FiddyP

I’ve been using the Google translate button on my google toolbar for quite some time, it’s got a whole list of languages that it can attempt a translation from.

Look at how it translates this Norwegian language blog when I click on “translate to English”:

The original page

After translation

Ok, so it’s not perfect but I’m sure you’ll agree that it is a lot easier to figure out what’s being said!

It means I can respond to a post if I have something to add and it always seems to surprise the blog owner that I could understand their article!

I’ve used this a lot more recently due to CommentLuv being picked up by a lot of foreign language blogs like CommentLuv users Andymse in Indonesia and My Lovely Blue Sky in Colorado but written in Malay Chinese

There are German, French, Spanish, Japanese and other language blogs that can be translated by the Google toolbar.

You can even add an option to show a translation from English to a language of your choice when you hover over words, I choose a new language to translate to now and then so when I do my normal web work, I absorb a language via osmosis…. it’s true!, I had it set on German for a few weeks and when i was on a German site I instinctively knew which was the about page link and which button meant “Support”

Installation

Easy peasy, just download the Google toolbar for your browser.
Visit the settings/options

And choose the language you want to learn by Osmosis!

Blogger CommentLuv

After 16 hours of starting and then rewriting and then editing and then adjusting and then tweaking…. I have got a version of CommentLuv working on Blogger blogs.

I had it working before but you needed to use Haloscan as the commenting system and the problem with that is, it’s obsolete and a Blogger blogger would lose all their comments if they switched.

Now, I have it working well with js-kit which is a replacement commenting system for blogger blogs that backs up all your previous comments and you can take your comments with you when you move blog platforms.

Try it out here: http://cl-jskit.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-post-before-jskit-install.html

I’m too tired now to tweak the last little bits so I’m off to bed to dream about the impending tutorial! :-/

Dotclear CommentLuv

Eric Maziade of inthemaze.net has made a perfect copy of CommentLuv for Dotclear blogs. It’s fully functional, it’s even compatible with the upcoming contest!

Nice one Eric. Lovely code.

You’ve done a great job on getting all the functionality in there including the heart info box. I’m really impressed!

If you have Dotclear for your blog, give CommentLuv a go and make the blogging world a happier place

Typepad CommentLuv

Hot on the heels of the Blogger commentluv, I have adjusted it a bit to work with Typepad blogs.

It’s a pretty simple process to install and seems to work quite well.

You can test it out here http://commentluv.typepad.com/fiddyp/2008/10/prepare-the-com.html
I think things are looking up!

I will add some options capabilities to the blogger and typepad version when my eyesight goes back to normal!

Download 3gp mobile phone video

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I made an announcement via CommentLuv.com to the ~1200 subscribers using email and I got a great response from quite a few people within minutes of sending it except, one person said they didn’t want to receive any communication at all from me.

Now, I’m not a spammer and I firmly believe in only letting people know about important news and changes no more than once a week so it’s a little disconcerting to receive a stfu email (even though it was from less than a tenth of 1% of those who received the same email)

I tried to be polite in my response and pointed the person to the checkboxes that could be unticked to stop receiving email but to be honest, those check boxes were right there to be seen when they registered and similar to many support requests, it was easier for the person to type up an email requesting the answer than it was to RTFM so I felt like saying something else entirely! politeness won through though (thanks mum)

Now, ever the conscientious coder I don’t want to cause a problem with even 1 commentluvver so I need to ask you something..

if you’re using some software for free and benefit from it and like to use it, expect updates to fix bugs , someone on the end of an email when something goes wrong or want a speedy response on the forum, is it too much to ask for me to be able to let you know by email when those bug fixes and updates happen?

Ok so I’m known for my outlandish theories on everything I encounter, not so much online but definitely so with my friends and associates who have to put up with my tangent flying explanations on why things are happening.

I’ve been asking how the LHC got so much funding from so many sources for literaly years, it’s only recently become mainstream news.

I was sure there was something that had been found or discovered or told that brought about the need for the LHC, something akin to the device made in the film Contact.

Just the past few weeks I have been noticing a lot more pages about Artificial Intelligence coming up on Stumbleupon, I haven’t changed my interests page options for months so why the surge of pages about AI? then couple that with the large increase in pages about distributed networks and cluster machines, wtf?

Deja-vu-ness?

I use the word synchronicity to explain those weird deja-vu 2.0 moments where you’re aware of strange shit afoot. I get them all the time, it’s either the cosmos, the matrix glitching, ghosties or plain old brain short circuits. I don’t care what it is or what causes it, it happens. A lot.

It happened when I caught the news at 9/11 before the second hit, I got it again when I first saw news about the LHC getting it’s funding, when the wii came out with new types of controls – a BIG one when the controller that works on brainwaves came out, then there’s the new hybrid exoskeletons from Japan, Mars probes finding interesting things.

I’ve seen 4 books with the word “Singularity” in their title. Funnily one had sub-plots based around the currency failing. Read this great free download called Postsingularity about what happens with AI and nano-bots are introduced to human society.

