Social Media

aside 5 May

How To Create A Facebook Page Badge Tutorial

This is a step-by-step tutorial to create a Facebook Page Badge using Facebook Widgets. I’ll be using my own site Singapore Part Time Jobs as an example.

1. Log in to Facebook. You need to be the owner of the Facebook page in order to create a Facebook badge to share on other websites.
2. Go to the Facebook Page Badges section and you’ll see a preview of the badge along with option to add the badge either on Blogger, TypePad or Other pages.
   
   

   Facebook Badge For Singapore Part Time Jobs

3. Click the “Edit This Badge” link and choose the layout as well as the items to be included in the badge. A real-time preview will be shown as you customise your badge. Once you are happy with the preview, click the “Save” button.
   
   

   Facebook Badge Layout Items

4. Now choose where you want to add the badge. In my case, I choose “Other” and the code to copy and paste is automatically generated.
   
   

   Facebook Badge Add Code

5. Copy and paste this code to your website.

That’s it, if you have followed the steps above then the website should not display your Facebook Page badge accordingly.

If you need my assistance in creating a Facebook page or customizing it then please do contact me. I live in Singapore (+8GMT) so there may be slight delays in answering queries.

aside 24 Apr

WTF Is RSS, Social Bookmarking And Social Networking?

What On Earth Is RSS?

Wikipedia says:

RSS (an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s URI, often referred to informally as a “URL” (uniform resource locator), although technically the two terms are not exactly synonymous, into the reader, or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

Did you really understand that? Here is what RSS is in plain English courtesy of the folks at Common Craft.

Now What’s Social Bookmarking?

Turning to the definition at Wikipedia

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”.

Here’s the plain English definition of Social Bookmarking.

What On Earth Is Social Networking?

Just being a little dramatic as most people are familiar with the concept of Social Networking. If you are really dying to read the Wikipedia definition then head here or you could just watch the video for a plain English definition of Social Networking.

Questions/comments? Use the form below!

aside 17 Apr
Can You Build A Great Blog In 31 Days?

Image Source: sxc.hu
Darren Rowse aka ProBlogger certainly thinks that a great blog can be built in 31 days and as I’m following along, I’m increasingly becoming a convert. Here’s how it works. Everyday, there’s a short post with some teaching on a topic that’s supposed to make your blog better followed by action items. I like the action items because that’s where the rubber meets the road.

As we speak, the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog or 31DBBB is in its 11^th 13 ^thday (will be updated periodically) and topics covered have been:
1. Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog: In this post Darren explains what an elevator pitch is and why is it important for bloggers followed by the task of writing an elevator pitch for your blog. He makes it easier by even showing you how to write an elevator pitch.
   Note to self: Hmmm, what’s my excuse of not having an elevator pitch for my blog?
2. Write a List Post: Here Darren gives 8 reasons why lists are very popular and lists out the task for the day which as you may have guessed is writing a post list. He gives examples of types of list posts and recommends sharing the list via comments on his post (smart move).
   Note to self: I need to write a list post but what shall I write about?
3. Promote a Blog Post: In this day’s post, I think Darren makes a good point about promoting individual blog posts instead of the blog itself. He lists out 11 ways to promote your blog posts including internal linking, article marketing and social media.
   Note to self: Apart from social media and internal linking, explore whether the other options are viable every time I write a post. A checklist of sorts?
4. Analyze a Top Blog in Your Niche: Success leaves clues and Darren recommends identifying and doing an in-depth analysis of a successful blog in your niche in terms of content, reader engagement, design, monetization, traffic and SEO with two important caveats a) do not become obsessed and b) do not copy.
   Note to self: Whom do I admire in my niche? Identify and then analyze their blogs?
5. Email a Blog Reader: Here Darren shares his strategy of paying personal attention to readers who leave comments on your blog. Three ways of doing this – a) email the reader, 2) leave a comment on their blog (provided they have left their blog address on the comments) and 3) comment on your own blog which shows that you engage the readers.
   Note to self: Thankfully, I’m doing what Darren recommends and I’ll continue to do so as this blog grows bigger and bigger
6. 27 Must Read Tips and Tutorials for Bloggers: Nice list of 27 tips and tutorials as Darren spreads the link love to other notable bloggers like Seth Godin, SEOmoz, Skellie, Chris Garrett, Yaro Starak, Shoemoney, Maki, Liz Strauss, Daniel Scocco and Chris Brogan.
   Note to self: Read the articles and make my own action items. Plus have a goal to get link love from Darren.
7. Write a Link Post: The objective of this day is to write a link post (see Day 6 on how Darren wrote a great link post) and he explains why it is important to link out before wrapping up 6 types of link posts to consider.
   Note to self: Is this post considered a link post?
8. Interlink Your Old Blog Posts: Internal linking is very powerful for SEO purposes but Darren goes a step further
   by giving other reasons to interlink to your older blog posts with practical examples of how to interlink.
   Note to self: Set aside time periodically to interlink especially when the blog grows in size and stature.
9. Join a Forum and Start Participating: Forums are places where your potential readers gather so harnessing the power of forums makes sense. Darren gives three good reasons to join forums with links to two great posts on the power of forums.
   Note to self: Start harnessing the power of forums that I have identified.
10. Set Up ‘Alerts’ to Monitor What is Happening in Your Niche: Darren gives 5 concrete reasons to monitor your niche and shows how to create a Google Alert before ending with a word of caution on ‘over monitoring’. I have found that monitoring Technorati as well as Twitter to be useful in addition to Google Alerts.
    Note to self: Write a post teaching how to create a unified alert combining Google, Technorati and Twitter using Yahoo Pipes.
11. Come up with 10 Post Ideas: Coming up with blog ideas daily can be a major pain and to counter that Darren recommends using older posts as a base and extending it further using tools like mindmapping.
    Note to self: Use FreeMind for generating ideas.
12. Develop an Editorial Calendar for Your Blog: The idea here is to build from the previous day’s task and come up with a weekly schedule. Darren talks about two methods to come up with a weekly schedule based on frequency and theme.
    Note to self: Weekly theme is something I should consider because it’ll give the blog some coherency.
13. Take a Trip to the ‘Mall’ and Improve Your Blog: The idea is to disconnected for sometime and then find inspiration for blog ideas offline. I know a lot of bloggers shudder at the thought of being offline
    Note to self: I’m going to the mall on Monday.
aside 15 Apr

