foomandoonian

Ping.fm is either a valuable resource in this Web 2.0 era of endless social networking communities, or a sign that things have gone too far. Simply put, Ping.fm lets you update your status on Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce, Brightkite, Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr, Bebo, hi5, Mashable, Xanga, Plaxo, MySpace and now Identi.ca, with more being added all the time.

You can send updates via email, IM, various gadgets, apps and widgets, or build something yourself using the API. In addition, you can 'group' your different services. By default Ping.fm defines 'micro-blogs' and 'statuses', letting you choose which group you want to update. When you're not using the web interface, you can use customisable 'triggers' (like @s for status updates).

And that's it. Another service that does a simple job, brilliantly. So now you can update all your services at once, and collect all the updates on FriendFeed or one of the other aggregation services. The cycle is complete.

If you want to sign up, the current beta code is "pingyoulater". Enjoy.

I'm a big fan of Tumblr and use it for my lifestreaming site, foomandoonian.net.

One of the neat features of Tumblr is the pre-defined formats for different types of posts: text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio and video. These are all very useful, but I've always wanted to have a 'list' option as well.

The internet loves lists, whether it's the Top 10 Firefox addons; 5 Things You Didn't Know About Me, The 250 Greatest Movies or The Ten Best Top-Ten Lists! In my opinion, the list format would fit in perfectly with the Tumblr ethos.

If you would like to see lists added, please show your support at my Get Satisfaction suggestion page.

I'm not presenting Website Outlook to you as anything other than a curiosity, but a curiosity it most certainly is. Submit your website domain (or indeed, any other domain) and it returns a valuation. For example, Google.com:

Net Worth : $1.2 Billion
Daily Pageview : 550000000
Daily Ads Revenue : $1650003.16

It also supplies PageRank, backlink count, Dmoz listing and other basic info. I have serious doubts that this has any real bankable value, (the site is full of typos and sloppy writing, so one wonders about the attention to detail behind the calculations) but if you're wondering about the potential value of your web properties, this is an interesting place to start. I'm certainly curious enough to delve a little deeper.

Mixwit simply lets you produce a mixtape out of whatever music you can find via seeqpod, skreemer or just as plain mp3's on the interweb, and embed them as a snazzy widget on your webpage. Well, you can see how cool it looks below...

The process was really simple - just search for tunes and drag the ones you like from the results list to your playlist. I rather liked the default templates, but you can upload your own image to truly customise the look of your tape. I didn't need give out my email address or sign up to anything to produce the widget above, although doing so would let me go back and edit the tape in the future. If you write a music blog, this would make a great sidebar widget.


So, another little service that does something simple, incredibly well.

TinyURL is the original URL shortener. The service is very simple - take a long URL like:

http://omnomnom.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/chihuahua.jpg

and make a much tinier URL, like: http://tinyurl.com/3qyjpe. TinyURL offers several additional features that are standard for most URL shortener services, including 'preview' links (eg: http://preview.tinyurl.com/3qyjpe) and bookmarklets, so you can streamline the process of creating short URLs.

So that's all pretty simple, right? Why would you want to use one of the many copycat services? Well, as with my other round-ups this one is not going to be comprehensive. Instead, here are a selection of URL shorteners that have some genuine value add. Still too much text? Skip to the end. Enjoy.

is.gd is one of my favourites. It produces some of the shortest URLs (eg. http://is.gd/mdt). Users can see a preview page by appending a hyphen to the URL (eg. http://is.gd/mdt-). You are also free to add any hints you like, after another "/", for example: http://is.gd/mdt/meow.

snipurl, snurl or snipr.com, by contrast with is.gd, makes a simple service seem complicated. They have tons of features, and I hate to do them a disservice, but I wasn't prepared to create an account for something that is so non-critical. If you need Excel integration, RSS feeds, support forums, 'multi snips', privacy keys and tons of other features, check them out. Example url: http://snipurl.com/2atwu.

memurl tries to generate mnemonic URLS, like http://memurl.com/kepumi.

doiop.com lets you pick a keyword (provided you can find a unique one) to produce more memorable URLs: http://doiop.com/flyingrat. It seems short of other features though.

icanhaz.com does the same as doiop, but with extra LOLcat, making for some amusing URLs: http://icanhaz.com/schrodinger. You have the option of entering your email address so you can edit your URLs later, but I could see no way of logging in. Just to be safe, I would advise against it.

moourl.com's unique selling point seems to be 'cuteness'. It also has the option to personalise your URL. http://moourl.com/hownow. And it is cute!

Metamark can also generate custom URLs. A typical URL is http://xrl.us/tortoisefail, but that link will fail unless the user knows to append the password (in this case, add: -fail)

notlong.com is the only one I found that actually uses a custom subdomain, allowing you to create URLs like http://kingarthur.notlong.com. It also, by default, gives you a password to access your stats and manage the URL. One of the neater shortening services!

TweetBurner caters to the Twitter market by giving you stats associated with your account, and making it easy to tweet your twurl (!). Again, the bookmarklet simplifies the process. Typical URL: http://twurl.nl/5wucdf.

HURL.WS is hosted on Google, so won't go down unless Google does. The URLs are not the shortest (eg. http://www.hurl.ws/7y) but it does let you check how many people have clicked through one of your links by appending /hits - for example: http://www.hurl.ws/7y/hits.

urlTea is open source and has some extra funkyness. Typical URL: http://urltea.com/38vd. You can also append descriptive info to the URL after a question mark, http://urltea.com/38vd?like_this.

Finally, LinkBunch does something a bit different and creates a short URL for multiple links: http://linkbun.ch/dw1. It does mean that users have to be routed through a special linkbun.ch page, but there are many useful applications that make this compromise worthwhile.

In conclusion...

Use is.gd to keep it simple and short. Use Tweetburner if you use Twitter. Use notlong if you want the URL to look semi-professional.

Jeffro has an interesting article (Un Authorized Syndication) about the pros and cons of allowing readers to subscribe to a full RSS feed, and problem of sploggers.

I weighed in with my perspective:

As a reader, I think full RSS feeds are important. When I stumble across an interesting blog, I add the feed to Google Reader and categorise it. If I notice at this stage that the RSS is truncated, I usually unsubscribe straight away. There is every chance that I will forget all about that site and never return, but if I get a full feed then I will continue to read and occasionally return to the source to make a comment (like now). I also share interesting stories via Reader, which gives the site some additional promotion.
I am sympathetic to the authors, who may want the visits, and I have no answer to the splogger problem (although you have my permission to flog any sploggers that you find!).

Drop on over to the comments and share your opinion.