The Implementation Conversation: Blogramming

I love to create. I love to program and I love to write. Blogging has let writers loose, creating a new field for dynamic conversations. It is even common to see conversations about these conversations.

As a programmer, I craft new online services (and free software) much the same way as a writer crafts a blog. I do it with the hope that it will be useful and that it will get people thinking, talking and creating. Blogging has a name, but I haven’t found a name for this programming-meets-blogging I like to do. Some might throw it in the “web 2.0″ bucket. Your ideas? Here’s a start: “blogramming.” (I’m sure you can come up with something better than that!)

Anyhow, the parallel between blogging and blogramming is clear to me. The blogosphere has its a-list — so does the, um, blogrammosphere (ouch!). We all, I think, want some portion of fame and fortune. Regardless of these rewards, we are all hooked on the thrill of hatching new ideas and sharing them with friends.

April’s Drawingboard

I have a good feature wishlist for ListMixer, and a couple of them are pretty cool. I have spent more time planning than coding, however. Thank you for your patience and your ideas. Above all, thanks for using ListMixer and helping me imrpove it! Without you, ListMixer is nothing.

I expect to add one or two gems this month, along with a number of smaller improvements. If there’s something you would like ListMixer to do, please let me know by email or by adding a comment. Thanks!

Bookmarklet Bling

Richard Berg wrote to ask how he could get his bookmarklets to display our asterisk icons. He makes a good point — icons are smaller and faster to use than text labels.

Firefox

With a little work I found a couple Firefox extensions for adding icons to bookmarks:

• Favicon Picker 0.2.6 — for Firefox 1.0 browsers (wouldn’t install on my 1.0.4), and

• Favicon_Picker 0.3.0 — for Firefox 1.5 (or later) browsers.

Even if you are running pre-1.5 Firefox, the thread around the 0.3.0 version is very helpful.

I had to install 0.3.0 by first downloading the extension and then dragging and dropping it into my browser.

After restarting Firefox, I found I could change a bookmark’s icon by right-clicking the bookmark and selecting Properties. This properties dialog sports a new Icon entry which does the trick.

When entering the file name for the new favicon, you can enter a URL — no need to save them locally, first. I also found you could pass it many kinds of image files of various sizes, not just 16×16 icons.

Internet Explorer 6

Right-click a bookmark and select Properties > Change Icon… > Browse…. You can select a local icon file or enter a URL to an online icon. You can change the icons for bookmark folders, too.

So, here are the images and their URLs:

— [link] [icon]

— [link] [icon]

— [link] [icon]

— [link] [icon]

— [link] [icon]

And: further reading and more links to favicons.

Cheers- Sid

More, Better Bookmarklets

This past week I have made a number of small improvements to make ListMixer faster and more useful. Many of these changes were suggested by you! A big Thanks! to the kind folks who write me with feedback and support. Please, keep it up!

Selection -> Description

The most useful new feature is the new bookmarklet. It lets you pre-fill the page description by selecting page text before clicking the bookmarklet. If you select no text, then it behaves as it always has.

The interesting question is: If I already have a ListMixer account, how do upgrade my bookmarklet? Here’s how:

1. Click your current bookmarklet — this opens the Add This Link landing page.

2. Scroll to the bottom of this page to the Mix with More section.

3. Click the invitation page link — this opens a new page.

4. You’ll recognize the same instructions and icon from when you first installed your bookmarklet. Follow these instructions to install the new bookmarklet. This new bookmarklet will be linked to your same old account.

5. Before you delete your old bookmarklet, test the new one to make sure it works.

Feel free to email me with questions or problems. You can also post a comment to this post. A hit tip to quirksmode for how to best grab selected text using JavaScript.

New, Specialized Bookmarklets

After getting comfortable with the new bookmarklet, take a look at the set of special bookmarklets I created. To find them, click your bookmarklet so it opens the landing page and scroll down to the Shortcuts section.

From the beginning, I have had keyboard shortcuts: 1, 2, and 3 — they are described in this Shortcuts section. These were great for me, because my hands never leave my laptop keyboard. Felix reminded me, however, that these weren’t as useful when using a mouse.

So now you also find three specialized bookmarklets:

– Add + Return
– Add + Browse
– Browse Only (Don’t Add)

You install them the same way you installed your first bookmarklet — instructions are on the page, too. They aren’t meant to replace your main ListMixer bookmarklet, but to complement it.

The combination of pre-filled link descriptions with one-click link submission is killer. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

March of Milestones — Two Week Review

First User-Created (Pre-API) ListMixer Hack!

This is great. Jonathan Brodsky emailed me yesterday about an applescript hack he created that marries netNewsWire with ListMixer. This was tricky because I haven’t yet created a handy API — he reverse engineered the LM submit form and used curl -d to pass in his data. So my hat is off to him for his trouble.

