Tag: obsession

Making WordPress act like Posterous

Dave

I think Posterous is a great platform, and a really simple and flexible way to start “or reinvigorate” a blog. I started using it because it lets you post by email, and tell it where you want your text and photos to go. So if I take a picture of The Boy and want to put it on Facebook and Flickr, I email it to facebook+flickr@posterous.com. Posterous knows my email address and thus knows how to find my particular Posterous site.

Here’s the only thing I don’t like: If I post a photo via Posterous to my “this” blog, the photo doesn’t live here, it lives at Posterous and links from here to there. Now I wish the Posterous folks a long and prosperous career, and from what I’ve seen “and the support I’ve gotten when asking questions” they deserve it.

But if they go away, I don’t want my photos to go with them. Even if they don’t go away, I want control of my own photos. I’ve had a blog on Typepad since 2003 and the only reason I’m still paying the $8.95 a month is because all my images are there. I don’t want that to happen again.

So here’s what I want. I want to be able to use this blog just like Posterous. I want to be able to post a photo or text via email and/or a Web and iPhone app and tell it where I want it to go: blog, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or some combination of the above.

I want to be able to tag the post and decide what category it goes in.

If it’s a photo, I want it to come in full size in Facebook, because I’ve noticed that people don’t comment so much on the smaller photos.

If it’s text, I want it to come into Facebook and look the same way a status update does, because I’ve noticed I get far fewer Facebook comments on my Networked Blogs posts than on a status update or Facebook note. I think as Facebook traffic builds, people are less likely to click on something that takes them out of their stream and away from Facebook.

All of these services have “post here and have it go somewhere else” features or plug-ins. You can post to Flickr and have it post automatically to Twitter. You can post to a WordPress blog and have it automatically tweeted. You can pull your tweets in as your status updates.

I think what I need to do is sit down and map out all the content I share and where I’d like it to go, and see what paths are available. My, doesn’t that sound like fun? Of course, if someone out there has this all figured out, let me know.

Google Buzz is keeping me awake

Dave

A follow-on to my previous post, that’s going to make me sound even more obsessive, but I’m okay with that. I’ve been checking to see if my Google account is enabled for Buzz yet. It’s not, but I can get to it on my iPhone. So far it looks pretty cool; Twitter-like features and a fairly tidy interface that looks like a lot of other Google mobile apps. I found I was already following seven people “how, exactly?” and nine people are already following me, including a couple of people from my contact list and a few I’ve never heard of, who seem to be from a country far, far away.

Turns out one of the folks following me has been busy today and is following 147 people, many of whom I know, so in classic Twitter fashion I was able to build my follower list by poaching his.

Even better “and apropos of my earlier identity crisis” you can search people by their full names, and their full names are displayed, not their Gmail usernames. So far so good, it looks like I’m “David B. Thomas” on Google Buzz, and I might be getting to sleep before midnight.

Then I scroll down the other guy’s follower list. 146 people, all shown in the Firstname Lastname format. And me, shown as “Thomas, David B.”

Should be fun trying to figure that one out.