Journal of PlanetMike

Here are a few tips on increasing your Twitter effectiveness

1. Repeat the same tweet day after day. People may forget your information, they need to hear it multiple times.

1b. Corollary: If your information is really important, post the same tweet multiple times per day.

2. Post inane information, such as what you had for lunch. People are interested, and besides, you can’t really say anything substantive in 140 characters anyways.

2b. Corollary: Post more than ten times per hour. For eight to ten hours a day. People want to know what you’re doing throughout the day. “Good morning” or “Good afternoon” posts are helpful.

3. Customize your twitter background with a tiny image that repeats many times. Your artwork isn’t at all distracting when reading an individual post.

3b. Corollary: Customize your avatar with the same image as your background image. Using your existing logo as an avatar is silly.

4. Customize the appearance of twitter pages with different colors and fonts than your existing web site. Using your existing branding and style is silly.

4b. Corollary: Make the fonts and colors you choose as different as possible from your existing marketing materials. Differing styles makes your organization look larger.

5. Only provide links to your own web site. Why take the chance a reader may visit the competition?

5b. Corollary: Only link to your home page. Once someone is there, they can navigate your site to find the details they are looking for.

Jeff Starr wrote back in March about his attempts at keeping scammers and crackers and other undesirables away from his web sites. He’s published his suggested settings for the Apache web server at The Perishable Press 4G Blacklist.

I’m not a fan of adding lots of stuff to my core system files. So I simply put the rules in a file called “perishable-press-blacklist.conf” in my /etc/httpd/conf.d/ directory. If I put them in one of the regular configuration files, such as httpd.conf, I may overwrite the file or forget it’s there. By keeping it in its own separate file, I can more easily tweak the settings.

If you are an active photographer, you should definitely look into using Pixelpost to manage your online photo collection. I’m using it for my Fractal of the Day web site (site is now dead).

From the Pixelpost introduction:

Meet Pixelpost, a small photoblog application that’s a no-brainer to set up and use. It’s perfect for anyone wishing to regularly post their photos on the web like a blog.

Unlike other blog engines out there, Pixelpost doesn’t try to solve all of the worlds problems. Pixelpost simply does photoblogs, and it does them well. If you are looking for a full blown CMS or text-blog, Pixelpost isn’t for you. But if you want something simple, and designed from the ground up for photobloggers, like yourself, you’ve found the perfect app.

Pixelpost is free to use, and is open-source software.

The Pixelpost templating system is a little klunky, but I like that the system is easily extended through the use of addons (the addon concept is similar to WordPress plugins). Check out Pixelpost.