Odeo introduced some new features last week including extended profiles and the ability to send any Odeo member an audio message. I’ve been asking Ev for audio comments for a few months and I’m glad it’s finally here! Anyone with a Flash player can send an audio message to an Odeo member. You can add a special button to your podcast site and instantly collect audio comments for each episode. Choose from over 20 pre-made buttons to include on your site and you can enable audio comments in minutes. I added a “Send me an Odeo” button to my contact…
Category Archives: Software
Image submit buttons and Movable Type
Do you use Movable Type and want to submit forms using an image? You’ll need to edit your Movable Type installation to work around a 4 year-old bug. Movable Type is listening for the “post” or “preview” parameter but if you use an image as a submit button these parameters have x and y values corresponding to your mouse click. You need to teach Movable Type how to listen for these different parameters before your comments will work. Fix it Open MT/App/Comments.pm inside of your server’s Movable Type installation. Search for “So we hack it” to find the commentary around…
Story of Google Reader
I had lunch today with the Google Reader team and learned a bit more about the group, their success and challenges, and how new projects at Google are sometimes formed. This is the story of how a side-project intended for someone’s blog became a feed aggregator integrated into one of the largest Web properties in the world. It all started with a love of blogging. Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell were both members of the Blogger team and working on different ways to trick out their personal blogs. Jason kept various blogs including a link blog and wanted a way…
Feed exclusion using categories
Many current and future feed publishers create content targeted at individuals for personal use and are not meant for widespread consumption. You may have a customized feed from Netflix, FeedBurner, or WordPress.com to track your movie queue, subscriber count, or blog stats respectively. Some feeds offer privacy through obfuscated URLs and others are just a one-time token exchange at the time of subscription. Given the current merged back-ends of online search aggregators with search and other methods of open discovery, how can a feed publisher opt-out of a public index? One solution using existing element sets may be to overload…
VoIP, not just for cheap calls
The latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available. This week Om and I talk about VoIP and the new applications with seamless integration of new voice technologies. A recent study by In-Stat found 73% of all VoIP subscribers have migrated to VoIP without making a conscious decision to adopt the new technology. On Sunday my dad asked me about Vonage, and the various boxes he saw advertised with the services in the Sunday newspaper inserts. To him, Vonage was just another long distance provider and happened to have cheap rates to call Ireland. He had no clue…
Google Toolbar button Movable Type template
Want to create your own Google Toolbar custom button? If you use Movable Type just copy and paste this template code into a new template ending with “xml”. Users can view your Atom feed from the toolbar, search your blog from the Google search box, or select text on the web page and click your blog button to find out what you have written about that topic. Your icon will be the Movable Type wrench unless you change it. Once you have generated the file, just add a special link to your blog to let your readers add your button…
Google Toolbar API
Google Toolbar version 4 allows developers to create custom buttons using a custom XML descriptor and extended functionality using RDF, RSS, and Atom feeds. The Google toolbar button API can be used to display the latest entry titles from a feed, execute a keyword or URL search, or continuously communicate data at a glance. I created custom buttons for this blog and Technorati. The Google Toolbar can now serve as a feed reader for any feed with a custom Google Toolbar icon. You can even specify in your button file a different icon you would like to display when new…
MSN Spaces upgrade: more photos, more locations, and search
Microsoft just announced major upgrades to MSN Spaces. Highlights Search MSN Spaces blogs using MSN Search. The search index is still being populated and found no results for “kitten.” MSN Spaces member search Mobile versions of all MSN Spaces blogs, including search. Xbox gamer card integration. MSN Spaces is now available in Latin America, South Africa, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Members can now upload up to 500 photos each month. The new photo uploading feature supports photo descriptions and comments. It’s now easier to make money with Kanoodle contextual ads or Amazon’s associates program. Over 100 themes to choose…
LiveJournal XSS attack
A group of crackers named Bantown claims to have hijacked 46% of LiveJournal’s active accounts, over 900,000 total, via a cross-site scripting attack according to Brian Krebs of The Washington Post. The group was able to steal the cookies of LiveJournal users clicking on links created by the group on their hundreds of automated journal accounts. LiveJournal altered their URL structure last night to allow each user to have their own private cookie domain. The Bantown group continues looking for sites to BBQ, or swap user profiles for something a bit more sexual, often involving farm animals. Some of…
Toni Schneider joins Automattic
Toni Schneider has left his position at Yahoo! to become CEO of Automattic, the corporate side of WordPress. Toni was previously leading Yahoo!’s API team and his move to Automattic comes less than a month about six months after his golden handcuffs came off from the Oddpost acquisition of June 2004. Om Malik broke the story of Tony’s departure this evening on his blog….