Don't Back Down

It's almost dangerous writing this as I do (in advance, I mean), because in so doing, I run the risk of having some of these things done by the time it actually gets published. One of the items - I'll tell you which in a minute - already had to be updated slightly from my original request, since it's already been fixed. I'm not complaining, mind you, as it means that Plurk is moving forward and continuing to roll out updates to the service in response to user requests. So here are mine.

First, let me say that I understand that the service is new. I've said that all along. I also understand that some of you don't necessarily like the service, and that's okay too. I'm just passing along some ideas for what I think would make things work even better, because quite frankly, I think it works pretty darn good, seeing as how it's only been around since January, and only in true live mode for the last ten days or so. Prior to that, it was on a development server, and it wasn't ready for the load that it's seen. Now, on with the list!

Read "A Wishlist for Plurk Nirvana" »

There are all sorts of reasons that you might like Plurk and dislike Twitter - or, as is often the case, the other way around.

A number of people - notably the Twitterati - will argue that Plurk doesn't have an API, or it's too colorful, or it's like a funhouse. Whatever. Pick your reason. It doesn't really matter. There is one thing that sets Plurk apart from Twitter, and one thing only. Yes, there are many smaller reasons, but there is one very significant point that most people seem to push under the rug, to try and ignore, but it's the point that is staring everyone in the face, and that the refuse to accept.

Plurk is about the conversation. It's about the relationship. Twitter allows you to distance yourself, while Plurk does not. It's as simple as that.

Read "The Real Secret to Plurk's Appeal over Twitter" »

The problems with Twitter are almost legendary. But a funny thing happened last week during their latest bout. As the popular Adobe AIR application Twhirl advised users to reduce requests to somewhere around a third of the normal rate so that users wouldn't experience errors on Twitter, another social application started to be mentioned. A lot.

Suddenly, users everywhere were talking about Plurk. Some people say that it came from Leo Laporte. Some say it was Scoble (evidence such as this tweet seem to indicate it was Leo). I think that I heard it first from Mack Collier, but I'll be honest - it could have been any number of people. Mack was likely just the most vocal that I heard (and he could have heard it from Leo, Scoble or any number of others himself. The fact is, Plurk started to emerge at just the right time, and now I'm convinced. It was just a day or so earlier that Plurk actually started to ramp things up.

Read "Moving from Twitter to Plurk (and the like)" »

The latest news online is the emergence of Plurk in the realm of social sites. Heck, I don't even know if that's the right term. But it allows you to find and connect to others, so that makes it social enough for me, and you'll just have to pardon my ignorance if I happened to classify it incorrectly.

The about page at Plurk is simple - it's less than a half-page (depending on the size of your monitor) and simply defines the site as A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life in deliciously digestible chunks. Straightforward enough for you? In practice, it's like a competitor to Pownce and Twitter (yes, jaiku too, but since they are still in closed beta, and no one takes them seriously, I can't really say).

So the big question is: Which one is for you? That's the tough question to answer. Luckily, you don't have to pick just one, but chances are you'll use one more than the others.

Read "A Brief Look at Plurk, Pownce and Twitter" »

Along with the Lost Season 4 finale, we saw a commercial that was unlike any that had been shown since the days of The Hanso Foundation. It was a recruiting video for Octagon Global Recruiting, seeking volunteers "on behalf of the Dharma Initiative". Listening carefully to the commercial, you'll find that these are definitely volunteer - unpaid - positions.

I caught it the first time through, but had to listen again before I really realized what was happening. of course, the Dharma logo is an octagon, and the ABC tagline at the bottom is something of a giveaway. Then there is the fact that the national recruitment drive will commence in San Diego from July 24-27, 2008 - dates that conicide with Comic-Con. Obvoiusly, something is up here. But what?

Read "Octagon Global Recruiting" »

Back in January (the 18th, I think, in case Amnesia comes calling), I ordered up a Leatherman Skeletool CX from Amazon. The price at the time was $79.85, with free shipping. I was happy, though for perhaps the first time in the history of times I've ordered from Amazon, I was going to have to wait for a while, since they were low on stock. I figured it would be worth the wait for this sweet little tool.

As it turned out, the wait would be a long one. On February 5th, I tweeted about how the product was delayed, while the price had gone up (the page at Amazon now shows another company not Amazon, as the primary supplier - though Amazon still offers it at $79.85, with free shipping, on the alternative link). On February 8th, I tweeted that now it was shipping earlier than expected, but it was still to arrive by March 18th. Guess what. Still not here.

