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DE-LEAU.COM - Jaargang 10
The end of this weblog
1 maart 2006
I decided to give the "stuff to put on your website" its own domain, so its easier to quickly jump to there. I installed Wordpress and converted these postings, see aweblog.net for the new weblog!
Kubrickr
26 februari 2006
With Red Alt - Kubrickr you can very quickly replace the giant blue blob at the top a wordpress blog with a flickr photograph.
LinkBlox
26 februari 2006
The LinkBlox is a very small handy link box, maybe for in your sidebar with tabs and links and uh... saves you a lot of space.

Very good idea actually, i think i will add it to my main blog and create a small /start linkblox.

Mood Smilies
26 februari 2006
Some posts ago i blogged about imood and unkymoods. Unkymoods seems te have dissapeared but here is another alternative: on moodsmilies.com you can let the world know how you feel on your website via the same principle as imood.com.

Check it out there are some great animated smilies and you can a complete moodbox
Visitorville 3d web statistics
9 februari 2006
Send via SMSBlogThis! blogspotInit();
Holy cow, this is interesting! On visitorville you can download the most advanced statistics system i have ever seen. You can watch the amount of visitors as 3d persons walking around, you can then chat with them, see visitors coming from special places e.g. google arrive in busses, be alerted when special visitors arrive. So really experience you webstats as if it were a 3d world with visitors walking between your webpages !!

Please visit the website for all the features and pictures.

This is not your typical free stuff but if i would work at a company doing webstuff i would buy it (starting from 15 dollar a month) and probably stay before the screen all day watching my visitors come in in 3d, really amazing smart to invent this.

Watch some movies too see it.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usFree Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us


how much is your weblog worth?
23 januari 2006


My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?

Your favorite movies at IMDB
22 januari 2006
When you run your personal weblog you probably have your list of "your books", "your music", "your pictures", "your weblog friends" and so on.

Ofcourse the "your movies" service could be delivered by no other than imdb, at least, i wouldnt know any other site.

The (start of) my personal top 1000 movies of all time is here. I must say that i havent found a way to publish them directly on a site without screen scraping the content of this page. But ofcourse you could just place a link on your weblog to "my movies" and create a nice button for it.
Sell your knowledge with Nuvvo
22 januari 2006
When you run your weblog or website, chances are you touch specific topics where your visitors keep coming back for. There is a chance you could present the knowledge you present on your site in the form of a course and ofcourse offer them for free or for a fee.

On NUVVO you can create courses for free.

Nuvvo is your way to teach on the web. Everyone knows a little bit about something, and this free, AJAX-enhanced eLearning web service is designed to bring out the teacher in all of us. Sign up and build a course in minutes; advertise your course on our eLearning Market to get the word out. Get teaching with Nuvvo, Web 2.0's answer to eLearning.
Get a Unique ESBN for your webpublication
22 januari 2006
Just like the ISBN numbers for books, the ESBN registers numbers for online publications. Get an account and start tagging your weblogs and websites!

WHAT CAN YOU TAG WITH AN ESBN?

Blogs: Simply copy and paste your blog context into our Firefox Extension or portal and immediately receive an ESBN ID.

Digital Assets: Simply upload your document into our Firefox Extension or portal and immediately receive an ESBN ID. Any digital document will work including: Word, Excel, Powerpoint/Keynote, E-Book, Podcasts, Video, PDF, XML, Images, Source Code, etc.

Web Sites: Simply zip up your site and upload it with our Firefox Extension or portal and immediately receive an ESBN ID.

This is the number i generated for the complete content under this weblog:


ESBN: 82900-060122-746132-53
Document Name: LEAU.NET
Document Description: LEAU.NET - A Weblog for those without a plan
Author: Edward de Leau
Publisher: Edward de Leau
Licensee Name: Edward de Leau
Licensee Email: edward@de-leau.com
Reference URL: http://leau.net
Feed2PodCast
22 januari 2006
The Feed2Podcast engine instantly turns your blog's RSS feed into a Podcast.

