social

I have been waiting for Chris to release his new social media theme called WicketPixie for a couple of weeks and it looks like he might have to put that off for a bit while he helps out his folks. So try and get something working that looks a little nicer than the plain one I had installed, I went searching

I came across a theme called CorporateID and the basic colours made me look twice. So I have taken that and made a few minor changes to make it something more me. I have put back the TheSleepyGeek picture at the top, a shot from the balcony at the cottage. Then I removed some images that are the background of the sidebar titles. They were too flashy for me.

So there you have it. Until Chris has the time to work on the final versions of his theme, I think we are sticking with this.

Comments?

Now that I have the comments working (the problem was caused by the theme I was using) I now have installed a really cool little plugin. It allows you to login to the site with an OpenID to post a comment. Many of us have an OpenID thought a service that we already are a member of. Most notably are Yahoo, AOL and Flicker however there are many more on the list.

I encourage you to register locally on the site if you wish. That feature is working and even preferred so that I have a more complete profile of you. That’s nice when looking at comment posts.

If you decide to use the OpenID approach, please have a look at your profile before posting. Some OpenId providers such as Yahoo will give you a name about 3 characters long full of gibberish. It doesn’t look nice and I can’t credit you with comments if I need to.

Now the next step in this process is to get the theme fixed. I am really torn because I love the theme I was using but don’t really want to invest much time in repairing it. I plan to use Chris’ social media theme that he is working on for his site. At this time he has said that he plans to make it free for everyone’s use.

I was poking around and noticed on twitter a mention from ponzarelli about a new IM client called Digsby. I am always looking for something since the promises of Trillian kept falling short. I don’t even know if they have released Trillian Astra which would be the predecessor to v2.x.

So I downloaded Digsby, fairly small download and very easy installation. The setup wizard is very easy. If first will prompt you to choose a username for their service and then ask for a couple of personal details. Once done, then it’s as simple as adding all your IM accounts to the interface. This process is also very easy through their main account window.

What is amazing about this IM client is that it is so much more than simple IM. It is a client for e-mail, twitter, facebook, myspace and a number of other things. It allows you to link to more than just your IM accounts in a sort of ’social utility’. I think I need to coin the phrase *wink - wink*. We have so many social links and they are in varying forms that a utility like this is going to be critical.

I really like the user interface once you are in the program. It is clean and user friendly. The lists can be organized as most other IM programs allow and you are able to use most of their features.

I suggest that you head over to the website and take a look at their product. Unfortunately there is only a Windows version, but they have plans to release for Mac and Linux. They seem to have started something that I think will take off with other programs. We will see integration a lot more in the future. People are starting to need to bundle all their external connections together because they are becoming too many and thus segmented.

I am always looking for good plug-ins for Wordpress. I have been using WP for a long time to blog and have tried to keep it simple because I am of the opinion that “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. I have been talking with some colleagues and fellow bloggers and one of the things that people are looking for is a way to share the content of a site with friends.

I have been looking for something simple yet still very powerful to perform updates to social networks and also allow article emailing. I think I have found it in ShareThis.

An excerpt from their site:
ShareThis makes a WordPress plugin that provides an unobtrusive way for your visitors to post your site content to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail & other communication channels (like Facebook and MySpace) to a friend.

You will notice on my website a new link at the bottom of my posts that has a rotating icon and link called “ShareThis”. That will link my article to their service and then allow you to share it by means of a number of avenues.

If you have a personal blog and are able to install your own plug-ins, I would suggest giving this one a try.