Archive for September, 2006

Cornbread

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 30, 2006
Cornbread

I should point out, I don’t really have an IM policy per se, it’s just that I will use anything against anybody to make me look good.

And, of course, I’ll Photoshop anything to get my desired result.

Is it any wonder I’m in constant trouble with the law?

ADDED: Speaking of frivolous litigation over instant messaging, I’ve added some new subpages to the Feedback at [MacStansbury] that’ll take some of the legal heat off me. Especially this page.

Or, that’s what the crack legal team says will happen.*

*The crack legal team does not guarantee that any of the stuff he just posted will work. Past performance of not being sued-the-pants-off-of does not guarantee future performance. To say it clearly, you’re on your own, buddy.

Categorized:
Overthinking

Is it time for another Mac OS X update?

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 29, 2006
Updates! Who needs updates? Get yer updates here!

Last night, it seemed like there were 8 zillion updates in Software Update. Actually, I figured the iTunes 7.0.1 update would be the biggest thing that happened this week. But, then I would be wrong.

I just happened to be going through the MASSIVE MacStansbury.com archive, and I ran across this entry for Mac OS X 10.4.7 (back in the good old “Blog This” days). I looked at it, nostalgic, and wondered if we were going to be getting another update anytime soon. Oh…I was so prescient.

Today, Mac OS X, version 10.4.8 comes out. Like a viking. Whatever that means.

So, it’s off to do my normal routine when updating:

1. Correct all my permissions
2. Backup any files or folders that I back up every 4 months or so
3. Correct my permissions again, since they might’ve been corrupted in the backup process
4. Restart holding Command+Option+P+R (Copper!) and letting it zap the PRAM three times
5. Boot into my root account, repair permissions again
6. Reboot into single user mode, fsck -f -y
7. Boot into my normal admin account, repair permissions
8. Run software update, reboot
9. Zap PRAM again, three times for safety
10. Boot into account, repair permissions

Can you see why I hate updating my OS?

Categorized:
Free & Updated

5 ways to more deliciousness, day 5: Using

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 29, 2006

This is one in a series of posts for mastery of del.icio.us and assumes you have a working knowledge of the system. For a complete listing of all you can do with del.icio.us, read through the help documentation.

5. Use it.

When I was working these, I knew I’d have to cover one of the inevitable conclusions for anything: most people stop using it. Everything in life has its ebbs and flows, and webapps are no different. This is purely speculative, but I’ve seen a great many blogs, and they have a grand total of one post; people start something and never continue.

It’s not from lack of interest, or motivation, it’s because - oh, wait, it is because of lack of interest or motivation. The reason there are few big sites is a combination of a lot of factors, including talent, audience, niche, and advertising. But to produce great content takes effort, and most people simply don’t put in the effort.

When I rebuilt MacStansbury.com, and put in the With a linkness section, I had no idea anybody would ever read it. It was simply a place for me to practice my art of the link. As I started reading other websites on how to create blogs, and how to be a great writer, and how to get the mad blog hits, I stumbled upon del.icio.us, not really thinking about how it would work.

I started using del.icio.us soon after they started offering linkrolls, and so it was easy for me to create a page dedicated to the latest links. As I grew in familiarity with the system, I started posting more and more frequently. But what didn’t change was how my effort on linking things was being noticed by other people.

What I found amazing is, while checking my PageRank (the way Google estimates the importance of a page), I was disappointed to learn MacStansbury.com had only a PageRank of 3. I have toolbar that lets me see, and I though nothing about it, until I hit the Linkness page…which has a PageRank of 5. Because of where people link, and how people view this site, and where the site links out, the Linkness page is the most important page on this site. That’s uncommon, but I believe it, mainly since most people still go to web pages to get information, not RSS feeds, and because that page is a more concise layout of the links.

The important thing is: I’m linking stuff. I’m producing content. I’m doing the things that make people take notice. And the begging, the begging doesn’t hurt.

But…that’s just me. I’m merely a case study for how you can use those del.icio.us links to create content on your site, focus your talents, and increase your reach. I’ve also shown you the importance of networking and licensing. Plus, I hope, I’ll pick up some readers for my effort. I don’t do it for the money or the notoriety, I do it for the PageRank.

