I’ve pretty much neglected the comments area on this blog, probably because there was never much activity. But as the blog starts to pull in more readers this year there’s been more feedback and I was beginning to realize how crap the default WordPress commenting system is. Ideally I was looking for a plug-in that offered threaded commenting to keep the conversation flow more fluid and easier to follow.

I’d seen Disqus on a few other blogs but was unaware of the speed and efficiency of this neat little WordPress plugin.

In about half an hour I’d downloaded the plug-in, installed it and set it up. The other really neat feature is that Disqus will import all the comments already on your blog. It makes it more user friendly with its threaded commenting.

Its also integrated with the option to include Facebook Connect so people can comment using their Facebook login details rather than having to go through the new sign up process just to comment. Will have to see how much, if any difference this makes, but whatever, am really loving this set-up right now. Highly recomended.

I remember trying to design one of those flash pro-looking Twitter backgrounds where you list all your social media profiles in a box in the top left hand corner. You know, like all those MLM ‘gurus’ have. I gave up.

But it did bring attention to a couple of things for me. I noticed that not all my social media profiles are blessed with URLs that fit in with my ‘social profile’ (or, branding if you like) and my Facebook URL is particularly unruly. (As is everyone elses!)

So I took five minutes to login to my website management software and using the sub domain feature added a couple of new subdomains under buzzsonic.com. Then I pointed them to my social profiles. So……

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=528551668 becomes www.facebook.buzzsonic.com and my Linkedin profile goes from www.linkedin.com/in/fusiarski to: www.linkedin.buzzsonic.com  And so on. Typing in the shorter name takes you directly to the long one.

What you need. 1.Your own domain name 2. A webhosting account 3. A few minutes.

Its all done using a simple trick using sub-domains and URL re-directs.

When you get a webhosting account you’ll get an online control panel that goes along with it to admin things like file uploads, email accounts, database stuff, installs and other geeky stuff. I think the two most popular web control panels are probably Plesk and CPanel. If you use Plesk you probably hate CPanel and visa versa. Its kinda like the Mac vs PC thing but even more nerdy!

But anyway. CPanel is my weapon of choice. There are several other control panels you may use but they all kind of do the same thing. So these steps should be similar on any software.

To set-up a sub domain login to your control panel (and there’s a live demo of CPanel here if you want to check it out) and head for the subdomain area.  First thing to do is to head for the sub-domain admin area. Its a simple task of adding your subdomain of choice.

So for example I added facebook.buzzsonic.com. Then added my lengthy default Facebook URL. So. What happens is simply that you (or anyone from now on!) types in your new shiny short Facebook and off it goes to the crappy URL that Facebook gives you!

Just follow the process for any URL you want to point to. I’ve actually seen people use one of those URL shortening services to hide their long Facebook URL. This looks way better.

Related Reading

URL Redirection (Wikipedia)
A Bloggers Guide to Branding With Social Media (ProBlogger)
100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media (ChrisBrogan.com)

Google is broken this morning, EST 10.18am.

Was looking around for Pro Tools 8 M Boxed/LE prices this AM and headed to Google search to check the shopping comparison for the iLok USB key. Surprised to find that the manufacturers site had been tagged with the dreaded Google malware ‘kiss of death’ page. Searching around for other terms brought up the same results.

Even Google’s own paid shopping links were being redirected to the malware page. Last gasp try to search for my own music as 99th Floor Elevators. Every search result for that term got the malware redirect including the link to my video on YouTube.

Headed to Twitter to see what people are finding.

Breaking:What’s The Matter With Google? (Geekbrief.TV)
The Day Google Broke (The Next Web)
Google Broken (Google News Search)

The Bit Torrent protocol has been well documented. BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the whole of the corresponding costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources.

So, filesharing in the truest sense if you like, where downloaders also upload as they download (if you follow). The more bandwidth and upload stream you share the faster your download (in theory).

Going against that whole equal sharing thing comes a new ratio cheating program called appropriately, ‘Greedy Torrent’. The India based software author Alex NJ calls his app “the survival kit for a leech” . What the freeware program promises to do in a nutshell is boost your bittorrent upload ratio.

