Blogging
Yahoo! plagiarises content
Yahoo! India launched beta version of their Malayalam portal with content stolen from Malayalam blogs. See the following links:
Continue reading Yahoo! plagiarises content →
100th Post
100 entries posted, 35 comments and 5 pings received and more than 500 spam comments/pings deleted. :)
What Kind of Blogger Am I?
Blogthings says:
You Are a Link Blogger!
Your blog is more about cool links than thoughtful posts. Better to be entertaining and brief than longwinded and boring!
;-)
WordPress - Matt's reply
Matt Mullenweg's response to the WordPress - search engine spam scandal:
The articles hosted content thing was just a short-term experiment, an interesting idea (original and relevant Wikipedia-type content on the site) that was badly implemented. As an experiment it could have been conducted much better than it was. The content should have been more topical to WP issue, I should have kept up with the content that was going up, the links should have never had the overflow CSS, and I should have discussed it with more people. Each was a mistake and they combined badly - I'm very sorry.
I take full responsibilty for how it was implemented. It was wrong, and it wasn't thought through
To WordPress or not to WordPress
That's the question...
Problems I see so far:
- The permalink structure I use here is /category/post_name. In MT, I can add a primary category and one or more secondary categories to posts. The permalink will be /primary_category/post_name. But WordPress doesn't have "primary category". If I add multiple categories, pemalink will be /first_category/post-name, not the_category_I_want_my_post_in/post-name.
- With this permalink structure, I cannot use subcategories. When I go to a /category/subcategory/, I get a 404. Because WordPress tries to find a post named "subcategory" in that category.
Movable Type Vulnerability Fix
Movable Type Version 3.15 released.
For those who don't want to do a full upgrade or those who still use the version 2.661, the fix is available as a plugin.
nofollow
Google, MSN and Yahoo! announced their support for rel="nofollow" attribute to hyperlinks. They will ignore links with this attribute to prevent comment spam. Movable Type and other blog software makers and service providers also announed their support. Movable Type released a plugin to modify all links in comments and trackbacks to include the rel="nofollow" attribute.
Continue reading nofollow →
TextPress or, WordPattern?
A good comparison of WordPress and TextPattern and a suggestion to merge them: TextPress or, WordPattern?
Continue reading TextPress or, WordPattern? →
Tsunami Relief Links
Anders Jacobsen will donate $1 to the British Red Cross for every blog linking to the below organizations, and then linking to his blog and his post, Webloggers: Give to tsunami victims and I'll give too!.
Continue reading Tsunami Relief Links →
Disaster Relief
Nick Bradbury has pledged all money earned by the end of the month from TopStyle and FeedDemon to the International Red Cross to help those affected by the Asian tsunami disaster.
Spam Attack!
The screenshot shows attempts failed by MT-Blacklist. But nearly 60 spam comments, containing links to two gambling sites, got posted. I removed all, added those links to my blacklist and then reported to Jay Allen.
By the way, I use Chu Yeow's MT-Blacklist Updater to update my blacklist.
Update:
Spam attacks continue. Two more URLs added to blacklist.
MT Tabs
Arvind Satyanarayan has created a new bookmarklet tool MT Tabs. MT Tabs is a quick easy refrence to MT Tags. The bookmark will pop open a sidebar in your browser with links to all MT Tags.
( Via Learning Movable Type )
CIA Asks Bush to Stop Blogging
(GoMeme 3.0 - Note: This is not an ordinary article. We have added some special information at the end. Read this entire article, and then follow the instructions at the end to pass it on in a new way...)
Washington, DC - In the interest of national security, President Bush has been asked to stop posting entries on his three-month-old personal web log, acting CIA director John E. McLaughlin said Monday.
According to McLaughlin, several recent entries on PrezGeorgeW. typepad.com have compromised military operations, while other posts may have seriously undercut the PR efforts of White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
A July 24 posting read, "Just got back from a lunch with Colin and Adil Moussa (one of Prince Saud al-Faisal's guys). Colin wants the Saudis to send some troops to Najaf - so some of the soldiers are Arab, I guess. This Moussa guy sure wears a lot of jewelry. A golden chain, a golden ring with his initials or something, and some other sparkling stuff - kinda effeminate. Anyway, best of luck in Iraq, Iyad."
McLaughlin, normally hesitant to express public disapproval of the president, said the blog was "ill-advised."
"I would hate for the president to inadvertently put American soldiers at risk," McLaughlin said. "We work hard to maintain the integrity of state secrets. When we see the president posting details of troop movements, international counter-terrorism negotiations, and even the nuclear launch codes, as he did on Monday, we have to step up and say something."
