Snap Shots a cool new Widget!

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Cool Music Widget

Get your own Music Widget!

Dive in! Find the music you like, create your playlists, make your widgets, grab the code and add it to your profile page, site, blog or photo album. It's really cool, it's fun, and it's easy.

When you create a widget, there are several options to choose from. I chose the horizontal embed in a blog post option. But you could have a nice little vertical music player in your sidebar as well. The one I have embedded here plays classical piano music. Turn it on, and check it out!

Circumventing the new Blogger comment system

For those of you who are not very happy with the new blogger comment system, here's an alternative comment provider, HaloScan. I found it, in use, at a nice little blog called Webster 12:

HaloScan provides a free, easy to use commenting and trackback service for weblogs and websites, allowing visitors to leave feedback, share their opinion, or comment on the subject at hand.

Features

• Easy, two-step installation on any weblog or webpage
• View, edit or delete comments from the members section or the comment page
• Ban offensive commenters by single IP or an IP range
• Customizable comment window through CSS or the HTML template editor
• Hundreds of user-submitted templates to pick from
• Worldwide time-zone and character encoding support
• RSS-XML feed/syndication
• Email notification of new comments
• And a lot more...
  

Here's what's posted on their front page as "Latest News"
· 12/30/2006 - New Blogger Installation Wizard - Easier than ever to install
· 09/17/2006 - Recent Comments Widget - A recent comment list for your blog
· 09/05/2006 - Dashboard Hotness - Members now have a Dashboard!
· 06/06/2006 - Free Email Notification - More free stuff for members
· 05/29/2006 - Database Upgrade - New, faster, higher capacity servers added
· 11/18/2005 - More Blog Integration - Blog post title fetching feature
· 08/24/2005 - Help Pages - The new help area contains over 100 pages

Build It And They Will Come

Just last week, I was whining and complaining to my sister about life in general, and how I spend so much time working on all these really great blogs that nobody ever goes to. And now I have to eat crow, because I went to stat counter today and this is what I found!!! One Cool Picture After Another has exceeded the 100 hits and 200 page loads mark! Yowsers! I thought that maybe, on a good day, I had like... 15 visitors.

I find this very interesting because I have not done much at all to actively promote this site. What I HAVE done to "drive traffic" is this:

1. Linked it on my other blogs.
2. Posted it at Technorati.
3. Put it up at My BlogLog.

That's it. I did the exact same thing for Way Cool Pictures and More Cool Pictures, plus I posted them at Blog Catalog, and have actively pursued links for them on other sites. And yet this blog is the one getting the most traffic. It can't be the content, because it has the same content as both of the other two. So, I'm thinking it has to be the fact that I put up three posts a day. It did get stumbled once or twice, and it did get posted on facebook. Both of which might also be contributing factors.

Why do I even have three picture blogs? Good question. And here's the answer: I have a number of friends and coworkers who might be offended by some of the pictures and art that I really like. So, I made a picture blog just for them. Nothing offensive is ever uploaded at Way Cool Pictures. The rest of the stuff that I like is housed at More Cool Pictures. I do not go in for anything too terribly gruesome... well... sometimes... but not usually. And while I never post porn, More Cool Pictures isn't necessarily something you could recommend to your great aunt Martha. Some of it is in very "bad taste", which is what makes it funny and interesting to me.

The two most popular posts at Way Cool Pictures currently is The Amazing Art of Julian Beaver, and Krakatoa Day. At More Cool Pictures, it's Foot Binding and Creepy Cannibal Pictures.

Then, one of my friends complained about having to go to two blogs in order to see ALL the cool pictures. So, I thought, why not... I'll combine the two and call it One Cool Picture After Another. I had no thought of it being more than a convenience for my friends. Interestingly, the favorite posts there are The Piercing and Pain Festival and The World's Largest Penis (no porn - I swear to you - it's not a picture of a person).

So, there you go! Build it and they will come. Be patient. Post every day.... post more than once a day if you have something interesting, relevant, shocking or funny. Eventually, that small trickle of 2 to 3 visitors a day will grow.