How to… use 1 widget in various WordPress Sidebars

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Widget-enabled themes are a good thing, Martha Stewart would probably say – and rightfully so. Configuring one's sidebar directly via CMS and drag-and-drop is doubtlessly a nifty feature we bloggers don't want to miss. To kick things up a notch, WordPress allows for an infinite number of different Sidebars. This comes in very handy for putting different sidebar contents on the blog homepage, the single postings and the static pages. But most bloggers who start experimenting with multiple sidebars experience a major draw-back: most plugins can only be used in one sidebar exclusively.

This means that if you have different sidebars for your homepage and your single posts, you cannot for example include the tag cloud widget in both sidebars. (more info: How set up multiple sidebars) But worry not, of course there is a very handy plug-in which solves this problem: Duplicate Sidebar Widgets does what its name implies: it enables you to make up to 25 copies of any widgets, therefore being able to use the same one in up to 25 sidebars. (You probably won't need that many, though.) btw: just in case anything goes badly wrong, you can always delete your widget-copies later. This solution works for most widgets, but some complex scripts simply refuse this treatment. (Top Commentators is one of those.)

But luckily, there's Samsarin PHP Widget. While the standard text-widget may only contain HTML but no php, the Samsarin Widget will gladly accept php input. So basically the first step is to copy the php-widget using the aforementioned Duplicate Widget Plugin, and in the second step you have to enter the desired php-function-call manually. This does not just sound like a bit of work and readme-digging, it actually is – but using this method gives you total flexibility in designing your widgetized sidebars.

Recommended Extensions: travelling into the future with Firefox

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The orange-blue fox is our favorite browser, no doubt – and one of the reasons is the incredible number of plug-ins available. In FF-lingo, they're called “extensions” and they cater virtually every need: whether it's a webmaster checking his page for errors, a SEO looking for those juicy follow-Links or Mr. average surfer looking for more comfort: almost every need is catered. Recently, MacStories has compiled an interesting postings that saves power-foxers a lot of time.

10 Best Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition #1: turn Firefox into Firefox.next NOW. is all about extensions which make daily web life easier, faster, more efficient. Some of them are all about gathering of additional information, some of them are about re-grouping contents and some dig deep into the code-structure of webpages. Even though I knew some of those plug-ins, a couple of them were completely new to me.

Some of those extensions are Greasemonkey scripts (in case you haven't installed Greasemonkey yet, you should do that right now. It's a script library which enables users to change various behaviors of websites: using Greasemonkey, one could color Facebook differently but also do a lot of useful things like improve the usability of various online services.)

There's no doubt that there are excellent feed extensions out there as well, but since I don't use Firefox to manage my RSS-Setup, I'm not using any of those. When it comes to reading news I love SnackR, while I use Snarfer, an excellent choice for dealing with large (and I mean: huge) numbers of feeds, for monitoring purposes.

But all hail to vertical browsing: I'm a tab addict, and even though I sport a huge monitor, there's never enough space for all those tabs. TreeStyleTab is great not only because it puts the tabs in vertical order, but it also comes with handy hierarchy- and grouping functions. And for those of you who want to switch tabs in style, FoxTab 1.1.2 raises the eye-candy factor and saves time.

Another great plug-in which I use is the SEOMoz toolbar which gathers all kinds of marketing-relevant information. And in case you want to surf along undetected from time to time, the Switch Proxy tool comes in handy. Those are my favorites – which extensions do you use to pimp your Firefox?

Epic fail: Why is twitter walling the reply-garden?

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Today's Twitter update was not a minor bug fixing issue: the reply-policy has been completely revamped, and most twitter users are not too about the fact that from now on users no longer see public replies sent by friends to people thy themselves are not following. This is how ReadWriteWeb puts it – and after reading 4 Pages of heated discussion on this post, I'm still not sure what the new policy *really* means.

