All this has happened before, and will happen again.

- Various Cylons, Battlestar Galactica.

Ah well, another engine move, dhirajgupta.com is now on WordPress. Seeing how cyn.in v2 is doing great as an Intranet collaboration and knowledge management software, (as opposed to being re-purposed for my personal blog) I thought I’d take the time over this weekend to move my site over to a minimally customized WordPress.

Hopefully this will mean I’ll blog more as well.

Stay tuned,
Dhiraj.

I recently announced to commenters that they would be getting invites to my new cyn.in based blog. Since then I’ve been busy readying our partner program, the cyn.in professional edition (Gratis up to 2 users!) and other assorted related activities. I finally took the time over the weekend to check the imported entries from my earlier blog and customize the site’s settings and appearance and I think I’m finally getting to settling in.

So what’s new?
Lots of things:

1. A new commenting system: Cyn.in features a registered user commenting system – to comment you’ll have to create a Guest Cyn.in user account once and you’ll be able to post comments to my site (And all other cyn.in sites too!) without having to type your name and email out every time. The cyn.in user verification system should also help me eliminate the spammers who kept flooding my blog earlier.

2. No Social Bookmarking Links (for now): The social bookmarking templates which were quite popular have now been removed. If you want to download them, drop me a line; I’ll email the template across to you.
3. AJAX: You’ll notice the new AJAX interface that Cyn.in provides. You can click on the page slider above to scroll to any page that you want, for example. Posting of comments is AJAX based too!
4. RSS Feeds: Cyn.in provides feeds for every SlashTag (The category menu you see on the left side) you can consume a particular SlashTag’s feed if you’re interested only in a selected set of my posts.
5. The Intranet: I’ve cleaned up all the personal and family stuff that was present on my blog. This has been moved to the Intranet Space, where I’ll be sharing private media (photos and videos, mainly) with family members and friends. If you happen to be on that select list and haven’t got your account yet, drop me a line and I’ll arrange it.

What’s next?
More posts, for one. Cyn.in makes it exceptionally easy to create and publish new content. I’ll hopefully be publishing much more content now.

Richer content: Cyn.in makes it really easy for me to upload pictures, audio, whatever. Expect richer content from now on.

Newsletter subscription system: For those of you who read my blog often, but can’t figure out all this RSS, XML and other tech stuff that I keep throwing around, I had started off a subscription based newsletter that would email you every day’s updates (courtesy FeedBlitz). This is now defunct; I’ll be moving the existing subscribers to a new system that allows better features soon; you’ll be able to subscribe to it soon after that.

Keep watchin’ there’s a lot more to come. 

I was exploring the public Tag Cloud services courtesy of 3spots’s post on the Artvibe Cloud generator (which I found too tacky looking to put up on my site).

I like ZoomClouds more. Specifically, I like the fact that it let’s me customize all the colors, sizes and volume of the generated output. And that it’s fast.

On the right you’ll see my newly added Bling. The ZoomClouds tag map of all the posts I’ve made so far on this site. Pretty good, huh? You can now use the tag cloud or my category list (on top) to browse the site. I still think that the structured category list approach is a better idea than the cloud from a navigational perspective, but the Tag Cloud does look better.

P.S. If you’re reading this by subscribing to the RSS feed or have a subscription by email, then you’re gonna have to come to my site to find out where the Tag Cloud is.

Took the opportunity over the weekend to change a few things in my Social Bookmarking section on my site.

I’ve removed a few buttons and I’ve added a few more. If you don’t like the new mix, I am known to (sometimes) take suggestions. Do tell.

For a detailed list of changes (and some thoughts), read on…
Took the opportunity over the weekend to change a few things in my Social Bookmarking section on my site.

I’ve removed a few buttons and I’ve added a few more. If you don’t the mix, I am known to (sometimes) take heed to suggestions. Do tell.

Removed

Backflip: I didn’t end up liking this one, so I’ve removed it.

BlinkBits: Spammed out.

CiteULike: This is for citations and academically oriented people. I’m not one of them.

De.lirio.us: This one shut down and moved to Simpy.

GiveaLink: Hmmm…… didn’t like this one too much.

LookLater: For private bookmarking, not suitable for posting on blog posts.

Squidoo: For creating published lenses. Not really suitable, either.

Zurpy: Can’t find a way to access public bookmarks. I think this one is private-only as well.

Added


Blabb: Cool ajax based social bookmarking site.

BM Access: Nice one.

Bookmark Tracker: Slightly klunky looks, but the content is nice.

