Alexandar Tzanov ~ The Titan » Useful Sites

Skribit – Topic Suggestions are ready for the big time.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:04:34 +0000

Skribit, a topic suggestion tool, which I have been using on my blog for over a year now, is ready for the big time. Last month the Skribit team announced the release of changes to the service and new features. They continue to add new features, some of which you can see below:

Follow your favorite bloggers on Skribit and see their recent activity
Sort suggestions by status, hotness and more
Merge similar suggestions
Ignore suggestions by user and IP (Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property) address
Reduce clutter with new comment and suggestion spam protection
Customize your the URLs for your Skribit blog and user profiles
Easily share suggestions through Twitter and Facebook with a click

I do find the Skribit service interesting, and as I have see it on other sites, it can prove a valuable tool. By the way, I first came cross Skribit on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger blog.

Bonus: There is also a promo code – ackbar42 – which you can use by Jan. 27th, 2010, to upgrade your account to Skribit PRO at half-off the cost for 1 year.

Enjoy!

Meebo has finally started to monetize its home page.

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:50:59 +0000

Meebo home page now featuring a background ad.

Meebo has finally started to monetize its home page. I like the design. Unlike many monetized backgrounds on popular web sites, their is more integrated, in style, with the content on the page. Good job.

At this time the add is for the Toyota Prius – 3rd generation.

Meebo does have some other products and services to complement its main function – integrating various instant messenger networks and protocols on the same web site. My favorite of their products is the Meebo notifier.

The Meebo notifier is a small app that sits in your system tray and it stays connected to the Meebo network, allowing you to exit your browser. The memory footprint is small, so it is not resource hog. In addition to providing notification when contacts come online and when new IMs are received, you will also be notified when any of the added accounts, like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, have new emails. A feature, which can be disabled if you don’t care much for emails. Lastly, the notifier is not an Adobe AIR app. Something, which to some extend, I find to be beneficial.

One thing I would like to see Meebo support is micro-blogging services, like Twitter, Identi.ca or Jaiku.

By the way, Meebo powers the chat room on this blog.

So, do you use Meebo? If you do, where do you use it? If you don’t, do leave me a comment regarding the reason.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

[cb type="company"]meebo[/cb]

Whois domain record: Meebo

What is the point behind a URL shortening service? Why are there so many?

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:30:59 +0000

What is the point behind a URL shortening service? In essence, why is everyone using them and why are there so many? These were questions asked on TechCrunch, yesterday, by Ronald Tin, but not in so many words. My reply to him was as follow:

Ronald, the point of a URL shortening service is to have a short domain and URL, but that’s beside the point. The real reason behind URL shortening is to have an easy to remember or pass along URL. Instead of having – http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/19/now-even-the-new-york-times-is-entering-the-url-shortening-arena-kinda/#comment-2708504 – which you will never remember, or care to do so, you have http://tcrn.ch/Lk. Much easier to remember or tell someone about.

The whole URL shortening idea has split into two evolving concepts – money making thus the variety of sites offering this service; and content ownership. The later ensures, by owning the URL shortening service, that traffic from the short URL will never stop. If any of the other URL shortening services go down or close down what happens to traffic coming from all the places where those URL have been used/posted? It stops, which results in decline in SEO, page hits, ad impressions and clicks …. It also guarantees that whatever the URL the short URL is pointing to will not be changed by someone, thus stealing the traffic.

This is pretty much what my view of URL shorteners is. There might be something missing, so feel free to add in the comments below.

In general, I find URL shorteners annoying and a nuisance. I like to be able to see the URL, which I am about to visit. I also want to be sure that whenever I post a link to something that link will remain working , and anyone, who clicks on it, will not have to go through extra hoops, especially through one that might not be there some times or eventually. I am kind of bothered by how many services exist, because each has something I like about it and some times it can be hard to decide on which one to use. I suppose it all comes down to convenience. I am also sure that there will be more URL shortening services, like is.gd, tinyurl.com, cli.gs, bit.ly and many others, in the future. Variety can’t hurt, but over saturation does! When services can’t make enough to pay their bills they close, variety suffers, but so do users and the Internet.

Let me know your views on URL shorteners and which one is your choice in the comments below. Oh and here is a quick poll about preferred URL shortener(s).

