My excuse for why I didn't blog much in March...

The goal from the beginning for this blog was to write a post a week, that's the incentive that kicks me each week nagging me to write a post even though sometimes I don't want to. I've seen a number of blogs simply fade into the past after a month or two once the initial novelty has worn off - writing informative well-versed (I hope!) posts is a difficult thing to do in one's free time.

I managed the grand total of one post in March but I did have a valid excuse: I had the "new job search" machine on full throttle and was spending every evening pouring over JobServe and various job blog sites. If I wasn't searching for jobs on the internet then I was either preparing for face-to-face interviews or being telephone interviewed and I just didn't have the bandwidth to blog as well.

I'm pleased to say that I accepted a new development position a few weeks ago and so I'm finally leaving the mobile telecoms industry after ten years (wow, I've only just realised that it's been that long!) and I'm moving into the financial services industry.

I'm still going to be doing Java web server-side stuff so I'm not out of my comfort zone but I'm really looking forward to learning a whole new dictionary of terminology as well as working with an excellent team of people...

Technorati Tags: Jobs, JobServe, JoelOnSoftware, WorkingWithRails, Andrew Beacock

A great new Oracle database resource

My colleague Mark Lishman has recently started blogging about all things Oracle over on Lishblog. He really knows his stuff and has a habit of explaining it so that mere database mortals such as myself can understand it.

He's only just started but already has an excellent post on how to use external tables in Oracle. This is really handy when you have a massive CSV file and want to query it but can't be bothered to write in input script in Ruby or something because you will be scrapping it soon.

He's a great Oracle DBA and his blog will no doubt be well worth subscribing to!

Technorati Tags: , Oracle, Database, Mark Lishman, Andrew Beacock

Manager Tools - my favourite podcast for over 2 years

Back in 2005 I blogged about the podcasts that I subscribe to and one of my favourites was Manager Tools.

Well two years later my list has changed a little (click on the 'podcasts' link on the left for a closer look) but Manager Tools is still my favourite podcast, the moment the show music starts to play in my car I know I'm in for an hour of energetic & informative advice regarding all aspects of management & leadership.

I'm amazed at how much time & effort Michael Auzenne & Mark Horstman put into producing a timely weekly show full of great content with such audio finesse as well.

I was recently very fortunate to get a sneak preview of some of their premium content and I must say if it's all of the same high quality (which with Mike & Mark is a given) then it's definitely worth the month fee.

They are consistantly the number 1 business podcast at PodcastAlley and have won the "Best Business Podcast" for two years in a row. If you only add one podcast to your itunes/podcatcher this week, make it Manager Tools, you won't regret it.

Technorati Tags: Manager Tools, podcast, Michael Auzenne, Mark Horstman, Andrew Beacock

A big thank you to RobinsReviews.com!

I received a surprise gift through the post on Saturday, a gift wrapped book off my Amazon Wish List from Robin of RobinsReviews.com.

Robin sent me the book after finding the Technorati Tags Bookmarklet on my blog - thanks again Robin I hope you find it very useful!

Technorati Tags: RobinsReviews, Technorati, Andrew Beacock

Sorry for not blogging!

I'm having major internet connection problems at the moment with my net connection dropping every few minutes (hope it hangs in there whilst I post this!). I'm with Pipex although after tests it's looks like a problem with my BT line...

Will hopefully get a post out soon but what with Christmas shopping, last minute project dashes and no internet I can't promise anything! :)

Support the new blog/RSS feed icon

Based on the Firefox RSS feed icon, (and adopted by Microsoft) is the transmitting symbol that with a big push from Feed Icons is trying to become the standard symbol that means "this is an RSS feed". I've added it to my blog today to support the effort.

Let's make RSS feeds simple enough for anyone to recognise - none of this orange XML this or RSS that...

Technorati Tags: Blog, RSS, Icon, Feed Icons, Andrew Beacock

I've fixed my Bloglines Shrinker - and so soon I hear you shout!

