Experiments & Expressions

Mac users who are enticed by the syncing solution provided through .mac, Apple’s commercial webspace, email, and file storage solution, now have a free alternative. Say, “Welcome” to notMac. notMac, a product of the notMac Challenge, was recently introduced as a free, opensource alternative.

If you’re not willing to pay $100 to fix corruptions issues, try notMac out and let us know how it works for you. Apparently there are plans to create a cross-server solution that will also work with non-Mac web servers.

Check it out here: notMac.

During my recent switch, I decided not to import comments. The main reason? It was easier not to. I don’t regret it, but now my posts look less lively. So I need more! For business blogs, even old comments are important. They increase authority and can provide a bit of an ego boast if you’re looking for one.

So how can you encourage people to comment more? Here are a few tips:

• 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog (ProBlogger)
• 10 Tips for Attracting More Comments (Performancing)
• Increasing comments (Blogozine)
• Understand why people don’t leave comments by (Successful Blog)
• Get on the D-List (Courtney Tuttle)

How are people encouraged to comment on your blog?

Favicons are those little icons in the Address bar and next to your Favorites. When I migrated to Blogger, I lost my custom favicon and inherited the default, orange “B.” To restore it to my original “j.u” favicon, I performed some first-grade slight-of-hand trickery (It’s really easy).

1. Choose a favicon host.Although possible, Blogger doesn’t make it easy to upload non-post files. To get your favicon online, you need to sign up with an image host. I chose ImageShack since I had a few things on there already. Others you could use include Photobucket or even GooglePages.
2. Create my favicon.If you’re creating your own, simply create a 16 x 16 pixel image. You can save it as a GIF or PNG. They should both work.I already had a favicon, although it was in .ico format. When I was on my own server, that was fine, and correct. ImageShack, however, doesn’t allow the uploading of .ico files. I had to convert my file to a standard image format. I chose PNG.
3. Upload my faviconI uploaded my favicon. Imageshack gave me a few choices of code to use to display my favicon. I copied the “direct” URL and pasted it in the next step.
4. Add favicon to templateOnce my favicon was online (it took less than 4 minutes), I inserted the appropriate HTML into my Blogger template.<link href="URL_TO_YOUR_FAVICON" rel="shortcut icon">

The whole process took less that 10 minutes, and almost less than 5. If you’re ready to dump that orange B for a spiffy new icon that better represents your blog, the four steps are all you need. If you need help with any of the steps, feel free to leave a comment.Update: If you’re getting some kind of parse error in Blogger, it’s probably looking for a closing tag. Try this code instead (note the added slash toward the end). <link href=”URL_TO_YOUR_FAVICON” rel=”shortcut icon” /> 

With the migration to Blogger from Wordpress, the most effort is going into dealing with post path differences. These differences will cause 404 (missing file) errors if not dealt with correctly. I wanted to be sure that people looking for my older WordPress posts would be appropriately redirected to the correct Blogger address.

My WordPress paths had this structure:
http://jason.ungos.com/2007/09/27/blog-downgrade/

On Blogger, the same post looks like this:
http://jason.ungos.com/2007/09/blog-downgrade.html

Here’s how I’m doing it.

1. Setup a missing files host.
2. Redirect visitor to new Blogger path.

Blogger Missing Files Host
The missing files host option was probably created to deal mostly with broken images or downloadable documents. I’ve expanded its use a bit by creating a custom 404 page that has some redirecting functionality.

The custom 404 page is a PHP script that:

• Checks the URI
• Determines what kind of document is being requested (post, tag search, etc.)
• Semi-intelligently determines the new URI, and
• Redirects the visitor.

Here’s what I have so far:

It’s neither elegant nor robust, but it achieves my main goal of dealing with old post links. I plan to develop this a little more to accommodate changed page names, broken images, and feeds.

Anything else I should add?

