Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Targets in Blogger

If you add a link to a post in Blogger, it will show the underlying page in the same window as your Blog. If you want your visitors to stay on your Blog while looking at the pages you suggest to them, add an extra tag to the HTML-code with which the link is made. It is called a TARGET, which you set to BLANK.

The effect:
- this link opens in the same window
- this link opens in a new window

The code looks like this:

Tag cloud made of a mix of RSS feeds

Zoomclouds offers a unique presentation of the content on a website that has RSS: in tags. It looks something like this:



Alas, Zoom Clouds only supports one feed per cloud. Wouldn't it be great to have a Zoom Cloud on your website offering a mix of several feeds? Yes, it would! And yes, it can be done.

If fact, it's rather easy. First, gather the feeds you want to use. Then, visit FeedBlendr, a website that offers just what its name pretends: blending feeds into one. Add your feeds and let FeedBlendr combine them into one new feed. You'll get a unique URL that you can copy and paste as a source for your Zoom Cloud.

Obviously the example comes from a bunch of jazz websites.

Nonstop video show using YouTube

Would you like to make a nonstop video show of YouTube videos on your website? Here's how...

- The clips have to start automatically. Jake Ludington's MediaLab tells how. Paste the code of the first video in your webpage.
- Add a META-tag to your website, which tells the browser to load a new page (the page with the second clip) after a given time. That given time is the duration of the clip plus three seconds for starting up the video. Translate the duration in seconds and place the total after the tag 'content=' (253 in the example). Place this tag somewhere between the 'head'-codes in the upper part of your HTML.

Example:


- Add clickthrough tags for visitors, if they want to skip a clip.
- Make as many clips as you wish. Your own TV Show is ready...

Here's an example with French pop songs.