GreedyTorrent promises to help you survive on trackers that enforce a minimum 1:1 trading ratio, and can keep you from getting banned for not uploading. It modifies the conversation between your bittorrent client and the tracker, suppressing the actual upload amount.
via Zero Paid

Related Reading

How To Cheat BitTorrent Ratio By Spoofing (Raymond.cc)
RatioMaster (Moofdev.org)
Is BitTorrent Share Ratio Enforcement Really Necessary? (Zeropaid.com)

I was designing an invoice last week for a friends business using Word. I hate the way Word formats everything and although I was pleased with the end result it took me longer than I would have liked. Still, before I sent it off to my colleague I cleaned up the final article and made it more printer friendly by converting it to a PDF which gave it a final polish.

There’s a number of PDF converters online though the one I’m using right now is the excellent PDF Online. One of the beauties of the (free) service is the simplicity and speed of it. Upload your document, enter your email address and bingo, you’re done. Your document is emailed to you minutes later. Brilliant.

I’m toggling between using Windows Live Writer for posting right now vs. using the Performancing Firefox add-on ScribeFire. Though for the last two days the Live Writer has been crashing everytime I try to add an image to the post. After losing two hours work yesterday I was on the brink of dumping the app completely and returning to ScribeFire.Having second thoughts Writer is simply fuller featured and offers things like the ability to add images to posts (ScribeFire doesn’t) and preview the post in your blog before publishing (much like WordPress does in the admin panel), two features I cant really do without.

Also ScribeFire doesn’t seem to have a minimize option so you either have to put up with it hogging the bottom of your screen, or you save and close. Obtrusive and I hate obtrusive, its what sends me rushing to the delete option!

Anyway, the crashing. Until I find the conflict (it used to work fine) I found an excellent plug-in which works around the problem Flickr4Writer.

Flickr4Writer is a simple plugin for Windows Live Writer that enables you to browse Flickr and insert an image from Flickr into a Writer post. The project is part of CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site.

I mentioned this WordPress plug-in briefly in yesterdays post here , though I didn’t elaborate much. But anyway, Postalicious is another useful plug-in that you may find of use if you’re running a WordPress blog.

Postalicious is a plug-in that automatically posts your del.icio.us bookmarks to your blog. I’m using it here and it works great if you are running Firefox with the del.icio.us browser extension. That way you can add bookmarks as you browse without visiting del.icio.us and at the end of the day the plug-in will add your daily finds as a post. Neato.

Related

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tools Collection (QuickOnlineTips.com)
Del.icio.us Firefox Extension (Del.icio.us)
Del.icio.us A to Z By Function (Econsultant.com)

I’ve been using the blogging software WordPress for around three years now and in all of that time there really is nothing to touch it. Why? Its free (Open Source), it has a massive user base and support network, plug-ins, mods, widgets and themes galore, oh and did I mention it doesn’t cost a penny?

Of course free doesn’t always mean great but in this case, you get what you don’t pay for. I have tried literally hundreds of mods over the years, different themes/skins and modifications. Basically I like to tinker and I think I’m getting closer to my ideal WordPress install (at least for my needs).

Buzzsonic.com (as of today) runs on WordPress v2.0.2, so its not the latest install (which is v2.1.2). Anyway, I thought I’d list my top ten (or eleven!) modifications which I’m finding the most useful right now. This could well change soon but these are what I consider the most useful WordPress mods.

1. Glossy Blue Theme- For a simple, quick overhaul of the default WordPress look this neat two column Web 2.0-ish looking theme is one of the easiest ways to get a cool looking make-over. A close second was Glued Ideas Subtle which you might go for if you prefer a three column look. Honorable mentions go to Misty Look and Semiologic (I’m using an older install of this theme here). (more…)

The Yahoo owned bookmarking service del.icio.us (also reachable simply by typing the URL delicious.com!) is easily the most popular of many, many similar services. I bookmark hundreds of websites weekly so I try and upload them by exporting from my browser and importing them into del.icio.us.

Uploading is relatively painless for me from Firefox. Bookmarks>Organize>File>Export>Bookmarks, go to your Delicious page and upload.

The most annoying thing about the del.cio.us service is that by default, sharing is actually turned off when you import your bookmarks which means that you have to turn on sharing individually for each bookmark you want to share. Bizarre and annoying and with over 500+ bookmarks just uploaded by me its just not happening.

Luckily some wag has has come up with a handy ‘work-around’ script which I used succesfully to change the settings on over 600 links yesterday.

