First Blog Anniversary
I started this blog exactly a year ago, so today (June 18th,09) is its first anniversary. The blog ‘TheTechTalker.com‘, in early days was called as ‘T3c-n0-cr@t : The Blog-e-zine’. It currently contains 82 posts and 118 comments, and has more than 19,000 hits till now. Unfortunately it also attracts a huge amount of spam posts – fortunately the WordPress spam filters catch most of these.
When I took my first tentative steps into the blogsphere, I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to find enough time to write. But so far I’ve managed to write at-least 3 to 4 posts a month, if not more. While perhaps not every post is a perfectly honed gem, I do try my best to make them interesting and informative.
Going onwards, I would definitely try to write more often and provide quality content.
Thank-you dear readers for watching this space, for allowing my experiences, my thoughts, likes & dislikes.
Look.fo – Simplify Linking To Google Searches
Everybody hates having to copy and paste a link to a Google search? The URLs are often so long, that you can’t cut and paste the whole thing. If you’re having that problem, you should see the simple solution provided by Look.fo. With this site, you’ll be able to create simple links to Google search results, which are much easier to share through any IM client or Twitter. Now, when you want to share a Google search, you can tell your friends to just look.fo/(search keywords). I’ve been trying it out for sometime and it makes sharing Google searches a lot simpler.
This is one of those sites that seem so simple yet they’re very useful. You’ll be quickly drawn in to the site’s simplicity and high usefulness factor. When in doubt, just “Look Fo It”.
Features:
* Get short links for Google search results.
* Create as many short links as you like.
* No sign-up needed.
I tried Look.fo out with something easy like “TheTechTalker” and the site performed well. It quickly formed the URL (http://look.fo/thetechtalker) and the Google search results it returned were accurate enough for me to justify sending that to someone who wants to know more about TheTechTalker.com.
Similarly use http://look.fo/microsoft for search results of ‘Microsoft’. Also, for specific Youtube, Wikipedia and Dictionary Definitions searches:
* For Youtube searches, http://look.fo/youtube-queen
* For Wikipedia entries, http://look.fo/wiki-blogging
* For Dictionary definitions, http://look.fo/define-freaky
Checkout Look.fo for easy sharing of Google Search result URLs. Something different or one should say – a twist in usual URL snipping service!
Get Your Twitter Feed into SQL Server with Tweet-SQL
If you’re reading this post, you’re probably a Developer or SQL Server DBA, and you’re probably into Twitter, so you’re probably going to be interested in Rhys Campbell’s Tweet-SQL.
Tweet-SQL is a set of SQL Server stored procedures that let you work with the Open Source Twitter API just by writing T-SQL code. You can do things like:
* Get the list of people you’re following into a database
* Retrieve their messages into a table
* Analyze who’s following who, and figure out who you should be following
* Compile metrics about what’s going on out there
Tweet-SQL Features
* Simple deployment.
* Simple GUI for configuration.
* Stored Procedures for configuration changes with TSQL.
* Over 30 procedures to interact with the Twitter API.
* Flexible ways to deal with resultsets.
* No unfair licensing restricting you to a single Twitter account.
* Free updates for 1 year.
To get started, you’ll need a 30-day eval copy of Tweet-SQL. It’s free to evaluate, and costs £25 at this point of time.
The Twitter API is pretty darned powerful, and it enables you to do things like:
* Find out who your followers are following, which might be people you also find interesting
* Find influential people in your Twitter network
* Get recap reports of what links have been sent out recently, or what hot topics are out there
* Get peoples’ updates without actually following them directly
* Build a web-based equivalent to TweetDeck, with multiple user functionality
For sample scripts, check out SQLCLRNews, Rhys Campbell’s blog where he posts how-to examples for Tweet-SQL.
Add Video to your Twitter profile
BubbleTweet allows you to add a video to your Twitter profile. This is accomplished by adding a link to your “Bio” section. This link can also be forwarded at will by e-mailing or tweeting it. This way, you can greet your followers in person and cause a better impression, in the hope of consolidating your position in the Twitterverse.