TV Tech Girl

Fixing the Lastpass Errors

2011-05-06T13:52:00.000+01:00

Like many people I've been suffering from not being able to access my account since the potential hack of the Lastpass site.

I finally managed to get it working by following these instructions step by step.

1) Turn off Modem and Router
2) Turn off PC
3) Reboot PC but leave the Modem and Router off
4) Load up your browser
5) Clear both Cookies and Cache on the Browser (very important)
6) Remove the Lastpass Extension from your browser
7) Close your browser
8) Start your Modem and Router
9) Once connected load your Browser
10) Re-install the Lastpass Extension
11) Log back on using your original password before the hack
12) If that does not work and you changed your password after the hack then try the new password.

If you are still not working now try to log in via https://lastpass.com/?ac=1

Failing that email their support support@lastpass.com

How Facebook Comments Killed the Techcrunch Community @Disqus

2011-03-15T15:11:00.006+00:00

Several months ago I was thrilled that Techcrunch moved over to the Disqus commenting platform for all it's comments. I'm a huge fan of Disqus and I only comment on sites that use it as it keeps all my comments in one place.

However, for reasons that Techcrunch are claiming are to do with Spam/Trolls they moved over to the new and IMHO awful Facebook comments. The Spam and Moderation controls on Facebook comments are vastly inferior to the well established Disqus system.

Since then I've not commented on Techcrunch and I've no desire to read what few comments are now left there.

Today as an example I looked at the Top 20 Posts at Techcruch to see how many comments their were. Here are the results

0 Comments - 5 Posts
1-5 Comments - 6 Posts
6-10 Comments - 3 Posts
11-15 Comments - 5 Posts
>15 Comments - 1 Post

In the past nearly every post when they used Disqus would have over 30 Comments each and it was a really great place to read peoples comments.

It's obvious to me that Facebook Comments has effectively killed the community at Techcrunch and I'm sure this is hurting their stats.

I wonder how long it will take them to realise this and go back to Disqus or are they too afraid of losing face by backtracking?

Some New Features coming to Blogger

2011-03-14T16:24:00.001+00:00

Which ones are you most excited about?

I have to admit I love the new look of the Editor and Dashboard, and I hope the Rich Text Editor works well.

Get Instant Email Notifications of the Sites you follow

2011-02-16T11:32:00.003+00:00

Most people these days follow blogs via a Feedreader or if they have one a Twitter Account.

I still like to get an email notification whenever some of my favorite sites get updated.

To do this we're going to use a free 3rd Party Service called notify.me

Follow these simple instructions and you'll be up and running in a couple of minutes. FYI: I use this service myself.

1) Goto notify.me and click the Sign Up button at the top.

2) Fill out the simple form and click the Sign Up Button

3) Then Click on the Start Account Setup button

4) You can if you want have it set to send you an SMS. If you don't want this, click the Jump to Next Step.

5) You can if you want have it set to send you an Instant Message Notification. If you don't want this, click the Jump to Next Step.

6) This next step is the important one. It asks you which source your want to use. For this we need to use the "Add Feed Manually" section.

7) Ok, here is where we need to get the feed for the site that you want to follow. Simply put the feed in and click on the Add Button.

8) Ok, now that you have your Feed, you paste it into the Feed box and click Add Feed.

9) If successful you will see a new Feed entry in your Notifications Box.

10) During this time you should have received an email from Notify to validate your Email Address. Simply click on the link that it sends you.

11) Now click the Jump to Next Step a couple of times

and you should get the Success message.

12) Now we need to turn on the Email Notifications. We do this from the Account (NOT Account Setup), Sources screen. You can then click on the Icon of the notification type you want eg IM, SMS, Email etc

13) If you want to add another Site/Feed simply click on the Sources button in the menu and add another feed (Step 8)

If you have completed all these steps, the next time there is a new post on your favorite sites you will get an email almost instantly.

If you have any questions/problems please let me know in the comments.

Adding Facebook Social Plugins to your Blogger Blog

2010-06-24T12:28:00.020+01:00

Facebook is all the rage these days and adding it to your blog is a good way to drive extra traffic and make your site more "social".

However, it's not very simple for new blogger to add the various Facebook social plugins to your site.

This guide will hopefully change all that!

Details after the cut

1) First we need to get a Facebook API key. To do this we go here and register our site. You must have a Facebook account.

http://developers.facebook.com/setup/

2) We fill out the form as shown below.