Bush said he could not understand McLaughlin's anger, characterizing his blog as a "personal thing written for friends and family or whoever" and therefore "none of the CIA's business."
Nevertheless, U.S. Secret Service director W. Ralph Basham objected to the blog, as well.
"He is compromising his safety and the safety of those in my department," Basham said, citing a post from last Thursday in which Bush revealed that he "had to go to some secret meeting with Norquist at some Marriot [sic] over in Virginia." "Someone could uncover some serious state secrets, if they took the time to wade through all of those photos he posted after he got that digital camera in June."
On Saturday, Basham asked to pre-screen all blog activity before Bush posts it online.
Bush rejected Basham's request and later that day wrote in his blog that "Some people who shall remain nameless apparently do not know there is such a thing as free speech in this country."
Members of Bush's re-election team have urged the president to exercise caution with his blog, perhaps because of posts like the one dated July 8, 2004: "Another long day of speeches and fundraisers. Met with all these phony media company execs. Had to promise them some bill next term and shake a lot of stupid hands, but they did bring in two or three million or so. Whatever. Karl keeps a list. I got big laughs during my speech, so I'm happy."
Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie said he spoke to Bush about the blog last month.
"After he mentioned our Monday message-of-the-day in a Saturday post, we've really been pushing him to not talk about campaign strategy," Gillespie said. "He's not that involved in the planning anyway, so it shouldn't be too much to ask."
"We're not trying to stifle the president's creativity," Gillespie added. "We think it's great he's taking an interest in writing."
Bush maintained that he's doing nothing wrong.
"I know so many people, but I'm way too busy to keep in touch with all of them," Bush said. "Whether I'm talking about our strategies in Gitmo or my dogs down in Crawford, the blog is an easy way to let everyone know what's been up with me. If I've just had a really good lunch at a new restaurant, or something funny happens in a briefing from the NSA, I want to let my friends and family know about it."
McLaughlin said it's likely that Bush will eventually agree to submit his blog for review by the Secret Service.
"Right now, the president insists it's his right to have it, as long as he doesn't work on it during White House work hours," McLaughlin said. "But I believe we'll be able to convince him, if we let him calm down. And even if we don't, frankly, I can't see the blog holding his interest for too long."
See below for some imporant information...
Continue reading CIA Asks Bush to Stop Blogging →
Testing Meme Propagation
This posting is a community experiment started by Minding the Planet to see how a meme represented by a blog posting spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet; results and commentary will appear there in the future.
Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate - the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.
Continue reading Testing Meme Propagation →
Blogging Magazine
Jeremy Wright has been discussing the idea of a blogging magazine for some time. Today he launched The Bloggist, a "pre-project" blog for brainstorming the blogging magazine idea.
Continue reading Blogging Magazine →
Mini Link Dump
- :BefTer Drop Shadows using :before and :after pseudo elements. (Via 456 Berea Street ).
- How to tick off visited links.
- Ping multiple services with just one ping URL: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ . MetaPinging. ( Via redemption in a blog ).
- Programming is an Art.
- Email v RSS, Email Marketer v Customer Matrix. ( Via Ensight ).
Why Blog?
Why Blog? A question that non-bloggers and bloggers alike ask. Jeremy Wright and Paul Scrivens replies...
Continue reading Why Blog? →
Post 23 Meme
- Go into your blog's archives.
- Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
- Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
- Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
Related: Page 23 Meme
Movable Type RSS Feeds - Full entries
The default RSS templates from Movable Type create feeds that contain only an excerpt of each blog entry. If the 'Entry Excerpt' field is blank, MT will auto-generate an excerpt from 'Entry Body', stripping all its HTML code.
Because of this, some of my blog entries looked weird in feed readers. I made a small change in the <description></description> tag inside <item></item> to include full entry and a link to comments.
Continue reading Movable Type RSS Feeds - Full entries →
Page 23 Meme
Found here.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open the book to page 23.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
From The Third World War by Humphrey Hawksley:
Armoured vehicles sent to confront the guerrillas were ambushed, the soldiers killed, with no prisoners being taken.
Markdown
Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. It converts content written in plain text format to valid XHTML.
Continue reading Markdown →
The World as a Blog
The World as a Blog is a blog world map that displays weblog postings. (WebMasterView.com doesn't appear in the map because I don't have GeoURL metatags in my index page).
If your index page have GeoURL metatags and rss tag and if you ping to Weblogs.com, your post will appear in the map
