*blend

Here are some of the sites I am currently reviewing:

(Beta) Spotplex provides internet users with real-time ranking of blog articles based on actual impression count.
In other words, you can find what is the hot news today, this week, or this month in real time at Spotplex. This is not a list of articles people recommended or voted for, but a list of articles read most in a given timeframe.
Bloggers can track and analyze their blog traffic with a simple Spotplex code or widget. Not just how many people visit the blog, they can even find which articles people read most and how many people read them. Whenever an article of the blog is read, it will show up at Spotplex in real-time and get noticed by Spotplex users.

RevolutionHealth.com, a free, comprehensive health and medical information site, specifically designed with the Family’s Chief Medical Officer — women and other caregivers — in mind.RevolutionHealth.com offers best-of-breed health information as well as more than 125 online tools aimed at helping individuals take control of their well-being. Revolution Health has partnered with more than 50 companies and teamed with a number of leading health nonprofits and experts to make its innovative approach to health a reality.

Slacker is a new kind of music company. We deliver personal radio that is customized for every listener. Slacker is effortless to use and the music is accessible at home, in the car, or on the go. Slacker Personal Radio has millions of songs with the breadth and depth increasing continuously. The extensive Slacker music library is organized into numerous professionally programmed genre and sub-genre stations and over 10,000 stations that are built around specific artists. Personalization options include adjusting your stations to play more popular vs. more eclectic music, newer vs. older music, or even to play more tracks you tagged as your favorites. Other features include:

• Log in from any PC or Mac to hear personalized stations in CD quality
• Playback through web player, jukebox software and portable devices
• Create stations by combining favorite artists
• Select favorite tracks/artists to play more often and ban other tracks/artists
• Click through album cover art, band profiles, reviews and artist photos
• Easily share stations with friends

I Heart Movies - beta.
A place to organize your DVD collection and view it in several ways, share information and discuss films with movie lovers.

Flektor. Beta. For all the hype about user-generated content, it seems like most of what people post is a vast wasteland of copycat Mentos®-meets-Diet Coke videos, bad parodies, and shaky videos of themselves crashing their cars. Flektor was designed to change that, and bring quality to the user generated content world, even for people who don’t have great artistic skills. Flektor allows you to quickly and easily create, remix, and share your photos, videos, with others via email, on mySpace, or in your blog. “Flektor is completely FREE until the end of our beta period. You may upload and publish as much as you want. When the beta period ends, we may announce a pricing plan for heavy users. ”

Fixya. Beta. FixYa was founded by two entrepreneurs who decided to take advantage of the fact that consumer products manufacturers are not providing adequate support through their web sites. Although these products become more and more technologically advanced, their manufacturers are not allocating the necessary resources that are required in order to provide good technical support. Like any other consumer out there, FixYa’s founders had a hard time finding relevant and updated support information for their printer or digital camera, and therefore decided to create this site. The idea behind FixYa is to aggregate all support information that is scattered throughout the internet in a single user friendly location. In addition, FixYa is a huge knowledgebase that is constantly updated by a live community of users who share their experiences of technical problems and solutions. Through the site’s unique rating system, FixYa is allowing users to find the best solution for every problem and even offer a new solution. Our aim is that over time, FixYa will offer the best solutions for the most common problems of each and every product the site is covering. The best thing about our knowledgebase is that it’s based on true user experience rather than on projected FAQs by the manufacturer.

A comment on a previous article led me to an awesome article about 2 boys getting their first computer for Christmas in the early 80s. I wanted to comment on his site, but had to sign up, so I thought I’d say something here. The 80s were THE perfect decade to grow up geek. Home technology was new, and full of promise. Nothing was taken for granted, and kids all over the world treated as fun and games what many others labor away at (and pay for!) in college.

Their story inspired me to write about one of my first computers I got for Christmas. One that is nearly forgotten today: a Tomy Tutor. While it sounds like a toy, it had AMAZING graphic and animation capabilities, far ahead of it’s time. I locked myself in my room and honed my BASIC programming skills to a razor edge on this baby. The soft keys and purple space bar sure didn’t hurt it’s appeal, either.

