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Hell Yeah Bitch! .com Gets Indirect Advice From Kottke.org

Posted on January 29, 2007 by Mike

Kottke.org changed their (his) “remaindered links” section today and the reasons why were compelling enough that I kind of changed our link posts to match. The #1 reason he was having trouble with his “link posts” is that, like ours, they were in a separate archive, and had a separate RSS feed. This proved to be a problem because nearly no one was subscribing to the links feed, they were just on the main feed. Those people were losing out on a lot of the content being pushed to Kottke.org. Though I realize we don’t have near the traffic on our RSS feeds that Jason Kottke gets, but still, that is an issue I don’t want to deal with. Solution: I made the two blogs we had (the main content and the link blogs) hump. They still look the same, but they are both encased in the same blog now so everything is in the same archives and the same RSS feed.

Hopefully everyone will find this to be a better solution.

Source: Kottke: Some RSS and remaindered links changes

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Whats the Best Way to Features Old Articles on a Blog?

Posted on December 13, 2006 by Mike

Sorry for the lack of posts lately but I’ve been busy banging my head against my table until something useful came out. I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to give you, my sexy readers, an easy way to discover old posts of the 1000+ that we have floating around in that archives directory. I know its hard to believe, but we do have some decent stuff floating around and its impossible to find it unless you know exactly what you are looking for, and if thats the case I know that you must be a dude because chicks never know what they want! Uh-huh! I’m I right dudes?! High five! (Go ahead hand just hit your palm on any sturdy part of your monitor…that counts.)

First off, I completely rewrote the search. The search has sucked for a long time here and there was no excuse because I’ve written many good searches for all the sites I’ve worked on professionally, so now Hell Yeah Bitch! .com has a good search. Secondly, I added that spiffy new “Top 100 tags” doohicky below the big Google ad that none of you click on. That gets rebuilt once a day and shows…well, I think you know what it shows. Thirdly, I stared at my computer screen for two days while alternating between looking at pictures of chicks sucking on a banana and Dexter episodes.

So now what do I do? I’ve been toying with a section that displays old articles that are related to the articles on the front page, but is that enough? The tough thing is, this is something that no other “blog”-type sites really do. Suggestions? Examples? Praise for my current plan of attack?

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Gratuitous Kate Beckinsale and Friends Photo #41

Posted on December 1, 2006 by Mike

Online gossip queen Perez Hilton is being dragged into the courtroom for using copyrighted pictures owned by some of the largest paparazzi agencies in the US. I have zero doubt that he will either pay them a ass-load of money in a settlement or he will pay two ass-loads in court because he will lose this case. The proof is pretty astounding and all over his website. You know, those pictures with the stupid drawings of dicks and the words “slut”? How do you come up with gold like that? He must have a team of 13 year old boys working day and night to dream up amazing comedy like that. Seriously though, the real irony of the stupid drawings is that he started doing that because people were stealing his images…and by his I mean the copyrighted images that he never owned in the first place.

I used to read Perez regularly. In fact he made frequent visits here and left a few comments, but I really think he started to suck when he became BFF’s with Paris Hilton. Now all he does is basically run her guerrilla PR campaign by slamming the people she hates and telling stories about how wonderful she is. I’m not usually one to slam a guy for taking on an impossible job, but he must be retarded. I just picture him at some club telling Paris how great she is while holding her hair as she pukes on stage between her “songs”. You not only sold your soul to the devil, but you’re also holding her hair…a small price to pay for fame right?

To sum up: Perez Hilton is getting sued. He’s become the douchey lapdog of Paris Hilton, and he’s not funny. Everyone knows the secret to being funny is spit takes…and something tells me Perez rarely, if ever, spits.

Now take a look at some of these fine copyrighted images of Brooke Burke:

If you promise not to sue me, there are two more copyrighted images of Ms Burke after the jump.

… Continue Reading

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More Updates to the Mobile Blog Reader

Posted on October 16, 2006 by Mike

Isn’t it great when you invent something on your personal website that you can use on a project at your new job so you basically get to spend a day working on improving your personal project while getting paid?

Here’s the changes to our Mobile Blog Reader:

I gutted the MagpieRSS core and poured in a new SimplePie core. SimplePie does somethings I had to write myself in the first version all by itself, plus gives us more flexibility for the next feature. That and development is actually moving forward as opposed to lifeless and cold like a CSI extra.

We now support the reading of podcasts! Try the Naughty Sheets feed, its a podcast of erotic stories, found it on Google today. For each post that has an associated mp3 file, it loads an instance of a flash player and allows you to play the podcast right there on the page. Very cool.

I also changed socks half way through finishing this up tonight. I was walking in the linoleum closet I call my kitchen and I stepped in some water. I hate it when that happens.

If any of those changes bothered you, let me know. If you find a bug, let me know. If you love it, let me know. If you hate it, let me know. If you are hungry, here’s a suggestion…make a bread pizza.

