FeedBurner Redirect in RSS Feeds

I do not believe that the FeedBurner redirect will actually affect PageRank in any way. According to the first comment in the first article, FeedBurner uses a 302 HTTP status code to perform the redirect. From what I gather in Matt Cutts‘ article about 302 redirects, Google will honor 302 redirects 99% of the time.

Another thing you can do to reclaim your feed is to put your feed on a subdomain. For instance, I have my feed on http://feeds.geeklad.com/GeekLad. To set this up:

1. Navigate to the MyBrand feature within your Account configuration.
2. Enter the URL you wish to host the feed on.
3. Create a CNAME DNS entry for that address, as specified by the instructions.  You will have to do this through your host/DNS provider.

Setting up MyBrand

If you’re using AdSense for feeds, the CNAME will be a feedproxy.ghs.google.com address (you’ll append your Google Account signon to it).  If you aren’t, the CNAME will be feeds.feedburner.com.  Once you have MyBrands configured, be sure to update your site to link to the new feed URL.

Disabling item link clicks and using MyBrands are two great ways to make your usage of FeedBurner a bit more transparent to your readers. It also makes life a bit easier for them, if they spend a lot of their time in their feed readers. If they want to site your article, they no longer have to click through the FeedBurner link for the sole purpose of obtaining the original article URL.

Related posts

• Writing for Make Use Of (1)
• Two WordPress Plugins That Will Make Your Life Easier (2)
• The Brilliance of the Izea Kmart Campaign (3)

I have a couple of Google Alerts set up to track the mention of GeekLad and ForeverSMS on other websites. You can do the same with the names of your blogs or websites. Tracking your names and brands is particularly useful when they are mentioned on blogs. Blog articles provide you with perfect opportunities to respond by replying with comments.

Unfortunately, there were some recent changes to Google Blog Search that makes this strategy a little more difficult. Google Blog Search now includes blogrolled links within the search results. That means if someone has blogrolled your site, every time they post a new article or page, the article or page appears in the results when you search for your name. You will also receive a Google Alert when the article is posted, because the blog has your site blogrolled.

Although the alerts now include blogroll links, all is not lost. It is possible to discern between alerts coming as a result of a blogroll and those from the direct mention of your name. When you receive an alert from a page where you’ve been blogrolled, you’ll see your blog/site name and a · symbol (that’s a bullet, not a period) separating it between other blogrolled links. Essentially, you can ignore alerts with those bullets.

Using Google Alerts to track your blog or website also helps to track inbound links to your sites. It’s a nice and simple little tool to add to your SEO toolbelt.

Related posts

• View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools (4)
• Update to Google Webmaster Tools Greasemonkey Script (4)
• PageRank 0 to 3 in Under 30 Days (3)

Izea recently ran a promotion for Kmart that would offer influential bloggers a $500 Kmart gift card, if they blogged about their experience at the store. In addition to offering the bloggers gift cards, they also gave them an additional $500 gift card to offer as a prize to one of their readers. Whether or not you agree with the ethics of the campaign, you have to admit that it was quite brilliant.

Not only did Izea manage to promote Kmart to thousands of blog readers and Twitterers, but the discussion within the blogosphere has generated even more buzz for Kmart, Izea, and the bloggers that participated. Many criticized the participants for writing paid posts. Others weren’t so critical and had no problems with it. Regardless of whether they agreed with the campaign or not, it got a lot of people talking about it.

Chris Brogan responded to the criticism with his thoughts on advertising and trust. I seriously doubt if Brogan and other participants have seen a measurable decrease in followers and subscribers. If anything, the controversy and other discussions may have actually helped to raise awareness of their blogs and their presence within the social networks. The situation demonstrates that any press is good press.