Read "Amazon Really Blows it with the Leatherman Skeletool CX" »

As I'm recording information for taxes this year, I realize that once again, I've managed to forget to update the account information at PayPal, and the 1099 form has my personal Social Security Number on it, rather than the company's Employer ID Number, which means that I personally will be paying taxes on any interst in the account, rather than the company. To make matters worse, the company taxes are already filed, which means that they have accounted for interest income, so it's like a double whammy. About the only good news is that it's not a huge amount. But still.

I figure I need to take care of the problem. The only issue is that there is no easy way to do it. The interface at PayPal, while not difficult, doesn't seem to have a way to figure out how to change this information. In fact, there's no obvious place to change your Social Security Number/Employer ID Number anywhere that I can find. I do manage to find a couple of places where you can contact them directly - both a local area code and an 800 number - so I try both. No such luck. After spending at least half an hour on the phone with various reps, being transferred more than once and being disconnected twice, I was still stuck with the same problem: My 1099 for next year was going to have my personal information on it, not the company's.

Read "Change Your Social Security Number at PayPal" »

The fourth annual Don't Back Down Tournament Pick'em has arrived. You can make your picks now. Thanks again to Yahoo! Sports for providing the brackets, which make it awfully easy for me to keep track of things.

This year, the contest is even better, because you can win $5 million for a perfect bracket (not from me, unfortunately), so get those brackets filled out to see if you can win the big prize. There are a few more readers around than last year, so hopefully we'll have a few more competitors - but no matter how many people are in the contest, I'm sure that it will be a good time for all! In order to sign up, you'll need a Yahoo! ID, along with the group ID (69931) and the group password (which, as usual, is dbd). So visit the Tournament Pick'em page and sign up!

I just received an email telling me that I only had a limited amount of time to accept (or decline) a potential review for a site called Web Hosting Bluebook. This is interesting for two reasons - one, because I don't remember being asked to review the site and two, because it's actually the first time I've been asked to review a site. In the interest of disclosure, this is a paid review, but I will give you the full details on what I find out. Ready? Here goes.

Web Hosting Bluebook bills itself as the #1 Web Hosting Source (their claim) - which is interesting, because it makes it sound like they actually provide web hosting (something I don't think they do). The site has a clean look to it, and I suspect they would be better off telling you that they are the #1 Web Hosting Research Guide or something along those lines. Whatever the claim, I think you'd be hard-pressed to put either to a test and have it proven with hard facts, so it's probably better to look at the site to see what you do get.

Read "Web Hosting Bluebook" »

With version 3.31 of Movable Type, the product began shipping with feeds.app lite, which allowed some simple abilities for republishing the content of other feeds on your site, through the use of Movable Type template tags. This plugin was a great step forward, and expanded on earlier plugins that did similar things, but in fact, it is the less-capable sibling of the (much) more powerful feeds.app from Appnel Solutions.

The primary difference between the two is that feeds.app lite allows you to pull some basic information out of the feed, while feeds.app allows you to get anything at all - it's much, much more powerful (and it also has a price tag associated). Unfortunately, feeds.app, while insanely powerful, also has caused some signficant hair-pulling to get things working from time to time. It's a shame, because it's a good plugin. Some of the problem is a conflict between the default feeds.app lite plugin and the full-featured feeds.app plugin. Some is that there are a lot of requirements (that ship with the plugin), and it appears that many systems just don't support everything that you need to get it working. Because of that, I have recently been looking for an easier solution, and I think I've found one in Feed Digest.

Read "Using Feed Digest to Republish Feed Content on Your Site" »

Now that I've mentioned what would make TypePad really rock because those features are things that I run into every day, and also came up with a few features that would make TypePad just a bit better with some features that I run into, but perhaps not quite as often, you might be thinking that I don't like TypePad.

That's actually not the case. In fact, the more I work with it, the more I like it. Sure, you can't do PHP on TypePad, and using PHP makes managing sites easier. But you can use SSI, which is awfully close. In fact, since you use the blog name in SSI calls, all you have to do is substitute one blog's name for another in the SSI and you suddenly have a module that you can easily include on multiple blogs. This isn't quite the same as having a module that you can include from multiple places, because you can't actually parse the content for template tags, but it's close. It isn't Movable Type, but there's a lot to like in there.

Read "TypePad Does Have Some Great Features" »