E-Biz Booster Blog

Recently I have described how I fixed a wrong setup of the tweetmeme button on my blog. I manually modified the blog template and I only mentioned briefly there is a Wordpress plugin for Tweetmeme.

Acknowledging Wordpress as the most popular blogging platform I need to follow up with a more detailed description of the Tweetmeme WP Plugin.

The installation and configuration is straightforward and shouldn't be a problem for anyone who has installed Wordpress on her hosting account successfully.

I provide some screenshots for your orientation.

Update Dec. 21, 2009: I made a screencam video of the procedure as well.

How To Setup A Tweetmeme Button On A Wordpress [HQ video] (↑)

Installation of the Wordpress Tweetmeme Plugin

You can download the plugin from Tweetmeme (↑) or directly install it with the Wordpress Admin Interface.



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A couple of days ago I have removed my do-it-yourself Tweet-it button and put the button from Tweetmeme (↑) on this blog.

It's more encouraging for website visitors to retweet a story that already has been retweeted a lot. People follow the crowd.

Besides that the button looks pretty, too.



However, as simple as it is to put a button on a blog or website I still got it wrong.

Browsing the Web I can see that I am not alone.

Therefor I decided to write a short article about how to get Tweetmeme up right.


The problem on my site was as follows:

• Blog visitor clicks the tweetmeme button
• A new window opens
• (If they have not done this previously, they need to authorize tweetmeme for their twitter account. Eventually they also need to login to Twitter.)
• The following text is suggested for being retweeted:

Do you spot what's wrong?

At first, it should be my twitter username that's retweeted, shouldn't it be.

Secondly, the text is not really informative or encouraging a retweet, isn't it.


Thanks to Andy Beard (↑) for shooting a quick email to me and pointing this out. Andy is someone whose suggestions got picked up by the tweetmeme developer team (↑) after his blog post in May, 2009. Now Andy uses Tweetmeme on his blog.

Setting Up The Tweetmeme Button Correctly

Obviously I have screwed up this rather simple task. Shame on me.

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About three weeks ago I euphorically wrote about Google Wave, had a Wave embedded in the blog post, got a lot of comments, … and did many things with Wave in the meantime.

Since then I also have started a list with my humble suggestions for improvement of the user experience.

Let me give you a quick update on my personal Wave experience.

Status Quo

Wave has already become a sort of everyday tool for me. My firefox plugin shows the number of unread messages in the inbox and the number of people I communicate with is on the rise.

We even use the ties from Wave into Google Groups to create private Waves with restricted access. Therefore, with a small circle of partners and friends Wave has partially replaced email for some communication needs.

Never having been fond of walkie-talkie style instant messaging or chat conversation or Twitter the feature of instantaneous, collaborative, style of communication is certainly a great one. And Wave crushes it. We nailed communication which would have taken much more effort and time for accomplishing the same results via email, chat, skype or phone.

Brilliant Concept

The concept of hosted conversations with synchronous access for working collaboratively is just brilliant. The real power comes from the combination of — the removal of the barrier between — synchronous and asynchronous collaboration in one tool, one document.

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Since I have started using Google Wave a couple of weeks ago I keep a list of potential improvements that come to my mind while working with it.

You can find my original wave at the link below (requires a Google Wave account).



In the list below I omitted some minor issues.

Usability And Other Improvements For Google Wave

(1) Search panel: Selecting one wave or multiple waves with Shift+Click is unfamiliar. Shift+Click lets you select a range, but not single entries. There is no obvious wave to deselect one. A click without a Shift will open the wave and the Ctrl+Click will open the wave in a new panel.


(4) Right/Access Management: This will be essential to protect blips from being edited unauthorized and to keep conversations private.


(7) Privacy: A privacy feature for the “green presence dot” would be great. Like on Skype. Invisible, don’t disturb, away, online, chat with me, … Something like that.


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New rules and guidelines for online Internet marketers and vendors are coming up fast. The date they become effective in the USA is Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

I guess some webmasters will be busy over the weekend to update their sites if they have not taken action earlier.

But what is this all about anyway?

Why not ask an expert?

Jim Edwards did.

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Clarifies New Internet Marketing, Blogging & Affiliate Advertising Guidelines With Jim Edwards (↑)

I strongly recommend you go over there and take opportunity to get this FREE information. Jim offers you 3 options.

1. Webinar Video Replay
   
   
2. Webinar Audio Replay
   
   
3. PDF Transcript
   
   (The PDF version is for Jim’s email subscribers only. But guess what, you can sign up for his list on the spot.)

Get all that legal info for FREE.

Jim Edwards interviews Rich Cleland, Assistant Deputy FTC (↑)

In previous posts I have also written about those changes in guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission in the USA for Internet marketing practices. I also wrote about similar — even tighter — legislation for Internet marketers in the EU (European Union).


At this point I want to thank Andy Beard (↑) who mentioned this interview in his latest blog post, “Harder Facts About Comment Spam (↑).”

Take a legal notepad, some time in the evening and listen to that valuable information. Or at least get the PDF for later reference. No idea how long it will be online.


Enjoy the weekend.

Yours
John W. Furst

What a surprise — for the first time I got search results surfed by Microsoft's Bing search engine. And I did not even intend that. All I wanted to do was to find a particular project for a Wave client (software) I read about on the Web. I typed my query into the address bar, hit enter, and got these results below.

Not necessarily what I was looking for. But wait a second … Why didn't Firefox serve the result from Google as usually?

Well, I played around with Bing a tiny bit, right when Microsoft had launched their new search service but I did not stick with it for long. Honestly, Google is my most favorite search engine. Period. Google did not only catch me for search, but with a plethora of other great applications. From Gmail, to Google Docs, AdWords, … to their translation tool, and … Wave is the latest on the list. They hooked me up. Probably for life.

So I was quite surprised that I suddenly got Bing results displayed.

What has happened?

I remember that I had updated my Alexa Sparky add-on for Firefox this week. I also remember having seen a note about new features but I kind of ignored it. Now, it's obvious what had happened. Alexa Sparky is one of the FireFox Add-ons I use.

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