Hello World! It’s a very exciting day here at BlogBurst, as we have launched a brand new sister product, Pluck On Demand. Pluck On Demand fuses together most of the technology we at Pluck and our parent company Demand Media have been perfecting over the years and delivers it to publishers websites with a simple javascript widget.
Pluck on Demand brings together content from a variety of sources — BlogBurst (you should log in to the workbench and make sure you are opted in for “extended syndication opportunities”), Demand Media content from eHow and Expert Village, and third party sources like Tribune Media Services and Encyclopedia Britannica.
Pluck on Demand then scans any page it’s widgets are placed on, and compares the content of that page with the millions of articles in our network using the same contextual matching system we have been using in BlogBurst for our large publishers. The resulting articles are then teased in the widget you have placed on your site.
When people click on those headlines, they are taken to a full article view within the publishers website that also include social media applications (modified from Pluck’s Sitelife solution), and advertising from our third party advertising partners. The publisher gets 50% of the net revenue from the advertising, the content contributor gets 30%, and the balance goes to Pluck.
Yes - content contributors get paid for their content as it gets used. We are very excited about this.
This (awesome) movie describes how and why it works:

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Hi folks, Eric here. I saw this great post on Wired a couple of days ago, and I have been thinking about it a lot. It’s a summary of an interview with Chris Alden, the CEO of Six Apart who make that awesome Movable Type platform, and host Typepad and Vox and are generally on the forefront of new technology. My first blogging platform was Movable Type, and after 6 years of hand-coding even the smallest of changes, I couldn’t believe how much better my relationship with the internet had suddenly become. But I digress…
I will start with my least favorite part of the interview. Kevin Maney claims to have met up with Chris “…over a Belgian Beer….” This made me thirsty and confused, as I had no idea which Belgian beer - they are all so different and I didn’t know which specific beer I should obsess over until the workday was done. Now I will have to sample many to make certain I have the mood just right. But again, I digress…
The general thrust of the interview is that the sputtering economy will lead to a surge in quality and quantity in the blogosphere. Bloggers will certainly start cranking up the quality scale in an effort to assert their personal brand - to show current employers what a smart person they are, and to help potential future employers become more comfortable with hiring them. Also, more undirected time will lead to more time spent creating blog posts (and […]

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 On Wednesday, October 15th, the blogosphere takes on poverty.

Since 2007, coordinators for the non-profit event Blog Action Day choose a topic of global significance and challenged bloggers to dedicate one post to the subject on a particular day.
Blogburst network members participating in the 2008 Blog Action Day include Techcrunch, Mashable, Teeth Maestro, Dave Lucas’ Notes, White African, RotorBlog.com, Everything and Nothing, PROFY, Ari Herzog, Quick Online Times, Serge the Concierge, eHub, The Savvy Entrepreneur, Interactive Agency Malaysia, Gather Little By Little, Constitutionally Right and Urban Workbench. Did I leave you out? Let me know in the comments section below!
From the organizers:
In 2008, the Blog Action Day theme is Poverty. Bloggers are free to interpret this as they see fit. We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.

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Hello friends, Eric here. I recently inherited the gadget beat here at BlogBurst. It’s a good fit for me — I had an iPhone on Day 2, I have Wiis and Zooms and Cameras, Bluetooth is my buddy, WiFi is my friend. I’ve gone to CES twice. I went to the Gadgetopia that is Japan this summer (with my band!). Heck, I even have (and love) a Kindle.
Ah, but the gadget beat is cruel. I have a perfectly wonderful bicycle - strong enough to hop a curb, light enough to get me all over town. Why oh why should i suddenly be coveting a Mountain Bike made of Bamboo? I have fought and clawed to erase the last decade of questionable fiscal policy from my monthly credit card statement, only to start filling my delicious account with links to USB hollywood film kits and Wii Light sabres? My crock pot works just fine thank you, but this one is so much cooler.
Alas alack, there is nothing for me to do but do my best to not fall in love and continue plugging away through all of the excellent gadget reviews BlogBurst members generate every day. Of course I’m not sure if I can afford to not buy my very own indepenedent power station. I will save so much money!!!
What about you guys — has anyone noticed any great gadgets that I can’t live without?

