AideRSS is Sweeeet ... for the Time Being at Least

Just added the AideRSS widget to my music blog. It aggregates user comments, bookmarks, and votes across wordpress, digg, and delicious. The widget then shows the posts with the most user activity.

This is a nice change of pace from other widgets that show 'most popular' stories, which are really just stories with the most pageviews. As well all know, there often is not much of direct correlation between pageviews and popularity. Heck, one story could just be really popular with SEO, and it would show up at the top of one of these widgets.

Anyways, for the time being, AideRSS is doing the trick. I just hope that more people come and comment on new stories. Otherwise, I'll have the same 5 stories appearing forever.

Try out the widget for yourself at Aiderss.com

Verifying Blogs with Google Webmaster Tools is Easy

I thought it would be hard. I didn't want to tamper with my source code because I'm not a coder. I tried uploading HTML files into file manager, but this didn't work because my HTML files were empty.

EASY ALTERNATIVE: Just drop one line of code below "head" in your source code. This is easier than it sounds:

In wordpress, go to 'design' -> 'theme editor' -> 'header'

In blogger, just go to 'layout' -> 'edit html'

Having done this, I can now verify that this post was crawled :)

Not Overly Excited about Yahoo BOSS

Yes, its very cool that Yahoo is opening up its search feed to developers. Ultimately though they are facing an uphill battle once this feature is out of the novelty phase, for a number of reasons:

-The majority of bloggers and web entrepreneurs are interested in immediate revenue, which this service will not be able to provide as well as other CSE.
-Google already offers a custom search engine with a fully customizable template and fully customizable advertising. Google advertising is also already the most lucrative for web publishers.
-The 'social search' feature, which in my opinion, is the ultimate distinguishing trait, requires widespread adoption of the APIs in order to be effective
-web users (who aren't e-marketingers) are tough to switch over to new web search technologies.

Like many of the other search and discovery novely sites, this may gain some traction with e-marketer/blogger crowd, but in order to be effective, it will need Joe Shmo web user to use the social search feature, which won't happen until bloggers promote their custom search engines, which won't happen until Jo Shmo web user uses the feature, which.... get where I'm going?

If Sharks Could Fly

I'm Running for President

So says this news clip

Funny Tampering with Muni Ad

Someone tampered with the below ad appearing on public transportation vehicle in San Francisco. My guess is that its supposed to read 'submarine'

Tough Life