Ofcourse by using voice technology, i wonder how it will transform my partly dutch RSS feed in a PodCast :









Anyway, pretty cool, i now have a podcast for my weblog and effectively every existing RSS feed is now automatically a PodCast!
Chatango
11 januari 2006
Put free live chat on your weblog or webpage with Chatango, its a little chatbox ofcourse. But the nice thing: you can place buttons e.g. under your e-mail or forum postings which point directly to your chatroom so people can chat with you any time.

Ofcourse you will not always present on your page so you either can be there at regular times or download the messagecatcher to stay online for instant messages.




get it here

CustomizeGoogle: Googling Just Got Better -- Firefox Extension
10 januari 2006
Library thing
9 januari 2006
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On librarything you can catalog your books. The nice thing is that you can see who else owns the same titles and get a real cozy community feeling and... you can place a bloglet on your website about your recent additions or random books:

ROR
22 december 2005
ROR - Resources of a Resource

What is ROR? ROR is a rapidly growing XML format for describing your website in a generic fashion, so that search engines can find and discover information more easily. By default ROR information is stored in a ROR file called ror.xml placed in your website's main directory (the location and name of the file can also be documented with a link tag in your main page). ROR is a bit like a website business card. And that card can contain as much information as you want about your website (contact, address, feeds, articles, products, discounts, images, events, etc). You can even provide reviews of other websites.
Dynamically place thumbshots next to links
5 december 2005
One picture says more than 1000 words!

It gives a much better clickthrough and it is much clearer for users when there is a little screenshot of the website. E.g. when you have a linkdirectory or even a linklog it is worth accompanying some of them with a thumbshot.

Ofcourse you could create your own screenshot, resize it, upload it and then show it but, as always, by thinking component based you will build your site the most efficient.

example:

LEAU.NET a cool weblog
google!

Get the code at thumbshots.org. What are Thumbshots thumbnails?
Add a Tagboard / Shoutbox
1 december 2005
A tagboard is a great way to interact in a fun and informal way with your web site guests. You can leave short bits of news or greetings, and ask your visitors to respond. Your visitors can also easily interact with one another, thus forming a sense of community. If you want to keep visitors coming back to your site, and want your site to seem open and friendly, try a free tag board and see if it helps!

There are zillion of free tagboards, tag-board.com, myshoutbox, oggix, tag-world, and many many more.
LifeStatus icon
1 december 2005
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The LifeStatus icon on your home page is a convenient way of informing friends, colleagues, and associates of your current status. At a glance, they will be able to tell that you're still alive and online, even though you may not have corresponded with them lately, or that you are away from your computer and unable to respond to their messages.

The basic LifeStatus account includes a Web page icon, similar to those shown shown to the right (other styles are also available), along with a status page that shows your login history. This basic account is available without cost - click the "Create Account" link to the left to get started.

Additional services, including the capability to send messages in the event that you have been unable to login for a predetermined number of days, are currently under development.

This is really great, i have been thinking of such a service for a long time!

the default icon:




the mini icon:




"steal this button" style:




GET IT HERE
TagCloud
29 november 2005
with tagcloud you can analyze RSS feeds (e.g. your own) and show the most common words inside it as uhm "a cloud", i see them appear more and more on all kinds of weblogs.

You can also combine several feeds e.g. from your favourite weblogs and sites and display the keywords as a cloud so you can easily determine what's hot.

Horoscope on your website
29 november 2005
Personally i think it is strange that every horoscope (the day and week predictions) predict something else. When you search in Google for horoscopes you get millions of horoscopes and each and every one of them predicts somethings different. So... i don't think it is possible to predict the future from horoscopes But... i must admit there is 1 horoscope which somehow is always right for me, if it says i am going on vacation i really am, if it says i have a deadline i really have. This is the horoscope in the back of the tv magazine "Tros Kompas" and is made by Josien Vos. But i must say it is never correct for e.g. my wife, somehow it is only correct for me. I wonder if someone could set up a website where visitors can give a prediction score for the horoscope afterwards so we can see if any one if them somehow gets a much higher score... anyway since it somehow attracts many people it is an idea to place an horoscope on your website, maybe your personal or maybe even a seperate page for your visitors or next to each user profile, visitors will come back to check their horoscope.

There are zillions of website who offer horoscopes for your website so i just pick some out of the list, if you really can recommend one then please add it in the comments and i will add it to the list, notice that it should be possible to include it in a personal website and it should be free.

