Showing posts with label BlogTools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BlogTools. Show all posts

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Feedly - Recommended news and RSS feed aggregator for Firefox.

I've been testing Feedly for about two weeks now and I must say...I really like it! Feedly is a news and RSS feed aggregator similar to Netvibes and iGoogle - a social and magazine-like start page.
Feedly is integrated with Google Reader - so in case you were using Google Reader in the past, any subscription you add to feedly will be added to Google Reader and vice versa.



To quote some Feedly features:

* The welcome wizard can learn from your existing personalizations - bookmarks, My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Netvibes, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Friendfeed - and apply them to your feedly.
* The what's new? page provides a real-time summary of the most relevant content available on the web based on your interests, your reading patterns and recommendations from your friends.

* The annotation tool makes it easy to clip the most interesting parts of a an article and share them with your friends. It also allows you to easily search for related information.

* The feedly+twitter integration allows you to easily spread the word about articles you find interesting. In context.

* The wall gives you a quick overview all the all the articles recommended and annotated by your friends. It combines your activity on both twitter and feedly.

* The explore module adds a pinch of serendipity by continuously suggesting new sources you might be interested in.

* The search bar allows you to perform a personalized search across your favorite sites.

* The dashboard makes it easy to get an at-a-glance view and manage all your favorite sources.

* The feedly API allows content owners to extend their reach by taking control over various aspects of the feedly UI. It will also allow third party developers to create new UI experiences (see cover, screensaver and feedly+flick'r for example) or weave in new annotation extensions (see Yahoo finance for example).


http://www.feedly.com/features.html

I also like the "screensaver" option where it displays a summary of pictures of RSS feeds you're reading



Anyway, you should try it!

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Woopra - new real-time Web tracking and analysis application



Most people who run a website or have a blog have a Web tracking and analysis application present. Always useful to see how much visitors your Website/Blog has, where your visitors come from, what posts are popular etc etc...

I used to have SiteMeter "installed" - but I replaced it with W3Counter since it has more options, statistics etc. However, there's still something I'm missing - until I found Woopra. It really has all the options/statistics I want! I'm sure you're going to like the several features it offers. You can run it from the desktop and it even includes Real Time notifications.

Anyway... for me, It looks pretty neat. :)

I signed up today and I'm currently waiting for my approval. This may take a while according to their blog.
So I can't tell yet what to expect - but I'll update this blogpost with my thoughts/view once woopra is up and running.
And if I like it - then I'll replace my current w3counter with it.

I love to test new "goodies" - so what's next? :)

Update
My blog was approved today (june 4), so Woopra is currently up and running.
I'm really impressed with all the options it contains. I even scared some visitors today with the chat feature :P (Don't worry, I won't use this feature often :D)
There are still some bugs present - but then again, this is also still a beta.
Can't wait for the final release. This is a keeper, that's for sure.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

New Comments System installed

I previously had Haloscan installed as my Comments System, however, I've noticed that there were a lot of problems with Haloscan lately. Posts were lost, debug errors in the comments system, and other errors which caused my blog to crawl.

So, I decided to remove Haloscan.. and replaced it with Intense Debate instead.
It's a free service that provides more functionality and allows greater control of the comments.
It also automatically adjusts itself to the layout of your blog and there are a lot of extra settings and widgets you can use with it.
Thanks to this great tutorial, I could "install" it without any problems.

Too bad that removing Haloscan deleted all my previous comments - but oh well, there weren't that many comments posted anyway.