With each blog incarnation (i.e., reboot, redesign, or relaunch) things are usually updated, upgraded, or improved. But how about a downgrade?

After months of dealing with spammers and denial of service attacks, I’ve decided to pass the bandwidth buck. I’ll be migrating my personally-hosted, personally-managed Wordpress blog over to the free, yet acceptable, Blogger.

Here’s what I’ll have to do…

1. Move posts from Wordpress to Blogger (Complete: 08/27/2007)
2. Update DNS (Est. Completion: 10/3/2007)
3. Make things look pretty and go template tweak happy. (Est. Completion: ???)

So why do I call it a downgrade?
Blogger is a great product. It’s simple, easy to use, and free. I call it a downgrade because I will lose a lot of the tweakability that a self-hosted Wordpress installation can give. With Wordpress, I can install any of the hundreds of plugins available and dive into code to my heart’s content.

Then why downgrade the blog?
If there are so many good things about Wordpress, why go to Blogger? Simplicity. This is my “fun” blog. I don’t want to spend hours deleting spammy comments, or paying lots of money because of exorbitant bandwidth usage. Neither do I have the hours of free time that I had in the past. I’m looking for easy and free.

Blogger has improved remarkably over the years and has the basic features that I’m looking for. I also contribute to a few other Blogger-based blogs. Blogger’s dashboard gives me quick access to each of those blogs.

Wordpress or Blogger?
I love Wordpress. It’s a top notch blogging system that can also do well as a basic CMS (Content Management System). Wordpress is the system that I recommend to most of my clients.

Blogger has some powerful options, but still not as powerful as Wordpress. For personal blogs (like this one), Blogger does does the job. Though, in the end, it’s all about preference.

What do you prefer?

If you’re not using FeedBurner, now is a good time to try it out. FeedBurner is a site that allows you to share your content with others through a central service for distribution. (Okay I tried to make it sound simple, but RSS is sure a lot simpler.)

So why now? FeedBurner has just given more for free. In addition to their standard services of syndication, you can now get their pro level TotalStats and MyBrand. Yes, for free.

In addition to standard subscriber counts, TotalStats will let you know things like:

• The number of times an item was viewed,
• The number of times and item was clicked, and
• The number of subscriber who actually did something with your content (i.e. read it).

MyBrand is a cool little feature that lets you use your own domain name for feeds. This means you can have feeds.yourdomain.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com. If you’re working towards professionalism and stronger branding, you must enable this.

These features aren’t enabled by default. So if you’re already syndicating your blog through FeedBurner, you need to login and check a couple of boxes. The TotalStats

I know I’m not the only one. Comment spam is frustrating people all across the blogoshpere. I moderate comments and have even gone through the hoops of using great plugins such as Akismet, Bad Behavior, Comments Post Rewriter, and Spam Karma 2.

Unfortunately, the issue has nothing to do with the amount of comment spam that gets posted on the site. The real issue is my data transfer threshold. The combination of heavy server beatings that slow site access and obscene data amounts that get pumped through each day is too cost prohibitive. Just to give you an idea, I burn through 6GB of transfered data when spammers attack. Multiply that by once every 2-3 days. Oh how I hate these guys.

I’m pleased that I do not have spam on my site, but what’s the point when comment spammers prevent a site from working. Obviously it doesn’t take much brains to be a spammer.

What to do?

Well, I’m pretty sure that Emily Post has never written a blogging etiquette book, but there are definitely a number of written and unwritten rules. One unwritten rule that I would like to see more in practice is the etiquette of updating post content.

I haven’t seen it written, yet. But I highly doubt that I’m the first to talk about updating content with regards to blogging etiquette. So if you find other support for this, I’d be grateful.

So here’s the rule (at least the one that I bend now and then)…

When you publish a post, it’s written in stone.

If you have something minor like typos, I think it’s completely fair and appropriate to make corrections. However, if you need to make other changes or corrections, here’s how you can deal with it.

