100 Useful Blogging Tools

(from DailyTekk http://dailytekk.com/2012/05/14/100-useful-blogging-tools/)

by Chris McConnell.

This post is part of DailyTekk’s top 100 tech series published every Monday. Don’t miss a single week: follow @DailyTekk on Twitter!

Have you heard?!? Blogging is dead! It’s not, actually, but that’s what some people would like you to believe. Blogging is very much alive and well 5 months into 2012 (you’re reading a blog right now). Blogging is one of the Internet’s oldest platforms for sharing information and it’s just as important as ever to the Internet ecosystem. True, less people and businesses are blogging this year, but the bloggers that remain tend to actually publish worthwhile content. If you’re a tech startup, you can’t tell me you don’t want to be covered on Techcrunch. Yes, Twitter (a micro-blog itself) and Facebook (built-in blogging capabilities) and a slew of new apps and networks are making it easier than ever to share information, and control who sees it, but some things simply can’t be said in 140 characters or less or shouldn’t be hidden behind a walled garden. The open Web is here to stay (it would be a sad world if it disappeared) and blogging remains the best way to publish high-quality, findable and useful information quickly and easily for a very large segment of the world’s population.

This is an exciting time to be a blogger in my opinion. Look, DailyTekk is just about 3 months old at this point and we’re getting 140,000 page views per month, are part of the SAY Media network, have multiple partnerships with interesting people and companies and are already nearing 1000 Twitter followers. Clearly people like the content we are producing out and how it is being delivered. Like many of the articles I have created, I made this post at least partially for myself. I’ve included some awesome-looking new blogging platforms, tools that can help optimize blog content creation, ways to engage readers and encourage loyalty, tools for enhancing blog performance and security, creative ways to embed media in your posts and much more.

Also read: The Top 100 Twitter Tools of 2012

New & Emerging Blogging Platforms

1. Jux - Your pictures and words fill the page edge to edge.
2. scriptogr.am - Converts markdown text files in Dropbox into a blog.
3. Svbtle - The essence of blogging.
4. Summd - Awesomely amazing email blogging. Coming soon.
5. Hoydaa - Lightweight and scalable blogging service for Google Apps users.
6. Compendium - Content marketing software (blogging for businesses).

Optimize Blog Content Creation

1. Zemanta - Blog publishing assistant (recommendations and related items).
2. List.ly - List making made easy, fun and social.
3. DivvyHQ – Spreadsheet-free editorial calendar application.
4. SourceBottle - Connects expert sources with bloggers for free.
5. Webdoc – Enables you to create rich media posts in seconds.
6. ScribbleLive - Cover news in realtime with LivePage and LiveArticle.
7. StoryCrawler - Information-gathering engine. Find unique and meaningful content.
8. CurationSoft - Meet your new content assistant.
9. Listiki – Make lists, share lists, read lists.
10. HARO - Help a Reporter Out. Get qualified sources when you need them.
11. Demolistic – Create, manage and discuss lists.
12. Editz - Allows readers to post corrections (grammar, spelling, factual accuracy, and more).
13. Lostography – Create a collection of lists and try the list topic generator.
14. After The Deadline – Spelling, style and grammar checker for WordPress.

Engage Blog Readers & Encourage Loyalty

1. socialbungy - Next-generation social content builder.
2. Livefyre - Supercharge your outdated comment system. Go realtime.
3. BuddyPress – WordPress-powered social networking in a box.
4. Wibiya – Boost your website with interactive features.
5. Zooshia - Create your own social widget.
6. E-MAILiT - Helping social syndication happen better.
7. Disqus - Comments platform with awesome features and powerful tools.
8. Gremlin - Professional social media tools (starting at free).
9. NewsPin - Become a social media rockstar. Coming soon.
10. Shareaholic - Social bookmarking and sharing plugin.
11. blogfrog - Communities and conversations for bloggers and brands.

