Blog Drive-Bys for 2007-07-28
Commenters are my first priority right now, so make sure you comment on an article every now and then. Enjoy todays…
After reading Benedict Herold's review of autocasting services at TechCorner, I'm left wondering why I haven't seen this on any blogs I've been "driving by". Having a text-to-speech service for blog articles seems like an interesting addition. It would certainly help people who have poor eyesight. I think I'm going to investigate this further.
I had to do a double-take when I looked at the photo that Steve of cymru66 put up. Look closely. Most of the red dragon is made up of flowers. I'm curious as to the size of it, but I have no eye for such things. It could be small or it could be huge.
Maybe it's not his blog, but he contributes to it. Ahbinav Sood, one of my guest blog authors, posted some funny baby pictures (twice!) at Funny Guy's Blog. Maybe Pankaj Sood is a brother or a cousin?
I usually ignore the daily style of memes, but Gabrielle's picture of a handbag at a metamorphoself of gabrielle, made with denim and two old long play albums (you know, the kind we had before CDs) made me stop, look and read. She didn't mention the cost and whether they were old, thick kind of record albums or the not quite as old, thinner kind. My bet is that it's the newer kind. The bag would probably break the first time it was dropped if the old kind was used.
Fong at Blog Gigs doesn't appear to give himself enough credit for the writing that he does on his blog. I found his article on three different kinds of bloggers to be interesting. I think I'm one of the third kind, except that I don't care what the first and second kind do. I try to be as original as I can be.
I didn't upload my robots.txt file until after I read the SEO article at Ask Apache. The header trick by itself was worth the visit. I can't wait to see the duplicate content disappear from Google's search engine listings (fingers crossed).
I really have to remember the prank I just watched at Geeks Are Sexy. Mentos and Coke. I think I would die laughing as soon as the soda started shooting out.
Hans wrote a very interesting article (I said article, Hans, not post) containing "8 Powerful Ways To Add Value To Your Blog" at Blogosquare. I think I'm only in one bad spot on that list. I write too much.
Gerri at Absolutely True tells us that two TV stations are going to get some "questionable" call letters for station identification. I don't know about you, but I'd like an audio copy of any broadcast from either of them that has an announcer saying those call letters. I can picture myself having a heck of a belly laugh.
Scott at Savvy Affiliate examines what to do after the next Google PageRank update. That update is coming real soon. The graph he posted may or may not be indicative of page rank updates but it does indicate there are more searches for the term.
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Thanks for the plug mate. looks like we are almost one of a kind, though you seem to be doing very nicely.
Thanks for the mention RT. I'm hoping to grab your podcast feed soon
[...] response to RT Cunningham's most recent Blog Drive-By where he was curious to find out the size of the red dragon, I decided to post another photo which [...]
Thanks for the drive-by! Just posted another photo which will hopefully put some perspective on the size of the dragon…
Appreciate the comment,
–Steve
Thanks for the mention (of The Funny Guy's Blog )RT.
when I am bored by the other chores I indulge in. Recently I decided to pop it up a little! And thus updated its template and layout. Pankaj Sood is a very very good friend of mine (almost like my brother!) and it was basically his idea to get some funny baby pictures because they are the cutest of all and it especially can bring lots of girls to the blog 
hha.. We were jus' playin' with ideas, anyway. And that twice posting was a blogger-error, its set all right now 
The Funny Guy's Blog is actually one of my blogs that is up there, more for entertaining myself than the rest
Love and Peace.
Ahem ….
You clearly weren't looking too closely when you drove by my Blog yesterday RT ….
Talkr.com do this (blog to speech) and I have it installed .. it's good .. especially once you become used to the accent. Every time I post to my blog it is automatically taken from the rss feed and converted into a mp3 file linked to from right under the post
Here's an example: the spoken version of the article I wrote about your logo contest:
http://www.talkr.com/app/fetch.app?feed_id=29286&perma_link=http://freedomforall.net/logo-designs-for-untwistedvortexcom/
Like most surfers, I just scan articles for the relative content. I didn't even notice the "listen.." part of each post. I have to say, I like the other service better. Talkr is fine, but a little hard to get around their site. Odiogo's embedded player is nice too. I don't like Quicktime at all.
I'm considering adding audio to my articles, but I haven't made up my mind about it. Perhaps I'll write an article about it and ask questions… I don't know about that yet.
I'll check out the otherone. I frickin hate quicktime lol
I'd suggest doing it – especially if the other site works well. I'm, well, busy. By listening to long posts on weblogs I can continue whatever else Im using the PC for. It's like having a mini-"radio my world".
Imagine: If lots of weblogs I read were on the same talking service and that service allowed me to "turn on and tune in" to my own spoken rss feed of the weblogs I like.
Another enhancement: Weblogers who did not like the voice of the automated system could even record their own MP3's reading their piece and upload them, which would be more interesting and less monotonous. Suddenly we'd be "real people" too. The site could be waiting for their upload and know which post having received a ping from the blogging software.
Wow ! all of a sudden I can do justice to the writing of my colleague webloggers and do justice to the other things I need to do. I can listen to a hundred posts a day and get my own stuff done.
I can't read that many. I don't have the time to commit. But I hate the falsity of mainstream media and if I could create my own "radio" feed from the writers out here in the real world …
I'd be happy. So pick the best service get active and get other webloggers to do so and we could help shape a service that would revolutionise our reading and our readership.
I'd say if that came off weblogging could end up quickly having more listeners than readers and suddenly becoming a mainstream media for the general public. There's ad revenue there too to pay for servers and for popular writing/listening content.
I have a new thing called "Haute Secure" and every time I go too your blog it says alexa.com is trying too put malware on me. I go to a lot of blogs you recommenced and I do not have any problems. Just thought I would let you know.
Trust me. The only thing "Alexa" on my site is the stats in the footer. I use AVG Anti-Spyware that's automatically updated daily and it detects nothing. I'm not familiar with Haute Secure, but I assure it's a false positive. Their software is still beta.
I just removed it anyway. I don't want to give the false impression of having malware on my site.
I installed it and checked the site with Internet Explorer. It blocked FeedBurner (which provide feeds) and Google Syndication (the ad server). I'm not surprised it would identify Alexa. That's way too strict in my opinion.
Seems that this software uses, to a great extent, white and blacklists for its blocking. I wonder how the lists get constructed and/or where they're purchased from. Supposedly, this product was created by former Microsoft Security Engineers. Now that makes me feel secure.
I agree with Mike On Ads – good idea, bad implementation. I'll stick with Spybot S&D and Firefox to protect my Windows machine from phishing, etc for now thanks.
I wonder if there's something installed on our work computers that works like this, as I cannot get to your site from there – IE6 tries but fails and the CPU usage shoots through the roof. I'll have to try with Portable Firefox.