Straw Poll - social bookmarks

What is your favorite social bookmarking service?
	BlinkList
	del.icio.us
	Furl
	Ma.gnolia
	RawSugar
	Simpy
	Spurl
	Shadows
	Google Bookmarks
pollcode.com free polls

I wanted to see where everyone stood on bookmarks, and what is the most popular. Sorry if I left out your favorite...just leave a comment.

BooksPrice.com

A new site was brought to my attention, and even though I receive several emails requesting a mention of their site, I thought this one might be of interest to many of you. Although it is not 'blog' related I'm passing it on. Who knows, it may help with gift buying this Christmas season.

Lucy, from BooksPrice.com, wrote "http://www.booksprice.com is a free service of finding the best price on books among the major online stores. Our real time price comparison can help you save as much as 60% from the retail price. At BooksPrice you can look for the cheapest price on new & used books, and also compare the price on a purchase of several books together."

So, being a skeptic, I checked it out. And sure enough, by running the author's name though their online search, I will save $10 from where I normally would of purchased it!

Take a look. If you are a reader, you will appreciate this service.

My New Obsession...Ma.gnolia BlinkList

I have realized something about myself in the last few weeks...I'm fickle. And I apologize for this. Why it took me so long to realize, I don't know. On the other hand, maybe I'm not fickle! Maybe I can just admit when I find a superior application. I believe the superior program I have found is BlinkList. I know I went on and on about Ma.gnolia in this post, My New Obsession... Ma.gnolia. Then one day I received this comment:

Mike said...

May I ask what made you go with Ma.gnolia vs. BlinkList? We are always hard at work on making our service better and better and I would greatly appreciate your feedback.

I left this response:

annie said...

@Mike, In all fairness, I have not tried BlinkList. It was brought to my attention a few days before your comment! I have been looking at it, and have an account. So, I will do a comparison to Ma.gnolia. What I have found so far that I like...the way it displays the links on a page. This seems faster than Ma.gnolia. I absolutely love the cloud and the fact I can display it on my blog. I will be looking into that, and it may be the deal breaker. I haven't looked much further...my time is getting away from me lately, but I will get into the goodies of BlinkList as time permits. Does it save the page as Ma.gnolia does, even if the page goes down? That is a feature that I like. Another feature Ma.gnolia has is 'Ma.gnolia Roots' which I find handy and fun, with the little badge displaying the number of times that page has been marked on your site. And, last, but not least, I love the easy feel of Ma.gnolia. The layout is easy on the eyes. BlinkList is close, but doesn't quite hit the "Zen-ness" of Ma.gnolia. I will look at them both, and decide which features are more important to me. I do feel that BlinkList is in the same ballpark as Ma.gnolia. It will be close.

I never received a response from Mike, which I didn't care for, since he said he would appreciate feedback. But, we all have a life, and perhaps his took over. After waiting for a response, I went ahead and tested BlinkList.

To answer to my questions...

• I don't think it saves the page as Ma.gnolia does - a feature I love, but may be only something to slow down the site. And BlinkList is much faster than Ma.gnolia. In the scheme of things, I would rather have speed over saved pages. If the page is that important, I usually copy it myself.
• I like the way the links are displayed on the page on BlinkList. There are more per page and you can readily see how many 'blinks' it has. A blink is when someone bookmarks that page.
• It does not have a feature similar to 'Roots' in Ma.gnolia. As cute as that is, it is really only a novelty...eye candy. I like the magnolia flower.
• I still don't believe it carries the Zen feel of Ma.gnolia, but it does not have a busy feeling either. It has a simple design that is intuitive and easy to move around in.
  

One feature it has that I absolutely love is the 'Cloud'. I can't help it. I love clouds. To me they are such a great way to get around. Now I have two clouds on my blog. One That is for BlogU labels only, and clicking on a word in the cloud will open a page with all the posts with that label. The other, which presently is located in my footer, is for all my bookmarks, and clicking on a word there will open a page with all my bookmarks labeled with that word.

OK. My vote is in for BlinkList. I have moved my bookmarks from ma.gnolia to BlinkList and am quite pleased with it so far.

Blogger Beta: Using Widgets for your Header

1977 left a comment on Customizing your Header: Add an Image with a little something he came up with. It is a way to add your header using widgets!

Here is what he did. Go to 'Template/Edit HTML'. Find the #header-wrapper <div> and change 'locked' value from true to false. (Note, it could be called #outer-wrapper. Each template varies. And in a template I tested, the value was already false.) Save any changes that you made.

Then open 'Template/Page Elements'. Here remove the header by clicking 'edit' on your header element, then 'Remove Page Element'.

In this same window, choose 'Add a New Page Element/ Picture'. In the box that pops up, you will either choose 'From your computer' or 'From the web' and browse your computer for the image or paste the web url in the box. Close that window by 'Saving Changes'.

If you want to change the header postion, go to 'Edit HTML' and in the #header-wrapper section of the Style Sheet, change the text-align value to left, center or right.

Thanks 1977 for a great tip!

UPDATE: 1/20/07 This comes from another reader, Shrish! One needs to set showaddelement="yes" in the 'header-wrapper' div, otherwise 'Add a New Page Element' option will not be visible on 'Page Elements' page.

10/24/07 I saw this tweak at Big Blog Directory: "The only problem was that the graphic wasn't clickable since it used the 'Picture' widget . I took my html code and put it in a 'HTML/Javascript' widget instead and it worked."

Beta Blogger - Clickable Header

Due to a huge demand for clickable headers, I'm writing a post to explain how to make your header clickable in Beta Blogger.

Since you want a clickable header, I'm guessing that you already have a header image and it is hosted on a web hosting account. You will need the URL of this image later.

First you will make a 'division' to hold the image and position it in your blog in the CSS style sheet between the <head> </head> tags:

#imageholder {float:right;}

To make it clickable add this code after the <body> tag:

<div id="imageholder">
<p><a title="Your blog title" href="yourblog.url">
<img border="0" src="image.url" alt="title of image" />
</a></p>
</div>

I have tested this in a practice blog and it works! With that being said, if you have a problem, let me know.

Classic Blogger - Clickable Header

Due to a huge demand for clickable headers, I'm writing a post to explain how to make your header clickable in Classic Blogger. (Did I miss the memo that clickable headers are the new cool Blogger thing to do?)

This is an easier method than for Beta Blogger! Since you want a clickable header, you probably already have a header image and it is hosted on a web hosting account. You will need the URL to put in the below code.

<div id="header">

<a href="your blog.url">
<img src="image.url" border="2">
</a>

<p id="description"></p>

</div>

And, that is it. Clickable header express!

Blogger Beta: Random Quote Generator - Part 2

Ramani over at Hackosphere has taken an idea Blogger Beta: Random Quote Generator and turned it into a slick little widget. His post, Random message widget (no Edit HTML!) shows you how. He created a nice form called Random Message Widget Creator that is basically plug and play.

You can find out more about this new/hidden(?) feature of Blogger Beta from phydeaux3 on OMG! Puppies!, which by the way, has nothing to do with puppies.

Check it out...use your imagination to see what else you can do with this feature!