1. astro.technetium.be allows you to place a horoscope on your website so you can see every day how lucky you (or others) will be in happyness, love and finance, it are nice indicators:

Tweelingen

21 mei - 21 juni

Dagelijkse horoscoop Tweelingen


2. On eatrolog, the largest in Europa with 10.000 readers daily, you get several tools among others the script to place your or others horoscope on your website:

January 1, 2006

Your taste for adventure and ambition this morning will be obvious for a group of friends with whom you have spent the New Year's party.

You will initiate a short trip to the mountains. You are advised to dampen down your enthusiasm and take into account other people's ideas, too. At the same time, you are advised to be more of a diplomat
and avoid controversies with your loved one.



3. On Astrocenter you can also get a free horoscope.

Feeds4All related blogs and feeds
28 november 2005
On feeds4all you can get a handy script which shows the weblogs your readers are also visiting like this:

ImageShack
19 november 2005
On ImageShack you can very easily host your images for use on your website/blog.

You upload your image via a form, via the rightmouse click in your webbrowser on any webpage containing pictures or via a rightmouse click in Windows and in return you get the "string" which you can paste on your website (or forum) to show the picture.

When you register you can even track the pictures you uploaded.

As far as i can "see" most of the world population is using imageshack currently for hosting pictures, its like a virus.
Place a paypal donate button on your website
16 november 2005
Place a paypal donate button on your website, like this one:


If you like this website donate me 1 Euro!


How It Works

PayPal Donations is easy to set-up and use:

1. Log in to your PayPal account
2. Click on the Merchant Tools tab
3. Click on the Donations link
4. Specify the name, amount (optional; if you leave amount blank, your donor will be asked to choose a donation amount), and other details of the donation
5. Add more optional information such as a customized button graphic and the ability to include a note with the donation
6. Click Create Button Now and the Button Factory will generate customized HTML code
7. Paste the HTML code on your website to create your Donate button

When a buyer clicks the Donate button, he will be taken to a secure PayPal payment page, where he can log in to an existing PayPal account or sign up for a new one, and quickly complete the transaction.

IF you are using an ASP.NET site put "validateRequest=false" in the page directive IF you are using encrypted e-mail adress in the code of the button (!)

Frappr
15 november 2005
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Frappr is a concept we have seen before but now combines several options for a very advanced "community guestbook". It lets you create a map of the world for your community where every member can place a tag on the world where he or she lives. Not only that but it also allows your visitors to leave comments and photographs. It currently has more than 1.000.000 members!

Check out our Frappr!

Another service is a little javascript which you can place on your website and which allows you to show a slideshow of all the photographs your visitors left on your website:

(I hope you will leave a photograph on my just created frappr map so the slideshow above shows some more pictures!)

The creaters have also a weblog which you can find here
MapStats
19 oktober 2005
MapStats is the first website statistics analyzer which visualizes the visitors of your website on a world map, using Microsoft VirtualEarth. With MapStats it only takes a single second to see where your visitors are coming from. For a webmaster, this is very valuable information.

MapStats is currently in a testing phase. If you're a webmaster, and interested in testing MapStats, please contact "mapstats@msgweb.nl".
Put the moon on your website!
12 oktober 2005
CURRENT MOON
moon phase info
The Cyborg Name Decoder
11 oktober 2005
Logical Exploration and Assassination Unit

get it HERE
SMS Board
10 oktober 2005
With SMS Board you can place a little box on your website which shows SMS'es people or yourself have SMS'ed to a certain central phonenumber. I used it when i was on vacation in Tenerife and placed the SMS Board on top of my website in this way i could update the content via SMS. Furthermore it´s ofcourse a very cool guestbook.

You can either place an SMS board for yourself, which gives you your private SMS Board Forum (clicking on the communicator on your website will then link through to all the messages ever posted so you can read and responed to them). Obviously there are countless possibilities with this.

You can either place a picture (several available) with the lastest SMS'ed message on your website:



Or a listing of the most recent SMS'es:



Here is the one i have on my personal website, i added instructions under it how people can SMS my website:



  1. dubbelklik het board voor alle berichten
  2. SMS mij op : +31(0)653761000
  3. SMS mijn board op: +31(0)25025025,
    met : "deleau" (spatie) "bericht"


Get it HERE
Blogshares
4 oktober 2005
Via Listed on BlogShares you can see what your weblog is worth compared to other weblogs.