Fill out the name of your blog and then the URL/LINK eg

http://tvtechgirl.blogspot.com/

Make sure you have the http:// and the trailing /

Then click Create

3) This will take you to your Applications Settings Screen. If all goes well you should see a screen like this.

Make a note of your API ID.

Under this you will see a snippet of Code. Save this for later.

4) Now we need to make some change to your Blogger Template. Goto Design, Edit HTML

5) Now we need to add the following to your Template

xmlns:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml'

At the very top of your blogs template you will see some code like this.

<html b:version='2' class='v2' expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>

You need to add the following inside the last > part

xmlns:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml'

so that your code looks like this

<html b:version='2' class='v2' expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr' xmlns:fb='http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml'>

Press the Save button to Save your Template.

6) Next we need to add the Facebook Script to our code. In Step 3) you were given some example code. Copy the Code as shown below. Only Copy the Highlighted parts

7) Now we need to paste this code into your Blogger Template. Goto Design, Edit HTML

Locate the opening <BODY> Tag, it should look like <BODY> or <body class='loading'>

Paste the code immediatly after it as shown below.

Press Save.

8) Ok, if you have made it this far, your blog is now ready to install the Facebook Social Plugings that you want.

9) First we go to the Facebook Social Plugins Page and decide which Plugin you want to install.

http://developers.facebook.com/plugins

10) For the purposes of this FAQ I'll be installing the Recommendations Plugin but the instructions are VERY similar for all of the others.

11) Click the Recommendations Plugin. You will be taken to the following screen.

12) Fill out the Form, use your blogs link as the Domain, and configure your settings. When ready click the GET CODE Button.

13) When you click the Get Code button, you will get a popup.

14) Copy the XFBML code eg for me it's

<fb:recommendations site="http://tvtechgirl.blogspot.com/" height="400" font="arial"></fb:recommendations>

15) Now We need to add this code as a Widget. Goto Design, Page Elements and click the Add Gadget link.

16) Select HTML/Javascript Widget.

17) Put in a title and copy the XFBML Code into your Widget.

18) Press Save and View your blog, you should now have a nice Facebook Recommendations Widget.

You can add other widgets the same way starting back from Step 9 and repeat the process.

I hope you have found this useful.

Any questions, ask in the comments.

Easy Fix to make your Blog more Smartphone Friendly

2010-06-11T14:06:00.005+01:00

Here is a quick tip that you can do to make your website more Mobile Friendly for phones such as the iPhone, iPad and the great Android Phones.

1) Goto Design, Edit HTML

2) Under the < head > line simply add this code.

<meta content='IE=EmulateIE7' http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.isMobile'>
<meta content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0' name='viewport'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='width=1100' name='viewport'/>
</b:if>

3) Click Save and Voila.

My 1 Month Cloud Computing Challenge - Day 4

2010-03-18T16:02:00.003+00:00

Day 3 has been posted below.

This is something I've been thinking about doing for a while..... I hope you can follow along with me and offer any advice help along the way.

What is the Cloud Computing Challenge
Simply put, to see if I can do all my day to day stuff entirely in the Cloud, that is without using any software or file on my hard disk (with the exception of the my Browser (Chrome) and Windows 7).

This means that everything I do on my computer I have to do entirely within my browser and I'm not allowed to store or use any files onto my PC.

How long will the Challenge Last
I'm going to see if I can last 1 full month using nothing but my Browser.

When does it start?
Now! From this post onwards I will use nothing but my Browser.

I will update this post regularly as I face new hurdles and need advice software.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Day 1 - The Setup
Ok, we're on Day one. The first thing I need to do is to get a basic setup of apps and ideas.

Listed below are the initial online Services that I will be using.

Browser - Google Chrome
Docs - Google Docs for all my Document and Spreadsheet needs
Blogging - Google Blogger to track my progress
Mail - Already using Gmail

Below are the items that I need to investigate to find online only solutions. If you have any tips about good online services/extensions please let me know in the comment.

- Browser Twitter client to replace Twhirl
- Online Graphics Editor
- Image Hosting
- Play MP3s/Video
- Task Manager
- Calendar
- Virus Scanner (Is this relevant anymore on the cloud)

I'm sure there will be a load of other items that I need to find an alternative for but for now I think this should keep me going.

Day 2
Thanks to Xavier for the tip about the Twitter extension Chrowety. It's a really good client for Chrome and very useful.

Been amazed about just how much I can do just by using all the free Google tools.

Google Docs handles pretty much any file I'm sent via gmail and it converts most formats that I use on a day to day basis..

