Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A Blatant and Probably Useless Plug

My topic for the day is a subject that may sound a little sticky.  It is called Glue, and it has a plugin for Firefox based browsers (my favorite is Flock) that can connect you to other web surfers in new ways.

At its core, Glue invades your privacy by monitoring your activity on certain websites and allowing you to show your enthusiasm for different noun-based objects (people, places, or things).  That alone is not all that great, and has been most of my experience so far.

What makes it better is the networking capability it has.  You can instantly add other glue users to follow from your Facebook friends and those you follow on Twitter, in addition to following other Glue users that show up in the Glue Bar when you visit a site monitored by Glue.  Once you happen across more people, you can comment on the comments they have left, see what they like or where they have been.

I consider myself lucky to know a few BIG movie buffs, and would love for them to start using Glue to show me which ones they like or dislike by slapping a link to their review of said movie into the "2 cents" Glue comment section.  That might also promote more reading of their reviews. Ha!

I have only done a little bit of this so far, and most of it has been on Yelp, recommending local restaurants.  I look forward to doing more, and seeing what my friends can do to tell me about what they like, whether it is books, movies, movie stars, music, recording artists, gadgets, restaurants, stocks, TV shows, or wine.

Now if only I could motivate them a bit more...
Blogged with the Flock Browser

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

New Blog Features for kEnny!

Part of what keeps me active on this blog, is a desire to understand how to appply new and nifty applications and gadgets.  Whenever I hear of new features or hacks being made available for my favorite sites and tools, I'm all over it.  Almost every gadget in this blog's sidebar is a result of that pursuit.  To that end, I'm officially introducing two new features to my blog today.

The first can be seen at the top of the main column, where you should see "Click here to leave your answers!"  This is a Wall gadget from Google Friend Connect.  This is not my first time using gadgets from Friend Connect, but it is the first time I have put something interactive like this on my own blog.  It is there for whatever you would like to use it for.  If you would like to tell me how super green my blog is, or how i could do something to make it easier to read, or if you want to ask a question for me to answer in a new blog post, go right ahead!

The other new gadget is my label cloud in the sidebar.  I've been looking for something that makes better use of the humongous amount of space taken up by Blogger's default label list.  You can find tag clouds all over the web, but it is near to impossible to find one that works with Blogger's Labels.  I found one, and it is fairly easy to implement.  Let me know if you want the details.
Blogged with the Flock Browser