The interesting thing is that weblogs are treated like companies with shares. Based on outgoing and incoming links your value is estimated and people can buy shares for your weblog or sell them. Ofcourse a large community is build around blogshares.

When you register you weblog you get a startcapital for $500,- by which you buy or sell shares for weblogs and to build a portfolio.

the truth laid bear weblog ecosystem
3 oktober 2005
See where you score in the TTLB Ecosystem and grab the outcome to place it on your weblog:

Clustrmaps - an Earth Visitor Counter!
3 oktober 2005
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Clustermaps (the continuation of the older hitmaps) is a very interesting service, it shows you a little world map where you can see where your vistors came from, but this is not all!

They provide you with a link to a thumbnail map, like the one you see under here; when it loads, it increments a counter and shows the locations of all the visitors to your page, cumulatively (even for ridiculously large numbers);

Locations of visitors to this page

But...clicking on it zooms in to a larger world map display, and (optionally) lets you zoom in on the different continents !!



For under 1000 visitors a day the service is completely free.

Get it HERE
Ticket Factory
30 september 2005
On Ticket Factory you can create little (or larger) graphical scripted count-down-ers for your website.

Via a nice wizard, where you can choose the background and the slider you can design your own counter e.g.:



or



Get it HERE
Publish a KLIP!
25 september 2005
Serence´s Klips let you publish a klip which users can view in their klipfolio for free! KlipFolio is the smallest RSS Reader to day.

In the klipfarm you can find thousands of other sites who, just like RSS or ATOM, publish KLIPs.

After you have created your klip as a Klip Provider, you can publish it and get a button like this one:


Get the Klip for this site

By simply cliking this button (click it!) users can add the KLIP to their Portfolio Manager to stay up2date to your site. Ofcourse they need to be KlipFolio users.

They will then see the update to your site in their Portfolio Manager like this:



The Klip itself is a simple XML file, you could just refer it to your existing RSS feed but it enables you also to make a much more complex klip by using JavaScript. When you download the KlipFolio SDK you get a reference in PDF format which explains everything in detail. Interesting ideas on how to evolve your klip are on the KLIP blog and the Serence Forum. You could even check one or more of the 25.000.000 pages in Google on KlipFolio (like doing all kind of fancy php stuff with it).

After your Klip is Live you can follow statistics and see how many people downloaded your klip and are actually using it.

Get it here !
Readspeaker - let your weblog speak to enable it for disabled users
24 september 2005
With Readspeaker you can add a button to your website which lets you website speak.

Readspeaker makes websites talk. It is easy to use and easy to implement. No backend reprogramming required and no plugins or software needed for the visitor.

The Mission of ReadSpeaker is to make the "miracle of the Internet" accessible for dyslexics, people with learning disabilities, low literacy level, people with English as a second language, elderly with impaired vision and others that like to listen as well as read.

These groups represents more than 20% of the population in most European countries and are also an untapped part of the market for online commerce, online banking, etc.
StripGenerator
3 september 2005
StripGenerator, create your own comic strips easily and place them on your website.
Google Logo Maker-Logogle
3 september 2005
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On Google Logo Maker-Logogle you can create a logo like Google uses but then with your own text. It's kinda cool to place this logo then on your search result page or archives listing.

If you dont like Google you can also create Yahoo logo's (or Ferrari, Star War, Harry Potter, Monsters INC, Nintendo)...
Otto's Blinkies
22 augustus 2005
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Otto's blinkies, mood blinkies, mood bears etcetera are very cute pictures you can use on your website for free, they are becoming some kind of hype since i see them everywhere these days. You can use them for your moods, for the days of the week, for buddying and much more. They are great!

get them HERE






Your Google Pagerank Button
27 juli 2005
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On google-pagerank.net you download a button to display your pagerank on your site, like this:


Whats Your Google PageRank?
Daily Zeitgeist from Flickr (beta)
26 juni 2005
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With the Daily Zeitgeist from flickr you can get the latest photos uploaded or a selection you choose yourself. (Flickr is a service where you can upload photographs and order them by tags, it allows you to easily blog pictures and search other photos by tags).



get it here !
Show your mood on your website : Imood and Unkymoods
30 mei 2005
imood has been around for ages. It currently has around 650.000 users. It is a simple system: you determine your mood on the website and the code on your website displays a little icon showing your mood.

