I’ve a handful of articles and blog posts that have been DUGG to frontpage, and I can say that I’ve had different experiences from each of them. But the few times my stuff had been voted up to front page, one can draw conclusions about the way the DIGG crowd thinks.

Here’s a brief rundown of my DUGG postings:

• On ForeverGeek, my beginner’s guide to podcasting (DIGG link here).
• On the J Spot, my guide to getting free US and UK incoming telephone numbers from anywhere in the world (DIGG link here)—reached frontpage, but was buried and marked “inaccurate” because the server hiccupped due to the sheer rise in traffic during the time at front page.
• My article on VPNs at bLaptops—nearly frontpaged (DIGG link here), but again it was buried and marked “inaccurate” because a glitch in the blog’s layout caused the content to be hidden in IE (stupid IE).
• On ForeverGeek, my post about the Windows vs Mac OS X issue being about the “maximize” button (DIGG link here).
• Several other places, I’d rather not disclose.

And what have I learned from this? Well, to get DUGG, you have to know what interests the DIGG crowd. Notable among these are:

• People love to argue – e.g., Windows vs. OS X.
• People love free stuff – e.g., free calls, free software, etc.
• People love new stuff – e.g., new gadgets, new ways to do things.
• People love how-to’s – e.g., hacks, tutorials.
• It pays to have a lot of friends. Even better, it pays to have influential friends – Bring on the DIGG army!

Check it out at ForeverGeek. Please feel free to comment either here or there.

It’s as simple as signing up for an account with FWD, downloading a SIP-enabled VoIP client, and signing up for a DID (direct international dialling) account with IPKall or CallUK.

Here are the steps

1. Sign up for an account with FWD. Freeworlddialup will then assign you a “telephone number,” in xxxxxx format. This will be your SIP (session initiation protocol) number, which other VoIP users can use to call, via xxxxxx@fwd.pulver.net. If they’re using FWD, they just dial your number.
2. Download and install an FWD-compatible client. You can use any SIP client, but you’ll probably spend some time configuring for FWD. I suggest you download a client pre-set for FWD already, such as Pulver’s own communicator. But if you want to go lite, download SJPhone instead (choose the one marked as FreeWorldDialup softphone. It’s free and it takes only minimal CPU and memory load. There are even versions for the PocketPC (yes, I’ve tried it and it works—I was able to turn a WiFi-enabled iPaq into a mobile phone of sorts).
3. Sign up for a free DID number from IPKall (US) and/or CallUK. These services will assign you a US or UK telephone number, and calls made to those will be redirected to your FWD number.

For instance, my US number is +1-425-906-3733. If you call this number, you will be redirected to my VoIP client, which is 635397@fwd.pulver.net, or simply 635397 if you’re calling from within FWD.

If you’re in the US, you would probably spend a lot less if you call this (425) number than if you were to call my Philippine telephone number.

The catch is, you have to be online (and have to have a headset or a laptop with a mic ready) to receive calls. However, you can activate the free FWD voicemail to pick up when a call is unanswered or when you are offline. Messages will then be sent to your email as .MP3 files.

If you’re running an offshore business that caters to US or UK clients, this might come in handy. You can even route these calls to your office PABX so you can receive calls as if you had your own US number.

Outgoing calls

Making outgoing calls is trickier, as you have to subscribe with your provider to get outgoing access (this means you have to pay!). FWD and Skype allow you to dial out to 1-800 nunmbers for free, though, so you can still use this to call toll-free company hotlines.

Other options?

There may be other services that allow you to set up DID numbers from other countries. Just make sure these are SIP compatible, or even better, already FWD-compatible.

Also, if you already have VoIP hardware that supports SIP (Such as a USB plug-in phone, or even a phone that plugs in directly to ethernet), having a US and UK number would be very handy!

Of course, there are other options, such as SkypeIn, but this would cost you monthly subscriptions. If you’re going for free, then the SIP+DID option would be the way to go.

DIGG this article!

Sometimes you’ll scratch your head, asking yourself why didn’t I think of that?

And I think this last one is good.

Discussion vs. Readership

I’d prefer to quantify and qualify attention better through the number and relevance of comments that blog posts get rather than just the raw number of pageviews for that entry. Why? Sure, you may get a lot of readers loading up your articles. But unless you can get a good discussion going from your post then there’s probably something wrong, which can be any one of the following.

• Your blog software or design is crappy and people are having a hard time submitting comments.
• Your post is worth the few seconds of reading, but that’s about it.

When readers talk back, it means they like what you’ve written and would like to contribute their two cents’ worth. This means your blog post is worth ranting or raving about or on. At the very least this would mean that your readers feel proud to tell the rest of the world that they read your blog!

Style and Substance

However, it’s usually not enough to be just funny, snarky, or satirical. Sometimes this kind of writing might be interpreted as being attention-seeking or bordering on despair, with the writing’s or the blog’s raison d’être being just that—to seek attention. Your writing should be backed with substance in order to be truly worth reading and writing about.

Here are a few tips I can offer from what I’ve learned in the course of my pro-blogging. Let’s not focus on picking themes or niches for your blogs for the meantime, and let’s narrow in on writing one single blog post. Pretty soon you might want to apply this to each and every blog post you write.

1. Pick an interesting topic and learn all there is to know about it. This may be a current event or a hotly-contested issue. But I think it’s best to be unique and try to zero in on something no one else is noticing, but you know you can write effectively about. Be creative.
2. Make a strong point and take a stand. If you will just echo what everyone else in the blogosphere is saying then your post is probably not worth the fuss. True, it may make for good reference, but that’s just about it. Express your opinion and express it clearly, concisely, and unequivocally. Speak up.
3. Write with conviction and confidence. Readers love it when they see someone expressing their own opinion and doing so with passion. You are more likely inspire your readers to do the same. Move mountains.
4. Invite discussion. Your readers would hate it when you shoot down each and every dissenting comment on your posts. Agree to disagree. Welcome even the people who don’t share your own opinions. Talk and talk back!

