Once I got the Storm, I started looking around for mobile versions and applications of services and features I regularly use. I have downloaded over 30 applications, but have since become removed all but a select few. Here are 11 free apps to help you expand the capabilities of the BlackBerry Storm.

BlackBerry’s App World

App World is BlackBerry’s answer to the iPhone’s App Store. It’s not as populated as the Apple rival, but it does have a good variety of applications, both free and paid, for direct download.

Facebook

I’m really impressed with this application. The Facebook app developers did a nice job packing most of the features of the Facebook into a mobile version. You can change your status, upload photos, manage friends, view your Wall, and send private messages.

Flickr

The Flickr App for the BlackBerry is extremely easy. Simply, click on the "Upload Photo" button and it asks for a photo from your media library and upload it to Flickr.

Gmail

As expected this Google App works quite well. It has much of the same functionality as web version, although you do not have the ability include attachments. FYI, the existing BlackBerry message center supports multi-touch so you can delete more than one email message at once.

Google Talk

The Google Talk application is strikingly similar to the desktop version. Most of the functionality exists on the application and allows you to keep in contact with your G-buddies when you are away from the computer.

Google Maps

The default mapping application for the BlackBerry OS is mediocre, at best. This application takes the GPS functionality of the BlackBerry and incorporates it into Google’s mapping engine. Satellite view is very nice when looking around in your immediate area.

Google Sync

This simple utility syncs your Google calendar events and Gmail contacts with your Blackberry’s calendar and contact list.

Pandora

My first app download. Pandora is a free streaming Internet radio service which an ongoing project to categorize hundreds of details of each song. You give Pandora a song or artist you are interested in, and keep presenting you with music that is categorically similar to that selection. If you like a song you can give it a thumbs up, if it is not your flavor, then click thumbs down and it will skip to the next song.

Snap2Twitter

This is a simple app that posts your photos to Twitter. When you take a photo, Snap2Twitter asks you if you would like post to Twitter in addition to saving the image. This application can be downloaded directly from BlackBerry’s App World

TwitterBerry

This is a simple, yet powerful Twitter client that is the preferred choice of BlackBerry users. TwitterBerry sends tweets and follows without going through SMS.

Viigo

Viigo is a robust RSS feed reader which suggests content as well as saves your preferences. Access a wide variety of news, sports, finance, weather, flight schedules, entertainment, and restaurant reviews.

Weather Bug

A real nice weather app that gives you forecasts, current conditions, precipitation overlays, national forecasts, and even time lapse video public weather cams. This application can be downloaded directly from BlackBerry’s App World

If you liked this post, feel free to follow me on Twitter and/or friend me on Facebook.

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Directories

WeFollow

Created by Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com. A nice clean directory that associates Twitter users by self-proclaimed tags. To get listed you can click the “Add yourself” link on the home page or tweet the following from your account: @wefollow #tag1 #tag2 #tag3. Provide three tags that are relevant to your interests and you all set.

Type: General | PR: 7 | Alexa: 6,462

twibs

A rapidly growing directory of Twittering businesses. Their registration form allows you add three related tags and a business email. You can also drop a link to your business’s blog and store.

Type: Business | PR: 4 | Alexa: 42,177

Hashtags

Hashtags is the zeitgeist of the Twitter world. Popular has tags are listed from the last six hours with a drill-down to see those tweets containing the hashtags. To appear in this directory, simply preface keywords in your tweets with a pound sign(#). An example would be as follows: Looks like the #blackhawks got skunked on over time.

Type: General | PR: 6 | Alexa: 26,428

Geofollow

This is another directory that takes advantage of adding listings based on tweets to their own account. Tweet the following and replace your geographic information and tags: @geofollow your city, your State Your Zip #tag1 #tag2 #tag3.

Type: Geographic | PR: 0 | Alexa: 93,415

TweeterTags

This directory relies on user-associated tags as well as tweets hashtagged with the keywords. A good place to find people and conversations relevant to your interests.