The current mood of edelwater at www.imood.com

Imood has grown to a community around your mood, it also has a handy plugin so you can set your mood from your webbrowser and many other community goodies such as buddy lists.

Other sites also show your mood on your website such as Unkymoods which shows your mood on your site with some original artwork.


The weatherpixie and the Stortroopers
30 mei 2005
Maybe you wondered where all these weblogs around the world get this little image "avatar" from that they are showing on their site?
Basically there are 2 different of these very common avatars, which look somewhat alike, the first one is the weatherpixie,
The WeatherPixie is a little graphic that shows a representation of the weather using data reported (mostly) by airports and aerodromes around the world.
As the weather in a particular location changes, the characters clothes will reflect the weather and the graphic will show rain, snow, airborne particles and changes in cloud cover. Daylight, sunset and current moon phase are also displayed.

The WeatherPixie

Get it at the weatherpixie, via a wizard you create the code for your weatherpixie which you then can copy and paste and place on your website.

The other common avatar you see much on the websites around the world is the "trooper", this was once some sort of hype. The original site where you could create these avatars is down unfortunately but the community has created a new avatar creater : avatar creator which is followed by a new site : stortroopers.com.



Get it at stortroopers.com


Texture Library
25 mei 2005
If you need some nice textures for the background on your website there are a zillions of sites which offer them, this one : texture library is one i found today and is VERY good.
The Bitty Browser
25 mei 2005
The bitty browser allows you to include websites or RSS feeds in your webpage in a familiar browser interface. Basically it uses a simple iframe but the effect is stunning.



So e.g. you can include your favorite RSS feeds as seperate iframe bitty browsers as a side panel but you could also promote your own website by sharing the bitty browser with your rss feed to other websites.
Fokke and Sukke on your weblog
24 mei 2005
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The dutch comic strip Fokke & Sukke published some cartoons around the topic weblogs. After many e-mails from webloggers they are offering the content for free to use on your weblog.

Link popularity
7 april 2005
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I tried the link popularity checker on the cqcounter site :

URL: http://leau.net

AllTheWeb: 226
AltaVista: 242
Google/AOL: 6
HotBot/Inktomi: 5
MSN Search: 214
Yahoo: 247

URL: http://www.de-leau.com

AllTheWeb: 4100
AltaVista: 13600
Google/AOL: 169
HotBot/Inktomi: 162
MSN Search: 889
Yahoo: 13600
Link2Blogs
15 februari 2005
Link2Blogs is a free text link exchange system that provides blogs the ability to exchange text links to cross-promote each other. Participating blogs display a small box containing text links in exchange for credits.

Example:



(use the "add blog" to get your own blog link exchange box)
The BlogMap Community
14 februari 2005
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The blogmap community ordens the weblog world by geographic location, you can easily add your location and get a nice picture for your website:

http://www.csthota.com/blogmap/

One nice thing about the site is that you can browse the world by "maps", little red crosses reveal locations where "there is blog". Really great initiative. Another cool thing is that you generate OPML files by "calling the blogmap" by the city and how many miles around you want to scan for active blogs : http://www.csthota.com/blogmap/blogapi.ashx?method=local&place=nijmegen,nl&distance=20


OnlineStatus
22 januari 2005
Online Status Indicator is a service that lets you put a small image on a web page to show if you are online on AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. Use the default icons or create your own status icons. This service is completely free, but donations are gladly accepted.

GET IT HERE : onlinestatus.org
Counters
20 januari 2005
One thing you need on your webpage or weblog are ofcourse the infamous counters. If you run your own webserver or developed your own webapplication you might generate logs and have your own online or offline log analyzing tool but the nice thing about these shared counters is that they often come with community goodies like webrankings or directories of websites that show the counter. For instance the nedstat counter has it's directory of weblogs ranked by amount of visitors.

The dmoz directory holds around 100 free web counters check them out one by one to see which suits you the most One thing you should take in account is to get a account that will last you for the years to come.

