Dogear Nation » Podcast

If you use Google Reader to check your feeds, you might have noticed the new “Send to” button at the bottom right of each article. Here’s how to quickly send items to the dogear-nation tag on del.icio.us to share them with us!

In case the URL you need is a little long to type, here’s the copy-and-paste version:

Name dogear-nation

URL https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/add?description=${title}&tags=dogear-nation&url=${url}&replace=no

Icon URL http://dogearnation.com/favicon.ico

I’ve just refreshed the theme of the blog for the first time in ~2 years. We’d been using the lovely i3theme for a long time, but as the show evolves and brings in new listeners (and as I’ve been curating and progressively improving / upgrading the site) it was time for an update.

The Publicizer theme we’re now using describes itself as having more of a “Web 2.0 look-and-feel” and I definitely like the rounded corners. I’ve made a few small changes to it to make the switch less jarring – I changed the header fonts from Times / serif to Trebuchet / sans-serif, and tweaked the spacing a bit. The essentials are all still here – we’re blue-and-white, we’re all logo’ed up, and the feeds and links are all still right there in the sidebar. The nice prominent search box, clean look and larger text should make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

The look is less Mac-ish, too, and although we talk Apple a lot, the show is definitely not supposed to be all about Macs or iPhones – we love our Windows, Linux, BeOS and DOS-using listeners, too A small annoyance is that you have to click through to an individual post to leave a comment, but I may change that.

All of that is just my opinion, of course, and I am but a humble web monkey. What do you think? As usual, we’re keen to hear your views – leave us a comment, or tweet us

Update: added social network links at the top right, and threaded comments!

Thanks to the nice people at MOO and their magic printing machines, we now have a selection of Dogear Nation stickers to share with our friends and listeners.

Ooooh… ahh…. shiny….

We know that lots of folks listen every week, and we know that many of you are also awesome enough to tag great content for us to talk about in every show. We’re social – we’re on Facebook, we’re on Twitter, we’re on FriendFeed, we love to get comments here on the blog or via email.

We can never get enough feedback, though – so here’s the deal. We’ve got stickers and minicards to share with our friends, and this week we want to send a few to people who “delurk” or “decloak” and get more involved. We’ll pool the names of the folks who tag, comment, email and tweet us this week, and before the show in a couple of weeks (August 21st) we’ll apply complicated randomisation algorithms in order to select a few… let’s say that ten listeners who contribute will receive coveted Dogear Nation swag items[1].

What kind of feedback do we want? Anything you want to share about the show! Constructive criticism is accepted just as much as appreciative remarks. Let’s have some discussion around here. Here are a few ideas:

• what do you like about the show? what could we improve? what topics would you like us to talk more (or less) about?
• do you listen via the blog, via iTunes, or using another podcatcher? why do you choose that method?
• what would you like to see us add to the site? we’re revamping the About page (slowly!), what do you think we need to add over there?
• have you reviewed us on iTunes yet? let us know!
• how long have you been listening? how did you find out about the show?
• is there anyone you’d like us to have on / have back as a guest?
• do you tag for us yet? if not, why not?
• which is your favourite Michael? (obviously, there’s only one Andy, so it’s a given that he’s your overall favourite…)
• have you had a favourite show, joke, or bad impression done by one of the hosts this year?
• feel the need to tweet or blog about us to spread the word about what you think about the show? drop us a link to your content!

We’ll be monitoring the interwebs more closely than usual between now and a couple of hours before the show recording on August 21st, so do get involved. The only “condition”[2] is that we will need some way of contacting you should your name come up. This will probably be via Twitter or email from one of the hosts, so it will certainly help to leave a comment on the blog (you can include and hide your email address in the comment form) or follow us on Twitter (so we can DM you).

[1] The small print: not everyone will necessarily receive the same items. Be aware that these are simple and small tokens of our appreciation to our listeners, not items of massive value, although in 100 years’ time your children’s children will probably find they are worth… pennies.
[2] Additional conditions: this is not a Twitter hashtag spam contest, we are not #squarespace or #moonfruit. Unwrap before eating. Burn before reading. Now go away, or we shall taunt you a second time!

Here at Dogear Nation headquarters we are big fans of the TWiT podcast network. On episode 82 of net@night last week, Amber MacArthur was talking about the Facebook Connect plugin for WordPress, so we thought we’d take a look.

The plugin is a great idea. It lets you use your Facebook profile information as an account on a WordPress site. We just added Facebook Connect here on the Dogear Nation blog, and you’ll see a “Facebook Community” panel in the right-hand sidebar. You can authorise with our Facebook application, and then when you comment on the blog it will use your Facebook profile information. Your comment can optionally also be posted to your Facebook wall / news feed – see the check box just underneath the comment field.

Here’s an example of what it might look like in your Facebook feed.

If you want to add the plugin to your own site, it is worth watching the installation and configuration video as there are one or two steps that you may not be familiar with if you are not a Facebook application developer.

Of course, if you’re not a Facebook user or you want to use your Google Profile to join our Dogear Nation community, we have Google Connect integrated too – it’s right there in the sidebar.

If you’re a Facebook user, you might also want to check out our fan page where we post weekly show updates, photos, and other extras.

We’ve just been doing a little housekeeping around here and this week switched around our hosting setup. For the technically-minded readers, we are now running on WordPress 2.7 and the Blubrry Powerpress podcasting plugin. In practical terms, the site itself should look the same, although I jiggled the sidebar a little.

I’ve tested things myself and it all looks OK on a range of platforms and browsers, and I think the podcast feed should still work… although in my case I had to hit “Update podcast” in iTunes to get episodes to download correctly. If you have an issue, and that workaround doesn’t help, then try resubscribing… we’re really sorry about that.

If our listeners could help by reporting any issues by email, commenting on this post, or @replying us on Twitter, that would be great.

Oh, and Happy New Year!