Blog Performance & Security

1. Akamai - Faster forward. Web app acceleration and content delivery.
2. Yottaa – Site speed optimization and website monitoring.
3. AlertBot – Website and service monitoring.
4. CloudFlare - Protects, accelerates and keeps your blog online.
5. VaultPress – Automattic’s official WordPress backup offering.
6. Load Impact – Website load and performance testing.
7. GTmetrix – Website speed and performance optimization testing.
8. Blog Metrics - WP plugin that calculates raw author contribution/conversion rate.
9. Pingdom – Uptime and performance monitoring made easy.
10. Which Loads Faster? – Have two sites compete head to head to see which one’s faster.
11. Site Trail - All-in-one free site analysis tool.
12. XCloner – Website backup and restore (PHP/Mysql).
13. blogVault – WordPress backup service.
14. BackupBuddy – Easily backup and move WordPress.
15. Tynt - See what gets copied/pasted from your site.

Embed Media In Your Blog

1. Pixlr - Like Photoshop but free and online (fast and no registration required).
2. SoundCloud – Share your sounds.
3. Skitch – Annotate, edit and share your screenshot and images… fast.
4. Screenr - Instant screencasts (just click record).
5. Blip.me – Turn your mobile phone into a voice broadcast network.
6. Curate.Us - Share screen clips everywhere.
7. Cinch – Create and share micro podcasts, images and text updates.
8. BYOAudio – Put audio and video on your website.
9. Aviary - An awesome photo editing solution for web/mobile.
10. Odosketch - Very cool web-based sketching tool.
11. PodSnack – Flash MP3 player.

Blog Design & Themes

1. WooThemes - Premium WordPress themes and plugins.
2. PageLines - Drag and drop web design for WordPress.
3. Blogic - Instantly creates a WordPress theme that matches your website.
4. Headway Themes - Drag and drop WordPress design tool.
5. StudioPress – Premium WordPress themes and design frameworks.
6. Graph Paper Press - WordPress themes for creatives.
7. Theme Forest - Premium WordPress themes, web templates and mobile themes.
8. Elegant Themes - Premium WordPress themes.
9. Themify - Awesome WordPress themes.
10. NewWPThemes - Free WordPress themes.
11. RocketTheme - Joomla templates, WordPress themes, Magento templates and more.
12. WTS - WordPressThemeShock. WordPress themes and web design sets.
13. Mysitemyway - A new breed of WordPress themes.

Ad Networks for Bloggers

1. SAY Media – Digital publishing company that works with the best editorial voices online.
2. Skyscrpr – Advertising, simplified. Sell advertising directly to buyers.
3. iSocket – Self-service advertising and direct sales tool for publishers.
4. BuySellAds – Makes buying and selling ads incredibly easy.
5. The Deck – Self-described as the premier ad network for creative culture.
6. Yoggrt – The creative ad network.
7. Carbon Ads – A premium, invite-only ad network.
8. InfluAds – The quality-only advertising network.
9. Fusion Ads – Making advertising beautiful.
10. Advertising.com – Get more return for the same inventory.
11. adBrite – The largest independent ad exchange.

Blogs for Bloggers

1. ProBlogger – Blog tips to help you make money blogging.
2. Copyblogger – Content marketing and copywriting articles.
3. Blogging Tips – Daily blog tips plus info on themes and design.
4. TentBlogger – Blogging for fun and profit.
5. BloggingPro – News, plugins and themes for blogging applications.
6. Spice Up Your Blog – Blogger tips, blogging gadgets and design tutorials.
7. For Bloggers By Bloggers – Helping you make your blog the best it can be.
8. The Blog Herald – News, information, tips and commentary on blogs.
9. Daily Blog Tips – Tips for bloggers.
10. Blogging Without a Blog – Your blogging classroom on the web.

Other & Miscellaneous

1. dlvr.it - Feed your blog to Twitter and Facebook.
2. OnlyWire - Automated submission to social media sites.
3. Scribe - Simple SEO software from Copyblogger Media.
4. Stribe - Link your website to others to share social interactions.
5. Plinky - Inspiration. You have answers. Plinky has questions.
6. Tagaroo – WordPress tag suggestion plugin.
7. Ping.fm - Update all of your social networks at once.
8. Penzu - Write in private.
9. TestSize.com – Test any website in any browser size.
10. Behappy.me - Inspiration. Receive an inspiring, happy quote in your email daily.
11. MarsEdit 3 – Desktop blog editing for the Mac.
12. Ping-O-Matic – Pinging search engines so you don’t have to.
13. timekiwi - Create beautiful timelines from your blogs/social media.
14. Blog2Print – Print your blog.
15. CoveritLive - Easy to use, scalable live-event platform.

