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InstantSpot.com is open for business!

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:56:00 GMT

You might have noticed, ever since our Version 2.0 release, InstantSpot account creation has only been available for those with a valid invitation code.

Well, that is a thing of the past.

Thanks to all of our testers/users for helping us sort through any bugs encountered along the way. As always, if any issues are encountered please feel free to contact me directly or use the link in the control panel to report problems.

So what are you still doing here??! Go create your 'Spot now!

Create a custom pod with Sproutbuilder

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:44:00 GMT

Sproutbuilder is a new application that recently rolled out in a beta status. Basically it allows you to create widgets in a pretty nice Flex interface.

From their howitworks page:

Building a sprout is easy. Choose from dozens of pre-built templates or start from scratch. Drag-and-drop shapes, text, images, video, and more. Then add components such as slideshows, jukeboxes, and countdown clocks, as well as interactive services such as chat (Meebo), phone (Ribbit), fundraising (ChipIn), and more. Once you’ve got your content in place, use advanced editing and navigation tools to perfect your sprout.

Ultimately you end up with an embed code, like this

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="180" height="171" id="sUAAKe0cDAJqAatXf"><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="align" value="middle" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><param /><param name="movie" value="http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/17661/load/UAAKe0cDAJqAatXf.swf" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/17661/load/UAAKe0cDAJqAatXf.swf" width="180" height="171" wmode="transparent" align="middle" bgcolor="#ffffff" /></object> <img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/CIMP/Jmx*PTEyMDE3OTA5NTUxMDcmcHQ9MTIwMTc5MDk1NTY5MSZwPTEyMDc*MSZkPTE4MjgyJm49.jpg" />

Now, to add it to your InstantSpot site...gotta tie that in right :)

Log in to the control panel and click on the Widgets section.

Then, once you are there, you can click to add a pod, reorder, deactivate, etc...

Then, on to the end result...go look at your Spot.

"Friend Only" Blogging...A New InstantSpot Feature

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:08:00 GMT

Example of one of the levels of permission that can be applied to blog entries on InstantSpot.

Robots and main page accessibility

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 06:00:00 GMT

On my quest towards e-stardom (aka a relevant and content-rich website), I realized that the navigation towards my older "news items" was somewhat lacking. My solution for this problem was to create a side bar menu that would contain all of the news item titles in descending date order (aka newest first).

A day or two after this change, I began to notice a positive side-effect to including all of these titles as links on the main page...The robots (spiders) were crawling all through my site! I'm not 100% sure, but I can't imagine how this increased indexing would hurt my chances of being returned in some search results.

In a possibly related subject, a Google search for 'Aaron Lynch' now returns this page in the top 10 search results (#6 as of this entry) and an MSN search returns www.AaronJLynch.com as #3!

Does anybody want my autograph?

UPDATE 1/25/06: Either Google has changed my ranking somehow, or my switch to BlogCFC has harmed my accessibility somehow. I now turn up on like page 5 or something terrible. Back to the drawing board!