Archive for April, 2008

For a while I was testing out the virtual world / MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) that is Second Life, just exploring and trying to figure out what it was about. I had a window in the background all the time, where my character was dancing around, camping and earning Linden Dollars at an almost Adsense-like rate.

Then work and other things took over for a while, but I had this strange lonely feeling. There was no pretend other person dancing around on my computer. I was wondering what kind of game Second Life is – if it even is a game in the truest sense. It has no predefined goal, so is it a game in itself, or some kind of virtual-world toy? Does it become another game when people bring their own goals into it? Perhaps.

I found many people who were beginners, like me. Some wanted to talk about life around the world. Many seemed to be playing with dolls, while some were playing with building blocks and Lego. Others still were playing Monopoly. I personally liked the Vulcan city, complete with Vulcan language and culture. But I think I was still playing Neko.

Click below to read more: I’ve put Web Neko onto his own page since he hasn’t been loading today (fingers crossed – hope he comes back!)
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Summary: I kept a diary while launching a Devon business directory / community website. This is part of it.

Diary from 4th Oct 2007: Collected my car window stickers from Devon Signs. They actually look really good, very clear. But I do feel a little nervous still about advertising to the people around me, as if they’ll say ‘Who do you think you are?’!

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Diary from Thurs 4th Oct 2007: Read some directory related threads on Webmaster world – looks like many people have a hard time with these, but it was comforting to read these posts from people further down the road…

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14 years ago, Chris Clark, who now runs an American software company, bought the ‘pizza.com’ domain for just $20. He thought it would help him get a contract with a pizza company…

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Is Web 2.0 just a load of hype? I have my suspicions that it doesn’t make money, but some aspects do have potential for website owners. Both RSS Feeds and social bookmarking seem promising to me (at least, if it’s Facebook, now that so many people are on Facebook). So I thought I’d give it a go.

I can’t see much potential for it on my Devon businesses directory, as the articles are mostly duplicated RSS stories and press releases. (There’s a bit of off-site anchor text keyword targetting for it though ). My chocolate website has original content, with more potential for social bookmarking, but probably a less nerdy readership (hence the emphasis on Facebook, which seems the most widespread and least nerdy option available).

So I found a selection of plugins from extensions.joomla.org to test out social bookmarking on my Joomla sites. The first plugin didn’t like my PHP version so that went nowhere. The next one seemed great: a ‘Digg’ button appeared at the top and a row of little buttons appeared at the end of my content items, but it didn’t have Facebook. The final one did have Facebook but didn’t appear everywhere I wanted it to. So I’ve still got them both at the moment.

I found a great RSS module from one of the same authors, which offers not only the feeds, but the buttons to add them to aggregators like iGoogle (which I actually use, therefore I think it’s handy and useful!) It did annoy me a bit by causing some code validation errors. So far I have fixed them all, apart from a stray ‘r’ which appears after the embedded CSS, but only when the module is on the right hand side. Huh.

But I am straying from the point again, which is trying out the social bookmarking plugins, not tinkering with the code behind the scenes. So I added a couple of stories to Facebook. I was pleased with one of them, but the other site seemed to provide the home page as well as the story, and more confusingly, it gave the home page meta description instead of the story’s, even after I deleted it. I tried various options with Joomla caching, but didn’t see any difference: strange. Perhaps I’ll try Facebook again later. Meanwhile, I registered with del.icio.us and bookmarked a couple of stories, but can’t really see the point to it yet.

So I’ll be keeping them all for now, and seeing if any of them work out well. I can’t see my sites getting Slashdotted (thank goodness!) but you never know, it might bring in some readers and friends of my visitors And I’ll be trying out each of these social bookmarking services myself, so I know what each one is about.

Next step: WordPress social bookmarking plugins for the blog

A sad thing has happened: an online community website I have visited on and off for the last couple of years appears to have finally given up the ghost. Personally I blame Digg (where some of the members turned up instead) and Facebook, which had a massive rise in popularity last summer (when I found it ).

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