The Currency

Don’t get me started on this! Petrol is down to below 1GBP per litre now, it is 7.50GBP cheaper to fill my tank than it was last month. Why is everything else so expensive? why does it cost more in the big cities when they get products faster and easier than a country village? Why is natural gas so expensive? it comes in a tube direct from source! no one has changed the layouts of pipes that lead from the land receiver to distribute to the population. (I tend to over simplify in my tangents!)

The Euro, hah! I’m so glad we didn’t join it. It’s around 8GBP cheaper per like for like shopping bags bought in the North of Ireland than it is in the Euro laden South. GBP is GREAT BRITISH PWNED !

Arabs spending millions, nay, billions on luxury world characature islands and world beating 7* hotels. Why are they spending this money so quickly? are they scared the oil will either run out or be replaced by bat droppings or even extra-terrestrial-excrement?

Bank bailouts? soon country bailouts will be asked for. The U.S. has trillions in external loans whose interest payments will soon out run the GDP

I saw references to the Amero currency in 3 different places this week and finally today, I saw this.

The questions

• The Amero? wtf is that gonna do to the world?
• Banks in Iceland, France and all over are failing. Where do we put our money now?
• Is the matrix we live in going through an upgrade? (I had an excellent site to link for this point but spookily it isn’t there any more)

I’m not scared though. I have read many books on survival and more on programming. Be it post apocolyptic wasteland with rabid rabbits or hi-tek floating sentry-bots, I’m ready.

Are you?

teehee! I have created a monster!! Today I put the code together that does the choosing for the upcoming contest that will be run on ALL CommentLuv enabled blogs (T&C apply).

Here’s a hint of how it’s going to go…

Any blog with the latest version of CommentLuv can register to take part. The prize goes to one of your readers! When a commentluv.com registered member comments on one of the blogs that has registered to take part then they have a chance that instead of their last blog post coming back, a winning notification will be in its place. Kind of like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket

As long as that comment gets submitted and approved (more details about how do deal with spam in the future) then the user can click their notification link and claim their prize.

There will be many many prizes, over $1000 dollars worth of cash prizes and gadgets like iPod speakers, noise reducing headphones from Vmoda, flash memory cards and more.

The purpose of the contest will be 4 fold…

1. Encourage blog owners to have the latest version of CommentLuv working and set with their CommentLuv.com member ID
2. Encourage commenters to register at CommentLuv.com and validate their URL and add some information to their profile
3. Promote my new ebay shop (that’s where the gadgets come from!)
4. Put the $350 WPMU contest prize money back to the folks who helped me win it and giving CommentLuv enabled blogs the chance to run a contest with great prizes for their readers at no cost to themselves (well, a post about you being in the list of blogs participating and how your readers can qualify by registering their URL with CommentLuv.com and entering a profile description would help!)

OK, so now you know something is coming… I still have to do these things before we can go ahead..

Code the registration page for blog owners.
Code the prize claim form.
Write up the rules and how-to’s
Write all the prize descriptions and upload images.

All people have to do to be in with a chance of winning is comment on the posts of CommentLuv enabled participants. This should really encourage the visitors of all CommentLuv blogs to get out there and comment some more! (spammers will be banned!)

Let me know what you think!..

stay tuned!!

CommentLuv has been doing really well since I launched the 2.0 version and updated the support site.

It got used by John Cow for a while which caused a flood of registrations and even influenced a few more bloggers to give it a try. John has since stopped using it in favour of his own CommentMilk (ever the original marketer) which adds all sorts of fields to his comment form for things like keyphrase, twitter url etc all of which can be integrated into CommentLuv by adding a page to the support site and no need to worry about when WP2.7 uses a new comment form format for (say that 3 times fast!) when they integrate IntenseDiscussion.

Suffice to say I’m not worried about the cow competition with authority blogs like Caroline-Middlebrook and HowToSpoter.com using CommentLuv to great effect as well as the literally thousands of fine blogs installing it every week and the millions of hits to the remote script each month prove it has quite a wide reach. Even more so when Typepad CommentLuv goes into production!

The CommentLuv.com site is approaching 1000 registered and confirmed users after just 4 weeks of operation with over 150,000 calls each day to the remote script from the thousands and thousands of blogs using CommentLuv. The heart info box introduction has been responsible for doubling the amount of registrations each day and more than a thousand unique users each day hovering their mouse over the heart to see what else the comment author has been up to and what they look like.

All these new users have put the plugin through absolutely every conceivable permutation of options and theme integration and as a result, version 2.5.4 is the most powerful yet and working on more blog hosting types than ever.

Now the plugin is ‘sorted’ to my satisfaction I can start to work on the ‘back end’ features like the support site and info box as well as extended member features like adding to the list of your last 10 posts with an option to display your twitter url or use a keyphrase…

This is what I need your help with, do you need these things? do you even want them?

