Dayn W Creative

I’ve compiled these helpful links for a Grady Britton PR introduction to RSS.  The following are some of the more popular resources for finding, subscribing, and processing blogs and RSS feeds.  Please feel free to add to this list by commenting.  Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb for many of these links from his presentation at the WebVisions conference.

Free RSS readers (your new custom personal newspaper!)
——-
NetNewsWire - Desktop based, feature rich, popular RSS reader.
reader.google.com - Web based RSS reader.  Simple and nothing fancy.  Requires a Google account.  Accessible from any computer.

Blog Search Engines
——–
blogsearch.google.com - Google’s blog search engine.  Search results can be subscribed to via RSS.
ask.com - Very good, non-spammy blog search.  Search results can be subscribed to via RSS.
technorati.com - Alternative blog search engine.  Search results can be subscribed to via RSS.
live.com - Microsoft’s blog search.

Social Bookmark Sites
———
del.icio.us, ma.gnolia.com, digg.com - Allows you to search tags (keyword phrases) that people have assigned to stories to find the most popular stories on that topic.  Also create an account so that you can tag stories yourself. Search results can be subscribed to via RSS.

Cool RSS Tools
———
zaptxt.com - Sends you an email, IM or SMS text message the moment a story is released about your keyword phrase.
summize.com - Search Twitter tweets (posts)!
snackr.net - RSS scroller for your desktop.  Like a stock ticker of your favorite feeds.
dapper.net - Scrape any dynamic site content and convert it into an RSS feed.  So nice!
aideRSS.com, Yahoo! Pipes, simplepie.org - Filter, rank, combine, and customize RSS feeds via web GUI or PHP.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Down at the bottom of this page, you’ll see a list of the most popular posts.  It took some doing to get this plugin working on this site.  I upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 before installing the Popularity Contest plugin.

Basically, follow the instructions in this article: http://tinyurl.com/2wne9f

You’ll have to edit popularity-contest.php in your plugins directory, as well as add 2 tables to your WP database either by running the included query, or manually with phpMyAdmin.

Popularity: 68% [?]

No matter what your situation is, get it out of your head that you must have gold plated cables or wires.  In fact, you can pretty much roll your eyes at any cable that claims better quality over any other.

There will likely will never be a human with the ability to see or hear a difference in video or sound quality based on the quality of the cable.  Sure, we can talk about shielding, strain reliefs, even length, but when it comes down to it, a Shadio Rack cable sounds and looks every bit as good as the gold plated Munster cable at 10 times the price.  The electrons jiggle the same in either.

(more…)

Popularity: 71% [?]

Some sites will tell you that you need to upgrade your Flash player to see their content. Don’t always believe it. Check your Flash Player version, and compare it to the latest Flash Player version here: http://tinyurl.com/yrlrvb. Sometimes, the developer makes an assumption about which browser or operating system you might be using. If you don’t match that assumption, they will toss you the “upgrade your Flash Player version” error. Don’t believe the hype!

Popularity: 79% [?]

The advertising/creative agency I work with uses a web hosted version Creative Manager Pro, which will soon become Workamajig. Aside from being quite unattractive and difficult to use, one of the biggest disappointments I had when introduced to the CMP system was it’s calendar. Hopefully, the Workamajig transition will change all of this.

(more…)

Popularity: 96% [?]