Cranial Soup

AJ's Cleaner FriendFeed Widescreen Theme for K-Meleon

2009-05-01T01:53:00.002-04:00

AJ Batac has created a lovely theme for the new FriendFeed, that not only makes it look good, but adds in some extra functionality, like highlighting comments made by people you follow in yellow, and your own comments in blue, and a few other nice things.

Since you can't install GreaseMonkey in K-Meleon, you'll have to apply it using the userContent.css file. Don't worry, it's pretty easy to do.

First, in K-Meleon, go to the Edit menu and under Configuration, select User-Defined Stylesheet. This will open a file named userContent.css in Notepad.
Go to this page, locate and click the button that says Show code.
Copy all of the code, except for the first line that says @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
In the userContent.css file, go all the way to the bottom and locate the line that tells you not to edit anything below it.
Paste in the code you just copied, right above it.
Save the file.
Go here and say thank you to AJ.

Update: AJ released a new version on 5/29/2009. I corrected the link to point to the new version.

The easy and fun way to market your message to millions of people

2009-04-27T00:36:00.006-04:00

Too many so-called “experts” are saying that if you have some message that you want to tell the world, that you need to have tons of followers on Twitter. They write blog posts and tutorials explaining how to do it, and sell tools and services to help you rapidly get as many followers as you can.

But they are wrong...dead wrong. You don't need any followers on twitter, none at all. You don't even need a twitter account.

You can reach more people in more places, including Twitter and Facebook, by just getting the right people on Friendfeed to follow you.

But who are the right people?

Anyone with a large following on both Friendfeed and Twitter that is highly active and will be likely to respond to your messages, blog posts, and whatever other content you post by clicking that "like" link, who also has his Friendfeed account set up to post his activities, including "likes" to his Facebook and Twitter accounts. And if your content gets reshared or retweeted, the potential reach can be explosive!

And it takes only a handful of power users to potentially spread your message to millions.

But the really tricky part is getting them to follow you and clicking that golden "like" link, which you can only do if what you post is of good quality and relevant to their interests, and you are actively social, commenting and clicking that "like" link on theirs and other people's content.

This isn't something you can fake your way through. You are either the real deal or it just will not work. Luckily you will have a blast and make a ton of new friends while you are doing it, because Friendfeed is a whole lot of fun and loaded with tons of great discussions around great content.

Social media "experts", internet marketers, get rich quick on the internet scammers, and spammers need not bother even trying. This kind of powerful marketing was not made for you.

My Top 10 FriendFeed Friends

2008-12-04T17:42:00.001-05:00

In response to Growmap's Top 10 FriendFeed Friend Challenge, I figured I'd post my list and tell a little about my FriendFeed experience and give some tips to those of you that might be new or may be a bit nervous about jumping in and friending strangers.

What exactly is FriendFeed?

Simply put, FriendFeed is a social network that aggregates your activities from other sites and networks. It's lifestreaming.

But it is much more than that. It's a great place to meet people that share your interests, share content, discover great content shared by others, keep up with news and events, engage in conversations, etc, etc, etc. It's the grand-daddy of social networking and a never ending internet content feeding frenzy.

It does not replace the social networks you are already a part of. It compliments them, making them even better.

How did I find FriendFeed?

I was introduced to FriendFeed by Chris Brogan. I was looking for a way to combine all my internet activities into a single RSS feed that my friends and readers could subscribe to. Sites like FaceBook were falling flat and not fulfilling the needs I had. I needed a service that wouldn't limit the number of blogs I could add, could handle some obscure services, and would be able to include my Backtype feed, containing comments I leave on the blogs I read. Chris assured me that FriendFeed was more than capable of doing all that I wanted, so I decided to give it a try.

How did I find people to follow?

When I came to FriendFeed, I came alone. I had no friends that used the service (that I knew about). Originally I didn't intend on using it for social networking. I just wanted to get myself together in one feed.

But curiosity got the best of me and I decided to do some exploring and see what kind of real potential the site had, beyond consolidating my activities into a single RSS feed. To do this, I had to start from scratch, finding interesting people to follow.

I decided to start by subscribing to Robert Scoble and working my way from there, following the writers of some of my favorite blogs and other people of interest. This was the same thing I did on Twitter, although I didn't find Twitter as engaging as FriendFeed. (conversations are much more difficult for me to participate in and follow on Twitter)

Who are the most interesting people I have found?

Of the almost 300 people that I have subscribed to on FriendFeed, these are the top 10 that have captured my interest the most:

Rahsheen - Author of the social media blog, SheenOnline. He is always posting something interesting to to think about and discuss.
Mona N. - Author of Pixel Bits, a great blog about gadgets, technology, pop culture, and Legos. She posts lots of stuff that just screams for you to comment and share your thoughts and opinions.
Kol Tregaskes - Author of the Squashy Frog photography blog. He is always posting links to lots of visually appealing stuff. If you want to be a better photographer, he's the one to follow. And if you just want candy for your eyes, you won't be disappointed.
RAPatton - Subscribing to this guy will bring you a real mixed bag of stuff, most of it quite interesting. If you love click adventures as much as I do, you'll really appreciate what he shares.
Stupid Blogger (aka Tina) - Author of Is This Stupid?. Besides informing you of all the ridiculous stuff she comes across each day, she is also very friendly and down to earth. She is one of the few that I am subscribed to that really lets you inside her head. She makes it quite easy to get to know her as a person. If you are a nice person that has no real friends (online or off) subscribing to her will make you feel like you have at least one.
Live4SoccerVacations - When you have had a bad day and need a good laugh, if you are subscribed to this guy, you won't have to look far.
Cee Bee - If it's cool, unusual, amusing, or nostalgic, you'll find it here.
Duncan Riley - Editor of The Inquisitr.
Robert Scoble - He's Robert Scoble. Need I say more? You can not join a social network he is a member of without subscribing to him or finding him interesting. It's just not allowed.
Zee - Founder of We Do Creative, he has also contributed to The Next Web, ReadWriteWeb, and The Inquisitr. As a fellow reject of the "Internet Addicts Anonymous" outreach program, he'd rather stay addicted than limit or give up his surfing habits. It's a good thing for him that he was able to find numerous ways to make his addiction profitable.

Just as important as the content this group posts and shares, is the conversations they start and contribute to. They really understand what social networks are for and they know how to do it right.

How should you find people to follow?

Now, this might not be the appropriate list for you to subscribe to, since your interests may differ from my own. The nice thing about FriendFeed is that it is different for everyone. Your Home page is not like anyone else's. It's what you make it, and you do this by subscribing to people that post the type of content you are interested in.

My suggestion to you would be to visit each of the pages of the people from my list, look over the postings they make, click some links that catch your eye, read the FriendFeed comments to their posts, then move to their "Likes & Comments" page and do the same. If you like what you see, subscribe to them so you can see more of it.

Make sure you post content, too. This is how people become interested in you. The more you post and share, the easier it will be to find others that like what you like, and more people to subscribe to. Commenting and clicking that "Like" link helps, too.

And check out the rooms that the people you follow are subscribed to. You can find interesting things and people there too.

You could even subscribe to me, if you want.

With some effort from you, you might find yourself on someone else's FriendFeed Top 10 list, some day.

WARNING:

Be really careful with FriendFeed. It is very easy to get sucked in, addicted, and totally obsessed. If you find your productivity going downhill, you will have to set some limits for yourself. Try Instant Boss and only pay attention to FriendFeed while you are on a scheduled break.