Greg at Freshblog has wrote the awesome javascript that goes through and automatically changes all your bookmarks to “share”. Copy and paste the code (from the above link) into the address bar of your browser when you have loaded the appropriate delicious page. Hit enter, bosh! An alert box will pop up telling you how many posts are on the page and off it goes automatically turning the “not shared” setting off. Brilliant.

Found at Freshblogs

Related Reading

Buzzsonic del.icio.us
Blogger Migration For Delicious and FreshTags (Freshblogs.com)
Do You Have Anything to Declare? (del.icio.us Blog)

Its been a while since we featured any posts on musical mash-ups here. Since the last mention (the excellent Green Day mash) the word mash up has taken on a slightly different meaning. Now the term is more likely associated with the latest Google Maps Api mash up rather than the latest frankenstein pop remix flying out of some digital DJ’s laptop studio.

Latest renegade remixers to join the fray are the Brooklyn based DJ duo Sound Advice who have ironically (see DJ Dangermouse) chosen to weld the music from the ubiquitous Gnarls Barkley album ‘St Elsewhere’ to the vocals from deceased rapper Biggie Smalls biggest hits.
The result is Gnarls Biggie a hit and miss collection of eleven tracks (all available as MP3′s naturally). ‘Smilie Faces Hypnotize’, ‘Gimme The Online Loot’ and ‘The Last Nasty Boy’ are worth more than one spin but the simple A vs. B formula is not nearly as inspired as the more elaborate examples of the ‘art’ like DJ Dangermouse’s (half of Gnarls Barkley) groundbreaking Beatles vs Jay Z mash up the ‘Grey Album’ or the aformentioned Green Day (or Dean Gray) remix project.

The guys have already got themselves banned from MySpace (though another ‘fan page’ has already sprung up). The cease and desist is in the post.

Related Reading

Gnarls Barkley Mashed Up with B.I.G (Spin.com)
Green Day Mash Up Leads to Cease and Desist Order, Grey Tuesday Style Protest (MTV News)
Grey Album Poducer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It (MTV News)
Gnarls Barkley (Wikipedia)
Sound Advice Blog (Blogspot)
Party Ben (PartyBen.com)
Mark Vidler (GoHomeProductions)
Grey Tuesday:A Quick Overview of the Legal Terrain (EFF.org)
Grey Tuesday-Free the Grey Album (GreyTuesday.org)

Lots of chatter in the blogosphere these past few days with the news that Chinese programmers have managed to reverse engineer the Skype protocol.

Charlie Paglee at VoipWiki.com seems to be the first off the block with this one with his post revealing how a business contact in China had contacted him on a beta version of the software.

Charlie explains it better than I can in the post thus:

“Right now every computer with Skype installed on it can be used as a relay to carry data between two other computers when both of those computers are only allowed to make outgoing TCP calls. This means that very soon Skype users will have an alternative client which will not hijack their computer. This could eventually have a very negative effect on the Skype network if too many people choose not to act as Skype Super Nodes and the network starts to deteriorate.”

In laymans terms this means that users could access the Skype VOIP network without using the Skype client, calls could be made through third party software directly to and from Skype users. Users would also not have the resource drain that often comes with running Skype.

This will certainly be raising eyebrows at Ebay who paid $2.6bn for the Internet telephony company last September. Though in a Skype PR statement published on TechCrunch the company dont seem unduly concerned.

“Skype is aware of the claim made by a small group of Chinese engineers that they have reverse engineered Skype software. We have no evidence to suggest that this is true. Even if it was possible to do this, the software code would lack the feature set and reliability of Skype which is enjoyed by over 100m users today. Moreover, no amount of reverse engineering would threaten Skype’s cryptographic security or integrity”

Skype’s software lets PC users talk to each other for free and make cut-price calls to mobiles and landlines.
Related Reading

Skypes Been Cracked? (Engadget.com) July 16th
Skype Cracked? (GigaOm.com) July 13th
Skype Protocol Has Been Cracked (Voipwiki.com) July 13th
Ebay to Buy Skype in $2.6bn Deal (BBC News) Sept 12th 2005

Back in May we wrote about some useful GMail hacks, including the GMail Drive shell extension, which basically enabled you to use the allocated 2GB+ of storage space at Google as a mini hard drive, even going as far as sitting a little hard drive icon in Start>My Computer on your PC for you to drag files too.