Participants’ Articles

Chris Brogan: Sponsored Post-Kmart Holiday Shopping Dad Style
Loren Feldman: Kmart FTW
Michelle Madhok: Sponsored Post: Win $500 From Kmart And Do Your Holiday Shopping In One Fell Swoop
Jeremy Schoemaker: What Would You Spend $500 At Kmart On?
Julie Roy: My Kmart Shopping Spree
Wendy Piersall: Enter to Win a $500 Kmart Gift Card for Christmas

Recent Articles about Izea and Paid Posts

Cleaning up after a social media shitstorm
Understanding Izea’s Sponsored Blogging Service
Has Paid Posting Finally Matured? And Is Ted Murphy a Genius or What?
Jeremiah Owyang Inserts Foot In Mouth (Again) Over IZEA Sponsored Posts
Paid Posts: Why they’re not that bad, but why you shouldn’t do them
Kmart embracing social media in a unique way
Paid Posts, Izea, Kmart, Sears, Social Media, Reputations and Cash Money
Are Paid Posts now acceptable on blogs? (poll)

And the list goes on and on… The biggest beneficiary of the campaign was not Kmart, the bloggers, or the blog readers. Without a doubt, Izea has received the most benefit. Izea has raised awareness of its services to even more bloggers. Many will join PayPerPost and SocialSpark as a result, and new advertisers will be drawn as well.

Related posts

• Writing for Make Use Of (1)
• Two WordPress Plugins That Will Make Your Life Easier (2)
• Two Ways to Reclaim Your Feeds from FeedBurner (3)

It’s not a big secret that promoting others is a great way to make friends online, as well as promote yourself. In doing so, you site sources of great information and demonstrate to others that you can be a trusted source as well. In accordance with that thought, I’d like to introduce you to a few other blogs I really enjoy reading and that you may enjoy reading as well.

Bwana.org

I really have to put Bwana at the top, as he has been a great inspiration to me not only in blogging but in my career as well. I met Bwana over ten years ago, when we worked together at the computer labs on campus at the University of Florida. Bwana and I had many similar interests we more or less became instant friends when we first met at work.

Bwana is well versed in the world of blogging and social media. I often seek his valuable knowledge when I’m navigating the sea of social networks, and attempting to learn what I can from them. He’s also a big-time gadget guy and if you are too, you definitely need to follow his blogs. Although he probably most often blogs about Apple products, he’s been known to blog about other gadgets too. Be sure to check out Bwana.org as well as Bwana.TV.

My Thoughts on Social Media

Michael Fruchter is a frequent guest poster on Louis Gray’s blog, which is how I came to find him.  He is an expert in social media and often writes about it in the context of search engine optimization.  Mike has been another great source for information in learning more about social networks and media.  Like Bwana and me, he also happens to be a resident of the great state of Florida.

The 2.0 Life

David Pierce is a fellow author on MakeUseOf, and is an Internet evangalist and provides info about great web and desktop tools.  He does an excellent job of catering to novice computer users, yet his articles are appealing to more seasoned users as well.  He writes on a variety of topics that includes desktop applications, video games, Internet websites and tools.

Shimon Sandler

Shimon Sandler is an expert on Internet Marketing and search engine optimization.  Like me, he does not tend to update his blog on a daily basis.  However, you can be sure that when he does write a new post that it will be filled with intriguing information about SEO.  If you want to learn more about what an SEO consultant does, look no further.

Related posts

• Chris Brogan’s Advice to Me (4)
• A Perspective on Micro-blogging from a Microblogging N00b (3)
• 4 Simple Ways to Make Friends Online (9)

In creating a new blog, I’ve found myself in need of new friends.  No there’s nothing wrong with my old friends, but most of them aren’t geeks like me.  I’m not talking about getting as many people on Twitter following me as possible, just for the sake of doing so.  I want to befriend the folks that write the stuff I’m interested in reading and learning about.  So how does one go about making new friends, when they have few or none to begin with?

Link Love

Bloggers love link love.  Linking to an article on another blog that you found interesting, along with some of your own thoughts is a great way to attract someone’s attention. This is particularly true for blogs that have trackbacks enabled, as the owner of the blog will be notified via trackback that you linked to them.  Sending flowers has been known to work as well, but that can get expensive.

