TechnoCloud

As you may notice, I recently added a Flickr feed to the sidebar of TechnoCloud. In part this was to experiment further with Wordpress plugins on a hosted blog, but it was also to give a wider audience to some of my Flickr photos after the original burst of activity died down.

To get a simple feed of thumbnail images to appear on the blog, I experimented with several of the Flickr plugins available on the Wordpress Plugin Directory, but was frustrated that either my version of Wordpress was not compatible, the plugin resulted in a code error or it wasn’t the functionality that I wanted. I won’t name names of the plugins, but needless to say it was a very frustrating evening messing around with code…

Equally frustrating was not spotting the Flickr badge tool buried in the Flickr site nav. Setting it up through the simple wizard was quick and intuitive and mercifully it worked first time.

If only I’d read a blog post like this, I could have saved myself a considerable amount of time…

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MTV parent Viacom is allowing web users to embed videos from a number of MTV sites, including Pimp My Ride, into their web spaces. This comes at a time when Viacom requested the removal of 100k+ clips from YouTube.

While this move shows Viacom’s desire to control the source of their content on the web, they are prepared to let users consume it at least partly on their own terms, whether embedded on a blog or in their social networking space. With the content contained in their player, they can potentially place advertising around the player or within the content to monetise their content in this space.

Check out our example below to see it in action.

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The lively TechCrunch UK and Ireland has been put ‘on hold’ with its equally lively editor Sam Sethi removed from his post, as TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington explains.

The gory details have been widely reported and centre around mixed feedback on social media conference Le Web 3, with organiser Loïc Le Meur objecting to Sam’s conference review, which spiralled into the subsequent fallout.

I hope that TechCrunch UK and Ireland can make a comeback as it was a valuable resource on start-ups and technology in the region.

Ironically enough, last night I attented the Mashup event, among whose sponsors were of course TechCrunch UK and Ireland. I certainly didn’t spot Sam at the event. Of concern is that TechCrunch UK and Ireland is scheduled to get involved in the organising of the Mashup events from next year, so I hope a solution can be found.

As “Oscar Wilde 2.0″ might have said, to lose one may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

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Domain registrants usually enjoy a spam-free honeymoon period, until they need to start paying increasing attention to email and comment filters.

Having been bitten in the past on other projects, I have been careful not to post TechnoCloud’s email address in machine-readable format. However, as sure as death and taxes spam found a way, most likely through some kind of Whois data spider. It took all of 4 days for the first emails to come through. I’m hardly alone on this one.

A few days on, the inevitable comment spam has started, although Wordpress plugin Askimet has been doing a good job of catching it, as well as providing the depressing statistic that 93% of all comments are spam.

Honeymoon over.

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