G+/Blogger integration, still not there, can we get some real features please?

// It's amazing what insignificant updates make news these days. Up until now, after hitting "Publish" on a new Blogger post, you were prompted to also post it on G+. Now you have an option and this will be done automatically. That's it. That's a new feature, announced on the official Blogger blog, filling up tech news sites and my G+ feed.

Left: post on Blogger. Right: post on G+

So here I am, testing Blogger again, and not much has changed since the last time I was here. I see that some problems remain:

1) Comment management: There is no central place to see all comments (on Blogger and G+ since these are (or more accurate, you can set it this way) the same thing now). You only have a list of posts an a comment count next to them. So you do not have a way to find if an old post has a new comment recently.

That said, if you had shared a Blogger post as a G+ post you get a notification on G+ for new comments but that's it. Comments from re-shares do not produce notifications (from what I have seen, correct me if I'm wrong). Finally, from what +Jean Abraham reports you get a G+ notification when someone comments directly on a post and +Gideon Rosenblatt reports that you get a G+ notification for shares (even if you didn't share it initially on G+?)

2) Smaller real estate on G+ feeds: Your full post (the text of it) is not posted on G+, forcing people to click through to get to the article. Unless you learn to write amazing first paragraphs, you've just lost a large part of your audience (Yes, people love easy stuff! Amazing insight: the easier you make it for people to read your content, the more people will read your content :)). In addition, your smaller thumbnail image has to compete with large photos from "real" G+ posts, some even taking up both columns of the feed.

I really can't see what's stopping Google from doing a full integration of the two services. Full Blogger posts on G+. Your blogspot.com can remain are your categorised archive and holder of "static" Pages content. A real comment management control panel (see WordPress, Disqus, etc). Am I asking too much? :)

Social media cross-posting with Friends+me

// I've recently posted about +Fotostat (http://bit.ly/g-fotostat) , a new service for cross-posting within several social networks, with focus on images. I have been using it with great success for a site I manage. But if your main network is #Google+, you are out of luck, because #Google has only given write access through the G+ API to selected third-party services like #Hootsuite.

An alternative service is Friends+me, currently in beta. The concept is that your source is Google+ and you can cross-post anything you publish on G+ to #Facebook, #Twitter and #LinkedIn. Both personal profiles and pages are supported, you automate at the same time your G+ profile as well as any page you administer.

The good thing is that it comes with quite a few settings for customising when and what's posted. You can set manually to which networks a post will be copied using hashtags or have some networks as defaults. You also have choices on how the post will be made and how it will or not link back to the original post. Finally, links posted through Friends+me on Twitter have support for Twitter Cards, so followers can have a preview of the linked post/URL.

The devil is in the details though. What really won me over to use Friends+me instead of Hootsuite for a site I manage was that links to pages on the website are actually posted as link-type posts on Facebook. Meanwhile, Hootsuite's automated posting to Facebook creates status-type posts which are less click-friendly.

+Friends+Me is now in beta and free. Some (really cheap) plans will be available in the next months (they are announced on the website but you can't purchase them yet - an interesting approach). Check it out! http://bit.ly/friendsme

Newton's playground: Javascript physics engines

This awesome animation is actually the recorded output of a real-time #Javascript-powered physics engine. There has been quite a lof of progress in this field lately using technologies like #canvas and #WebGL, here are some recent developments:

The "dragable/tearable cloth" demo above comes from lonely-pixel.com. Play with it live and get the code here http://bit.ly/15wyK0F There are more demos on the developer's website, like this "ball curve collision" http://bit.ly/1078otN (balls fall through the curves which you can re-arrange as you like :))

Then we go to Verlet-js http://bit.ly/XY0okC a simple (according to SubProtocol, the developer) Verlet integration physics engine written in Javascript by. Check out the "spider" demo
http://bit.ly/ZGWIy6 where you can push a spider around on it's web (yes, the spider moves around on it's own as well :))

Finally, CoffeePhysics (http://bit.ly/11XpGxF) by +Justin Windle. Yes, every bubble there moves around in a frantic manner :)  More experiments by Justin here http://bit.ly/XYfjeJ

Links via +Veljko Sekelj , +Lo Sauer and +Steve Mayne. Many thanks! :)

Blogger and the Holy Grail of unified comments

// So yesterday Google announced a further integration of Google+ comments and Blogger. If you enable the related setting, if your Blogger post is shared on G+, any comment on the G+ post with your post will also be shown in the page of the Blogger post in the comments section.

This is a Holy Grail for comments on Google+ for people like who use Google+ as a blogging platform, as you can have all (public) comments from re-shares on your original post both to read (if you have many re-shares usually you just don't follow discussion there) as well as respond to.

