Do Know Evil - Tyler Mulligan’s Tips and Tricks

My friend sent this to video to me with the message

I just sent you all a video by a group that feel strongly for net neutrality. They are kind of weird and most of their movies are based off the girls boobs so besides that what they are saying is really fucked up. The initial phase isn’t that bad but where it is headed makes me worried.

Net Neutrality

I’m proud to announce that I’m one of the Entrecard users with seller status. I will begin selling Card Redesigns, Quality reviews, Ad space shortly and possibly some t-shirts in the future.

To give you an idea of the quality of my work, here are two cards I’ve designed for forum goers who took advantage of my free offer. There are 2 spots left… if you’re interested, act fast. Otherwise, it’ll cost you 400 Credits.

Congratulations to the rest of the winners and too readers uninterested in Entrecard, I have some more how-tos and lifehacks on the way!

I you’d like a check check out My Entrecard Page.

Happy New Years 2008!

Entrecard users knew from the start that not everyone was in it for the same reasons and lets face it, there are some blogs we’d rather not waste our time viewing. Blogs that waste our time trying to get rich off their garbage content. Unfortunately, the only system in place as of now, is reviews. Unfortunately, these were being gamed until recently.

So Tyler, what do you suggest?

Well, I wouldn’t want to tamper with the one-click drop method because that would be silly but I want to integrate something into the widget so a user can tell a lot about a blog just by being at said blog.

My proposal is a system such as this:

With this integrated voting system, it will be easier for other bloggers to know if it’s a reputable source or just some more internet garbage so some degree. In an ideal world, there would be some crazy algorithms to back this thing up to prevent gaming but I’ll leave that logic to the Entrecard guys if they like my idea!

Another approach Entrecard can take to limit the amount of abuse would be some additions to the forum. Staying true to the proud design of Entrecard, I’ve crafted my idea of a simple solution.

The reputation would preferably use some ajax that would pop up with a box to fill in a reason. Reporting posts would help admins moderate the forum. A quick link to message a user would be handy as would the edit post button.

What do you all think?

Edit: There is a thread on the Entrecard Forums that answers some FUD related questions.

There is something Google did a while back that ruffled my feathers a bit. When they updated their style to move the bar to the top. They removed a feature I used quite often.

Say I want to search for “Tyler Mulligan”

but last second I decide I’d rather see my sexy mug than a bunch of text. When you change your search type (i.e. web to images), your search string disappears!

Am I alone in missing this feature? Certain other search engines don’t have this problem.

Entrecard has announced it’s addition of the ‘Store’ module which uses EC credits as currency. Currently, Entrecard is the only seller, offering a few things to promote your blog faster but they are planning on giving users seller status in the future. If I were to have a store it would benefit both Entrecard any myself as I would offer not only adspace on my blog but quality reviews and business card redesigns.

A rough idea of what I would sell:

- 20 Card Redesigns at 400 Credits a pop
- Quality reviews at 500 credits a pop (a note about this, by quality, I mean in my writing. If your site sucks, I’ll say so. I’m not going to help promote internet garbage.)
- Ad space on my blog, 2 weeks for 2500 credits / 1 month for 4000
- T-shirts with on line creative says fresh out a book of ideas I’ve been compiling for a few months… the price of these is undetermined at this moment.

If you aren’t familiar with entrecard, check it out below.

Bookmarks are something most of us don’t really keep up to par. Sometimes you just ctrl+d on a whim, losing that page in your lack of a hierarchy forever. Well, at least that’s how it’s been for me. However, once in a while I give myself a kick in the ass and try to shape up. Based upon the patterns I’ve learned in the past and the general direction I wish to go, I reevaluate my mess and decide the proper way forward. In this case it was the standard, “Make general categories and add sub-folders if they need more organization” route… with a little extra spice.

This time around, I decided to utilize folders in the bookmarks toolbar. Maybe I’m blind to this but I feel like most people don’t utilize this helpful feature, I know I didn’t until now. After spending a few days using folders on my toolbar, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is both effective and efficient.

I spend a lot of time developing locally and often do rounds on my live sites and rather than waste 4 seconds typing in a 32 character URL, I’d rather waste 0.4 making two clicks. Yes, that’s right, I’m shaving off seconds to increase my efficiency. It might not seem like a lot but it adds up to minutes a day and hours a year.

Now, because I’m going to be spending a lot of time on my laptop, I needed a global solution to my bookmarks. The path I chose to get is syncing them with the Firefox extension, Bookmark Sync and Sort. If you don’t have your own server, there are some hosted alternatives such as Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. Those trendy bookmark sites aren’t really the solution for me for a few reasons.

1) I like to control my data.
2) Those sites are usually distracting to me
3) While the Firefox bookmarks manager isn’t the ideal solution, the GUI is far more advanced than something you’ll find on a social bookmarking site.

Admittedly, there is an advantage to these sites, and that’s the fact that I can get to my bookmarks quickly no matter what computer I’m on. But again, I can argue that I can find a link just as fast (if not faster) with SSH by greping the xml file Bookmark Sync and Sort generates.

Back on track, once you have the extension installed, click ‘Bookmarks’ > ‘Synchronize Bookmarks’ and fill in the dialog with your information as such:

What kind of man would I be if I didn’t take advantage of this moment to sort my bookmarks?

Mmm, alphabetical order.

Now I just need to upkeep as best I can… I’ll let you know when I come up with a better solution for that. Right now, I just force myself to take the time to find the correct folder in the hierarchy. It’s a good habit but a hard one to keep. If you have any advice, please share. Good luck and happy bookmarking.

P.S. I edited the file wp-admin/admin-functions.php, line 2126 to increase the generated thumbnail size in wordpress. Just replace ‘128′ with the max you wish. Thought maybe some of you could use that information.

With the evolution of communication via the internet, it’s interesting to see how websites of today are really client-side applications of yesterday. In some cases, we see applications mirroring existing applications (meebo). Advances in CSS and Javascript with the push of ‘web 2.0 technologies’ such as application frameworks and AJAX have shown programmers of other backgrounds that we web folk really aren’t that different. This in combination with the release of various APIs and the opening of platforms ensures these companies existence in this new module war. Thus initiating the next step in this game of chess, which one company has already taken a shot at.

Behold the future of web applications:

Businesses will ensure their place in the industry by becoming the host of niche web applications, utilizing their services as modules.