First things first, you can now log into the service using more than just your Twitter handle.  You can now sign in with your Google login information as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, or Windows Live.  The only thing you have to remember is once you sign in via one of these other accounts, you will need to remember how you signed in before.  (So if you log in via Twitter, always log in via Twitter) 

The also have decided to provide a little more optimized experience when it comes to video playback with their own universal player.  Whenever somebody is viewing your content for their phone (just as an example) they should get a player optimized for mobile devices. When somebody check out your videos via their desktop machines, they get delivered a version of the player that is more optimized for desktop playback.  You can also choose to publish your videos to YouTube (although, depending on the resolution of the video – this may look great or really crummy) or download the video as a .mp4 for backup purposes. 

Here is a quick video to show off some more of the new features:

If you haven’t played around with Screenr yet, there really isn’t any reason not to anymore.  They make it brain-dead simple to get your quick screencast you want to create from your imagination to the public at large.

Building and hosting successful forums on your website can be a lot of hard work.  Just like you would do if you were building a house, you have to build your forums with a good foundation.  Here I have for you seven different successful forum rules you should keep in mind when you either set up a forum script, or look to redo some of your forums to make them easier for users to navigate through.

Here is my general advice for anybody out there looking to start their own forums.

1. Enable Really Simple Syndication
   You want to give people as many routes into your forums as they need.  Making sure your forum has an RSS feed gives your users one more way to keep up to date on what is happening on your forums.
2. Use an SEO Friendly Permalink Structure
   You have to have a good permalink structure to keep the search engines happy, when they are crawling over your forums.  Use page paths like "this-works-great" rather than "index=conversation2".  By using a better permalink structure, you will get ranked a little higher in search results.
3. Only Make the Forums as Complex as You Need
   Do not go overboard adding a new forum category for every wild idea you think people might want to talk about.  Only create a new category or sub-forum if there is a real need or desire for it coming from the people who use your forums.
4. Find Good People to Help You Moderate Conversations
   Once your forums have been up and running for a while, you might look towards the community you have created for people who will help you enforce the forum rules, and keep the forums active.
5. Set Some Basic Rules for Posting
   From day one, you should have a basic list of rules for people to follow.  My best advice for this situation is to keep this list somewhere where everybody can see it, and keep it simple.  If you get too complex with your rules, nobody will read them.
6. Help Feed the Discussions
   Stop in daily and see what conversations you can reply to, and try to find topics of discussion that might get more people to come by and post their thoughts, ideas, feedback or solutions.
7. Link to Your Forums from Other Places
   You need to work hard at getting new links to your forums.  You can do this from your website (if you have one) and other like-minded websites that might share the same general discussion point of your forums.

Have another rule of your own that I might have missed?  Makes sure you leave a comment and share it with the rest of us.  Learn to take care of your little community,  and make sure their needs are being met. Also, always welcome feedback, because if people care enough to complain – it means they want your forums to succeed.

You can do great things, but if nobody knows – did you really do them at all?  After reading a recent interview with Richard Branson, on building a brand for your business, something he said really made me think.

Here is the quote from the British industrialist:

The key to improving sales is to make sure your business or product stands out in the marketplace. We have always tried to ensure that Virgin products are innovative, that they offer good value and that there’s a great attitude about service. When you have those basics right, you need to make sure people know about your business: Too many great businesses remain "well-kept" secrets for too long and never get the attention they need to grow and thrive.

You have to let people know about your business, and what it is you are doing that they might be interested in knowing about. This might seem like an obvious point to make, but sometimes features are overlooked because one man’s boring detail is another man’s press release worthy note.

I want you to make a list of features your product or company might have that are unique. For example, I could say some of the differences Mitchelaneous has with other blogs out there are:

• I am a one man team, doing the designing, writing, and editing
• This blog has been around for six years, which is pretty good if you count it in blog years
• I cover a wide variety of geeky topics that tickle my fancy

Now, let us take a look at this quickly made list.  You might have known I did all of the work on this website and that I write about a geeky variety of topics.  You might not know that I have been blogging here since the year 2004.  So if I was to market one of those three facts to new users, it would be the fact that I am a better established blog than most, because I have been around longer.

So go out there and create some attention for yourself today.  Spread the word about something that is unique to your business, website or project – and make sure people know about it.

The Freebie Marketing Problem

The problem with the freebie business model right now, is that consumers realize they are getting the short end of the stick.  When you can buy a new razor to shave with for only a few dollars, but the razor blades for the razor cost twice as much – you know something has to be wrong.  While this might work for items you buy that are necessary to your life, I would much rather walk around with a large lumberjack like beard before I pay more than I should for a razor I’ll only use for a month or so.

