It may not be obvious, but the bottom image now has an ALT tag on it, meaning it's easier for people using screen readers, who have their graphics turned off, who surf the web with a text only browser or who might be on a handheld device.
An ALT tag is a simple bit of code that goes on the end of the image source, which describes what's in the image being shown. The more technical definition is
As I've said before, I use Picasa for most of the images here, preferring it to the integrated blogger image upload system. To add an image to the blog, what I have to do is copy and paste the code from Picasa to the blog and delete the album hyperlink that comes with it. It's pretty much the same as how I described putting comment buttons on a blogspot blog.
So now, when I have my image code in:
I just type in
alt="description of what I'm describing"
before the closing > bracket, as highlighted below:
And that's it! I'll just need to improve my skill at describing what's in a photo. If you have any helpful suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
Wordpress.com users, rejoice. In your image insert function, you can easily specify the alt text, or caption, as shown below.
A huge thank you to Digital Darragh for advising me to do this (albeit ages ago!). I hope it improves the experience of this blog somewhat. I'm getting there...
The grafitti/street art by the way is located in a laneway - Palace Street, perhaps - in Dublin 2. Not sure who the artist is but a lot of stuff down there is worth a look.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often."
Aww? Isn't that nice? Comments like that are great. They're why I wrote the beginners guide. They're the ones that Grannymar calls the readybrek of bloggers. Except, in this case, it was spam. Bold Susan or Deborah or whatever you were called.
One name to begin with, but signed Deborah and a link to an insurance website. Spam spam spam.
Many blog writers will be more than familiar with such comments. Wordpress users have their own filters to deal with such, but people new to blogspot/blogger might like to know the following.
Why it happens:
This is just another form of bad advertising. The same way your web email gets "gr0w y0ur pen1$" and "cheap r0llex watch" emails, so some people write comments in the hope that the link they attach will either boost their SEO rankings (how quickly and easily people will find them in search engines) or that you or your readers will click on the link and buy.
Believe it or not, companies actually pay for this. One such site is pictured below:
They advertise how "they hire skilled writers who are trained in creating high quality blog comments. They post relevant comments on websites that have a strong connection to your website’s niche. By posting a username at each comment with a hardlink directing back to your website, our commenter creates a high quality backlink for your site with each comment."
You'll be glad to know though that unless you or a reader clicks on the link, it doesn't work. In January of 2005, Google created a nifty piece of code called "nofollow" which means links in the comment section of Blogspot don't benefit from any Pagerank boost, the very thing the spammers are after.
These companies are out there though and I'm seeing a lot more of their spam creep through. Darren Rowse over at the well-worth-a-regular-read Problogger.net has more on it here. How to recognise a spam comment
Well, like the above, it's usually in the name or the fact they've included a non-relevant URL or website in their comment. As well as the above, I have some examples here:
Example 1: No name provided and a non-descriptive URL linking to a site that could be anything:
Example 2: No name provided, another link to a site that could be anything and a foreign language. (I really hope I'm not deleting a comment that is telling me I've won something.)
Example 3: Sometimes they're nice comments! However, given the facts that no name is provided, I guess we can say they're probably more spammy than not.
Example 4: We have a name, we have a decent, relevant comment but it's still bad advertising, it's still a link to a site I have no relationship with, so it still gets deleted.
What you can do about it.
Your first visit should be to your Dashboard. You can then choose Settings and then Comments and set things up there, from who you want to comment on your blog to whether you'd like to enable comment moderation or word verification.
If you enable comment moderation, you can view new comments and approve or reject them before they appear on your blog
If you enable word verification, this will require your readers to enter a unique code - or captcha - when they comment which will deter automated comment spamming systems.
You should also ensure you have your email address entered in the Comment Notification Email section, which will ensure you get an email whenever anyone leaves a comment. I have a filter set up in my Gmail meaning every comment goes to a special marked label and is easy to find.
What I do is delete all of the spam comments I get, usually immediately but always as soon as I can. It's just a matter of clicking the little delete/trashcan icon on the comment itself.
I hope that helps someone. If you happen to think though that this is far too basic, that people must or should know this information already, do spare a thought for Rhonda:
Check out the Quick Online Tip to help you locate the ANY key on your keyboard.
I've been using my Nokia N95 8GB for almost a year now and have managed to accumulate a serious amount of internet bookmarks.
I have two varieties of bookmark - links I use, like Gmail, mobile Twitter, Facebook, RTÉ mobile and so on, and then there's the ones I see linked to, click on to save and read later but rarely get back to. I needed to save all these bookmarks to read on my computer.
I went googling last night on how to copy bookmarks from the phone over. Whatever search terms I used didn't bring me up what I was looking for until I found this 2007 post on n95blog.com detailing how you might want to:
isolate the .nbu files, convert them to .nfb and then export to HTML with another program
and ending with the writer admitting "I haven’t tested this, but it seems to be possible." Yikes.
