A few short short notes on what’s up here on the Trumblog.

First, I updated to WordPress 3.o.  It was uneventful, except that in order to use the auto-upgrade I needed to deactivate all of my plugins and then re-activate them all again once the upgrade was complete.  It was a good excuse to review my plugins, deactivate a few and tweak some settings so I’m not complaining.  Otherwise the update is stable and without any problems that I have noticed.  I haven’t explored any of the new features in WordPress 3.0 yet, so I won’t offer a judgment except that any upgrade that doesn’t break anything is a good upgrade.

Second, I switched my lifestream page over to the Lifestream WordPress plugin.  My old lifestream page had been down for awhile, I wasn’t keeping up with the tweaking that was necessary and I worked out the issues with some of the feeds in the lifestream and I’m pleased with the layout and functionality of the page now.

Finally, I haven’t been keeping up with my blogging and social media schedule that I had hoped to.  Things got busy. I stopped putting in the effort. The next thing that you know a week or two passes without blogging.  I have a new tool that should support my blogging both through technological support and topics to blog about. The second half of the year is almost upon us and I’ve got renewed energy to publish.  I hope that you find the results enjoyable.

Programming Notes is a post from: Trumblog

WordPress is probably the dominant blogging platform used today as well as an acceptable content management system. One of the aspects of WordPress that has led to its broad use is that it is open source, the code is free and updated and extended by users so that not only is it an affordable option, but it also has been enhanced through design (themes) and feature specific modules (plugins) to do just about anything that you’d want it to.

Despite that, WordPress did not have a BlackBerry application until last summerwhen a beta was released. It was a bit buggy and had some UI issues, but since then updates to the WordPress BlackBerry application have been rapid, developing a useful application for managing your blog. That part is key. WordPress for the BlackBerry is for existing blogs only.  Setting up a blog and refining the design and functionality of an existing blog are beyond the capabilities of this app (that will go without saying for most bloggers, but it’s worthwhile to point out to the newbies).  This app is for managing a blog that you already have, writing new content, editing existing content and reviewing comments.

Before you get started with the app you’ll need to set up your blog (the app supports multiple blogs either self hosted or on WordPress.com) with your log in information in order to download and sync your content changes. That’s how the app works; download content from you webserver, edit or create and then synchronize.

The app has four areas of functionality:

• Posts - blog posts,
• Pages - pages on your WordPress site,
• Comments - reader comments on posts and pages,  and
• Options - application settings.

Posts

The posts section of the app is of course for writing and editing blog posts. By syncing this section (each section of the app can be synchronized independently, which is a benefit for memory and time or causes unnecessary repetition depending on how you work) the number of posts that you pre-set are downloaded from the server. Those posts can then be edited and re-synched.

The landing page displays your recently posted and submitted posts with the title and date. Using the pencil icon at the top of the screen you can open a new post, the folder icon displays drafts, both local (on your BlackBerry or on the server) and when they were last saved. The icon with two arrows refreshes the list of posts.

The edit screen has the same basic content fields as the online version of WordPress: Title, Tags, Categories, Status and Content. The post title is naturally whatever you want to name your post. The tags (words that describe the post) are added as a comma separated list. Existing categories on your blog are imported to the app for selection and new categories can also be created from the app as well. The status refers to the status of the blog post in regards to it’s being posted. With some statuses not yet posted and others posted in different ways I don’t understand the logic behind their order.  Status options are:

• Pending Review – a post that has been uploaded to the web server, marked for review, but has not been published,
• Private - a post that has been uploaded to the web server, published and marked private,
• Draft - a post that has been uploaded to the web server, but not published,
• Published - a post that has been uploaded to the server, published and is currently live, and
• Local Draft – a post that only exists on the BlackBerry app and has not yet been uploaded to the web server.

Finally there is the post content, which is the HTML text for the post. I find it burdensome to write HTML markup on the BlackBerry so I tend to just write posts and then add the markup online later. But you may be more proficient with HTML.