A Directory of RSS Feeds of Popular Social Sites

(from Digital Inspiration Technology Blog http://www.labnol.org/internet/rss-feeds-directory/21242/)

by Amit.

If you are old school like me and still prefer consuming online content through RSS feeds, this directory is for you.

Most of the popular online apps and services – including the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, offer RSS feeds but the problem is that you have to be a near geek in order to discover any of these feeds. Hence, I compiled this directory that will probably help you find XML feeds for your favorite online services without digging into the complex APIs.

Twitter RSS Feeds

1. Get the 20 most recent updates of any Twitter user
https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/<username>.rss [example]

2. Get the favorite tweets of any Twitter user
https://api.twitter.com/1/favorites/<username>.rss [example]

3. Get mentions of any Twitter user as an RSS Feed
http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=to:@<username> [example] 

4. Get the RSS feed for any search query (or even hashtags) on Twitter
http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=<query> [example]

5. Get the RSS feed a Twitter List
https://api.twitter.com/1/<username>/lists/<list-name>/statuses.atom [example]

[Tip] If you wish to insert two or more words in your search query, use %20 as the separator – for example Hello%20World.

YouTube RSS Feeds

1. Get the most recently uploaded videos of any YouTube user
https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/<user>/uploads [example]

2. Get the RSS feed of videos that contain a particular tag
https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/<tag> [example]

3. Get the RSS feed for any search query on YouTube
https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?q=<query>&orderby=relevance [example]

Replace “relevance” by either “published” or “viewCount” to order search results by the upload date or view count of videos respectively. Also, here are some standard feeds for most shared YouTube videos, most highly rated videos, most viewed videos and so on.

Facebook RSS Feeds

1. RSS feed of your Facebook Notifications
Go here to see the private link of your Facebook notifications feed.

2. Subscribe to Facebook Pages via RSS Feeds
https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=atom10&id=<ID> [example]

To get the ID of any Facebook Page, go to graph.facebook.com and replace Digital Inspiration in the URL with the username of any Facebook Page. Also, Facebook does not offer RSS feeds for individual profiles.

Pinterest RSS Feeds

1. Get the RSS feed of any Pinterest user
http://pinterest.com/<user>/feed.rss [example]

2. Get the RSS feed of any Pinterest board
http://pinterest.com/<user>/<board>/rss [example]

Pinterest, at this time, does not offer RSS feeds for search results though that would be extremely useful.

Image RSS Feeds for Instagram, Picasa and Flickr

1. Get the RSS feed of photos uploaded by a Flickr user
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=<ID> [example]

2. RSS feed of Flickr photos that contain certain tags (comma separated)
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=<t1>,<t2> [example]

3. RSS Feeds of Instagram photos that have a particular tag
http://instagr.am/tags/<tag>/feed/recent.rss [example]

4. RSS Feeds of Picasa photos that match a search terms
http://photos.googleapis.com/data/feed/base/all?alt=rss&kind=photo&q=<search> [example]

If you know the username of a Flickr user, you can find his or her ID using this online tool (the ID format is 18436325@N00). Instagram does not offer RSS feeds for individual users officially but there are third-party Instagram viewers that can add the missing RSS feeds.