There are ofcourse several sites which review the available counters on capabilities you can find some of them here and one of them is the tellertest, for some time now they rank the cqcounter counter as the top-of-the-bill counter.

For me, i stick with the nedstat counter which you can see on the top left. It gives me my stats information for over 9 years now, i like it.


Associate a FavIcon with your site
8 januari 2005
A favicon is a little icon that displays in front of your url (in the browser) when users surf to your website or view your url in their bookmarks: an icon always gets more attention.

First you need an icon. You can either create one yourself (16x16 in size and 16 colours) by using on of the zillions of free icon makers or use an online service e.g. : favicon from pics, with this service you can just point to any image (jpg/gif/png) on one of your offline storage places (your computer) and it automatically transforms it to an favicon.ico. Now you need to FTP this icon to the root of your webdirectory and the users will be able to see the favicon.ico.

If you want to design one pixel by pixel online you can use favicon.co.uk or just steal one from a favicon gallery e.g. MpP's favicon gallery">.

It helps for some situations (e.g. over HTTPS or if your ISP doesnt support favicons OR if you dont like the name "favicon.ico" but want to give it another name OR if you want use to place it in another location than the default root location) to also display the location of your favicon.ico (or another name) in your HTML meta tags like this :

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://leau.net/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="icon" href="https://leau.net/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"/>


The "shortcut icon" tag was used in the beginning but is not conform W3C standards so many websites use "icon" instead. "image/png" would be ok if it was a png (duh).

for more help see
- favicon.com (including a href="http://imageauthor.com/">onsite icon generator)
- MSDN
- wikipedia

Another interesting thing you could do with this is to count the number of requests for the favicon.ico in your website's logfiles.

update : You can also search for 300.000 favicons in the favicon search engine (this one giving also top searches, top rated, 30 random icons, etc...)
Publish your winamp songs on your blog
4 januari 2005
With BlogAmp you download a little file that integrates with your winamp to display a list of the songs you recently and currently played. This plugin ftp's the songs every so often to your webserver where you can display them via a simple javascript tag.

There are many many many other WinAmp Plugins by this time who sort-of do the same thing and many times much more and in every variation you can think of:

TrackUp by Thomas Uebel
CurrentlyHearing 2 by Garrett Murray
Winamp Thingie Now (which also updates your IM status and Forum's sig!) by Dustin Smith
MPHPNow Playing by Mathijs Futselaar
WAPsonic by M-Squad & mad geniuses (which does it for a WAP site...)
Info Sender by Luke Reeves
Winamplive by Adam Niedzwiedzki
AudiStream RC1 by Adam Parker (also publishes on IM's and IRC)
eJukeBox 3 by Dave Dante (which does so much more that it dazzles me)
Trackmonkey by John Doe

Let me know your favorite winamp blogging tool!

GET IT HERE : winamp plugins
Allconsuming.Net : put your read books on your weblog
4 januari 2005
On allconsuming.net (from Erik Benson) you can build YOUR booklist online (including the status and even on which page you are!) and publish it next to your weblog. The website also shows you EVERY hour the most "blogged" books of the moment, so that is always nice to know if you regularly write about books you read AND it shows you a list of "recommended" weblogs of people who read the same books like you, how is that about auto-discovering new blogs for on your blogroll ?

So...you think, he probably makes money by associating all your books with his Amazon Associate ID? Negative, your Amazon Associate ID is part of your profile and used in the list, however if you leave it blank you will support Erik (like i did).

Erik wrote an article on how the webservices work on allconsuming on xml.com, and is also working on improvements on the list, like a recommendation engine for books.

The little line of javascript allows you to set the CSS settings for this list and looks like this (i just put one book in) :


But ofcourse you also can grab your personal book RSS list.

GET IT HERE : allconsuming.net
43 things
4 januari 2005
On 43 things you can build a list of 43 things you want to do in your life and see at the same time how many people want to do exactly the same thing. You can link this list on your weblog or pull the rss feed and use it inside your content.

One nice thing about this site is that it forms communities around goals where you can post comments under your goals and see the other people who have the same goal. But you also get many nice ideas from the lists of other people.

