Orangeinks

LinkWithin: A New Related Post Widget for Blogs

Are you looking for a blog widget to further increase your page views? One way of increasing page views on your blog is to offer related reading. This gives the readers an opportunity to have a glimpse of your other articles. You can install several scripts or plugins (depending on your blog platform) to feature your other posts.

LinkWithin is another related stories/articles widget that you can use on your blog. What makes it different from other plugins/widgets is that it comes with a photo thumbnail. The widget is minimally styled to blend in with your site design. The widget is free and ad-free. It will only take you just a couple of minutes to get the widget up and running on your blog. It works on most blogging platform such as WordPress, Blogger and Typepad and you will not be required to sign or register in order to use the widget.

I only get to test it on a WordPress blog and I must say that it looks great. The only thing that I am concerned with when I installed the plugin is that (as of now) it doesn’t give you any customization option. It displays 3 sets of related posts on each of my pages. It would be great if I am, as a user, is allowed to limit the number of Link Within widgets set on my blog. This will allow blog owners to target where their related posts will appear on their pages.

If ever you want to try something new on your blog, Link Within might be the widget that you’re looking for. As of now, it’s not for me. I’ll be patiently waiting for further development of its WordPress plugin. Goodluck guys.

Tags: link, Link Within, Plugin, Related Articles, Related Posts, wordpress

Psolenoid: Blog Reaction Linking Tool

Psolenoid is an interesting new service which aims to help bloggers interconnect with each other by linking a post reaction to another post. It kind of works like the related posts that you see displayed on blogs, the only difference with this particular service is that other bloggers can link their related post to your blog entries.

It’s like making a comment without sounding spammy like- ” hey I also wrote a blog post about this topic here’s the link. ” This can only be made possible if both parties have Psolenoid activated on each other’s blogs. It means that if you make a reaction to a particular post, that post’s link will also show up on your own entry.

We call this process “wiring” and it automatically creates a “rabbit hole” or two-way link for audiences of both blogs to visit the other blog post.

Psolenoid will appear at the bottom of a blog post/entry and will look similar to a comment but in a more enhanced manner. It includes a preview of the wired blog post, a short comment introducing the other site and a user profile image. A Psolenoid link also displays a small thumbnail of the image or video included in the post if any is present.

Important FAQ

How does Psolenoid prevent blog spam?
Psolenoid by design is architected to prevent spammers from wiring posts to your blog. Because it uses pull technology to fetch the content it needs for wires, all content needs to come from an actual blog post. This is uniquely different from push technology used in trackbacks which are often prone to spammer abuse. Additionally, Psolenoid users are centrally managed and spammers will be policed.

You have full control on who links to you. User controls are built into Psolenoid’s intuitive user interface. If you wish to sever a wire between your blog and another blog, simply click on the X over the wire to delete it. You can do this either from your Psolenoid account or from your personal page while you are logged in.

I’m not sure on how Psolenoid will affect blogs or this site in particular but I will be activating it here for testing. If you want to try it out feel free to make a Psolenoid reaction with any of your posts on this entry. Remember, once you activate Psolenoid on your blog, it will be displayed on all of your pages.

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Tags: Blog, blog reaction, link, psolenoid, tool

Get Blogging Suggestions for your Content Using Zemanta

Zemanta is a new web app (still in alpha version) that lets you get suggestions for your content while blogging. As of now, they index around 300 top media sources and numerous blogs of their users. They also provide image suggestions for your content. The suggested images are based on the contextual comparison of your text and image description, title and the articles or posts they were used in originally. They currently get their suggested images from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers like Shutterstock and Fotolia. Link suggestions are also provided and even tags for your post.

Zemanta Blogger integration from zemanta on Vimeo.
The suggestion engine will start working after you have typed in 300 characters in your blog. It will analyze your post through their proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and then the engine will statistically compare its context framework to their preindexed database of other content.How to Use:

The service currently supports the Mozilla Firefox browser and is currently available in WordPress (supports both hosted and wordpress.com platforms), Blogger and Typepad blogging platforms. All you have to do is install the Firefox Plugin which is available in their site. Once installed, you will notice a small icon (will be activated when you start writing your post) addition on the right side of your URL bar, then go to the dashboard of your favorite blogging platform and start writing an article. When you get to 300 characters, the engine will start to work and will give you relevant articles, images, links and tags suggestions for your post. You can either visit the suggested articles through the link provided or click to insert them in your blog as related article for your content. If you find an image in their suggestion bar, just click on it and it will be automatically added to your post. The same procedure applies to links and tags suggestions.

This is a great way to find additional content for your articles. The service is very new and you can expect more improvements in the future when it comes to bringing suggestions and supporting other blogging platforms and browsers.

 

Tags: Blog, content, engine, Firefox, image, link, Plugin, suggestion, zemanta

Scientology: A Dangerous Cult, Says Google

I found this while Stumblingupon yesterday and had a good laugh when I saw this pop up on my next stumble. It seemed that Scientology is ranking first on Google for the keywords “dangerous cult.” It’s funny to think that they are advertising on different forms of media and using big Hollywood stars just to gain supporters for their religion only to find their website ranking first in the world’s most widely used search engine with keywords “dangerous cult.”

I think this is a result of Google Bombing (also known as link bombing or search bombing). It is an attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions. Because of the way that Google’s algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text (dangerous cult). A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner. This means that the “dangerous cult” keyword(s) is a result of a successful Google Bomb.

Tags: bomb, cult, dangerous, Google, link, scientology, search