Using an IMified widget, it’s possible to post to your Wordpress blogs via your instant messenging client. I typically use Meebo, and don’t IM ‘on the road’, so I’m not sure this is an awesome find, but I do occasionally use Mundu away from home on my Palm, and since my Palm doesn’t play nicely with most of my web applications, I think it might be handy, just in case, to keep this cool little widget in my IMified menu. You never know when inspiration will strike…

Moments after my previous post about viralinks, I received a comment from Culture Shiok! with information about another viral linking system. Here is the tag-based link matrix and instructions:

Instructions:

1.) Copy and paste the matrix of ViralTags below courtesy of Founders Cafe (to support Jimmy’s quest of launching his own Internet Startup with a shoestring budget, please consider subscribing to his Full RSS Feed to see his triumphs and struggles in real time).

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the Viral Tags in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their Viral Tags, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tags anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your Viral Tag below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: Daily Life Technology

Revellian | Investing Women Online| A Great Pleasure | Tech at Hand | Overseas Filipino Worker | Internet Marketing Austria | Anything and Everything | Mariuca’s Perfume Gallery | Technology Music Life | Mariuca | Manila Mom | Good Jokes | JohannTheDog | Startup Entrepreneur Money | RescueMe | Webtools | Make Money Blogging | The Third Eye| Agloco Internet Marketing | TECH LOCK-RAHUL | Tech Gadgets Stocks | EMOI | Computer Seventy-Five | Learn about e-Learning | Sexy Celebrity | Jack Book | Butterfly Feelings | Yoeru | DIGITAL I.T BLOG | LifeIsRisky.Com | Disjointed Intelligence | ViralTags | Earn Money Online | ViralTags | Earn Income Online | Daily Mind Xpression | Entrepreneurship Internet Web | Huma B | Create a Blog | ViralTags | start a blog | ViralTags | ViralTags | Tech Startups Web2.0 | ViralTags | ViralTags | Plugins TV Blogging | Mrs Sparrow | Hot Buzz | Weight Loss | Really Funny Jokes | ViralTags | ViralTags | Internet Marketing German | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Business Blog Web | ViralTags | Anitokid Chronikos | ViralTags | esofthub’s web finds| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | The Broken Bow | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Daily Life Technology | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Sarah Pauline Cada |

Important: Once I get a ping back from you (I promise to do the best I can), I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as Host Tag here, replacing one of the ViralTags from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

This one has the added benefit of tagging to make click-throughs MUCH more likely to happen, but it sure does take up a lot of space. Perhaps a smaller matrix would look better, even though it would result in fewer link-backs.

It’s been quite some time since I have posted to either of my blogs, and while I have plenty of excuses, I won’t bore you with any of them. Somerset Bob poked me with a sharp stick and I thank him tremendously for it. I need to get back on track!

So, I only used Live Writer once. Haven’t looked into getting Andrew Grant’s Keyword tags working on my site in order for tagging from within Live Writer to work right, and now I see that all of my tagging is currently broken anyway. While the lack related posts links and Technorati keyword links really won’t affect my content, they sure are nice to have. So that’s what I’m going to work on right now. Perhaps when I have more time, and ambition, I’ll look into getting Live Writer working correctly with my blogs, but right now, there are more important things to do… like actually blogging.

While surfing, I came across this interesting way to build cross-links to your site. I think this is a much better plan than others I have seen (and refuse to participate in!). This is less obtrusive, doesn’t require any special accounts or javascript, and I have more control over who links back to me (sort of). I mean, ANYONE can copy the grid from here and they will be linking to me, BUT more than likely, the only people reading this are the folks who already visit my blog, and therefore, we have something in common.

So, here’s how it works:

Below is a matrix of 120 stars, I have already added a link to my blog onto one of the stars, all you need to do is copy and paste the grid into your blog and add your own link to one of the other spare stars, and tell others to do the same!

 

Viralink

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When I receive a ping back once you have added the Viralink to your site I will add your link to this grid, and each person who copies the grid from here will also link to your site!

Rules
No Porn Sites
Only 1 link per person (i.e don’t hog the viralink!)
Please don’t tamper with other peoples url’s
Enjoy!