Blog Feeds for Tumblr, Blogger and WordPress

1. Get the RSS feed of a Blogger (blogspot) blog
http://<blogname>.blogspot.com/rss.xml [example]

2. Get the RSS feed of a Tumblr blog
http://<blogname>.tumblr.com/rss [example]

3. Get the RSS feed of an WordPress hosted blog
http://<blogname>.wordpress.com/feed/ [example]

Private RSS Feeds

Here’s a list of popular web apps that offer private RSS feeds for your eyes only:

Dropbox – Enable RSS feeds under your Dropbox Settings. Then go here to get your unique feed URL that is useful for tracking changes to your Dropbox files and folders.

https://www.dropbox.com/123/456/789/events.xml [sample format]

InstaPaper – Open the Instapaper website, scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see an orange RSS icon pointing to the feed of your Instapaper bookmarks. changes to your Dropbox files and folders.

http://www.instapaper.com/rss/123/456 [sample format]

Foursquare – Go here to get a feed of all places where you have checked-in using Foursquare.

https://feeds.foursquare.com/history/ABCD.rss [sample format]

LinkedIn – Go here to enable your private feed that contains the activity of your LinkedIn network.

http://www.linkedin.com/rss/nus?key=abcdef [sample format]

RSS Feeds for Google Products

Gmail – Gmail offers Atom RSS feeds of your Inbox but it requires your password in plain text. The alternate is that you Gmail to Twitter (as a private user).

http://<username>:<password>@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom/

Google Search – See how to create an RSS feed for Google Search using Google APIs.

https://www.googleapis.com/customsearch/v1?alt=atom&key=API_Key&q=<Query>

Google Finance – You can track news around stocks and currency via RSS Feeds.

http://www.google.com/finance/company_news?q=<Symbol>&output=rss [example]

Wikipedia – Track changes to any Wikipedia entry using an RSS feed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=<Page_Title> [example]

StumbleUpon – Get the RSS feed of likes of any SU user

http://rss.stumbleupon.com/user/<username>/favorites [example]

Evernote – Any shared notebook on Evernote can also be subscribed as an RSS feed.

https://www.evernote.com/pub/<username>/<notebook>/feed [example]

You can also use the RSS Search Engine at CtrlQ.org to discover more RSS feeds around your favorite topics (including podcasts).

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This story, A Directory of RSS Feeds of Popular Social Sites, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 03/05/2012 under Rss, Internet.

Related posts:

1. Link to the Original Articles in your RSS Feeds
2. Yahoo! RSS Feeds Available for Web Search, Images & Video Search
3. Tumblr Blogs Can No Longer Import RSS Feeds
4. Google Alerts gets RSS Feeds
5. Move FeedBurner RSS Feeds From One Account to Another

The Perfect Milk Machine: How Big Data Transformed the Dairy Industry  |  The Atlantic  |  May. 2, 2012  |  13 Minutes (3,431 words)

(from Longreads.com http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-perfect-milk-machin...

by Alexis Madrigal.

The quest for the perfect dairy cow—starting with Badger-Bluff Fanny Freddie, a bull who has 50,000 markers on his genome that make him the best sire at the moment:

"While breeders used to select for greater milk production, that's no longer considered the most important trait. For example, the number three bull in America is named Ensenada Taboo Planet-Et. His predicted transmitting ability for milk production is +2323, more than 1100 pounds greater than Freddie. His offspring's milk will likely containmore protein and fat as well. But his daughters' productive life would be shorter and their pregnancy rate is lower. And these factors, as well as some traits related to the hypothetical daughters' size and udder quality, trump Planet's impressive production stats.

"One reason for the change in breeding emphasis is that our cows already produce tremendous amounts of milk relative to their forbears. In 1942, when my father was born, the average dairy cow produced less than 5,000 pounds of milk in its lifetime. Now, the average cow produces over 21,000 pounds of milk."

The 100 Most Influential People in the World - TIME

Nero Multi Trigger Trips Your DSLR Shutter Using Sight and Sound

(from PetaPixel http://www.petapixel.com/2012/04/17/nero-multi-trigger-trips-your-dslr-shutte...)

by Michael Zhang.

The Nero Multi Trigger is a nifty camera triggering device that can make your DSLR and external flash unit respond automatically to sight, sound, and motion. It has built in optical, audio, and laser sensors, allowing you to shoot everything from lightning flashes to balloon pops. There’s also an intervalometer for time-lapse photography. The device mounts to your DSLR’s hotshoe and is powered by a pair of AAA batteries. They cost $200 each and are available for both Nikon and Canon DSLRs from the NERO website.

Nero Trigger (via OhGizmo!)

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