Blogrolling

Adding a blog to your blogroll is even better than a link to a single article.  When you add someone to your blogroll, every page on your blog will link to them!  It’s sending lots of link love with one simple act.  If those bloggers also have blogrolls they will often reciprocate.  Regardless, they will appreciate your act of kindness and you will likely have made a new friend.  No one appreciates the power of blogrolling more than I do.

One problem with blogrolling is that unless they watch their inbound links closely or you tell them, other bloggers will be unaware they’ve been added to your blogroll.  You could always give someone the 1-2 punch by blogrolling them as well as linking directly to an interesting article.  If the other blogger has trackbacks enabled, it is likely they will read your article and may notice the blogroll link to them as well.  Otherwise, you will need to contact them directly to inform them of your act of kindness.

Commenting on Other Blogs

Providing your words of wisdom on other blogs is another good way to make friends.  It will likely take more than just a comment or two.  As you engage in more discussions within comments, the blogger will start to notice.  Eventually they may start commenting on your articles, Tweet you, etc.  Although it doesn’t have quite the same initial impact as link love and blogrolling, it can be just as effective.

Email

With all the attention that microblogging gets these days, people seem to forget that everyone still reads their email.  If you frequent a blog that posts interesting and relevant content to your blog, send the blogger an email and solicit them for a guest post.  Send them an email to just say, “Hi.  I really like your writing!”

Be careful not to send the latter type of message in a blog article comment post.  Even if you are genuine in expressing your appreciation for the blogger, it may be confused as a comment intended just to drive traffic to your blog.  If you want to just say hi to make the other blogger aware of your existsance, do it in an email.

Just as I use these methods to contact others, I emplore you to do the same with me as well as other bloggers.  If you’d like to contact me via email, I can be reached at geeklad [at] geeklad [dot] com.

Related posts

• Some other Bloggers You May Enjoy (6)
• Chris Brogan’s Advice to Me (4)
• A Perspective on Micro-blogging from a Microblogging N00b (3)

I’ve taken a great interest in Search Engine Optimization since having started WealthBoy early this year, and GeekLad just a few months ago. I’ve learned the importance of blogrolling and promoting others. To be honest, I’m beginning to find that performing SEO on a blog is actually not that difficult, although it is time consuming. But what about promoting a site that isn’t a blog?

Promoting a corporate website or a startup web service is a daunting task. It’s not as easy to promote a brand that is not a person, as it doesn’t lend itself to community. A blog can easily be promoted by guest posting on other blogs, commenting on other blogs, joining social networks, and so on. This is a big reason why there are many people that have been able to afford a living from blogging. However, a web startup does not have such advantages.

I’m living proof of this. I created a service to send text messages for free over 7 months ago, and it still sits at a dismal PageRank 0. Yet I managed to reach a PageRank 3 in less than a month with GeekLad. I recently decided that in order to really learn more about SEO, I was going to have to learn how to promote a website that was not a blog. ForeverSMS presents me with the perfect learning opportunity!

I decided to take the first step by writing a press release and submitting it to free press release websites. Christine O’Kelly (Self Made Chick) wrote a great hub on Hubpages about how to write and distribute a press release. She also made a presentation on writing and submitting press releases. I did my best to follow her advice when I wrote my press release for ForeverSMS. So far, it has been published to the following sites:

• PRLog
• SeeNation
• dBusinessNews
• Google Base
  Google Base seemed odd to me too, but it was in Christine’s presentation, so I figured what the hell

I’ve also submitted to the following, but it hasn’t been published yet (as far as I know):

• openPR.com
• Free Press Release Center
• PR-USA.net
• I-Newswire.com
• Launch Feed 
• Get Satisfaction

I got the idea for adding Launch Feed and Get Satisfaction from a post on marketingstartups.com with 10 tips on how to get your startup noticed. The article couldn’t have been more timely, as I had just written the press release a couple of days before.

