Feeding my blog post into Twitter

Well, this is cool! Now I don't have to worry about manually sharing a link to my detailed thoughts (blog post such as this) into social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

My problem was I hadn't taken effort to figure a way to tweet my blog post, automatically. But once something is tweeted in my account, it naturally propagates to Facebook.

From what I know, Twitterfeed is the only available service for sharing your blog post into social networking sites.

So, this is how it works. You create an account in Twitterfeed (if you have OpenID, you can use that as well to login. For example, I used my blogger id to login into Twitterfeed). Then you specify the RSS link to your blog. Twitterfeed regularly pings this RSS to see if something was published new. If yes, then it will post it to Twitter, Facebook and other services.

I have configured Twitterfeed to post the title of the blog post following by a shortened url to the same (Twitterfeed uses bit.ly).

Also, I have put  a filter in place where in only those blog posts which have the keyword #tweetit will be published to my twitter account. Now that i have specified this keyword, this post will be automatically tweeted into my twitter account. This will ensure that i can have some control over what is pushed to twitter and what should be pushed.

Back again after a long break with a new Look'n'Feel

Back again after a long time. I really haven't had time to post in this blog. Also, for whatever time I do have left for browsing, most of my thoughts and comments are flowing in the form of my status updates in Facebook and Twitter.

Especially with my discovery of Yoono (addon for Firefox which lets me post/share comments on FB and Twitter at the same time.. also lets me share a site instantly), I have been liberated even more in terms of sharing my thoughts and opinions on the stuff that I like.

So looks like my chances of venting out my thoughts is going to be even more on FB and Twitter!

But nevertheless, my passion for writing has never diminished and my heart still longs to write on my blog(s).

I've decided to give myself a breath of fresh air by changing the boring default skin to something much more attractive and thus motivating myself to come back here often and consequently to post more.

I am loving this new look'n'feel.. and i hope folks visiting my blog like it as well.

Closing down DigitallySmart and starting SmartMobileLife

I am closing down Digitally Smart (blog about technology in general) because I could not find to blog about everything on Technology.

So I thought I will rather blog on a more specific topic that I like.I am passionate about Mobile Computing and have been keenly following trends in Mobile Computing. I thought I will focus more about that.

Feel free to visit my blog on Mobile Computing - http://smartmobilelife.blogspot.com

I am still maintaining a backup of all the post from the DigitallySmart blog in the following location - http://digitallysmart.wordpress.com

Ditching Google Bookmarks and moving to..

I finally had to ditch Google Bookmarks because of its deficiencies (which I will explain below). The only regret is that I am moving my bookmarks outside the Google ecosystem. Maybe, if I keep using Google Bookmarks for quite some time, it might improve and there might be better integration of Google Bookmarks with their other services which would make my life easier.

What I mean by advantages of Google ecosystem and its integration is that, say for example, I can create a document in Google Docs and later on I can post that as a blog into my blogger account (I might have given a bad example.. if you have a better example, please let me know). So, it lets me move my information and thoughts across different web applications with ease. All my information is consolidated. That's what I mean by "Google ecosystem and its integration advantages".

I might still be updating or taking copies of bookmarks in Google Bookmarks for the above mentioned reasons. But it depends on my time.

Now, I don't blame Google for its deficiencies in Google Bookmark because they never claimed that it was a social bookmarking site. In fact, its a pretty decent personal bookmarking web service. Its just that I am need of some advanced features which are available only in some good social bookmarking sites. Let me just list out as to what kind of features will take it from "good to great" bookmarking service.

Sharing of bookmark: This is one of the main reasons why I want to move out. When Google has been great at exposing information in the form of RSS feeds in most of their web service (for example, feeds from blogger or shared items in Google Reader), I could not understand why they could not do so for such a simple but yet powerful web service.

Private and Public bookmarks: Of course, I can ask for this feature only if the first one is implemented. I would like to share some bookmarks and hide some of them.

Integration with Social Networking sites: This is an era of social networking and if you are an average user, I can bet that you must be having an account in at least one of the following: Orkut; Facebook; MySpace. Most of the other web applications provide ways to share their application in these kind of social networking sites. For example, I can put my twitter profile in Facebook. So, it would be great if I can share my bookmarks in such social networking sites.

