The Ft. Hard Knox Project

The goal of the FHK project is to assist politically-conservative bloggers, social-networkers, and citizen journalists to navigate the wild, wild world of Web 2.0 more effectively.

If you're interested in learning more about the Ft. Hard Knox Project, here are the links:

• Ft. Hard Knox Main Page and Blog
• Ft. Hard Knox Discussion Forum
• Ft. Hard Knox Discussion Forum Chat
• Ft. Hard Knox Wiki

"Wiki...What?" A Wiki is a user-supported and continuously-evolving hypertext encyclopedia. Thus, by definition, a Wiki is always "under construction." The Ft. Hard Knox Wiki has recently been established within the Wikispaces environment, and it already has some useful articles. Its purpose is to offer an easy way to access tech tips and information, to help conservatives use the Web more effectively.

Using the FHK Forum and Chat Room:

The Ft. Hard Knox forum is hosted on Delphi, so you'll need to register for a Delphi user ID if you don't already have one. Registration for the basic functions is free, and that's all you need to leave messages on the forum or to use the chat room. Prompts will appear when you click on the link. It takes just a minute to sign up!

Updated 7/17/07:

Meet with us on Twitter!

• The Monday night FHK forum chat has been discontinued for now. That's because it's too difficult to get everybody in different time zones all over the world to meet at the same time, especially in the summer when so many people are traveling.
• Instead, we're encouraging fellow conservatives and antijihadist activists to meet with us on Twitter. You can use Twitter both in "real time" for chatting with people who are online at the same time, and as a forum for communicating with people who will be online at other times.
• Click here to view all of our articles about Twitter. We'll have many more articles about Twitter in the future!
• So how do I get started on Twitter? The easiest way is to ask an established user to introduce you to other Twitterers. Whom to ask? Me, of course! Don't be shy. Just go to the Twitter site, register an account, click on my profile at 1389, and add me as a friend. I'll "friend" you back soon afterward. Then send me a message introducing yourself, and I'll begin introducing you to others. I hope to see you there soon!

Updated 7/2/07:

• We'll be discussing the Ft. Hard Knox Wiki during tonight's Forum Chat, so please stop by if you'd like to know more, or if you think you might be interested in working with us!

Updated 6/26/07:

• The main page and blog for the Ft. Hard Knox project have moved to a new address, http://forthardknox.com/
• From the new URL, the Ft. Hard Knox blog can be accessed via a cellphone or PDA browser as well as from a conventional browser.

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TinyURL for this blog post: http://tinyurl.com/yo8og9

Tools for WordPress Bloggers - With Rolling Updates

Here's a roundup of tools and techniques for bloggers who use WordPress.

Rolling updates follow the main body of this article.

New items are being added to the list as the information becomes available. Your comments and suggestions are invited!

• Economy Size Geek offers Postie, an add-on for independently-hosted WordPress blogs. It lets you e-mail blog posts, including photos and video clips.
• Andy Moore offers a downloadable plug-in to create a mobile web interface for your WordPress blog. WordPress Mobile Plug-In works well with PDAs and ordinary cellphones, and even allows editing through the mobile web interface. (Stein hoist and lots of good tweets to fellow Twitterer WiredPig for telling me about this and the above plug-in.)
• Alex King offers a collection of WordPress tools.
• eMoms at Home explains how to future-post blog entries in WordPress.
  
• William Teach at The Pirate's Cove offers several blog posts that discuss WordPress tools:
  • List of Plug-Ins
  • Blog Post Editors
  • WP-PDA and Kate's Sideblog
• Imthiaz Blog offers WP-PDA, another downloadable plug-in that lets PDAs and cellphones access your WordPress blog through your existing blog URL. This is the interface used at The Pirate's Cove.
• Bill Hartzer describes One Simple Way to Protect Your WordPress Plugins.

Rolling Updates:

• Dev.Mobi plug-in for WordPress (Posted 6/30/07)
• Caveat: Make sure your plugins are installed correctly, so that search engine crawlers don't receive error return codes at your site.
  WordPress Plugin Hurting Google Rankings? (Posted 6/30/07)

TinyURL for this blog post: http://tinyurl.com/26gdu7

Stumble It!