Of the sites that have published the release so far, I think the SeeNation release is closest to what I wanted, with the proper hyperlinks and all. Unfortunately, some of the press release sites would only allow HTML or wanted money to add links. I figured I’d try my hand at doing it for free since I’m all about free stuff (i.e. I’m a cheap bastard).

Hopefully the press release will help create some buzz (and this blog post may not hurt either). It does seem that some of the sites I’ve submitted to have syndicated it. A quick search for ForeverSMS Press Release on Google shows a few sites where I didn’t even submit it. So the first step towards promoting ForeverSMS is well underway. Now I have to figure out what the second step will be.

Related posts

• View External Nofollow Links in Google Webmaster Tools (4)
• Update to Google Webmaster Tools Greasemonkey Script (4)
• Track the Mention of Your Blog or Website with Google Alerts (0)

A few days ago I got an email from Google telling me that I had been whitelisted to use Google Friend Connect. I took a glance at the Friend Connect pages, fooled around with it a little bit, but I didn’t yet put any widgets on my site. Then, yesterday the Official Google Blog announced that Friend Connect is now available (the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog announced it as well). Yesterday, Bwana made a nice write up on three ways to utilize Google Friend Connect, so I decided to go ahead and put it up on GeekLad.

I went ahead and put up two Friend Connect gadgets: the member gadget and the wall gadget. The member gadget allows folks to join your community and make use of other widgets. Unless you allow anonymous posting on your wall, people will need a way to join you. I decided to put up a seperate page for my wall, just as Is This Stupid? did in setting up the reader wall there.

Initially I was running into problems when I tried to put the wall on a separate page. The WordPress post-processing was messing up the JavaScript code for the wall gadget and it was driving me insane! Unfortunately, by default WordPress has no mechanism for preventing the post-processing of pages and posts. Ergo the Raw HTML Plugin for WordPress. Once I installed the plugin, I just placed the JavaScript code for the Friend Connect wall gadget between

<!--start_raw-->
and
<!--end_raw-->

tags. Then the gadget worked just fine. You may have pulled out all your hair if you’ve ever tried to place bookmarklets or other JavaScript code directly into WordPress posts and pages. I don’t know what to tell you about your hair, but at least you can have your sanity back with the Raw HTML Plugin.  Plus you’ll be able to set up a whole separate page for your wall.

Right now Michael Fruchter is the only one that has joined my community. Hopefully after this post he and I will have some company. If you do join my community, please feel free to stop by my wall and say hello.  If you start making use of Friend Connect communities on other websites, you’ll probably want to update your Google profile as Chris Brogan has suggested. You can update your profile here.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Why the Google Toolbar does not include a search button for Google Reader by default is beyond me! I searched for a Google Reader button in the button gallery, and much to my dismay the only one I found does not perform a search. I then took it upon myself to create my own search button for Google Reader. If you search your reader items as much as I do, you’re going to love it!

Install the Google Reader search button

Related posts

• New Version of Google Toolbar for Firefox (0)
• My Three Goals for 2009 (0)

Today, Ann Smarty posted the first guest post on my blog. She wrote up a great article on how to find people that share your interests. I solicited her and other MakeUseOf.com authors to guest post for me on my blog. I’d like to open the invitation to anyone else who is interested in making a guest post.

Chris Brogan says it is important to promote others, and I could not agree more. This is something I would like to often on GeekLad. I’m fortunate in that I have the opportunity to do it early too, as this blog will be a mere three months old tomorrow.

I would also be more than glad to guest post for you as well, if you’d like to have me do so. Exchanging guest posts is a great way for bloggers to promote each other, and it is fundamentally the same as posting trackbacks. Trackbacks are essentially guest posts on a micro level. Exchanging entire articles across blogs takes place at a macro level.

If you’re a blogger, please do feel free to offer up posts to me on anything related to technology. The sky is the limit! I don’t even mind if you use affiliate links in your articles, but I do ask that you disclose them.  Although there is no obligation for reciprocity, I would certainly appreciate it if you linked to your guest post (or any GeekLad posts you find interesting) from your own blog(s).