Latest GMail hack is the G2G Exchange which basically enables GMail users to swop files that are stored on their GMail accounts. Google has a 20mb email limit so bigger files have to compressed or split as multiple files. G2G apparently will recognize these files and display them as one complete file.

More GMail Hacks

Roam Drive (Roamdrive.com)
Ten Cool Gmail Hacks (Makezine.com)
GMail Tools and Plugins (Igniq.com)
gDisk (Sourceforge.net)

Here’s another useful little service. An online generator that allows you to convert any RSS feed into a PDF, called, not unsurprisingly RSS2PDF. Useful if you’re wanting to print out stuff I guess.

Here’s how the Buzzsonic RSS feed looks like using RSS2PDF

We’re big fans of well done mash-ups here at Buzzsonic and one of the better done bootleg DJ mash-ups (or, unofficial remix/bastard pop to give it two of its many names) in the last eighteen months has easily been San Francisco DJ Party Bens ‘remodel’ of Green Days ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ (as Boulevard of Broken Songs) which seemlessly mixes up Green Day and Oasis and throws in a bit of Travis for good measure. There’s even a companion video mashup of the audio mashup here.

Now Australian mashers Team 9 have taken on the whole of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ album with great effect.

‘American Edit’ grabs the album, shakes out all the crap bits and sprinkles the whole project liberally with cheeky samples from the likes of Johnny Cash, Queen, the KLF and Ashanti, amongst plenty more. Wholely applauded at the ‘bootleg barometer’ GYBO.
Stand out track for us is ‘Novacaine Rhapsody’ a brilliant mixup of ‘Give Me Novacaine’ and Queens ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, pure brilliance. Grab the album while you can here.

Get Your Mash On….

Get Your Bootleg On (GYBO)
NWA As Remixed Illegal Art (Buzzsonic)
Primal Scream Get The Mash-up Treatment (Buzzsonic)
Beatmixed (Beatmixed.com)

News search experts have long been wishing for Google News search results to be dished out as RSS feeds. For a company usually renown for its forward thinking innovation Google have been slow to usher in any serious useage of RSS feeds, mainly because the search power house has been actively supporting the rival syndication format Atom.

No sooner said than done. ScrappyGoo is an unofficial app that lets you search Google News and generates a unique RSS feed of the results. By default, each feed has sixteen entries and uses standard boolean operators.

ScrappyGoo uses Gnews2RSS, an open source, experimental PHP script developed by British programmer Julian Bond . He’s already run fowl of Google when he was hit with a cease-and-desist order last year.

And then there was two. Just as I was finishing this post another Google RSS news generator came to my attention. The GNewsfeed from Justin Pfister also offers geo targetted results.

Thanks to John Batelle’s Searchblog

Related Links

Google Moves to Block RSS Scraping [Internet News April 2004]
Google News RSS/RDF Feed Generator [XML Mania] now blocked
Google Mulls RSS Support [CNet News]

It wasn’t that long ago that you had to make do with a paltry 2mb (Hotmail) or 4mb (Yahoo) email storage. Google came along and moved the goalposts with GMail and an account rippling with 1GB of space (now up to 2gb and climbing). Going back to use my old Hotmail account recently I was told I had to sign up again as I hadn’t used the account for longer than 30 days. I didn’t bother. There’s no flashing banner adds at GMail either.

I dont care for every Google development though. The ‘Web Clips’ RSS feed at the top of my Gmail account is pretty much redundant for me as is the ‘web accelerator’ introduced recently . What with the Google Toolbar, GMail notifier, Picasa 2 and Google’s desktop search tool the search giant are getting enough stats from me.

Of much more use to me is the tiny 125k freeware app from Dane, Bjarke Viksoe. The GMail Drive shell extension is a little Windows app that lets you access your Gmail account’s 2 Gigs in Windows Explorer, as if it were just another hard drive on your computer. You can drag and drop big or small files to your Gmail drive, and access them from any computer connected to the web via the Gmail email interface.

Somebody else has already produced a ‘Pocket GMail’ app for PDA owners based on the open source libgmailer formatted to fit on Pocket PCs. There’s even a version that enables users to check their accounts using a WAP enabled phone.