Read all the posts in the 5 ways to more deliciousness
1. Add a linklist to your blog!
2. Add the feed to your feedreader!
3. Add me to your network!
4. Add a license to your links!
5. Use it.

Categorized:
Tutorials

5 ways to more deliciousness, day 4: Licensing

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 28, 2006

This is one in a series of posts for mastery of del.icio.us and assumes you have a working knowledge of the system. For a complete listing of all you can do with del.icio.us, read through the help documentation.

This sounds so simple, yet it’s so complicated. For a myriad of reasons, del.icio.us allows you to copyright your own bookmarks. There’s a laundry list of reasons for that, but mostly to avoid possible legal actions from somebody who comes up with some of the mad frivolous lawsuit money. Putting a license on your links doesn’t sound like much, yet there’s a few reasons you should be interested.

First of all, you can use del.icio.us for categories in blogger. If there was ever a reason to copyright something, that would be it. That’s material you’ve used to produce your own content, and anyone taking that and using it as their own would be, in effect, stealing your work.

My links are not, however, any more a part of my content than anything else I link. Therefore, I’ve added this license to my del.icio.us links. This means:

You are free:

  • to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
  • to make derivative works
  • to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

  • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

Now, that’s just the Commons Deed, it’s not the full license. It’s a simplified explanation of the long, boring code nobody every reads. It does not, however, invalidate the copyright.

The reason I suggest people add a license to their links is simple: people steal your feed. What we’ve found with splogs is that they grab your RSS feed, publish it, then use it as content for their pages and add advertising, without producing any content, and profiting off your work. Adding another layer of legality to legitimize the sanctity of content production is probably the only way to seek legal damages in the future.

Another thing is some people license their material with a Creative Commons license, as Share Alike, so you’re bound by this license, and any copyright, if you want to use the material. This was the other reason I changed the license on the With a linkness links.

However, nothing else on this site is so licensed that way. In fact, I use a plugin called Better Feed that allows me to add this to my main content feed:

This feed is intented for private, non-commercial use.
Any other use without the expressed, written consent of MacStansbury.com is unauthorized.
If you’re reading this anywhere other than MacStansbury.com or in a feedreader, it’s been stolen.
Please contact me if you find any abuse of this user agreement.

Imagine seeing that somewhere else!

Long story short, license your links.

Read all the posts in the 5 ways to more deliciousness
1. Add a linklist to your blog!
2. Add the feed to your feedreader!
3. Add me to your network!
4. Add a license to your links!
5. Use it.

Categorized:
Tutorials

5 ways to more deliciousness, day 3: Networking

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 27, 2006

This is one in a series of posts for mastery of del.icio.us and assumes you have a working knowledge of the system. For a complete listing of all you can do with del.icio.us, read through the help documentation.

3. Add me to your network!

No, seriously, add me to your network.

In the last installment, I explained how you’d get the benefits of RSS-y goodness, but it goes beyond that. By adding people to your network, you’ll have major bragging rights. And that’s all we’re doing this for, right? Bragging rights?

Okay, so it goes a little beyond watching an endless stream of connected people from del.icio.us - it’s like watching natural sifting of news. That’s why the network feature of del.icio.us is so important, and mostly overlooked. It is a powerful tool that lets you sort through the common interests incredibly quickly and reliably.

On Monday, I showed you that linklists are a great way to show off what you like. Yesterday, I showed that it’s easy to show other people what you are linking. If you could make it easy to harness that power, you’d want to, right? Just as I link to other sites, and save them on del.icio.us, I read what other people in my network save, because I know they save things that I’m generally interested in.

That’s what I mean by natural sifting; other people filtering out what they read, and only linking the things they find most interesting. In addition, people will look at people in your network, and judge wether or not they want to add them as well; call it “cross-pollination.” As with any popularity contest, having a lot of fans makes people think you’re more interesting than you maybe are (I’m looking at you, adobe).

And the Flash Java-thing doesn’t hurt, either.

Get this here.

ADDENDUM: I meant to point out, in my original draft, how the best way to get people to do what you want them to is to ask. The reason being because some people will do things because you ask them, and nobody will do anything because you don’t. So, asking nicely, and giving them the opportunity to decide for themselves, you provide the ability to do what you want them to as easily as possible.

