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cyberSaps business: blogging news, internet biz, communities, UK angle
A pure blogging company. With history (5 years 80 days ) in hosting Manila weblogging communities and building customised blogging environments for a range of companies and Government quangos. The latest project: building the intranet for the Government Office for the West Midlands, based entirely on Manila. Next project: their internet and extranet. See more details on services and history.

01 May 2005   

 

I've moved my blog

Mainly, because it's much simpler, mainly because Radio Userland is dying at Userland. Manily because I can't see a commercial reason for staying with Radio Userland.

So, I've gone back to Manila, or my take on Manila.

Over on BlogFootball I support hundreds of Manila blogs, and slowly that community is growing into other directions like shropblogs.org.

So if you could update whatever you want to update, my blog is now here or here.

I've actually been at the blogFootball Service site since Jan 2002. While the blogfootball community has been going since July 2000! I first started posting with Manila in December 1999.

One day I'll put all these sites or rather all my postings from many, many sites together in one site. One day

 


2087 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:28:40 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: I've moved my blog

 

10 March 2005   

 

Something new, something good

I don't know why Google news is still in beta, probably they are worried about the legals of scraping so many news sites.

But, they've added a customisation section, I've deleted sport, since this isn't news in my book and added a blog section. That is, I can now do searches in news papers the world over for references to the word 'blog.'

This reminds me of Netscapes RSS news page back in '98 or was that '99? Where you could add feeds from those who had RSS feeds, which wasn't many then. It's also like my searches with PubSub in my aggregators.

[Update:] I've added some more panels, some of which I use in PubSub and other aggregator searches, like Blogdigger. As Google news is only searching newspapers, these aren't bringing in much that's current. Now, if they add in blogs to their reach, this will be a killer. Really!

google news 2

 


2083 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 10:08:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Something new, something good

 

01 February 2005   

 

Curing Float Drops and Wraps

Cascading stylesheets: "Unfortunately, however, you'll occasionally run into a situation where one block drops down below the other one instead of sitting side-by-side as you anticipated. This is commonly referred to as a float drop."

Shudder! Yip, I've suffered from f-f-float drop. It's a bastard. Where it comes from, how to get rid of it? It can make an afternoon disappear into the late, late nights. I hope, if I print this article and say all the magic words I'll save myself weeks, and bloody weeks.
float-drop-def_wrong

 


2072 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 8:53:58 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Curing Float Drops and Wraps

 

23 January 2005   

 

Nofollow May Be a Rank Solution

Rogers Cadenhead: "The most far-reaching impact could be from publishers who adopt nofollow on external links to boost the effect of their internal links, taking a bajillion rank suggestions right out of Google's algorithm."

Actually, I don't really care about Google. But I do care that when reading many of the nationals or internationals like The Guardian or The Register that they articles they speak of are not linked to.
Usually, I have to do a search in Google to find the articles that they should be directly linking to. These professional newspapers don't link because the don't want to send traffic off their site. Though I never considered that they were more Machiavellian and they didn't want to lower their Google Juice—perhaps that is another reason they don't link.

Perhaps now with the advent of rel=noFollow these newspapers WILL link. I doubt it. I think the "less off site linking as possible" rule will still apply. No, it'll still be blogs who trade links freely.
 


2071 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 12:13:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Nofollow May Be a Rank Solution

 

21 January 2005   

 

Browser stats

This in from December 2004, the rest of the 4 years this site has been monitoring are here. I spy many more MSIE 6 than I think should be there.

There is some evidence that some browsers mask their identity but not that many to really influence this chart, and if I remember from wayback, it was usually MSIE pretending to be Netscape.

Sad that Mozilla is still so low.

1. MSIE 6.x 39945828 (80%)
2. MSIE 5.x 4569062 (9%)
3. Mozilla 1662809 (3%)
4. Netscape 5.x 1101858 (2%)
5. Unknown 893435 (2%)
6. Safari 405196 (1%)
7. Netscape 7.x 389338 (1%)
8. Opera x.x 351607 (1%)
 


2070 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 11:26:56 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Browser stats

 

 

Pubsub: Over 8 Million Blogs Served...