The Butterfly Project: Ok. I like the name. And Dutch people. Go figure.

i89: Cool concept, let’s you create short URLs at *.i89.us. Gives away cash prizes for the best linkers.

IndiaGram: Indian Social Bookmarking site.

IndiaMarks: Another Indian Social Bookmarking site.

IndianPad: Yet another Indian Social Bookmarking site.

iTalkNews: Comprehensive point based ranking system. Users earn XP points for whatever they do. Relatively spam free.

Memigo: Uses a “bloggy” feel, while calling itself a forum.

Some Thoughts
I’ve only done these changes on my site template. The blogger and wordpress templates continue to be the way they were. I’m waiting for some feedback on my move to remove (and also not include) some sites. Some of these were spam filled, some not really suitable, and some  shut down.

The proliferation of Indian Social Bookmarking sites (Is this a global trend? Are there small sites popping up with local links as I speak?) is quite amazing to see. The content add on these sites is slower than the biggies, but it is definitely relevant – usually.

Monetization of the user’s experience seems to be the new way to get the links in. Simpy does it by offering adsense revenue, i89 does it with cash prizes, I wonder if the biggies are going to have to adopt this strategy as well.

Some sites don’t have favicons at all (i89); some screwed up in .ico to .png transparency. I’ve fixed these where I could. If anybody wants to contribute with better looking icons, I’d be very appreciative.

I’ve reduced the font on the tooltip by one size and also removed extra spacing in between the icons. It should come that teensy-weensy bit down faster to you now. And it looks a little neater as well. Tell me what you think.

Shoutouts
A great big shoutout to 3spots for maintaining THE most comprehensive lists of these things. I used the 3spots blog for reference and opinion forming.

Took the opportunity over the Saturday weekend to bring some much wanted reform on to DhirajGupta.com.

Following are a few of the changes that are visible on the site:

1. You don’t need to rate the posts for which you submit comments anymore. Rejoice!

2. I’ve removed that annoying “Click here to post a comment” message and instead you can post a comment directly on the same page.
3. The RSS feed is now full HTML, the way it should be. This might cause a few problems in some archaic / weird RSS readers; if so, do let me know and I’ll do what is feasible. I’ve also changed the feed picture, see if you can spot the difference!
4. The RSS feed now doesn’t get the extended links on the bottom of each post (FeedBurner calls this FeedFlare). While this was cool it kinda slowed RSS Readers a bit because each of those links was an image coming from Feedburner. I’ve decided to remove it, in favor of the now more popular “Click to Social Bookmark” section on the site. Maybe this can ultimately make it to the RSS feed as well. Let’s see.
5. Integrated MyBlogLog to show number of clicks on external links. Hover over an external link to see it.

I’ve been looking at Social Bookmarking sites and what kind of impact they’re having on the way the general Internet populace finds news, tells the world about their discoveries and in general increases activity on a particular topic of interest faster than any search engine ever could.

I recently modified the blog template on my site to include a “Click to Social bookmark” section below each post title as you must have noted.

Want the same section on your site? Read on…
My Social Bookmarking section seems to have gained some sort of audience and I thought I’d go
ahead and give it off to anyone who was interested. So I made a
Wordpress template for everyone to use. If anyone’s interested I could
make a Blogger template as well. Ask for it if you want it.

The WordPress template snippet

Here’s the WordPress template snippet: dhirajgupta_socialbookmark_wordpress.zip

How to install?
This will currently only work for people who host their own WordPress blogs with someone other than WordPress. This seems to be a requirement for you to be able to edit your WordPress theme – they don’t let you edit it right there.

You’ll need to be able to add the images for the template and also the Overlib javascript library.

The template snippet expects the images for the Social bookmarking block to be present in a folder called Images inside the folder where you have the WordPress template. This is the norm and you should already have it. Copy the images from the zip file to your template’s Images folder.

Next you need to install the Overlib Javascript Library. This is what allows the template to have those neat tooltips on the hover of each Social Bookmarking site. This is usually quite painless and should not pose a problem. Get the Library and install it on to your blog template according to their instructions.

Next it’s time to finally insert my Social Bookmarking template snippet into your actual WordPress template. To do this, open up the wordpress.html file from the zip file you downloaded from my site. Copy all the contents from this HTML file into the correct place in your “The_Loop” section. Normally you would paste it right under your title header area. Save and refresh your blog; you should see the Click to Social Bookmark link come up.

Place, lay it out and tweak according to your preferences.

