Introducing Technorati’s WTF aka Where’s The Fire

I don’t think it has quite caught on yet, but Technorati has built it’s own answer to Digg, Reddit and the rest of the social news and bookmarking sites. It’s called Where’s The Fire or WTF and covers “What’s Hot, and Why.” Considering the popularity and resources of Technorati, it seems like this should be more popular than it already is . . .

WTF Manipulation

Unfortunately, it seems like people are already manipulating the system. I was just looking and there were 4 stories on the front page of the site all promoting some blog (that is a huge POS). Each story had 15 votes and they were all in different categories for added exposure. WTF’s competition already has methods for dealing with situations like these, and if Technorati doesn’t handle the problem FAST, then it is likely that this application will turn out to be a complete flop.

User Manipulating Technorati’s WTF

If Technorati hopes to gain any ground on the competition for social bookmarking/social news, then they need to get a grip on this ASAP. In addition, publicity is going to be key . . . if no one knows about WTF, then it will never become popular (pretty obvious, I know).

Meanwhile, feel free to vote on and support some of the articles I’ve posted to WTF, or just submit some yourself!

Looks like MySpace wants to go back to its roots and launch another crappy product without style or functionality. The recently launched their MySpace News Beta (of course they had to include the uber-lame BETA tag – more about BETAs in another post), which looks like a really poorly modified Pligg clone. You would think that with all it’s resources, NewsCorp would make sure they had a good product before putting out an ugly piece of junk like this, but nothing seems to surprse me anymore.

The site, steals borrows the now famous Digg voting system and presents blog posts and news stories (I have yet to see anything other than a blog post) for users to read and review. The output is just poorly designed. While I do appreciate the vast number of categories the site offers, and the events options (they aggregate events from Backpage, CitySearch, amongst others) I don’t really see any reason to rate an event that I, nor anyone else has attended. It just makes no sense. I see nothing else about the site that I like.

In addition, when I attempted to include my blog’s feed to the site, it simply timed out. I tried again later with another blog and got the same result. I realize its a “BETA”, but these kinds of problems won’t win the MySpace team any kind of good buzz.

According to Playfuls.com:

The news feature of MySpace is built using Newroo technology, a company they acquired in early 2006 for a rumored $7 million. Newroo never had the chance of displaying the merits of its technology in public because of the acquisition.

I’m not sure, but I think they got ripped off. I’m pretty sure this could be developed for somewhere around $.75 (not a fan, can’t you tell?)

Here are some other links to thoughts about this new site:
- MySpace News Kinda Sucks
- Social Media Now: MySpace News Not Ready for Prime Time
- MySpace added News aggregation
- Will MySpace News Ever Fly? (The Answer May Surprise You)
- After the (brief) Honeymoon: MySpace News Still Sucks
- MySpace News: failure to launch, no one is reading

Introducing Shopify, A Hosted eCommerce Solution

I just found out about a cool new ecommerce solution called Shopify. The site is a beautifully designed web 2.0, Ruby on Rails hosted ecommerce site. According to the few reviews that I found about the site, setup was extremely quick and easy.

The site is free to use, and you are only charged a 3% commission once a sale is complete. This can drop down to 2% if you sell over $10,000 in goods. Users can use Paypal or a merchant account to handle payment and everything from security to maintenance is handled by the Shopify team.

From what I saw, all of the ecommerce shopping sites created with shopify look incredible. They are attractive and easy to navigate. Other key features that caught my eye were: timeline based order tracking and the ability to track orders through an RSS feed.

The biggest problem I see is that it is a hosted solution. In its current form, I would have no way to set up a shop on my server using Shopify. I’d have to send all my traffic to their site (my subdomain) if I used them. This presents a problem for me.

It looks like I’ll be passing on Shopify, and another hosted solution I found called RightCart, but if you don’t care if you host your own shop, I think it is certainly worth a look.

Here are a few other reviews of the site:
TechCrunch: Shopify was worth the wait
CNet: Shopify makes quick work of setting up shop

Sample Shopify Website:
Conrad’s Coffee Company

I found a great mod for phpBB forum administrators. This particular mod will ban any user who registers for your forum from a particular time zone. I’m not sure if many newbies to phpBB are aware, but most SPAM registrations come from GMT-12 Timezone. If you can prevent users from registering from that zone, you’ll go a long way to stop these SPAM-Bots.

Ban User Registration Based on TimeZone aka. SpamBot Timezone Registration Mod

Just alter the timezone range to prevent bots and people from zones you don’t want them coming from.

#
#—–[ OPEN ]——————————————
#
includes/usercp_register.php
#
#—–[ FIND ]——————————————
#
$sql = “SELECT MAX(user_id) AS total
#
#—–[ BEFORE, ADD ]——————————————
#
if (($user_timezone < -5) || ($user_timezone > 5))
{
$message = ‘Sorry, you appear to have triggered our spam security system. Please go back and modify some of the information and try again.

To give you a hint, we only accept registrations from people based in (or near) the GMT time zone area.

‘;
message_die(GENERAL_MESSAGE, $message);
}
#
#—–[ CLOSE/SAVE ALL FILES ]—————————————
#

Thanks to InertaM for sharing this with everyone.

I’ve been suffering a bit here with my new iMac. Everything is perfect, except I’m lacking an adequate feed reader / aggregator. I’m currently using an aggregator called Vienna, a RSS reader for Mac OS X, but it does not compare to FeedReader (the PC reader I’ve been using).

Vienna lacks the ability to easily recognize new feeds if you enter a website’s URL (not the feed’s). Every other good aggregator I’ve used has this functionality. There are a few other annoyances (inability to easily remove read articles quickly), but I haven’t found a suitable replacement.

BTW – I know everyone is raving about the web based reader from Google, but I prefer a stand-alone application on my desktop.

Anyone know of a good reader?

I’ve been trying to find a new look for my real estate wiki, but have had no luck while searching for templates. I realized I’d have to look for “wiki skins.” After some searching, I found a great resource with a bunch of great ones.

If you’re looking to change your wiki’s look, here is another resource with more styles.

Building a Wiki Site
Last month I mentioned that I was looking into setting up a Wiki and that I had chosen MediaWiki to do so. Since then, I’ve set up my first wiki (it is a work in progress), a real estate wiki. The set up was really easy – like most scripts, the basic install just required setting up a php/mySQL database, a few configurations, and we were ready. Modifying the script and learning how to run and manage the wiki took a bit longer. I’m still feeling my way around, but I’m pleased with how it is turning out!

Creating My First eCommerce Website
Just to make things a bit more complex for myself, I’ve decided to create an ecommerce site – my first – as a complement to one of my other sites. I’ve made half-hearted attempts in the past to do this, but this time is different. After some initial research, I’ve narrowed my shopping cart script choices to OSCommerce and Zen Cart. I felt like they both had the largest support base and it appears like they are two of the most touted shopping cart solutions.

Now that I’ve got the initial first steps figure out, I’m totally lost when it comes to ecommerce. I’ve explored the forums at both Zen Cart and OS Commerce, and I’ve searched for tutorials / blogs that help walk you through setting up your own ecommerce site, but have failed to find anything halfway decent. If anyone has any recommendations, please let me know. Regardless, I will do my best to try and explain how to go about doing it, once I’ve got it figured out. Wish me luck!