Google Friend Connect Enabled

I signed up a while back as I wrote about in this post for the google Friend Connect Preview and today got a mail that this site had been whitelisted to use it! While not replacing any of the login information of this site, its more an added feature letting you sign in to certain features of this site with using your Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account info. Its not incorporated into the core of wordpress which powers this site, it’s rather an added set of gadgets, or widgets if you prefer, such as the “shout out” box there to the right to let anyone post a quick comment or say hello. They have only a couple of gadgets available at the moment including a “rate it” gadget, with the promise of more to come, both from Google and independent developers. I was looking at several of these “shout out” widgets to use before , but most of them have so many proprietary links to ads ands services that i wasn’t interested. This is a very simple one, just comment and post! I have found over the years that no matter how easy it seems to me to post a comment to these blog entries a lot of web surfers really are just passing by and don’t have the time or know-how to do it. Well i think this one will work out well as most people I know have one of these id’s and it only takes a single click to join the site or sign in. As i mentioned its an early release so I don’t know if its available to the general public yet or not, I’m assuming so, but you know what that entails It only took me a couple of minutes to get it set up on this site, the first step was to upload two files to the root of the server which lets the code work around the site. the next step was verify the files were there and the next was to generate the code for the widgets, its already set up on a default size so its only a few seconds to use that and have it running on your web-page. In my case i spent a few more minutes customising the colours to match the site. I chose two of the gadgets, a member gadget, and the comment gadget. I may play around with some others if they can do something that I don’t have already at my fingertips. I did run into a problem trying to post the code into a post- it wouldn’t work. Putting it in the sidebar widgets though was smooth as silk, worked instantly. I think it is a WordPress specific problem as the sidebar is generated from a different directory that the post contents… I think.. well I’ll play around and see what I can do with it. Just as it is now I like it as a simple way for friends to say a quick hello. I’m sure though thats just the tip of the iceberg though. so check it out and say hello! I don’t know what the plans are for these hosted blog programs like blogger and the like as right now you have to be able to upload files to the server. But I see it somehow being incorporated into blogger very soon and actually transforming that into something similar to myspace or facebook! , well the social connection part anyway.

Feedjit

I was reading my friend Mike’s blog, The Top of Texas Gazette, the other day and he had found this very cool widget from Feedjit. Its a live traffic feed widget to add to your website, and though its not giving you as much information as a full fledged tracking tool such as Google Analytics, its really a great tool to see quickly where your traffic is coming from and it works very close to real time, well with each page refresh. Mike’s always having some really clever finds posted to his blog as well as a lot of humour, good music, great photo blog posts and even the serious posts as well, a little something for everyone there in the panhandle of Texas, so have a look sometime. Tell him G sent you

The widget is easily customised to incorporate it into your own site or blog. Its a handy tool to see at a quick glance where your traffic is coming from. As he mentioned in his post, he knows where his friends live so he can see at a glance who has dropped by and the same with me, If I see a hit from Lemesos, Cyprus, and I know fairly well thats my baby or one of her friends, and of course Amarillo, Texas is likely Mike. But generally the cities that show are I am guessing where the local traffic from the surrounding areas is routed to. For instance I know he doesnt live in Amarillo, just its the closest relay to him. (I dont know if relay is the correct term but I’m using it ! ) Its pretty neat and pretty accurate too. The only thing I can see is it only will show where you came from if you actually select a direct link form some site, just typing in the address wont show up, neither will it show where you left off to unless its a link on the site you are on. . Well its still a great tool I think and I was going to add it to our site on blogger, but my baby beat me to it! Oh she’s getting good now with this sort of thing Well I like to think I am teaching her some things , but I think she picks up things a lot better than she lets on It doesnt seem to add much time to loading a page either which is nice, as I already probably have just a few too many things there in the right column as it is increasing the load times and the overall consensus is already saying WordPress is a bit slow to begin with.

