I have been on StumbleUpon for more than two years. Generally, everything works fine. Sure, the toolbar sometimes seems to crawl and buttons act like they are about to curl up and die, but nothing serious there. The most irritating bug for me is this:

The Toolbar Tag feature that does not let me tag!

Tags are not activated in the toolbar by default. But a lot of people have gone into Toolbar Options, and activated it. Once activated, you get a little text box on the toolbar, where you can tag any page. So, say you like a page and does not want to review it. What you do is, you type tags which describe the page into the toolbar box, separated by commas. You have actually helped the site describe itself better to the SU algos, thereby making the oversall StumbleUpon better.

But sometimes, suddenly, it stops working. While typing the tags, previously entered tags drop down, and you cannot choose them or ignore them. Like here.

Whatever you do, you get this error in this screenshot:

Basically, now you can’t tag anything. Anymore. Here’s a pic of the error so you can read the content of the error message. It is telling you to add words as tags, when that is exactly what you are trying to do!

Well, that’s what I am trying to do, dear.

What’s the solution to this? Nothing. I have been hoping that SU would fix this error during its numerous incremental updates to the toolbar, but nada.

For now, you can exit and restart the browser, and you can continue tagging.

The amazing vanishing edited review

Well, it does not really vanish. Say someone likes your profile and reviews it. The review would appear when you check the reviews of your profile. But sometimes, a user edits a review which they had given you some time back. Then, you get a mail from SU that your review by so-and-so has been edited.

Well, run to the page, and nothing! The edited review does not rise to the top of the reviews. It stays where it was, sometimes 10 or 20 pages of clicks to find it. So if a StumbleUpon user has added something nice about you to his existing review of your profile, you have to really want to see it. On the other hand, he/ she may have dissed you.  And you can’t see it either. You can try clicking over to the user’s profile to see if it’s on their profile page. But if they are prolific SU users, that too is visible only after a number of clicks.

So there. Been irritated about these two things for ages. Hope SU fixes them soon.

WordPress 2.7 was officially released on Dec 10, 2008. Like most bloggers who use WordPress for their blogs, I too was eagerly waiting for it.

Read the full story

I came across some of the typical Indian English funniness today.In fact, You kicked my dog!, How can she slap, and similar stuff have been big hits online.

Today, I came across this ad, suddenly, on several sites I visited. Read the text:

Indians Will Speaks!
World WIll Hear!

I was quite curious to know how Indians (I am one) ’speaks’. So I clicked right through.

And more hilarity ensued. Indiabol is a neat-looking Digg-clone for India alright. But look at that big button in the right sidebar!

Submit a Good Stuff, dear friends!

Yup, so my fellow Indians, visit Indiabol so the rest of the world can hear you ’speaks,’ and while you do that, you can ’submit a good stuff!’ too!

Life can’t get any better you, can it?

This is the most irritating StumbleUpon bug I have come across. What makes it really irritating is that none of the toolbar updates have gotten rid of it.

I have a habit of tagging pages which I see and like. That’s why I have the tag search box enabled there. And most of the time, it works like a charm.

And then out of the blue, something goes wrong, and after typing the tags in - in this case, SEO, google, search - this message pops up.

It tells me in great detail that I should type in some tags in the text box above. What the…? That is what I was trying to do.

The only way to get the tag text box working again is to close the browser and start again.

I really wish I knew why this stupid error keeps popping up.

Live Search Maps, the new Microsoft India feature, has gone live in India and promises to offer users access to detailed listings and street maps for nine cities in the country.

This is the first version of its local mapping service for India and the main features have been developed by the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) based in Hyderabad.

It has been said that Microsoft has, over the past couple of years, made huge investments into research and development for Live Search. It had also acquired global resources and introduced several new features to make it work without a hassle. According to Microsoft India, the feature would also offer users access to business listings across 29 Indian cities and access to highway networks to 20,000 cities and towns. Users can now search for geographical information, places of general interest and business listings both on the PC and mobile.

