Geek News: Latest Technology, Product Reviews, Gadgets and Tech Podcast News for Geeks

WordPress Runs Almost Half of the Web’s Top Blogs

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 11:39 AM on April 14, 2012

Recently a study was released by Pingdom regarding the content management systems (CMS) used by the web’s top blogs and, perhaps not surprisingly, almost half of those sites were powered by WordPress.  48 of the top 100 are using WordPress as their backend system, while Movable Type, the second most used CMS, powers only 7 of the top 100 blogs.

To break the numbers down a bit further, 39 sites were using WordPress and an additional 9 were hosted by WordPress.  In addition, 12 sites used their own custom CMS, Typepad accounted for 8 blogs, and at the bottom end, one was using Tumblr and one was on Diderot.  Gawker sites all run on their own custom software and counts under “Gawker” as opposed to “Custom”.  There is a smattering of Blogger, Drupal, BlogSmith, and others, while 8 blogs declined to answer.  You can check out the chart below to see the full breakdown.

pingdom cms chart

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Posted in blog, blogging, blogs, wordpress

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WordPress In Your Pocket

Posted by tomwiles at 5:56 PM on May 14, 2011

WordPress has been around a long time and is quite a powerful web publishing platform available to virtually everyone at no cost.

I finally got around to installing the official WordPress app onto my iPod Touch and I have to say I’m impressed with the app. It quickly accepted the credentials to my own WordPress blog, and I found I could update my site directly from my iPod. More impressive to me was when I discovered the ease with which I was able to take photos (or videos) with the iPod’s camera and instantly embed them into blog posts.

Nothing is more powerful than to be able to quickly update one’s own site with not only words but images as well. The official WordPress for iOS is a free download on the iPod/iPad/iPhone/iOS App Store. If you have a WordPress blog and an iOS device, this free app is worth installing.

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Posted in Apple, application, blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, blogs, iOS, IPAD, iPhone, ipod, Phone, photocasting, Photography, wordpress

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Do not Sell your site to the Text Link Farmers!

Posted by geeknews at 12:08 PM on February 14, 2011

Every single day, I get at least 2-3 emails from companies looking to buy text links on Geek News Central.  To date non of them have come from what I would term a valid vendor, most of them are poker sites, or some site looking to boost their page search rank. It has become so common that I send the following email in response.

“I understand your desire to purchase as you describe them targeted text links on this highly valuable website, and because you have taken the time to email me, I would like to inform you of our rates for text links. The cost is $10,000 a month, per link, with a 12 month minimum run payable in advance. All links will have the nofollow tag plus will be put in an area of the website that clearly indicates a sponsored link. Here is my paypal address to make payment”

This is usually enough to get them to go away, but some are persistent and will come back with a counter offer of $100-$500 for a 90 day run.  I ignore these responses do they really think I’m stupid.  What’s sad is that I am sure a lot of sites would sell them text links for that kind of money.

Google has specific policies for link schemes and a site risk being de-listed from the Google search engine for participating in those types of activities. Now I am not sure how I would react if someone actually took me up and deposited the money in my paypal account but at what point will link farm agents start advertising legitimately instead of wasting time trying to get me to risk all the work I have put into this website.

With the news this weekend of JC Penny getting busted doing this, it does not surprise me that 3000+ website owners sold their soul for a few bucks to help JC Penny have a banner sales season during the holidays.

So while the lure of money is great, don’t sell you soul to the text link farmers.

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Posted in blog, bloggers, Commerce

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Does The Cloud Have A Dark Side?

Posted by tomwiles at 2:41 PM on July 25, 2010

Does The Cloud Have A Dark Side?For some time we’ve been hearing about the virtues of cloud-based computing.

Certain functions seem to lend themselves to the cloud. Online word processing, spreadsheets, etc. can seem to make sense in some situations, such as collaborating with others.

In everyday use scenarios, does the cloud really make sense in more traditional private computer-use situations? I contend that it does not.

Right now I’m typing this into Microsoft Word on my MacBook Pro. At the moment I have rather lousy Sprint and Verizon connectivity, even though 12 hours ago at this very same location I had really good connectivity from both. The only thing that changed is the time of day. If I was currently limited to using Google Docs chances are I would be unable to write this. Network demand constantly fluctuates depending on the time of day and location.

