Luna Tail

One of my doggie friends online, Johann the Dog, was twittering the other day and said he was checking out Yoono. So curiousity always gets the better of me when I hear of things like this so I had to go check it out.

It’s a Firefox Extention for social networking. I tried Flock for a while, the social networking browser, but I still like Firefox better. And Yoono actually provides a lot of what Flock does.

Yoono is a bit complicated but the more I figure it out, the more I like it. I was using Twirl as my twitter client, but Yoono incorporates Twitter right inside and now that I can view the updates, I like it! And they only update every 3 minutes because of the Twitter limits. Where Twirl just kinda sits there and says it’s going to try again, and sometimes it’s longer than 3 minutes, I like how Yoono has it set up instead.

I can also include Flickr and Facebook (though I don’t use Facebook much and it’s blocked from my work anyway) and I can load up my blogs so I can post to them.. and I LOVE the little sidebar that opens up when I hover my mouse on it.

So far, so good, for Yoono. And I even have my own Yoono page.

I just joined up with Dneero, and I’m trying it out. Here is a conversation!

Well I signed up for Friend Feed. And actually, it’s pretty cool. You can put a ton of your own things in there… like your blog URL, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and other information and then people can subscribe to your feed and the the whole darn bunch. Which, actually, seems like a lot. LOL. I only am subscribed to a couple of people’s feeds now through Friend Feed, but if I find more people on it then I’ll subscribe to more. I especially like to check out friends, family, and dog people.

I was checking out some of the services and Yelp looks like a fun one, too. So I signed up there. Though I haven’t written any reviews yet.

So if you want to check out My Friend Feed, there it is. What is yours?

After much debate (pun intended) I’ve decided to switch my blogs from the Disqus commenting system to Intense Debate.

There are a number of things I like better about Intense Debate, vs Disqus. Intense Debate has a nicer dashboard. And they can import comments from my blogs into their database so they are all in one place.

Intense Debate still doesn’t email my replies to comments to non-registered users, which is a bummer. I would prefer to have an email sent out to all my commenters, informing them of a reply. So… though it’s by no means required, if you want to get in on this commenting community, I recommend you claim your comments and sign up. There are lots of blogs starting to be part of Intense Debate.

Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to get the comments that were in Disqus to import back into Wordpress itself, or into Intense Debate, and I apologize if your recent comment is no longer showing up. But please feel free to comment now, as I do think I’m staying with this comment platform!

Now to find me some weight loss pills to drop these ten freakin’ pounds I have gained back… ugh! I am working hard on getting rid of them, I’m tired of them!

The new version of Wordpress (2.5) has Gravatars built in. It took me a while to understand Gravatars, but finally I do, and really they are pretty neat.

A Gravatar is basically just a little picture that is related to your email address. And when you post a comment to a Wordpress 2.5 blog, WP will check if your email address exists in the Gravatar database. If so, it shows your little picture by your name.

It’s cool! If you don’t have a Gravatar associated with your email address, then a generic image will show. It’s boring.

Getting a Gravatar is free, and fun. Mine, as you can see, is Tatum. I have it linked here. If I reply to a comment of yours, this picture will show next to my comment as well.

So.. what are you waiting for! Getch yerself a Gravatar!

Though I’m not quite sure yet. I think I get OpenID… just like finally I get del.icio.us. Here is my OpenID page if you care to see:

So with OpenID… it has to be a URL / domain name. I guess… you can use your own domain name. If you don’t have a domain, you can sign into one of the companies (like ClaimID) and they give you a pseudo domain name that is your OpenID.

I think I was thinking OpenID is more than it is. I was thinking it was a social type network thing… and I guess it can be, but it’s not really, yet.

What is it, you may ask? OpenID is an ID you can use to log into websites that support it. When you post to a blogger/blogspot blog, it will give you the option of using your OpenID as one of your logins (if the blogger has set it up this way). But.. as far as I can tell, you have to use one of the publicly hosted OpenID sites to host the OpenID. ClaimID is one of them. Then… when you log in using your OpenID, the login page checks… err, checks something, not sure what, to confirm your OpenID and log you in.

What does it check? What does it know what to check? The geeky side of me wants to know!

I was thinking OpenID was a website in and of itself. Well it is, but you can’t get an OpenID from the OpenID website! Or at least I don’t think so. You get one through ClaimID or sites like it, such as MyOpenID. How does ClaimID talk to OpenID? No idea. Maybe someone will come along and clear this up.

I was thinking OpenID was a website where you could enter your information, link to other people with OpenIDs, and have a good old time. But… it is not. However, ClaimID seems to be, though it’s limited. You can claim your websites, and you can have contacts that have other ClaimIDs. I have one.. Johann The Dog. So if you have a ClaimID OpenID, I hope you’ll consider being my friend… my ClaimID is very lonely!

I need some home theater furniture to sit in while I figure this all out. OpenId really should be easier to understand than this! Or, sometimes, I’m just a bit slow.

One of the things I really enjoy about browsing to other blogs, is checking out things in the side bar and clicking them to see what they are. That’s how I found VerveEarth.

It looks pretty cool! I don’t even remember what blog I saw it on now… oops. Anyway, you can put in your blog and info, and then you can see what other people are around you and read their blogs.

They do need to be able to allow people to put in multiple blogs. Since I have six blogs, it’s not really practical for me to put all six in. So if I could relate them all to my one login, that’d be better. Guess I need to suggest that to them.

It’s a kinda fun community kind of website!

It was hard to find a picture without a dog! Don’t tell my sister this is her.. LOL.

Wordless Wednesday

I’ve been browsing around a lot of Entrecard blogs lately.. and there is a recurring theme among many of the bloggers who have been doing the same.

We hate hate hate… HATE, HATE going to a blog and having music blaring our of our computer speakers.

I will not drop a card on you if you have music on your blog. Please, don’t force me, and others, to listen to whatever music you think the whole world should like. Not only is it just obnoxious and annoying, for those of us who occasionally visit blogs from work, having sound suddenly blaring out of our computers is just bad for everyone involved.

So please, turn off your music.

Well.. I’m building my list of Entrecard sites. I posted a new page about it… so if you’d like to be on my bookmark list for Entrecard, please browse on over to that page and leave me a comment.

My Drop List

I will not guarantee that I’ll get to all these sites every day. With all 3 of my accounts. I may do it a few times a week. Depends on how fast I can speed drop. And if your blog is interesting to me, that might slow me down as I stop to read. If you have a tankless water heater… hey wait a second, what is a tankless water heater anyway? Hrm I have no idea.

Entrecard is being quite fun!