Personal Archives - Page 14 of 22

Google Reader To Shut Down: My Thoughts

So yes, I woke up to the news that Google Reader is To Shut Down.

Usually I am rather flippant when Google services shut down (remember Google Wave?), and I am usually that dickish mate who responds to my less intelligent mates who whinge about Facebook changing it’s layout with “If you don’t like it, ask for a refund.”.

But gah I am annoyed with this move.

Where's the "I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS" button? — Where’s the “I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS” button?

You see I use RSS in 3 ways. Despite the usual way of keeping up with news, I also use it to provide basic content to my Twitter feed quickly and easily, using a combination of Buffer (which is amazing, use it), and IFTTT (which is amazing, use it). It helps keep me relevant and useful even when rushed off my feet.

The second is that, at least with this here blog, RSS is the fourth biggest source of traffic, and has the biggest engagement. I assume many of these people come from Google Reader, so to lose that source is really frustrating.

I have signed the petition on change.org with the unbelievably vain hope the behemoth that is Google listens, but I doubt they will. I am looking at alternatives as we speak (suggestions welcome! Especially those that have recipes already in IFTTT), but I guess this is a timely reminder that you should always always build your services and legacy on your own domain and hosting, and obtain email addresses when marketing. Whilst not 100% secure, it is more secure than building on services that are open to the whims of large organisations.

What are your thoughts on Google Reader Closing?

P.S. Even with this move, RSS isn’t dead. I think WordPress would have to stop offering RSS feeds, and this doesn’t look likely, at least for WordPress 3.6. Feedburner users should be worried, though.

February Challenge Update & March Goal

Apologies for the small delay in the blog post. I completely missed a blog post last week, which is practically inexcusable, as I do have posts to post. I celebrated my 29^th birthday last Monday (Happy Birthday to Me!) and generally spent most of the week either celebrating or recovering.

I have also have some amazing news on the horizon on the next couple of months, which may take quite a bit of my time, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend on this site for the next couple of months. Next months’ goal for example is “fucking finish what is causing the amazing news”, so that’s all sorted! But onto this month’s goal & last month’s.

February’s Goal – Decluttering: Complete! (ish)

Yes! I managed to declutter a fair bit from my room and domain portfolio, making about £100 in the process. Money which is appreciated as in under two weeks I am heading to Glasgow to watch Wales play Scotland in the footy (as well as the bonus attraction of Glasgow Rangers vs Stirling Albion the next day – Scottish Division 3 doesn’t get the International break that higher leagues do). It wasn’t without it’s faults, here were a few things that could’ve scuppered me:-

eBay Throttling My Listings

I talked about this briefly in another one of my other posts, but something I didn’t realise was eBay would only allow 10 items (or £500 value items) for new sellers. As somebody who rarely dabbles in eBay, this was frustrating as I had to split my listings up over two days, nearly missing the February deadline.

Bad/Late Payers

So I had two auctions won, however at the time of writing I’ve still to receive payments for. They were also fairly high selling items, so I’m a bit gutted to not get the cash in my back pocket yet. I’ve chased and chased, and not sure what to do if I’m honest. eBay don’t exactly support sellers over buyers, so I’m thinking I may have to suck it up and relist. Boo hoo.

Godaddy

What a bunch of monumental weapons. You see, I snapped up a domain on backorder a few years ago, and it came with a “free domain monitoring service” which automatically links me with the domain. However, after realising I had fuck all to write about Belgium I sold it to a friend of mine. Said friend has let it lapse, Godaddy paced it into auction and because I have the “free domain monitoring service” still on my account they very kindly put in a bid for the domain. A bid that wasn’t matched, and I now once again own said domain.

I’m not happy. It’s not expensive, but frustrating as GoDaddy have been as helpful as a chocolate teapot, often throwing answers in legalese to me. In this one dickish move, they are losing me as a customer. Sucks to be you, Godaddy.

March’s Goal – Launch a Website

And so onto March’s goal – it is to get a website out of the door. I’ve been sitting on a domain for about 3 or 4 months for an idea that I’ve never even started, so decided to launch a website by March 31^st.

I’ve bought the domain name, secure the Twitter & Facebook accounts for it and invested a little bit of money for advertising. The domain however is going to try and make money, and I have a plan for doing so. Wish me luck!

Buy My Stuff!

Don’t worry, this isn’t a post on me hawking WP Email Capture.

So yes, if you remember my goal for February is to declutter. It’s going well, a sober weekend saw me break the back of most of the work I needed to do, and have well and truly cleared my desk. I also went on an eBay splurge, and managed to clear a bunch of stuff and list it online. Hurrah!

Yes, that’s most of the stuff I’ve listed online. But not all. You see, for some reason eBay in their infinite wisdom have put limits as to what you can sell in a month. You see, I should’ve sold about 15 items, I’m only allowed to sell 10 a month.

Curses! When did this happen?

Anyway, as a few of you asked, the items I am selling are below. Bid high, bid often, bid aggressively. Thank you.

(PS. Want a feed like this? Download my eBay Feeds For WordPress Plugin!)

(PPS. Snowed under with a few projects, back early next week with proper non shilly post)

Featured on Two Posts on SEONo

Recently, I was lucky enough to be featured on two posts on SEONo. The SEO blog, run by Steve Morgan, has been churning out some nice stuff recently, so it’s well worth checking out (~~even~~ especially if the posts don’t feature yours truly).

The first is a guest post by Emma Barnes of Gaming Memoirs who interviewed me and a bunch of other SEO’s for “What Video Games do SEO’s like?“, this epic post was great fun in participating in (even if a few of my responses raised a few eyebrows!). Check that out and add me to Xbox Live – I’m well up for a game!

The second was a post detailing SEO’s on last.fm. I must admit I’m not a huge last.fm user, using letting Spotify scrobbling to it. Nevertheless, I was relieved, as my so-called bad taste in music didn’t come to the fore. Result!

Cheers for the features Steve! 🙂

WP Email Capture Featured on WPCandy Podcast 35

A big thank you to Jake Caputo and Ryan Imel for making WP Email Capture one of their “Picks of the Week” for WPCandy’s Podcast 35.

I thought Jake summed up WP Email Capture better than I have ever have (I have paraphrased a bit, so apologies, but I think I’ve got the jist):-

“For theme developers, it works pretty well. It’s not for a specific email service at all, it saves the email and name captured in the database that you can then export to whatever your list management software is.

I can put it in the theme as my customers can use it regardless of whatever list management systems they use, and it works pretty well.”

Thanks Jake!