Related posts

• Writing for Make Use Of (1)
• Two WordPress Plugins That Will Make Your Life Easier (2)
• Two Ways to Reclaim Your Feeds from FeedBurner (3)

The following is a guest post by Ann Smarty. She is an SEO consultant blogging on search engine optimization, search engine news and social media. She is also interested in all kinds of (free) Internet tools and apps and loves to discover new unique ideas.

With the wealth of social networking sites where people can register, specify their interests and find friends that share common hobbies, it is sad to admit that people search is still quite messy. Popular networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn) offer surprisingly limited search abilities: you can only search by name or by location or by company or school.

What if you need to find an expert in your area? In this case you will have to (at least) specify the key term (e.g. area of expertise) and city. Let’s see what tools can be used use to get connected with people based on different types of search options.

Method 1

Take advantage of a social connection and search tool that has its own membership.

Example: PeopleJar

PeopleJar is a start-up project that aims at improving global people search. The service connects people through the networks of interests. The process is simple: you register at the site and join as many relevant networks as you think best describe your personality: profession, hobbies, past experiences, etc. Inside each network you then expand your profile with unique attributes (for filmmaking these can be movie genres, film schools, areas of expertise - e.g. editing, producing, etc).

The search platform gets all these together: you can search by any combination of these attributes, you can create your own search and save it to let the system update you of new members meeting the search criteria. And what’s more, all search options are available without registration.

Let’s try to find makeup artists in New York, NY using the custom search feature: add “Location” and “Network Membership” to cart and push “Build Custom Search” to specify the criteria and get the list of tightly relevant profiles:

Method 2

Use sites aggregating results from several social media networks.

Example: Wink.com

Starting as something like socially enhanced web search, Wink then evolved into a social media profile aggregator and people search tool. It has now the ability to unite and crawl profiles from most popular social networking sites: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The process looks like this: a person signs up with Wink, adds links to his profiles at any (or all) supported social media sites and thus gets into the search index.

You can search the site by name, location and tags (in our case, that’s profession or hobby). The search results will include the profile photo, a few details (gender, age, etc) and links to relevant profiles at external networks - e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, etc:

Related posts

• New Social Network for Gamers (0)
• My Three Goals for 2009 (0)

I recently made the move to install Disqus here on GeekLad. I had been running it on WealthBoy for a while and decided to go ahead and install it here as well. I did also take a look at IntenseDebate, but in the end Disqus won out.

First, let’s take a look at the major common features between them:

• Comment Threading - By default, WordPress comments do not allow threading, and all comments appear in a single thread. With Disqus and IntenseDebate, a thread is created when responses are posted to other comments.
• Reply by Email - When responses are made to other comments, they are sent via email. A reply to the email sent will post right into the comment thread. There is no need to revisit the post to reply.
• Comment Synchronization - Comments are synchronized between WordPress’ built-in system and Disqus/IntenseDebate
• Comment Voting/Ranking
• Importing Existing Comments
• Commenter Profiles
• Moderation
• RSS Feeds
• Gravatar Support
  

All of these features make sense and are relatively comparable between the two. Here are the IntenseDebate features that are lacking in Disqus:

• Twitter and FriendFeed integration
• Visual Appeal - I think that IntenseDebate comment threads have a better overall look and feel to them.

Not a particularly long list. Now for the features in Disqus that are lacking in IntenseDebate:

• API
• Full Comment History in Profiles
• Community Page - The community page mirrors post/comment activity on the blog, but also allows Disqus members to start new discussions.

Not a particularly long list either. I think they are both great products. If you like the Twitter and FriendFeed integration that IntenseDebate offers, that feature may be what sways you toward IntenseDebate. However, if you’re concerned about search engine optiimzation, then Disqus is probably the better choice.