Technorati tags:
blogging
cellular
mobile web
tech tips
WordPress

Updating a Blog Post in Blogger.com

If you're a blogger, no doubt you've sometimes wanted to add more information or make corrections to one of your existing blog posts. You can use the editor in Blogger.com at any time to make your changes.

Here's how to update your blog post in such a way that readers of your blog will notice the entry and see what has changed:

• To get into the editor, sign on to Blogger.com to display your blog(s).
• Click on "Manage Posts" for the desired blog.
• Select the individual post that you want to update.
• (If you are already signed on to Blogger.com, and the blog is on your screen, you can begin editing by clicking on the pencil logo beneath the blog post that you want to update.)
• Type in your changes to the body of the blog post.
• Add a line of text to indicate what has been updated. If possible, the line should be bold or highlighted in some way.
• You can also update the blog post header. It's safe to do this, because changing the header for an existing blog post will not change the blog post URL.
• Change the blog posting date and time:
  • At the bottom of the text box in the Blogger.com blog post editor, there's a Post Options selection with a "flippy arrow."
  • Click on the "flippy arrow." This will reveal various options, including the blog posting date and time.
  • Overtype the blog post date and time to change it from the past to the immediate future. This will cause Blogger.com to treat this blog post as the newest, and to reposition it to the top of the list.
  • Blogger.com differs from some other blogging systems in that Blogger.com will not hide a future-dated blog post until the future date and time arrives. On the other hand, Blogger.com will recognize this blog post as having the newest date, and reposition it accordingly on the screen.
  • If you are using Blogger.com's feed option, Blogger will re-stream the updated version of the blog post into your Atom feed.
• Publish your blog post as soon as you are satisfied with it.
• Note that the changes to your blog might not appear immediately on your screen. To see the changed version, it may be necessary to clear your browse cache by deleting the temporary files in your browser.

Stumble It!

Technorati tags:
Blogger.com
blogging
feeds
software
tech tips

Web 2.0, social network, and blogosphere spam - and what to do about it

Sooner or later, every forum moderator, blogger, blog admin, wiki organizer, or Web 2.0 aficionado will have to confront the issue of comment spammers. There are no easy answers. Posting a comment policy statement, such as the Comment Policy for 1389 Mobile Blog, may help to discourage human-generated spam, but 'bot-generated spam will require other measures.

Here are some articles on the topic that may be helpful:

• Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win?
  
• Comment Spammers: Internet Pigs
  
• Spamming Social Networks is a No-No

Sometimes, though, the bloggers and webmasters themselves are to blame for degrading the quality of the blogosphere:

• Content Hypertext Spam

Stumble It!

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TinyURL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/29e25a

Updated: Use the little orange square to get your news anywhere!

You may have seen this little orange square with rounded corners on many of the blogs and news sites that you visit. This orange logo is the unofficial Web logo for feed access.

Alternatively, as on many blogs supported through Blogger.com, you may have seen a line that says:

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Either of these indicates that the website or blog offers an RSS or Atom feed syndication.

What does this do for you? It gives you a quick and easy way of keeping up with many blog and news sites without having to navigate to each one to see if there's anything new.

In a nutshell, here's how it works:

• Whenever there is new material on website with an RSS or Atom feed, the website sends those new items along to a feed server that you can access.
• You can bring up a feed reader in your browser and use it to select and subscribe to as many RSS or Atom feeds as you want.
• Every time you recheck your feed reader, you'll see a menu that lists all of the feeds to which you have subscribed.
• For each feed, the feed reader shows you the headers of all the recent news updates or blog posts from that site that you haven't seen yet, so that you can click on whichever items you want to read.

There are plenty of feed reading options available, but we'll keep it simple here.