Download GMail Drive Shell Extension

Related Google Reading

GMail Drive Shell Extension [Viksoe.dk]
GMail File System [Richard Jones]
Creepy Gmail [Gmail-is-too-creepy.com]
The Controversial Google Web Accelerator [Pandia.com]
Google Software Downloads [Google.com]
GMail Invite Spooler [Isnoop.net]
The GMail Resource [GMailResource.net]
Google Community [GoogleCommunity.com]

Primal Scream are the latest in a long line of artists to be ‘honoured’ by getting some of their best known music hacked and rehashed by a group of Mash-up bootleg remixers.
The Beatles, the Beastie Boys, the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, Blur and the Clash have all recently been given the unofficial remix treatment by DJ ‘Mashers’.

Primal Screams classic 1991 UK indie-dance crossover album ‘Screamadelica’ was hailed by NME writers as one of the top albums of all time in 2003. The original album boasted production credits from UK club legend Andy Weatherall, the Orb and veteran Rolling Stones producer, Jimmy Miller.

The remade opus, ‘Screamadelica-Primal Scream Remixed’ was reworked by some of the main players in the UK bootleg / remix community including Mark Vidler (who produced the albums bonus track, ‘Screamadelica’), Soundhog, Tone 396, FakeID, Dunproofin and Cry On My Console, amongst others.

Like all the best made projects in this vein, the album is available for download as a BitTorrent file. The makers are eager to confess, “ We don’t pretend to think this comes close to the Scream’s masterpiece, but then nothing else does. So what primalscreamremixed.com offers is a different spin, moving from chill through dub via glitch to drum & bass. Not a million miles away from the eclecticism of the source.”

Thanks to Beatmixed.com

Related Links

Get Your Bootleg On [GYBO]
Culture Deluxe [CultureDeluxe.com]
Bootie San Francisco [BootieSF.com]
Twenty Questions [TwentyQ.Blogspot]
BitTorrent FAQ and Guide [Dessent.net]
Bastard Pop [Wikipedia.org]
Boom Selection [Boomselection.info]

There’s seems to be a split amongst the search engine cognoscenti as to wether Google has lost its crown to Yahoo, now that the expanding search giant has pulled up its socks with the purchase (in December 2002) and fine tuning of Inktomi. Here we’re not so sure as we tend to use both and keep an eye on the newly tweaked MSN Search too.

Still, Norwegian Asgeir S. Nilsen started search engine forums gossiping at the beginning of the month with an April fools joke that has taken on a life of its own. YahGooHoo!gle started as a post on geek news bible Slashdot announcing a Yahoo/Google merger.

The search site actually could be the answer to many web researchers prayers, comparing search results between the two market leaders and splitting the results across a framed results page. How long the site stays up without Yahoo and/or Google pulling the plug or setting the legal bulldogs onto the useful comparison site is anybody guess.

Related Search Resources

YaGoohoo!gle Blog [Yagoohoogle.com]
Comparing Google and Yahoo Search Results [Langreiter.com]
Search Wars are About to Get Personal [CNet News]
GoogleGuy [Googleguy.de]
Google vs Yahoo, the War of the Search Engines [MSNBC.com]
Search Engine Watch [SearchEngineWatch.com]

A tiny European software company has done what the giants of the consumer electronics industry daren’t do – and put a potential Napster in every pocket.
Simeda, based in Bucharest, has ported Rendezvous to the Pocket PC platform and bundled it with a web server. The software automatically discovers other devices on a WiFi network and allows people to stream or share music with just a couple of clicks. Simeda’s CTO Razvan Dragomirescu tells us that the inspiration came from a series of speculative articles that ran here at The Register eighteen months ago in which we envisaged an Apple iPod enhanced with Bluetooth and Rendezvous, which is Apple’s trademark for the ZeroConf LAN discovery protocol. We nicknamed this ‘BluePod’.
Razvan says that after being inspired by the idea, he set about examining various implementations. He chose 802.11 networking because of its speed and range advantages. Given the overheads of the protocol, Bluetooth devices typically exchange data at only around 20 kbits/s.

Read Full Story : the Register

Related Reading

Apples ‘Bluepod’ [theRegister]
Mobile Firm Offers ‘Phoney Alibi’ [BBC News]
‘Social Hardware’ Nears With Bluetooth iPod [theRegister]
MMS PDA Client and Kiosk Using the P2P Model-PDF [Nanyang Technological University]