Presently I’m following close to 350 RSS feeds on a daily basis. The majority of them are blogs and news agencies, but I do have some keyword search feeds, podcasts, forum and groups feeds, plus other types content in there.

As of this writing, I’m looking to expand my subscription of/to women bloggers (primarily tech I’m interested in, but will consider any interesting female bloggers) to add to my daily subscription list. The really good ones that I post from frequently will make it into the list on the left of the page (no guarantees about how long they’ll stay there) but that means exposure on the home and archive pages. I’m searching because I would like to balance authors out with my reading a bit better.

I found one group tech blog written by females called popgadget.net which caught my eye with this story about bust up chewing gum:

The very serious BBC News reports that B2Up is selling a chewing gum which can help enhance the size, shape and tone of the breasts and improve circulation, reduce stress and fight aging.

Wow, that gives all new meaning to Bubble Yum!

Seriously, I know that I’m missing a bunch of great female bloggers out there. Can anyone help point the way? Please share your favorite female bloggers using the comments or trackback for this thread. Feel free to tell me about yourself and don’t be shy.

I think it might almost be time to call this MakeYouGoHmm version 2.0! Over the last week here is a list of the new features that have been added (or changes made):

• added A9 custom column integration. If you visit A9 then you can add a column for search by keyword against the MakeYouGoHmm database.
• successful import from Pivot 1.24 to Wordpress 1.5 including all 1,550+ posts and 800+ comments, providing a much more dynamic and customizable future for the website
• past archives now seamlessly redirect to the new WP pages on MakeYouGoHmm. New commenting and trackbacks are allowed on all 1,575+ posts
• RSS feed available for comments made on any post or comments made on all posts (standard feature with WP)
• 16 new category full text RSS feeds, so you can keep up with only (or all) the category-specific content that you are interested in. Look under the archives tab on the home page or see pictured above.
• the custom Internet Explorer toolbar for MakeYouGoHmm search now includes total search results, pagination (1,2,3…10) and full integration with the new version of MakeYouGoHmm as well as all the archives. You can download this toolbar for free by clicking the banner below. No spyware.
• Custom search RSS feeds are available by keywords! This makes drilling down to find the content you are most interested in at MakeYouGoHmm entirely possible! Do a search through the toolbar or via the MakeYouGoHmm web search and then just right click on the orange XML icon to add to your favorite RSS reader. This is explained in more depth below

You, the reader, are in almost total control of how to receive and read the existing and new blog content at MakeYouGoHmm.

If you can think of any other way we can make it easier for readers to subscribe and quickly/easily find the information of interest on this website, please leave a comment.

Don’t have the MakeYouGoHmm custom Internet Explorer toolbar yet? Give it a try. I personally use this toolbar all the time (see screenshot below), and have gotten rid of a bunch of other toolbars like Google (you can search Google, AOL, Yahoo and many, many more through our MakeYouGoHmm custom toolbar). There’s other types of searches too like dictionary, images, shopping, weather and more.

Download this toolbar which is totally spyware-free and you’ll quickly find out what has ever been said on MakeYouGoHmm about Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Technorati, Feedster, and who knows, maybe even your blog.

Download the Official MakeYouGoHmm IE Toolbar

Here’s how to use the new MakeYouGoHmm search:

Let’s say you are Robert Scoble and want to keep up with what coverage MakeYouGoHmm has for the keyword “Microsoft” — easy. First, do a search and #1 in the picture above shows where in the toolbar to launch a search (make sure to choose MakeYouGoHmm as the default search source). This works just like Feedster. You do a search by keyword and then subscribe to the feed linked by the orange XML (#2 pictured above) and voila, subscribed! Now, any new MakeYouGoHmm blog post made that matches the keyword will be included in the feed. Also note the number of search results shown (#3) and the pagination at the top and bottom of each search results page. The default number of results shown at one time is 10.

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Things That .. Make You Go Hmm!