Current Issues
Looking for a way to save an image so that I can make edits or use in blog posts without having to save it to my hard disk first?

Anyone have any extensions and/or free services that will allow me to take a photo from a site and use it on my site or documents.

Oh advice of some friends, I'm going to check out Aviary later today. Hopefully I can get this to work with URLs rather than having to upload saved images.

I'll report back tomorrow with my findings on Aviary and any other issues I've found.

Day 3
Ok, one of the biggest issues I thought I would have would be how to use/create and save Images. I've always used applications like Paint.NET, irfanview etc to do my image work.

However lots of you email me and suggested I use the Chrome Extension Aviary.

Ok once you have installed the Aviary Extension you get a little Icon in your Chrome Toolbar, click that and you are presented with a host of options. Click the Image Editor.

This then loads the image editor. Click Load Existing File

Here we can either upload an existing file from your hard disk or specify a URL. As this is the cloud computing challenge I use the the From URL and paste in the URL of the image I want to use.

Paste in the URL and click Upload

Once it is has uploaded your file you can then make whatever changes you like

Once completed click File, Save As and you will be presented with the following screen. Complete the fields and click Save as new creation

Once save it provides you with a number of options from which to use your newly uploaded image. Here we use the Image URL so that we can specify it directly into the post.

Thanks to everyone who suggested Aviary, it seems that this is the goto tool for people want to edit/create images on a Cloud only PC. It's very impressive.

Tomorrow's challenge is to find a good online only Chat Client/Extension.

Any suggestions?

Day 4
Thanks everyone for suggesting Meebo. I've been using it now for a day and this seems like the best online only IM Client. I'll try to do a little more detailed write up later.

I'm impressed how easy it is to setup and to add various accounts. I can now chat with Meebo just as easily as I could with a number of standalone clients.

So far I've not found any other issues that is stopping me moving to an online only existence,although a couple of things that I will probably need to look at.

- Document conversion (Probably Google Docs will handle most of these)
- Sync Bookmarks and passwords across different computers. (Google Sync?)
- How to take a video from a site like YouTube and load it into my account
- NON RSS Feed sites page monitoring
- Online Music Streaming (LastFM?)
- Online Torrent Downloading to an online file store
- I'll also be looking at Hootsuite Twitter Managemet

New Blogger Template Designer

2010-03-12T16:43:00.004+00:00

I was so thrilled to see that Blogger have just released a new Template Designer.

This was something that has been missing for Blogger in order for Blogger users to get nice looking custom designs.

I've been playing around with it and it's really rather excellent. My blog today was redesigned using the new editor in just under 5 mins.

You can read more about the new Template Editor here.

Also if you have any ideas about new features for the Template Editor you can go here and vote on existing suggestions or create your own suggestion.

Blogger Template Editor Product Suggestions

If you have used it to revamp/re-design your blog, leave your blog link in the comments below and I will rate it out of 10 and give you a 1 line review and suggestion for improvements.

How to Share your Content with AddThis

2010-03-01T12:25:00.008+00:00

Ok, today we're going to take a look about how to add the popular "Add This" button to your Blogger blog. It's a great way to allow readers to share your content on a number of social media sites.

Some of the biggest sites and blogs out there do this.

1) Ok, first up lets create a free account there.

http://www.addthis.com/register

Full out the Forum and your done. Make sure you click the email weekly digest to get a nice summary of your stats emailed to you.

2) Ok, we now have an account. Lets get started. First goto the Addthis homepage

http://www.addthis.com/

3) Make sure you select Blogger as your Service Type

4) Select the Style of Button you want

5) Click the Get Your Button

6) For this Tutorial, we will be adding the button under each post on your blog. Copy the code provide.

7) Log into Blogger and select the blog you want to add AddThis to. Select Layout > Edit HTML. These controls look like tabs, and they're located at the top of the page.

8) Check the Expand Widget Templates checkbox. This checkbox is located in the top right corner of the page, above the code. By clicking the checkbox, the code in the field below will refresh.

9) Copy and paste the AddThis code snippet into the template, right after the <div class="post-footer"> tag.

Note: If you have trouble finding this DIV, try copying and pasting the blogger code into a text file editing program and do a search for 'post-footer'. Once you located it, copy and paste the AddThis button code below the DIV. Then copy the entire text file and replace the code on blogger.

10) Click Save Template, and you're done! A new page will load along with a confirmation at the top of the page should appear that reads, "Your changes have been saved. View blog." Click View Blog to preview your blog with the new AddThis button. The button should appear beneath each blog post.