More: Mobile Blog Reader Upgrade

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Gratuitous Kate Beckinsale and Friends Photo #34

Posted on October 15, 2006 by Mike

Well This Weekend Didn’t Go As Planned
Crap. I went on a mini-vacation from Thursday until now. I didn’t mention it because I assumed I would have no issues with internet connectivity as well as have a little time to be able to post a few things to the site. Neither happened. If I was a big guy that crushes beer cans on my head and wears a constant supply of polo shirts I would have just picked myself off the ground and said “My bad!” as I pounded my chest and continued with a “That one’s on me. On me!”

As a peace offering I now give you three Carmen Electra pictures

Per my agreement with the Devil in which he got my soul and I got the last piece of pie last Thanksgiving…there are two more pictures of Carmen after the jump.

Oh and one more thing: Go Cards! …and all hail our new power-hitter So “The Guch” Taguchi.

… Continue Reading

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Mobile Blog Reader Upgrade

Posted on October 6, 2006 by Mike

Today the Mobile Blog Reader got a mini-upgrade. You could always simply enter the base url of the desired site and we would find the RSS feed for you and display it, but I also heard requests for the ability to put in a RSS url directly and have that pull up. Well you can do that now too. So you can either enter a website and we’ll do the work or you can input a link right to a RSS file and we’ll display that for you too.

Finding time lately is an issue, but if I can, I have a few other features for the Mobile Blog Viewer soon. As always, if any of you have feature requests, I’d love to hear them.

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Video Comments Movable Type Plugin

Posted on September 11, 2006 by Mike

What?

This plugin allows a Movable Type blog to give the readers the chance to comments via video. The video is uploaded and encoded into flash video (like on youTube) and then displayed in the comments of an article with the use of an open source flash video player.

Requirements

This plugin isn’t as straight forward and many others. The reason is, you need to have FFMPEG installed on your websever in order to encode the video correctly. However, installing FFMPEG is only the beginning, because you can / should also compile FFMPEG with any number of extras in order to handle the myriad of different video types out there.

The Plugin File: videoComment.pl (Update: Dreamhost made some change with their servers, so I had to remove the .pl extension. Download the file at the updated link and add the .pl extension yourself. Sorry.)
FFMPEG: http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/
Flash Video Player: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=Flash+Video+Player

Features

This first release features:

  • Upload and auto-encoding to a directory of your choice.
  • Zero code changes to any Movable Type scripts, just modify the comment form on your template.
  • Zero additions to the Movable Type database.
  • When a comment is deleted in the Movable Type interface, its associated video content and screenshot is removed automatically.

Demo

As of right now, no demo is available at Hell Yeah Bitch! .com. I will post on tonight, after Dreamhost fixes their network connectivity issues. (No use in demoing a video upload, with the speeds are this slow.)
Update: Dreamhost seems to have gotten us to move at least a little faster. You can now see a demo in the comments form of every post, but please use this article’s comments for discussion and testing.

Install

  1. Check to see if your web server or web host has FFMPEG installed and configured. If not, you will need to do this yourself or request that your system administrator install it for you. For help configuring and installing FFMPEG with all the video decoding ability your site needs, see http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ and http://hellyeahbitch.com/archives/2006/09/081009
  2. Download the Flash Video Player, and “install” by putting the flash player file in the root of your web directory.
  3. Now, download the plugin file, and place it in your $MT_DIRECTORY/plugins directory
  4. Modify the plugin file at the top to set the directories that you want your video comments to reside and where the plugin should place the temporary files before they are deleted.
  5. Modify the HTML form in your comments template to accommodate the uploading of the video file. To do this, modify your form to this general example:
    [Your current form's contents]

    < input tabindex="6" name="video" type="file" / >
    [Submit button]
  6. Lastly, the plugin will give you two new tags for use in your comments templates. They are for use in between your tags. They are: < MTIfVideo >, <$MTShowVideo$>. The first is used to check to see if the comment being displayed has video content with it, the second is used to show said content. So in your comments showing area of your template, you would put something like

    < MTIfVideo >
    <$MTShowVideo$>
    < /MTIfVideo >

    After the rest of your comment tags.

  7. Your done.

    8. Like I said, its not as straight forward as most plugins are, but with a little work on the FFMPEG install, you can get your video comments working just fine.

Hopes and Dreams

- Hopefully Dreamhost will fix the problem tonight and I can post up a demo.
- Hopefully I will figure out how to install faad2 on my Dreamhost shared server account so that you can upload video with AAC encoded audio for use with the comment system.
- Hopefully I’ll get at least enough response and bug reports to tap out a new version sometime soon and possibly figure out a way to kill a few steps in the install process.

