technical

I've added a new option to the subscription list for BlogWatcher. (Thanks to the "other blogwatcher" for the idea.)

I had an email waiting for me this morning about BlogWatcher. Someone else has written a similar application - he even called it BlogWatcher!!!!

He's using technology similar to what I'm using, though his focus is a bit different. Check it out if your interested. And, if you see things about his application that you like better than mine, let me know. I'm certainly open to suggestions.

After my political diatribe, I thought it might be a good time to bring this up. ;)

As those of you who exchange email with me will know, all of my emails include an attachement that virtually none of you can read. That attachment is my digital signature, which proves (with the right software) that any email you receive from me really IS from me, and that it hasn't been altered since I sent it.

As a folloup to my prior post about BlogWatcher including active user's subscription list to display lists for anonymous users:

People who use Blogwatcher regularly probably won't notice this, but I've made a slight change to it. The reason you won't notice is because you'll only see it if you try to view your bloglist when you're not logged in. It was showing a "sampling" of the logs I support. The problem was that the ads that were getting selected had nothing to do with people's actual subscriptions.

Well, I don't know if I should be happy or mad.
Spammers have found this site. One of the problems of blogs like this is "comment spam." I got what looked like about 2 dozen "trackback" links this morning. (Trackbacks are a method of some other blog notifying my system that a comment has been made on one of my posts). Unfortunately, they weren't "real" comments, but instead links to various porn sites.
I deleted them, of course, and put blocks in place so that particular server can't spam me again, but I didn't like having to do it.

The Baytown Sun has just added some RSS feeds. Since all of the current users are Baytown residents, I went ahead and added them as subscription choices on the "Manage my Bloglist" page.

You might want to look at the "Manage my Bloglist" page of BlogWatcher, if you haven't done so recently. I've added several new feeds to the right side of the page.
The "Manage my account" link is also worth a look. You can change the color scheme that BlogWatcher uses when you log in, and you can also change the number of articles shown on each page, and your local timezone. Check it out.

I'm looking for suggestions on ways to improve BlogWatcher. Things that would give it more general appeal.
I already know one thing: an ability to show at least a count of the comments associated with an entry. I'm not sure that I'm able to do that, but I know that it's something people would want.
Anything else? Make any suggestion, no matter how "practical" it sounds.
Also: how would people feel about ads in the output? Wendy has already told me she hates the idea. Anybody else want to chime in?

I've been playing around with the test release of GeekLog 1.4, and I have to say that I'm pleased with what I've seen so far. I've only encountered two minor bugs so far, both of which I've been able to fix myself. That's not bad at all, considering all of the new functionality that's been added
The most significant changes (from my perspective):