How a power outage in San Francisco silenced us for 4 hours on Tuesday

Some of you might have tried unsuccessfully to read us on Tuesday.  Between the hours of 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm (US, Eastern Standard Time) our blog host, TypePad and many other services such as Red Envelope and CraigsList got shut down by a Power Outage in San Francisco....

Bloggers: check out BlogBackupOnline

"From PCWorld via Yahoo... If you have a blog and you aren’t sure that your blog provider will always have a backup in case of a crash, head over to BlogBackupOnline pronto. The site is straightforward: Log in, enter information about your blog, and the site diligently...

Why the Whole Web is Wild About Widgets: An Introduction

"Widgets are all the rage this week. Let's take a look at what widgets are, why they're popular, how they're likely to change the web and where you can go to get some. What's a Widget? The best definition I've seen yet comes from an announcement by the The World Wide Web...

Keep Readers Happy With a Fast-Loading Blog, Part Two

" I love the way that widgets have started to really extend the capabilities of what can be done with a blog. I especially like the fact that most of them make it really easy for even the most non-technical bloggers to add content. But many widgets are pretty heavy on the...

Keep Readers Happy With a Fast-Loading Blog, Part One

" There are more and more options to add widgets to your blog these days… I'll be posting reviews of some of these services soon, but first I wanted to run a little PSA on how best to use blog widgets without slowing your blog's load time to a total crawl. After all, if the...

Jotform: Add Forms, File Uploads or Email to Your Blog with WYSISYG Ease

"   The image above is a screen shot of the Jotform home page. It's also the application, the demo, and a brilliant example of user-centered design. Jotform is a simple, free, web based WYSIWYG form builder that you can use to create forms for your TypePad blog (or any...

Receive email notification

" Yes, believe it or not, in addition to obtaining my RSS feed, you can now also receive email notification of my blog posts.First of all my experience of the service Excellent. Easy to set up an account (free or premium), syndicate my feed, generate the HTML...

Six Apart's Business Blogging Seminars

"   I've added a link to the sidebar for Six Apart's Business Blogging Seminars. Early registration gets you a 50% discount (that's just $75 to go see some pretty cool speakers and meet other bloggers over cocktails!) and all attendees will receive TypePad free for...

Amazon aStores… An Almost Amazing Alternative (or Addition) to Blog Adverti...

"And an awesome excuse for annoying alliteration, as well! Heh. But I promise I'll stop that now, since what I really want to post is a review of the pros and cons of Amazon's aStore program. Note: Adding an Amazon aStore to your blog requires no template hacks. It's as easy...

Use TypePad's New Technorati Tag Feature to Embed Tags in Your Blog Posts Wit...

" One of the features I've most wanted to see incorporated into the TypePad Application went live today! You can now tag your blog posts without having to paste HTML links into the HTML window of your compose page. Instructions for customizing your Compose page to take...

Increase Reader Participation on Your Blog with cbox Chat Widget

" I just added a new feature to TypePad Hacks— It's a live chat window in the sidebar that allows readers to talk amongst themselves in real time! I think it will prove to be a pretty valuable addition, adding some of the forum functionality that many people have asked...

Update Your Advanced Template Blog To Make Technorati Tags Visible

"Craig McGinty wrote in with an update on using the new built-in Technorati Tags in TypePad. It turns out that blogs using Advanced Templates will need to update their template code before the feature will work. It's pretty easy, though, (much easier than adding tags by...

CoComment: Better Than Ever

" The folks over at coComment have been busy! They relaunched the service with a ton of new features recently, and I'm deeply impressed. I've reinstalled the FireFox extension this week and so far have had none of the issues that I reported earlier with Firefox crashing on...

MajikWidget Adds New Widgets, Improved Control Panel and a Great New Look

" Yesterday, MajikWidget announced three new widgets and a revised and improved user interface. I wrote about MajikWidget when they first launched and gave them high marks for their service and tech support. If you haven't checked them out yet, they create blog widgets...