I prefer to do the same with media. In the application image files from your BlackBerry can be inserted into posts and you can add a title, description, caption, etc., but the media can only be positioned at the top or bottom of the post. More precise positioning must be done online.

Once the post is complete it must be submitted to the web server. The status selected for the post determines whether the post is immediately public, is a draft, etc. Personally I prefer to submit posts written on my BlackBerry as a draft so that I can review the spelling, grammar, formatting and media before I promote it to live, but you can push posts live directly from your BlackBerry.

Pages

The pages section of the app functions basicaly the same as the post section. The main difference is that you can set the options for Parent Page, Page Template and Page Order instead of Tags and Categories. Parent Page and Page Template are drop down menues with data pulled from the live site. The Page Order option allows you to determine where in the order of pages on the site the new one will go by using a numbering system. Other than that the structure, submission and content entry functionality is the same.

Comments

Managing comments on a blog seems like a small thing, but it’s critical to maintaining a community and can be rather difficult with a mobile browser. WordPress for BlackBerry app makes managing comments easy allowing you to spam, hold, approve, delete and reply to multiple comments or individually with little time or effort.

Options

The WordPress application doesn’t allow for much customization and the options screen just gives you the ability to change the blog username and password for logging in, the number of posts that are downloaded and an option for uploading images at a smaller size. More options for things like memory usage, default location of media, etc would be nice add-ons in the future, but for now this will do.

Verdict

This application is a must have for any WordPress blogger with a BlackBerry.  It simply provides the primary features that bloggers need for writing and editing content on the go as well as managing their blog’s community.  It is everything that you expect from WordPress, stable, clean user interface, simple to use.  I find it extremely useful for blogging on the go (this post was written in subways during my commute and a parked car waiting for my daughter’s plane to arrive) or capturing an idea before it gets away.  I’ve published a couple posts directly from my BlackBerry, but for the most part I feel that some extra polish is required that this app really can’t do without a more feature rich text editor and finer media placement control.  With that and some memory management this application would be perfect. But even without it I am very pleased with the app.

Review: WordPress for BlackBerry is a post from: Trumblog

I dabble with Lifestreaming, displaying activity from across multiple social media and networking site in one location, and have gone as far as to tweak a plugin to add a bunch of feeds and work just like I wanted, but it takes a lot of maintenance.  Currently my Lifestream page is down again and not displaying anything and I haven’t taken the effort to fix it. Now along comes the Lifestream WordPress plugin which is an easy way to set up a lifestream, appears to be robust and has a nice set of support resources to help maintain it.

Once you have the plugin installed and activated a whole Lifestream section is added to the WordPress right navigation bar.  On the Feeds screen you can enter all your social network activity RSS feeds.  There are 62 options available from Amazon to Yelp and with a few generic feed options for extending it further.  You can also add multiple feeds from each option which is nice if you have more than one Twitter account or something.  From each feeds set up screen there are options to adjust the feed label, icon, whether to group actions from each day and whether to show a full, partial or no excerpt.

The Settings screen lets you set a variety of universal properties such as date and time formatting, number of items in your lifestream, description length, icon styles, creation of a lifestream feed and a lifestream digest post option.

By and large I found this to be pretty easy to use and customize, though my Flickr, Amazon and Netflix feeds all had issues that I am still trying to work out completely. Luckily there are lots of resources for maintenance and support.  The Maintenance/ Debug screen is key for a quick default settings reset, cron timer reset and to check extension file locations.  You can then see all events downloaded by the plugin on the Events screen.  Finally there is an Errors screen, a change log and a link to support forums if that still doesn’t resolve your problems with the plugin.

I haven’t yet decided whether to replace my existing lifestream with this new one or not.  Check out my lifestream that I set up with the plugin or this other example and let me know what you think of the results.  Clearly it is easy to use, has great resources and is more stable, but I’m not crazy about the layout and until I can fully work out the issue with some of the feeds I won’t be fully satisfied.