Live Search Maps will be accessible on the PC and the mobile, thus ensuring that users get the information they need anytime. The feature will be available at http://m.live.co.in too, the company said.

The company has said that this is the first version of Live Search Maps for India. This, in fact, means that Microsoft will continue to introduce new features and improvements in the near future.

With the new Live Search Maps, uses can access addresses, roads, localities, landmarks, detailed street maps and places of general interest such as monuments, restaurants, hotels and other places of interest across nine Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur.

These apart, the business listings across 29 major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Agra, Allahabad, Amritsar, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Kochi, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Nagpur, Nashik, Patiala, Patna, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara and Vishakapatnam. Basic geographical information on the national road network of India across 20,000 cities and towns will also be available.

Microsoft India said that the Live Search Maps for India has as its key components street maps, location search, business listing search, routing or directions for navigation and options for users to print, share collections through email, blogs on Windows Live.

The company plans to add new features such as landmark-based driving directions, collections search, options for enterprise customers and developer community to create custom mash-ups, along with satellite imagery and related features for India and important cities. Powered by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform, the new feature draws information through multiple local vendor partners like NavTeq and uses government-approved data after he took a gamble on unconventional movies. Kapoor bounced back and now after

In a significant tie up in the television entertainment scene, Netflix Inc has struck a deal with TiVo Inc in its bid to realise its goal of offering its web streaming service directly to TV sets.

Read the full story

First of all, let me say that I am not an active Digger anymore. I gave up on Digg some 3 months back, when I found that the amount of time required and the network required to get some occasional FP was too much for me.

Zaibatsu banned!

Zaibatsu is the latest top Digger to be banned. Funnily enough, he was not banned for the normal crime these days - using scripts to automatically digg, shout, manage friends etc. He was banned because he submitted a pic of someone he thought was a beautiful female Digger, and the owner of the site redirected the URL to another page where products were being sold.

Not his fault at all, as we can see. But Digg went ahead and banned him. He was a good contributor to Digg from the beginning. There is a chance that he would get his account back, I think. Losing him is bad PR.

Fools banned for using scripts

I have no sympathy for the people who were banned by Digg because they were using scripts. Scripts were against TOS. End of story. If you wanted to be safe, you would not use them - not even the simple Greasemonkey scripts for digging your friends’ submissions directly from the Friends’ Submissions page. That is as non-spammy as it gets. I had with 3 months back, and when the first rumors of scripts being trouble surfaced, I deleted it. Seems a lot of others did not. Even much more dangerous scripts.

For example, there are active Diggers who I have added on my IM. Top guys. When I digg their stories regularly, they add me back. Don’t Digg them, and they vanish from my IM list. Digg a few, and they are back. Don’t digg, and they vanish. Script? I think so.

Then there are the ones who unfriend me, friend me again, unfriend me again - sure sign of a script.

Basic screw-up with Digg

I am all for submitting good stories - but when a good story gets 50 diggs and it cannot reach the front page later all on its own, you are asking me to spend much more than a reasonable time on Digg digging my friends, networking, checking shouts…

Who really can afford to spend the time needed to play by the rules and become a succesful Digger?

A professional Digger is who.

For an active student, or someone in a well-paying corporate job, Digg is impossible to succeed in. Why? If you are an employee or employer, you spend close to 9 hours working and commuting, sometimes more. Then in a weekday, you have perhaps 4-5 hours of time available. How many can afford to keep 2 or 3 hours of that time for Digg? Especially if you have a girlfriend / wife / kids?

Impossible.

An honest Digg user would reach home, log into Digg, digg the stories he like on the front page, read most of them, digg upcoming stories, read the good ones, check for shouts and digg the ones you like, check friends submissions and digg the ones you like and then look in the big sites for some good story to submit. Then spend a few minutes letting a few friends know about his new submission.

That is easily 3-4 hours. Tough for someone who has a life. Easy for a professional digger who can do this all day.

Er… unless, you have some scripts to help you with all that!