Thought I'd take a quick look into the issue of my broken Bloglines Greasemonkey script and spotted the issue straight away. It's a pretty simple thing really...

They've changed the title of their site from "Bloglines | My Blogs" to "Bloglines | My Feeds". So all I had to do was update the little bit of code in the script that checks the title to read "if (document.title == "Bloglines | My Feeds")" and upload the script to my website.

The script is available here, or through my original post which covered installing Greasemonkey as well as details of installing the script.

UPDATE: I've moved some files around on my server, I've not changed any of the content of this post.

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Greasemonkey, Andrew Beacock

Bloglines breaks my Bloglines Shrinker GreaseMonkey script

Back in May I blogged about modifying a Greasemonkey script written by Matthew Gertner over on the Peer Pressure blog.

Well the recent additions to Bloglines has stopped my script from working, all the icons and text are back to their rather large size. I wish there was an option to set the feed list text to be small but the blog post text to be big. As that's the main reason this script exists.

I'll have to see if I can figure out what's breaking it, but don't hold your breath, I'm no Javascript wizard!

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Greasemonkey, Matthew Gertner, Andrew Beacock

Bloglines gets hotkeys!

I was in for a treat when I got to work this morning and powered up Bloglines to catchup with what's going on in the world of tech whilst enjoying my first brew on the day.

A little message at the bottom of every page informing me of some rather handy keyboard shortcuts.


This was followed up sometime later by an official announcement on the Bloglines News blog.

My personal favourite is the s key which moves you to the next sub-folder and just keeps going to the next, and the next, and the next...

The 'next article' j key seems interesting which moves the right-hand pane to the next post from that blog, but if you have a multi-page post it will skip too far - I prefer to still use the down cursor key.

The real nice thing with these keyboard shortcuts is that you can navigate around your feeds without loosing the keyboard focus on the right-hand side - I'm not sure of how many times I've pressed down on the cursor key expecting to scroll down in a long post only to find the left-hand list of blogs scrolling instead!

Great work bloglines, could you now possibly add a keyboard shortcut for 'Keep New'?

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Keyboard Shortcuts, Andrew Beacock

Oddiophile's Technorati Tags Bookmarklet is available here

One of my more popular posts is regarding a bookmarklet by Oddiophile that will create the html template for any number of space-separated Technorati tags.

For quite a while now the Oddiophile blog has been offline, and after quite an exhaustive search on the web I cannot find a bookmarklet that offers similar functionality.

As I use it all the time for my posts (as you can tell from the bottom line of every post) I have a local copy. I'm going to put it up for distribution, if anyone has any issues with this duplication please get in touch with me by commenting on this blog post and I'll take it down (if you have a damn good reason why the blogosphere shouldn't benefit from this rather fab tool!) :)

Ok, here you go...

Oddiophile's Rather Fab Technorati Tags Bookmarklet

Technorati Tags: Oddiophile, Technorati, Bookmarklet, Andrew Beacock

Mr. IT Conversations (Doug Kaye) discovers my podcast post

Just took a quick look through my StatCounter logs, and found a strange link from Google Groups pointing at my recent post about the podcasts that I listen to. I followed it through to find Mr. IT Conversations himself, Doug Kaye, thanking me for my review:

"There are new blog postings like this one *literally* every day, but I particularly liked what Andrew had to say"

Cheers for the kind words Doug!