Is there enough bandwidth available? With the tsunami of smartphones that are on the immediate horizon, will the carriers be able to keep up with the average five-fold bandwidth demand increase that the average smartphone user pulls from the network? Can carriers keep up with a smartphone-saturated public all trying to pull down data at the same time?

However, for the sake of argument let’s say that mobile Internet connectivity isn’t an issue.

What if the Internet is turned off due to a declared cyber attack and all of your documents are online? What good would the network appliance approach to computing be then?

Can e-books be revised after the fact? If government can simply decide to turn off the Internet, then it’s not that much of a leap to imagine laws and regulations being passed banning certain types of blogs or even books that have been deemed dangerous or seditious. There have already been books sold such as “1984” by Amazon that were deleted from Kindles after the fact by Amazon when it was determined that Amazon didn’t have the legal right to sell it in e-book form. What if instead of banning books, they were simply rewritten to remove the offending parts? What’s to stop instant revision of e-books that have been declared dangerous?

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Posted in amazon, blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, blogs, content, internet, Microsoft, smartphone, sprint, verizon

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Is CNN Calling For Curbs On Free Speech?

Posted by tomwiles at 11:09 PM on July 23, 2010

On July 23, 2010, CNN anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed on air the idea that bloggers should be somehow “held accountable” or perhaps regulated in some way. Here’s the video of that exchange.

It’s no secret that CNN and other so-called mainstream media outlets, both broadcast and print, have had for some time now an ongoing loss of viewers and readers. A number of traditional journalists from time to time have had and expressed an almost open hostility towards bloggers and the Internet. They perceive the Internet as a threat to their business models, and their vaunted self-appointed job as information “gatekeepers.”

If you look back over the past few years, almost every major story, particularly scandal stories, originated first on blogs. In many cases the mainstream media were dragged kicking and screaming into reporting stories. The clearly forged National Guard documents that ultimately ended up forcing CBS to fire evening news anchor Dan Rather comes to mind from a few years ago. Bloggers quickly picked up on the fact that the supposed National Guard documents had been typed up in the default template for Microsoft Word and then ran through a fax and/or copy machine a number of times to make the documents look dirty and/or old. The trouble was, Microsoft Word didn’t exist in 1973. If it weren’t for bloggers, this story would have likely never come to public light, and what is clearly a forgery and a made-up story would have passed into the public mind as the truth.

Should free speech be curbed? Should bloggers somehow be licensed or officially regulated in what is purportedly a free country? Should we be forced to get our news from “professional” or even “licensed” journalists?

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Posted in blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, blogs, internet, Law, Legal, Microsoft, Net Neutrality, weblog, weblogs

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Be Careful How You Use The “T” Word

Posted by fogview at 4:50 PM on July 1, 2009

Twitterdummies_I’m talking about the company that starts with “Twit” and ends with “er”, and seems to be the hottest social media site around these days. A year ago I would mention that I was using Twitter to friends and family and I would get a strange look. Now it seems everyone wants you to follow them on Twitter: radio and TV stations, news shows, companies, and the list goes on. I even had a few friends sign up for Twitter, “just to see what it was all about.”

Lately with all the news breaking about the death of Michael Jackson and others, and the happenings in Iran, Twitter seems to be the way a lot of people are getting the news. The information may be short, but it can happen in real time. I heard a story about someone sending Twitter messages from Iran and someone else commented that their comments were pretty short. The person replied that “140 characters seems like writing a novel when you are being shot at.”

It’s no wonder that Ev and the team over at Twitter want to protect their name and brand. In a blog post today, they stated, “We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of ‘going after’ the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter…”

They also state, “Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well…”

I started with Twitter over two years ago when it was mainly a way to keep up with your friends over SMS. (That is where the 140 character limit came from.) At the time it was mainly the A-list bloggers who had accounts and the rest of us geeks came along for the ride. At the time there didn’t seem to be any business plan to monetize the service.

Fast forward two years, and to my knowledge Twitter is still not generating any income, but I think that will change soon. With all the attention it’s getting and all the commercial companies looking at Twitter as a cheaper way to provide customer support and keep in touch with customers, the Twitter team must be finalizing plans to support these commercial customers by having them dig into their pocketbooks. I’m sure ads will come to the site as well.

People new to Twitter (i.e., on-air news people) don’t know what to call these Twitter messages: twits or tweets. Today’s Twitter blog posting clearly shows that the official term is “tweet.” I know this makes Leo Laporte, the owner of the TWIT (This Week In Tech) podcast, and who also owns the TWIT trademark, a happy man. There has been past discussions between Leo and the Twitter team about how similar the names, TWIT and Twitter are, and I’m sure today’s posting was an attempt to clear that up.

