Another century post slips past

I figured it was time again for a human post when I noticed 300 for potpourri on the dashboard, and the month of February gone by without one. The 3ooth was an automated Diigo bookmarks compilation. Does extending the dashboard metaphor mean I was asleep at the wheel?

No, the three such automated posts last month represent about thirty Diigo bookmarks (February 2011). What with categories, highlights, notations, quotations, and tags as options, not to forget [group sharing,] Diigo-to-blog and -to-Delicious output options and other extensions, I'm beginning to think of Diigo as my micro-blogging engine of choice!

As the chart in the graphic and figures below indicate, total numbers of visitors and countries from which they hail continue on modest upward trends.

2010-10-15 79 2338

2010-11-00 n.d. n.d.

2010-12-15 80 2397

2011-01-00 n.d. n.d.

2011-02-15 81 2444

Sayonara, P2 - WinK Core

As noted on Sayonara, P2 - WinK Core, "a Vox Group acts largely independently of the individual blogs of the members of the Group" (2009.09.05, at 11:11). This bears out in endeavours to capture content from Vox prior to its imminent closure (2010.09.30). Although it has been possible to move posts from Vox directly to TypePad (How to move your Vox blog to TypePad, [n.d.]), and indirectly to a WordPress blog (see: Bloxi, in diagram below), such exports capture only posts by a single [blog's] author [or authors?]. Moreover, as almost all of ... [an individual group member's] WinK Core ... posts were private, they became drafts.

[Note: Various WordPress installations offer different options for direct imports (WordPress.com: Support: Tools: Import). If Vox isn't among your site's options, you'll have to improvise.]

Quick Study of Blog Feed Stat's

When the ClustrMaps widget on the Writing Studio Blog started getting blotchy in locations other than Japan, I started wondering how all the blots came to be. Some, I knew, represented sources of comment spam that began showing up recently even though I've kept that blog out of Blogger listings (Settings: Basic: Add your blog to...: No!) since its inception. 


So today I took a look at FeedBurner Feed Stat[']s for both the blog headline feed and the blog post feed that I'd redirected through FeedBurner, respectively: 

• Headlines: February 25, 2007
• Posts: January 15, 2009

A difference discernible in spite of the disparate ages of the redirected feeds is in how the feeds get used. The Headlines go to FeedBurner Email subscriptions, and, although there also is a "Get Mailed: Posts" from FeedBurner gadget in the blog sidebar, too, the Posts, by and large, go into feed readers and aggregators – over the past seven to 30 days, mainly to Mozilla Compatible Agents (5-10), Google FeedCatcher (2-3), and PubSub (2 [unchanged]). 


Also over the past seven to thirty days, but for neither feed, have there been any hits (clicks on the feeds) from either Google Chrome or Internet Explorer browsers. Most hits have been from Firefox browsers; next most, from other Mozilla driven browsers.


The remainder of this post lists other findings as well as sources of this information, to which you may not have access (except in parallel locales relevant to your own FeedBurner feeds). 

The Writing Studio Blog: Headlines

Current

33 subscribers

Last Seven Days: Wednesday, March 31 – Tuesday, April 06

28 subscribers (on average)

"This number provides a general understanding of the size of your subscriber base over a time period" (FeedBurner Help, What is a Subscriber? How does FeedBurner tally them? How does it look?).

Last 30 Days: Monday, March 08 – Tuesday, April 06

28 subscribers (on average)

• including 27 email subscriptions

All Time: Sunday, February 25, 2007 – Tuesday, April 6, 2010

• since adding Post Feed Redirect URL to blog Site Feed settings
• jumped from two to almost 30 in April 2008

18 subscribers (on average)

• 18 email subscriptions

__________
Source: The Writing Studio Blog: Headlines – Analyze (Google FeedBurner)

The Writing Studio Blog: Posts

Current

55 subscribers

• more than doubles average for Last Seven Days (below)
• almost triples average for Last 30 Days (below)

Last Seven Days: Wednesday, March 31 – Tuesday, April 06

24 subscribers (on average)

• including one email subscription

1 reach (on average)

"At any given time, you can expect that a certain percentage of this subscriber base is actively engaging with your content and this “Reach” measurement provides this additional insight." (FeedBurner Help, What is Reach?, What does it tell you?).

Last 30 Days: Monday, March 08 – Tuesday, April 06

19 subscribers (on average)

• including one email subscription

1 reach (on average) 

All Time: Friday, January 15, 2010 – Tuesday, April 6, 2010

• since adding Post Feed Redirect URL to blog Site Feed settings

16 subscribers (on average) 

• zero email subscriptions

0 reach (on average) 

__________
Source: The Writing Studio Blog: Posts – Analyze (Google FeedBurner)

Mendeley sync's ... [from] CiteULike

I've accepted an invitation to adopt Mendeley desktop and online bibliographic reference management applications, whose features Mendeley Research Networks summarize here. They work with Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows, as well as online, so you can use Mendeley just about anywhere. It was quick and easy to sign-up, and start a profile.

The Import to Mendeley bookmarklet, found through a dismiss-able feature link in the profile sidebar, dragged and dropped sweetly into a biblio. folder in my Xmarks synchronized Firefox Bookmarks toolbar. The CiteULike Importer (Account Settings) set up was almost as dreamy.

I wonder how long it takes to get CiteULike references flowing [in-]to Mendeley, and how seamless sharing references with collaborators will be.

Addenda: Although adding spot-on articles highlighted by Mendeley at login was a piece of cake (shown first by field, perhaps filtered through new research interests), I've found no trace of previous CiteULike citations coming through to Mendeley over the past hour or so. I checked to make sure the CiteULike Importer connection was hot. Anyone know a way to release the backlog?

Brainless language defaults: not necessarily so

Though service providers seldom notify individual users of enhanced affordances, it has come to my dumb-founded attention that Google Calendar embedding code generators now offer recovery from defaults imposed according to user ISP locations. Deep among your calendars, you may find:

• Settings:
• Embed This Calendar:
• Customize the color, size, and other options (sorry, no screen shots here because they might violate copyright).
  

Then, after culturally sensitive options like "Week Starts On" (left sidebar, 2009.06.19), there's a drop down menu that enables you to over-ride the default. I've over-ridden the default on two calenders, embedded in singular locations, so far.

If you have more calendars that you wish to appear in certain languages, when embedded in multiple locations, more power to you! You may need to regenerate embedding code in Google, and then replace whatever you've embedded in other websites.

Brainless language defaults (Skype)

From a help link in an English, so-and-so-wants-to-contact-you web-mail message (Yahoo!), opened in Safari, on Mac OS 10.5.7, while operating in English in Japan; I got shunted to a Japanese language page automatically:

• http://www.skype.com/intl/ja/help/guides/ (emphasis added, pab)

Knowing just enough about URLs, and two-character country or language codes, I was able to read that troublesome URL, and figure out that the Skype site had probably read my internet location, and imposed a connection to the Japanese language page in the international users directory ("...intl/ja/...).

In this case, plugging in different language codes that I tried (en and fr) worked to over-ride the default, and made reading the page easier than it would have been in a third language. Thankfully, the Skype URL above was human-reader-friendly.