A quick-and-dirty way to see what feeds are all about is to let your browser serve as your feed reader. You can do this simply by opening the news website in your browser (Internet Explorer or whatever else you might be using on your own computer), clicking on the orange button, and selecting the "Subscribe to this feed" option when the next screen comes up. Your computer will download the feeds automatically at regular intervals, provided that your computer is on and can access the Internet; the browser window need not be running. But there are some big disadvantages here. The downloading takes up a noticeable amount of resources on your machine, and you can read the feeds only when you are able to access your own computer.

A more practical option is to set up an account with a Web-based service such as Google News Reader. If you haven't already signed up for a Google account for Gmail or the like, Google will ask you to set up a free account using your e-mail address and a password of your choosing. This distinguishes your list of news subscriptions from everybody else's, and lets you access your account from anywhere on the Web, not just from one particular computer.

Once you've signed on to Google News Reader, you can subscribe to new feeds by clicking on the Add subscription button. This opens up a search box that invites you to enter either a search term or a feed URL. In other words, you can use the same search box to look for feeds with subject matter that interests you, or to subscribe to a feed that you already know about.

Example:

• To subscribe to this blog, you would copy the feed shortcut directly from the Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) line.
• Then, paste this URL, which happens to be http://moblog1389.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default, into the search box.
• Click the Add button, and you're good to go.

Every time you sign on to Google News Reader again, you'll see all the new posts that have appeared on your favorite blogs and news sites. You can also click on Google's Manage Subscriptions option to group your feed subscriptions conveniently into folders, or to delete any feeds that you no longer want.

Finally, you can use Google Mobile Reader to check your feeds from your cell phone or PDA. Bring up the Web browser function, go to http://www.google.com/reader/m/, and sign on with the same email address and password that you used when you set up your account. You'll see a downsized, mobile-web-friendly version of your Google feed menu.

Stumble It!

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Blogger.com
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Update: Click a button to add a subscription to 1389 Blog to your favorite feed reader!

XML

Click here to get RSS buttons for your own blog!

Walk2Web: Web 2.0 tool for visual web exploration

Walk2Web is a new web exploration tool that starts you out with a preview of the starting site with its outbound links. From there, you can explore the web visually by "walking" from one link to the next as Walk2Web builds a network of links on your screen. Walk2Web shows the site at your current position in the main preview window, which offers tools to vote the site up or down, to set a public or private bookmark, and to post tags and comments about the site. Registration is free and allows you to use personalized features.

In addition to the main preview, smaller preview windows pop up as you mouse over other links on the screen. You can scroll the screen, either by moving the mouse to the edge of the viewing area, or by using the scrolling arrows. You are not restricted to the path you selected; you can click on any other link on the screen and restart your journey from there.

On Walk2Web's home page, you can request live help, access the Walk2Web surfer's blog, and build widgets for your blog or website, such as this button that launches Walk2Web with your site as the preview starting point.

Try it and see!

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Technorati tags:
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TinyURL for this blog post: http://tinyurl.com/24t8yu

Social Bookmarking Made Easy with Browser Links

Those of us who enjoy social networking through bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, and Newsvine are familiar with those little shortcut buttons, chicklets, and quicklinks that allow us to submit, vote for, and comment on our favorite web articles quickly and relatively easily.

But what if we’re reading an article with no shortcuts? Yes, we could still bookmark these the “old-fashioned” way (sign on to the various social bookmarking sites, and post the information using the url…sigh…yawn…)

OR we could take advantage of our browsers’ “links” button. Newsvine has posted a 10-second demo on how to do this with its Seed-the-vine service. It works exactly the same way with Socializer 2.0, which allows you to bookmark to multiple sites from a single page with its “Socialize this” link (Don’t forget to check out the “Create a Short Socializer Link” feature, which saves time when posting to multiple sites by providing a short url and pre-formatted post title!).

It takes a couple of minutes to set up the links initially, but for active social networkers, these little buttons will save a lot of time over the long run. All you need to do when you are on a page you want to bookmark or submit for promotion is click on the link!