Oh, I almost forgot: you can follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/Fogview

73’s,

Tom

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Posted in blog, Social Media, Twitter

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Bloggers have it. Newspapers want it.

Posted by GNC at 6:58 AM on May 23, 2009

There are many articles comparing the pros and cons of physical print news versus the online/blogging news.  The following lists are not pros and cons but what each group has that the other side wants.  What could happen with the merging of the two?  Thanks to Tech Crunch for stirring my brain.

What Newspapers Have and Bloggers Want/Need:

  1. Bloggers have less official access to many press conferences and meetings. Who gets the press pass?  How do you get the press pass?  Will it not eventually recreate a few sources for news as different agencies pick and stick with favorites?  Newspapers made narrowing it down easy.
  2. covetBloggers have less incentive/time to investigate and search out multiples sources. Bloggers seem to surf the web not pound the streets and interview people face to face.  Newspapers live that way.
  3. Bloggers write about what interests them, not what interests others. With no boss giving assignments, who will report on those needed but sometimes mundane happenings?  Will we be stuck piecing together all of our news from 500 RSS feeds?  Newspapers make basic world, national, and local news easy.
  4. Bloggers are not the one “go to” place for news. Difficult to find a local blogger.  I do not know of a single blogger reporting on news in our area of 175,000 people .  I guess I would have to look if the paper shut down.
  5. Bloggers have less accountability/oversight to preserve the truth. I know, I know, that the community could police itself just like Wikipedia.  I’m not sure they will or really have the ability.  Besides, most people believe whatever they read and probably won’t go back to see any updates or corrections.

What Bloggers Have and Newspapers Want/Need:

  1. Print Media has a narrow chain of command that dictates what and when news is published. It is no wonder why dictator, communistic, and extreme governments want control of the media?  Why are news agencies tending to endorse political candidates? The news has been far from fair and balanced for a long, long time.  Blogs are more numerous, yield less individual influence, say what they think, and allow more free interaction.
  2. Print Media has a need to make a larger profit.  Bloggers hope to pay the bills.  There is nothing wrong with this.  It is the goal of every business owner to make money.  Why should newspapers be any different?  The problem is that it is a very low margin/no margin business that is about to go on a ventilator.  The motivation and ability to survive is decreasing.
  3. Print Media has a high overhead for getting the news to the reader. Ouch this is number one.  Manufacturing and delivery is expensive.  Presses are extremely expensive, paper is expensive, labor is expensive, management is expensive, delivery is expensive.   The web does it on the cheap.  I can deliver the same news to as many people for pennies on the dollar as a blogger.  And it won’t take much ad revenue to pay for that delivery.
  4. Print Media has few ways to guage how much of their content is read. The newspaper does not create a log file ever time my eyes read a certain article or ad.  Advertisers are left to subjective decisions on whether business increased because of the ad most of the time.  The web brings freedom and analytics.
  5. Print Media locks down the content and its distribution. There is no open source in this land.  Republish the AP article and receive a DMCA.  Everything is copyrighted.
  6. Print media now publishes old news. 24 hours is not soon enough.  12 hours is not soon enough.  2 hours is not soon enough.  What do you mean “The game was not finished as of press time”?  By the time your article reaches me 36 hours after the game, you have lost me.  I can visit a site, use an RSS reader to get the headlines, or subscribe to email updates and text alerts.  I do not even have to wait for the “top of the hour”, “quarter of the hour” news on the radio.

Enough of my opinion.  What is the real truth?  Will you, the community, let me know?  Are we really ready for this new world of news?

Posted in blog, blogger, bloggers, blogging, Information, New Media

Comments 3 Comments

Introducing the New Geek News Central!

Posted by geeknews at 12:51 AM on April 18, 2009

itunes150The switch from Movable Type to WordPress is now complete and what a journey it has been.  Yes I know let the rejoicing begin the last diehard MT user has left the building.  The move was needed but there were a number of significant challenges in moving from MT to WP that I will highlight below.

spaceblue1My hat is off to the team at SpaceBlue for the redesign and integration work. They went above and beyond the line of duty. I highly recommend them great design team. Although the logo redesign in concept was my idea and Brian improved upon it in a big way. Contest starting next week on Geek News Central on where I came up with the logo idea.

