Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Do you use Twitter?

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I joined twitter well over a year ago, but it’s only in the last month or so that I’ve really started to use this fantastic social networking tool.

Actually I have been using twitterfeed to post new blog post announcements to Twitter, but since that was all that I was doing for most of the first year that I was a Twitter member, you can’t really say I was using it well. Now that I’m finding new friends and gaining followers I’ve started interacting with others on Twitter and it’s a lot of fun.

Do you use Twitter? If you do, please feel free to check out my Twitter page and follow me if you like what you see.

If you don’t use Twitter, what are you waiting for? As I said above it’s a great way to not only promote your blog posts, but to also connect with people who have similar interests or sites in similar niches.

Update: Kelly just came up with a great idea. If you use Twitter post your Twitter link in the comments and follow the commenters that leave a twitter link. Sounds like a great way to make some new blogger/ Twitter friends.





What addon do you use to open multiple links in Firefox?

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This has been bugging me for a while … well ever since I upgraded my Firefox browser to version 3.0.

In Firefox 2 I had this great addon called Linky that I used to open multiple links in new tabs. It was great if you were visiting sites listed on a blogroll or wanted to visit all the links listed in someones blog post. All I had to do was highlight the section of links I wanted to open and then right click over them to bring up the menu that would allow me to open all of the links in new tabs.

Unfortunately Linky doesn’t work with Firefox 3 and I’ve been suffering! It was a very useful addon and I haven’t found another addon that works the way it did.

There must be an addon that works with Firefox 3 to open multiple links in new tabs. There’s gotta be. I read posts quite often where people talk about being able to open up multiple tabs … and I’m sure some of those people must be using the latest version of Firefox.

So .. if you know of an addon that might do what I’m missing so badly I’d love to hear your suggestions.

Migrating to Google Feeds

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It looks like my RSS feeds, the ones that I set up on Feedburner, will be migrating over to Google Feeds sometime tomorrow.

I got an email from Google last week stating that my feeds would migrate to Google Feeds on the 5th. I didn’t request the migration, but I guess that they must be converting all of their Feedburner customers over to Google now.

Now that the day has just about arrived I’m starting to get nervous.

Will my Feedburner Feedsmith WP plugin still work? I use the plugin to convert my normal WordPress post and comment feeds to a Feedburner feed so I can accurate track my subscribers. Will I still be able to do that?

I took a look at the Google Forums and did a search for “Feedburner plugin” and a few other similar keywords, but I really couldn’t find much information as to whether it will still work once my feeds are on Google. A Google search turned up similarly unsatisfying results so I’m going to assume that the Feedburner plugin has continued to work for most people.

If you’ve converted your feeds from Feedburner to Google feeds and you use or used the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin would you be so kind as to let me know if it still works for you?

I have 30 Feedburner Feeds so I hope the migration goes well!

If everything goes well I’ll be able to monetize my feeds with Adsense. I’m not sure whether I’ll do that or not. I know that some of the big bloggers who are using Adsense for Feeds have stated that they are making money on their feeds, but I also know that people read RSS feeds not only for the convenience of being able to read their favorite feeds in one place, but also because the feeds are often ad free.

Have you added Adsense to your feeds? Are you making any money? How did your readers respond?

Now here’s a question for my RSS readers – how would you feel if I added an Adsense banner or two to my feeds? Would it bother you or would you be fine with it?

If I do decide to try Adsense for feeds I’d put the ad below the post. I HATE visiting a website and seeing big ads above a post. I mean, we visit websites or read feeds for the content and it’s just irritating to have to scroll down past an ad before you can read the content you came for, isn’t it?

BTW if you mainly read my sites by RSS feed or via an email subscription, if you suddenly stop being able to get my feed or if it looks like there’s no new posts (I generally post at least once a day) please let me know as there might be a problem with the feed thanks to the feed migration from Feedburner to Google Feeds.

Join Second Brain and organize and share all of your social media sites

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Over the past two years a lot of new social media sites have started up and if you are like me, you kind of feel like you need to join quite a few of them in order to keep up with all of your blogging friends. Some of the social media sites are not only good places to connect with other bloggers and old friends, but they also offer ways to promote your own websites and or blogs.

If you look at my About page you can see a list of some of the social media sites that I use. It’s not a complete list as I get invites every week from blogging friends to join new sites! It’s hard to keep up!

Some time ago I came across a site called Second Brain. I didn’t join it when I first came across the site, but I decided to sign up a few days ago when I realized that I could connect most of my social media accounts to Second Brain.

There are a few other social media sites where you can connect quite a few of your other accounts, but I liked the look and feel of Second Brain.

Not only can you bookmark favorite sites in your Second Brain account (or use their Bookmarklet tool in your browser), but you can import your bookmarks from sites such as Delicious, Faves, Digg, GoogleReader, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Reddit and Mr. Wong.

You can also import feeds from your Blogger, WordPress, Metaweblog, RSSBlog and tumblr accounts. If that’s not enough you can also connect your Second Brain account to your accounts at GoogleDocs, MindMeister, ZohoDocs, Slideshare, Box, Scribd, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, Qik, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Behance, Diigo, and GoodReads.

One thing that I discovered recently is that you can upload files from your computer to Second Brain. I don’t think you can do this on many of the other Social Media sites. I’m not sure what kind of files one might want to upload – perhaps articles – but it’s an interesting feature to have.

Anyway, I know that a lot of you already have accounts at many of the Social media sites that I’ve listed above, I get enough friend invites each week to know that, LOL … so why not join Second Brain too? It’s free to join!

Remember to add me as a friend if you do start an account there!

How do you handle comment spam?

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I’m so sick of spam! I swear, most days, every second comment I get on all of my blogs is either spam or someone just commenting to get a dofollow link and using a SEO user name.

I have the spam bots pretty much under control between the Akismet, Bad Behavior and WP-Spamfree plugins I use, but comment spam from real people is a constant problem.

I’m seriously considering closing comments on my old posts. I don’t really want to do that because I get real comments on older posts all the time, but I also get comment spam on them too.

I mark comments that appear to be spam (don’t make sense or that really don’t add to the post “good post!”) as spam and put them in the Akismet bin quite often. Others that look like they’re from someone commenting just for a link and or using a tacky SEO user name are either marked spam or have their links removed. It all depends upon the comment, how many comments or the number of my blogs they hit that day and the mood I happen to be in when I find the comment.

How do you handle human comment spammers on your blog?

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