UPDATE: well I worked out my issues with a few of the feeds and the SimpleLife plugin wasn’t getting support nor could I keep up with the tweaking of it, so I officially switched my lifestream to the Lifestream WordPress plugin.

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Simplicity, Elegance and Customization With The Lifestream WordPress Plugin is a post from: Trumblog

Writing a blog post is only half the battle.  Once it’s published you need to spread the word that it’s done and attract an audience.  I do that through RSS and Twitter and together they do a lot of the heavy lifting.  However that leaves my Facebook friends out, unless  of course we are also connected via Twitter.  In theory I could cross post from Twitter to Facebook, but these are two different audiences and I don’t want to bore my Facebook friends with the links to online marketing and social media articles that my tweet stream is filled with,  not to mention conference backchannel discussions.  I do however want to let my friends on Facebook know about blog posts that I publish, regardless of the topic.

While there are plenty of options for sending a tweet when a new blog post is published, sending an update to Facebook has not been so easy unless you are channeling your tweets to Facebook as well.  However, Steve Atty‘s new Wordbooker plugin and Facebook application (you need set them both up and grant them permissions to have full functionality) cross posting is both simple and has all sorts of great benefits.

Cross Posting Options

Through the settings panel Wordbooker gives you two options for cross posting.  The first is to publish a post, which is the same as sharing your blog post a link on Facebook including the blog post title, excerpt and content image if one exists.  Both the status update and the length of the post excerpt can be easily customized. I love this option and actually wish that more sites and services shared the title excerpt and image, which is so much more engaging than just a link.  This is why it’s the option that I use for sharing my own blog posts on Facebook.

The second option for cross posting is to just post your Facebook  status update with a customizable intro, the blog post title and a link to the post.  I’ve described them as two options, but there is no reason to pick between the two.  You can cross post both ways at once if you like.  There’s also the option to automatically repost the link to Facebook if you update the post 10+ days after you originally posted it.

You think that’s fancy?  Wait there’s more.  You can customize all of those options for any given post and republish any post to Facebook at will.  The plugin also supports posting to multiple Facebook accounts and pages.  Talk about flexibility.

Comment Fetching

All that easy and customizable cross posting to Facebook might have been enough for some people, but Steve Atty didn’t stop there with this plugin.  Just as with any other link that you post to Facebook you are likely to get comments.  You may use a plugin like BackType to aggregate comments from Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, etc. Wordbooker does the same with Facebook.  Wordbooker fetches comments about your link or update on Facebook and adds them to your comments section. Ain’t that sweet?

The Wordbooker WordPress plugin fills a void for extending your blog posts into Facebook and providing plenty of customization and flexibility.  I’d also venture to say that Steve Atty is open to further modification based on the feedback that he’s taken and enhancements that he’s added since launching the plugin just a couple weeks ago.

Wordbooker Simplifies WordPress Facebook Cross Posting is a post from: Trumblog

Tumblr, the microblogging platform that’s a simple tool for quickly posting text, photos, music, video, etc., has never included one surprising feature.  Comments.  I’ve never quite understood this decision that limits the social and interactive feature of a blog.  Sure you can add comments by tweaking the template code and using a third party like Disqus, but there is no commenting included natively with the application.

Tumblr does have allow you to “like” a post (a pretty tepid recommendation if you ask me) and if you add something when reblogging a post that addition will appear in the comment-like list of likes and reblogs following the original post.  Now with the new Ask feature in the Messages section there can be direct reader communication. It works like this.

Once implemented a new page is added to your blog, which you can rename and will need to link to from the main pages of the blog.   From that new page readers can submit questions appear in the messages section of your blog dashboard.  From the messages section you can answer the question that then posts the question and response on your blog.

