John Tropea at Library Clips was asking if anyone knew of a bookmarklet that would generate link text to open in a new window. I thought I could figure that out based on the tagging bookmaklets I’d fidled with before (see also the screen cast there if bookmarklets in general could use clarification.)

So here’s that bookmarklet, you can probably figure out how to use it.

NewWindow

Here’s what the code looks like, displayable thanks to John’s recommended service centricle.com. (I just used the bookmarklet to use that link – hooray!

<a href="javascript:(function(){var%20a=”;var%20t=prompt
(‘Enter%20URL%20without%20http://’,”);var%20tr=t.split(‘%20′);
for(var%20i=0;i%3Ctr.length;i++){if(i%20%3E%200){a+=’,%20′;}a+
=’%3Ca%20href=’+unescape(‘%22’)+’http://’+tr[i]+unescape(‘%22’)+
‘%20target=’+unescape(‘%22’)+’blank’+unescape(‘%22’)+’%3E’+tr[i]+
‘%3C/a%3E’;};prompt(‘Copy%20this%20code,%20press%20OK,%20
then%20paste%20to%20your%20blog%20entry:’,a);})
()" rel="nofollow">NewWindow</a>

So obviously this is only going to be useful in some circumstances. You’re lined text will read marshallk.com but I’m often ok with that. A real developer could make this more sophisticated, but for now I think it’s pretty darned handy. Heck, I’ll bet with a little more time I could add another field so you can put in your text and then what you want it to link to. Anyone else faster at this than I am though?

Technorati Tags: linking, bookmarklets, HTML, javascript, hacks

Ugh, this blog has been under heavy comment spam attack for the last 48 hours. Hundreds and hundreds of spam comments. It is no longer viable to just go in and use the Word Press mass edit function. It is also quite dispiriting. I think I’m going to stop blogging.

Ha ha, just kidding! I’m going to start evaluating various anti-spam products and services! And I’m going to prowl the streets at night and see if I can find any comment spammers so I can…give them a firm talking to (?). I know there are much more evil people in the world, but they are the most wretched creatures I come into contact with regularly.

I’ll post updates on either front as they become available.

That’s today’s cartoon from Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void. His site, and the discussion around this cartoon in particular are worth reading. Hugh is a real charmer, but obviously with a biting sense of humor. The percentage of blogs trying to make money (mostly unsuccessfully) is a substantial part of the landscape. I feel very fortunate to be able to blog as much as I do. Was that too boring to read? If so, too bad – no one is paying me to write this blog. I’ll do it however I like!

That’s terrible, isn’t it? Obviously it doesn’t quite work that way. Many people talk about new communication technologies moving us away from a page view centric model and towards a lead-generation model. Thus offending people here is far from inconsequential.

This Yahoo News search result for immigration boycott, on the right hand side of the results page where blogs appear, reminds me that I have to write better titles. Especially when I’m writing about something other than just tech – if I want to take advantage of good placement in places where there is news/blog integration, chances are every other blog post there is liable to begin its headlines with a subject-level phrase. I would love to see people interested in today’s events find my blog through a search for that and take interest in how RSS can be used in their field of interest.

As more and more mainstream media/news sites cut deals with Technorati to include search results on their pages – the headline and first few words of it even become more important for bringing readers beyond that link. Related: See NYTimes, This boring headline is written for Google. I’m talking about something different, though. Perhaps SEO works this way as well, but I’m talking about the human eye being able to see the distinct nature of a truncated excerpt.

I see now that I also misspelled the word strike. Great.

Update: I just changed it and will now go ping manually and see if Yahoo News indexes the new title.