1. Write a new post.
2. Clearly mark your change/addition.
3. Both 1 and 2.

Write a new post

Sometimes, but not always, it makes sense to provide a follow-up post. When your readers are presented posts in the standard reverse-chronological order (like in most blogs), your corrected post will appear at the top of your blog giving readers the opportunity to read your corrections. If you simply changed your post, your readers may not know that a change was made. So write a new post.

Clearly mark your change/addition

If you change something within a post, it helps to identify the change that you made. People may return to a post. They may have been notified of new comments or maybe your update. When they return, how do they know what was modified? It helps tremendously when people use strikeouts to show deleted lines or type “UPDATE: ” to precede blocks of text that were added.

Be sure to follow the same principles for editting comments too. Once an edit is made, the comments may not make sense. Marking your changes can keep things clear.

Both 1 and 2

Using both of the methods can help, too. It can allow good crosslinking of your posts while allowing readers to better understand your train of thought.

Just Suggestions

Now, these “rules” are really just suggestions. Their implementation depends a lot on the situational circumstances of modifying a post. However, they are good guidelines that can help to improve our blogs.

By the way, if you know of any good blogging etiquette resources please comment with the link(s) below. This can benefit us all.

[Previously posted on ActiveRain]

Thumbing through the numerous hosted virtual tour options can seem mind-boggling and endless. However one of the best, and free, options I’ve found for search engine visibility has been Google Video.

You’re probably saying, “Wait a minute. They only do videos. I don’t even have a video camera!” Take a look at the current Home For Sale tours on Google. There are many that are simple photo slideshows.

Making Photo Tours

Windows folk can use the free Photo Story software. Photo Story will allow you to easily create a video from your property photos. Here are a few things you can do or add:

• Burn DVDs
• One-click processing (i.e. crop, rotate, auto color, etc.)
• Background music
• Narrate shots
• Titles and captions
• Transitions

Once created, just upload your video tour to Google Video.

What about YouTube for tours?

YouTube and other types of services are very similar. In fact, YouTube is great with search engines. I highly recommend posting your videos to multiple video hosts.

Though If I were to pick one host, it would be Google. Why? YouTube tends to get itself blocked by various corporate and ISP filters.

Virtual Tour Alternatives

Yep, there are a lot. I’m working on a semi-comprehensive list of photo and property tour alternatives. I’ll post it when I have it ready. Any suggestions?

Is the question really about money? I say no. When 60 minutes aired a segment on RedFin.com, an online discount brokerage, the endless debate of full-service vs “no-service” was refueled.

More than marketing

Truthfully, I think the founders of RedFin.com and other innovative business plans should be commended… for their innovation. It brings about good ol’ competition. Beyond that, I have no desire to enter the debate of whether they’re good or not. However, as a non-real estate agent, I’d like to point out the real issue at hand is not money, it’s representation.

The big issue that people tend to point out is broker/agent fees, a.k.a. commission. But as with any business, all have the unregulated right to set their own fees. Consumers should be made aware of their options and choose intelligently. Discussions of marketing and other value-added services happen at this level.

To serve and protect

The bigger issue for discussion is representation. Most consumers don’t understand the power of representation that an experienced agent can provide. Representation takes a person beyond property marketing and into the deeper realm of protection.

I think good agents recognize the power of protection that they can provide for their clients. Unfortunately, I rarely see it leveraged. If someone considers themselves a full-service agent, they must discuss protection with their clients.

Good agents

I took the classes. I took the tests. And I’ve been in the real estate industry long enough to know that good agents stand as a shield of defense for their clients. Good agents negotiate powerfully. Good agents protect confidential information. Good agents do things in the best interest of their clients.

Whether a consumer pays 8%, 6%, $2995, or $500, it’s their prerogative. It’s the responsibility of the consumer to know their options. It is ALSO the duty of agents to let them know what they’re getting.

What say you?