technorati

[Know that a website is different than a web application.  If you are using a website, it’s probably only going to give you information.  If you use a web app, you are probably going to exchange information.  This is what “web 2.0” is about – exchanging of information.  Web 2.0 is about the world being a database.  Go get the data you want.  If you aren’t getting the information you want, you probably haven’t looked hard enough.]

Here’s a list of software and web apps that I used regularly over the past year.

Gmail – Gmail is the most powerful web-based email client.  It got IMAP support this year which, if you know about IMAP, is huge and revolutionary.  I use Gmail from different PC’s and from portable devices.  Gmail hooked me up with 6 GB of space this year.  With Gmail’s powerful filtering system, I get email thrown into my Gmail account from other email accounts.  This enables me to go to one place to send mail from different email accounts.  One email to rule them all.  Additionally, Gmail’s SPAM prevention is top-notch.

Flock - web browser built from Firefox.  Flock is the "social networking" browser with intuitive and time-saving features built in to the interface that makes blogging, Facebook, Flickr, uploading images, Twitter, etc. so much easier and faster.  Flock will run almost all Firefox extensions.  I'm amazed at how easy it is to use their blog editor and images.  Flock will automatically upload images to image-hosting sites (like Flickr or Photobucket).  Flock will also embed the images in your posts.  If you are a blogger, Flickr user, or Facebook user, I suggest dumping Firefox and running with Flock.

Basically, I ported by Firefox footprint (install) into Flock and it has been seamless.  Blogging is a breeze.  Flickr is much easier.  Facebooking is simple.

Google Reader - The internet is a database.  Every webpage, every file, is a record in this database.  It is up to me to go to the database and pick the news and topics I want to learn about.  With Google Reader I'm subscribed to 271 RSS feeds that give me information about technology, Huntsville, family, politics, entertainment, and the purpose of life.  271 individual feeds is a lot.  However, with keyboard shortcuts (mainly the “N” and “space bar”) I can scan over all feeds and only spend time on the ones that interest me.  After I follow a website for a couple of weeks, I get an even better feeling for how the content comes to me, making it even faster to sort through the data.

I have found that I spend as much time reading news in Google Reader with 271 feeds as I did when I had 20 feeds.  The only difference is now I read the news that I want to read while cutting out more and more cluttering information.

del.icio.us - personal bookmarking.  I used del.icio.us more than ever this year to bookmark various files and webpages.  I even wrote a script or two to import some of my bookmarks into this website.  Don’t use the bookmarking system built into your web browsers.  Use a secure online bookmarking service like del.icio.us.

Pandora.com – I like music.  I used to buy dozens of CD’s a year (even when Napster/Kazaa was big).  Today, I don’t consume much music mainly because such a piece of art is all but forbidden in my work place (that’s another story) and I’ve found a love for NPR while driving.  Still, I enjoy music at home.

Pandora is a part of the Music Genome Project.  Basically, I pick an artist or song that I like and input it into Pandora.  Pandora creates a station and then streams music that is similar to the artist/song that I inputted.  I can give an up or down vote to any song that plays.  Using my feedback, Pandora learns what music I like.  Over time, I get a good mix of music that I like listening to for hours on end while discovering new artists and sounds.  Surprisingly you find that Pandora is pretty accurate right out of the gate.

Flickr.com – Online photo gallery site.  Still archiving digital images for me and millions others.

Flickr Uploadr – I wouldn’t use Flickr nearly as much if it weren’t for the Flickr Uploadr.  Note:  If you are uploading images to Flickr one at a time, you are not investing your time efficiently.  There are mass uploading tools out there that let you mass upload images, tag them, add descriptions, titles, and so on. 

Flickr Uploadr is a tiny little software app that allows me to drag and drop my images into my Flickr account. 

Fatwallet.com/Slickdeals.net – I rarely pay full price for any non-service product.  I’ve saved thousands of dollars on purchases in the last several years by using websites like FatWallet and SlickDeals.

Digg.com - I used DIGG like crazy at the beginning of the year.  And then they got big - too big.  They started censoring stories and attempted to covered up the fact that a ring of people were controlling the frontpage.

reddit.com - My new digg.com.  Reddit gets the stories faster than DIGG.  There's less turnover on the reddit homepage so I check it less often.  However, reddit has some really interesting stories with better discussion than that found on DIGG.  It’s a good place to go for tech news and interesting stories.  It’s full of political stories.

Facebook - I joined Facebook and started using it.  It was much safer and simpler than MySpace.  Facebook is on pace to be the largest social networking website.  It has been valued at $15B.