And that is the fault of the official explanation on Twitter's corporate blog which is quite short and leaves some questions open. The first paragraph seems like a good explanation:

We've updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow?it's a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

But later today Biz Stone updated the text with a second paragraph which kind of nullifies the message of the first:

Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you'll still see mentions or references linking to people you don't follow. For example, you'll continue to see, “Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff” even if you don't follow @biz. We'll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.

This is the whole blog-posting by the way – and it seems to imply that the “reply”-status of a tweet solely depends on the position of the @username either in the beginning or somewhere else in the message. This doesn't make a lot of sense. Before today's update users had to chose the reply-behavior via a drop-down box in their settings/notices section. This dropdown has vanished without a trace. And frankly I do have no idea about Twitter's motivation for cutting us off from third party replies, which are one of the best ways to discover new users. Naturally, you're much more inclined to be interested in new people your friends talk to, but Twitter takes all this away. So please stop walling the garden – we want our old reply-policy back. Or, as tet3 puts in on Twitter's public support page:

Removing configuration options which substantial numbers of users used, rather than educating users is lazy, stupid, and insulting. Twitter is a great service, and it's where the people are, but boy, does the management know how to screw good stuff up.

Viral Clip for the new HTC Magic

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The second Google Android phone comes without any keyboard – after the rather disastrous hardware of the G1, HTC/Google decided to go with iPhone touchscreen hype. But unlike Apples geek gadget android can run multiple applications at once, also known as multitasking. This viral clip targeting the British market is quite funny, yet still I'm not impressed: using windows mobile on HTC hardware I've been enjoying these kinds of perks for quite some while now:

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Win a free ticked for meshed #1 conference!

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meshed - social media marketing konferenz in linzMeshed #1 conference takes place for the first time this year. From May 28th to 29th, the ars electronica center Linz will focus on all aspects of Social Media Marketing. On my German blog datenschmutz I am giving away a free 2-day-conference pass (priced at ?680) and there's more: using the coupon-code meshed_datenschmutz will save you ?170 when ordering a regular ticket. To enter the competition, you need a twitter account as I will be tweeting various quiz-style questions during the next three days. The persons who answers most questions right wins the ticket. There's only one downturn: the whole-give-away is explained in German and I'm using my German twitter acount @ritchie_tweets, as the conference language will be German, too.

So if you happen to be near Linz during 28./29. of May and would like to attend meshed #1, check out this posting on datenschmutz.

The Twitter Auto-Follow accounts list…

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The Twitter Auto-Follow List …is deprecated. When I started this project a couple of months ago, Twitter was in its early stages and far from being as spam-flooded as now. While the system worked perfectly for a couple of month, at some points more and more users began turning off the auto-follow feature as an increasing number of spam accounts became more and more annoying. Keeping in mind the current state of Twitter, such an auto-follow list doesn't make sense any more, so I decided to remove the list.

But the increasing success of Twitter did not only show us the downsides of tweet-spam but also produced a couple of very interesting mash-ups. In the Last weeks I found out that TweetLater Pro's brand-new “FriendFinder” feature and Pretty Link Pro's Pretty-Bar are the two most efficient strategies if you want to increase your followers with targetted micro-bloggers and leave spammers and feed-accounts out in the cold. Take a look, TweetLater, an online-mash-up service as well as Pretty Link, a WordPress plugin for using your own domain as a URL-shortener, are available in free trial versions:

tweetlater-250x250prettylink-250x250

For historical reasons…

…I've left the old text online. Thanks for visiting – I'll keep a sharp eye on our favorite micro-blogging service and I will keep you updated about my experiences (by now I run one of the largest European accounts with more than 30k followers. Feel free to follow me; I don't auto-follow any more, but I take a short look at the timelist of all new contacts and follow back everybody who has something interesting to say:

twitter.com/datadirt

Like all web 2.0 services, twitter works best on a give-take (reciprocal) basis. That's why I am starting this list which will help you to build a lot more twitter followers much faster than you usually could, and it's a great way to promote your own account, too! There are a couple of services out there that offer an auto-follow option meaning that you automatically follow every new user who follows you. This is a list of such accounts – which basically means that all you have to do is follow those guys and you are sure to increase your twitter-followership very fast, which is extremely useful if you start new accounts. Update: I have a done a major update today (2009-04-26) and split the list into three sublists: English, German and other accounts. This will make the list a lot more usable as it keeps growing and growing. Also, I've added a mini-FAQ: please read and save you and me some time.