So this is a post written and first post on Blogger at mgiannopoulos.blogspot.com. I'm not sure where this will lead as not everything is peachy.

First of all, I've been looking for some good premium themes that would have the same look as my current setup at giannopoulos.net but have not found anything decent. Any suggestions here would be great.

The other issue I see is that, when you share a new post to G+ at the time of publishing (while you're on Blogger), you actually create a G+ post which contains a link to the blogger post. This mean that my current G+ followers, who were used to seeing my full posts (complete text and image) on their stream, will now see just a link (and perhaps some intro that I write while sharing). This is less compelling to click through.

On top of that, I would not be able to share a Blogger post on G+ communities without being marked a spammer :) Currently it is generally acceptable to share your own G+ post in a community since you're still keeping people on the platform and they can read the full post inline. See the screenshot above for a terrible "inception" effect :)

So as it is, I'm sceptical on whether this could work. My G+ audience is well, on G+. Sending them to Blogger in order to have all discussions in a single place could actually be counter-productive. Thoughts? :)


[Update] When someone replies directly on your Blogger post (not through a share), you get a notification on Google+ :)

Now this IS parallax!

// I'm not a big fan of parallax scrolling sites. Mainly because it is CPU-intensive which means that you will have people with a bad experience and by definition you are constrained to a small number of "pages" which means that you can only use it for small sites and you can't upgrade such a site easily (you will end up re-designing it). 

But this 2012 wish card mini-site of Soleil Noir is simply beautifully done: 
- Vertically scrolling that makes sense: the content is linear (you're supposed to read each page after the other) and extremely short so quick flipping through it is actually needed as opposed to clicking on a menu where the use pauses to think about what he needs to do
- Animations are not only part of the scroll but continue after you've reached a key point giving the impression of a "live page", an element of nature that you're there to experience 
- URL changes according to where you are and a navigation menu is on the right (for some implementations, these are details to be ignored as not overly needed)

See the site here http://bit.ly/Zt4srn
Got any good examples of parallax scrolling that parallax is just used because it's trendy? :) 

This is not how HTML and CSS should be used!

// Some fun coding by Peter Westendorp: "Tunnel vision 3D" with CSS. As Peter writes: "This is an experiment to demonstrate the power of CSS and modern browsers. This is not how HTML and CSS should be used." :D

See it live here http://bit.ly/10SvqbK

This is the Internet!

// Openly accessible data + open source development + open technologies = awesome :) 

The people at Teehan+Lax have developed a method to create timelapse videos using imagery from Google Street View. They call it Google Street View Hyperlapse and you can see the amazing video that you can produce as well, along with links to the source code here http://vimeo.com/63653873

Full size photo uploads: G+ winning the tech war on Facebook

// In the latest #googleplusupdate, you can now upload the full-sized photos and G+ will serve them accordingly: Initially you get a reduced (but great quality) version but you can zoon and pan to see more detail!

How to have this: To enable full-size desktop uploads, just visit your settings at https://www.google.com/settings/plus, and check "Upload my photos at full size." Afterwards, any files larger than 2048px will count towards your Google storage (up to 5GB free). Photo storage at 2048px or smaller remains free and unlimited.

Meanwhile, Facebook still can't keep up, probably not having enough servers/storage to handle better quality in their photos. See also this experiment by +Mike Elgan http://bit.ly/10y7JUH 

Finally, a reminder on how to zoom (try it on this 2448 x 3264 pixels photo from snowy Luxembourg :))
- use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out
- click and drag to pan right, left, up or down

Have fun!

Social media cross-posting with Fotostat

I've been expanding the number of social networks I use, almost like an addict lately :) So I've been looking for a way to administer my addiction in an easier way. I had an automation between G+, Twitter and my Wordpress blog (so I was only posting on G+) and additionally was cross-posting to Facebook and LinkedIn through Hootsuite.

Today I'm trying out Fotostat, a new service currently in beta for posting your photos (but also text, this post was written on fotostat) as well as gather statistics about them. To copy the service's description:
- Save time by scheduling your uploads to multiple social photography sites, blogs and merchant facilities.
- Discover how well each photo is performing by seeing all available statistics from each of your networks.
- Interact with your followers by commenting across all your sites from one easy to use location.

The service works very nicely: you first connect to your networks and your existing photos are imported to the service so you already have statistics on your content so far. You then can post new content, selecting each time to which networks you want to post to.

Currently supported are Google+ (Publishing to albums only, no post creation as yet.), Facebook, Flickr, 500px, Smugmug, Tumblr and WordPress. The effort is headed by Daniel Treadwell, developer of the G+ to WordPress plugin I have been using for over a year now, so I'm sure there are lots of improvements to come.