Read all the posts in the 5 ways to more deliciousness
1. Add a linklist to your blog!
2. Add the feed to your feedreader!
3. Add me to your network!
4. Add a license to your links!
5. Use it.

Categorized:
Tutorials

Am I overthinking?

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 26, 2006

Having fun following the related links takes me around old posts, and to places where I I ran out of things to mess up, and where I ask, “So this is what it looks like?” It also makes me wonder if I’ve been over-thinking a lot of things. I tend to do that, you know.

So, when I was thinking about changing the category name for “Ruminations” to something else, I had to wonder how to make sure it didn’t break everything I had before. I’m all about the SEO, you know. And the not-confusing-myself-with-old-links.

Luckily, I stole some good information from other people, and I used a variation of this .htaccess tip to make sure people are sent to the right place. That way, the old links on other sites still work (both of them), and the site remains navigable.

Plus, I get to over-think things more often.

If anybody wondered, here’s the code:

RedirectMatch ^/ruminations(.*) /overthinking$1

UPDATE: Let’s try that again. Since this’ll be permanent, might as well let everybody else (read Google and Technorati) in on what I’m doing.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RedirectMatch ^/ruminations(.*) /overthinking$1 [R,301]
RedirectMatch ^/category/ruminations(.*) /overthinking$1 [R,301]

The [R,301] just means you’re going to redirect all the traffic, and 301 is an arcane number to specify it’s a permanent redirection. Not telling the search bots lets them think they should keep trying the old page, hoping for something new. It’s like that hunting dog, waiting for it’s master to come home, but really he never will (not until the authorities clean out the wood-chipper, anyways).

Now all the .htaccess does is take any old link and transform it into the new link.

Ya think I could’ve put this in the minor changes on Sunday?

Also, you would’ve thought I would’ve titled this, “So, what’s so great about ‘Ruminations?’“

Categorized:
Overthinking

5 ways to more deliciousness, day 2: RSS

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 26, 2006

This is one in a series of posts for mastery of del.icio.us and assumes you have a working knowledge of the system. For a complete listing of all you can do with del.icio.us, read through the help documentation.

2. Add the feed to your feedreader!

When I was coming up with a list of topics for this week, I made a couple of assumptions about the readers:

1) I’d be dealing with savvy internet users who were familiar with most of the terms I’d use
2) The interested readers would be looking for how to add to their current del.icio.us experience, not to create it

It was with this in mind that I realized I’d spend most of five paragraphs just describing how to work with RSS feeds, and it’s something I didn’t want to do. I’m totally not down with Oprah, if you catch my drift. So when I start going off on RSS this, and feed that, don’t come crying to me that I’m being too technical.

What you’ll see on the del.icio.us homepage, on the bottom, is a line that reads, “RSS feed for this page.” In fact, it says that on the bottom of a lot of pages. If you look in your bookmarks, there’s an RSS button. There’s one on your network, your inbox, the links for you, and the popular and recent pages. That RSS image is darn near everywhere.

I’m thinkin’ you already know what you’re posting, so why would they put all of those in there? Because that’s how savvy internet users like you and me find out what other people are saving. And because it was fun to code it. Coding RSS is fun. Probably.

How you can make this work for you is like I’ve done with my network. If there’s somebody I find interesting, who’s links I find interesting, I add them to my network. That way, I’m putting them on my network page - the same one with the RSS feed. That way I’m only pulling down one list of interesting links, delivered strait into my RSS Feedreader of Legendâ„¢.

The same thing can be done with your inbox. Your inbox is where you can put the tags you’re interested in following, and every time one shows up, it adds it to your page, and the feed. Don’t worry, if you don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up a subscription, there’s a feed on the tag pages as well.

I rarely get sent links (bookmarks tagged with for:macstansbury), but there’s a feed on that page as well. Can you see how this really takes the effort out of tracking things down? With the speed and efficiency you gain from this technique, you’ll be linking like a viking in no time.

Read all the posts in the 5 ways to more deliciousness
1. Add a linklist to your blog!
2. Add the feed to your feedreader!
3. Add me to your network!
4. Add a license to your links!
5. Use it.