Type: General | PR: 4 | Alexa: 247,971

The Twitterectory

Twitterectory has the look and feel of a typical link directory site that has been modified for Twitter statistics. Additional URLs can be dropped when signing up for inclusion.

Type: General | PR: 2 | Alexa: 2,001,158

Just Tweet It

This popular directory groups tweeple by interests. Choose a category and add your Twitter URL, name, and comments which can include additional links.

Type: General | PR: 5 | Alexa: 48,086

TwitR

TwitR is essentially a clone of the WeFollow directory. However, it is still another opportunity find followers and tweets on desired topics.

Type: General | PR: 0 | Alexa: 167,084

tweetworks

Tweetworks takes the Twitter microblogging platform and uses it as a discussion forum. Discussions are public and private on a wide range of topics. Tweets are all listed with the discussion for easy reading.

Type: General | PR: 4 | Alexa: 92,594

Loaded Web

Loaded Web is three directories in one. Login with your Twitter ID and add yourself by providing your city and state. Then, you can also add your blog. The directory displays your information based on a category in a city and as a regional listing.

Type: Geographic | PR: 5 | Alexa: 41,854

TwitterPassion

Add your Twitter ID and a detailed description to be included in this link directory type of site.

Type: General | PR: 3 | Alexa: 1,963,910

Localtweeps

Getting listing on Localtweeps is easy. All you have to do is provide your zip code through a form on their site which is made into a tweet. Search by zip code, city, and state. There are also popular city and state lists.

Type: Geographic | PR: 0 | Alexa: 69,947

ChirpCity

Write a tweet with your city name to be automatically include in this directory. ChirpCity displays the most recent tweets with mentions of a city name. This site relies on city name and not zip code like some others.

Type: Geographic | PR: 5 | Alexa: 311,821

ÜberTwitter

This is a Twitter client for the BlackBerry that allows you to see everyone who is tweeting near you. Your location is based on the cell tower instead of GPS hardware integrated GPS(Thanks, @robrowald for the update).

Type: Geographic | PR: 0 | Alexa: 184,188

Niche Directories

Twitter Directory – Analyst - AR Analysts

Twitter Directory - Analyst Relations (AR) - Analyst Relations

GovTwit Directory - Federal and local offical tweeple

Twitter Chamber Directory - Chamber of commerce

Justia Legal Birds - Legal related users

First Issue - Book/publishing trade people on Twitter

Twitter Directory for Designers - Web designers

Follower Finders

These sites look at your existing followers and determines who those tweeple are following and you are not.

Twubble

WhoShouldiFollow

If you enjoyed this list, be sure to follow me @jasonbartholme. If I have left any out, then please let me know below.

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I have been running the script on My Directory Live for about two and a half years and I have recently given it more attention since the Page Rank and Alexa Ranks have increased substantially. Right not it sits at a PR4 and an Alexa of 41k, not bad at all for a link directory.

With the volume of links coming in, I try to look at each individual one, but it is difficult sometimes to maintain my own personal guidelines. There is a mass approve function in the admin. area which allows you to select all links and approve. However, since sometimes due to how the reciprocal link is displayed on the admin. page, it’s difficult to see the full linking URL unless you mouse over it or sort all unapproved links to the top and check each one manually.

The exploit I have been seeing more frequently is websites using the URL of the web directory as a value in a $_GET variable in the link. The page they link to simply takes the value of the variable and makes a single anchor tag on the page. When the phpLD script look at the page it appears fine and verifies the link as valid and moves on.

Here is what the link and result look like:

I am not familiar with the coding in the directory or the Smarty template engine, so I came up with a solution outside of the script. I use a scheduled task with ColdFusion on another site to get at the database and look at the recpr_url, ipaddress, and recpr_url fields in the pld_link table querying on if the reciprocal link URL contains my directory’s URL. Then, for the links that are returned on the query, I delete them from the table and insert the IP and domain into the pld_banlist table.

