Bookmarklet to generate open in new window link

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?

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I’m being attacked by robots

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.

RSS consulting and client feedback

Just found the impeteus to put together a one page PDF description of my consulting services in regards to RSS for Competitive and Market Intelligence (making the most of RSS reading to maximize rapid knowledge discovery etc. in your field of interest.) I’ll post that here for your feedback if you’d like to leave any. I’ve got room on the work schedule in June and July for a short gig or two and RSS training is what I’d like to focus on.

Speaking of feedback, I’ve updated my client feedback page so it looks nicer. I know I’ve left some folks off who’ve sent me feedback, but no offense intended.

One cool teacher on the congressional move against social networking sites

A group of primarily Republicans calling themselves the “Suburban Caucus” have moved to require schools to block access to all commercial web sites that enable the creation of web pages by students, user profiles and the ability to communicate between users. Otherwise they would lose their federally subsidized internet access. It’s MySpace-o-phobia gone nuts. It’s despicable, but I’ve never liked school much anyway. I wrote a snarky post about it over on Social Software last week and some very interesting commentary has emerged in the comments section. The best commentary I’ve seen yet, however is from the Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis. Davis is an outspoken Christian, a private school teacher in Georgia – and she’s got a long, scathing critique of the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) congressional proposal. I highly recommend checking it out. Vicki points to some great resources on the topic and her post is a good place to start if you want to learn more or help do something about it. Thanks Vicki!

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Contest: Tag web applications, win web applications

This might be totally obnoxious, but I’m going to give it a try. Randy Morin of the RSS Blog began an experiment recently where he gives a free book from Amazon.com to the person who sends him the best link via del.icio.us by tagging it for:randymorin. Similar to Engadget Mobile giveaways, where a new phone is given to one random person who comments after a particular post. Those posts get thousands of comments.

I think that’s a pretty cool idea. It’s like in SnowCrash where people suck up “intelligence” information freelance about everything, submit it to the Central Information Agency (privitized CIA) and get paid whenever someone pays the CIA to access their intel. Hmmm…maybe that’s frightening.

Regardless, let’s try it.

If people tag their favorite online productivity product, service or application for Web 2.0 style info-management/research with the tag tools4marshallk – I’ll pick my favorite one of the month and the person who submitted it gets one year of premium subscription to any web service of their choice on me, up to fifty bucks. For two runners-up I’ll pitch in twenty bucks towards premium subscription to a web service of your choice. High stakes stuff, huh? I think it could prove more than worth it. And fun! At the end of this month I’ll profile the winners, their submissions and their selected services. Unless I have less than 20 submissions, at which point I’ll extend it to one month from this post. It’ll be great, and did I mention fun? Since it won’t be a for:marshallkirkpatrick tag, anyone can see the submissions here. Heck, if this works well then we could all vote on which submissions are best. But this whole idea might be really stupid, or at least in need of continual evolution.

Update: the tagging has begun! Check out the first submissions at http://del.icio.us/tag/tools4marshallk
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