So, this adds a direct feedback mechanism from Tumblr blog readers to the authors, but it is not commenting and does not facilitate conversation around the blog.  However Tumblr has left out (purposely?) a few features to make this truly useful.  First there is no back and forth.  Reader submits, author replies and that seems to be it.  No response to the reply, no follow-up questions, no “asking” about a question.  This is one and done.  Second, there is no system for notification.  If I ask an amazing question and the author responds in a fascinating way, there is no way for me to know that it has been posted.  Maybe I’m missing something, but that seems critical for this functionality to catch on. Finally, Tumblr should drop the whole “ask” thing right away.  That’s going to be useful for about as long as Twitter’s “What are you doing” and Facebook’s “Thomas is…” prefix both were.  People are going to use this for all kinds of communication not just questions. That is if the incomplete feature set doesn’t get in the way of this catching on.

Tumblr Adds Messages, But Still No Comments is a post from: Trumblog

It’s 2010 and before a weekend of renewal to start off the year right I’m taking a look at the Trumblog’s analytics for 2009 and how it fared.

Benchmarks

In terms of major benchmarking metrics the blog has done well.   Visits are up 318% from 2008 with Absolute Unique Visitors up 377%. Page views are up 481%, pages per visit are up 39% and the bounce rate is down 71% from last year.  Unfortunately the time on the site is down 51%.  This data looks great, but compared with Google Analytics benchmarks I’m still well below the traffic and activity on comparable sites.  There is always room for improvement.

Direct traffic and search engine traffic are both up for the year (21% and 12% respectively) while referring sites are down 49%.  Domestic traffic (US folks visiting my site) increased by 15%.

It’s particularly gratifying to see how traffic picked up at the end of this year when I began blogging more regularly with my Social Media Checklist project.

Top 10 Blog Posts

I’ve compiled 2 lists of top blog posts. The first is the actual top visited posts this year, which includes some written in 2008 and 2007 and gives and advantage to posts written earlier in the year.  I’m surprised, but grateful that some of my posts have had such staying power, not to mention that no one else has written about some of these issues.

1. Fixing Twitter Feed in Google Reader
2. How To Remove Attachments From Emails in Outlook
3. Setting up Your Go Daddy IMAP or POP Email Address on Gmail
4. BlackBerry RSS Feed Readers Reviewed
5. Free Texting With Google Voice
6. How To Walk With Attitude In Any Situation
7. Modified SimpleLife Lifestreaming Plugin
8. New England Patriots 2008 Schedule for MicroSoft Outlook
9. Google Mobile Updater for BlackBerry
10. Dilbert Being a Dick

1. Setting up Your Go Daddy IMAP or POP Email Address on Gmail
2. Free Texting With Google Voice
3. How To Walk With Attitude In Any Situation
4. Top 10+ Albums of 2009
5. Case Study: TSA’s Social Media Damage Control
6. Viigo News: Less Filling, Works Great
7. Social Media Checklist
8. Most Watched YouTube Videos Of 2009
9. Facebook: Where Is My Status Update To Everyone?
10. Updated BlackBerry Google Maps Application: Now With Layers

Top 10 Keyword Searches

I’m glad to see that I didn’t buck the trend for 2009 top search terms on the Trumblog and as on Google, Yahoo! and Bing, Twitter is at the top of the list. I guess that you’d expect that considering what I write about.

1. twitter rss google reader
2. Trumblog
3. twitter feed google reader
4. google reader twitter feed
5. twitter feed in google reader
6. google reader twitter rss
7. twitter rss feed google reader
8. strip attachments from outlook email
9. twitter rss in google reader
10. twitter google reader

My Vistors

Finally, here is a look at the people (or more accurately the browsers and operating systems of those people) who visited TTrumble.com this year. Both Firefox (-42%) and IE (-25%) dropped as a percentage of visitor’s browsers with Safari and Chrome making gains.  Visitors on Windows was down about 15%, while Macintosh (+3%) and iPhone (+11%) visitors were both up.  BlackBerry makes up a measly .51% of visitors.  I don’t see much of interest in connection speeds this year, faster connections made modest gains as you’d expect.

