I’ve recently started using Disqus for the handling of this blogs’ comments. Service has really nice features, including integration with Facebook Connect, which unfortunately seem to mess with your statistics if you are using StatCounter or Google Analytics (I’m using both).
There is a solution posted on the Disqus blog and I’ve got a tip for you if you are using WordPress, which will allow you to include the given xd_receiver.html on your blog only when necessary, to reduce the front page size.
If you wrap the given code on the Disqus blog with the WordPress conditional tagis_single(), mentioned xd_receiver.html (and the javascript that its calling) will only included in your post pages, where the comment form should appear. See the code below;
<?php if (is_single()) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
var facebookXdReceiverPath='http://alikuru.com/wp-content/files/xd_receiver.html';
</script>
<?php } ?>
If you are allowing your visitors to comment on your WordPress pages too, you might want to change the is_single() with is_singular() ;)
Update: Disqus has launched an update and Facebook Connect caused messy statistics issue seem to reoccur. Here is another workaround.
Prezi is a new Flash based online presentation tool from Zui Labs, which lets you create extra ordinary “zooming” presentations.
With traditional presentation tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote, you have to work slide by slide to create your presentation. With Prezi you have only one slide to work with! But rather than thinking your working space as a “slide” in Prezi, you should think it as a big (actually limitless) scientific poster. (more…)
Apparently, Google Calendar has an offline mode just like Gmail. Although I didn’t like the way Gmail handles your offline data, since it dumps every mail and attachments’ to your hard disk in an un-encrypted fashion, I like the idea of always accessible Google Calendar.
As always, you’ll need Google Gears to be installed in the first place.
Just noticed Bespin, a collaborative browser based code editor from Mozilla Labs, which announced last week. The idea of an online editor is not new, but this one looks pretty cool even in its very early 0.1 version. It has those must have features like code highlighting, and you can access your whole codebase wherever you want, share and work with whoever you want. I strongly suggest watching the screencast below to understand its features and discover its cleverly designed user interface.
I got an invitation to Ginx recently, and want to share my thoughts about this new Twitter front-end, a webware which is currently in “pre-alpha” status.
What makes Ginx attractive is that it handles conversations in a threaded fashion. This makes easier to track people’s replies to each other, hence improving overall Twitter experience. Ginx has another usability feature which is about shortened URLs; it automatically converts shortened URLs to longer ones for preview, you don’t need a browser addon or a user script to do that. It also adds target web pages’ favicons next to the links and, especially if the link is pointing to an image, creates thumbnails (unfortunately, Ginx only takes care of the first one if there are more than one links in the tweet). (more…)
Twitter is testing a new AJAX-based interface which updates users’ time-line automatically, according to a post at RWW.
Although two places differ from each other distinctly, there is obviously a competition between Facebook and Twitter, and this competition probably increased after a recent buying offer came from Facebook.
I don’t think Twitter actually worried about Facebook. Since this attempt of adding features to its interface came after their rumored fund raising effort, they might up for creating a monetization method after almost 3 years of existence without a proper business model.
I love Gmail, it simply gets more useful every day.
If you have Labs enabled in your Gmail account, you can now display your location information at your signature. You’ll probably find this useful if you are a frequent traveler.
First, you have to enable the “Location in Signature” feature in Labs, and then you have to enable signatures under settings and check the box in front of the “Append your location to the signature” option. After these steps, Gmail will use your public IP to locate where you are.
It says on the Gmail blog that using Google Gears with location module brings more accurate results with Wi-Fi triangulation.
Twitter is testing a new AJAX-based interface which updates users’ time-line automatically, according to a post at 