Grouping Tags: Its good that I can tag my bookmarks. But it would be great if I can group them into categories or folders. When I could do this in Google Reader then why not in Google Bookmarks.

Blog Integration: Allowing me to add link and/or tag roll widgets into my blog is missing in Google Bookmarks.

Basically, I am asking Google Bookmarks to mature from a personal bookmarking site into a social bookmarking site.

I know Google has been working towards an other web service called Google Share Stuff which is an effort at bringing in the concept social bookmarking. But it is still in its infant stages and has a long way to go before it matures (out of the Google Labs as well.. talking of Google Labs and their beta applications, I am not if Google Bookmarks has graduated out of Google Labs.. I am assuming it did).

Now, I went out hunting for a good bookmarking site. Not many useful reviews or comparisons were available (at least I could not find them). But I did get some pointers on which were the most famous one. And after quick look at each of these services and considering their usability and look'n'feel, I decided to go with Del.icio.us.

Del.icio.us deserves a separate post for itself where I would like to explain its features and advantages. But for now, to tell you in short, its a great web service.

Good reviews are painful to write

I just posted a review about Opera Mini on Digitally Smart. Though I enjoyed writing this review very much, I also have to say, writing good reviews is a long process.

It took me close to 3 days to first take screenshots of Opera Mini, then uploading them on to blogger, then writing a review and placing the uploaded photos at relevant places. Given the fact that I hardly have time left are hectic hours at office and very little time that I spend with my kid, I usually wait till Nazia and Ahu to sleep so that I can carry on writing reviews.

Hope I get more time to post more meaningful reviews and information at Digitally Smart.

Inspiring articles on turning blogging into a full time career

All good things are realized late by me (at least on the WWW). There was this recent phase in my life (past 2-3 years) when I was kind of disconnected from the latest happenings in the world wide web. I guess my work was taking its toll and also I was very choosy in what I wanted to browse in the web.

But off late, I've been trying to consciously keep myself updated and I've been reading a lot on what kind of new web services and success stories have spawned in the web world.

And one of my recent discoveries in Technorati. I never had an clue as to how useful this web site was with respect to aggregating the top blogs in the world wide web. Yes, believe it or not, I did not visit Technorati until last week. I knew about this website.. in the sense I knew this name was quite famous and had something to do with aggregation of content. But for some reason I hated web sites starting "tech". I had some kind of phobia for the word tech and had shunned sites that started with word tech. That's the reason why I haven't visited other famous websites like Techcrunch (I haven't even till now :). Only recently I visited Techcrunch40 but not its parent site - Techcrunch).

I guess I've deviated from what I really wanted to say. Coming back to the topic, I was browsing the popular blogs at technorati and found Problogger.net to be one of the top ones. I was specifically interested in this one because the theme of the blog was about making money through blogging.

That was my recent effort when I started Digitally Smart. Would not suggest you to click on the previous link as I am kind of feeling embarrassed. I started Digitally Smart with an intention of making a career out of blogging. I wanted to keep Digitally Smart simple and so I started this at blogger rather than choosing to host my own server or use a custom domain name. But I haven't been really successful. Till now, I have written only 4 posts (inclusive of an About page). I have lots of ideas on what i want to post in Digitally Smart and I have saved those topics in my drafts. But I am never really getting the time to expand on those topics. I guess "not getting time" is just an excuse. The bigger problem I have is that I am still trying to figure out as to should I start an other blog apart from this one (wondering if I should stay loyal to this one blog and focus all my energy in here). But again I am wondering if I can use this blog for earning any kind of income. That's because this blog is very personal and I blog not just about technology but about everything under the sun.. so would it be appropriate to have sponsors and ads in this blog.

Again coming back to Problogger.net, the guest columns are very good and give some nice tips of blogging and how to make it into a career. While following some links I came across this article from Read/Write Web's Richard MacManus where he reflects on what it took for him to make his hobby (blogging of course) to into a full time career. A very inspiring article. In the very same article Richard refers us to an other similar article (on what it takes to make a career out of blogging) about TechCrunch's Michael Arrington which is inspiring as well.

Well, the moral of both their stories is that it takes lot of hard work, patience, perseverance and being passionate about what you are blogging, in order to make a successful career out of blogging.