This is Geek News Central Version 3.0 aka this is the third skin and the first in which we are running on WordPres. I hope the look and feel is something we can stay with for a few years. Let me highlight the reasons for the switch from Movable Type to WordPress.  First and foremost I don’t think SixApart cares about their bloggers  anymore and in my opinion have been too slow to meet my new publishing needs.

Second their new media support was literally non-existent, and only a few small improvements have been made to taht part of the platform  since 2004. But I will be very honest, without my team working hard on the PowerPress Podcast Plugin making a clean and seamless transition from MT to WP would have been nearly impossible! Let me explain that more in a few paragraphs.

Some background Geek News Central while running on MT was in fact three separate blogs made to look like one the reasons why are to complex to get into. To make the move I had to combine content from all three blogs into a single wordpress install. Then we had to map links from the old blog to the new. With over 8000 articles this was no small challenge but 99.8% of all the old links were able to be re-mapped.

A condition of the move from MT to WP required that I have static RSS feeds. This site gets way to much traffic to depend on dynamic rss feeds.  Angelo from SpaceBlue had a “Static Feed” plugin that solved this issue. End result my podcast listeners and blog subscribers see no change the feed is the same url it was on MT.

powerpress1Why no other Podcast Plugin would do and how PowerPress saved the day.  PowerPress has the capability to setup multiple RSS feeds. Being I had a Blog, Audio, Video and Special Media RSS feed each with different content I needed a Podcast Plugin that could support that many feeds. Additonally this will allow me to start creating media for other devices like mobile phones that can be subscribed via new feeds. So we have huge growth opportunity now.

The biggest challenge was one that a lot of podcaster face if they are on Blogger or on other platforms like Movable Type in that. Movable Types 3rd Party Podcast plugin was simple in that you Hyper-linked a media file in your blog post and the enclosure was detected and written in the RSS feed.

WordPress natively supports that method minus iTunes support. So my guys at Blubrry updated our PowerPress Podcast Plugin so that I could import all of my past hyperlinked podcasts into the specific Powerpress feeds I had created. The import function in PowerPress probably saved me over 100 hours of cleanup work.

So here we are all setup on WordPress, and while there are some tweaks to be done, I am very much pleased with the end result. Comments will be able to left easier now, and I have the tools I need to move forward with Geek News Central in a way that I feel very good about.

We will see how nice Google is to us in the transition I am expecting big results based on what changes have been made and what we have planned for the future.

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Posted in blog

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New PodcasterNews.com Website Released Today!

Posted by geeknews at 7:20 AM on December 26, 2007

My team at RawVoice is proud to announce the new site design for PodcasterNews.com. PCN was RawVoice’s very first site that we launched in 2005 and has had significant success in being a primary point of presence for a number of podcasts that are all short format content.

With this update a whole new site design has been implemented including a new publishing and site management system which will allow our podcasters to publish Video along with Audio. We also are now featuring new content on the front page in a unique way that allows all podcasters to get equal exposure to listeners.

The new design really brings out the fact that the content being created on the network is truly a team effort and that ever content creators content is treated as a integral part of the overall network.

With this roll out we have introduced our new stream lined Podcast Publishing system which allows podcasters the ability to essentially have a full blown multi-media publishing system as media creators can now Blog, Publish Audio or Video all within a very streamlined interface that we feel is quite evolutionary

The RawVoice generator is the first comprehensive media publishing platform that has integrated podcast media publishing and a blogging component that is commercially available to any third party company looking for their own platform.

Be sure to visit PodcasterNews.com and check out the power of the new website in consuming content and if you want a test drive of the new publishing system contact the team here at RawVoice.

Posted in blog, Podcast

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What is the BlogWorld and New Media Expo?

Posted by geeknews at 12:21 AM on August 25, 2007

Tonight I just by chance found out about a Blogging Expo in Las Vegas in November. Apparently the planning for this has been in progress for some time, but come on now — how come no one knows about it?

A blogging conference that no one is blogging about is not a good Omen. The conference tracks look pretty good and I think we will look at having a booth at the event but I am pretty surprised by the lack of publicity.

Has anyone else heard about this event, does anyone know the people behind it and again how come no press on this. Honestly I am pretty shocked. If you’re going, start blogging about it so this thing gets out from under the radar. BlogWorldExpo.com

Posted in blog

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