Reading on though I found a simpler comment on what to do, which worked. So, following from my "How to comment on a blog" and "How to embed YouTube videos into your blog" posts, here's my beginners guide on how to copy the bookmarks you create on your N95 8GB to your internet browser. At least, it worked for me...
I'm using Vista Home Premium SP1 on an Acer Aspire laptop. I assume the instructions below can be adapted for your own computer set-up. My browser is Firefox 3.0.5 but we'll be using IE as well. Please make sure Internet Explorer is closed before you start this.
Assuming you have the Nokia PC Suite installed (if not, download from here), connect your phone and select PC Suite. You're finished with your phone for now.
On your computer Start menu, go to All Programs -> Nokia -> Nokia Nseries -> PCSync.
When the PC Sync window opens, choose Settings and you should see something like the below:
Select Bookmark Items and then click on the Bookmark tab.
I've chosen to Export to Microsoft Internet Explorer (even though it's not the browser I use) as it seems to be easier for the exporter to work with this. Click OK at the bottom and then click Synchronise Now on the next screen. It should only take a moment and when done you'll see something like the below:
When finished, it's simply a matter of going to File -> Import... in your Firefox browser:
Choose to import from Microsoft Internet Explorer
Select Favourites and then click Next > and that should be it! I now have a folder in my favourites called Mobile bookmarks which I've synced with my Google Bookmarks meaning they're accessible to me anywhere.
A bit easier than searching for .nfb and .nbu files, eh? I hope that helps someone.
If you have any hints or tips, suggested applications requested how-tos for the N95, please let me know and I'll see what I can do. I'm still only learning my way around it and am open to learning and sharing any hints and tips!
And here's how it's done. This may seem complicated at first glance but if you do it once, it should be easy and I hope the screenshots help. Please note - this is only the way I do it - if you know of an easier method, please do share!
1. Go to Iarfhlaith's website where he's made this zip file of his buttons available for download. Leave a comment to say thanks ;o) Extract all the buttons to a folder on your computer.
2. Go to http://picasaweb.google.com - this is a photo and graphic site from Google, and works well with blogspot/blogger. I use Firefox 3.0 for blog writing.
Upload all the buttons to a new Picasa album using the easy upload form. You'll end up with an album looking similar to this:
3. Write your blog post as per usual, keeping Picasa open in a separate tab. Once you've finished your post and are ready to add in your comment button, go to where Picasa is open. Choose and click on the button you'd like to add. For this example I'll choose green.
4. Click Embed image on bottom right. Tick the Hide album link box.
5. Right click with your mouse to copy the code.
and then paste the code into your Edit Html tab - after all your text. It will look something like this:
6. Then, switch over to the Compose view
select/highlight the comment button by clicking on it
and centre it using the centre button.
You're nearly finished, I promise. After you fill out your labels and everything, all you have to do is publish your post. First though...
7. Open a new tab with your blog in it.
Press publish on your new post. Once it's published IMMEDIATELY choose to Edit this post again.
8. Go to the tab with your blog in it and click F5/refresh. You should see your new post there. If everything looks okay, go right down to the end of the post and you'll see a link for 0 Comments. Right click (in Firefox anyhow) and choose to Copy Link Location.
9. Return to your Edit post tab and go to the bottom where you'll see the code for your comment button. Select the URL for the button, then highlight and replace with the comment link.
So the code ends up looking something similar to
10. Press publish and that's it! As I said, it appears daunting at first glance, but follow the step-by-step process and you should be fine. It takes me only a couple of seconds each time I do it at this stage :o)
Give it a go and let me know how you get on, please. Any questions, please do let me know.
1. Sign into your blogspot account as per usual and choose to create a new post.
2. Depending on where you choose to place your video in the post, either write your text before putting the video in or wait until after.
3. In a new tab/window, go to YouTube.com and decide what video you'd like to select.
I chose Rick O' Shea's interview with Mundy at OXEGEN yesterday, not least becauseI needed at least one OXEGEN post it's funny to see Rick taking photos on his N95 in it...
4. To the right side of the video you'll see the EMBED code.
Just left-click on the code to highlight it all and right-click and choose to copy it to your clipboard (or CTRL-A, CTRL-C and CTRL-V or whatever you find best) :)
6. Return to your blog post screen and switch to the Edit Html view.
7. Paste in your YouTube embed code - it will look something like: And that's where your YouTube video will appear in your post. You can write as much text as you like before and after it, or indeed just paste it in and publish, it's up to you.
There are probably easier ways of doing it, but that's what I find works for me :) And if it doesn't work the first time, just try again!
Nothing left but to enjoy the video and comments from the people you share it with.
Any of the things I write on this blog are my own opinions and should be treated as such. They are neither a reflection on or the opinion of the companies that I work with. I also do not write posts that have been paid for or requested by employers.
Given all that though, I still hope you enjoy them :)