Making Freebie Marketing Useful Again

The best way you can make freebie marketing useful again is to first look at what it is you are offering to the public.  No matter if you are selling shoes, or just writing blog posts – you have something to offer.  Now, I want you to make a list of the features of that product that will help your audience.

I am going to sell a thing-a-ma-jig and it will make you need to sleep less, feel more relaxed and make you smell pretty.

Now, instead of saying you produce this, that or the other – I want you to say that you produce a product that will, well insert what it is your product does here. For example, in the world of web hosting – everybody’s offer looks pretty much the same. A successful web host shouldn’t sell you on the disk space and bandwidth you are getting to start a website – they should be telling you what free things they offer make them better than the web host down the street.  This is a better freebie business model that can work just about anywhere.

Rather than tricking the consumer by getting them to buy expensive extras to use with your service, tell them what free features they get from you product that nobody else out there is delivering.

These are the kind of surprises I like to wake up to in the morning.

Here is a little more about the feature from the Disqus developers:

This feature continues Disqus’ goal to help pull a true community out of the audience that visits your site. Liking comments has been a core piece of Disqus since the beginning, and we’re now extending this feedback mechanism to the top-level page or article itself. Community Likes is an easy, quick way for your visitors to give feedback and make their presence known on your site, all without having to post an actual comment.

You can read more about this innovation here. Now, sure this might be “borrowed” from Facebook, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t worth using.

I have become a big fan of Disqus for managing the comments across my websites. They have really gone from being a lackluster set of commenting tools to one of the best website add-ons very quickly.

Try it out, and see how you like* it.

* – Pun was fully intended.

What have I been hard at work at this weekend?  A brand new layout for Mitchelaneous, my blog for tech tips, web development and geeky entertainment.  Based on the Press Box theme, I think this new layout is easier to navigate and read, but just as feature rich and useful as the old look was. 

Go check it out at Mitchelaneous.com and let me know what you think!

This forum script uses PHP and MySQL to run the backend, so that means that any shared hosting account should be able to host it.  Here are a few more features:

• Comprehensive template system.
• Advanced permission and user management.
• Supports multiple languages at once.
• Open and well-documented source code.
• Tracking of new and old unread topics, not just from your last visit.
• Designed for optimal performance and scalability.
• Multi-media output.

Here are a few screenshots of it in action.  First we have the administrator interface:

Next, we see how the forums would look after you have installed SMF:

If you are looking for support, there are many ways to ask for help.  You have the FAQs, the SMF community, or searching on your own via their web site.  They also have an online manual which has many of its features and other details documented.

First time users might want to check out how to Install SMF or check through the various converters, so you can go from another forum script (like phpBB, vBulletin, IPB, and others to SMF).

Simple Machines Forum is free to use, and easy to customize.  If you are searching for a forum script of your own, you should definitely give it a shot.

Bonus -  be sure to check out our other free forum script reviews!

Here are the key features that I enjoyed the most:

• shorten long URLs (using bit.ly, snurl, twurl or is.gd)
• search tweets using Twitter Search and TweetScan, and follow topics in near-real time with saved searches
• automatically find tweets mentioning your @username

Another thing I really needed, which from what I could tell TweetDeck didn’t provide was multiple account support.  Since I am now working on my own Twitter account and the Lunarpages Twitter account, I needed a way to keep them both separate but running at the same time.

The only annoyance I have found with twirl is that when running multiple clients for multiple accounts, you can’t have one be a different color than the other.  If any developers are reading this, that would be a handy feature to toss in there.

So, twhirl gets my geek candy seal of approval.  Come follow me and see what I am doing throughout the day @mitchkeeler and @lunarpages.

Download Vol 6 Issue #3 of Ping! Zine (.pdf)

If you did not get the paperback copy of the magazine, you can also pick up the digital version from PingZine.com.  If you want to get the paperback version of the magazine for free, check out this special subscription offer from WebHostingShow.com.

Here are a few more details from the developers:

Meteora is built on top of MooTools and the package comes with a full version of that framework. If you’re already a MooTools user you may read Quick start for mootools users, if you have not used MooTools before just keep reading.

After you have uncompressed Meteora, you’ll notice that it’s around 1.1M in size, this is mainly because of all the images it contains, also because it’s distributed with a full version of the MooTools framework. But do not worry about loading times, with Meteora’s automatic dependency resolution your browser will download only the javascript the page needs and nothing more.

I do have to say, some of this looks even easy enough for me to wrap my head around.  These tools would be perfect to slice into your recent project or web page and offer a lot of eye candy and functionality to the mix. 

Not convinced yet?  Check out the demos to see this powerful set of tools at work.