The community page for your blog will contain backlinks to your posts. That can help to boost your status with the search engines. The profile pages of the folks that comment on your blog will have backlinks to the posts as well. The more folks you have commenting on your blog, the more backlinks you will receive from profile pages.

IntenseDebate was recently acquired by Automattic (creators of WordPress.com), so they will most definitely be working on tightening up the integration with WordPress. I believe that they recently updated the WordPress plugin to have WordPress display the comments, rather than displaying them via JavaScript. That’s definitely a good step towards making it more search engine friendly. I’d like to also see them make changes to the profile pages, to allow people (and search engines) to see all of the comments that IntenseDebate users have posted.

Related posts

• WordPress Plugins (0)
• WordPress PageRank Widget Plugin (6)
• Two WordPress Plugins That Will Make Your Life Easier (2)

As far as all of my blogs have gone, GeekLad really has started with a bang. I never really had this kind of blogular momentum (I think I just made that up).  My other two blogs (jsierra.net and WealthBoy) have been plagued with inactivity.  Although in WealthBoy’s defense, it has fallen back mostly due to my efforts on GeekLad.  I really have no excuse for having neglected jsierra.net other than my own laziness and lack of direction with that blog.

GeekLad has been a great experience in trying to find my identity online.  I can’t say that I’ve truly found my online identity yet, but I think I’m probably closer than I’ve ever been.  Today I read an article by Chris Brogan about what he would do if he started today.  Having “just started” only a few months ago, it’s as though he wrote the article just for me.  Thanks Chris!

It was actually quite reassuring to know that so far I’ve been doing a lot of things right.  There are also a few things that I could be doing better, and Chris has helped to bring some of those things to light.

Before it All: Listening

Earlier this month, when I spoke about my experience as a microblogging n00b, I discussed my approach to getting started with microblogging.  Essentially, I started following my good friend Bwana and some of the folks that he follows.  Bwana and I are of like minds and have many common interests, so I knew he would be a good place to start.

Microblogging services like Twitter and FriendFeed can be a great place to start listening.  In addition to following some of the people Bwana was following, I started reading their blogs as well.  That’s how I came across Chris’ article.  I’ve been following his blog for a while now.

First Platform: A Blog

Got that covered, you’re reading it. 

Second Step: Outposts

I more or less started my outposts at the same time I did this blog.  However, I really have not done a good job of promoting my outposts on the blog.  I also haven’t really used them to their full potential.  I’m on all three that Chris mentioned (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook) and many more.  I think that FriendFeed is a very good one to add to the list of outposts.  It’s a great place to aggregate all of your outposts in one place.

Third Step: Audience

This is what I’ve really struggled with the most.  I think the biggest reason why is because I haven’t listened enough.  Chris put listening as step number 0 for good reason.  You can’t just fabricate a reputation overnight.  You can’t build a good reputation by screaming at the top of a mountain like a lunatic and expect people to listen to your every word.  You have to earn your reputation and when you do you will reap the rewards.

In order to build a good reputation, you’ve got to listen to what people have to say and interact directly with them.  I’ve been struggling to find a good platform for doing this but I’m experimenting with them all of the time.  Of the ones I’ve seen so far, I think FriendFeed has gotten the most attention.  I like the forum-like qualities of FriendFeed, and I think it will be a great place to get to know some sharp people.

I also like DISQUS because of the way blog articles become forum posts and the comments are the thread that follows the initial discussion.  I also like DISQUS for SEO reasons, but that’s another post for another day.

Fourth Step: Experiment

I’m definitely experimenting and having fun with it.  For instance, last night I found a good article about copywriting, SEO, and blogging with a FriendFeed search for SEO on DISQUS.  It was actually a rather cool way to combine both of the services I’ve been experimenting with recently.  I’ll continue to experiment as I always do, and I’ll be sure to share all of the interesting things I find here.

Related posts

• Some other Bloggers You May Enjoy (6)
• A Perspective on Micro-blogging from a Microblogging N00b (3)
• 4 Simple Ways to Make Friends Online (9)