What Are Your Essential Software Tools?

Essential Software tools



What are your essential software tools? Which applications can you not get by without?

I would like to do a round up of your suggestions and links. Please add your recommendations as a comment or if you have written an article or blog post describing your favorite tools, put the link in a comment. When I do the round up I will link you up with attribution.

Ideally it would be good if you can mention which operating system (Windows, Mac and Linux) and price along with your suggestions, along with why you find the software so useful.

My aim is by this time next week to have compiled a comprehensive list of the best software tools around right now. Think we can manage that?

Add your recommendations and links in the comments. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

5 More Ways to Reward Commenters and Attract More Comments

In my last Community Building WordPress plugins roundup post I mentioned you could encourage more comments to your blog by rewarding them with a top commenters list, in this post I will show you more ways you can attract more comments by rewarding commenters.

  1. Show the commenter’s most recent blog post with the CommentLuv WordPress Plugin. When the visitor adds their comment, the plugin will go to the URL they enter and try to find their feed and extract the title and link of their most recent post. This provides an incentive of a link back to their blog, plus encourages readers to investigate posts they might find interesting too.
  2. Use the Do Follow Plugin For WordPress to remove the “nofollow” attribute from your comments. This means any links in the comments get full search engine recognition. “Nofollow” was intended to stop spam by removing search benefit from links, but it failed to do that and punished honest blog comments at the same time. By removing this attribute you will encourage people to comment in order to get a link back, just be vigilant this doesn’t get abused!

  3. Show off commenter stats with the Comment Info Tip plugin. This plugin shows information about the commenter in a rollover popup box, such as when they commented before, their most recent post, and allows people to become more familiar with each others comments.
  4. Replying to comments is one of the best ways you can encourage more. People like to know you are listening and that they have been heard. If you get many comments, make it easier to reply to them all with the WP Easy Reply plugin. Hitting the link that appears for the blog owner puts each comment since you last commented into your comment box as a quote with the commenter’s name, all you have to do is edit the quotes down to the part you are replying to and add your reply.
  5. If you are handy with your blog database, use this top commenter SQL query and write a post to thank your top commenters of all time!

Can you think of any other ways to thank or reward blog comments? Do you think rewarding commenters leads to more spam? Please add your tips and thoughts in the comments …

How Would You Improve Search?

Google is growing search market share every day. Whatever happens with Yahoo!, to compete the other search engines are going to have to work very hard to catch up, and it is going to take a lot of creative thinking. New and improved algorithms are not going to cut it.

What would you do to grow your search engine if you were Microsoft?

The latest initiative from Microsoft is “Cashback” that you might have heard about recently. I just heard about it today as I have been a bit out of the loop this week. I benefited in this case from hearing all sides and opinions, and was not swayed by the initial negative reactions as I might have been.

Lot’s of people are talking about how Microsoft are “bribing searchers” but paying out either on the publisher or user side is nothing new online, even Google once did what people are describing in Microsoft’s case as “bribes”. As Danny says

for those scoffing at the idea that Microsoft is so “desperate” that it wants to pay searches, let’s not forget that even the Big G was doing it indirectly through affiliates and continues to do it today through its AdSense For Search program.

Paying for searches seems a smart move. Microsoft has money in the bank and a lot to gain or lose. Why not use some of this cash, especially as when moving products they stand to be able to cream some of this cash back off the advertiser?

As I said above, the algorithm, that is the way the search engine works out what to show you, is not the only answer in search, but is what search engines have traditionally shouted loudest about. Google is often talked about in the same breath as their algo, page rank, etc. Consumers just don’t care that much though. If they get results they hope for and expect they are happy. Do they currently? Depends.

Do the searches Danny mentions in his article above ans you can see the disappointment potential. Search engines need to be smarter in identifying what kind of information is required. If someone is early in the buying cycle, sort of wondering what a “DVD recorder” even is, they might want a Wikipedia page explaining in an over view form about the product and category. On the other hand, if you want to buy a DVD recorder you might search using specifics such as “buy”, “shop”, “store”, “cheap”. Somewhere in the middle there are “reviews” and “advice”, there are a lot of models and features out there, you don’t want to buy the wrong item or get ripped off. Each search and user will have different requirements.