This was announced on the radio show earlier today and a few people seemed pretty excited about it, so I thought I’d repost it here. From time to time myself, and a few other folks are going to start posting small code snippets to serve as real world examples of how to use built-in functions, variables, arrays, DB connectivity, etc in PHP and other scripting languages at the Script School News blog.

That is the official SS blog and we intend to have this directory of snippets mirrored on Webmaster Cookbook (for younger students). Here’s an example of they type of code snippets that will be found there. All snippets will be free to use by anywhere. If you are a developer in any programming language and would like to submit short original code snippets, please drop me an email at principal at scriptschool.com and we’ll get you an author account.

I just did some quick Wordpress 1.5 hacking and now we have a custom MakeYouGoHmm A9 column so that readers can easily mix and match search results with this blog! We aren’t the first blog to do this as I already saw Russell Beattie and a few others in there, but I think I counted something like 38 custom search columns so far. This is cool stuff, check out how these mixed search results look:

Speaking of Dave Winer (#22 Dave, so keep reading!) political blogger Chris Nolan recently posted that Dave is stingy with the links. Before I could disagree or agree with that on any sort of scientific basis, and not emotional basis, I decided to do a little research.

One of the neat things about this blog now being stored in a database is that I can much, much, much more quickly and easily run queries to see in how many different posts I’ve used certain words or links.

For example: “Dave Winer” as well as scripting.com queried against the 1,578 blog entries revealed 21 blog entries where Dave Winer was mentioned and 21 times scripting.com was linked. The word “Winer” by itself was used 4 more times for a total of 25. How many times has scripting.com linked to me?

Goose egg. Zero. Zilch. Nadda.

What about Scoble? I’ve mentioned him in 57 different blog posts, counting this one. He’s linked to me at least a dozen times in his link blog and a couple of times in his regular blog (thank you, Robert!). Once was for my opinion on Mark Jen, and the other time was Tablet PC related. Scoble isn’t stingy. He sends good traffic too when you get listed on his main page and the linkblog traffic isn’t too shabby either.

Tyme who recently used me as a bad example over our default checkbox experiment? I’ve linked to her 3 times. I didn’t realize Tyme was female until this recent exchange when someone in the comments said “she” — so that tells you how much I pay attention to the sex of a blogger.

“Chris Nolan” I’ve mentioned 2 times now and linked it this time. How many times has Nolan linked to MakeYouGoHmm? As best as I can tell, zero. Coincidentally the last time I mentioned her it was in reference to her arguing with Dave at Bloggercon III. The lady is feisty, it seems.

Chris Pirillo, another geek business owner that I admire: 22 times. His lockergnome publication has linked various entries here several times (thanks to the authors who did that, BTW) and when I met him for the first time he seemed excited and recognized me as being from this blog, but he’s never linked to this blog from chris.pirillo.com to my knowledge. I’m sure he’ll get around to that someday when I do something worthwhile or interesting. It’s cool that he’s in the same neck of the woods.

Heck, this blog has been slashdotted but not yet had Winer link to this blog. I’ve even met Dave in person at the local Seattle blogger meetup but apparently not even a face to face meeting could generate the holy grail of scripting.com links. Dave, when you going to spread some of that warm scripting.com link love this direction? Perhaps once I’ve written about him in a 100 or more entries I’ll make the grade. Is the content here that uninteresting and untimely? Can’t be that …

For example, Dave, you just mentioned StumbleUpon, but we’ve talked about it here 10 times with the first time on January 18, 2004. I’ve demoed it at a few local blogger meetups and I even showed it to Chris Pirillo in the hallway at Northern Voice. Furl was another thing Dave mentioned discovering recently. I’ve only posted about that 3 times but I’ve been using that over a year too.

What about Skype? All these folks talking about Skype today, but Stuart Henshall and I were talking about it way backwhen there less than 100k downloads in September of 2003. How many blog entries have had Skype mentioned? 60 times!

Yup, databases are mighty useful and informative.