Try it out for free at http://fotost.at/

BP Imperial

A fun display font by George Triantafyllakos. Get it at http://www.backpacker.gr/font.asp?m=1&font=bp13

Just because you can: GUI icons with pure CSS

// Inspired by an elegant piece of CSS code by +Lea Verou, creating the WiFi code (see it here http://bit.ly/wificss), I searched for other examples of this and found this little gem: A demo of 84 icons created with just CSS by +Nicolas Gallagher.

Nicolas calls it's a "technical exercise" but given that this was done back in 2010 and support for the methods used is much wider now, the code should be working in all modern browsers. 

You can see it in action and dig into the code here http://bit.ly/css-gui-icons

Charts with Javascript: even more ways to kill Flash

// Javascript-powered chart solutions is a favorite topic of mine, so here are a few more options for you- NVD3 (http://nvd3.org/) builds upon the powerful D3 library and currently supports 11 different interactive chart types

- Rickshaw (http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/) also built on D3, can be used for live-data time graphs with 4 customisable chart types

_ gRaphaël (http://g.raphaeljs.com/) is based on Raphaël and has 4 different chart types including a dot chart

- YUI charts (http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/) is part of the YUI library and supports 7 chart types

- Polychart.js (http://polychartjs.com/) has 5 chart types which can be combined.

Depending on your situation and needs any of this could work, but surely NVD3 stands out. For more on the topic, see here http://bit.ly/g-chart

Draft: cloud text-editing for any anything anywhere

// I've written about #Draft already a few days ago http://bit.ly/g-draft when it was "just" a web-based text #editor for #Dropboxand Google Drive with version control and collaboration features.But I need to write again as a #Chrome extension was released that redefined how you can use Draft. I'll just copy the developer's (+Nathan Kontny) description:

Any webpage that you can write on, you can now use Draft with. Your blog, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, even comment boxes on websites like Reddit and Hacker News. Just place your cursor in the box you want to write in, click the Chrome Draft extension, and Draft will open up in a new Chrome Tab. Choose an already written document or something new to write in Draft (any text from the original text box will carry over). When you're done, there's a menu button to paste your work back into the text box you came from.

As I write this post on Draft, it's a much better experience of writing without all the noise of Google+'s interface. Highly recommended, get Draft here http://bit.ly/draft-chrome

Twitter Cards: Engage!

// Just 6 days after my submission for inclusion on the #TwitterCards program, I got in and in the screenshot you can see the result: whenever someone tweets a URL of my blog, an "expanded view" will be available with a title, short description, thumbnail, my name and #Twitter handleIt also works on the mobile (iOS at least) app. See it live here http://bit.ly/t-cardtweet and read more about it here http://bit.ly/g-twitter-cards

Improve links to your site on Twitter with Twitter Cards

// Announced since last July, Twitter Cards is Twitter's equivalent (or "answer" if you like tech drama) to the Open Graph. By defining a set of #meta #tags in your #HTML code you can provide instructions to #Twitterin order to display an "expanded" preview of your page, when your page's URL is included in a tweet.Twitter Cards come in 3 types:
- summary: The default card, which includes a title, description, thumbnail image, and Twitter account attribution.
- photo: A Tweet sized photo card.
- player: A Tweet sized video/audio/media player card.

Basically, you can use the first for article pages (think of blogs), the second for pages where the main content is a photo (e.g. Instagram) and the third one for pages of videos (e.g. YouTube).

The structure of the meta tags are similar to #OpenGraph and you can read about it in the official documentation (http://bit.ly/twittercards). While Twitter re-invented the concept of meta tags for describing a page for social media consumption, they acknowledged that having duplicate meta tags is kind of silly, so if you already have the OG tags of title, image, url and description in your code, they will be recognised for their twitter equivalents (you still need to add a couple of twitter tags though).

The feature is still in development, simply adding the tags on your site will not do anything yet. You need to submit a form (http://bit.ly/t-cards-form) asking to be included in the beta.  Twitter promisses to respond to you in "a few weeks". Until then, you can try out your page on the preview tool (http://bit.ly/t-cards-preview). If you have a WordPress blog, you can use the Twitter Cards plugin (http://bit.ly/wp-twitter-cards) which does (almost all of) the job for you.

If you have gone through the process and can share some feedback on how this worked for you, post in the comments :)

Tracking shares before they happen (or even if they don't happen)?