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Domain record whois: TechCrunch, tcrn.ch, tinyurl.com

Live From TechCrunch50 Con 2008

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:09:03 +0000

The TechCrunch50 conference is going on this week. Very Exciting. You can watch the live stream from the conference, thanks to Ustream.TV, below.

BTW, TechCrunch50 is 52 this year. Two extra companies, which is good. The more the better.

UPDATE: Look at all the bloggers/laptop screens.

TechCrunch50 Con 2008

[cb type="company"]TechCrunch[/cb]
[cb type="company"]ustream[/cb]

Waste Management – You are doing it wrong!

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:13:18 +0000

My house is serviced by Waste Management. A company, supposedly, on the forefront of thinking green and working to recycle and minimize pollution. Well, I can tell you guys that you are doing it wrong! I don’t know if this is standard procedure, but I for sure know that other companies, which offer recycling, don’t do it that way.

Here is my problem with them. WM asks its customers to separate recyclables from their garbage into different containers, something that is necessary to make recycling easier. But when they come to pic up my garbage and recyclables, they are both dumped into the same container. To me that does not make any sense. Supposedly they sort out the garbage at their station, but then why would you ask your customers to separate these objects if you are just going to put them back together and then “waste” money to pay someone to separate them again? Other companies have trucks, which have compartments for the different recyclables and waste. Why doesn’t WM have these type of trucks?

I think that combining the recyclables with the garbage, just to separate it again at a later point, ruins much of the potential recyclables, like paper products for example. Many times the garbage bags have juices and liquids in them as well as sharp objects. When they are put together and then compressed inside the truck these bags break and all those liquids flow out soaking into any potential recyclable paper products and thus ruining them.

BTW, WM new has a social network called Greenopolis, which is part of their Think Green educational program.

[cb type="company"]waste-management[/cb]

Helicopter birthday cake

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:00:55 +0000

Now that’s a cool birthday cake, if not the best birthday cake ever. This cake is shaped like a helicopter and it has a functioning rotor. It’s not a cake like the ones you see created by professional cake creators/designers on the Food Network’s Cake Challenge show, but it’s a cake that everyone can make at home. Sweet!!!!

You can find the instruction on how to create your own helicopter birthday cake here, on Instructables, an awesome do-it-yourself site.

Domain Record Info

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:01:24 +0000

I wanted a way to quickly view the record information on a domain, but I did not want anyone tracking domains I look up. Or like some bad registrars, have any possible domain I look up end up as registered thanks to the ICANN grace period and overpriced registrars trying to extort money before selling the domain.

So, I ended up searching for possible WhoIs scripts and how one could query the domain record information and ended up coming across the whois.php script, which is currently utilized on Domain Record Info. Also accessed via WhoIsMesh.com and DomaIndex.Info.

There are few other options/functions I would like to add to the page – ping, dns report, and various help and tutorials information. Eventually I would like to do something similar to DNS Stuff, but for the moment it will have to wait. Right now I have many other projects.

Classic Rock, Classic Look

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:56:02 +0000

mixwit.com allows you to make your own virtual mix tape. You can search for any song or band you would like to hear, and then via a drag and drop interface you can select the songs you want and arrange them in any way you want. Once you are done with your selection, you can pick your own tape design, color, font and so forth. Then, thanks to Gigya, you can embed your song selection on any social network, your blog or a web page.

I like Queen, so I have created a play list, that includes the first 15 Queen songs from the search results, and have embedded it below. Enjoy!

Which will it be?

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:06:00 +0000

I have been using Twitter for a long time. It is at the top of the micro-blogging structure. I also use Jaiku and Pownce, but I think that Tumblr has something to offer, something to compete with against the rest of them. I would say Pownce comes the closes, as far as features, when compared with Tumblr.

Users can have custom themes, in addition to being able to edit the provided themes code and throw enhancements to the pages. Just like I did earlier with Disqus! Tumblr has plenty of room to grow when it comes to features to be added. But in my opinion it is the better one of all of them.

I hope that it will soon pick up speed and become more popular amongst the micro-blogging community. I did try to find a WordPress plugin that integrated Tumblr the way Alex Kings plugin integrates Twitter. But, I did not even find one that can interact with it. Helpfully soon someone will produce something.

[cb type="company"]twitter[/cb]

[cb type="company"]jaiku[/cb]

[cb type="company"]tumblr[/cb]