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SELECT PLD_LINK.ID, PLD_LINK.URL, PLD_LINK.RECPR_URL
FROM PLD_LINK
WHERE PLD_LINK.RECPR_URL LIKE  '%www.mydirectorylive.com%'

If you run a link directory script, you may want to look at your tables and see how many links like this are in there. Also, if you know how to mod the directory to check for this within the application, it would be great to see it in the next directory version.

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I have been trying to hone my RegEx skills to use for good and a little bit of evil, so I decided to challenge myself. I read Fark.com almost daily and love the pictures that people post along with comments about the particular story. During my lunch break, I only have a limited amount of time to browse without a content filter, so I end up skimming the comment pages for the funny/interesting pics.

It would be nice to see the comment pages on Fark without conversation but only the pictures. Here’s what we need to make this happen:

Home Page

• Grab the content from the live page
• Extract the list of categories(tags), stories, comment count and story ID
• Pass story title and ID to picture display page

Pic Page

• Grab the comments from the live page based on the story ID
• Parse out all the tags within the comments
• Discard all the images with “fark” in the image to not display site related images
• Show only user submitted pictures and a link to get back to the main page

We use ColdFusion cfhttp tag to pull the home page content as seen below:

All that content is held in the CFHTTP.FileContent variable. Then, we use the REMatchNoCase() function to build an array for each story. Within the array, we can parse and loop through the back references based on a complex regular expression we used to scrape the page.

We put those variables into a simple table that we can look over and decided what stories we are interested in with a link to spit out only the pictures from that stories comments.

Onto the picture page. We have a story ID that we use to get the page contents from Fark. We take that and apply two different regular expressions. One is to isolate the user submitted comments, the second extract only the <img> tags.

Once we have the array built, then we simply loop through the array and display the images. I filter out the images that contain “fark” within the tag, because that usually denotes a “Total Fark” member badge.

We place a simple link to get back to the main page, and possibly pass in the story name to the pic page. There is limitless customization that can be done to this script. I was more concerned about getting the correct data to display.

Download the entire script. Here is the working pages which include the complex RegEx that was used to get the desired content.

Disclaimer time. Fark.com is a great site that loads of entertaining content that keeps me coming back. The tutorial is more about applying the principles of regular expressions with ColdFusion to get the data you want than exploiting Fark. The same principles can be used on other master/detail sites.

I would have had all the code inline, but my plugin to do was acting screwy with the code. Any suggestions for displaying source code in WordPress?

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1. Find a list of directories

Well, you have to start somewhere. If you don’t already have a list; a quick Google search for web directory lists will give you some sites to get you a sizable list. You can check out RSSMage.com for a current list of RSS feed directories.

2. Format your list

No matter how you get the list, you want to format it so it is only one absolute URL per line. Have a look at the example.

3. Make Folders

• Now that you have a clean list of URLs, count the links and see how many you have. This is why it is a good idea to use Excel.
• Say your list has 230 links: divide that list by 20, that gives us 11.5 rounding up, that’s 12.
• Now, open Firefox: click Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks or Control-Shift-B. Select the “Bookmarks Toolbar” item on the left.
• Inside the area to the right, right-click and create one folder called Links.
• Inside that folder create 12 more folders named sequentially. Something like Links1, Links2… is fine just so you have the number on the folder.
• Be sure not to close the Bookmark Editor page, you’ll come right back to it.

4. Populate the Folders

• Here is the magic. Go into your list and select the first 20 URLs.
• Use Control-C to copy the URLs to the clipboard.
• Go into Firefox and select the first numbered folder. (Links1)You’ll see an empty folder.
• Hit Control-V to paste and the URLs will populate the empty folder. Very nice, aye?
• Now do this for the remainder of the URLs in your list, filling the rest of your folders.

5. Open the URLs

OK. So far we took a list of URLs, formatted them, and made bookmarks out of them. Now we can open a batch of them at once.

