BlogMunch

Google Reader - Discovery and Drag&Drop

(credit: Greenberg Art)

Google reader push out two new features yesterday. Apparently, both features would implemented by interns working at Google. Good job! I think the gourmet food, Segway and massage chair work their magic.

Discovery

This will help you discover new, interesting rss feeds based on what you have subscribed and your web history (I inactivated it as soon as I know about it).

So where do you find this “discover” button? It is just beside the “Add Subscription” link. You can also find it on the “Home” page, labelled “Top Recommendations”. Once you click thru, you will see a list of sites that you might be interested in. If you look carefully, you will see “x.xx posts per week” near the url. Interesting. I didn’t know Google keep track of how frequent you post.

The recommendations are okay. I know most of the sites, but for whatever reasons didn’t want to subscribed to them previously. One thing I hope to see is the title link to the site rather than to their feed. I usually like to surf a bit before subscribing.

Drag&Drop

Desktop application without drag&drop will feel very weird. So why is drag&drop so difficult to implement in web tools? Anyway, now you can organize your feeds by drag&droping into folders and reorganize the feed in any order you want. But from what I tested out, this function only within the feed sidebar.

That means you can’t drag your starred items or shared items in. Neither can you drag from the “Top Recommendations” into your folder. I hope they improve to implement the drag&drop site wide.

So is it a matter of time before drag&drop comes to Gmail, where it is needed the most?

Do you have my feed as your “Top Recommendations”? If not, subscribe to the BlogMunch Feed here.

I DoFollow you…really

(credit:Yael Fran)

After the recent debacle with Google on PPP and its insistence on Nofollow tags for paid links and advertistment, I decided to find out more on this Dofollow/Nofollow tag.

What is Nofollow

Nofollow is apparently used so that spiders reaching the link will not score or rank the link. But recently, it can also mean “do not follow this link”. The initial purpose is to prevent comment spam, but Akismet stats show the tag have not reduce spam comments. Wordpress starting from ver. 1.5 have also set the Nofollow tag for all comments and trackbacks on WordPress blogs.

Join the movement

There are now a “You Comment|I Follow” movement started by Randa Clay. I like what he has done and decided to join the movement too. I believe in giving out incentives, especially if a blogger takes the effort to comment on your blog. Why shut down the linklove?

I use the Dofollow plugin from Semiologic. It’s really simple. Just install and activate. No flickering with different options. All your nofollow tags from comments are gone.

To know if the plugin is working for you, you can download the firefox extension NoDofollow. So on your blog or any site on the web, you will see nofollow links in pink and dofollow links in blue. As you can see, the links in my blog comments are now blue.

Okay, now some more resources about nofollow/dofollow:

• Ultimate list of dofollow plugins - Banish nofollow from comments and trackbacks
• CommentHunt - Search engine for dofollow blogs.
• Dofollow community @ Bumpzee
• How To Identify That A Blog Has NoFollow or DoFollow Comments
• Technoratic: tagged Dofollow
• Does Dofollow Influence Your Willingness to Comment?
• 13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck

So make a choice Follow or No Follow?

Follow BlogMunch by subscribing to the Blogmunch Feed now.

Take a break, have a Hyper Holiday!!!

December is the time where people clear their leave and go on holidays. My office is currently at half strength and I think more will be going for holidays as we go deeper into December. So if you are from the UK and plan to book a holiday, I suggest you try out Holiday Hypermarket.

The first thing you will see at the site is the three feature sections.

• Last Minute Deals - For cheap last minute getaway with you friends or family. This is great if you do not have a fixed destination in mind and wanted to enjoy a great deal.
• City Breaks - Feature all the major cities in Europe. I click through to Paris to view it. There is an introduction to the City of Paris and a weather widget to show you what the weather is like in Paris. To give you more information, they even have videos of Paris embedded from Google video. So thoughtful of Holiday Hypermarket.
• Summer 2008 - Book early and save. It is common knowledge that when you book early, you have the best deals and highest discount. Holiday Hypermarket shows you what the best deals are in the Summer of ‘08.

What I find great for the website is how they are embracing the web tools on the internet. You can bookmark it to Del.icio.us, add to Reddit or even submit it to Digg. The companies even have a blog. That is cool and forward thinking. No wonder they won the ‘Best Website’ award at the 2006 TTG Agent Awards.

As one of the UK’s leading internet travel agencies, Holiday Hypermarket specialized in good value Package Holidays. So if you want to book a last minute holiday this December, do you know who to go to?

My poor rss needs a hug-hug

No money to own a page from the MillionDollarWiki? You can submit your rss feed to rssHugger and own a page on it for free.

Submitting to blog/RSS directories normally requires some registration fee. The fee is to handle the review of your blog and assure only quality blogs is accepted. rssHugger, previously was a paid rss directory too. It cost 10 bucks to register for a RSS page on rssHugger. But after listening to its community feedback and a critical review by John Chow, Colin decided to change it direction and will accept your rss submission for free if you blog about rssHugger. Which is what I am doing now. Even better if they will accept your submmision if you just hug someone today. Spread some free hugs around.
But if you decide for whatever reasons, you do not want to blog about rssHugger, you can still own a page for $20.

So what are the advantages of submitting to a rss directory?

• Attract new rss subscribers to your blog
• Build backlinks
• Maximize blog visibility
• Send traffic to your blog

So go on and submit you rss feed to rssHugger. Don’t miss out a chance to be part of a viral idea.

Hug me here –> http://www.rsshugger.com/blogmunch.com

Need more hugs from me? Subscribe to the BlogMunch Feed for more.

Blogger’s guide to SEO by SEObook

From the creator of SEObook, only the most widely read SEO ebook on the web, Aaron Wall, comes a new resource just for bloggers. He highlights how blogs SEO is different from other types of static websites.

SEO for a blog is different than SEO for most other websites, largely because of the social elements baked into blogging technology. SEO for blogs is less about buying links or tricking inadequate search technology. SEO for blogs is more focused on giving people something to talk about and creating something worthy of attention.

Its all about the people. Write for the people to read and not for search engines. There are useful information like this throughout the guide. Go read it.

Actually, this guide is only a small part of the comprehensive SEObook. If you like this guide, you might want to consider buying the 300+ pages and constantly updated SEObook.

Subscribe to the BlogMunch Feed now for more useful information like this.