// A tricky question poped up in my Quora home page: Is it possible to check, if somebody requested your site's #meta #tags ?The logic behind this is that you could track social shares even if the user doesn't complete the process (load's up the URL on Facebook or a sharing widget) and then quits.

My suggestion and response on Quora was that one can use the og:image tag. Declare a specific image that is only used on the og:image tag. Then check the Apache logs for requests to that image.

You will have when someone started the sharing process. You won't have when the shared page is shown in Facebook, because what is shown is a cached thumbnail that Facebook keeps. On that thought, you might want to have a dynamic URL for the image because the first time someone starts the sharing process, Facebook creates the cached copy (which is stored for some time)

Alternatively to the Apache logs part, you can set up some PHP/whatever script as the URL, allowing you to create a dynamic URL but also keep track of the requests in a database (easier than running analytics on Apache logs).

I haven't tried this, but I don't see why it wouldn't work, at least in part. It all comes down to Facebook/Twitter's cache systems and how often their cache is refreshed. It might also be worth looking into adding a random variable at the end of the og:url so that when someone tries to share the page (from a FB/Twitter button on the page for example) it would be a new URL and it would not be cached. Of course this would probably mess with share/like counts of the page.

That said, Twitter has their own set of  meta tags (because using the OG tags would be a discrace apparently), described here http://bit.ly/twittercards

Further thoughts on this are welcome :)

HTC cloned Jony Ive!

// The "evidence" :)
1) Video of Jony Ive on Apple's unibody process http://youtu.be/lJx6cF-H__I
2) Video of HTC's zero-gap process http://youtu.be/pDjfh5mFWUc

Quora, a Google+ blogging alternative?

// I generally detest article headlines that pose questions rather than provide a definite position, but I'm undecided on this one.Recently, #Quora upgraded their Boards feature, renaming the Blogs. The standard features include:
- a quora.com subdomain of your choice
- set a title, logo/avatar image and #blog description
- choice of set of basic categories that show up on the right side of the pages, acting as navigation links to your blog's archives
- categories are linked to Quora existing set of topics
- your blog posts can be linked to either your main categories or other Quora topics
- limited HTML editor for your posts
- statistics on views per post, with monthly archives, including which specific users viewed your posts
- multiple authors per blog allowed
- easy posting via the mobile app
- you can use your Quora credits to promote your posts
- your posts show up in the home pages of people who follow the topics of your posts
- up/down voting and comments on posts
- choice of 2 quite elegant themes (see the default one in the screenshot of my blog)

I've been using #Google + as a blogging platform, so here's how it compares:
- an existing audience: no need to build up a fellowship through Circles or join #Communities (to which you can't cross-post). Tagging to Quora's topics will give your posts a chance to being visible to hundreds if thousands of topics.
- a topic-based audience: the G+ experience is based on following people, while on Quora on following topics
- a different audience: while G+ tries to market itself as everything for everyone, it is mainly focused on images, from great photography to silly GIFs. Quora is focused on text and analysis (top currently trending topics are "smart people", "human behaviour" and "computer programming") which, as you can imagine, has implications on the topics that have the bigger audiences. Quora also has a small army of admins and reviewers who have created a culture of quality content. If you have such content, it should thrive on Quora
- a better editor: although limited ( no source editing), you have an actual HTML editor, can add multiple images anywhere in your post and can have actual links not just drop URLs in your text.
- social propagation: on G+ people can re-share your posts, increasing your audience. Comments and +1's though are mainly done on the copied posts. On Quora, there is no sharing feature (posts have Facebook and Twitter share buttons of course) but when someone follows your blog or a post (similar to subscribing to the comments) or comments to / votes up a post, a related "story" is shown on the user's followers home page as well as the user's profile page.
- statistics: on G+ you have no statistics on whether your posts where read at all. You can only get a total view count on your photos based on third-party sites that use the G+ API or through Picasa. On Quora you get a full listing of who viewed (if they have turned on the related privacy setting) each posts, and how many views you have today as well as per month.

So where do all that leave me with the original question? As you can guess from all of the above, I'm quite positive about it. Of course, I'm not replacing G+ with Quora, I'll be cross-posting though, you can find me (and see a live example of how the system works) here http://bit.ly/g-quora
In the end, I think there is indeed a big difference in the audiences of the two platforms, so there is no harm done from the "both" choice. What do you think? :)

How to create an infographic from your Google Analytics data

// Well, there's not much to say here. People love #infographics for visualising information and numbers in an easy to consume manner. People also love #GoogleAnalytics for an endless amount of #statisticsabout their website.Now you can combine both with a few clicks on the free tool by Visual.ly. The process is relatively simple, you connect +Visually with your GA account, select the website you want the report of, and you're done. You get a result for the last week, like the one shown on the screenshot (you get the typical long form, but I've re-arranged it to fit better on a page). You can also set to have a weekly report sent to your e-mail address.