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Copyright © 2008 Stephen Cronin. Visit the original article at http://www.scratch99.com/2008/09/exciting-new-theme/.
This post marks an exciting new theme for More Than Scratch The Surface. Regular readers won’t recognise the site! I’ve extensively overhauled the theme and in this post I explain the changes, the choices I made and why I made them.
Firstly, for my regular readers, if you’re reading this in a feed reader, come on over to the site and check it out. I’d love some feedback from you. And if you find any problems, please let me know.
Screenshots
For posterity, here is a screenshot of both the old theme and the new one:

A New Theme?
Actually, it’s not a new theme, it’s the same theme. I’ve just totally overhauled it to the extent that you wouldn’t know it’s the same theme.
My original plan was to start from scratch and build a new theme from the ground up. However, I’m short on time at the moment, so I decided to just adapt my current theme.
I started by creating the header graphic and the menu section in straight HTML, then modified my current WordPress theme to incorporate it.
Making the new stuff work with the old has resulted in some very messy HTML / CSS. I’m quite irritated by this, so I’m still planning to create a new theme, from the ground up, when I have time.
It’s also not quite finished yet. I have some other features I’d like to add and I’m not quite convinced by some things (the font, […] Read more »

I don’t watch much television but I really enjoy the Olympics! Okay, yeah…enough with the beach volleyball. It’s good but come on. And yes, some of the up close and personal features are way overboard, but the competitions themselves are facinating and often inspiring . I joined the local YMCA after the 2004 Olympics because I got so intrigued with the swimming events, and while Michael Phelps probably wouldn’t be impressed, I can do “the turn” and trust me, it’s cool.
Work and TV schedules often interfere with my Olympic intake so I turn to the blogosphere for help.
Some BlogBurst bloggers have provided some amazing coverage:
Beijing Olympic Games 2008
The Olympics
Fourth-Place Medal, Yahoo! Sports Olympics blog
I also found an article listing some of the olympic athlete’s blogs. Anybody know of any others?

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Titles change the destiny of your posts.

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Howdy folks-
Looks like we got a nice write-up about Blogburst from impNERD.  It is always nice to be appreciated, and in particular I truly think that the piece places the correct emphasis on the value of Blogburst.
Indirectly, the SEO value is amazing. The more eyes that view a post the better. If your post is picked up, you have the potential of tens-of-thousands of eye balls glaring at your post. A few of them might own blogs. They might also click-through to your website and link to it.

The true objective of Blogburst is to get exposure for the everyday blogger. There are certainly some nice knock-on effects, and it never hurts to get some extra quarterly cash if you’re a top performer in our system, but the core purpose for Blogburst is to get a blogger out in front of as many people as possible.
Having this purpose recognized, and reinforced, is a pleasant event. Furthermore, we are always looking for new publishing partners and methods with which we can syndicate and distribute the content within Blogburst - content that we believe to be of high quality, and worthy of distribution.
Kudos to impNERD!

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Copyright © 2008 Stephen Cronin. Visit the original article at http://www.scratch99.com/2008/08/productivity-tips-microsoft-windows/.
Okay, so this isn’t directly related to what I normally write about (WordPress, websites and web development), but if you use Microsoft Windows, these tips may increase your productivity, giving you more time for other things. For me, that’s more time for WordPress, websites and web development!
I should point out that I’m just passing these tips on. They are things I’ve read recently, that have helped me. I decided to put them into a post in case it helps others, and also to remind me what they are, in case I forget!
Tip 1 - Keyboard ShortCuts For Windows
I recently read IntelliAdmin’s Windows keyboard shortcuts you never knew existed! article. It’s two and a half years old, but it’s still well worth it. The tips should work for Vista, although I’m using XP. Let me know if they don’t!
I’ve been using Microsoft Windows for 17 years and have even taught how to use Windows, but there were some shortcut gems in here that even I didn’t know! The really useful ones, that I wasn’t aware of, are:

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Copyright © 2008 Stephen Cronin. Visit the original article at http://www.scratch99.com/2008/07/roundup-work-plugin-news-theme-update/.
This is a brief update on what I’ve been doing, my plans for the site and my WordPress Plugins.
Busy, Busy, Busy!
Work has been pretty busy. For those that don’t know, I head up the web team for a large organization based in Brisbane. The role is mostly management / internal consulting, but with
a little hands on development.
The website uses the RedDot CMS, which is an interesting challenge for me, because it’s a proprietory Windows based solution, and I come from an open source background. I haven’t learnt much about RedDot itself yet, but I’m going to focus on that soon.
We’re looking getting a project off the ground to revamp the intranet site, which I’m very interested in. You’ll probably see some intranet related posts in future as I’ve been reading a lot about this topic.
I’ve also undergone some training in the Prince2 project management and ITIL service delivery frameworks, both of which were fairly intensive.
Because work’s busy, I have less time for my online ventures. It’s a little frustrating, as I have so many things I want to do. At least I enjoy work!
WordPress Plugins
As yet, I haven’t performed any testing of my plugins in WordPress 2.6, but I know I need to do it soon. I’ve had reports that DualFeeds works fine in WordPress 2.6, but don’t know about the others.
There is one very small issue with most of my plugins. WordPress 2.6 may break the Check Version […] Read more »