You should now have a great AddThis button for each of your blog posts.

Stats
Add this also provides excellent stats for your site.

Just goto your account

http://www.addthis.com/myaccount

and you can then instantly see a variety of stats for your site which you can slice and dice and you see fit.

I hope this has been helpful and if you have any comments/questions, please ask them in the comments below.

Supercharge your Blog Comments with Disqus

2010-01-25T13:33:00.001+00:00

Ok, as we know, most Blog commenting systems suck, especially Blogger! However if you follow this simple guide your blog will be the envy of your friends and fellow bloggers.

In this guide we will introduce you to the Disqus commenting system which is probably the most popular 3rd party commenting system out there.. and it's VERY impressive.

Before we get into how to install etc, lets first look at the advantages that Disqus Provides.

1) In built Spam filtering
2) Moderate all your comments from 1 place. Very handy if you run multiple blogs.
3) The ability to ban users by either email address and/or IP Address.
4) You can reply to comments via email so that you don't have to go to your blog to reply to a comment. Very handy if your on the road.
5) Threaded comments.
6) Live comments. If your site is busy people will not have to hit refresh to see new comments.
7) Whenever you leave a comment on another Disqus enabled site you will be able to see and track all your comments from the Disqus profile screen. This is great if you are trying to remember where you left that comment on a blog a while ago.
8) It's FREE!

There is a LOT more to Disqus than the list above but you can discover the benefits yourself.

Ok, so how can I install this on my blog?

Well it's very simple.

First Goto http://disqus.com and create a free account. Once done click on the Comments Section

As this is your first site you will probably be prompted for your blog details. If you already have a blog with Disqus simply click on the "Register a New Site" link.

This will bring us to a simple screen where you need to fill out your Blog Details. Once done click Continue

This is the main configuration screen where you can setup how you want Disqus to work. I normally select all features to get maximum benefit from it. I highly recommend that you get a free Akismet Key so that you can use their very powerful spam filtering system. Once done click continue.

Note: You can always go back after you have installed Disqus and change these settings on the fly.

Now we tell Disqus what blog system we are using. For the purpose of this guide I will be using Blogger. The operation is similar for other systems and you just need to follow the simply on-screen instructions.

First off we have to Download our Template from Blogger. You do this via the Layout, Edit HTML screen from your Blogs Dashboard. Click the Download link and save the file to your Computer.

Now click the Choose File button and select the above file that you have just saved.

You can now decide if you want Disqus to import your existing comments. I always import the comments so that I know I have a full set.

Once done click Continue

You should get a message saying that your Template was patched.

Now this is the important bit. In Step 1 below make sure you copy ALL the code in the little text window.

Now go back to Blogger and in the Edit HTML section of your Template, tick the Expand Widget Checkbox, and then paste the code from above into the Template Box below, OVERWRITING the existing code.

Hit the Save button to complete the process.

Now return back to your Disqus page and click the Import button to import your existing comments.

You will then be asked to authorize Disqus to import these comments. Click Grant

You will now be asked to confirm which of your blogs you want to import from. Select the correct one and click Import.

Once done you should see a message like the one below, informing you that your comments have or will be imported shortly.

Now we need to ensure that Disqus and Blogger comments are kept in sync so that if you ever decided to move away from Disqus all your comments will still be in Blogger.

Click the Enable button

Again you will be asked to grant Disqus Access to do this

Once granted click on the Blog that you want to Sync

You then get a message informing you of any settings that you might need to make with your Blogger blog to ensure the smooth syncing of comments. Check you have these all set.

When you close the above box, you will be taken back to disqus and the button should have changed from Enabled to Disable. This means that you comments are now in sync with Blogger.

Now pop over to your blog and click on one of your posts to see your shiny new Comments System

As we mentioned earlier, Disqus is very powerful and you can customize a lot about it. The good thing is that when you make changes, you don't have to re-install the code again. All changes are dynamic.

Clicking on the Settings Tab allows you to change your Moderation Options

And the Look and Feel of your Comments Box

I hope you found this useful and hope to see more Disqus powered blogs.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate in contacting me or leaving a comment.

Do you think you'll add Disqus to your site?

Google Nexus One - I want one

2010-01-05T20:20:00.002+00:00

The new Google Phone looks pretty cool. Need to start saving.