Try it out here: http://bit.ly/visually-ga

Found via +Jules Stuifbergen

Does your company know what the internet is?

//_UPDATE_: The situation has been sorted out, the project is back online normally http://bit.ly/chartjs

// Yesterday I wrote (http://bit.ly/g-chartjs) about Chart.js, a new library for javascript/canvas-based charts. A day later, the site is down with a note shown in the screenshot, basically explaining how the developer's employer doesn't like the idea of #OpenSource.

Here's the outcome so far after a few hours:
- The code was removed from the original Github repository but of course has been copied (here http://bit.ly/chartjs-fork along with at least 92(!) forks) and it's not about to be ever deleted completely
- The angry commentators at Hacker News are already looking for the name of the company http://bit.ly/chartjs-hackernews

This is bound to get some press soon...

That said: this wasn't a ground-breaking piece of technology. There is no case that it was any kind of competitive advantage for the company (plus the whole IP issue is ambiguous as this was a university project of the developer). The company had nothing to lose with this being released as open source, only to gain from the publicity of one of their employees releasing a successful open source project.

But if you don't know what the internet is, you're bound to act like an idiot...

Chart.js: cross-browser, animated, HTML5 charts

//Non-Flash charts is a favourite topic of mine (see more here http://bit.ly/g-chart), basically because charts have been one of the last things Flash could do that HTML couldn't. This of course has been changing a lot the last few years. 

Another very recent (released yesterday!) example of is Chart.js. It packs: 
- 6 animated chart types: Line, bars, radar, pie, polar area and doughnut
- Canvas-based vector output which means crystal clear graphics at any resolution
- Cross-browser support on modern browsers, support for IE8 and below through ExplorerCanvas
- No Flash = Mobile-ready (kind of obvious since it's HTML5 but worth noting) 
- Lightweight and very good documentation (for a 0.1 release) 

Get Chart.js here http://bit.ly/chartjs

(Found via +Michael Mahemoff and +Stephen Bond)

Text editing on the cloud: Draft

// I've been using Dropbox for some time now to access work files from home or when travelling. But when I've recently had to work on a closed down Windows PC that I couldn't install anything, I had to get further "deeper" into the #cloud. :) 

I've been keeping quick notes in text files stored in Dropbox so how could I edit them without login on Dropbox, downloading them, editing them and then uploading them again? 

Luckily, I've found an excellent new service for that, Draft http://bit.ly/draftincom It combines a clear interface focused on writing, #MarkDown support for formatting and connections to #Dropbox , Google Drive, Evernote and Box. Any change on the document is automatically saved back to the service it originated. 

On top of that, you can keep multiple versions of your documents for reviewing what you wrote. And on top of that, you can share a document to let others edit your document. #Draft will give you an overview of the changes and the option to reject any edits you don't like. 

Draft is a free service with a premium service for professional editing of your work.  

In case you don't like Draft for some reason, check out also Writebox http://bit.ly/writebox which offers a simple text editing experience (so simple, you don't even need to open an account) and connections to Dropbox and Google Drive. No collaboration features though. 

If you know of another similar service please share it in the comments. 

Blog redesigned - comments?

// I hadn't touched my blog's design for a bit over year, so I thought it was time for a refresh. Yes, In case you haven't noticed, I have a blog at which contains a full (an indexed) archive of all my Google+ posts. 

So over the last 20 months I have ended up writing about a big variety of topics and I realised people probably would not want to scroll through the entire article to get to the next one. So the content on the homepage and category pages needed to be "compressed". Also the big header was taking up to much space, pushing everything down. 

With that in mind, this redesign set out to achieve the following: 
- Provide a cleaner layout with emphasis on content (kind of obvious but still) 
- On the home page and category pages, give instant access to more content 
- Improve navigation options by replacing the drop-down menu with a list of categories
- Remove social media junk (there were all sorts of buttons) that had gathered over the years

You can see the before (left) and after (right) on the screenshot. Check out the site here http://bit.ly/giannopoulos 
What do you think?

(Masonry effect using Isotope by David DeSandro. Fonts used are Homenaje by Constanza Artigas Preller and Agustina Mingote and Roboto by Christian Robertson, you can find them on Google Web Fonts)

Google Reader is dead, long live Feedly

// As I was writing (http://bit.ly/YvRWmi) when the #GoogleReader death was announced, the race is on for a new king of #RSS readers. 

