In continuing my hacks package, here are my five favorite blog reading hacks! (I couldn't come up with 10 for this one - go easy on me.) You can collect all five collector's edition cups in my hacks series at a Burger King near you: RSS, Technorati, Wikipedia, blogging and Bloglines.
1) Build Your Own Blog Category Feeds
Bloggers don't have hard edges. Some bloggers blog about their cats, others write about world affairs and some blog about their cats AND world affairs. So what if you just want to follow what a blogger is saying in one of his/her categories. Are you stuck? Uh, no. I told you this post is about hacks, right? For many bloggers you can build your own custom RSS feed that will stream only what a blogger posts on certain topics.
This works on all blogs powered by Wordpress or Moveable Type, including TypePad weblogs. Using IceRocket, construct an advanced search as follows - tag:“[blog category]” author:“[blogger's name]”. Each of these persistent searches generates its own RSS feed, accessible on the right hand side of the IceRocket results page. Here are some examples.
All posts by BL Ochman about Alternative Marketing (RSS)
All posts by Joseph Jaffe categorized under “Creativity” (RSS)
All (Howard Stern-free) posts by Jeff Jarvis tagged newspapers (RSS)
Special thanks to Mark Cuban for teaching me about this hidden IceRocket feature (He's not a billionaire for nothing you know).
2) Highlight All Words on a Blog Site with a Single Click
Let's say you want to find all mentions of the word hacks on a blog page you're viewing. Well, if you drag this link to your bookmarks folder and then click it a prompt will come up. Type in the word you're searching for and hit enter. They will all get highlighted. I tested this on Firefox but not IE so I don't know if it works in all browsers.
3) Talk a Walk Down Blogosphere Memory Lane
The blogosphere may feel new for most of us, but really it's not. It's been a force for awhile now. Even a couple of years ago then there were so-called “A-listers.” There was also an emerging upstart called Technorati tracking them. Thankfully, it's not too late to take a walk down blog memory lane. Using the Internet Archive, I have unearthed for you the top 100 blogs wayyyy back in 2002 and in 2003. My how the list has changed! The fun doesn't stop there, however. Add this bookmarklet to your browser toolbar. Click it when you're on a blog and you can surf like it was 1999! It's Macarena time!
4) Size Up a Blogger's Footprint
So you stumbled upon a blog in Google. Congratulations. Now say you want to know just how “important” the Web thinks he/she is. There are two ways t do this. Be forewarned that some think these methods are dubious. Where I think they can be helpful is in sizing up two blogs in the same category.
The first method involves using the Google Toolbar. When you install the toolbar it gives you the option to turn on a button that gives an indication of a blog site's Google PageRank. PageRank is the importance Google assigns to a page. It runs on a scale from one to 10. Note the green bar in the toolbar when you're on different blogs. For example, you can see below how Dave Winer's site has a PageRank of eight, while my site ranks a seven. Now you know who's Daddy (as if you didn't already!).
The second method involves using Alexa data. Again, take this with a grain of salt but use the tool to size up two different sites for relative girth. Drag this bookmarklet to your bookmark toolbar. The next time you're on a blog site, click it and you will be redirected his/her Alexa profile. More information is available here.
5) Elevator Up
Sometimes you get so buried in a site, you lose your way. That's certainly true with blogs. What I suggest is that you add this bookmarklet to your browser bookmarks toolbar. The next time you get immersed in a blog, click it and you will go up one level in the site's directory. For example, click one will take you from http://www.acrossthesound.net/2005/11/giving_thanks_t.html to http://www.acrossthesound.net/2005/11 (all posts for November). Click it again and you're at http://www.acrossthesound.net/2005/ (all posts for 2005), etc.
Special thanks to Karlheinz Dobler for some of these awesome bookmarklets.
