social media | Technology Bloggers

Letting you know about recent updates

4th July 2012 6 Replies Christopher Roberts

As the loyal readers among you may have noticed, there has been a lack of posting in the last week or so, but don’t worry, this trend shall soon be halted, as there are many new and exciting posts written, planned and on the way very soon.

This article is just to keep you in the loop and let you know what is going on.

Usually, I will endeavour to keep people up to date with updates to the blog via our social channels, specifically Facebook and Twitter. I feel the blog is a place for content, whilst notifying you about updating the ‘frills’ that are the design and functionality updates should be the place of social media.

Social Media Updates

Let me start by letting you know how our social side is currently evolving. A few months ago, Facebook stopped feed compatibility, meaning that if you liked us on Facebook, you no longer got updates regarding new posts. Now however I have linked Twitter to Facebook, so every tweet @tecbloggers tweets is also posted on our Facebook page.

UPDATE: We now tweet under the username @TechBloggers.

This means that you can now receive updates of new posts via your Facebook feed.

Some tweeters like to spam you with content every five minutes, likewise, update Facebook statuses practically all the time. I don’t believe in this, and only post/tweet an update should it be something you may want to know. Updates like small site improvements/issues and interesting content are the sort of thing we use our social media channels for.

Occasionally if I find, or someone brings to my attention something interesting that I think is worth sharing to the community, but doesn’t warrant a post, then it may get shared via social media. Don’t worry about getting spammed if you subscribe, we will only be posting stuff you probably want to know about.

I have also recently added a cover photo to our Facebook page, as it was looking a little bland. I didn’t have any great ideas, but I think it works for now 🙂 If you have any suggestions, by all means leave them in the comments below.

Technology Bloggers Facebook cover photo.

In future, I don’t plan on writing as many of these sort of posts, as I feel it is better to keep you informed via social media, of updates as and when they occur.

If you don’t want to miss out on future update news, subscribe now!

Follow @TecBloggers

In other news…

Top Writers

For a long time now we have had a top commenters widget at the bottom of every page, however the observant among you may have noticed the appearance of a new widget: a top writers list.

I came across the plugin whilst searching for something else, and thought it was a good idea. This is a community blog, so if we highlight the top commenters, why should writers not be recognised too? Well now they are 🙂

The top commenters list excludes administrators and resets every month, the top writers list doesn’t.

Design Updates

Technology Bloggers design is constantly being updated and tweaked. I believe that continuous improvement is important. Most of my time is spent writing and replying to comments, however I do dedicate some time to improving other areas of the site.

One recent update is the removal of the social icons from the sidebar, and the addition of a new set of social buttons to the header. I felt that this area needed a bit more colour, and the buttons bring just that!

More Speed!

A few weeks ago I posted on our social channels:

“Just moved servers in order to speed up the blog 🙂
Do you notice a difference?”

We encountered a few problems, however they were soon sorted out, leading me to later post:

“A few hiccups later, Technology Bloggers is fully functioning and faster than ever!”

The blogs response time was sometimes really quite slow (usually higher than 2000 miliseconds!). I moved the blog to a different server and the response time is now around a quarter of what it was, currently around the 550 ms mark.

That is one reason you may have noticed the blog loading faster, another is because of the relentless efforts that I have been putting into slimming things down and reducing load times.

Google’s Page Speed tools have been very useful, enabling me to see where the site lags, and what can be done to improve it. I think there may be an article on the way soon with more detail on Page Speed, and how I have and am still using the tools to speed up the blog. Watch this space.

Jonny

For a while now, Thursday here on the blog seems to have been Jonny’s day, with him posting a regular feature on a Thursday for more than ten weeks now.

The day is not a dedicated day to the writings of Mr Hankins, however at the moment, I feel it is good that the regular feature is on a fixed day, as it gives consistency. His articles are very popular, and it is a delight every Thursday looking to see what new and innovative topic he has chosen to cover.

Jonny has been busy travelling of late, meaning that last week he was unable to post. Don’t worry though, he already has an article written and lined up for us for tomorrow 🙂

Competition

Just a quick note about a competition I plan on launching next Monday. Technology Bloggers has teamed up with two other blogs, and hopefully will soon be launching a competition in which anyone bar the three prize donors can enter for a chance to win one of three $50 USD prizes in a $150 competition!

UPDATE: This will now launch on Tuesday.

Until Next Time

That’s about it from me now, so remember, if you want to keep up to date, be sure to subscribe to our social profiles, and stay tuned to the blog to see our exciting future unfold…

Create a Google +1 button for an entire site

29th May 2012 7 Replies Christopher Roberts

About a week ago, I posted about how Technology Bloggers now supports Google Authorship, so that writers can now claim posts as their own via linking them to their Google + profile. This article is also about the blog integrating further with Google’s growing social network: Google +.

Until recently it was not possible to create a sitewide Google +1 button, so that users could +1 your entire website; before you only used to be able to +1 the exact page you were on. However thanks to one of Google’s recent updates, it is now possible to +1 an entire site!

If you are a website/blog owner, then this article is probably going to be of particular use to you 🙂

I have recently added a sitewide Google +1 button to Technology Bloggers sidebar, which sits on the sidebar, next to our other social widgets.

To get a +1 button, you need to visit the Google +1 Button customisation page. There you can choose the style of your button, how big it is and the language used. What most people probably then miss is the ‘Advanced options’ link.

Advanced Options

If you click ‘Advanced options’, you get a whole new set of options drop down. One of these options is URL to +1. Usually when you place a +1 button on your site and a user clicks it, it +1’s that exact page. However if you enter your sites URL into the box and then get the code, when a user clicks your +1 button it +1’s your entire site.