Technorati tags:
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Digg
Jenn Sierra (author)
social bookmarking
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Socializer 2.0
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Web 2.0

Socializer 2.0

You know that long list of little icons at the bottom of some blog posts? They usually represent Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, Technorati, slashdot, and other social bookmarking sites. Socializer 2.0 simplifies that process. Socializer is free, by eKstreme.com webmaster tools and tutorials.

Socializer 2.0 provides several different convenient ways for surfers and webmasters to use the service.

One thing that's missing is a usable button. Maybe they'll have one soon.

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Digg
Jenn Sierra (author)
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Updated: Two MORE Takes on Twitter

1389 has been on Twitter quite often recently. You're all invited to join the conversations there.

Here are some recent articles about Twitter to give you an idea of what the buzz is all about:

• Blogging author Andy Wibbels discusses Twitter and how to begin using it.
• Business blogging consultant Dave Taylor has a less enthusiastic take on Twitter.

New:

• Dan Mosqueda explains how he increased his Blog Traffic, using Twitter as part of the mix.
• Connecticut blogger Joe C. answers the question, Why is Twitter So Successful? He also explains what Twitter is all about, and what to do to make friends and network successfully on Twitter. This article is a must-read for Twitter newbies!

Technorati tags:
social media
tech tips
Twitter
Web 2.0

How often do you look at your own blog?

"Why would I want to do that? I haven't forgotten what I wrote last week. Besides, I'm busy. It's time for me to get out the next blog post!"

Do you know how well your blog is working?

There's no substitute for bringing up your own blog in your own browser and taking a good look at it on a regular basis. It's even better if you also view it on other platforms and browsers. If your blog has a mobile web interface, be sure to set up the proper environment to check that too.

Here's what you can learn by putting yourself in your readers' shoes:

• Does your blog actually display? Don't laugh. I've looked at a lot of blogs lately, or tried to look at them. I was surprised by what I found.
  
  Your blog may be among the many that won't even come up at all.
  
  How do you know it's running if you haven't tested it recently? If you're serious about blogging, you won't want readers to find that your blog is down. If that happens too many times, readers will stop visiting because they think your blog is defunct. Worse yet, other bloggers and webmasters will stop linking to it.
  
  You can't just assume that your hosting provider and your blog publishing system are making your content available, unless you monitor your blog regularly.
  
  
  • Does the entire main page load up on the first try? Or does the loading process stop before the page is complete, leaving you with pictures or text that are cut off in the middle or missing entirely?
  • Does the initial page provide everything that the reader needs to begin navigating, including excerpts or full text from one or more recent blog posts?
  • When you click on the URL for an individual blog post, does the entire page become visible, including comments?
  • Are your outbound links working? Check your recent blog posts. Click on outbound links individually or run a utility. If a link is dead, either fill in the updated URL, or delete the link entirely.
  
  
  
• Is all of your text legible? If you want people to make a habit of reading your text, give them an unrestricted view, and don't give them eyestrain and headaches.
  
  
  • Is any of your text hidden behind misaligned widgets, add-ons, photos, or other text elements?
  • Is there too little contrast between the text and the background?
  • Is your background so loud or busy, or your layout so cluttered, that readers have a trouble focusing on your text?
  
  
  
• Does your blog take too long to load? Remember, people may be browsing from anywhere in the world, sometimes from mobile devices. They don't all have as much RAM as you do on your desktop. They don't all have broadband connections with unlimited access at no additional charge.
  
  So don't try to make them drink from a fire hose. Their connections will time out, their browsers will crash, they may incur extra charges. Many readers will give up and never come back.
  
  If you want those readers to stay, make it easier for them.
  
  
  • Limit the total size of blog posts, text, and graphics that appear on your home page, and on each subsequent page.
  • Break the data stream into chunks and let each reader decide what to see next.
  • Don't cram your last fifty blog posts onto one display. These endless vertical scrolls hog system memory and run at a snail's pace. All too often, the text at the end is cut off. Readers hate that. Instead, display full-text blog posts individually or in small groups.
  • Don't post high-resolution graphics directly on the page. Let your readers click on a thumbnail view when they're ready to display or download a large photo or chart.
  • Don't autoload music or videos. Readers are always complaining about websites or blogs that monopolize their bandwidth, make unexpected noises that disturb others, or launch some sort of multimedia extravaganza without asking. Let readers decide by clicking on a link when they are ready to see the next set of blog posts, watch a video, or play music.
  
