Brian Junyor The Blog

Site Updates & Changes a.k.a. hello friendfeed

Removed Google Reader stream
Removed Twitter stream
--> Replaced both with friendfeed stream. friendfeed displays my shared content from around the web, including my shared items from Google Reader & my updates on Twitter. friendfeed is a keeper, but might build a widget..see below.

Sidenote: The friendfeed embed script doesn't seem to render properly in IE6. It required a change to the stylesheet (inline changes at this point) to redeclare width & to set the overflow as hidden. Ex: <div id="some_div" style="width: 400px; overflow: hidden;"> I've checked out 2 different widgets, but neither worked well with my current theme and didn't display thumbnails.

Tags, Archives, and Contact info removed from sidebar
---> They are incorporated into the tabbed box at the top right.

Removed/Readded/Removed/Undecided on the ShareThis widget.
---> Caused slow page loads & is blocked by websense, need to find an alternative. That's why you see a blank space under leave a comment & before Related Items. When I think about it though, do people actually use the "share this" button on web sites?

Updated Related Items display
--->Now inline versus bulleted text.

Dropped Lijit Search
--->I was torn on this one. I really like the widget, I like the company, and I like the concept. However, I found that I used it more to display my social homes than for searching. In a perfect world, I would have kept it , but I just couldn't figure a good way to integrate it. They still get the big recommendation from me.

Added a Social Homes plugin & widget (hacked & edited)
--->More customizable as a simple social homes display than lijit. You can get the original wordpress plug by Elie Zananiri from silentlycrashing.net. I hacked it to add a couple of new social network, i.e. Mento. [I freaking love Mento, only use del.icio.us now to back my links from Mento]

Considering Disqus
--->I don't have that many folks who post comments, but I like the community idea. Am not sure if I really want to direct people to another site.

That's about it for now.

Internet & Consumer Choice

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study(pdf) in May regarding the different search and purchase strategies used to buy goods online. Jack Loechner at The Center for Media Research has already done a good job of recapping the study, but two call outs of particular importance to me were:

1) Participation after the purchase is surprisingly rare.
2) That the "growth of broadband adoption at home and the buzz about online participation in a Web 2.0 world, widespread activity in this arena might be expected. Yet the data in this report do not show this; there is clearly distance between the number of those who contribute and those who lurk."