For more information on the URL +1’d when users click your button, please see Google’s URL configuration explanation.

Sharing

When someone clicks +1, they will also be given the option to share the content/page to their circles. Usually Google will fetch the page title, and choose a selection of text and an image from the page users are currently on, however it is now possible to customise this too by customising the +Snippet.

Scroll down the page and you are able to select the type of page users are on, is it a local business, article, book, organisation, event, review etc.? You can also choose the title, description and image of the share. If you have created a sitewide share button, usually the button will offer users to share the current page, however by customising the +Snippet, you can make it so that your chosen title, text and image are what are shared, not the one Google automatically selects.

To implement the snippets you just have to add a few meta tags or some HTML code to your page.

Problems

One small problem I have come across when implementing this on Technology Bloggers is that you can’t successfully run 2 +1 buttons on the same page. That means that if you want to have a sitewide button, so users can +1 and share your homepage, and a button on every individual page, where users can +1 and share that page, it is not entirely possible.

The code of the button determines the URL to be +1’d, so it is completely possible that you can have 2 buttons, 1 for the page and one for the site, however the problem is with the +Snippet and the sharing, as both buttons inherit the meta data, meaning that when you share the individual page, it doesn’t share data from that page, but your generic sitewide text, image and title.

It isn’t really a major fault, and with a bit of clever scripting (and a lot of time) I am sure I could get it to work the way I want it to. I am sure Google will release an update at some point which allows you to have 2 +1 buttons, one for the site and one for the page, but in the meantime, we will just have to put up with it not working exactly as we would like it to.

UPDATE: I managed to resolve the problem easier than I thought. I added the +Snippet to the theme header, however told it only to appear on the homepage. The button is designed to fetch the +Snippet from the page users are on, unless the button is designed to +1 a specific URL, in which case, it goes to that URL to fetch the +Snipped – the homepage, where the +Snippet for the entire site is.

You and +1

So what is your opinion on the +1 button, do you use it in the same way/to the same extent the ‘Like’ and ‘Follow’ buttons, or is it not as important? If you own a website or blog, will you be adding a +1 button to it, and if so do you think it is better to have a sitewide +1 or a unique URL +1 button – or both!

How and why has the tablet industry grown so rapidly?

2nd April 2012 18 Replies Christopher Roberts

In 2011, it is estimated that 65 million tablet computers were sold globally. The population of the United Kingdom is currently around 62/63 million strong, meaning that last year alone, more tablets were sold than there are people in the UK. That is a pretty big figure!

Incredible growth

The tablet industry is a technology phenomenon, with regard to its growth rate. The concept for tablet PC’s has been around for a while now, however they have only been seriously released on the market, in force, in the last two years. Apple’s iPad launched in early 2010 (April in the USA, and May internationally) and since then the market has quite literally exploded.

Okay, there were tablets before the iPad, and concepts have been around since the 1950’s, however the tablet industry really ignited two years ago tomorrow, (the 3rd of April 2010) and it is a technology that already has over 60 million users! To put those numbers into perspective, it took Radio 38 years to get 50 million users, television 13 years, and the internet 4. Tablets reached 50 million users in just over a year. See what I mean about rapid growth?

After the initial launch of major tablets, hundreds of firms started to produce their own tablet, submitting their creation to the global market. Why? Well, future trends predict that we are likely to move away from our desktops and laptops and use evermore our tablets and smartphones.

The technology research firm Gartner Inc., predict industry sales to grow to more than 300 million by 2015. 300 million tablets means huge amounts of money being spent by consumers on tablet, and for big firms like Sony, Microsoft, Apple and Samsung, that means huge profits. The industry is now so big, and with such immense growth forecasts, that it is a no-brainer for most tech firms, to enter this lucrative market.

Why tablets?

But why do people prefer tablets to desktops? Well there are a number of reasons. I like bullet points, so here we go 😉

Tablets are very portable – you can take them almost anywhere, and with the likes of Wi-Fi, cloud computing and advances in wireless charging, there will soon be no need to have a permanent workstation
Tablets can do so much! – Most tablets have the ability to do what most PCs can do, so why do we need our PCs any more?
Apps – one thing tablets have that your regular computer doesn’t is apps. Apps are revolutionary and are changing the way we live our lives, as there does seem to be an app for just about everything!
Price – for what they can do, and the speed they can do it at, tablets are extremely competitively priced, especially compared to their PC counterparts, and with tablets, their is no monitor, mouse, keyboard etc. it is all built in
Convenience – tablets often run faster than computers, and can be accessed almost anywhere, making them one of the most convenient devices around, probably why they are becoming a massive hit with businesses around the world
Choice – there are so many firms with a tablet released, you really are spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing!
Social media on the go – tablets and smartphones can provide you with access to social media when you are out and about, and given that most of us use social media, this is a huge positive

The future

Personally, in the future, I believe the device most of us will move to is the phablet. Phablet, what is that? Phone-Tablet. Smartphones revolutionised the way we communicate when out and about, as did tablets. In the future I think we are more likely to see the two come together. Basically tablets getting a little smaller, and smartphones getting a little more advanced.

Why do I think this? Well the smartphone industry and the tablet industry are two tech which are seeing major growth. Everyone wants a tablet, everyone wants a smartphone. In essence, most tablets and smartphones do very similar things, just in different ways. In the future I believe that the two will come together, share their features, and create the phablet!

Your thoughts

What about you though? What do you think about the tablet industry and its growth? Is is sustainable, or just a fad? Will we move away from our high tech craze, or does the future lie with phablets?