"That would put the minimum blog census at 16 million while there are probably more than 24 million blogs. Personally, I would bet on the higher number."

In all the blogs in all the world...
 


2069 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 10:24:27 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Pubsub: Over 8 Million Blogs Served...

 

 

Hate linking

"Most Google-conscious bloggers avoid linking to spam sites but it's also common to hear about various de-linking nonsense because someone was offended by words on a page. Now you can have a decision when you make a link: do I want my viewers to see it but not promote it in Google, or do I not mind promoting it in Google because I want other people to see it as well."

All you need to do is include the rel=noFollow in a link, and Google will ignore it, though others can click through. Like the below example
<a href = "http://astonVilla.blogFootball.com/" rel="nofollow">blogfootball.com</a>
 


2068 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 9:25:30 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: rel nofollow non linking

 

20 January 2005   

 

Big List of Blog Search Engines

Of all the blogs in all the world, you had to submit to all these blog lists. It would be nice to build a central submission page to submit to all these sites. If I had the time.
 


2067 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 11:07:15 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Big List of Blog Search Engines

 

19 January 2005   

 

Comment spam and Google

Not that we get attacked by comment spam here, but I've implemented the rel=noFollow idea from Google on comments, trackbacks and referers. (However, I've not added the rel=noFollow to the actual links to [comments 0] and [trackbacks 0], this is to allow the indexing of comments, but no Google Juice from any links inside comments and trackbacks.) Knowing spammers as I do, I think this will be part one of the war of attrition. Chuq Von Rospach thinks that the comment spammers will still spam even if there is less return, so long as there are some vulnerable weblogs.
 


2066 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 12:44:02 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Comment spam and Google

 

 

How British people don't say what they mean

"If a British person says 'very interesting', they mean in fact the opposite. For a Dutch person this is very confusing as we are not used to playing with language in such a manner."
Some examples:
What the Brits say What they mean What the Dutch understand
Oh, by the way… or,
Incidentally… 		The primary purpose of our discussion is… This is not very important.
I hear what you say. l disagree and do not want to discuss it any further. He accepts my point of view.
With the greatest respect… I think you are wrong (or a fool). He is listening to me.
 


2065 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 12:19:04 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: How British people don't say what they mean

 

 

Converting Manila to Movable Type

"This is a script, written in UserTalk (the language of Userland Frontier), which will export a Manila (or Weblogs.com, or Buzzword.com, or Weblogger, etc.) weblog to a file suitable for importing into Movable Type or TypePad. It will also write all of the images contained within the Manila site out to files, convert Manila discussion group threads into MT/TypePad comment threads, and convert any Manila News Item departments into post categories."

Most excellent! I hate lock-in. This just goes to prove that if you have a Manila blog, you needn't fear that you're stuck. I'd like to include this script as a page within all myManila blogs. Thus, not only is there an existing download your site page (/downloadMySite/MySite.root), but there will be an export your site to these formats page.
 


2064 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 12:07:52 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Converting Manila to Movable Type

 

 

Using SOAP to post to Manila from Word

"This was a Word macro I wrote that uses PocketSOAP to create a new story in Manila"

Amazing the stuff I miss. This is from 3 years ago. I found it via Steve Kirks who found something similar for Radio. When I have a bit of time I'll play with this a little, I can see a few of my customers using it, perhaps.

 


2063 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 11:52:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Using SOAP to post to Manila from Word

 

 

The BLOG Shirt

"Smal text at the bottom of the design is: "She wanted to stop reading it- but she had nothing better to do! Produced by average people who seem to think their lives are interesting. Filmed in thrilling HTML-O-Scope with exciting new fonts!""
blog_lg

 


2062 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 11:41:27 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The BLOG Shirt