I do realize that some of the MakeYouGoHmm website (blog) pages are loading slower than it was when it was static and that’s on the to-do list to fix all those queries, most of which I think are excessive. I’ve cut it down from the 24 it was running every time the front page was loading to 13, but that’s still too many queries. 99% of the front page can be cached and require zero database queries, which is on the to-do list, so please bear with us if the pages take a little extra long to load over the next week or two while we right the ship.

Thank you for your patience and for reading!

Does Blogging + social networking sound like something we’ve heard before? It seems familiar but at the moment I can’t put my finger on the killer app that has merged the two successfully. Yahoo is hoping on March 29 that they can make a splash in both areas.

Yahoo Inc. is preparing to introduce a new service that blends several of its Web site’s popular features with two of the Internet’s fastest growing activities - blogging and social networking. The hybrid service, called “Yahoo 360,” won’t be available until March 29.

I would say the link blog + social networking goes to Stumbleupon which I’ve been using for over a year now and find quite useful, but it will be interesting to see what Yahoo has come up with on this front. I haven’t found much practical use for social networking sites like Ryze, Friendster and Orkut.

Thanks Dave Winer for the link on the Yahoo 360 gig.

I think I finally have John Dvorak figured out. He is not the uber-complex, wizard technologist and scribe that I always believed him to be through his many PC Magazine columns.

Sure, he is rarely in a good mood but that is just his writing style. Never met the man personally, but I wonder if he’s different in person and not the blowhard he is portrayed as by the verbiage in his many columns? I’ve met another blogger — no names, so don’t ask — who is similarly grouchy in his writings, and he is a blowhard in person like he is in his blog. I could be wrong about Dvorak, maybe he is the same way he writes, but I doubt it. I think it’s just a style thing.

Dvorak’s perspective and activity while actually blogging has indicated to me that he’s a better writer than technologist. Simply analyzing his blogging over the last few months, you’ll rarely see John linking to other bloggers, he has no blogroll, his advertising is scattered and mostly to prop up his employer, his blogging seems to consist primarily of snipping out pictures from everywhere and everything — and who knows if these images are copyrighted or not — and yet he writes with this authoritative, stoic tone as if he has easily figured out every blogger and the entire blog readership phenomenon in such a limited time.

Please.

Check this out from his most recent PC Magazine opinion column:

Having become a blogger myself, I feel even more inclined to write a column once in a while with various gripes and complaints. But I looked at my readership numbers over the past few years, and the fact is that most people still do not care about blogging. I’m now convinced that blogging is a niche market. Most folks online don’t even know they are reading a blog half the time, and don’t know what a blog is. This accounts for blog being one of the most looked-up words on the online dictionary sites.

I would agree that most people don’t realize they are reading a “blog” but I don’t really see how that matters? Who cares if what I’m reading is a web page or a blog?

As for blogging being a niche market? So what to that too. As a business person, what is the downside to getting into blogging? Is the upside better to shun it and let my competitors get a foothold in this “niche market?”

Really, I’m no expert on blogging either (are there any experts?) because I’ve only been blogging regularly since July 2003, but I do know that a significant part of blogging — at least the allure of it — involves carrying some sort of interactive dialogue with other bloggers.

Dvorak, based on his blogging actions to date, doesn’t seem to get that yet. It seems like he’d rather snip pictures and make fun of things with quips than actually link to and get any sort of blog-to-blog dialogue going. Yeah, I’m sure he’s linked to a few bloggers here, but it rather seems like the premise of his blog is like a news clipping service with mostly sparse annotations. He’s not really blogging, the way most bloggers think of blogging, he’s more like a glorified link dump. This activity would fit more with services like Stumbleupon or Delic.io.us.

Far be it me to try and tell anybody else what they should or should not be blogging about — this is my opinion column, after all — but maybe it’s fair game with a guy like Dvorak who has so many stubborn ideas about what is out here in the blogosphere?

