Alex Harries's diary

While I wait for my bedtime cup of hot chocolate to cool down (and yes, that really is the time), I just wanted to jot down a couple of little changes that almost no-one will notice, even fewer people will use, and that I'm fairly proud of regardless.

• Yesterday, I added social bookmarking links to the news and blog pages (as they're generated by the same chunks of code) to encourage a bit more user interactivity. No, it doesn't mean I'm expecting a gazillion people to descend on UPSU.net and declare it an amazing website, but it's definitely a start ;o)
  
  
• I also got round to turning on a redirection system which lets us create a news article as normal, but instead of showing a news page when people click on the article's link, they're sent automagically over to another page on UPSU.net. This is quite handy if we want to put up a short news story where the topic is already explained in more detail elsewhere on the site, which lets us cut down on maintaining information on the site. It also means we can start linking blog entries and forum posts into the news feeds, which means that people whose only contact through the site is via the RSS feeds can also be kept more up-to-date on changes on the site's non-news areas. Not that you lot out there in readerland will ever actually see the system in action until you click on something you think is news and get sent over to Fraggy's Sheep Worrying pages. Or something...
  
  
• Tonight, I've been tweaking the social bookmarking toys links (sorry) and adding in a bit more control over comments - now we can turn the commenting system off on a news article (and soon you'll be able to do the same in your blogs if you want to) to let us gracefully close any discussions that get a bit too heated, or just when we're reporting on factual news and don't want to give the impression that we're asking for comment. Comments also automagically turn themselves off a month after a news story was last updated, so yesterday's news doesn't start attracting comments that won't be seen by the majority of the readership. The third (and best) benefit of this is that it reduces the number of news articles which our new best mates the spam bots are posting on, which makes my day a little bit smoother ;o)

Goddamn I need to get me a life... Or take up knitting or something... ;o)

Buenos noches darlings! /al

Digg, Del.icio.us and Technorati are websites where you can quickly and easily bookmark (save a link to) web pages you like, usually just by clicking a link on the webpage you want to "save", or by clicking a button in your browser toolbar.

Most of these types of websites will let you keep your links list private, and all you need to sign up to most is a working e-mail address.

Because your links are kept online, you can access them from anywhere on the internet. This could be really useful, for example, if you're researching coursework on the library computers and end up with a list of web links you want to review at home, since you just save your links online and access them again at home.

If you'd like to find out more, try the following weblinks:

• Digg.com (about Digg.com)
• Del.icio.us (about del.icio.us)
• Technorati (about Technorati)
  

There are lots of other websites that let you do similar things with your bookmarks: see bookmarkz.net for a complete listing.

Other things you might be interested in

• Find out what RSS is and why it can save you a lot of time online
• Google Reader - web-based RSS feed reader
• Google docs - lets several people edit an online word processor document at the same time
  

(Last blog entry tonight - promise...)

To say I'm a bit slow on the uptake of certain fairly cool/handy/important things is like suggesting that I'm a bit grey, grumpy and fat. I am all three, by the way... ;o)

Del.icio.us - a site with a really odd web address - is billed as a "social bookmarking" site. The idea is that you can keep a (private or public, or a bit of both) list of your website bookmarks on the site. You sign into your del.icio.us account and there they are. Adding new ones is dead easy, and it means you can get to your bookmarks wherever you go. Very handy if you have a desktop PC at home and have to use the library PCs to do some homework.

The best bit about the site though, is that it also tracks the most popular websites by category (aka "tag"). One of these categories is humor - largely full of predictably American gumph, but there's also a humour tag, and the majority of the sites recommended here have probably come from Brits. At least, I like to think so, 'cos there's some good stuff in there.

Like this - Moronland.net's Philosophy of sex. Well, I liked it anyway...

Find out more about del.icio.us here, visit the homepage here, or take a look at Flickr's interesting photos pages for something totally different in a Web 2.0 stylee...

/al