Toluu

Josh Bancroft's TinyScreenfuls.com

Edge Case, Community Builder, Tinkerer, and Teacher

How To Get People To Link To and Talk About Stuff You Write Without Being a JerkNovember 19

I’m writing this up to help bloggers and other people who create stuff online (videos, etc.) get their “stuff” more visibility, by getting more sites to link to it and talk about it. Specifically, I’m trying to help people in my group at work, Intel Software Network, by sharing some of my experience and ideas, since I’ve been blogging for over 5 years. I’m by no means an expert, just sharing what I know. I hope you’ll post a comment or otherwise jump into the conversation if you have ideas of your own on how to get more “outside” links and conversation around the things that you write.

This post is NOT going to be a list of “tricks” or quick fixes. I’m not talking about linkbait, or SEO black magic, or anything like that. Hopefully, the things I lay out will seem like common sense. It takes sustained effort over a period of time to build up your reputation and influence - you don’t just instantly “get famous”. So be prepared.

Update: Google has posted some great tips for bloggers. It’s mostly on how to optimize your site for Google, make your stuff more findable, etc. In case you didn’t want to just take my word for it…

Step 0: Build Your Network

Survival ModeNovember 14

Things have colluded to make the last three weeks or so super busy on a personal, work, and community level. It’s been pretty nuts. Continues to be. But if I can make it through this weekend, I should be OK for the rest of the year.

Some of the things I hope to be writing more about soon: Ignite Portland 4, Ignite Portland 5, more netbook stuff, and gearing up for a project I hope to kick off next year that I’m really excited about. So stay tuned. I’m not dead yet.

Sprint’s “Now” Data Overload Widget - My New ScreensaverNovember 11

Via John Gruber, Sprint, for some reason (marketing, obviously), has put up a giant Flash-based, um, dashboard display widget thingy, called “Now”, with a HUGE amount of data. Just let it all wash over you. Swim in the data. Perfect for info-crack addicts like me:

The audio bits are a little annoying. Wish there was a way to turn them off.

This is my new screensaver, for now, thanks to IdleWeb, a cool free little Mac app that lets you display any web page as your screensaver. I had been using the Digg Arc visualization. We’ll see how long this one lasts. For my screensaver, I can’t stand just some random visualization. I want realtime ambient data streaming across my screen when I’m not

Know what would be really cool? An open, customizeable, hackable version of this. Like iGoogle, My Yahoo, or NetVibes run amok. A framework to build and display the data, and a library of widgets to show realtime information. THAT would be awesome. Someone get on building that, would you?

☍ Let Google Reader Automatically Translate Feeds Into Your LanguageNovember 10

Official Google Reader Blog: Is Your Web Truly World-Wide?

Ever wanted to subscribe to a feed in a language other than one you understand, and have Google automatically machine translate it into your language? Now you can.

Of course, machine translation is usually terrible. I worked in software localization for a few years, where I learned first hand just how far out the idea of usable machine translation is. But hey, it’s better than nothing, and is a nice option for that Chinese or Russian blog you REALLY wish you could read.

I tried this out on the feeds for the Intel Software Network blog in Chinese and Russian, and it seems to work pretty well (as well as Google Translate ever does). Pretty slick.

Michael Crichton Died of What?November 5

Oh, those wacky Wikipedians. For a brief time this morning, when I first heard that Michael Crichton had died of cancer, his Wikipedia entry stated that he’d died "after a long, private battle with a velociraptor."

Somehow, I think he would appreciate the joke. The Wikipedia page has since been edited to remove the reference.

I loved the way he wrote about science. It wasn’t always science fiction, per se, but even when he was writing about corporate politics in Airframe, he just had a way of tickling both the literary and scientific parts of my mind. Too bad he won’t give us any more books.

Update: Hey, the New York Times linked to this post!

I know i