Posts Tagged ‘blog’

Music Provider GrooveShark Wins Top CNET Award

Grooveshark is an application that was reviewed here on Crenk sometime ago. At the time, I didn’t see the relevance of

Grooveshark awarded CNET's Top 100 Webware Award

Grooveshark awarded CNET's Top 100 Webware Award

the application, though it had some good aspects, I just did not feel comfortable with the entire package. It was not long after that post that officials from Grooveshark contacted me for a dialogue encouraging me to take a look at the offerings again, highlighting features I had not really seen the first time around. In the year that I’ve had with Grooveshark, I’m impressed with the continued efforts it’s making to establish itself as a viable music service for users.

CNET was obviously impressed enough to award it the 2009 Webware Winner for Audio and Music. Grooveshark has indeed come a long way and its user base has grown significantly. With this announcement comes features that again make Grooveshark heads above the rest. For starters their partnership with Ping.fm to build Tinysong API, which allows users to take the code and develop webapps that provide access to Groovesharks extensive library of music. It will be interesting to see what developers come up with as we’ve seen with various other online applications, the opening of the API makes it easy for supplementary apps to proliferate the net.

The second feature that was announced deals specifically with the blogging community. Grooveshark has announced that is now has a Wordpress plugin that allows integration into blog posts for users to set up their favorite songs for specific posts. You can set up just one song, or a playlist of songs for your readers on your site. An interesting option, at the very least you could create a small station of songs on your, possibly with a widget.

Grooveshark is definitely expanding its platform and appeal, and it should be interesting to see how much further they go in 2009!

Intense Debate: Enhance Comments on Your Site or Blog

intensedebate-logoIntenseDebate is a new wordpress plugin which offers an enhanced user commenting experience. Currently IntenseDebate has a easy to add wordpress plugin in which you can add straight into your platform and within a few clicks it can be live and working. Features include: commenting threading, reply by email, profiles, widgets, twitter integration and more.

IntenseDebate is one of many comment plugins that really help you try to increase traffic and build community around your site. I really think this idea has legs, but it needs to be part of a much bigger platform. It would be great if Wordpress took a few ideas from IntenseDebate and added them into their platform.

Wordpress 2.8 Releases in Beta

WordPress Testers and early adopters can now download Wordpress 2.8 and test the new features that promise to make WordPress better and more powerful than before.

There are lots of new features in WordPress 2.8 that are really interesting. Here are a few user features you can look out for

  • New Theme Installer routines
  • Add CodePress syntax highlighting to Theme and Plugin editors
  • Use “Custom Header” for menu text and revise Default theme to reflect change
  • Separate Comments into a separate postbox, from Discussion postbox, on the Edit Post screen
  • Make tags accessible without Javascript on the edit screen
  • Don’t ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam
  • Don’t notify post author of own comments
  • Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns as set via the Screen Options tab
  • Add column “Rating” in Administration > Links > Edit
  • Improve installer to help people entering wrong email addresses
  • Per Page option for plugins
  • Show absolute date instead of relative date for scheduled posts
  • Autosave post/page when pressing Control/Command+S
  • Add toggle all button to the Gallery tab in the uploader
  • Support more than one gallery on the same page
  • Add per page option to Screen Options for comments, posts, pages, media, categories, and tags
  • Show Tools menu for all users so they can access Turbo
  • Fix most popular link category list
  • Add description field for tags
  • “Choose a city in the same timezone as you” for Timezone in Administration > Settings > General
  • In upgrade process, provide better explanation for database upgrade message
  • Enforce unique email addresses in Add/Edit users
  • Hide things that need to be available to screen readers via offscreen positioning
  • Use invisible class for hiding labels and legends
  • Use a semantic class name for text targeted to screen readers

Download Wordpress 2.8 Beta 1 now and try it out. Since its a beta release, don’t try it on your primary blog.

Blah Girls: Why Isnt Ashton Kutcher Pushing It on Twitter?

Over the last few days there has been a lot of talk and discussion surrounding Ashton Kutcher and CNN. First he manages to get almost as many followers on Twitter as CNN (almost 900K). Then he challenges CNN to a race to get to 1 million followers first. If he wins, he’ll “”ding dong ditch” Ted Turner’s house.

This made me think a bit about Ashton and his original tech startup the Blah Girls. Blah Girls launched with a lot of press and publicity (mainly due to Techcrunch and Michael Arrington), but now it seems to be a very basic gossip blog with a cartoon attached.

blah-girls-ashton-kutcher-startup

Blah Girls produce a weekly vidoe who is pretty much a catoon spoof. The videos are very well develop and quite cool. However, these videos and Blah Girls in general doesnt seem to be getting much traction at all. The Blah Girls Youtube channel has over 3,500 subscribers but each video seems to be lucky to get more than 1000 plays. Plus for some reason YouTube has given Blah Girls a partner page, but they dont seem to meet the requirements of being a YouTube partner (apart from the fact that Ashton is quite well known).