Technorati Tags: IT Conversations, Doug Kaye, podcast, StatCounter, Google Groups, Andrew Beacock

A list of the podcasts that I subscribe and listen to

Peter Cooper asked a few days ago about what podcasts people are subscribing to. Here's my list:

IT Conversations
IT Conversations got me into podcasting, it's the original and the best for anything to do with technology. They have loads in interesting recordings, the best ones for me are recordings of presentations given at conferences like eTech and Web2.0. If I could only subscribe to one podcast it would have to be this one.
http://www.itconversations.com/index.html

For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report
Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz are two communication professionals who discuss public relations, corporate communications and how that intersects with technology in a twice-weekly show, each show is about 1 hour in length. They normally discuss what's happening in the blog and podcasting worlds including any new tools or sites that are of use in tracking what is going on. Shel and Neville get some great banter going and so this podcast is one of my favourites.
http://forimmediaterelease.biz/

Lee Hopkins' Better Communication Results
A short weekly podcast by Lee discussing communication issues and how you can improve your communication results. Lee has a very entertaining style and his podcasts are always a pleasure to listen to.
http://www.hopkins-business-communication-training.com/communications_mp3s.html

Gillmor Gang
The Gillmor Gang has been podcasting for quite a while, they were originally hosted as part of IT Conversations but have now moved off into their own 'space'. They are five industry experts who have been around the block a few times discussing recent technology issues (e.g. Apple/Intel, Gnomedex, RSS, Attention). They normally have some good disagreement going, this extends the context of the item in question as you get a more balanced view.
http://gillmorgang.podshow.com/

Gillmor Daily
Similar to the above Gillmor Gang, but hosted by Steve Gillmor and a guest or two.
http://gillmordaily.podshow.com/

LugRadio
A fortnightly show that looks at Linux and open source. It's hosted by four British guys, with lots of swearing and foul language. They normally interview a lead developer of an interesting open source project, and discuss various distros, applications, etc. I find it a pretty good, light-hearted look at the open source world.
http://www.lugradio.org/

Manager Tools
A weekly podcast on how to be a better manager. The two US hosts have a lot of managerial experience and give a very informative and educational show. They are upbeat presenters, and present real stuff that is actually useful. I have particularly enjoyed their most recent editions that covered how to host more effective meetings.
http://www.manager-tools.com/

Ruby on Rails
A podcast dedicated to providing information about Ruby on Rails. It covers new tools, modules, and tips & tricks for Rails, interviews with key players in the Rails world among other things. There has only been two of them so far so I'm not sure just how good or useful this one will be.
http://podcast.rubyonrails.org/

BayCHI
BayCHI is the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI). They have a number of interesting recordings of lectures by industry experts in the web world including David Sifry of Technorati, Stewart Butterfield of Flickr, and Scott Berkun of ex-Microsoft.
http://www.baychi.org/podcast/

Agile Toolkit
I haven't listened to this one yet, but it's got a good list of recordings with various people from the agile world.
http://agiletoolkit.libsyn.com/

Please let me know if you have found this list useful, and if there are any that you are aware of that you think I would be interested in.

Technorati Tags: podcast, IT Conversations, For Immediate Release, Better Communication Results, Gillmor Gang, Gillmor Daily, LugRadio, Manager Tools, Ruby on Rails, BayCHI, Agile Toolkit, Andrew Beacock

Add fresh RSS content to your website with Feed Digest

Peter Cooper in the UK has just launched Feed Digest, the successor to the very popular RSS Digest.
It's a tool that allows you to put a section of HTML on your website which is powered by one or more RSS feeds so it means that your website is updated by these RSS feeds.

Here are a number of things you could do with it:

* Show the latest BBC news.
* Display your latest 10 del.icio.us bookmarks.
* Display your latest blog post in your home page.

I haven't thought of my use for this yet, If I add too much other data, the blog posts will disappear into a sea of links, but it's an interesting service none the less.

The other thing that is interesting about this service is that it's powered by Ruby on Rails. This is a Ruby-based web framework that I've been reading about lots but haven't got into yet. There are quite a few US-based sites that use it, but Peter's is the first UK one that I've heard about.

Technorati Tags: Feed Digest, RSS Digest, Peter Cooper, Ruby on Rails, Andrew Beacock

How to use HaloScan's TrackBacks

Last night I detailed how to add trackbacks to Blogger, a free service provided by HaloScan. In this post I want to cover how to actually use trackbacks to enable the conversation.

