Today’s highlighted design is….North X East. The owner of NxE, Collis Ta’eed, is obviously a designer. Take a look at the current design (as of July 6, 2007….who knows? It could change again. ). It’s not your ordinary blog design. It’s pretty unique. Then there was the old, design (which was really cool as well). Collis has even said “I admit I do tend to dislike my own old designs Actually you’ll laugh to hear that I’ve already started to dislike this one, but this time I’m going to ignore myself!”. That’s how I feel about my designs as well. I sort of….get bored with them after awhile. When you know how to design, you tend to want to design more often than you get a chance to, and you get tired of your blog’s same old design. Read the rest of this entry »

RSS is one of the greatest web technologies invented in the last ten years. It enables us to keep up with our favorite sites, listen to podcasts, and get niche news easily. Forget annoying old newsletters! Who needs them when you can just open your RSS reader and skim through headlines, looking for things of interest?

Ah, the RSS reader. Like with web browsers and email clients, everyone has a different preference. Some like desktop programs, while others like web-based apps. There’s no shortage of choices. You have Feedreader, Netvibes, Bloglines, etc. I don’t like any of the choices. I’m a big fan of RSS, but I’ve never really liked any RSS reader other than Firefox’s Live Bookmarks feature. Recently I’ve had two problems. Number one, my feed collection outgrew Live Bookmarks. Number two, I’ve often wanted to read my RSS feeds on other computers.

What did I do? I threw together my own web-based RSS reader. I call it MyNT (say “Mint”), which is short for My NTugo. It’s a little innovative, as I added a few…different features to it.

My favorite feature: You can read your RSS feeds without logging in at all (just go to http://my.ntugo.com/yourusername.html). Just bookmark that URL and you can check your feeds with a single click (let’s see Bloglines do that).

Take a look at MyNT, you may like it. I can’t guarantee everyone will like MyNT. After all, I made it mainly for myself (and anyone who thinks that most feed readers are too bloated). I wanted to capture the simplicity of Live Bookmarks in a different form, and I think I did a pretty good job at it.

Well, MyNT’s URL is http://my.ntugo.com, and you can read the official press-release-sort-of-thing here.

Are you a blogger? Whether you’re new to blogging, or you’ve been blogging for years, you should take a look at North X East. Once or twice a week, a nice informative article is posted, going in-depth on a blogging-related topic.

I often find myself waiting anxiously for another article to be posted (much like I do with Smashing Magazine).

So, which is the better blogging software? Wordpress or Movable Type?

Movable Type is one of the older blogging packages. Once they were the cutting edge, and the most popular blogging tool. Nowadays, that title has been given to Wordpress.

Wordpress, though in development back in 2001, is officially successor to the old B2 blogging script. I don’t believe they share any code, though. Currently Wordpress is the most popular blogging tool, thanks to it’s power, flexibility, and ease of use.

Can Movable Type still compete with Wordpress? Let’s see. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to BlogBuzz! I’ve decided to start doing some speedlinking on Webmaster-Source now and then, so…

• iPhone Launched, 500,000 sold. Despite constant jabs about it not being a total hit, selling out like the Wii or iPod Nano, Apple’s ahead of Mr. Jobs’ predictions. Who cares? It’s still a cool (and pricey) product. I’m waiting for the phoneless-iphone. Apple: Please make an iThing that’s like an iPhone, but without the phone.
• Google: the ISP? Could that mean cheap broadband and @#^#$-less phone contracts?
• MyNT: The Social Feed Reader. Gotta plug my latest creation. I got tired of looking for a good web-bases RSS aggregator, so I made my own. My feed collection outgrew Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, and I wanted a way to access my feeds from other computers.
• ProBlogger Darren Rowse on RSS-to-Email services: Unfortunately, not everyone uses RSS. I agree that it’s a good idea to offer email updates. I use FeedBurner’s RSS-to-Email thing, since I already use FeedBurner. Can Darren convince me to switch to another service for email updates? We’ll see.
• Smashing Magazine smashes you with Wordpress plugins: Of course I had to give them my two dollars two cents. As you can see by looking at the comments, I was the first to submit a list of plugins. Yeah, first comment!
• According to AlexKing, the iPhone works without AT&T’s service, though without the phone and web features. No thanks, I wouldn’t pay $500 for a widescreen iPod. Now, if you could use the iPhone (with the most important part: mobile web access) as a pre-payed phone, then I’d be interested.

Googlebombing, as you may already know, is a prank where massive amounts of links alter Google’s results for (generally humorous) reasons. It used to be that if you googled “Miserable Failure”, you’d be taken to the George W. Bush bio on the White House website.

It seems that Google has been “un-googlebombing” sites. Sure enough, all those famous Googlebombs have been altered. They claim that their intervention was not manual, but a change in their ranking algorithm.

Is it ethical though? Technically, the search results were that way because of genuine links. Despite their “Don’t be evil” motto, they’re tampering with the results. Should they be doing this? What do you think?

Personally, I think they have a responsibility, as the most widely-used search engine, to not fiddle with their algorithms for frivolously “fixing” things such as Googlebombs.

Here’s an important question: Should you use Google Custom Search (GCS) on your site? Or would it be better to directly search your database.

It depends on your point of view. Some bloggers use GCS, while others use their blog software’s built-in search tool (which acceses the database and searches it). Which should you use? Let’s take a closer look at each option. Read the rest of this entry »

A Favicon, as you may already know, is that tiny icon that sits to the left of a web site’s URL in modern browsers (and in your bookmarks menu). Usually they’re 16×16 pixels in dimensions. Want to learn how to make one for your website? Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Design Spotlight. Today we have The Leaky Cauldron.

The Leaky Cauldron, or TLC (or “Leaky”) for short, is the oldest Harry Potter news site. Older, and larger, than Mugglenet (the second-largest Harry Potter site).

We’re here to analyze their design, not talk about their history. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »

In no particular order, here are some Wordpress plugins I find useful.

• Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam - This is the best captcha plugin I’ve been able to find.
• Share This Plugin - Who wants to clutter their blog with 15 social bookmarking icons? With Share This, you can have them all in an expandable box….and you get a bonus “Share by Email” feature.
• WP-Amazon - Easily add Amazon product links (and your Associates ID) to your posts.
  
• AddQuickTag - Want to add your own QuickTags to the post editor?
• Smart Archives - A smarter way to create an “Archives” page.
  
• WP-Polls - Who doesn’t like polls? Add your own AJAX polls with ease.
  
• Subscribe to Comments - Give your users the ability to subscribe to a post’s comments via email.
• podPress - “A dream plugin for Podcasters” (or something like that).