Better Polls for your Site

2010-01-04T11:20:00.002+00:00

A great way of adding some interactivity to a blog for your readers is that of asking poll questions. There are plenty of poll making sites out there, and even Blogger itself has it's own simple poll gadget. However if you're serious about your polls then you really need to check out PollDaddy. It's probably the de-facto standard of Polls around the blogsphere and some of the largest blogs on the net use it ... and best of all, it's free!

So lets take a quick look at Polldaddy and what you can do.

First you will need to visit PollDaddy and create a free account. Once done you will be presented with your Dashboard where you can View your previous polls, create new ones, Edit old ones etc etc

To create a new Poll simply select Polls, Create a Poll from the menu.

You will then be presented with a blank form to fill out. Most of the fields are pretty self explanatory and it allows you to set/change the following:

- Title
- Add/Remove Poll Options
- Add Video/Image as Poll Options
- Set Automatic Close Date
- Select how you want the results to be displayed
- Block/Allow Repeat Voters
- Allow Multiple Choice Polls
- Change the sort order of the poll options
- Allow users to enter their own answers and comments

Polldaddy also comes with a great number of pre-defined templates to change your poll appearance as well as allowing you almost complete control for you to create your own unique poll styles.

Once you have configured you poll you simply click the Save and Continue Button.

The great thing about PollDaddy is that once you have created a poll and added it to your site, you can simply come back to PollDaddy and edit/change the poll without having to re-add the code to your site.

Once the above save button has been pressed you will be presented with some code that you can paste into your Blog/Site etc. They have a whole bunch of various options such as Javascript, Flash, MySpace etc which should allow you to post your poll almost anywhere.

Once you have copied the above supplied code, you the simply add it to you blog/site. In the simple example below I've added it to a new blog post.

Once you have pasted and saved the code you can then view your Poll.

Here is the poll that I created in the above example. Hopefully this will help you add polls to your site to get feedback on you blog posts from your readers. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate in asking in the comments below.

Adding a Stat Counter to your Blog

2010-01-03T12:46:00.005+00:00

Like most bloggers it's always nice to know more about who is reading your site, where they come from and what they are reading etc. This post will show you how to add an excellent free statcounter to your site which will give you access to a large amount of useful information.

This should be sufficient for 90%+ of bloggers. However, if you later find yourself being in the envious position of getting 1000's of hits per day then you can always look at a more powerful solution such Google Analytics which I will write about later on.

Ok, so how do we get some stats on our blog? For the purposes of this How-To I'll be using the excellent free service from Statcounter and assume you have a Blogger blog, although the technique applies the same to almost all the Blogging services out there.

First we need to create a Free Account with Statcounter.

1) Goto http://www.statcounter.com/ and register a free account. Fill out your info and click the Register button.

2) Now click the Proceed and Add a Project button.

3) Now fill out the Project Settings such as Title, Category and your Blogs link.

4) Click the Next button and then click the Configure and Install Button.

5) Now you can decide how you would like your stats to be displayed. Personally I like to keep my Statcounter hidden, but you can choose to have your counter visible if you so desire. Once done press next.

6) Next you select the blogging platform that your blog is on eg Blogger, Wordpress, Drupel, etc etc. Statcounter works on almost all platforms.

7) You will now be presented with a block of code that you need to copy so that we can paste it later.

8) Now that you have copied the above we now need to add this to your blogging platform. For this example we will use Blogger but Statcounter provides instructions for all the major blogging platforms. So we now head over to your Blogger Dashboard (http://www.blogger.com) and click on your Layout link for the blog that you want to add your stats to.

9) Now we click the Add Gadget link

10) Now click the HTML/Javascript Gadget

11) Now Paste the Statcounter code into the box as shown below and press Save

Voila you now have a Statcounter on your blog.

Now when you go back to your Statcounter Dashboard you should see your nice new Statcounter Project.

Clicking on the Project name then takes you into the detailed stats reporting for your project.

From here you can click on the Stats Details on the left hand side to explore your sites statistics in more detail.

I hope you have found this useful and if you have any questions feel free to drop me a note in the comments.

Liven up your Twitter Posts

2009-12-28T10:48:00.001+00:00

I'm a huge fan of Twitter and I often find myself re-tweeting a lot of interesting content from a lot of the same sites that I follow. I was looking for a way to automate some of this and found a recently added new feature in Google that allows me to automatically re-tweet content even whilst I'm away. This has the benefit of saving you time as well as keeping your tweets interesting.

I will attempt to explain below how to do this. It's very simple and should take you just a couple of minutes. We shall be doing this for one of my favorite tech sites, Mashable.