I mentioned above about it not showing actually the city you are living in but where the connection is made to the internet. In my case I live very near t the coast of northeastern North Carolina in a town called Grandy. the first time I saw the feed on Mike’s site it has me in Raleigh, NC and yesterday it was showing me in Kenly, NC and today its saying Lillington, NC. Well I have never even heard of either Kenly or Lillington!Well I had to look them up then to see where they were.

This pin on the far left is Lillington, the next one to it is Kenly and the one in the upper right is where I actually live so you can see its really not so accurate but only to a good size area. Not that it makes a difference really as you know generally when its someone you already know pretty well.  (I love this map feature in Live Writer by the way)

The biggest advantage it has is you can see at a glance when you have had some hits from say a search engine or another blog and what people are actually reading on your site.

Technorati Tags: Live Writer,widgets,web tools,friends,tech,garazon,feedjit

Google Friend Connect

I was just reading this post from ZDNet, Google launches Friend Connect with mixed reviews , and it caught my interest. Well first as a site owner its an ideal way to make just about any site into a social site very quickly and easily. Well they always say easy don’t they, copy and paste some code, etc… well it should work on most sites that allow you to edit html and allow iframes. Friend Connect was just launched a couple of days ago. It’s not being released yet to the public, but there is a preview release sign up link to add your name to the list on their site (remember doing this with GMail?! That turned out to be a pretty good venture I think! ) There’s a preview video, a couple of example sites set up, as well as it already being integrated in one or two existing sites. it looks very promising to me. well not just as something to make your site easily a social one, but one that opens up the web to possiblilites we haven’t yet imagined. it will be more than a passive web in that regard. Imagine just having to remember one or two identities and passwords! And being able to share what you do on one site with another, or not. as you see fit… I welcome it personally as long as we still have the ability to stand back and be a passive user too and not become just a statistic on some hit counter or how deep I followed the links on some ad goal set up on a website… ok that all happens anyway, signed in to anything or not~ But I do like the idea of it and have always been a proponent of the OpenID movement. Just makes sense and makes things simple.. I like simple   Of course this being the launch of something new, it will be a work in progress and it seems for now its a bare bones sort of thing with not much control on the aesthetics and tying it into your sites look, but I’m sure as development goes forward we will be able to integrate it seamlessly in a spot on our pages. I’m impressed a lot here lately with the way these large companies now are finally beginning to realise the enduser is fed up of having to feel like he or she has to choose one place over another as their favourite social site, there are always those diehards who will praise myspace over Facebook or vice versa,, well each has its own followers,just they cant interact, well couldn’t i should say. I did see the other day that its now possible to add your Myspace profile and comments to your Facebook profile, and again vice versa. Well that alone was great for me. Oh I am not a big fan of either of them really, but I have family here in the US that uses only Myspace and then Alison and her family and friends are all on Facebook there in the European Union. Well now whichever site I am on I can see at a glance if a new comment has been added to the other.. well i should say it worked a few days ago. As of yesterday Facebook has now banned Google from accessing it so I dont know if thats affected the Facebook/Myspace connection in any way or not. Facebook is saying its protecting its users info as the reason. Well in my opinion thats up to the user isnt it, Facebook is very big on these third party apps to add things to your profile and each one you add is accessing that same info if you opt in to use it. whats the difference? I want to opt in to Friend Connect. I think in this case Facebook has put up a wall that may keep the info in, but it wont keep its users inside for long when they all realise its a whole new web out there. ( shades of the Aol broswer anyone?) Well i will be following this closely and cant wait until its available. I’ll be able to keep up nicely with all my friends, all 7 or 8 of them   LOL

Speedtest.net

Speedtest.net is a site I use often to check my dsl speeds. I dont know if its the most accurate or if any  of them really are but it seems to be a least consistent in the results. Of course speeds will vary depending on your connection and what type, as well as how many people may be on your same line. If nothing else its something to pass a few minutes while surfing the web and pretending like you’re some kind of geek   If you have your own server they have a Speedtest Mini shockwave and javascript package that enables you to plce a mini test on your own site.