The good Digger I mentioned above will get probably 50 diggs on his stories over a period of time. He will get nowhere near the front page without 150 or more. Often more.

End of story, Digg. You are a professional’s playground, and the only thing that matters is how well nd how long they fool ya.

Digg Front Page - Just what is it?

Now, we know Diggers don’t like blogs. With full justification, of course. Nowadays, if you look at the Digg front page, you see nothing but big media stories. New York Times, CNN etc, or the top blogs on the Net. Gizmodo, autoblog, engadget, arstechnica…

Now there are a lot of blogs which fall a rung below those ones. Sometimes with better articles, better scoops, better pics or better insights.

Digg’s, and Diggers’ negativity towards upcoming quality blogs and small sites mean that the front page of Digg resembles Google News - from 6 hours past, often 24 hours past.

More productive to just go to Google or Yahoo News, right? Or just go to Huffingtonpost, or Autoblog, or NY Times directly.

Coming back to Zaibatsu, bad deal, man. But they will probably give it back to you. And you will go back to the good work, and all will be normal with Digg. Normal is pretty bad, though.

I really do not want to moan and groan about social media nuttiness. But sometimes, things get a bit ridiculous.

I am a top stumbler - a Top Stumbler is, according to StumbleUpon, someone who contributes a lot to SU, through his discoveries, reviews, thumbs ups and tags. I do a lot of that, it is easy as I am always on the Net for work, and it is easy to open a tab where I keep stumbling and reviewing. That does not make me an expert on SU - or a super networker. There are people with 100 times more powerful accounts in SU.

But it makes me someone who uses SU a lot. Therefore, I see a lot of these guys below:

The Idiot Fan

My biggest issue is the number of fans. I have almost a thousand fans! That is no small number. In theory, it means that a lot of people like what I discover and stumble, and would like to follow my stumbles using the StumbleUpon toolbar. In practise, it means that people see my avatar in the top stumblers list, come to my profile and add me as a friend. They think that it would be great somehow to add a Top Stumbler as a friend, and he / she would add you back. Not so. But they keep doing that.

Now, I would add anyone back as a mutual friend, if I know they really like my stumbles. How do I know that?

I keep checking back on my discoveries and pages liked to see who all have thumbed up what I liked. If I don’t see your avatar among people who have liked what I liked, then how does that make you my fan or friend? Being my fan means SU would send my stumbles to people who use the toolbar, they would like my stumbles, and thumb them up too. So a fan or friend should like what I do. If you never ever thumb what I stumble, why are you my fan? Why join a political party and never vote?

SU Spammers

These are the fools who will send you messages that go: “hi, I have been checking / following your stumbles and I really think our interests match. Hope you will add me as a friend / check out this site of mine”.

Checking or following my blog? I can always check back to your profile. And I see you have never ever done that. Not a single thumbs up from you on any of my discoveries. Why, yout total stumbles are probably 20 or 100, the amount I stumble in an hour!

The spammer idiot thinks that you would add him back, check his website, thumb it up… I don’t know. Trust me, never gonna happen.

Bikini babes

Yea, that super-sexy blonde bombshell is certainly you, I believe that.

Someone told me this is pink-hat-SEO. Get you to visit them by showing you the pic of a girl in a bikini, legs, bums, big boobies or whatever.

Waste of time, I think.

I know there are a few who just like to have a pic of a girl in a bikini in their avatar. Fair enough.

But when I see you messaging me, then it won’t fool me. Bikini or nude, I would check your blog to see how active you are.

If you are active, you could wear a bikini or even Stumble naked, and I won’t care.

Psycho Thumb Downers

Suspect in his late teens. Will thumb down stuff because

• he got bullied at school
• girlfriend refused oral sex
• cop broke his skateboard
• does not like certain colors

Yea, say he does not like red; he would thumb down a site with a picture of red sky on Mars because he does not like red. Psycho.