Controversy is good

I’m of the opinion that a blog is only half-complete without active discussion from its readers. This is why I’d rather allow commenting without moderation and clean up spam post-fact—those that slip through spam filters at least. I’m thankful for all of you who have been actively posting here. I’m actually also happy that the J Spot has had a higher comment-to-post ratio since I moved from i.PH to my own hosted WP installation. Somehow my old design, layout and blog software were just not comment-friendly. I’ve changed the format of my blog, too, since then. I’ve focused on writing more substantial material rather than just simple “read this, this is cool,” posts.

Here’s a case I’d like to highlight my point with. A few days ago, I wrote on FG about something I read up regarding Wikipedia (as pointed out to me by Corsarius). I made some strong assertions, and I drew some flak from commenters who thought otherwise. They had good points—some probably better or more valid than mine. But I chose to take a stand. True, I downplayed some points by responding with humor, but that’s to entertain the dissenters and not turn them off.

Controversy is good. And it’s even better when you have great arguments to back up each and every side. That’s how you can blog and get noticed!

Say, I want to check out trends in the search volume for “blog” and the plural “blogs” for the past couple of years, I get this result:

The blue line would be for “blog,” while the red for “blogs.”

So clearly, more people search for the singular rather than the plural form of “blog,” and this trend has been on the rise ever since. The tool also marks the peaks, or high points in search frequency, and gives the details on the particular top search results during that period.

What’s great is that this tool also gives you the trends in how often the searched keywords appear in Google News items, another great way of comparing across keywords or phrases.

Another good feature is the geographic aspect of the search trends. Trends gives information on the top searching countries, cities, and languages for the queried keywords.

Now what good is this for SEO? It helps you identify which keywords or phrases are best to use, when coming up with content for in-site optimization (i.e., keyword density) or link anchors for off-site optimization (i.e., backlinks). Do check out the SEO Philippines blog if you’re interested in making your blog more search-engine friendly.

Or perhaps you’re just interested in checking out what people are looking for—Trends would come in handy for this, as well.

More information on Trends can be found on the About Page.

Great! Now I can reactivate my Google Analytics account. A few months back, I accidentally deleted my website profiles, and I couldn’t create new ones, with Google temporarily suspending creation of new accounts and profiles.

I’m not so sure, though, whether Analytics is as good as it’s hyped to be.

(via DIGG)

What’s a better way to make Windows XP boot up faster than doing a fresh install?

Yes, it’s as simple as that–or complicated if you have a lot of apps to reinstall.

I recently made fresh installs of XP on my desktop and laptop, and got quite a performance boost.

In fact, many techies would recommend reverting to fresh installs every so often (about once every six months) to declog your system of all that unneeded junk you tend to collect in the course of your everyday computing and Internet browsing.  I’m not sure about the case of Linux users, since it’s either their systems are stable enough even after months of heavy use, or because it may be too tedious to do that reinstall after all the kernel and app modifications.

Of course, part of the fresh Windows installs include the requisite AVG antivirus and Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D anti-spyware.  And make sure you update your Windows XP with Service Pack 2, if not already embedded in the installation (older copies are likely to have only SP1 or none at all).

If you’re frustrated that your browser’s search function can’t search across text areas and fields, despair not.  The local search function of Firefox can actually search within these areas not normally searchable by Internet Explorer’s own search tool.  By default, you will not be able to search within text areas, form and whatnot, but if you use the “Highlight all” button, you actually extend the search across all the content in the page.

So for instance, you press Ctrl-F and type in a keyword, the live search will automatically lead you to the first instance (even without pressing Enter).  But if your text is inside a text form, the browser will not be able to find it.  But if you toggle on “Highlight all,” and scroll across the text content, you will notice that matching words/phrases are now highlighted!  You can try it in the comment area below!

I was hooked with Firefox from day one. I ’d been following Mozilla’s releases since they came up with their first beta releases. I actually switched from the full Mozilla suite to Firefox when I heard about how fast, light and secure it was.

Mozilla has more or less perfected version 1.0x; they’re now at stable release 1.07. Now version 1.5 is under development–in fact, Mozilla has recently released 1.5 beta 2 for public use and testing.

I recently downloaded version 1.5 beta 2.  Read my initial revew at Pinoy.tech.blog.

The BSA’s

“Great Raid” on establishments using unlicensed proprietary software,

dubbed Oplan Crackdown, is just another wake-up call to end-users,

business or individual alike, that it does pay to use properly-licensed

software.

But with software prices still at astronomical levels, especially in

the local retail market, the ordinary Filipino computing public may

still feel disccouraged from buying the real McCoy.

Read more at Pinoy.tech.blog.

Here’s an article written mid-2004 comparing Dashboard and Konfabulator.  From Daring Fireballs:

A sliding puzzle. A calculator. A clock. A little notepad. Tiny

little applets — little pieces of software that are something less

than full applications themselves, but which run alongside real apps

and are easily accessed at any time.

Obviously, Apple ripped off the idea for Dashboard. Stolen

wholesale, without even the decency to mention where they took the

original idea.

Which, of course, would be the desk accessories from the original

1984 Macintosh — conceived by Bud Tribble and engineered (mostly) by

Andy Hertzfeld.

Notwithstanding these debates, I’m enjoying the use of both!