So you've read a blog post that you want to comment on. You want to say more than just 'great post!' but don't want your finely crafted response disappearing into someone else's comment bucket. Not only would this be never found by your blog subscribers, but it's also difficult for you to see if anyone is adding to the comment discussion.

Enter trackbacks - a way for you to inform the original blog post that you have made a comment on your own blog, and that they are regarding the same topic of conversation.

How do you actually use them then I hear you ask?

Trackback URL

First of all, make sure that the original blog actually has Trackback capability. If you can't see a 'Trackback' link mentioned at the bottom of the blog post, that author (or blogging system) doesn't support trackbacks, so you might as well stop now. If it does support them, click the link, you will be taken to a page that provides a trackback URL to 'ping'.

Permalink URL

Back on your own blog write your response as a regular blog post, and publish it as normal. You will need the 'permalink URL' to your entry, this is the URL that will take you straight to this particular post. On Blogger you can get to the permalink version of a post by clicking the 'post time' given at the bottom of each post listed after the author's name.

Trackback Pings

Login to HaloScan, click 'Manage Trackback' in the 'Members' menu on the left-hand side. Choose the middle tab 'Send a Trackback Ping' as you want to inform the original blog that you have posted a response on your blog. Now you need to do a bit of 'cut and paste' from both blogs, I'll list each field in the HaloScan 'Send Trackback Pings' form, and what to put in them:

* Your Blog Name - This should already be filled in as you provided this information when you signed up for the service.

* Your Permalink URL - This is the link that goes straight to your blog post, details of how to find this are given above.

* Your Post Title - I copy and paste the title of my blog post provided on the permalink page.

* Your Excerpt - A short paragraph from your blog post, I try to find the most relevant section of my blog post that covers the original topic.

* URLs to Ping - This is the 'magic' step, you put the Trackback URL that you found on the original blog here, this is the location that HaloScan will tell that you have responded to the conversation.

Once all that is filled out, click 'Ping Now' and let HaloScan do the rest.

That's it!

Your trackback is now in place and the relevant blog has been notified of your post. You can notify multiple blogs of your post by putting additional trackback URLs in the 'URLs to Ping' box.

If you revisit the original blog post you should see that the number of trackbacks to that post has gone up by one, if you view the list of trackbacks you should now see your excerpt with a link to your blog.

Technorati Tags: TrackBack, HaloScan, Blogger, Andrew Beacock

Adding TrackBacks to Blogger using HaloScan's TrackBack service

After being an RSS consumer for a while I started to pay attention to 'TrackBacks'. They are a way to allow you to comment on your own blog regarding someone else's post, but inform their blog that you have done so. By using this feature you can continue the 'conversation' without having to leave comments on the original blog and remembering to check back every now and then to see if someone has replied to you.

Blogger doesn't including this feature but you can add it in easily by using a free service provided by HaloScan. I added the trackback feature quite a few weeks ago, I'm going to try and document the steps I went through as I know that Lee Hopkins has had some trouble recently, and my friend Robert Baillie is too lazy to figure it all out himself!

The first thing to do is go to HaloScan and register to become a member. Once you are signed up and logged in, click 'Instructions/Code' in the 'Members' menu on the left-hand side.

Select 'Blogger' from the options list, make sure 'Display trackback code' is ticked, then click 'Next', DO NOT click 'automatic install' as it may alter your Blogger template without letting you know what it has changed (I seem to remember that this didn't work for me anyway).

You now need to edit your blogger template in a separate tab (or window) so that you can add the code that will enable trackbacks for each of your blog posts. Open your blogger dashboard, click the name of your blog, then click the 'Template' tab.

Back on the HaloScan site, follow the instructions for 'Step 1', I have placed mine after the last '<link rel=...' statement, before the '<style type="text/css">'.

Next you need to add the 'Trackback' label to each post. This is achieved by looking through your template until you find the section '<p class="post-footer">', within this is the commenting template code which we will add to. Find the line ending 'Comments (<$BlogItemCommentCount$>)</a>', you will be adding the trackback code here.