To make targeted following a little easier, I added a couple of additional info. Every entry consists of a link to the twitter account, three tags that specify the general topical field of the account and finally and optional language entry which only applies to twitterers who are not tweeting in English. Being part of this list of course means that you will gain many followers yourself – the longer this list, the greater the gain for all tweet-geeks involved.

Unboxing: HP Deskjet 8500 Pro

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Last week HP Austria sent me one of their multipurpose-flagships for testing purposes. Since five days the one they call 8500 thrones amidst my other hardware, ever-obiently serving scans and various kinds of prints. Whatever Deskjet-printer feature you've ever read about, this huge box packs all the heat: automatic duplex prints, a touch screen display, LAN- and WLAN-integration and much more. HP says it's a real ink-saver, too, but since the headquarters of datadirt media group have become a paperless office long ago, I lack comparison.

The Deskjet 3500 comes with four separate ink slots and a sticker on top of the printer claims that the “cost per page and energy use are 50% less than lasers”, but your average customer has probably by now learned the lesson “don't believe product stickers, especially when they come with a footnote” the hard way by now. But still, there are factors which can be measured by an amateur like me: speed, print quality, usability – there's one thing I didn't test though and that's the fax capabilities. Running a paperless office, I'm not much of a fax-guy either, but if you're into fax-machines (in a non-vindictive way), this is probably a cool one.

And if size does matter, this device rocks almost any other home-office printer I've seen. I'm not sure though about the kind of customers HP is targeting with this machine: for really huge offices a laser printer is definitely a faster choice, while for a small home office this huge monument of HP entrepreneurship might seem a little oversized. And it's really loud, too, so if you're printing a lot, you don't want to put it anywhere near your desk.

And that's the part where the WLAN might come in handy: the installation is done in a couple of moments via the touch screen-display. The HP “solution disk” is one behemoth of a driver-setup. In my case, the ESET Smart Security didn't play along well with HP's software. To cut a long story short: even though the installation routine advised me to set my firewall to “rule based” (which is the mode I use anyways) and grant Mr. 8500 all access, it just wouldn't work out. The installation routine stopped, the second time around I disabled all security features and was able to install (and use) the printer. But here comes the tricky part: since my firewall wouldn't pop a the rules wizard, I was instructed to manually add a rule for a certain UDP port which I wasn't able to do properly. So like a true myth-buster I smiled danger in the face and knew that from now on it was either security or printed paper.

Apart from this little firewall incident, everything worked just fine – in duplex mode, it took about 7 minutes to print an 80-page eBook, and photos printed on HPs inkjet paper looked great. But even though the idea of having all those possibilities at my fingertips does sound tempting, I wouldn't buy the 8500 Wireless: I have never ever in my whole digital life used any direct-printing functions from USB-sticks or cards (yes, everything's on board), I don't need a copier and I never send a fax. In this kind of usage scenario, the fancy touch screen becomes extremely obsolete once the WLAN connection is set up and working. Status messages might as well be delivered via driver and pop up on the screen. On Amazon, the little brother named Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet Pro 8500 costs about ?250 (without WLAN and touch screen), while the price of the version I tested is ?100 higher. But both printers have the same cover on their blank paper case – and this construction doesn't look too sturdy at all. Especially under harsh daily office wars conditions this might turn into an annoyance, but unfortunately I have no means of recreating test conditions like two public relations assistants fighting over who gets to pick up their Google SERP page prints first. While the Deskjet Pro 8500 might be a good choice for medium-sized offices, I'd prefer an A3 printer with WLAN and a bigger scan area. So luckily, it's not going to be that hard to part when I send the printer back to HP next week.