Mahalo aims to do this using humans crafting pages. Much has been said for and against but right now it seems they have a shot no less than the others. Scale and implementation worries aside, perhaps a human being can work out what a searcher is looking for better than a computer? Try it for yourself, I don’t think they are far off, for this search at least.

DVD Burner - Mahalo

So what would you do if you were Microsoft? Is there any beating Google now? Is search even broken in your view? Please share your thoughts in the comments …

The Dream of One Online Identity

Gravatar - Globally Recognized AvatarsGravatar is the leading provider of cross-site avatars. I can’t think of a single service that is integrated into more community sites for the visual representation of a user.

If you sign up to the service you can have your picture associated with your email address. Comment on a blog that uses Gravatars, or sign up to any other community that uses them and you can have your avatar show up, allowing a consistency of identity for yourself and a more inviting community for the site owner.

All great and useful, but that is all the service does.

Ideally, it would be a true online identity. The beginnings of this would be easy, just add OpenID support, something they can do, keeping in mind Automattic who owns both Gravatar and WordPress has added OpenID to their WordPress.com service.

Gravatar + OpenID would be a single identity both in authentication and visual sense.

OpenSocial - Google CodeIntegrate with WordPress.com and they could build in a public profile. Add in friend/buddy support and you have a social network, and through open API plugins could be built that extend this network presentation across any site. With Googles latest developments, such as Open Social, they wouldn’t have to even build most of it.

OK, I have picked on Gravatar here. Truthfully, I wish one of the many services I use would take this kind of idea and run with it. Twitter would work, even Flickr (although they do have things to worry about with the off and on Microsoft dealings). Perhaps Google is best place to do this, especially as they will want to make Microsoft investment in Facebook moot.

One issue I guess is portability of your data means you have even less say in where it appears. Privacy issue?

What do you think? A dream, a likely scenario or one step too far? Please add your thoughts in the comments

PicApp – Free Professional Stock Images?

Cannes: Blindness - Premiere
Image details: Cannes: Blindness – Premiere served by picapp.com

If you run a website that needs lots of stock photography, particularly pictures of celebrities, it can get very expensive. It means licensing photographs or waiting until you get a cease and desist legal threat from the owner. PicApp aims to solve this problem by making stock photographs free.

Registration is free and not actually necessary, but I would recommend you do.

What’s the catch? You don’t get a clean image, the photograph has some “stuff” along with it that actually pays for the use of the photograph. You have to decide if this is a good trade off yourself. Take a look at the example top left of this page to see what you think.

First you get the dashboard where you can search for “creative” or “editorial” pictures. Creative pictures are the “man in suit” variety, while editorial are pictures from the news, like celebrities. It’s the latter that can really hurt the old bank balance and therefore where the main interest lies.

PicApp - the best content for the best publishers

Once you have your results you can take a closer look at the images that came back
PicApp - natalie portman images

Selecting a particular image allows you to embed, in a manner a lot like Flickr or YouTube

PicApp - Image of Cannes: Blindness - Premiere

Verdict

I absolutely would NOT use this service for “creative” images. The prices at istockphoto are so low I would much prefer an image without any cruft around it. The one role I see this playing is in the celebrity field. Searching for “Natalie Portman” on stock sites either comes back with nothing or pricey. Hopefully the in-your-face aspect of the service will be worked on so the frame doesn’t detract so much from the picture, it’s early days and I know they are listening to feedback.

One element that might interest you though is in future publishers will be able to share in the proceeds. As a way to make some side money while adding some colour and interest to our pages, this could be an interesting service to watch.

Google Paranoia and the Tin Foil Hat Club

How many times have you seen on forums

“Don’t use the Google toolbar!”

“I don’t use analytics, I don’t want Google knowing what I am up to”

“Guess I can’t use FeedBurner now”

“There is no way I am getting a Reader account”

… and so on.

What is it with all the Google Paranoia?

These are otherwise sane webmasters not wanting to use services because Google might use their data. What do they think Google is going to do with it?

Now if we are talking about spammers, well they have good reason to not want Google to see their data. One click and their business could be impacted. For the rest of us, surely we want Google to see our stuff?

What is the biggest issue people have with Google? Not giving our sites enough credit. What could help Google see we have quality sites? All that analytics and feed data!