  
  Does your blog offer an RSS or Atom feed? There are many advantages to offering a feed, so you certainly should set up that feature if you haven't already.
  
  
  • Subscribe to your own RSS or Atom feed. That way, you can be sure that it comes out promptly and is formatted correctly.
  • Use full feeds, not just headlines or excerpts. Don't frustrate users by making them wait for something else to load in order to finish reading your article. Also, some search engines use your feed to index your blog, so it's to your advantage to provide the complete text.
  
  
  
• Are readers leaving comments on your blog? If they do, be sure to pay attention. You may even find some good ideas in the comments for this blog post!

The bottom line: Review your blog regularly to make sure it's functional and user-friendly, and you'll be sure to attract and keep far more readers.

Stumble It!

Technorati tags:
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design
mobile web
tech tips

If you use the Firefox browser, be careful which add-ons you download!

Cnet News.com warns us that:

Popular add-ons to Firefox are the latest criminal attack vector

Many people have switched to the Mozilla Firefox browser because of Internet Explorer's known vulnerabilities to malware. But as more people begin to use a browser, it becomes a larger potential target for malware, and authors of worms, spyware, spambots, and so forth will probe for ways to attack it. They've found that vulnerability in the download procedure for Firefox add-ins, whenever the download is coming from an unsecured server.

Here's a summary of what to do to avoid the problem:

• If you have a wireless home router, make sure that you have set your password to something other than the default.
• Download an add-on only if it is hosted on a secure server; i.e., a server that uses the SSL "https" protocol. Safe add-ons are listed on Mozilla's official Firefox add-on page.
• Your existing add-ons may automatically reconnect with their host to check for updates. This is safe only if those updates will be downloaded from a secure server. Disable any existing add-ons unless you are sure that you originally downloaded them from a secure server.

Techies can find more details about the Firefox vulnerability, including an FAQ, on Slight Paranoia, Christopher Soghoian's blog:

A Remote Vulnerability in Firefox Extensions

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downloads
Firefox
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Why Conservatives Need to Geek-Up (Part 2)

(Go to Part 1 of 3)

When I was growing up, if I had a question, I was often encouraged by a parent or teacher to go look for the answer in a dictionary, the encyclopedia, or in the library. Students of all ages have it a lot easier, as they often need to go no further than their closest internet connection, so that they can Google, Yahoo, or Dogpile, or Ask Jeeves for the answers to their questions.

It’s so easy, and convenient. Just type in a few keywords, and voila! Often hundreds of pages of information is instantly available on any given topic. But we don’t sort through all of those pages, do we? I personally almost never go past the first, second, or rarely the third page. So who controls what information populates those first pages?

There is an entire career field dedicated to getting websites promoted to this highly coveted location, called search engine optimization (SEO). There are directories, crawlers, and paid listings. Organizations such as SearchEngineWatch.com offer suggestions online for getting websites closer to that front page, and explaining the hierarchy of search engines.

Google PageRank’s webmaster center explains, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.” High quality sites, as it turns out, are pages that have a lot of traffic, and have lots of other sites linking directly them. See a pattern? The more links you have to your site, the more traffic you will get, hopefully resulting in more links. There is a compounding effect.

Why do conservatives need to understand this? As we discussed in part one, there is a noticeable liberal/progressive majority in the politics discussions of any of the social networking sites, which extensively utilize the newest technologies and the art of collaboration. This is also reflected in the information that is available online through a typical search.

The compounding affect of the search engine algorithms assures that the majority view will continue to be the majority view. Want to test this theory? Try the following searches in any of the search engines, and see if the first page leans right or left: Iraq war, immigration, or gender.

Curious about where your favorite websites rank on Google? Try this free PageRank checker.