Back on the HaloScan site, examine the code in the textbox in 'Step 2: Automated for Blogger (or BlogSpot) Users' and you will see that it contains a '|' roughly in the middle of the text. Copy all the text after the '|' and paste it in your blogger template at the end of the comments section as described previously.

Follow 'Step 3' on the HaloScan site if you wish, it's just a little advert graphic telling your readers that you are using the HaloScan service, I've added mine at the bottom of my right-hand menu.

Now made sure you 'Save Template Changes' and then 'Republish' your blog otherwise your new TrackBack service will not be available.

That's it, you are now using Blogger's commenting system & HaloScan's Trackback system so you really can now 'join the conversation'.

If you have any problems with any of these instructions, please leave me a comment as I performed this operation some time ago, and I'm writing this mostly from memory (and revisiting the HaloScan site).

Happy Trackbacking...

Technorati Tags: Trackback, HaloScan, Blogger, Lee Hopkins, Robert Baillie, Andrew Beacock

Nice podcast mention from Lee Hopkins' Better Communication Results

I have just listened to Lee Hopkins' latest podcast tonight and was delighted to hear not only that he was mentioned me, but that he gave my blog a favourable review!

I've been enjoying Lee's 'Better Communication Results' podcast for quite a number of weeks now, having been referred there from the rather good 'For Immediate Release' podcast produced by Neville Hobson & Shel Holtz.

Thanks again for the mention Lee, just hope I can keep up the quality of posts that gave you such a good impression!

Technorati Tags: podcast, Lee Hopkins, Better Communication Results, For Immediate Release, Neville Hobson, Shel Holtz, Andrew Beacock

Even more blog usage statistics via StatCounter

Lee Hopkins (who hosts an excellent podcast on business communications) posted a comment to my last post about MyBlogLog with a suggestion to also try out StatCounter for some excellent website (and therefore blog) statistics.

It's a cookie-based system, with a small amount of JavaScript that is inserted into each and every page on my blog (easy with the use of the Blogger template). It can then report all sorts of interesting information regarding number of visitors, returning visitors, browsers & OSs used, resolutions, etc.

I really need to start posting to my blog a bit more frequently, I've got a bit stuck in a rut lately, not really trying out new stuff and so my blogging has suffered.

Maybe these stats will show that people do read this blog, and that might give me the kick I need, who knows... :)

Technorati Tags: web tracking, web statistics, StatCounter, MyBlogLog, Lee Hopkins, Andrew Beacock

Track outgoing links on your blog with MyBlogLog

I read an interesting post on Successful Blog last night that mentioned a site called MyBlogLog.com.

It's a site that with a little scriptlet that you drop into your blog template allows it to track what links on your site have been clicked, so you can see what links your readers are interested in.

I've only just added it to my blog, so I've nothing to report yet but if I get any interesting statistics I'll drop them here.

Technorati search engine for Firefox

If you use Firefox then you probably use the Google search box in the top left corner. If you want to add Technorati to the list of search engines in the drop-down box then download RatherBiased.com's beta Firefox Technorati search plugin.

Technorati Tags: firefox, technorati

How to create Technorati tags

Each of my blog posts has a list of relevant Technorati tags that makes it easy for Technorati to categorise my posts, hopefully generating more readers of my blog. I read about Technorati's tagging system a while back, but didn't really want to handcode the HTML at the bottom of each post.

I set about searching the web to see if anyone else has the same issue and can across the Oddiophile blog. There is a post from January which provides a bookmarklet that does all the work for you.

You drag the bookmarklet link to your bookmark toolbar (that's the installation process!), then whenever you want to create some tags, you click the bookmarklet, type in the tags with a space between each one, click 'OK', then copy the resulting text and paste it into your blog post.

That's it, nicely formatted Technorati tags, without any of the work or possible typing errors!

Technorati Tags: technorati, bookmarklet, oddiophile