Category: Web

AddThis Here

Four stages of adding AddThis to this WordPress.com blog: (1) attempt; (2) hey, it seems to work; (3) no, it doesn’t; (4) providing bonus links; (5) returning a few weeks later and adding AddThis to the sidebar.
AddThis Social Bookmark Button
(1) Original post was as follows. Right now, I’m just trying to see if WordPress.com will allow use of an AddThis blog button… will edit this post later.

(2) Here’s the later, rather optimistic edit.

You’d like people to bookmark your stuff, especially if they use a social bookmarking service. So you’d like to put a button (or other link) on your blog (or other site) to make it easy for visitors to bookmark you. The trouble is, there are so many social bookmarking services that you don’t want to include a button for each of them.

So you’d like one button to rule them all. AddThis provides such a button. Actually it provides several, the smallest of which appears in this post. Now, down to business, via TechCrunch.

AddThis is gathering some very interesting data that can form the core of a business model now that they have fairly deep penetration. They’re releasing some of this data… AddThis also sees what stories people are bookmarking.

I’m considering putting the AddThis button on the sidebar of this blog. That’s saying something, given my current minimalist tastes.

There is an AddThis blog. The current post tells us that AddThis is now serving over 2 million buttons each day. The blog uses WordPress. I hope that this will encourage AddThis to continue to produce widgets that don’t use JavaScript. (Such widgets aren’t allowed on WordPress.com, although they are allowed on WordPress blogs hosted elsewhere.)

(3) On later checking, the link from the button doesn’t work. A new window comes up, and allows me to choose a bookmarking site. But when I select a site, and get to it, the URL of the blog page isn’t there. So, apparently WordPress.com does strip out some of the AddThis code.

(4) There’s a thread on AddThis on the WordPress.com support forum.

(5) It now (a few weeks later) seems to work, so I’m putting the button in the sidebar.

OpenID Is About

Since your OpenID is a URI (web page address, URL, what have you) that you own, it would make sense for that web page to express your identity, in the sense of being your About page. (Hence the rather strange title of the current post.)

My current preferred OpenID is at claimID. That’s what’s in the sidebar today, although it may change at some future point. My ID/About page there lists (some of) my blogs and other web sites and pages.

I’d like to be able to do more with my ID/About page. For example, I’d like it to include the feed from this blog and from a few other places. I don’t know of an OpenID provider that currently allows this. If and when one does, I’d like to hear about it. If there is currently no such provider, then the gap looks like a significant opportunity.

On the other hand, I could follow the directions on how to use your own URL as an OpenID without running your own OpenID server. Well, I couldn’t make this blog my OpenID, since WordPress.com doesn’t allow access to HTML (or at least not to the HTML relevant here).

The directions are provided by Brian Ellin, who claims the ID here. I think he had something to do with implmenting one of the features of Jyte that prevents me abandoning the service: You can now ignore people on jyte by clicking on a link on their profile page.

Brian, if you did implement said feature, and if you’re reading this, many thanks and much cred. But why do you use URL rather than URI? Isn’t the thing in question, well, an identity?

OpenID For Testing Times

From the comfort of one’s home, it can sometimes seem that OpenID isn’t such a big deal. One’s comfortable browser and one’s helpful web services mean that one can use a variety of services without encountering a “Halt! Who goes there!” challenge.

But when one is giving a test and using the prof PC at the front of the room, all these usernames and passwords could become tiresome. I may have to resort to doing some of the grading I brought with me. So that’s what OpenID is all about: convienient surfing while inflicting a test on one’s students.

Perplex City 2

I recently mentioned that procrastination kept me out of Perplex City. There are consolations. One is that I wasn’t alone in last place. 8958 others also had zero puzzle-solving points.

The other consolation is that the Season 2 just started. I ordered a few packs of them for my nephew in the UK, from Firebox.com (no, that’s not an affiliate link).

It took me a while to find the place on the Firebox home page where I could specify that I wanted to send the cards to a country other than the USA. Perhaps that should give me a clue that I’m not very good at puzzles. Nevertheless, I ordered a few packs for myself, with some previously-unspent Christmas money.

Quotiki and Ning

QuotikiA few weeks ago, I wondered if there was a social web application based around quotes. There is, and indeed was at the time.

The name Quotiki is rather misleading, since it’s not a wiki. But I guess quotr.com was taken. Anyway, Quotiki is to Wordie what YouTube is to Flickr, or something like that.

I was thinking of creating a quotal network myself. Had I seen Michael Arrington’s case that Ning is [now] an impressive and useful service before I’d seen Quotiki, I might have done it at Ning.

Even so, I should go back and check Ning out again. It looks very different from the Ning I checked out, then checked out from, just after its launch. It now emphasizes social networking around mutual interests, rather than application building.

GAPEing Offline

Firefox and GoogleFor many, the GAPE-ing hole in Google Apps is that they don’t work offline.

Josh Bernoff considers this point so good he makes it twice. He concludes by asking: “is there a huge offline browsing/apps breakthrough in the offing?”

Richard, the alert kiwi, provided an answer to this question a week or two ago.

Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla… spoke about how Firefox 3 will deliver support for offline applications. This is significant because you’ll be able to use your web apps – like Gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, etc – in the browser even when offline. I deliberately mentioned all Google web apps there, because of course this plays right into Google’s hands.

Although Mozilla is an open source organization, some of its top workers are employed by Google.

Garbling GAPE

I hope that the previous post’s coverage of Google Apps Premier Edition was clear. I think that it was clearer than either of the following:

  • Google’s software applications… are downloaded from the Internet. OK, maybe this is clear (as in unambiguous), but it’s just plain wrong. One of the selling points of GAPE is that the apps are on the web, and don’t have to be downloaded or otherwise managed by the user. Shame on the Boston Globe.
  • “Please see the open id eff ick you.” Nobody actually wrote that (until I did just now). Andy Roberts wrote please see The OpenId FAQ, and a podcasting bot mangled his words. Andy’s main point is that: “The most important and ultimately decisive battle which starts up in 2007 may be that between OpenID and Google.”

GAPE at Google Apps

Today’s big web news is the release of Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE?). The Google Apps entry page tells us:

  • What it is, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets (but not yet Presentations), all hosted by Google
  • How it’s packaged for different markets: small business, enterprise, education, family/group.

Here are remarks from four “usual suspect” Web 2.0 bloggers.

So, what’s missing?

  • The presentation app, but I’m sure that’ll be along soon.
  • Google Reader. There are many Google services that could have been part of GAPE, but aren’t. Reader is, for me, the most prominent of these.
  • Support for OpenID. Suspicious (but “open”) minds might take this as an implication that Google considers your Gmail address the only identity you’ll ever need.