In the next year I hope to continue the upward trend

Trumblog 2009: The Year In Review is a post from: Trumblog

I upgraded to WordPress 2.9 this morning and the water is fine.  Dive in and help yourself to some goodies like:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature - bring back posts and comments that you’ve accidentally deleted
2. Built-in image editor – crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images from within WordPress
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking – update multiple plugins at once (although this seems to be all or nothing, which makes it a lot less useful)
4. Easier video embeds – paste a URL and it automagically turns into the proper embed code
5. Back end upgrades – like post thumbnails, custom page types and theme and plugin editors remembering your location and taking you back to that line after you save

Details can all be found on WordPress.org’s blog.  Now c’mon, upgrade WordPress, update all your plugins, edit some images and embed some video.

After all, it’s the Saturday before Christmas.  What else have you got to do?

WordPress 2.9 is a post from: Trumblog

When Google released Google Reader Bundles last week I suggested that it would be great to have those as HTML in order to add to my blog.  Well, Google didn’t quite do that, but they just rolled out Google Web Elements which is a step in that direction.

Google Web Elements allow you to embed a calendar, conversation, search, maps, news, presentations, spreadsheets and YouTube news channels as a little widget into your webpage with a snippet of HTML and Javascript.  I suspect that there will be more elements and greater customization in the future.

I don’t have an immediate need for any of the widgets, but if I keep posting entries about upcoming events that I may be attending then I’ll add a public calendar and maps to those events.   Maybe post a presentation that I give at one of them, add a conversation about the topic.  I’m on a roll…

Google Web Elements, New Widgets For Your Website is a post from: Trumblog

Google Reader added a new tool that allows the creation of sets of RSS feeds that can be shared with friends and used to discover new feeds around topics that you are interested in.  The sets are called Bundles and they are very easy to make.

To get to the Feed Bundles from within Google Reader click on Browse for Stuff, which is the last item under the Home tab.

This opens the Discover and search for feeds menu from which you can either select from hundreds of pre-existing bundles (currently 449) that Google has compiled, or you can create your own.

Creating your own bundles to share is easy, just drag feeds from the list of feeds on the left that you are subscribed to into the bundle then give give the bundle a name and description.

Google makes a nice little Google Reader Bundle button with your profile picture, name, description and expandable list of feeds, but unfortunately it’s not available as HTML for blog bling.  It’s only visible within Google Reader.

When people click through to your bundle it will display posts from the set of feeds in chronological order.

Bundles are a nice feature for sharing RSS feeds, supporting community, and promoting Google Reader, but they need a little help.  I’d love that button for my blog that people can access, which would also encourage use of Google Reader, but that’s not available as of yet.  Hopefully this is just an initial stab at things and more features and support will be coming over the next few months.

Share Sets of RSS Feeds With Google Reader Bundles is a post from: Trumblog

Monday Google published two new applications that take advantage of Google Latitude.  The first is a widget that allows you to show your location on your blog. I’ve currently got it added to the right column of my blog, but I don’t think that it fits the blog layout and probably won’t last. I’ve placed it on my About page if you want to see it in action.  The second is the option of sharing your location in Gmail Chat.  Both applications require you to be signed up for Google Latitude, natch, and wave some privacy restrictions since you are broadcasting your physical location.  You can limit the location shown to city-level only as opposed to best available location, which provides a balance of information and privacy that I’m happy with.

The widget is a little HTML code that you can add to your blog and displays a Google Map with your location on it.  I needed to tweak the sizing to fit in my WordPress blog template, but it seems to work well.  One issue that the less privacy concerned among us should be aware of is that the widget can be easily copied from your blog and therefore used by someone else to keep tabs on you.  If at some point you want to not be found using the widget then you must disable the widget from the Google Public Location Badge web page.  Deleting the code from your blog does just removes one instance of where it is used, and does not end having the data broadcast and displayed somewhere else.

I can certainly see the potential for Google Latitude and these widgets are still only scratching the surface of its utility.  More value will need to be shown for this application to make the jump to higher registration that will make even more useful applications possible creating the increasing user base fueling valuable application feedback loop that Google is hoping for.  All that said, the widget is what got me to sign up.

Google Latitude Blog Bling is a post from: Trumblog