(Go to Part 3 of 3)

Technorati tags:
conservative
cyberwars
Jenn Sierra (author)
politics
search engine
tech tips
Web 2.0

Does Blogger.com think your blog is spam?

If you have a blog on Blogger.com, you may find that Blogger has begun requiring you enter an odd-looking string of characters each time you publish a post. This extra step is called "word verification" or "Captcha." You must enter a string of characters to identify yourself as a human being, as opposed to an automated procedure.

Blogger Help gives two reasons for this requirement in Why do I have word verification on my posting form?

1. Blogger suspects that your blog is spam. An automated process within Blogger applies certain filters to identify potential spam blogs or "splogs" - bogus blogs full of gibberish, designed to fool search engines. The endless proliferation of "splogs" causes problems for the Web as a whole, not just for the owners of legitimate blogs, as Wired.com explains in Spam + Blogs = Trouble.
   
   If your blog is flagged as potential spam, then Blogger will require word verification every time you publish a post.
   
   Not only is this a nuisance for you, but it also hurts your efforts to gain readership for your blog. Your blog will be penalized in Google's search algorithms. Moreover, your blog will be excluded from the "Next Blog" taskbar button and the blurbs on Blogger Dashboard.
   
   So what do you do if you know your blog is legitimate? The next time you post to your blog, click on the encircled question mark next to the Word Verification caption. A form will pop up that lets you submit a request for a human review of your blog. Enter your e-mail address, and in a few days, you should get an answer from Blogger Support about clearing your blog for regular use.
   
   
2. You, or your blog team members, have been posting too rapidly. Blogger will require word verification for the next 24 hours to control the load on its servers, as well as to discourage spam. During that period of time, if you post to your blog by e-mail, the blog posts will be held as drafts.
   
   Blogger makes no exceptions for specific blogs, so it's no use contacting them to complain. So if your blog must support an unusually high posting rate, you'll have to host it elsewhere and support it with more specialized software.

Stumble It!

Technorati tags:
Blogger.com
blogging
spam
tech tips

Are you a blogger and a twitterer?

The folks at twitterfeed.com are providing an automated service that captures your blog's Atom or RSS output at regular intervals and posts up to 140 characters of each blog post to Twitter. You can post under your existing Twitter ID, or set up a new one for the blog. It's free and in beta test status at this time.

For a ridiculous example of how this can work, see I Can Has Cheezburger, which is the twitterfeed-powered version of the infamous "LOL" bad-grammar cats macro-meme explosion that has been amusing (or irritating) everyone all over the "intertubes."

Technorati tags:
animals
blogging
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humor
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social media
tech tips
Twitter
Web 2.0

Two ways to access Twitter from the mobile web

See Introducing Twapper 2.0b: Mashing 30boxes and Twitter on the 30boxes blog. 30boxes is an "identity aggregation" service for Web 2.0.

They're offering another way to access Twitter from the mobile web that has some advantages over Twitter's own m.twitter.com interface. In a nutshell, Twapper lets you view expanded URLs, more photos, and other things that you can't view directly through Twitter Mobile. If you already are a 30boxes user, you can mesh Twapper in with the other features of 30boxes. It works on a PDA or on a conventional cell phone, subject to memory and other limitations of the device.

Click here to access Twapper. Access to the basic display features is free and no registration is required.

Technorati tags:
cellular
mobile web
social media
tech tips
Twitter
Web 2.0

"Bad Example"? Actually, it's full of GOOD blogging examples!

Here's a funny blog called Bad Example, featuring tech tips, conservative politics, counterterrorism issues, observations on the passing scene, and lots and lots of humor.

But today, we're here to get some tech tips. This blog has an entire blogging tips category, which 1389 highly recommends.

Take a look at this article about trackbacks: what they are, why bloggers should use them, and how to submit trackbacks even if your blogging software doesn't directly support them. Enjoy!

Technorati tags:
1389
blogging
humor
tech tips
trackbacks

Using a proxy IP address for web-surfing privacy

This Computerworld article explains some available options and suggests ways to get started.

Technorati tags:
privacy
proxy
tech tips