Then he would thumb down a story which actually supports their point of view because someone quoted in the story opposed their point of view. It matters not to the Psycho Thumb Downer that the story thoroughly refutes and demolishes what that guy said. “Something I do not like appears in this story as a point of view, THUMB DOWN, BUWAHAHA” describes the philosophy of the Psycho SU user.

Read the effing story, dumb ass. Or better still, join Digg. They love you there. Reddit is too smart for you.

The Maniac Send To user

The send-to button is there to send stories to users. Fine. But how many do you send? The Maniac Send To user would send his site every morning, afternoon and night to you.

Now remember, the maniac can do this because he is already my friend. He is not without a brain, he knows his SU. Except for one thing: SU can track what you send. So if you are all the time sending your own blog posts, SU obviously knows you are marketing your own site - and will probably discount the stumbles on your blog.

Also, say I thumb your post every day. That is a pattern. Obviously, I would blindly thumb anything you send me. It is certain that any half-baked algo (yes, even Google’s algo!) would be able to catch it and discount it.

Why bother, man? Why waste my thumb-up by devaluing it - asking me vote your blog daily? Send it to me once a week, and you probably will actually gain a lot. In fact, if you send your blog posts only occasionally, the thumbs ups you get will remain valuable and send even more traffic.

Who is the least harmful of the above?

The SU bikini girl! She at least shows you pics of boobies.

Hey, no offense

And now to the honest SU user who still doesn’t have a clue. You are like me when I started. I mean, the Idiot But Will Learn category of user. Don’t worry, this is normal.

You are here for fun, or profit. Both are fine by me. SU rewards you with friends, brilliant stories to see and read, and even traffic to your blog or site, if you just take it easy.

Initially stumble a lot with the toolbar, learn the ins and outs, search SU or Google for some guides on SU, and make friends. Make friends here means you find some people you like, religiously check their discoveries and liked pages, thumb them if you like them - and just continue.

The more pages you stumble, the more credible you will become in SU - and you would make friends naturally.

Promoting your page on Day One, on the other hand, is the beginning of a big waste of time.

This is what I see when in my recommendations page in Digg today.

Either the Digg Recommendation Engine is on crack, or the submitters are!

Do Diggers have a life? 4 people submitting the same story in the space of a minute.

Just imagine them at their keybooards, eyes darting between windows, continuously refreshing their RSS reader to see if there is something FP-worthy that pops up! And then, a flurry of fingers and panicked breathing, they all submit the same story to Digg - from different parts of the world, for all you know.

I remember when Corank started - they got write-ups everywhere. i was thrilled too. Went and started a little site on Corank immediately.

It gets some 300 visitors a day now after almost an year. I haven’t tried to market it, too lazy.

But what the hell is going on with Corank itself? Nothing much seem to be happening. The Corank blog where the founder talks to you is updated rarely.

The old Corank site is now available here and practically kept out of your sight. These guys started ages before Mixx and could have easily done what Mixx is doing now. Look at Mixx Communities, that is what the current Corank is all about. However the way stories are promoted vs shared / featured is where they diverge. I never thought social news was about sharing. It is about collaboratively driving stories you like UP like in Digg. The Corank way had that dreary feel about it, at least for me. The pages do not pass pagerank either - stories open in an iframe. Sure, you can say a lot about why your site is not for SEOs, but marketers (the good ones) can be incredibly handy to make a site go viral. Did not happen here. Sad. (Correction: The links on the Corank Featured stories pass PR though)

Then there are the non-existent improvements. Nothing has changed in months now. I recently sent a support request, there was no reply.

The Corank interface was much cleaner than the alternative Pligg. And much faster too. Sad that this happened to it.

I tried to find a way in the admin interface to block a spammer. Nothing. There seems to be no easy way to ban a spammer. I have to sit around and delete his submissions one by one. Super. And I am still not sure about if the feature exists. It just is not in any place where someone who spent 12 years on the Net can find it.

Does anyone remember Corank anymore? I don’t think so. Time to write the epitaph? Well, I sure hope not. I hope I get back the entire data that my site contains if that happens.