If Google sees that this blog has so many subscribers, so many get the feed via email and so many sites send traffic, that should put us above the spammer with the tricked and mislead traffic, right? We should rank higher than the sites with bought links that never get clicked and the machine-made content that gets no subscribers.

So for me, bring it on! Use everything, I have nothing to hide!

Is there something I am missing?

Top 5 Community Building WordPress Plugins

When we launch a blog, as well as getting people to read what we have to say, we are most of us looking to build a sense of community. While what we say has a big effect, how the blog works can also make a difference. Thankfully WordPress users have a good set of plugins to help:

  1. Make it easier to subscribe or share your blog with Add to Any
    This provides dropdowns for social bookmarking sites or feed reading services, making it totally easy for the reader to make a note of your location and keep coming back for more.
  2. Top Commenters plugin and widget will reward your top commenters with a link back. Consider the link a bit of public recognition and a small incentive. Plus, you know how competitive people can be, it’s also kind of a high score table!
  3. Make your comment area friendly with smiling faces – Add Gravatars with this easy plugin. Gravatars are “globally recognised avatars”. Basically anyone can set up a Gravatar picture centrally and any website that supports them will show your face whenever they are available, using your email address as a key. Seeing recognisable faces along with comments really helps build community.
  4. Fire off a thank-you email to new commenters using Comment relish. We all like to feel valued, this email can  be a nice touch, and also provides the opportunity to point out your feed or useful introductory content they might have missed.
  5. An essential for creating conversation, bring commenters back with Subscribe to Comments. Just like with popular forum software, this will notify you when someone replies to your message, keeping the conversation flowing.

Have you any suggestions for great community building WordPress plugins? Please share your faves in the comments …

Is Web2.0 Culture Risking Democracy?

Over the weekend I had an opportunity to discuss all things internet with people with varying backgrounds and perspectives. Everyone there was a blogger, but with their own approach and profession, everything from health, business and music to journalism.

A straw poll showed hardly a hand full of people regularly read a newspaper or TV news. Very few read online newspapers routinely, choosing instead to get the information they were interested in from their own sources, such as blogs and Digg.

This is great news for those of us with a vested interest in social media, but what are the negative side effects?

We are increasingly in a self-service and self serving culture. I want, I need, is the order of the day. We don’t want to be told, just consume on our own terms.

Traditionally we have been told what was the news of the day. Told what is important via headlines and front page stories. Journalism was an important check against our elected leaders straying from the path. If we in the mainstream are all tracking the latest Britney/Hilton/Miley Cyrus story and overlooking anything dull or downer like politics, could democracy suffer?

There will always be individuals who hold our politicians accountable, but who will speak for and defend them? As one person pointed out, we say we dislike lawyers and journalists, but when things go bad these are the people we often need most.

You could say Digg and such like are the new newspapers, but as someone who works in social media I know how easy these things can be gamed to promote or bury a story. Also there are only so many times these sites can cry wolf before we ignore those too. We need the journalistic rigor and fact checking (even if this has been failing lately).

What do you think? Am I being overly pessimistic? How will journalism evolve to fit into a web2.0 world?

Imagining the Ultimate Computer for Travellers

Asus EepcI have mentioned my interest in the Asus Eepc before. It seems it is almost the perfect machine for traveling, but not quite.

My current trip to the USA has made me think about the topic again. It seems all the needs are addressed in different devices, why isn’t there one machine that does it all?

What do I need for travel?

Other requirements exist but could probably live without them.

Blackberries are all the rage, often have qwerty keyboards, but software support isn’t quite what you could get with a real desktop operating system.

The iPhone is almost there, but no 3g (yet) and I have doubts that you could do real work on the small screen, even with the funky interface. Apples lock down on apps is a problem too. It seems you still can’t edit documents locally.

Nokias little tablet seemed promising, with linux and a nice wide screen, but was restricted to Wifi and fiddly to operate.

Gadgetry

My old HTC based PDA was almost there but it also had a tiny screen, and crashed a lot due to running pocket pc operating system. The little keyboard was surprisingly good for typing with though once you got used to it, and it could run Skype for both voice chat and text.

Asus seems have the best solution. They have even announced a new model to their tiny notebook with 1024x wide screen. Paired with a bluetooth 3g phone (ok, cheating a little), is this the ultimate traveling machine? Seems to tick all the appropriate boxes.