This poor blog has been neglected for over a year. I’ve been gathering some topics I want to start posting about and am going to get back into some regular blogging.
However, if you have anything in particular (web or technology related) that I might be able to answer or help with … feel free to ask!
Check out my previous post (thanks aja) for a great little site for Tumblrs with iPhones. Basically, you type in your (or somebody else’s) Tumblr username and Tumblephone will create an iPhone friendly version of your Tumblog.
Wouldn’t it be better to have your site automatically detect if it’s an iPhone browser and redirect to your Tumblephone page? Yes it would … so here’s how.
Note: You have to have custom themes enabled for this to work properly.
If you know what you’re doing with custom themes, just insert the following bit of javascript somewhere in between your <head> </head> tags:
<script language=javascript>
<!—
if((navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i)) || (navigator.userAgent.match(/iPod/i)))
{
location.href=’http://tumblephone.com/geekery101’;
}
—>
</script>
*Replace the geekery101 with your username/site name*
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, here’s a great tutorial on custom theming.
Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them in the comments.
The number of social sites online is staggering. Some people choose one site and stick with it. A majority of us tend to pick a handful (or all) of them. It can be time-consuming to post updates to more than one site, especially if you plan to send the same content to multiple sites.
Fortunately, there are tools available that make it easy to send one update to multiple sites. Ping.fm and Tarpipe are two such sites that I’ve used on a regular basis. Ping.fm is easy to use and supports a lot of sites, but offers little customization. Tarpipe however, offers integration with almost as many sites, but also offers a level of customization similar to Yahoo!Pipes. The benefit of this is that you can update more than just a status or blog (text). You can also use the Tarpipe service to update pictures to more than one service.
Want to setup your own Tarpipe workflow? Read on …
Sign up for a Tarpipe account
Visit the Tarpipe sign up page to get an account.
Connect Tarpipe to your other sites
Click on the accounts tab and enter your credentials for the sites to which you want Tarpipe to connect.
Create your workflow(s)
Click on the workflows tab and click “create a new workflow”.
Enter a title and description in the properties section. This will help keep your workflows organized as you start making more and more workflows.
Choose which connectors to use in the connectors section. I use the “MailDecoder” connector to process incoming emails. If you’re a fancy-schmancy developer (which I sometimes claim to be), you could use the “RestDecoder” and use the Tarpipe API and roll your own updater. Since we’re not going into that level of detail here, click on “MailDecoder” to add that connector. Then, click on one or more external site connectors (Twitter, Facebook, etc) to add connectors for whichever sites you wish to update. Think of the “MailDecoder” connector as your starting point; this is the connector that will process the email you send and push different properties to other connectors (or sites).
With your connectors in place, click on a connector property (“subject” on the MailDecoder connector, for example) and draw a line to another connector property (“title” on the TwitterUpdater connector, for example). Continue to connect properties to properties until your workflow represents what properties you want sent where. See below for diagrams of my workflows.
This is my workflow for updating statuses. You can see that the subject line of my email will get sent to Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed.
This is my workflow for updating pictures. If you follow the lines, you can see that the subject of the email becomes the title in Flickr, the photo caption in Facebook, and the status in Twitter. The picture itself gets uploaded to both Flickr and Facebook, and the URL from Flickr gets sent as a link to Twitter. I have a Plurk connector in place, but don’t send anything to it anymore … I’ve found that two sites to keep up on is my sweet spot.
Once your workflow is setup how you want it, click “Save”. To make it convenient, you might want to create a contact with your specialized email address (don’t hand that out unless you want people updating for you).
Ta-da! That’s basically all there is to it. Hopefully, in future Tarpipe updates, they’ll add more services and more functions. One I’d particularly like to see is the ability to inject strings … in case I want to add something like “sent via Tarpipe” or even just a random link.
If this inspires you to setup a Tarpipe workflow, or you know of an alternate (or better) way to do this, please let me know in the comments!
Some people create tumbelogs as a form of expression. Some people use them as another form of social media (like Facebook or Twitter). Still others use the medium as a way to share pictures, videos, articles, links, stories, chats, etc with the World. My favorite software platform, and the one used here, is Tumblr. Tumblr is a free, fantastically easy tool that allows you to setup a tumbelog in minutes, and post things with ease. There are even iPhone apps that will let you post on the go … but that’s another article.
The one thing that’s lacking on the Tumblr platform however, is a comment system. Some Tumblr purists believe that Tumblr is meant as a tool to post things and re-blog others’ posts as a way to communicate, thus there should be no need for comments. Some people want a way for their readers to leave direct feedback other than emailing the author. Whether by design or not, there is another free tool that plugs a commenting engine directly into your Tumbelog called Disqus.
First: You will need to create an account on Disqus.
Second: Next, you’ll need to add your website to Disqus. Click “Add Website” under the My Websites header.
Third: Add your website details
Fourth: Choose your platform. Click the Tumblr logo.
One of the great things about choosing Disqus as your comment engine is it’s ease of use. It’s available for ANY platform. But, as you can see above, they give you clear directions for a few of the more well-known sites as well. Also, if you’ve got more than one site that you manage (on multiple platforms), you can simply log into Disqus to manage comments from all your sites in one place.
Fifth: Follow the instructions on the next page to cut-and-paste the correct code in the correct locations. This step is best done with two tabs in your browser (or two browser windows) that you can flip between. The first bit of code will be the link that others will click to leave comments. It will also be the comment counter for each post.
I wanted my comment counter just beneath the article author’s icon. If you don’t know any HTML, these steps might take a little trial-and-error. Keep in mind, if you put the code inside a specific post type ({block:text} in my example) you’ll need to paste the Disqus comment count code in each of the other blocks in which you want to enable comments.
Sixth: Copy-and-paste the final bit of code from Disqus. This will serve as the comment posting area, and the comment threads at the bottom of each post. Note: place this AFTER the {/block:Posts} code as Disqus states. This also might take a little trial-and-error to get everything looking the way you want.
I placed mine before the {block:Pagination} because that’s the look I wanted to acheive.
Seventh: Click “Save Changes” in Tumblr and “Done” in Disqus. Your Tumblr blog should now have comments!
Before Disqus Comments
After Disqus Comments
Hopefully this task doesn’t seem too overwhelming. It really is easy to do once you understand what’s going on. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the newly enable comments.
I’ve decided to start a Tumblr account dedicated to all things “geek”. Of course, there is a very broad definition of what is “geek” and what is not. For the purposes of this class, we will stay fairly mainstream geek and focus on technology, comics, science fiction tv and movies, and other common “geek” things. That’s not to say we won’t touch on fringe “geek” material or controversial “geek” culture, but the majority of the class will focus on mainstream geek culture.
If you have any questions or comments, please bring them up to the group. I encourage discussion and hope we have a good semester.