Is Your Username Available At These 72 Social Networks?



Image Source: sxc.hu

NameChk is a great service that allows you to check whether your username is available at various social networks that it covers.

Just type in your username and click the “chk” button and viola, it shows whether the username is taken or not for the 72 social networks the service currently covers (see screenshot below as well as the tags). I wish it would go one step further and allow me to register for these social networks should my username be available. However, I know that would be quite difficult but I like asking for the pie in the sky.




Before I forget, here’s a blank copy of the spreadsheet I use to track my usernames on social networks.

aside 13 Apr

Dumb MySpace Doesn’t Seem To Know That Singapore Is Not In China

Not that I think of MySpace highly nowadays especially as a medium to market and make money but I visited the site today after a long time. I was stumped that it was mostly in Chinese and I just couldn’t find an easy way to change the language preference back to English (see screenshot below – click to enlarge). Since, I live in Singapore MySpace was probably trying to personalize my experience but instead ended up frustrating me.



Repeat After Me “Singapore Is Not In China”

If the knuckleheads at MySpace had done a little bit of research (like reading the Wikipedia entry), they would have known that English is the main language used in Singapore.

English is the main language of Singapore and has been heavily promoted as such since the country’s independence. The English used is primarily based on British English, with some American English influences. The use of English became widespread in Singapore after it was implemented as a first language medium in the education system, and English is the most common language in Singaporean literature. In school, children are required to learn English and one of the three other official languages. By law, all signs and official publications are required to be primarily in English, although they are occasionally translated versions into the other official languages.

Three Extremely Stupid Ways To Change The Language Back To English

In the screenshot above, did you see an easy way to change the language option to English? Neither did I. It turns out that there are three possible ways of changing MySpace back to English.

1. I must be able to read Chinese. Duh!
2. I need to have oodles of patience and mouse over links to potentially find one that leads me to MySpace in English
3. I randomly click the Chinese links and hope to find MySpace in English

I went for the second option and moused over links to finally find the link to MySpace UK. So much pain just to change the language! Why can’t they have a big button that says “English” (in English)?



aside 8 Apr

Security Loophole In Ning Social Networking App?



Image Source: sxc.hu

I’m not a security expert but there have been a number of cases within the social network for Darjeeling that I run (with over 1,000 members) using Ning where someone logs in as another person and wreaks havoc giving the administrators a hard time.

One of our members dropped me a Facebook message informing me of the security loophole telling me that Ning transmits email address and password in cleartext.

the site is transmitting userid and password in clear text. i know the login form with ning id is secure but there there a field named xg_token as “xg_token=&emailAddress=me@gmail.com&password=password” somewhere in the code that is doing this.

Like I said before, I’m not an online security expert but I downloaded a sniffer from Effetech to test the claim using my own email address and password in Ning. I could see my password in cleartext (masked in the screenshot below). Additionally, as a logical test I tried sniffing my own Gmail username and password which was unsuccessful. In my own layman way, this probably means that the Ning password is being sent in cleartext while Gmail sends it securely.

I have informed Ning and let’s see what they have to say about it. Meanwhile, has anyone had this issue with Ning before?

aside 20 Mar

Twitter This WordPress Plugin Review

Twitter This is a great Twitter plugin for WordPress written by Andres Artux Scheffer which can potentially make your blog posts or pages go viral on Twitter.

How Twitter This WordPress Plugin Works

1. The obvious first step is to install and activate the plugin on your WordPress blog.
2. Assuming that everything goes well with the installation and activation, the plugin will simply insert a small icon and a “Twitter This” link at the end of every blog post or page. When users click this link, the Twitter username and password fields are displayed which allows them to tweet the blog post or page.
3. If the user enters the correct Twitter username and password then the blog post or page title along with a shortened link is posted as a tweet otherwise an error is displayed.

Everything sounds really good so far but there are a few issues with the plugin. I know it is a free plugin so I shouldn’t be complaining too much but my main grouse is the lack of support for other languages. This is how it can be fixed.

No Language Support

The language used for the plugin is Spanish and I could surely add on a language file but that’s a little too techie for most people. The quick and dirty way to change the language is by directly editing the code. The good news is that editing the code is not difficult but the bad news is that you have to edit the code whenever there is an update to the plugin.

Edit the following plugin files.

twitter-this.php on line 89:
From: $html .= "Usuario: ...
To: $html .= "Twitter Username: ...

Post_to_twitter.php on line 94:
From: echo "Posteado en ...
To: echo "Posted on ...

Post_to_twitter.php on line 96:
From: echo "Error en Twitter, intentelo luego";
To: echo "Error posting on Twitter, please check your username and password";

Remember to back up before amending the files. The above changes should make the plugin workable on English language blogs. However, other limitations still exist but these are fortunately not deal breakers.

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