• It’s best to close all of your open tabs to eliminate extra open links.
• Right-click on Links1 folder and select “Open All in Tabs”. This will take all the links in the folder and open them in their own tab.
• Wait a bit while all the pages are opening or the browser might crash.

6. Submit the forms

Then, you can start at the first open tab and fill out the form. There is a variety of applications and Firefox add-ons to assist you with form filling, check out 3 Tools to Quickly Submit Your Sites to Web Directories. Once you get to the last open tab, right-click on that tab and select “Close Other Tabs”. This will obviously close all the tabs with the one remaining tab. Rinse and repeat with Links2, etc.

Conclusion

I prefer manual submissions over an automated process and this technique allows me to take a lot of time out of the process so I can do other things. You can have 50 links in a folder, or setup your folders to be particular niches. Whatever makes it easier. If you have other ways (aside from paying someone else) to reduce time in the manual submission process let me know in the comments.

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The current project is being built from scratch and has allowed me to really implement some best practices to save me time and resources. I wanted a something that could be reused, so I allowed the user to change the field name of the drop list and the number of years in the future they care to display.

components.cfc

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<cfcomponent>
<cffunction name="getCCyearfield" output="no" returntype="string">
<cfargument name="FieldName" required="no" type="string" default="ExpirationYear" />
<cfargument name="YearsAhead" required="no" type="numeric" default="15" />
 
<cfset ccyearselect = "">
<cfset thisyear = val(dateformat(now(),'yyyy'))>
<cfset futuredate = val(dateformat(dateadd('yyyy',ARGUMENTS.YearsAhead,now()),'yyyy'))>
 
<cfoutput>
<cfsavecontent variable="ccyearselect">
<select name="#ARGUMENTS.FieldName#">
<option value="">Choose Expiration Year</option&gt;
<cfloop from="#thisyear#" to="#futuredate#" index="i">
<option value="#i#">#i#</option&gt;
</cfloop>
</select&gt;
</cfsavecontent>
</cfoutput>
 
<cfreturn ccyearselect />
</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

The display of the field is fairly straightforward. Optional arguments are “FieldName” and “YearsAhead”.

display.cfm

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<cfinvoke component="components"
method="getCCyearfield"
returnvariable="CCYear">
</cfinvoke&gt;
 
<cfoutput>#CCYear#</cfoutput>

The code itself is not rocket science. However, it should save me, and hopefully you, the effort of updating a static credit card year select field.

Was this helpful for you? Let me know.

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I think I overloaded myself with sessions again this year. Sunday, I have the “Building High-Performance ColdFusion Applications” class all day which will hopefully give me some insight on making my own applications more robust. Monday is sprinkled with AIR, Flex and more ColdFusion, Tuesday is a lot of AIR sessions and Wednesday is more advanced ColdFusion.

For fun our little group is hitting Alcatraz Monday for the twilight cruise. It sounds like it’s going to be a great time, and I plan on taking a bunch of photos. Hopefully, I hit it big again during the big event on Tuesday. Last year, I took home a copy of the CS3 Master Collection for winning best hand at a Texas Hold ‘em game.

I’ll be looking for the ColdFusion people and say I if I can. Always nice to match the faces with the names.

Hope to see you there.

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My Current Setup

Right now, I have “Ganymede” the current version of Eclipse. Along with that I installed a few plugins that are a vital part of making the application so powerful:

CFEclipse

CFEclipse is the essential plugin for ColdFusion developers. There so many features that make this plugin great. Some of the more powerful features:

Code Folding - Which manually or automatically collapses code from view.

Bracket Highlighting - Which changes the pairs brackets, parens, and squiggles different colors when your are next to one.

Integrated Browser - Run your pages from within Eclipse

Scribble Pad - This has kept my project code from being littered with test.cfm type of pages. It is a defined page within is accessed by a toolbar button which allows you to run your code inside of Eclipse before you add it to your project. It works nice for small chunks of code.

Dynamic Snippets - add variables to your snippets before they are inserted onto the page.

