Intensedebate wishlist

This morning I got an email from Intensedebate asking for feedback. Well, I thought of turning this into a post.

The good news is that I like the idea and the current implementation. But, nobody is perfect, at least in the early stages, and here is my wish list:

• I like the fact that they promote the fact that you can leave their service and take the comments with you. This means freedom and is important. But the sad part is there are no tutorials or tools on how to do this. I am aware that technically this is not possible for Blogger based blogs, but they can build up some wordpress tools.
• Comments provide feedback to blog owners. But more than that they provide unique content for search engines. Due to the fact that Intensedebate is javascript based this factor dissapears. Again. Make a php script for WP blogs.
• Search. Where is the freakin search on my Intensedebate account?
• Details about the commenters. Wordpress gives me the IP of a commenter. A service like Intensedebate can offer more than that (IP/Country/Browser etc)
• Create ghosts accounts for those that are not already users. This implies that an account is created for each person based on his email address. By doing that a ghost account can be claimed through email validation
• Give me an option to stay logged in. I hate logging in every day.

This are a few things that came up in my mind. I’ll add more if I remember any. I am very aware that the things I’ve listed are not a piece of cake. But this is what I want
P.S. Please guys pay attention to the javascript. I had 2 sites down for a few hours because of that. If that happens again I am out. With or without comments

Posted in Blogging | No Comments »

Free automated pinging for your pligg site

We all have learned by now that having the ability to ping is doing miracles for our sites. So having a ping feature for a pligg based website is a must. Due to the fact that this is not a built in feature, we have the following options:

Buy a custom module. For this there is Plingger which is very cheap, only 10USD. This ping by default 13 engines and more can be added.  If you are in a hurry this is for you.

If you are not willing to invest in such a module there is another option for you: Feedburner. Here are the steps that you need to make:

1. Go to Feedburner and burn a feed for each of your sections.
2. For each feed, go to the “Publicize” tab and activate the “Pingshot” service.
3. Check the  Google Blog Search Engine and Ping-O-Matic and than add 3 more search engines of your choice

If you want to deeply integrate your Pligg based website with feedburner, here is a tutorial on how to do it. This will allow you to get statistics for your RSS feeds.

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Free DNS analysis web service

Elvsoft, a romanian company, has released a free DNS analysis service called IntoDNS. IntoDNS checks the health and configuration of DNS servers and mail servers. It’s designed as a tool that helps server and network administrators in day to day job, to identify and fix DNS and mail issues.

The service has also an associated blog that will let the users know all the latest development so don’t forget to subscribe to their feed.

read more | digg story

Posted in General | No Comments »

Why usability matters

When the new Gmail version was made available, lots of new features were announced  and than people started to point  to new ones. But behind the great fireworks some other small changes with deep impact were made.

Here is an example on how some small changes can lead to feature awarness.

A few nights ago, my girlfriend called me that she saw that Google added, to the compose screen, the option to create invites for Gcal. While I knew that this was an pretty old feature, I knew that something has changed but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Happily, you can switch between the old and new interface and than I saw it:

Gmail old interface:

Gmail new interface:

(click on thumbnails for the bigger pictures)

What really changed  so that feature become more vizible to the “regular” user:

• In the old version,  the link to create new event was placed on the far right of the screen. Most people don’t move their eyes so far so is practically invisible even though it’s in front of your eyes.
• Labeling. In the original version, the feature was labeled “” Add event info”. That basically doesn’t say anything to “regular” users. What event? It’s an freakin email. What info should I add?(those questions appeared in the rare case they spotted it). In the new version, the label says “Add event invitation”. This label is more clear and in plain view.

Those 2 small changes might appear as insignificant to most of the people. But I am willing to bet a lot that the spike in usage after the roll out was pretty huge.

So, summing it up. Just because you use the internet on a daily basis and develop web apps that doesn’t mean that those are going to be user friendly. Not even if you are a huge, popular company. Hiring  a team or an usability company, might not also guarantee your success but at least you have more chances than your competitors

Posted in Google, Information Architecture, Usability, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Google hysteria

When I woke up this morning, I saw on Techcrunch that Google’s hunting season has moved toward Pay Per Post publishers. Since I have been denied becuase of my theme, I’ve just took another sip of coffee and moved over. Later I saw that John Chow has approached the subject too and I checked my PR.

Well, after the first flush (hunting those selling links)  when I got from 5 to 2, now I am at very fresh ZERO :))). Well it looks that this one was an algorithmic one, flushing all the sites that had a Pay Per Post badge.

Is funny and is funny a lot. I really don’t care about how this site behaves in SERPs or in terms of PR, because this is a testing ground and not a traffic/money machine. But Google movements tend to have the opposite effect on the market. Instead of wiping out an entire industry that has a symbiotic nature, Google is in fact growing it stronger. At the end of the day, the winners are going to be the publishers and the looser will be Google.

And it will be the looser because it will be facing thousands of new stealth techniques.

Regarding my new shiny PR 0, I am very curious how this site will behave on the nex, regular PR update because I’ve removed all my link exchange scripts and the PPP badge.

Posted in Google, Search Engines News | No Comments »

MFA tip: Increase your Adsense CTR

If you have a MFA in your closset, here are two tips that may lead in an increase in CTR:

Decrease normal text vizibility through:

1. slightly smaller fonts for the content than those in the Adsense units
2. faded text color (if the text in the Adsense unit is black, choose a light shade of grey)

Posted in Black Hat | No Comments »

First Adsense payment through Western Union

I just received my first Adsense payment through Western Union. It went pretty smooth from 4 weeks (with checks) to 30 minutes.

The procedure is as follows:

1. Once you pass 100usd you’ll get around 23-24 of the month a “Payment in progress” status in your Payment History tab
2. Once the status changes to “Payment issued”, you can go to any Western Union office to get the money
3. You will only need:
   1. Sender’s address (is on the details page of the payment)
   2. MTCN code (is on the details page of the payment)
   3. A valid government ID
4. The other good news is that beside being fast you pay no fees. What you have earned, that’s what you get

Thanks Google

Posted in Google | No Comments »