New Twitter HTML badge script

Twitter HTML Badge

I bet most people never noticed that I displayed my most recent Twitter update as my blog description – it was right under the blog title. I used Twitter’s HTML badge script, and it worked great. Until today.

This morning I noticed that the Twitter update was not showing up, so I thought Twitter was down, as it had been often lately. Turned out Twitter was not down. Instead, the old HTML badge script was deprecated and a new one is in place.

I don’t like the new script. It returns Twitter updates enclosed in separate <li> elements, which did wonders to screw up my blog header layout in Internet Explorer. I had no choice but to restore my default (useless) blog description. Twitter just became less useful to me.

Google buys Jaiku

Well, I never thought Google/Microsoft/Yahoo would buy a product like Jaiku, because

1. it’s not a very complex product,
2. it doesn’t have the biggest user pool compared to Twitter,
3. and it’s not a big money maker.

With all that said, I actually prefer Jaiku over Twitter. Jaiku’s interface is more Web 2.0, and it has more features like the ability to publish content from feeds. See for yourself: my Jaiku and my Twitter accounts.

I guess the lesson is that one does not have to be the market leader or have a giant community in order to be bought (and make tons of money).

The final lesson, I suppose, is that I would be a terrible visionary.

Y360 now has RSS integration

Yahoo 360 has finally integrated external RSS feeds. This is something I have wanted for a while.

Yahoo tells us tonight that users of their Yahoo 360 blogging/networking service can now publish content to their personal pages from other blogging or bookmarking services, such as LiveJournal or del.icio.us, using RSS. What is more, 360 users will still be able to alert friends and family members of new content on their 360 pages, even if the content is from somewhere else.

Flickr integration is in there too, but it just displays some thumbnails.

These new features can be found in “My Page” section.

My 5-minutes thoughts on Friendster

I had signed up for Friendster before but quickly deactivated my account because I had problem even responding to a friend invitation. Now that I have played with Yahoo 360, I thought I should give Friendster another try. Because I am a geek.

It’s good that Friendster no longer requires an invitation to sign up, so I just “reopened” my account using the same email address. Upon login I noticed that my previous Friendster invitation was still valid, so I accepted that invitation. Yes, I was finally able to add a friend!

Here is a quick impression of Friendster, much of it is in comparison with Yahoo 360:

• Friendster displays way too many ads on every page! This is not scientific, but I feel that the two blocks of ads together occupy up to a quarter of the home page content.
• Friendster’s UI is bland compared to that of Y360. Y360′s layout just seems more logical and appealing to me. Friendster’s ads probably have some ill-effects here as well.
• I like Friendster’s horoscope feature. It’s nothing useful, but a cute read nonetheless. I like innovations such as this.
• Friendster’s free blog, powered by TypePad, is served with ads. Still, it looks clean and offers features such as categories. Y360′s blog cannot compete. I got 50MB of space and 0.25GB of monthly bandwidth. I can upgrade to an ads-free version for a fee.

Friendster’s omnipresent ads is the deal breaker for me. Yes, they have to make money, but the ads do occupy quite a lot of space. Besides, I just see more potential in Y360 since they have more services that could be integrated.

Update: Here is a picture of my Friendster page showing the ads.

More Yahoo 360 praises

I like Yahoo 360, and I am certainly not alone.

Yahoo! 360 Invites

“Yahoo! 360 Invites Coming In at Forever Geek“, go take a look at what Yahoo 360 looks like.

Nothing too fancy and functional, but it’s in beta and it satisfies my curiosity.

Yahoo! 360

Looks like Yahoo is joining the social networking and blogging world. I hope its Yahoo! 360 is not a let down like MSN Spaces.

MSN Spaces and its content ownership

Microsoft/MSN now also has its own blog service. I tried it and let’s just say I won’t switch over anytime soon.

I didn’t bother to read the service agreement when I registered for the free service, but someone sure
did:

“For materials you post or otherwise provide to Microsoft related to the MSN Web Sites (a ‘Submission’), you grant Microsoft permission to (1) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission, each in connection with the MSN Web Sites, and (2) sublicense these rights, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. Microsoft will not pay you for your Submission.”

Pet networking sites

This article is actually about networking sites with million+ members, but the information I want to mention is the pet networking sites it listed:

• Backwash for Pets
• Dogster
• HAMSTERster
• KissyKat
• Neopets