The Simian Downtime Analyst

Ok so that thing that I do that keeps me away from here and makes me a bad blogger….
There is a awards thing for podcasts and you should totally vote for it.

Vote for The Random Time Lords!!

It is that time of year again.

Today I was focused on making a couple of banners for a few websites (SDA included).   I decided it was time for a web search intervention so I would not spend an entire day doing the wrong thing. In one of the top results, I found a nice straightforward video tutorial at Hiphop Makers.

This tutorial was done by Mark Valenzuela of New Ice Media.

While we still dig the idea of what Disqus does, it is about time for us to reevaluate the necessity of it.  To be honest, it was installed in an attempt to gain conversation.  When conversation did not happen, it didn’t bother me that no one was talking, but it felt like we put this big honking new engine in a car that nobody wanted to drive too fast.

This was the case until Disqus added a new feature, social media reactions. I saw it as a chance to ditch the plugin we were using to import Friendfeed comments and the like, but the update has not quite made it to our humble little home.  On another blog which I felt needed a different approach, Backtype Connect is installed.  Since that does function correctly, it is possible we will be using it in the future.

Also, lately I have been on a kick to seriously clean the code up on every WordPress blog I can get my mitts on. In each instance Disqus is installed,  validation is more difficult. This might not be an issue if I knew Javascript, but I don’t yet so there is another compelling reason to let the platform go. Maybe it is time to pare down a bit.

Amber has been a tad bit occupied lately.

Random Time Lords podcast.

Me and Steven Perez discuss things that are going on.

Check it out.

Also don’t forget about the comic.

In case you have been in a black hole, here is a list of stuff you may have missed:

Google Wave
It looks awesome, but a bunch of the features already exist with a combination of services (mostly Friendfeed).

Bing
Microsoft’s “new” search engine. The name will probably work better than the Live branding.

Facebook Usernames
In a move that makes it look like the last horse in the Preakness, Facebook will offer custom URLs.

Verified Accounts
Twitter just launched verified accounts. So now you know if that is really the celebrity you are drooling over for no apparent reason. I wonder how long it takes the bad guys to fake it.

DTV Transition
Also on the agenda, the belated DTV changeover. I will just be happy to not see the messages scroll on the local stations anymore.

Project Natal
Could be full of win. No controller required gaming.

WordPress 2.8 is Out

There is a gif of NPH dancing with Elmo

New Element!

For some reason Web 2.0 is the millionth word. It is two words, but I guess that does not matter.

Back to whatever you were doing.

Sure there are plenty of posts out there on the internet covering this same topic.  For some reason there are still not enough sources.  So here is one more.

Favicon = is a small graphic that is associated with a page or Web site. (short for favorite icon, sometimes understood as favorites icon), also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon).

1. Get an image

To get that happy little 16 x 16 square associated with your site, you first need an image (16 pixels by 16 pixels of course).  Bear with me and pretend it is a picture of a cake.  So get your cake picture ready in your favorite image editor and save it as a .ico file.   If you cannot do that it is not so bad, you can just save it as a gif, png, or jpg but there may be a few browsers out there that don’t like those options.  There are plenty of favicon generators available so dive into the pool if you need to.  In the example it will just be called cakefavicon, but you can name it whatever you want.

2. Put it somewhere

The second thing you need is somewhere to put the icon. If you host your own site this is not likely to be a problem, but some free hosts might be a wee bit upset about letting you upload a .ico file. This is why the standard was relaxed to include the other formats. So if you run into trouble when you upload the image, then try the next image format on the list.  Make sure wherever you decide to put the image, that you save the full link. You will need this for the last bit.

3. Tell the site what to do with it

This is the fun part.  You need to find the header of the site and add 1 line of information. The hardest part of this step can sometimes be the header since some sites use a CMS and some do not. In both cases this line of information needs to be placed somewhere after

<head>

and somewhere before

</head>.

This is the line of information that tells the site what to do with the image:

<link rel=”SHORTCUT ICON” href=”http://www.example.com/cakefavicon.ico” />

After you place that in the header (substituting the words in bold for the real address of the image) save and enjoy the favicon. In some cases you may need to clear your cache to see the image appear.

Bonus:

For WordPress users there is a plugin called MaxBlogPress Favicon which appears to just have a bunch of icons and just lets you pick one without having to get your hands dirty with image editing and code.