Multiple Blog Dilemma

I am sure that most of you would have faced this dilemma.. Whether to have one common blog where you blog about everything under the sun with topics as diverse as family to as geeky as compiling a linux kernel [OR] to have multiple blog domains which each blog domain for very specific topics, for example, a blog specifically for family updates and an other for updates on linux.

At least I have been having this dilemma ever since I started blogging. I have close to 5 different blogger accounts and not to mention the mirrored ones in wordpress.

Off late, I had created one more blog account which I intend to use only for updates on technology. These updates will have a professional tone.

This new blog is called Digitally Smart. I intend to run this blog with a means of generating income for me. I love blogging about technology and would like to pursue this as an alternate career to start with and if the situation is favorable, I might do it full time as well.

Wordpress's mobile phone optimized web interface

I am so relieved to find that wordpress provides a web interface optimized for mobile phones. I dont remember wordpress supporting this earlier.

Mobile blogging has always been a pain for me earlier and to some extent even now. Blogger, for instance, provides a mail based posting of blogs. You can mail your post by mailing it to a predefined mail address (thats how I am posting this message). But its not very covenient though. I need to open my mail client to post the message and also formatting on the posted message looks bad. Also, it does not provide a way to tag the message and also does not provide me with a dashboard.

Web service providers seem to vastly underestimate the need for a mobile phone optimized web interface. The whole world is moving towards mobile computing and web service providers better realize this.. For their own good.

Windows Live Writer lost its gas ??!!

It has been 10 months since I wrote my detailed review on Windows Live Writer. Though I liked the Windows Live Writer a lot then, I never really used it for blogging actively.

After so many months, I thought I wanted to use Windows Live Writer for one very lengthy and comprehensive review of something on the web (not going to tell you what it was about :) You will have to wait to see that blog). Blogging a lengthy post staying online would take lot of time. I thought using Windows Live Writer, I could blog as and when I find time and then publish it in one shot.

But then I just remembered that my PC was reinstalled with Window XP once and I had not installed Windows Live Writer since then. So went about searching for "Windows Live Writer" on Google and came across this official blog cum home page for Windows Live Writer. I believe this is being maintained by the developers of Windows Live Writer.

Having been away from Windows Live Writer for so long I was really curious to know what was happening to this blogging client. So I clicked on this link to see their posts. To my surprise, since November 2006 there has been not a single post in their "OFFICIAL BLOG" :)

Has Microsoft realized that blogging client is by no means generating money for them. Whatever be the reason, one thing is for sure - Windows Live Writer has lost its gas and I believe you are not going to see any more releases of Windows Live Writer.

Windows Live Writer.... RIP!!

Trying hard to sleep

Have been trying hard to sleep today, but am still awake. Now, its almost dawn and now that i am feeling sleepy, I am trying hard to keep myself awake :).

I need to be in office by 9.00AM in the morning to ensure that my tickets to Virginia are booked. I am going on a business visit there today evening. Should be back to Irving on Sunday.

I had a late dinner yesterday. Had been to my colleagues room last night to prepare and eat the dinner. Since I am bad at cooking, I usually join him and help him out with the dinner preparation. The dinner was a feast. We had parathas (Indian bread), egg omelet, grilled chicken and some curry (cannot name it though :).. was invention on the fly).

Then I also had to get my clothes washed at the laundry in the ground floor. All my clothes were used up and had to get them washed for my Virginia trip. Also, I had to press them and have them ready for my trip today.

I've been trying to sleep ever since but no luck :(. Thats when I thought why not blog something. Well, there is nothing interesting in this post. Just some self-talk. I was hesitant to write my personal thoughts. I've always been in a dilemma as to whether or not to mix up my personal thoughts in this blog. I have a reason for that dilemma. I would like to explain more about that, but for now I am stopping here. I will come back and update this post later today.

I am back again. Its 1.12PM now and I am waiting in the lobby for my cab. Happy that my booking for air and hotel for my Virginia trip are confirmed. Well, coming back to the dilemma, I always was not sure if it would be a good idea to mix up my personal and technical postings in my blog. I tried creating a personal blog as well where i thought I would post my personal thoughts. But it din't really help.. I was lazy to update 2 different blogs and I was unable to differentiate between a blog which is personal and blog that i would like others to see (for its news or technical nature). But thats fine. I decided to put all my thoughts in one single place and label/tag them accordingly. Okay, got to rush back to work now..