CommentLuv has evolved from a simple plugin I created just for myself to a fully fledged site and community plugin about to be released on typepad, blogger and more because of one reason,
YOU wanted it! it’s all your fault for sending me comments saying thinks like, “thanks!” or “this is great!” so now you need to tell me what more you want… I’m perfectly willing to give it, but first some questions I have..

1. Would allowing your users to show their chosen keyphrase instead of their last blog post be helpful to you?
2. Would you want to show your twitter url instead of one of your last blog posts?
3. Do you think it would decrease the value of CommentLuv if it showed more than just last blog posts?
4. Would you rather just have extra information like Twitter, facespace, mybook etc in a profile page at CommentLuv.com and have the button on your own blog link to it?

I have my own answers to these and they are no,no,YES and YES..

But, I think these answers are important to find out from YOU the user, it’s your blog that CommentLuv gets installed on and it’s your comments that get the link added. Let me know what you want or don’t want with CommentLuv and I’ll zig-e-zig ah it!

A huge thanks to all those that voted for CommentLuv in the WPMU plugin contest. CommentLuv won the peoples choice awards!
US$250 from the team at Bloglo.co.il
US$100 fromTrent Adams
WPMU DEV Premium yearly account

In the spirit of the way CommentLuv gives something back to the blogs community members, I have decided to use most of the cash prize money as the fund for a great CommentLuv giveaway!

The particulars are still being arranged while I collect the money from the prize donors and set up some code and pages to administrate the contest. This should be around the beginning of next week…

the best bit is, to be in with a chance to win you just need to be a CommentLuv.com member and make comments on CommentLuv enabled blogs (latest version 2.5.4). A random comment will get a prize winning notification URL instead of their last blog post and as long as that comment is published with the link then BOTH the owner of the blog AND the comment author win a spot prize of real cash money!!

rules and yadayada will be published near the time the contest will start..

thanks again for voting for CommentLuv. It had nearly 50% of the total vote at the end! awesome.

I’ve spent far too long preparing the pc for doing some instructional videos for commentluv. I remember when I used to just start recording the screen and do most tutorials in one take with only minimal editing to add callouts and cut long pauses and inevitable swear words

I’m supposed to be making an introduction video for the CommentLuv.com site and it’s a different type of video needed so I’m a bit stuck. I don’t really like scripts and when I present, I have just a title and paragraph about each section and wing the rest.

The other videos on how to use it and install it will be easy, I can just record the screen as I visit blogs that use commentluv and comment or narrate my way through a standard installation.

I think with the intro I will have to use powerpoint mixed with screen recording and a narration. I had a little practice and after listening back, I sound like I’m talking at the speed of sound (which I am kind of but you know what I mean).

Anyone out there have any voiceover services? do I need to write the exact script that is to be said or would a voiceover guy or girl be able to ad-lib the inflections or self edit something so it’s easier to say and understand?

I just don’t know so if anyone out there makes the kind of videos you see on affiliate sites or 2.0 web services sites then please let me know as much as you can about the process of getting a voiceover video done.

in the mean time, you’ll all have to suffer with my farmers accent!

I have just finished watching a double Star Trek the next generation on BBC2 (no ad breaks!) and the flood of nostalgia and flashbacks made me wonder at the source of the mushrooms in my soup tonight.

I remember when it first aired on Sky TV. OMG! I use to daydream of joining starfleet, oh how sweet that would be to travel the stars and see quasars and fix things by reversing the polarity!

In those days, I spent literally minutes and minutes every night after the episode aired daydreaming. I would meet Data and he’d think I was cool. oh, I would meet Wesley Crusher and we’d become the greatest of friends until I stole his hotty half Betazoid bit of stuff!

Will Riker wouldn’t like me though, he’d be all cock-jealous and feel gutted that his Betazoid bird was getting on and I got with the tall dark eyed half Beta’ hotty. I saw your face when she broke up with Wes, you wanted to march on in there and give her the old half smile hairy face shit.

HAHA, while you were all handcuffed with your poncy Imzadi stuff and pretending you like eating Gagh I moved on in with the 20th century boy routine… ha, sheh iz mahn. Yoink!
But eating Klingon food? What the hell is that for? you know Klingon females are proper mingers.. who do you think you’ll impress eating unprocessed serpent worms? and what the hell does Imzadi mean anyway? I’ll tell you what it means, it means “not happening tonight” hahaha
And Geordie? I caught him using his visor to access subspace porn channels and forced him to replicate me one too. We had to do 4 Sherlock Holmes holodeck programs with Data before he’d program a scene with Tasha Yar in it.
It was OK though, we sent it to Deepspace Nine courtesy of one of Quarks extended network delivery ships. He managed to slip Jadzia Dax into the program. Bashir is always sending me subspace messages asking to get a copy of the crystal, the frickin sap.

Because it’s my make believe world, we’d find a way to transport one person from the lost Voyager craft. Oh Seven, how I would futilate my resistance just to make a tertiary junction with your phased input device.