365questions.org

The mankind benefactors at Automattic (the people who run wordpress) have issued an updated version of their Twitter-like wordpress theme, Prologue.

Prologue is not just another WP template, it’s a microblogging tool for groups.. Everyone with posting rights can post a little note right from the home page.

I installed it on my wordpress.com account and it looks like this :

Or see it in action as used by the real wordpress team, or here for a nice French version already..

I think it’s really cool. I’d like to install it on its own for some project.. However, I need to find a concept.

What about :

- a linkdump : sign up and start dumping links on a specific subject.

- a place for friends for posting ads : “anyone knows who would buy a used toaster ? ”

- a “missed connections” site : like on Craigslist, people think the girl they saw in the subway will read it and recognize herself (”you were standing by the door, you had brown hair and a green jumper, our eyes met, then you left at Marcadet Poissonnière… call me.”)

- A gossip site : people love to know what others think of our President’s private life..

- A dating site : “guy needs girl in Paris 14th, urgent”..

- A place for ideas…”I was thinking… What if the big bang was the result of a huge black hole swallowing the entire universe and exploding, this over and over ? ”

- A family space : just me and my folks could post (maybe needs to be private).

- A place for neighbors : news from my street, building, etc..

- A twitter-like, but just for food : “eating a banana”, “made myself gorgonzola macaroni”..

- A place for keeping track of everyone’s movements. Been there, done that. Well that’s Twitter.

That’s just some random ideas. Any suggestion ?

I just installed PHP speedy from Aciddrop.com.

Now 365questions.org loads in less that one second, instead of 6 previously. It’s really impressive.

How does it work ? It seems to compress all the files like css and javascript that burden a site : a wordpress blog with lots of plugins will typically be heavy to load…

Installation is a breeze : just upload the folder to you site and browse to it. It will launch a step by step installation wizard and that’s it.

There is no code to paste in your pages. Congratulations to Aciddrop.

Nice website in any case :

I like the girl taking “it” to the next level…

Microsoft Office : mac 2008

After much delay, I finally posted some photos of my last India trip :

A trek in Zanskar :

A Journey to Bodhgaya, where I didn’t receive enlightment…

And some random shooting in Delhi.

What is hot linking ?

It’s when somebody embeds an image directly from your website. It looks as if they’re hosting the image, but they use your bandwidth, sometimes without even crediting you with a link.

(This is something I don’t like about flock by the way : it encourages hot-linking when you use the “blog this” or “web clip board” feature. Same problem with many “web clipping” services).

Some people import entire feeds with the content of other blogs. All texts and images are copied. it’s called Blog scraping, or a splog (spam blog).

An example is this guy (hey, you, you finally got linked to !) who consistently imports ALL my posts (and many others form other sources) into his splog.

How to tackle it : you can put a watermark in your images (like a copyright or your site’s name in a more or less transparent way), or you can use a wordpress plug in, or you can use a custom “ht-access” file to point all hot-linked images to a default image… That’s when the fun starts !

So what people do, is they replace the image with another one that displays a completely different message, just where your original image was supposed to appear..

Here is a small compilation of the best I found (not hotlinked, and credited I hope, to their authors). Thank you Google images by the way.

From the French Barbablog:

Caption reads :

“I know it’s a bit rude, but I pay for my bandwidth, so if you want to use the images of this site without asking anything to me, at least, host them yourself. In the meantime, I greet you with this friendly sign..”

And here are some also funny or creative ones :

Darwen.us :

Militantplatypus :

Mobileforum.nl

Movv :

Corchetero :

B4it :

Greyduck :

Darkcus :

Blogula rasa :

Adblockplus :

A good lesson..

Thx Delphine for the idea..

Do you remember those ugly animated gifs that only your web illiterate colleague still insists on posting on the corporate intranet?

They used to populate our cheap html pages back in the nineties. Now they’re back on myspace and the likes…

But some of them are really cool :

Impossible machines : bigger view here.

Seen at Zwei Zwei Drei

seen here

from here

from here

from Irak..

From here..

We all know that aliens are very likely to visit us one of these days.

Some of them have already landed in many of our cities.. Here is one of the greatest websites ever : space-invaders.com.

One of my oldest favourites.

“Some people call me a polluter, others say I’m an artist. I prefer to think of myself as an invader !”

You will never know his face, but you may definitely encounter his works, in more than 25 cities…

Whenever I see one, it always fills me with joy.

It all started in Paris.

New York :

Tokyo :

Hong Kong :

Dhaka :

Mombassa :

And many more..

Now you can have them under your shoes too (89 euros) :

Today I tried to go to Stumble Upon for a random ride on the waves of the web, but I landed on a page that was telling me to go outside and play…

In approval, I tried to give it a thumbs up, but that was not possible.

So I stayed on my computer and now I’m writing this post.

Web 2.0 brings to us its daily dose of useful “social utilities” (you don’t say a website since Facebook, you say a “social utility”.

So here comes a social utility that helps you track your friends your calories. And share this with your friends through Twitter of course.

It’s called Tweet what you eat.

Our President, always jogging away a few kgs, and an early adopter of all things web, has “recently Tweeten” some swiss chocolate and a big loukoum.

Oh, and if you don’t know what to eat, here is another social utility that connects you with magic mushrooms :

Shoomr.

via MoMB

“Things that are living in the pockets of your bag, jeans or jacket: travel and pay checks, old cigarette pack that just looks interesting, sugar lumps and all the stuff that has found home in your pockets.”

Add your face to it and scan the whole, and here you go with Face your pockets!

Among many, here are some cool ones :

Reminds me of the old catscan, same project with cats (except there was nothing in their pockets).