1) First thing we need to do is to use our existing Feedburner account or to create a new one. Simply goto Feedburner and log in or create a free account.

2) Next we need to get the RSS Feed of the site that we want to tweet about eg goto Mashable and find the RSS Feed. In this case they have a nice big RSS Icon so you simply right-click and copy the link. Most sites have easily identifiable RSS Links/Icons and most modern browsers will also put an RSS Feed Icon on your address bar

3) Now that we have the RSS Feed link address which should be (http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Mashable) we then goto our Feedburner account and paste it into the Burn Feed Now box and press Next.

4) Then we give it a name and press next.

5) Now Press Next on the next 2 screens until you see the following.

6) Now click the Publicize Tab and then the Socialize link

7) Now click on Add Twitter Account button and follow the instructions to add your Twitter Account. You can then customize how you want your Tweets to appear and you get a preview of what they will look like at the bottom.

8) Finally click on the Activate button at the bottom an you're good to go.

Now whenever Mashable make a new post on their blog you will automatically send a tweet out to your followers.

You can add as many Feeds from your favorite sites as you like to Feedburner to keep your twitter lively and interesting.

Let me know if you have any problems and hopefully you will find this useful.

Blog Comments - Best 3rd Party Solution?

2009-12-27T21:32:00.012+00:00

Disqus vs JS-Kit/Echo vs Blogger vs IntenseDebate

Before setting up my first blog I spent some time looking at the various comments systems that are available for the Blogger Platform.

The default comments that come with Blogger are Ok but they don't allow for some of the more sophisticated Social Media notifications that are becoming more and more popular.

These items are:

- Capturing Reactions from various Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc etc and placing these comments and reactions back into the Original Post so you can see at a glance who is talking about your content.

- Moderation - Moderation is very important in this increasingly spammy age. I need a powerful spam engine like Akismet to filter out 99% of all spam before it reaches me.

- User Self-Moderation: - I also want to be alerted of any content that whilst not being spam is considered unnecessary or offensive. I want the readers of the blog to be able to "flag" any bad comments.

- Building a Community - One thing I looked for at the larger well establish blogs like TechCrunch, Mashable, EndGadget, Lifehacker etc was that of building a community and to showcase regular commentators in the form of popular commentators as well as having a "reputation" factor so other, new readers of the blog can see how well respected another commentator is.

- Speed of Loading and Reliability - This is very important as I want the blog to be fast loading so that readers can access both the content and comments immediately without any noticeable delay.

- Support - Pretty self-explanatory. If I have a problem I want to get it fixed.

With all these in mind there were only 3 real choices for me.

Disqus
JS-Kit/Echo
Intense Debate

Based on all my criteria the easy winner in nearly all the criteria was Disqus. It has great Moderation, allows me to reply to a comment via email so that I don't have to visit the site. I can moderate via email as well and it has Akismet built in. It also has a nice gadget to display Popular Post, Top Commentators, and Recent Comments.

Also searching through Twitter and Forums, it also seems to have the fewest issues. A quick look at the JS-Kit offering (which is also the only one that charges) it appears on the surface to be the most powerful, but a little digging around and a look at their support site shows a very different story. Lots of users with unresolved issues and a whole post dedicated to the users wanting refunds. Not good PR there. Maybe in a year or two I might revisit JS-Kit/Echo but for now it seems the most buggy, slowest to load and the most complicated of the 3 solutions as well as being the only one that charges.

The other great thing about Disqus is that I can see from my Disqus profile all the comments that I've left on other sites which use the Disqus plugin. This is a pretty cool feature.

They have also recently added the ability to sync comments back to the blogger backend so that if you ever wanted to remove Disqus you can easily do so.

So if you're using Blogger or Wordpress and are looking for a way to spruce up your comments and to build a community I can strongly recommend Disqus. Oh and it was a total breeze to install on my site. Give the comments a test below if you like so that you can see how it works.

What are your experiences with the various comments systems?

Image thanks to 40Tech

My first ever blog post

2009-12-27T21:02:00.005+00:00

I thought it was about time to create my first ever blog and post. I have also decided to create a Facebook page that I'll be filling out with more content later.

My blog will have little bits of info that I've found in my Internet Geek Travel around the web. It will include info on new Websites and startups, Computer tools and utilities, help on the Blogger Platform, all things Google as well and stuff on TV Shows.

I hope you enjoy it.

If you have any suggestions about what you would like to see on the blog please leave me a comment. I love to read all your comments.