It also lets you post these directly on your weblog if you are using either Blogger, Movable Type, Live Journal or Type Pad !

GET IT HERE : 43 things
Blogroll (ing)
4 januari 2005
Some years ago, the blogroll was invented in weblog country. Since many weblogs auto-form sort-of communities and like to link to "friends", lists to the side of the weblog with other interesting weblogs became to become common. The blogroll is an automated list of your favourite weblogs which you can "stick" to the side of your weblog. I believe blogrolling.com started it and since then it has somewhat become a standard weblog term. Most weblog systems include a "blogroll" system of their own and zillions of utilities have been invented to easy up your blogrolling.

- the blogroll description in Wikipedia
- share your bloglines subscriptions
- commoncraft on blogrolls
- an extra shell around blogrolling which enables you to use it in your browser
- how to create a blogroll using radio's outliner


Blogrolling offers multiple ways to order your blogroll, display, importing of OPML, a 1-click blogrolling applet (so you can instantly add the weblog as you visit it), and much more, you can even find out who blogrolled you! This is what the javascript version looks like (although you can even get it in RSS, OPML or PHP), it also can show you which blogs were updated recently and show a sign next to it.



One nice thing you see often in websites is a service in which they offer 1-click-blogroll-me, like : Blogroll Me! (which would add this site to your blogroll)

GET IT HERE : blogrolling.com
Steal these buttons
4 januari 2005
On 22 oktober 2002 this posting was published on antipixel.com (by Jeremy Hedley) who hates the current RSS buttons and made some of his own. This type of button caused some kind of a hype and ... more than 2 years later, the Internet is covered with zillions of these kind of buttons in all categories you can imagine, from politics to food, and from sports to complete button navigation systems. Most weblogs use it to express some of their personal feelings or software they used to build their weblog.

Some directories with thousands of free buttons:
- Taylor McKnight (3000 buttons to date)
- tbworld (includes PhotoShop Layers for easily creating your own buttons in Adobe PhotoShop, also here)
- Erik Meyer's
- FridgeMagnet
- Amanita
- the "logstraat" steal this button
- Nolageek

and.. you can also create them in CSS 2.0!

A website that allows you to create (simple) buttons online:
Adam kalsey's buttonmaker ( here is the php script to generate them from your own website)

Some example buttons:



please do not link directly to these buttons but just copy them to your own server first (rightclick, save-as), or check one of the online button galleries

There is ONE button you may link directly from this server :

http://leau.net

If you have created some nice buttons to steal yourself feel free to post the link to them in the comments.
Pheedo's SimpleAd Exchange (formerly known as BlogSnob)
3 januari 2005
For some years you have seen these little text-ads from weblogs on many many weblogs. It is actually a simple mini-banner exchange: once someone clicks on a text-ad on your website you earn points which, as a result, shows the text-ad you have created for your weblog on someone else's site (in contrary to the Google text-ads which result in cash ). The nice thing about these text-ads is that they can blend perfectly with your weblogdesign.

It was called "BlogSnob" and was created by Idya Research (which also has a nice xml based database product) and was aquired by "Kalsey Consulting Group" in november 2003 (who also owned the text-ad exchange). The combined network now shows banners on more than 10.000 sites. Adam Kalsey works at Pheedo (weblog and RSS marketing solutions) which leads to... "Pheedo's SimpleAd Exchange" the new name apperently for "BlogSnob" although the name BlogSnob seems to persist. Let's just keep calling it BlogSnob.

Pheedo also has some other weblogproducts : simple ad feed server, where you can earn money if you include ads in your weblog's RSS feeds and simple ad network which is somewhat like the Google Ads. For advertizers Pheedo also offers RSS advertising. It looks like Pheedo is in the middle of weblog for business market.

As with most ad programs the site provides you with "campaign" options so you can have "professional" marketing campaigns, including end-dates and the choice of category.

An example text-ad (which has 2 variations: horizontally and vertically) :



GET IT HERE : Pheedo's SimpleAd Exchange (formerly known as BlogSnob)
Hello w... ebmaster and bloggers!
3 januari 2005
Send via SMSBlogThis! blogspotInit();
This was on my mind for some time: to put all these zillions of things you can put on your weblog or website in a seperate weblog, have fun with these webgoodies!