Of the 4 that I tried the last 2 days, here's the outcome: 
- The Old Reader: imported everything (but only current copies of the feeds, not the Google #Reader archive (which has about 1000 more unread article  and works fine (with the exception of photos on the Shorpy feed but that is something none of the readers get right)
- Netvibes: imported everything including the article archive but the interface is not very appealing 
- NewsBlur: in order to manage the extra load, they reduced their capacity of 64 feeds to 12 for the free account so that case is dropped for me.
- #Feedly: imported all feeds and article archive, has an excellent interface with multiple choices for layouts and an additional great free app for iOS and Android. 

So, thank you #Google  for introducing me to a great service, Feedly :) http://www.feedly.com/
And now for some obligatory Hitler rage on the issue http://bit.ly/XEczDn

Google Reader's death is an opportunity, but for who?

// So #Google is killing Google Reader, messing with the image they have been building for years that "Google can do everything for everyone". #Reader has been the definitive #web-based #RSS reader service for years. That said the race is one for it's replacement. And things are not looking good in terms of instantly responding to demand. Here is my experience so far: 

The Old Reader imported 3 out of 20 subscriptions and is giving my a message that the rest are being imported in the background. That was some 40 minutes ago. The 3 subscriptions are loading fine though, with the exception of photos on the Shorpy feed  http://theoldreader.com/

Netvibes imported all of my subscriptions but loading feeds is very slow or does not happen at all at the moment http://www.netvibes.com/

NewsBlur hasn't managed to complete the import process after several tries and often gives out 502 error pages http://newsblur.com

Feedly (Chrome extension) imported all subscriptions with ease, but has a problem loading up all the many little images that uses in it's interface and basically you can't use it much http://www.feedly.com/

If you have found another service that does not directly connect to #GoogleReader but instead can import #OMPL files, you can export your Reader subscriptions to OMPL on Google Takeout here https://www.google.com/takeout/#custom:reader

So how are you dealing with this? 

Today on the other hand

//
- Can be the first day of the rest of your life, if you so choose. Choose wisely.
Is an opportunity to decide if you like the path you're on, or if you need new direction.
- Is an opportunity to start building new habits, changing the you of tomorrow.
- Is an opportunity to say "yes" to something you normally say "no" to. New experiences bring growth.
- Is an opportunity to say "no" to something unhealthy that's a part of your routine. Change is good.
- Is an opportunity to make one better decision than you did yesterday, in life, love, health, or wealth.
- Is an opportunity to be better than you were yesterday.
- Is an opportunity to do NOW what you were going to put off until tomorrow.
- Is the ONLY thing you can truly control.

Proceed accordingly. 

Source: NerdFitness http://bit.ly/ZbELsY

Public service announcement

// Then again, I'm afraid the internet would be half empty if we followed this rule... :)
via +Kay Kulkarni 

Add icons to your links with CSS3

// A lovingly quick way to add icons next to your links that I just saw in +Lea Verou's (of W3C) site: all you need is a simple line of #CSS3 code.

a[href^="http://twitter.com"]::before { content: url("twitter.png"); }

See it live at http://lea.verou.me/

The Ultimate Browser Detection Fail

// So here's a screenshot from #Google #Nexus , running Google's #Android browser, showing a page on a Google service (Google Groups). We notice two things happening: 

1) Google's page can't identify Google's browser correctly and instead mistake it for #Safari
2) Google engineers can't (or wont?) make a page of relatively simple (in terms of features) web service to run on Safari, one of the two biggest mobile browsers, disregarding the fact that both browsers use the same engine.

I've recently switched from Safari to #Chrome due to better memory usage but these kind of ridiculous "games" really need to stop...

So this is Bill Gate's monitor

// Bill showed off his monitor during his AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit http://redd.it/18bhme 
It is actually a 82" multi-touch display intended for presentations but I suppose it can work as a decent personal monitor as well :) If you have the pockets for it, click here http://bit.ly/YYOfYV

The AMA received a lot interest with almost 29,000 comments. For a summary of Bill's answers, click here http://bit.ly/X6nN0d

CSS Paint times and a Faster Web Experience

// At a perhaps an alarming rate, web sites are becoming more and more like complete applications, see for example the refreshed +The Next Web or +Mashable). This means that looking into initial page loading times is not enough. We need to monitor how the web page reacts at user input. 