If you’re going to use the virlink matrix, just copy the grid and the instructions into your own.

After posting the previous entry via Windows Live Writer:

Negative:

• Key words did not integrate into my current keywords
• Because no key words, related posts aren’t generated
• Technorati links aren’t generated, again because of the keywords don’t jive with what I use

Positive:

• Image uploaded with the post
• Link to full-size image maintained

I downloaded and installed Andrew Grant’s Keyword tags, which is supposed to resolve the tagging issue, but didn’t. It generates a whole different level of tags.

Let me know how Writer integrates with your blog, especially if you use a different platform. And if you have any tips, tricks, plugins, hacks to turn Live Writer into a working blog-from-windows-desktop app from a simple drafting editor, please pass them on!

Oh, and I’ve found that editing existing entries via Live Writer works great, without breaking any existing tagging, related posts, or linking.

I just installed the beta of Windows Live Writer on my XP desktop. After reviewing it, I thought I’d give it a try. Running a program on my PC in order to post to my blogs seems a little contradictory to me, but on the other hand, I usually end up writing drafts in notepad, then pasting them anyway. This way, I can write the post and actually preview it, and Writer has some really cool plugins that allow me to insert screenshots, Flickr images, and more. I have more options available on my laptop, which is running Vista, but the basics work quite well on their own. This is the first post using Live Writer, and it’s more of a test than a review. But based on my experience so far, I like it. I wish I could set up my Virb and Tumblr blogs on it, as well as my Wordpress installations. It wasn’t immediately apparent if I could, and I haven’t devoted any time to figuring it out.

Writer allows you to set up multiple blogs. The post editing can be done in a semi-preview mode, which shows the entry, as you write it, in the size and layout of your actual blog. It imports the HTML and CSS setting from the blog, and you can preview each post before publishing it. Formatting and editing is easy, and previewing changes is MUCH nicer than doing so in Wordpress. On the other hand, at this point, I don’t know what is going to happen when I click “Publish”.

I would probably use a tool like this much more on my laptop, when I am away from an internet connection and want to work on a blog post, but I see myself drafting my entries here instead of in notepad from now on.

I have slept for 2-3 hours per night, each night, all week. Because of some persistent server problems, which I couldn’t be reassured that they would not keep happening as they had for the past few weeks, I moved all of my sites and clients to new servers.

All 34 of them.

All of them this week.

I’m tired, brain-mushy, and not just a little irritated that I couldn’t just leave them where they were. I had been with that hosting company for many years, and all they had to do was reassure me that the problem WAS fixed. But since they couldn’t, now I have to keep my fingers crossed that I made a good choice in the replacement company. Only time will tell that.

But, it is now early Friday afternoon, and the last of the sites is now live on the new server. Email seems to be working, I didn’t screw up any of my databases in the process (that was my biggest worry!), and my phone has not rung since 8 am this morning.

For those of you haven’t read any of my previous posts regarding telephones - I HATE PHONES.

So the silence is such a blessing after this week from hell, that I think I’ll go take a nap, then fire up the bike this evening. The Thumpin’ Puppies are playing the Shining Star Motorcycle Rally, and that’s where I plan to be for most of the night.

Thanks for bearing with me while the site was up-and-down for the past 2 weeks. I hope it’ll be steady here on out….

I feel like a proud parent all over again.

Because of discussions at certain social web sites and this blog, along with the westXdesign blog, I have seen the following over the past few weeks:

A writer friend set up his own wordpress installation to host his blog and has been tricking it out almost continually since. It’s looking great!
Somerset Bob’s Place

A great Christian artist put up his site and album tracks on Virb.
Scott Wilder

ANOTHER great artist set HIS Virb up.
Sonic Real Estate

And a few other folks got on the LibraryThing, Meebo, Goodreads, BlinkList, Stumbleupon, and ClipMarks bandwagons.

I’ve had all kinds of new friend adds on all of these services, and in the process have met some really awesome people, discovered great new music, and even added a new podcast to my line up: Chaotic Christians.

I’m feeling the web 2.0 social love, and it’s great to have been able to play some small part in the evolution of each!