TODO task list - Simply add the text “TODO:” to your ColdFusion comments and they are all reference in a “Tasks”. Good for going back to finished incomplete code or assigning tasks to other team members.

SnipEX - This is a wonderful feature to create and share snippets. You can host your own SnipEx snippets to share with your team or get them from public servers. Some notable SnipEX server URLs are the following:

http://cfsnippets.org/model/snippets/snipEx/snipEx.cfc

http://www.cflib.org/snipex/snipex.cfc

ColdFusion 8 Extensions for Eclipse

This plugin is release by Adobe and is a CFC and AS code generation from you database schemas. It also give you a “Components Explorer” view gives you a look at the available components.

Subclipse

This is plugin or Eclipse that plays nice with the CFEclipse perspective to give you the functionality to get at and manage your SVN code repository. Subclipse works well for team development and you don’t need to use Tortoise or go to a command line for commits, updates and syncronization.

Aptana

Aptana is good for syntax highlighting of CSS files and it’s boasts itself as an IDE for creating Adobe AIR applications. It also gives you an environment for developing in PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Python.

This are the plugins I have been using for the last few weeks that has made it a joy to code in Eclipse. I’m curious to know what CF developers are using for their plugins. Let me know, I’m still finding pieces in the toolset to make me code more efficiently.

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Quick Overview

Dropbox is a fast and easy way to share and store files remotely with the ability to access the files using PC, Mac, or Linux operating systems. The files are versioned so you can actually restore previous versions of a file and even restore deleted files. The basic account comes with 2GB of storage and premium accounts are $9.99 a month, or $99.99 a year.

Windows Experience

Once you install the application is installed, Dropbox sits in your notification area in the lower left of the desktop. Right click on the icon and you can see your remaining storage space as well as other options. When you click on “Open My Dropbox”, Explorer opens up a file location inside of your My Documents folder called “My Dropbox”.

Drop and drop files to the location and they sync to Dropbox’s servers automatically. It’s like SVN without having to manually commit and update. It only takes a few moments for others to see the items you just placed in shared folders. Also, you can choose to see any updates to your shared folders so you know when new items are added.

Mac Experience

Installing Dropbox on the Mac was just as easy. I downloaded the installed, dragged the program to the Application folder, signed into my account and I had Dropbox running on my G4 Mac. I didn’t have to have an Intel Mac to run the software (yeay!). The program adds Dropbox to two locations on the Mac. The first is in the area of Finder next to the Documents and Pictures. The second is in the top right of the page with and icon to see the same options as on the PC.

First Impressions

Right now, I carry around a few thumb drives in work bags to move around large files between work and home. Now, I can simply drag and drop those files to a folder on either my Mac or PC. I’d say that’s pretty convenient. Sharing files with friends is great too, already my friends and I have traded some large image files which wouldn’t send well in email. I’m pretty excited on how easy the service is and will be using it in the foreseeable future.

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Getting quality inbound links is an important part for getting targeted traffic and to encourage search engine spiders. The Link Building Wiki covers almost every conceivable aspect of link building. You can educate yourself with link building references on popular webmaster and SEO forums such as SE Roundtable, Cr8asite, Webmaster World, and Abacus to name a few.

The Link Building/SEO Blogs and Posts section has required reading from the leaders in the industry. The XML is on the page and is ready to be added into your feed aggregator for each blog. There are even blogs that dabble in the “grey hat” and “black hat” realms of link building which often involve shady or unorthodox methods. Those blogs are interesting to read because the authors are very intelligent and know their stuff when it comes to getting links.

If you are link building yourself then you need an arsenal of tools to help you analysis your competitors and look for linking opportunities. Listed are an extensive list of tools which include entire software packages, online tools, and Firefox add-ons. I use a good handful of the tools listed when I am in the link building phase of a project.

Another option is to look into link building services if would like a quality, professional team to do the work for you. A good team knows where to find the great links that your site needs to get it in front of the right people and high in the SERPs.

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