TypePad Hacks

Murali has launched a newly redesigned Authorati.com that's so beautiful, it really makes me want to do a new design for the hacks blog! Sadly, my own redesign will have to wait till things slow down here at hacks central, which probably won't happen till winter. Here's a quick list of new Authorati features, cribbed shamelessly from the Authorati blog: Timeline control: You can now view the rated blog posts on the Simile timeline control.... Postoons: Postoons are humorous, satirical titles for imaginary blog posts based on current events and personalities associated with them.... You can also use the richer Authorati widget instead of the badge.

Our architecture conversion work after the BlogBeat acquisition is complete, and our free StandardStats service now enables any of our publishers to track both feed and site audience, all from the comfort of your FeedBurner account.... Clicky is actually a brilliant free stats service if you have only one blog (until they come out of beta, they're only allowing users to track one site).... This initial release of site statistics includes: Visitor summary, detail and trends Page summary, detail and trends Referral and Search trends Inbound referral traffic breakdown, grouped by domain and broken out in detail Outbound click breakdown Visitor city cloud and live geographic visitor detail Percentage inbound traffic from search and the queries that drove the traffic Percentage of visitors that are new to your site today Browser and OS breakdown, with trend indicators Detailed historical traffic by page and by date FeedBurner also has some screen shots of the new stats package if you'd like to look before you sign up.... Towards the bottom of their post you'll see the following paragraph: The First of Many Hacks: Filed under lightweight yet handy, here's a "bookmarklet" hack for quick stats access: drag the Page stats link to your browser's toolbar.... I kind of scanned it and thought, "oh yeah, well, easy stats access, blah, blah blah, whatever…" Then I read it a second time and realized that the bookmarklet doesn't just open your stats dashboard— It takes you directly to the stats for any single page/post on your blog!

I've been tagged by BL Ochman.

He included some great screen shots of a redesign they're working on for the Widget Directory and user interface, generously offering to let me share them with you even though they're still in development.... get a fair bit of insider info these days and I usually don't get to share it until launch day… It's a pleasure to deal with someone who really embodies the ideals of transparency and openness that get so much play in talk about Web 2.0: Consider everything on the record - including the screenshots - though they are a work in progress so to speak so may change a bit.... We will integrate the directory much more closely with the app - and also rebuild the directory so that it previews and links widgets and allows visitors to sign up for widgets from the directory itself. This was the Within the app you will see the introduction of widget sharing between members and outside the app. We are now believers that as widgets get more and more powerful and encompass more and more mashups, a constructed widget will have a lot of value in its own right.... The idea here is that the Snipperoo button is available to any widget producer to integrate without reference to us. We say 'Keep your hands off our widget', i.e. we don't impose any structure or changes on web widgets - they can go into Snipperoo just the way they are built.

If you're using Advanced Templates or Mixed-Media Layouts, you'll need to paste a bit of javascript from widget providers into a Notes style TypeList to run them in your sidebar. That's exactly what makes Snipperoo and Widgetbox so useful… once you've added their code to a TypeList, you can manage your widgets at their site and any changes you make will be instantly reflected on your blog.... There are good clear instructions on the site, and all the widgets can be added to your Widgetbox panels from within the site itself. For some widgets, you may need to have an account with the widget provider, but once you have that set up, you can do everything from within Widgetbox.... In some cases, you can add widgets without having to leave Sniperoo's site, but most of the time you'll go to another site, get a snip of javascript, come back and add it to your panel.

VS There is no safe way to post an email address on the web as text without One of the most useful things I've added to my blogs is a hosted email script that lets me use a form to cut down on spambots finding my email address.

I've been emailing back and forth with Murali Narasimhan (creator of Authorati) all morning and he's done a bunch of great work to improve the service.... You'll notice, for instance, that at the bottom of each of my posts you can now click on a FeedFlare link which allows you to rate this blog at Authorati.... FeedBurner will be adding it to their Flare catalog on the next revision but there's no need to wait if you'd like to get it now. He also made some of the changes I suggested on the home site for Authorati, including a quick bio to tell you who has created the service and a new, improved sidebar widget for your blog. Changes in the works include putting together code so that individual blog posts are available for rating without the need for authors to regularly log in to the website to update the list of articles, updating the MyAuthorati page which displays the ratings breakdown, and some additions to the FAQ to describe the new features.

That's not so much my thing… when I want privacy, I just use email or the phone (and yeah, I know, email isn't as private as you'd think, but I figure anyone who can tap mine is entitled to laugh at my more off-color remarks).... It was then that I realized that having a public blog and a public persona and keeping the intimacy that made personal blogging fun was an incredibly difficult balancing act.... It was then that I realized that having a public blog and a public persona and keeping the intimacy that made personal blogging fun was an incredibly difficult balancing act.... If I want to ask them something or share an intensely personal tidbit, I can post it there for them and I don't have to IM or call anyone and I don't have to tell the same story 15 times as I see them throughout the year.... O’Reilly Radar: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/06/first_thoughts_on_vox_nee_come.html Andre Torrez: http://notes.torrez.org/2006/06/vox_luv.html When TechCrunch announced that Six Apart had released Vox for limited public beta testing, the majority of the comments were fairly negative.