TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

firefox

Search Cloudlet adds tag cloud for Twitter users

By

If you use Firefox for web surfing and Twitter (I do!), then you might find Search Cloudlet is a useful plugin.

It’s simple and effective to use – it inserts context-aware tag clouds in Google, Yahoo and Twitter pages.

Apparently the addition of Twitter was the suggestions of @cleverclogs, who suggested I give it a try. And having installed it, I now have a tag cloud on my Twitter home-page, plus search pages, profile pages, favorites and the public timeline.

You can click between the tag cloud for keywords, or, on Twitter, a tag cloud of @ replies, which is quite useful. And there’s a handy ‘Off’ option as well. You can also select to turn it off permanently on your own page, other profile pages, or on Twitter search.

To be honest, I don’t use it a lot – following 2000+ people means that I need more than a tag cloud for the latest page of updates to really look into the available data – but it can be quite handy for checking out who I’ve replied to recently, especially as a reminder if there’s a username I need to look up.

But it’s no hassle to have it turned to ‘Off’ for when I occasionally need it.

Have you used Search Cloudlet and found it useful?

And what Firefox Add-Ons would you recommend using with Twitter, or other microblogging platforms?

Plurk sidebar tool for Firefox 2 and 3 already!

By

One of the great things about the current web revolution is that as soon as a website/application aPlurkppears, someone clever figures out ways to tweak it to improve on it for their needs.

And so, as many people are discovering Plurk, TwisterMC aka Thomas McMahon, has already created a sidebar plugin for Firefox 2 and 3, to use the simplified mobile version of Plurk.

It comes with the Plurk logo of a headless ‘thing’ and a keyboard shortcut. The actual functionality of the sidebar is down to Plurk, and it’s being download right now for a test.

I’ve seen a couple of rumours that Plurk’s creators are too keen on third party applications being developed – perhaps down to Twitter’s downtime problems and the fact 90% of requests to Twitters database comes from external applications. But we’ll see…

Dan Thornton on Plurk.

Julius Solaris on Plurk

Want to keep up to date with the latest on microblogging? Subscribe via RSS here.

New tool for website promoters/link addicts

By

There’s a new Firefox add-on for those people who want to submit links to Digg, Reddit, and up to 34 social bookmarking sites, without having to visit each site individually.

You’ll still need an account with each site, but Social Poster allows you to submit the same info to sites including StumbleUpon, Technorati, Newsvine, Furl, Spurl etc.

It”ll be interesting to see whether it has an effect on the sites included, as more of the same links could start appearing across all the social bookmarking sites. I’ll certainly be trying it to promote my blogs and MCN’s website with it…

Readers or ads….readers….or….ads

By

I’m still pondering the eternal paradox which is RSS.

On one hand know that the majority of people who will read this will do it via an RSS feed, whether it’s read in Live Bookmarks in Firefox, a feed reader, or another outlet.

By the same token, I don’t have the size, stature or chance to place adverts in my RSS feed yet, so anyone reading this via RSS can’t be tempted by any links.

So do I start publishing a truncated RSS, against my better judgement, to get people to come and view my blog to try and eke out a few extra dollars, or do I continue in the hope that enough people will still be intrigued enough to visit?

It’s a micro version of the problem facing most online publishers in one form or another. Whether or not I can solve it satisfactorily, remains to be seen…

On another note, I’m at internetworld tomorrow at Earl’s Court in London. See if you can spot the Badger!

Firefox and Vista in one post?

By

I’ve been a little distracted by the arrival of a new PC at work. So I now have two PCs, and three monitors on my desk! All with a rather lovely view of Seattle to remind me of the time I spent there.

Anyhoo. If you’re a keen user of Firefox, and you’re also a user of Vista, then why not get involved in the Mozilla testing process? You can find out more, here. The test day itself has passed, but you can still join in. I would, but all my work PCs are locked onto Win XP for the foreseeable future…

And in other news, I’m sure most people have now heard of Yahoo Pipes. Kudos to Yahoo for releasing the tool for creating, merging and splicing all kinds of feeds, and with an interesting graphical interface. I’ve been receiving emails from several people telling me how great it is.
Trouble is, it’s not quite user friendly yet. As zdnet pointed out.

Start growing your business today Contact Us