+Addy Osmani has been posting a lot about this topic, check out his article DevTools: Visually Re-engineering CSS For Faster Paint Times http://bit.ly/VfpHen

Track WordPress Queries with Debug Bar

// I'm in #WordPress  mode these days (building a site for a client), so here's another handy plugin: Debug Bar gives you helpful information for #debugging  like PHP error/notices, the full list of database queries and more. I needed the database part as you can see in the screenshot. Get it here: http://bit.ly/Z7YAWe 

Secure WordPress with WP-Security

// WP Security Scan is a set of tools for adding some basic #security  on your #WordPress  installation. It includes: 
- A series of tests like if you have the latest version, if you're not telling the world your version of WordPress, .htaccess protection, etc (see screenshot) 
- Information on your PHP/MySQL installation for debugging
- Permissions checks on your files
- Feature to backup your database 
- A password tool to select a hard to brake password

Get WP Security Scan at the WordPress.org plugin directory http://bit.ly/Xx6dPe

For getting .htaccess setup without messing directly with files, see the AskApache plugin http://bit.ly/YQLhFU (will have another post on it at later time). For more on WordPress security see my previous posts http://bit.ly/1262rDZ

Change your scrollbars with jQuery NiceScroll

// For some time changing the look of #scrollbars has been quite tricky but the last couple of years this has become easier. Probably one of the best is a #jQuery  plugin call NiceScroll. Now in version 3 it features:

- simple installation with just a line of code for any div or the whole page 
- support for cursor/mouse wheel/keyboard
- support for all browsers (even IE6) and touch devices
- zoom feature that showcases just a specific div 

Get NiceScroll here http://bit.ly/11zztgv

How to save space in your WordPress site

// Handy #plugin  for #WordPress : WP-Optimize will give you the option to clear revisions, draft posts and spam/pending comments and also optimise your database tables, freeing up value disk space and speeding up all database access.

That said, if you use the Google+ Blog plugin http://bit.ly/yNwPxo by +Daniel Treadwell to import your G+ posts in WordPress, you may want to check the size of your posts table. With just 440 posts there were almost 130.000 rows in my posts table, the likely cause being the Google+ Blog plugin. 

Get WP-Optimize here http://bit.ly/WBF81q

The waiting line game of Mailbox

// #Mailbox , the latest attempt at improving mail #productivity , might work or it might fail. But they've handled their launch strategy in an innovative and smart (in terms of  #marketing ). 

Instead of the classic "give us your e-mail to notify you" and then just launch for the entire world, they adopted a "waiting line" concept: people who signed up first will get the app first. This rewards early adopters but also allows for "bragging rights" as the app shows your number in the "line" and how many people are in front and behind you. 

The result today is people filling the social networks with screenshots like the one below, showing how long the line is and if they are lucky (to be ahead) or unlucky (to have to wait a lot). And of course the tech press has something "exciting" to write about :) 

One could say it's the digital equivalent of #Apple 's lines on product launches. It remains to be seen if other start-ups will copy this idea... :)

Twitter is actually IRC, with less features

// Want proof? Here you go :)  http://tweetchat.com/room/irc
One could say that it's a step backwards from #IRC  because you need a special interface like tweechat to avoid always mentioning the name of the room (hashtag) you are writing in. And of course you can't have a private room. Or really good moderation tools. Or... ;)

What is a Project?

// Things don't have to be overly complex (as in the #Dilbert comic below) An answer by David Allen of Get Things Done ( #GTD ):

Any outcome that’s going to require more than one action item, in some sequence of events in order to be able to get to that outcome, that’s a project. And boy, there are a lot of people that just miss that.

Invariably I see that most people’s “project lists” are very, very incomplete. One of the more subtle ones that comes to mind is: What issues are on your mind right now, or situations or circumstances? Not necessarily negative things, but oftentimes there’s kind of a health thing, there’s kind of a family thing, there’s a relationship thing, there’s a—who knows?

There’s all kinds of subtle stuff that show up out there that are either problems or opportunities and they don’t march up to the door with a pretty pink bow and say, “Hi, I am now a project!” Get those clarified in a way that you know what done looks like (the project outcome), and what doing looks like (the next action).

More from David Allen at www.davidco.com
and of course more Dilbert at www.dilbert.com

Finally, an awesome UX tutorial

// Answering the question "What are the best resources for learning bleeding-edge web, UI and UX design?" on Quora, Colm Tuite, UI/Visual Designer & Developer, decided to write one of this own. The result was an extensive post / #tutorial  with 10 steps to a decent (if not great) start in learning about #UX. To sum up: 

1. Discover the problem
2. Get to know your users
3. Learn to #wireframe properly
4. Communicate effectively
5. Guide your users
6. Encourage your users
7. Reward your users
8. Learn the basic fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby, Python etc.)
9. Learn visual #design
10. Study. Study. Study.