Ripfilms presents: Animal Twitterholics

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Jay of ripfilms sent me the following movie – it's a collabo between nalts, mgm, zipster08, askcarrielee and atomicus5000. The “actors” are asking for video reviews, so it's time for your favorite pet (or future meal) to star YouTube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM1djLc0FIg[/youtube] Read more

Oh hi we fixed ur homezpage

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Yesterday I talked about some twitter marketing ideas at digitalks. In my presentation I referred to the page howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com. All it shows is a big fat “Don't” and I highly doubted this thesis. Luckily my namesake Richard Pyrker aka @cycus has done a fantastic pundit-kitchen-digitalks-xsara-photoshop mash-up:

hi we fixed ur homezpage

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Microblogging-Ad-Time: Magpie sells tweet attention

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mplogoAs social media services grow, they become more and more interesting for advertisers. Magpie, a brand-new “twitter advertising network” (and in no way affiliated with the RSS-parser library bearing the same name) is offering tweepers money to embed spam ads in their timeline. This sure was unavoidable, but at first glance, the European-based network is doing a pretty nice job.

Since I'm an online entrepreneur, I'm naturally very interested in new ways of monetizing my social media activities – but I would never recommend any service which I'm not a fan of, which ultimately leads to the one requirement that any ad network *must* take serious: I want control over the messages I'm sending out – whether to my followers on twitter or as banners on my blog. And Magpie takes this factor into consideration: every paid tweet can be pre-approved before it is sent out.

Psychologically, Magpie is doing quite a great job: new twitterers are encouraged to enter their username, based on which Magpie displays the amount which “could be earned” – I guess that this is a pretty rough and very optimistic approximation, since the systems tells me that I could make nearly 2.000 Euros a month. The tutorial video explains how the exchange of attentions actually works:

And how does it *really* work?

The sign-up process is really simple – advertisers need to apply for a dedicated log-in, twitterers have to deal with the ol' trust problem: Magpie requires them to enter their passwords; I hope that an authentication-token is on twitter's top priority list.

  1. You define a tweet frequency at which you will accept magpie-tweets for your Twitter account. Given your current tweet rate permits it, our service will try to find a matching magpie-tweet and twitter it. For maximum control, you'll be asked to pre-approve magpie-tweets.
  2. To help your followers recognize magpie-tweets, you can define a custom disclaimer which we'll happily append or prepend to all your magpie-tweets.
  3. Depending on the compensation model of each successfully delivered magpie-tweet you will be rewarded in cash.

That's pretty much all there is – and since the publisher's terms and conditions do not require you sell your soul to any kind of devil, I became curious and signed up, as it is possible to pause one's account at any time. I'm really curious if Magpie will be able to turn tweets into bling-bling or if users will rejects ads at all. This is what the dashboard looks like:

mpdash

You have to be aware though that Magpie is discussed quite controversially: While Marshall Kirkpatrick senses dark-side qualities and Dave Fleet feels abused, Studio Rizzn explains the truth about “evil Apple”.

What about the earnings?

Magpie is using PayPal, you have to earn at least 50 bucks to qualify for your first virtual paycheck. Besides from intercultural gaps (European users tend to be a lot pickier about commercial tweets and US citizens), I guess that Magpie's success will largely depend on the advertiser pool: if they offer enough interesting contents and manage to successfully pitch their system to the right advertisers, this could be huge. I'll try Magpie for the next two weeks and keep you updated, or you might want to start your own experiment: Sign up for Magpie

My 5.000th twitter follower: Archie!

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The Easter bunny had a great present in store for me this year: a couple of days ago, I was about 100 followers short of 5k. So I announced that my 5.000th follower would receive a free review of a site of his choice – but instead of a text review I am going to show you some pictures, and I'm honored to announce that the said person is not a human being, but a famous internet dog. Welcome Archie! And Archie does not run a blog himself, but he stars in a large number of great pictures, so I decided to post a selection of my favorite Archie photos. All shots have been taken by Phreak 2.0, the other end of Archie's leash.