MySpace - I ditched it.  MySpace is bad.  Very bad.  Don't go near MySpace if you are looking for a social networking experience.  Use Facebook.  Just after I log into MySpace, I begin getting SPAM from MySpace bots looking to add me as a friend. 

Twitter - Twitter was all the rage this year.  Neat, clean design. Easy interface.  However, who needs Twitter when Facebook already has status updates?  With a little bit of code, you print out your Facebook status to a new website - effectively making a Twitter clone and saving you from having to crosspost to multiple sites.

Drupal - Drupal is getting more support and more powerful.  Major corporations (especially those in the entertainment biz) are using Drupal to built interactive websites.  IBM, NASA, Electronic Arts, and MTV use Drupal to built communities and/or share information.

WordPress - I setup a few WordPress blogs for people this year. WordPress is the best personal publishing software out there.

Huffington Post – It’s news blog to counter Drudge Report’s news.

rEVOLution - When I get home from work each day, I listen to 30-120 minutes of speeches by the most potent Presidential candidate.  This after having read years worth of www.house.gov texts.  My life is forever changed.

The Hushed Casket is my local video gaming community here in Huntsville, Alabama. I set up a website for us a few years ago. We never really did anything with the website other than host a forum.  Actually, before we hosted the PHPBB forum, I simply redirected hushedcasket.com visitors to our website at Bungie.net.

After some time, I got a vision to build a website for the community that was just more than a forum. I needed good ole "community plumbing". Enter Drupal.

Drupal would allow users to have news, forums, blogs, events, podcasts, rss feeds for everything, tagging, comments, match results, aggregation, and so more.  Drupal would allow me to have total control of PHP and MySQL.  It was up to me to give the community tools to use. Most of the time, communities are built around the tools pre-packaged in a content management system.

Drupal was a perfect fit.  But, it was a big hurdle for me.

I knew I could do it. I also knew that to get what I want, it was going to take a lot of time and a lot of learning. While I consider myself experienced with Drupal, I'm not a PHP expert.  I wanted to do things with Drupal that I've never done before. I wanted to build a site that had features that the users would appreciate.

I didn't want a cluttered PHPBB, vBulletin, or SMF forum (although SMF rocked and was the best, IMO).  I didn't a simple cookie-cutterWordPress blog.  I didn't want cheesey content management systems like PostNuke, Mambo, etc. Those systems were rigid - not flexible.  I felt locked-in when I used them.

After a custom theme (which got some accolades from CSS design sites like Daily Slurp, CSS Mania, etc.) was up and running, the website took off. Regular users started using the website more often. I think they liked the new look and the new features. 

They community felt empowered.  They started writing original content. Then content ended up getting syndicated on some major industry sites like Newsweek, MSNBC, IGN, Team XBOX, DIGG and other sites. One story even got picked up on G4TV and other TV news stations.  Before long, the Hushed Casket was averaging several hundred unique visitors a day. After only a few months, the Casket gets thousands of unique visitors a day.

Google traffic is coming in like mad (check out this post about recent Google searches that led people to the Hushed Casket) and we are beginning to see more back-links from other websites.  While our homepage Google PageRank is just 4/10, our presence in the blogosphere is growing. 

Last week, we were a top 20,000 blog according to Technorati.  Our Technorati "ranking" continues to climb a few points per week. That's a big deal in that the Hushed Casket didn't have much of a presence on the web this time last year.  The turn around has been amazing. And it's because I realized that a forum isn't a community. If I could find two or three dedicated writers, I believe that the Hushed Casket would be one of the top technology and video game blogs in the industry.

Will we get into the top 10,000?  I doubt it.  We don't have the manpower to write more articles.  The video game media has some huge companies like TimeWarner (AOL's Weblogs, Inc.) and FOX (IGN and company) whoring a lot of attention when it comes to blogs.  It's hard to compete with them when their video gaming websites are advertised on other major websites.  We're just an independent website.  When it comes to indi blogging, we are one of the most influential (according to Google and the blogosphere).  However, we need daily fresh content to keep up with the big boys. I don't see that happening for a while.

Should we sell out to someone for some cash and a network?  Should we hire a couple of writers?  Should we stay where we are?

I think we'll stay where we are.  We might see a 5/10 Google PageRank after the next update.  But, without fresh and original content, I think we've found our max.  We'll probably settle down into a top 30,000 blog and not see much growth.  : /

Then again, there's still a lot of work I want to do with the Hushed Casket website. I've got a long list of features that I need to build into the website. Those features will for sure attract more and more users. However, without original content, I'm not sure we can keep up with Kotaku's and Destructoid's, let alone the Joystiq's.