Read the full article here http://b.qr.ae/XNmOQH

Colours, Emotions, Brands

// This kind of chart has been going around the net for a while, but a reminder is always good :)

If you're looking for more #marketing -oriented #color   #infographics  see also How do colors affect purchases?
http://bit.ly/VG6O70

(Chart by The Logo Company http://bit.ly/VG6wwT)

Cross-network social media engagement analysis

// Did that sound complex enough? :) Statistics and trying to do comparisons can often be misleading as just seeing the numbers below can prove. The numbers are from a test +Wil Wheaton did: he asked people on #Facebook  and #Google + to following a list to his blog as a test on how much traffic he gets from either #network . Here they are:  

Facebook followers: 95K
Google+ followers: 1.4M
 
Traffic from Facebook:  ~13,428
Traffic from G+: ~11,261

Interactions on Facebook: 1118 likes and 345 comments
Interactions on G+: 647 +1s (same as likes) and 247 comments

On first look, FB looks like an amazing way to get engagement given that there were more interactions with just tiny fraction of followers. I think a crucial explanation for these numbers is that every like and comment on Facebook generates a story in the feeds of the friends of the user who made the like or comment.

This allows a much bigger spread of anything that get a good amount of likes/comments (as recently proven by the recent "help me get laid for 1 million likes" story http://cnet.co/YMy5pc). Meanwhile, the main way for something to spread on G+ is shares and the trending list (although usually in order to get on the trending list you need a lot of shares).  

Where as a percentage of the 1.4mil of G+ followers might see Wil's post just once if they have him on a circle which shows 100% of posts in the main stream (and if they read everything on their stream), on Facebook, it's not just a percentage of the followers who see a post in their feeds. It is also the friends of everyone who liked and commented on it through the "X commented on Will Wheaton's post" stories. 

An additional insight: a small page I manage on FB has just over 1100 likes. The overal potential audience though (friends of fans) is over 400k. I suppose some similar numbers apply in Will's case. His 95K followers can translate to an audience of millions. I wont do the math because I am probably going to end up with wrong assumptions again. 

The fact is, people interact differently with content and also discover differently  content on either network. So the whole situation is a bit like, well, apples and oranges :) 
_(Photo by Michael Fawcett http://bit.ly/12k6EE1)_
cc +Robert Scoble as he has written a lot about the differences between FB and G+ and their content discovery models. 

Hack your life!

// #Hacking  is not a bad word, mmm'okay? :) Here is a small intro on hacking your daily routines to improve your #productivity  and enjoy more of what's really important in #life! :) 

The interface is (part of) your brand

// When it's pointed out it is kind of obvious but you might not consider it otherwise. Interface elements are indeed part of your brand. If you're not convinced take this quiz: can you recognise the origin of the buttons on the image below? 

Answers on the original article by +Marc Hemeon : http://bit.ly/11cxFK9 Marc has more guidance on designing your buttons. 
(via +Nassos K.) 

History: G+ Activity Log for the rest of the Web

// I recently wrote http://bit.ly/Vx6wiE asking for a #Google+ activity log, a page where you could see all the posts you +1ed or commented on. The problem is, if someone doesn't interact with the post after you, you can't easily find it. 

It turns out something like this is on the works. +Shamil Weerakoon pointed me to the direction of the #Google #HistoryAPI. Announced back in June of last year at Google I/O, it promises to allow websites to post updates of actions you take around the web to Google's archive. If the concept sounds familiar it is because #Facebook has already done with #OpenGraph http://bit.ly/YG2e9B

The History #API is still in development but you can get a taste of it already. You can have in a single page, the archive of pages you +1ed around the web (not G+ posts), videos you viewed on YouTube, apps you got from Google Play, photos from Instant Upload and searches you have made (although that last one hasn't appeared on my page so far). People concerned with #privacy  should be reassured by the fact that you can select per source who can see your history (i've set everything to "only me"). 
 
Click here to learn more http://bit.ly/WARdDg and here http://bit.ly/WzOOce to sign-up. And here's another #googleplusrequest : Do the obvious, integrate this with Google posts and comments! :)

Photobox: CSS3/jQuery image gallery

// There are probably thousands of #lightbox  solutions but here is fancy one, straight from the refreshed #jQuery   #plugins  site (http://bit.ly/YBFQye):

Photobox promises to be a lightweight image gallery modal window script which uses only #CSS3 for silky-smooth animations and transitions. The goal was to create an image #gallery script that uses GPU rendering to move things around, instead of the old fashioned #javascript way (e.g. most other scripts in existence).

The visual result is what you see in the screenshot, check out the demo and download it here http://bit.ly/114QgYz 
Official support includes Firefox, Chrome and IE8+, although Safari had no issues with it as well.