Add Cool New Functionality to Your Blog

Some of the our favorite third-party applications are giving us the royal treatment this week- Ping.fm, Apture, and Userfly.

Apture's a slick Firefox extension that helps you to add and integrate all kinds of media into your blog. Andy and I are working on another video to show you just how cool you can get with it, but give it a whirl. It'll add a button on your compose window to help you along. (It works with Movable Type too.)

Ping.fm makes updating your social network-ed friends very easy, and Userfly makes your web usability testing both free and easy.

Thanks to all the awesome developers out there who keep building cool tools to use on your blog. Have a favorite widget or browser plugin you want to share?

Comments

[Editor]

I'd like to add Blogo for Twitter interaction...

http://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/blogo

[Benjamin Jackson]

Thanks for mentioning Blogo! We just released version Blogo 1.2.5 this week, with support for custom post slugs, Movable Type tags, and the ability to post to all types of Ping.fm accounts (microblog, blog, and status updates).

[Ginevra]

lucky day! Ben from Blogo answered yes just below your comment, and we're having him put together a guest post for Everything TypePad about how to use it with TypePad/Movable Type.

[Editor]

That's great! I can't wait until their post...

[Brian Hines]

Apture looks cool, and I tried to add it to one of my TypePad blogs. But apparently it doesn't work with a two column layout, sidebar on the left. Consulting Apture help, I'm told to change my blog design so the sidebar is on the right. Doesn't seem like adding a widget should force a redesign. Maybe you could encourage Apture to support the left sidebar. What's the difference, left or right?

[TAS mania]

In my brief use of the apture, it looks great for a quick link to a few generally filtered sites about a topic. And I can see this expanding to a application that lets me search more indepth in the future. (5 to 10 results per media sources is not enough) For now I might use it, after I do my search with other engines, input my results in apture so as to keep viewers on my site. I saw google listed on aptures website, but don't see it being used as a web search engine. Would prefer google to Yahoo. Also, I have a mapped url and two blogs....couldn't get apture to accept any variation of my 2nd blog which has all my preexisting links that could be apturized.

[Cosmo Scharf]

Hey Ginerva! This reminds me of a post I wrote a month ago about some more great services for a blog. Maybe you add them to the list or create a new one.

http://tinyurl.com/b3mghd

[the WanderingSalsero]

I saw an app on Ning.com yesterday that seemed like a really good idea but my browser wouldn't open it up. Strange! It was called www.uplayme.com. I sure wish we had it on TypePad.

Art
www.wanderingsalsero.net

[Colleen McGarry]

Hi Brian, we are working on the best solution for you to be able to use Apture. Hope to have it up soon, and I'll definitely share it here for other TypePad users to partake in!
If any of you have Apture installed and have a right-column layout, just make sure Apture is at the bottom of your widget/module list, and you should be good to go!

Feel free to email me if you have questions, too.

[Ginevra]

thanks for everyone replying! I think that Apture (and we!) are getting some great feedback out of this, so keep it coming...

[Brian Hines]

Thanks, Colleen. Um...what is your email address? Mine is [email protected] Let me know if Apture finds a way to add the widget to the left or main columns. If all else fails, I could go "rightie," but I'd rather not. Maybe it's a semi-subliminal political statement I want to make, being an Obama supporter.

[Brian Hines]

A P.S. to Colleen...and general comment about Apture. I decided to switch to a two column right format so I could try out the full Apture features (Wikipedia and You Tube links work with Apture in left column, but nothing else).

I just uploaded a photo via Apture and love how it works. You don't get a thumbnail (which would be nice), but hovering over the link lets the viewer see the photo without a popup or opening a new window. That alone is worth the price of Apture (which happens to be free).