This Blog Is Now Connect’d

Let me first promise that this is my last post with the annoying ‘d in the title!

Two days ago I spent about 15 minutes setting up Google Friend Connect on my blog — I just wish it was more than a bunch of widgets and probably Google is already working on that. The process was simple and pleasant.

Yesterday it took me about the same time to also enable Facebook Connect here using Adam Hupp’s plugin called WP-FBConnect, which is the official one for WordPress. The two other plugins seemed either too invasive (Sociable!) or too early in development (Community Facebook Connect by Jessy Stay). There is an official Facebook Connect Plugin Directory now and, which seems to be actively updated.

I had to make a few minor tweaks to WP-FBConnect — the first and last names of users were not getting populated in the database and the CSS did not match my theme well, but in general it was also simple and pleasant experience.

What I find sad is that Yahoo! has failed to maximize the full potential of their MyBlogLog service — they’ve got all building blocks necessary to offer a combination of both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect — identity, widgets, lifestreaming, friends, communities, following. Oh, well… again and again, Yahoo! is letting competitors eat its own pie.

Related posts:

1. This Blog Has Been Coltrane’d

Syndicated 2008-12-20 07:58:44 from Nikolay

This Blog Has Been Coltrane’d

Minutes after the official announcement of WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” availability my blog got powered by it! It took roughly 10 minutes to upgrade and I can say that it was worth the wait!

The next step would be to tweak the Emptiness theme to support threaded comments.

Syndicated 2008-12-11 11:31:51 (Updated 2008-12-20 08:04:24) from Nikolay

Artiklz Has Been TechCrunch’d

Finally! Artiklz has passed a major milestone in its development — it’s been TechCrunch’d by the European techcruncher Robin Wauters, who we had the pleasure to meet in person at BLOG08 in Amsterdam!

We are also happy to get a nice follow-up coverage by the #1 blogger in Eastern Europe — Svetlana Gladkova in her blog Profy!

Thank you, Robin and Svetlana!

Aside from being in the news, we’ve been busy at Artiklz adding three new features for blog readers and now kindly invite you to taste the fruits of our labor and line up for our private beta, which will feature the highly anticipated conversation search.

Related posts:

1. I’ve Been CrunchBase’d

Syndicated 2008-11-25 03:35:37 from Nikolay

Hashtagging Twitter Feeds

As many of us use now twitterfeed by Mario Menti or Twitter Tools by Alex King, I think it makes sense to start applying some standard hashtags based on the feed type to make searching and filtering easier. As I added my BackType feed to twitterfeed, I now get automatic tweets when I blog and make comments. BackType added Twitter integration recently, but it sucks as tweets go out just once a day or once a week, which is a lot worse than the 30-minute intervals with twitterfeed.

After a short period of brainstorming, I came up with the following hashtags:

#blogpost for blog posts
#comment for blog comments

I will ping Mario Menti and Alex King to see if this can get built into their tools to ease standardization.

What do you think? Any ideas?

Syndicated 2008-10-11 19:46:19 (Updated 2008-10-11 19:50:55) from Nikolay

Euro Trip

I couldn’t wait to add my next trip with Artiklz on DOPPLR!

John, Iris, and I will first attend Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008 in Berlin, Germany (October 21–23, 2008) and then we will get on the cityhopper to attend BLOG08 in Amsterdam, Netherlands (October 24, 2008). I haven’t been in any of those countries yet (excluding the airports), so, I’m excited! I’m also excited, because we’ll have the chance to present Artiklz to a different audience and hopefully to establish new partnerships. See you there!

Related posts:

1. Artiklz Has Been TechCrunch’d

Syndicated 2008-10-10 09:42:20 from Nikolay