It’s been awhile — maybe too long — since Dvorak penned a truly useful, positive column on anything. Can any reader point me to a recent article or piece that contradicts this? Then again, maybe it’s just me that doesn’t understand what an “opinion” column is all about. Maybe it’s me that doesn’t have a clue on the inner machinery of the publishing business and Dvorak really is the grandmaster of technology past, present and future.

Whatever. He can flame all day long in his columns and maybe that will help PC Mag’s circulation numbers — heck, it sometimes makes for an interesting read — but this same cranky egotism in the blogosphere without the content to back it up does not portend well for his blogging future.

Personally, I’m not fond of having to uncheck items (default checked items) however I will admit when leaving comments on blog entries around the web it can be handy to get an email notification automatically when future comments are left after mine.

I noticed when running the previous script here that several people leaving comments chose to be notified. This is a win-win for the site (return visitors) and for users if they like this function, but it’s an extra click for those who don’t want to get email when it is default checked.

This is where I’d like your help if you have a few seconds.

I’ve just added and enabled Jennifer’s WP Subscribe to Comments plugin and made the default be to automatically send email notification. If you are a reader who leaves comments on this blog and do not or do like this box being checked by default then please speak up in the comments section and let me know.

BTW, I didn’t bring back the CAPTCHA (yet) as I received some feedback that not only was this not accessible for disabled people, it was a PITA for other. This may still come back if the spam becomes a problem, but we’ll wait and see on this one. If this is your first ever comment on this blog than it is held in moderation, after that your comments will passthru without delay.

Thank you for reading.

Frontier Bank is a local bank that puts out a seasonal newsletter and check out the recent Spring edition mentioning business blogs! Here’s their bulletpoints for why businesses should blog:

• Provide an easy-to-manage Web presence
• Make your company’s Website more personal
• Give visitors a reason to keep coming back
• Lead more traffic to your site

Here’s the irony: Frontier Bank doesn’t have a blog. We’ve had an account with this bank for over 10 years and I’m thinking about walking in and asking them: so when are you going to start your blog? Good bank if you are in this area. They actually know your name.

Whew! The blog move is almost done, please continue to excuse the pregnant dust clouds. What an adventure today it has been moving 1,567 posts and 858 comments in 18 different categories made since July 4, 2003. Hasn’t gone completely smooth, of course, and unfortunately there seemed to be no importer from the prior blog program we were using to Wordpress 1.5, so I needed to write my own. It weighed in at 262 lines of PHP code (with comments).

The good news for others in the same boat is that I’ll be sharing this importer once I’ve used this blog for a little while and made sure that the importer didn’t miss anything important.

I still need to do some tinkering around with the entry page and search result templates, and gone are the recent comments on this page as well as a few other things (some of which I might like to put back like the mini-hmm linkdump blog). If there’s something missing that you particularly liked, please drop me a comment and let me know.

There is now a standard WP comments RSS feed as well so you can add that if you really want to keep up with the most recent comments, though. I have the old RSS feeds redirecting to the new ones (Atom and RSS 2.0). I didn’t change the WP defaults so that should keep it simple for those familiar with how that works, though I am going to go to crufty-URLs when I get some more time:

RSS 2.0

Oh, and the site doesn’t validate XHTML (it never did) and the calendar is really sad looking, I know … yowsa! This was a huge amount of work, that I hope not to have to go through for at least another couple years. I believe I was successful in keeping every reader comment, though the trackbacks weren’t imported (sorry). For those who did send trackbacks, the old pages and archives are still up and in tact and remain so for awhile until we figure out what we want to do with them. Since all the data is searchable through Wordpress it’s a little redundant, but there’s a ton of search engine listings pointing to those old pages so I need to make something that properly deals with that scenario. I have some ideas about doing a dynamic search so that it maps to the correct page in the new database and thus the search will remain in tact and then I can delete those old pages.

Oh, and I’ve modded WP so that the rel=’nofollow’ is not enabled. As some readers will remember, I’m not a fan of nofollow.

Time to go check out Friends Season 9 and get away from the keyboard for a little while.