And I do promise a basic API soon. Please email me with your wishlist. Right now I envision GET-styled write access, and offering JSON for read access. I would also add options to the RSS 1.0 to enable finer-grained XML read access. Your thoughts?

First Podcast Featuring ListMixer!

ListMixer was promoted into the top 10% by SturgeonsLaw.com. There’s something about a podcast that impresses me. I think it’s the planning, trouble and time that must go into a good podcast. Thank you, R. Francis Smith.

Two Weeks: Over 1000 Accounts, Over 5000 Links

Since ListMixer went live on 2/21 (two weeks ago), users have created over 1000 accounts and over 5000 links. That’s about 350 links per day! Thank you for making ListMixer a success. Please keep in touch and let me know how I could make it better.

Mix in Many Languages: Unicode Support

hlb suggested I add unicode support, and I realized that unicode should have been the first thing I built in. Well, maybe second, after error logging. Actually, I am surprised that PHP (ListMixer’s language) doesn’t default to utf-8 encoding out of the box. Maybe the newer versions do.

Anyhow, now ListMixer uses unicode!

RSS Feed Encoding Fixed

You probably have not noticed, but the XML we were serving as RSS was using illegal named entities — XML knows only five: < > & " '. In RSS 1.0, everything else should be encoded using UTF-8 (more unicode fun).

Anyhow, whether you like it or not, our RSS is now valid XML.

Devour Links Faster: Deleting and Editing

I just added link deleting and editing features to ListMixer! Go to your Mix by clicking your bookmarklet, then hover your pointer over a link. You should get a menu like this:

The trick is that your bookmarklet landing page sets a cookie in your browser that identifies you as the account owner. If your browser doesn’t accept the cookie, then this menu won’t appear.

The only issue I’ve found is that the Delete link doesn’t work in my OS X Safari (the Delete + Visit link does). Please let me know how this works for you.

I also added support for RawSugar and Ma.gnolia bookmarking services.

A big Thank You! to the folks who wrote me with these feature requests. More goodies on the drawing board, but so little time (Hi Jeff!).

Not Crazy

I like hatching crazy ideas, and sometimes I’m left wondering: am I just crazy? I feel ListMixer is a genuinely new idea that addresses a real need for many people. The feedback I’m getting from friends, users and bloggers bears this out. So, maybe, this one time, I’m not crazy. It’s a good feeling.

I hope you like ListMixer, and I also hope you’ll write me with feedback and suggestions … even if (especially if?) you think ListMixer is crazy.

A perfect example of this was Jim writing me about getting his ListMixer link roll to work on his blog. The problem was a ListMixer bug. I fixed it, and now it looks good. Olé!

ListMixer Online!

Friday night I was hit by this idea. I wanted a tool for managing blog and news pages that are noteworthy, yet don’t quite deserve a place in my permanent bookmarks. This murky notion took shape in my mind as I puzzled over the best design for such a thing. As it came into focus, I grew more excited. What lit my fire, however, was when I figured out I could build it in one weekend.

Nothing makes the long tail clearer to me than a good project. The big pieces fall togehter quickly, but the details seem impossible to sweep up. It doesn’t help that I obsess over minutia, like keyboard shortcuts for the bookmarklet. Was that really necessary on initial release? I wanted it, so I built it in. (Mac users: everything works on OS X except for these funny shortcuts.)

Luckily, this was a long weekend. It went online last night, and this morning I tested it some more and fixed some bugs. Now it’s ready for you! Check it out: here’s the front page, here’s is my Mix. Cool, eh?

I think you’ll find it very easy and useful. No need to create a password-protected account — your unique ID is built into the bookmarklet. Install the bookmarklet, click it, and you’re running.

Use ListMixer for your throwaway personal bookmarks. Subscribe to its RSS. Add its link roll to your blog. Here’s a screenshot of mine (WordPress won’t let me add an iframe):

Start a party by inviting your friends to add their own links into your Mix (as I like to call it). It will start to look like a meme tracker or news page.

If a link in your Mix goes unclicked for 30 days, we delete it for you. That’s the throwaway part.
If you decide to promote a ListMixer link into your permanent bookmark collection, just open your page, hover over the link, and click your icon. See?

… I haven’t tested all of these bookmarking links, but they should work

I love this thing. I think you will too. But if you don’t (or even if you do) then email me with your bugs, suggestions or comments. Thanks.

Update! I added link deleting and editing features (2/27)! These are visible only to the account owner(s). You must use your bookmarklet to visit your account, if you want to use these features — that’s when we set your identifying cookie. If your browser rejects our cookie, then this new menu won’t appear. I changed the menu screenshot, above, to suit. Olé!