Back to the site itself it seem that is had an initial push at launch but then has been slowly growing at the same pace as a normal gossip blog. The site has a great design, but there seems to be a huge gap of white space between the video section and where the actual blog starts. Ashton I really think you need to take a look at the design and try to piece it all together a bit better. Additionally, Ashton why arent you twittering about Blah Girls on your Twitter stream? Im sure 1m followers will really help you in pushing your site to the next level faster, plus you have a benefit that no other gossip blog has, your already bloody famous!

Top 5 Digital Music Blogs That You Should Read On a Daily Basis

For the last two years we have been developing RouteNote at Insomnia Media, and in that time have been closely keeping an eye on digital music news and where the shift is going. I thought I would write a quick post and let everyone know my favourite digital music blogs to follow.

Hypebot – Hypebot is written by Bruce Houghton and is a daily report on the last news in the digital music space. Bruce is also the founder and president of Skyline Music (booking agency) and Skyline Consultancy in which he is a music and technology consultant to many music startups.

Digital Music News – Digital Music News is the news and information authority for music industry and technology executives. Digital Music News is founded and edited by Paul Resnikoff. Paul writes daily posts on Digital Music News and also send out a dialy newsletter to industry executives called the Daily Snapshot.

Billboard.biz – Billboard.biz is the digital music arm of the Billboard website. Billboard.biz discusses digital music news with normally at least 10 articles per day. Articles on Billboard.biz don’t just come straight from the USA they as encompass International digital music news, so that you get the full picture.

Digital Audio Insider – Digital Audio Insider is written by David Harrell, who writes digital music news from an artists perspective. David is in a band based in the UK and they use all kinds of different digital music stores and partners to sell/stream their music, and David’s writings are a great insight into what the average artist is thinking and what they are looking for.

Coolfer – Glenn Peoples has worked in the music industry for over eight years and founded Coolfer.com while working and living in New York City. Coolfer was a total ad free blog which is pretty unheard of these days. A week or so ago Glenn announced on his site that he would stop writing because he was offered a new job over at Billboard.biz asSenior Editorial Analyst, so you can now read his work over there.

17 New Wordpress Themes That Will Rock Your Personal Blog

Personal blogs are more than a bunch of words put together. A good personal blog reflects your identity, your personality and individualism and a  factor of great importace here is the design. It is the first thing that the viewer notices, before making any presumptions about you or your personality. So a good design is necessary to leave a good and long lasting impression on the visitor.

To help you out with the design, we at Crenk have put together 17 new wordpress themes that we believe, will rock your personal blog. Read on.

Creative Art

Creative Art

Theme Info | Demo

Masinop

Masinop

Theme Info | Demo

Nouice

Nouice

Theme Info | Demo

Scruffy

Scruffy

Theme Info | Demo

Vigilance

Vigilance

Theme Info | Demo

Simply

Simply

Theme Info | Demo

WGrey

W Grey

Theme Info | Demo

Simple Pro

Simplepro

Theme Info | Demo

Simple Changes

simple changes

Theme Info | Demo

Reviews Theme

Reviews Theme

Theme Info | Demo

ProudBlack

Proudblack

Theme Info | Demo

Modicus Remix

Modicus Remix

Theme Info | Demo

Modern

Modern

Theme Info | Demo

LightWeight

Lightweight

Theme Info | Demo

IAMWW W2 DnD

Iamwww

Theme Info | Demo

Bright Spring

Bright Spring

Theme Info | Demo

Elegance

Elegance

Theme Info | Demo

So that ends the list. I hope you liked it, if that’s so, show me some love and Digg it :)

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.

MakeMoneyOnline.com: Money Making Tips Sites Thats Actually Worth Reading

I came across a very interesting site the other day. I know its not really a startup so I shouldn’t be reviewing it, but I thought it was worth a mention anyways. The site is MakeStableMoney and it talks about how the average person can make money from home. I realise there are so many poor sites out there that seem to talk about this same issue, but for some reason I think this site actually has some quality.

Previously the site has talked about way to make money through sponsorships, best 3 google adwords books to read, 17 secrets on how to sell ebooks and more. This site can really help people make money online and I think it is a good investment of your time to check it out.

Irresistible: Personal Wordpress Theme for Free by WooThemes

WooThemes has just released a new Free theme called Irresistible. It is a visually-rich personal blog, with a little bit of a multimedia focus. Incorporating some nifty video-options and widgets, Irresistible should meet all of your personal blogging needs. Just add your content to the mix.

irresistible-wordpress-theme

Irresistible: New Free Wordpress Theme from WooThemes

WooThemes has launched today a new free WordPress Theme. Irresistible is a personal blog theme with a great unique design, available in 9 different color styles. Download and demo it here.

irresistble-wordpress-theme-from-woothemes

Zemanta Now Available on Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and ScribeFire

Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

In less than a year, Zemanta has made a name for itself in the blogosphere. By becoming the premier add-on to the FireFox browser, bloggers now had access to an amazing set of tools to provide further depth to their posts. With hundreds of thousands of downloads, it seemed like a surefire winner, and there was little doubt that Zemanta has room to expand, but where and when?

Zemanta late last year supported another FireFox add-on called ScribeFire, a simple blogging tool that opened up in your browser without having to log into any other site or leave the page you are on. This allowed for amazingly quick posting to the blog of your choice, but also provided the same depth that you had available to you from within most popular blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad.