And in case you have any problems, do let me know.

A word of caution
I’m not quite an experienced WordPress user, any help / assistance / feedback on the working of the template snippet would be quite appreciated.

This template snippet will end up increasing the page download size of your blog for first time visitors, a little bit. The stuff that gets added (Overlib JS, image) should be cached by the browser well, though. Your Mileage May Vary.

This is not really a full blown template yet, it requires you to already have a template ready. If any of you’ve got a cool template and would like to share it with the rest of the Internet along with the Social Bookmark section incorporated, do drop me a line.

Licensing?
I really don’t want to get into any kind of licensing or that kind of stuff. So please consider it free of all restrictions, modify, use, do *whatever* you want to, with it.

If you’re feeling thankful, you could leave a shoutout on your site. Do tell me if you find it useful, here or by feedback.

Shoutouts
A big shoutout to Socializer, for inspiration on this.
A bigger shoutout to NEO Binaries for helping me find Socializer in the first place! I just clicked Bookmarks on the comprehensive category list.

A big shout out to the guys at Overlib too, you guys rock!

So you like Social Bookmarking sites.

I like it when you bookmark my posts socially. I get a lot of new readers that way.

Just click on the heart below any post title to bookmark it on your favorite bookmarking site.

Don’t know what Social bookmarking is? Can’t figure out which one to use? Check out the Social bookmarking section on NEO Binaries.

Not everyone understands, at all, what terms like RSS, Atom, and news aggregator mean.

These are all technologies and terms related to receiving notifications when an update happens – in my case you could use these to get notified whenever I post something new on this site.

For those of you that don’t know (and don’t really care) what these things mean, and yet would like to be told when there’s something new on dhirajgupta.com, I bring to you (drumroll) FeedBlitz!

Feedblitz let’s publishers (me) offer an email subscription to subscribers (you) so that you can be notified, by email, whenever something new has happened. They only send out email whenever there is actual activity, in a concise single email for the day. No activity, no email; it’s that simple.

And no, they won’t spam you. They promise.

To subscribe, simply fill in your email address on the new “Subscribe for updates:” section on the right and hit subscribe me! A new window will open with my feed url highlighted and ask you to confirm.

And you (and thus, I) will be much happier!

I’d love to integrate with coComment. 

They’ve actually gone ahead and executed an idea that I’ve been kicking around in my head for quite some time now, but never got around to discussing with anyone (forget putting down on paper). There’s only so much that one can do, I guess.

So should one join with an already existing service which seems to have no commercial model at all (is that good or bad?), at least currently,  or re-create one’s own wheel every time with the exact custom circumference, spokes, rims and material that one wants?

I vote for joining in.

This site has been created off a custom code base from Amieo. The blog (what you’re reading) is pretty much customized from / for the same platform. I think integrating with the coComments javascript based meta-attributes platform shouldn’t be that tough. I guess we’ll give it a shot the next time we’re looking at that particular part of the codebase.

I love the fact that coComment has walked the extra mile in creating a Firefox plugin that integrates awesomely with the service. It provides full status bar indicators for whether your comments on this blog will be tracked and even will tell you when any of your blogs have new comments.

Very recommended for Firefox users. And if you don’t use Firefox yet, then what the heck are you waiting for? Get Firefox from the link on the right bar of my site. Now.

Shoutouts go out to Chrono Cr@cker for recommending coComment.

Yes. I would love to say that I’ve spent the whole past half year creating this site. I’d love to say that this is the culmination of the efforts of countless hours of painstaking effort by me.

But I can’t.

‘Coz that would be a lie.

The system that this site is built on is in fact the results of the countless hours of effort of the Cynapse team. Over the past uncountable months we’ve gone and done some magic! And also learnt, burnt our fingers, learnt some more from experiences, improved, developed countless components for ourselves and numerous clients, field tested the whole platform under the most adverse of conditions, toiled at the CSS styling, and kept polishing our “precious” gem until it shines, so!

Total time to set up this site, including putting up this content: 15 minutes. Enough to silence all you critics. Yes, the picture on top looks really old and unmatched, I know. I’ve still got to work on finding a more recent photo.

This is the current setting for my new home. A brand new site. With no content in it except this pathetic attempt at garnering some undeserved empathy from you, dear constant reader.

No excuses. I didn’t get the time to really look into making the “new site” I kept talking about on the old one. The good news is that that’s about to change. Shortly. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

Keep checking, shortly the RSS feed should be up for the posts and then *you* won’t have to do the checking.

-Dhiraj.