Categorized:
Tutorials

5 ways to more deliciousness, day 1: Linklists

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 25, 2006

This is one in a series of posts for mastery of del.icio.us and assumes you have a working knowledge of the system. For a complete listing of all you can do with del.icio.us, read through the help documentation.

1. Add a linklist to your blog!

You need to stick del.icio.us links on your site, because it’s important for a lot of different reasons. This may seem like a trivial matter, but a list of links can really help your creative process. Plus, it can help your site remain relevant in Google. Plus, it makes a dandy page to impress the kids!

Part of the simplicity of del.icio.us is that it tries to make it as simple for anyone to put your links on your site. One line of javascript and you can get the latest links on your site. Set it up on this page, and then transfer it to your page. There’s a lot of customization you can use, and it will take just a little customization to make it look good on your site.

Obviously, you’ve got the knowledge that it’s easy to put links on your site. Easy to customize, easy to implement - but you want to know what’s in it for you? You wouldn’t read this far if you didn’t. It all has to do with rhythm, and your blog has one, if you didn’t know it. Most posters aren’t the great thinkers of the internets, and most posts are less than 256 characters - perfect for del.icio.us.

Ever seen a post, thought it was pretty funny, then did this:

Wow, this is pretty funny.

That’s your whole post? That’s just what you need a list of links for, to cut down on those wasted posts. Now, if your name is Glenn Reynolds, or you have raging comment sections, you can get away with this (I’m looking at you, Atrios), but for the 99% of us who don’t have faithful link followers (or comments), you’re doing a disservice to yourself, and to your SEO, but having throwaway posts.

For almost all of us, we have more links going out that coming in. A linkfarm like your blog can actually harm your prominence in Google’s search results if it discerns that you’re just linking to everything on Earth. Since you’re only using a finite number of links, you aren’t going to appear that you’re a link clearing house.

In fact, right now, I’ve got over 500 links on del.icio.us, but you only see 15 on this site, and only on one page. If you get a sidebar plugin for WordPress or Movable Type, it’ll show up on every page, but still, it’s only 15 or so links.

Now, I made mention that the kids dig the pages of links - it’s because they do! Fark.com is essentially just a list of links, so is Digg, and many other of the most popular entertainment websites are simply lists of links. Fancy, with comments and voting, but essentially just lists of links, and people go to them everyday just to read the links. When I was setting up With a linkness, I figured it would be okay, but I figured the RSS subscriptions would dwarf the people going to the page, and I was partially correct.

What I did not foresee was the del.icio.us network (sneaky link), where people can add you to a single page with all their contacts. I get a lot of traffic when I link to my site from other people’s networks, so I know that’s the entry to where a lot of people who don’t use RSS feeds to find new links.

Read all the posts in the 5 ways to more deliciousness
1. Add a linklist to your blog!
2. Add the feed to your feedreader!
3. Add me to your network!
4. Add a license to your links!
5. Use it.

Categorized:
Tutorials

Desperately seeking talent

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 25, 2006

A while ago, I thought about adding a video channel here at the mighty MacStansbury.com headquarters and linkfarm. It’s because I was thinking about ways to push the readers to this site.

But, there’s plenty of video on the internet. So, no need for more video here. I’m not even sure it would have any effect on the ratings, as people are just here to read the links and hope for Safety Bear’s return.

In fact, last night I started work on the next phase of my internet domination, a system that lets a person do very little, yet get oh-so-much internet traffic. Problem is, though I’m knee-deep in great ideas, I’ve got absolutely no talent for it. Other than linking things like a viking, the programming just isn’t my bag.

I’m working on learning the php and MySQL, but I need to know everything RIGHT NOW! And, you know, I need some patience, too. RIGHT NOW!

And talent. I could use some of that, as well. That’s be sweet.

Categorized:
Overthinking

Admin notes for Sunday

Published
by
John Stansbury
on September 24, 2006

1. Google is not some sort of god. Don’t bow down to it!

2. I have tamed you Feedfetcher! Bow to your new master!

3. Will all the people looking for MySpaceIM go to the right URL, please?

UPDATE: What do you mean, “my pagerank is 0?” When did that happen?

Categorized:
News