Recently it was announced that Zemanta has made another move towards mass market exposure, it has integrated with Gmail and Yahoo Mail, offering users of those mail clients the ability to attached related articles, pictures, and keywords to their emails that the recipients might need to fully understand the topic. I personally can’t imagine a better mass exposure opportunity than attaching yourself to two of the largest mail clients on the internet today.

Zemanta is a key tool that I recommend all bloggers install, but now with mail enhancements, I’m happy to see them growing. I’ve always been a big supporter of their efforts as it’s nice to see innovative ways to breathe life into a long standing medium like blogging.

It’s apparent that Zemanta will continue to offer what it always has; by offering photo suggestions, article suggestions, and keyword suggestions, as you type, updating every 300 words, there is bound to be another leap into further integration.

Perhaps a jump into an office platform for document and presentation creation, like Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. Only time will tell!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

How To Make My Blog Stand Out From The Crowd?

Yesterday I was having a great conversation with Marshall Kirkpatrick (Vice President of Content Development at RWW, not sure what that means) about how to get your blog noticed in the current environment. The discussion started with me posing the basic question “how can I get my blog noticed because we seem to be producing very good content but not getting the rewards”?

It was first mentioned that Problogger is the best source for this information on the web, however I have been reading his site for many years now and most of the content seems to be getting a little reproduced. Additionally, Problogger talks a lot about social media and how to use it to your advantage, but these days everyone has been reading those articles for year and most bloggers use StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Buzz and other very proficiently. If most bloggers are using these tools to their advantage then you still have the same issues, how to stand out from the crowd?

I know that here in Europe a blog that has been on the rise lately is TheNextWeb, but I know these guys have been writing that blog for several years now and they also have one of the best technology conference on the mainland of Europe. Therefore if I want to improve my readership it is a little difficult to just start a conference, or is it worth adding some add-ons to the site such as job board, marketplace or others?

Content is also a major player in this issues, cause most good bloggers say that content is king. However, I think that content is king when you are either a small blog or a large blog, but definitely in the middle content isnt king and it is all about promotion and push.

This is main problem with web 2.0, noise! Currently, there is just simply so much noise in most niche’s, so why instead of writing individual sites and keeping a little revenue, maybe the plan should be to join forces with other blogs and create a larger blog and take a smaller slice of a much larger pie.

I propose this question to you, “how can I get my site to stand out from the rest, especially considering we produce amazing content that is much better than the majority of our competitors”?

Twingly: The Blog Search Engine That Is Actually Moving In The Right Direction

When you have an urge (we all get it), or a task that requires you to go sifting through blogs, what is the first place that comes to mind? Technorati of course. It is an established player in a fairly open market which has seen their superiority fairly untroubled. Until now?

Enter, stage left, Twingly.com, a Swedish blog search engine founded by Martin Källström.

According to Twingly.com’s ‘about‘ section, the philosophy behind their search system is to produce “a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere”. Nice, but aren’t Technorati and URLFan doing the same thing? Twingly uses relationships, ie how well linked each blog and article is, to work out how relevant to your search they are. Key to the service is a blog’s ‘approval’. If a blog is not approved by the Twingly team (meet them here), it could potentially be spam. If you are the owner of a blog that comes up as not being approved, you can of course resolve that little issue by sending the Twingly team a swift e-mail.

You can express your opinion on the blogs Twingly finds via a fluorescent green ‘links/likes’ tab. This shows you how many people are linking to the page and it allows you, once you’ve signed up to the service, to vote on if the post is relevant or useful – it’s the equivalent of Technorati Favourites.

Where it gets really interesting though is the blog profile page. With some nifty “research”, we can compare Crenk’s ranking on Twingly, Technorati and URLFan.

Crenk is ranked 3/10 (10 being the highest) with 43 blogs registering as being linked to various articles on Twingly. Technorati claims 80 and URLFan says 45, with 199 other mentions. These are vastly differing numbers, and you have to wonder if Technorati is brilliantly accurate  or if it’s not omitting that nasty spam.

Some other nice touches from Twingly include the ability to search within a certain timeframe, <em>as mentioned</em> you can search by one of the 12 supported languages, and you can also look  for blogs that have been officially approved, thus weeding out any other possible spam.

Twingly have also released their top 100 blogs by ranking, and if you are proud of where your blog sits in their 1-10 scale, you can of course throw on that all important badge to show it off. One rather large omission however,  is the Huffington Post.

With this in mind it is safe to say that Twingly isn’t the most accurate blog search engine, yet. However, the layout is simple and practical,  and although the ‘likes/links’ updating isn’t instantaneous (it took about ten minutes to register), the future looks very bright for the Twingly team who are currently overseeing about 25 million searches per month.

Twingly has the potential to be a very good blog search engine. It looks good, is quick when pulling together results and the blog profiles, in relation to each other, are very useful; it even has some pleasant widgets to pop alongside your page ranking.

They are very much into their feedback in Sweden, and you can vote for your most wanted features at the Twingly Tech Plan page.

Try Twingly.com out for yourself and let us know what you think.

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