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Comments on the Mobile Blog Viewer

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Mike

Some recent comments from bloggers on our Mobile Blog Viewer:
Craig Burton:

I received a comment about my efforts to create a mobile feed from my web site. Here is the comment.
Try this: http://hellyeahbitch.com/mobile Makes a mobile version of any site with a RSS feed, just plug in the URL. No logins or anything.
Wierd url but it seems to work. What can I say?

Doc Searls has the same quote on his blog today as well.

We also received a comment from Make Magazine’s Phil Torrone on his flickr post:

… – neat, thanks!

Phil Torrone thinks its neat. Seriously, thats awesome.

Its great to see such a simple thing with minimal options do as well as it is. I mentioned to Craig on his blog that if the level of traffic keeps this high, I might be moved to giving it its own “proper” domain name. We’ll see if the traffic stays this high, but either way, its cool to see people using it and giving good feedback.

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View Mobile Versions of This or Any Other Blog

Posted on August 18, 2006 by Mike

Quick version:
After frustration over viewing blogs on my cell phone, I made not only a mobile verion of Hell Yeah Bitch! .com, but an interface that any mobile user can use to view any site with an RSS feed and not be bothered by excess styling and such. Check it out right here: hellyeahbitch.com/mobile

Long Version:
I recently got a Windows Mobile Smart phone (the T-Mobile MDA) and I love it. However, I soon found out that trying to read a website on it sucked. I really like the RSS reader PRSS, but I’m not much of a “feed collector” I’m old school in the way that I just like to visit sites and read whats there. I was beginning to think that everyone just used RSS readers on their mobile devices until I read Robert Scoble issuing my very same complaint on his site earlier this week. Robert followed up that complaint with jubilation today as he demoed Dave Winer‘s mobile version of TechCrunch: techcrunch.scripting.com Give it a click and check it out. Its just the content part of TechCrunch with little to no styling. For Robert and I, it was the answer to our dreams:

This rocks. Rocks. Rocks. Now I can read TechCrunch while walking around tonight’s TechCrunch party.

I hope Dave wraps up this server-side aggregator and gets every blogger to implement it so I can read every blog on my phone.

Thanks Dave for scratching my itch.

I commented on this article too with equal excitement. But after thinking about it for a second, I decided to wait on Dave, but instead make my own. So after an hour of coding and a few hours of playing with it, I give you the Hell Yeah Bitch! Mobile Site Viewer (hellyeabitch.com/mobile) Its simple. Its easy. It does just what I want it to do and nothing more.

Yes, I know about Bloglines Mobile. But I prefer this. With our version you don’t need to sign up, or create a site list of your feeds, all you do is just plug in a URL and read what they have in there feed. It doesn’t keep track of what you have read and what you haven’t. It never will. This isn’t an RSS reader, this is just a way to view a site in a nice format for your mobile device. I have an RSS reader app on my T-Mobile MDA, and I still will. I will use the Hell Yeah Bitch! Mobile Site Viewer to read any and all blogs (or anything with a feed) that just need to peak at and read.

Notes:
I said “blog” because the app is dependent on the target site having a RSS feed. Specifically RSS. At this time it doesn’t support a site that just has an ATOM feed. UPDATE 8/22/06: It now supports ATOM feeds.

If you use the option to remove HTML from the listings, I still translate new line characters into
‘s so the paragraphs stay correct.

Yes, unlike Dave Winers, I styled the page with a little bit of CSS. If you want to turn that off you can with the “No Styling” option. I’m sorry I can’t send something out the door with out at least a little subtle styling…it’ll catch cold!

I should say that its built off of MagpieRSS which is great.

Future features? If more people than me end up using this, I would love to put a list of the most viewed sites on the front page. Kind of like community bookmarks. Other than that, I see no more features added. This was meant to be simple. It will stay that way.

Like I said before, I made this in a little over an hour earlier today so there will be a few bugs that I haven’t caught in my use in the last few hours. Please contact me with any bug reports, feature requests, or undying affection you have for me.

Ok I have to stop writing this and playing with the code, my girlfriend is yelling at me from the living room, I should go. (Yeah, the mobile web is cool, but this is a living, breathing girl!) Please leave any notes here or contact me directly.

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Are There Other Sites Like Hell Yeah Bitch! .com?

Posted on February 13, 2006 by Mike

A few…at least according to BlogCode. BlogCode is a place where you can signup (or not) and “code” blogs by using nifty sliders to describe its level on many different questions. They then take that data, roll it into a ball and send it through the old Mouse Trap board game, and on the other side pops out a list of the sites / blogs that are most like the site you “coded”. Not exactly sure how one can tell if its working correctly, but its yet another cool idea I didn’t think of and a good way to find new content on the web.

Here is the list of sites like Hell Yeah Bitch! .com. Do you think the other sites on this list would like to know that their site is just like one called Hell Yeah Bitch! .com? I didn’t think so either.