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This Tech Attack will also serve as a brief overview of tools that Shutterview has recently added to its repertoire.

To begin, above the Shutterview header I have placed a blog search option. You can now search for any post that Shutterview has published. The search engine is powered by Freefind.com and is one of the most effective personal blog searches I have come across. Use it, get it. The I have added a Flecking tool to the site at the bottom of the Sidebar. Make use of this tool to make comments on Shutterview about design, content, genre, me, you or anything that your heart desires. These comments will then be sent to Fleck for anyone to see and make use of in the future. I will also be able to use these comments to keep in touch with your opinions of my blog. And finally I have added my Google Reader favourites to my topnav above the Shutterview header. Follow the link to see what RSS feeds I am viewing and loving. You can also add my Google Reader shared pages to your Google homepage if you so choose.

Google Reader:

On to the Google Reader. I have mentioned on my “Coming soon” feature that I would be comparing Google Reader with Bloglines. I have decided against that. Google reader has taken me. Bloglines is cool and all, but I just found it to be somewhat temperamental occasionally and very difficult to add RSS feeds to your list and manage the list.

Then I discovered Google Reader. Simply put Google Reader is an RSS feed reader. There are many of them out there on your desktop in your mail or a separate website (bloglines and Google Reader). What you do is find a blog with an RSS feed that you like and stick that feed in to the Google Reader and hey-presto you have an easy to view blog, no frills, no fuss and all your favourites on one page telling you when they are being updated. This not only saves time but is a lot less effort for people who read various blogs throughout the day.

What a joy. It is the first page that I look at when I wake up. It is easy to manage and simple to add new feeds in to. Simply download the “subscribe” tool that is offered and subscribe to feeds as you surf. It’s now a matter of clicking subscribe, adding a tag and watching the feed update. 1-2-3 and done.

I have tags extended from News to blogs to international blogs and technology. The reader updates as often as updates are available and has yet to let me down.

Check it out today and change the way you blog-surf.

I have recently been viewing alot of my photos through Google’s Picasa. This program is great and adds photo’s to itself by searching your hard drive for the photos. This is all well and good and I love making use of Picasa and have in the past. But for Picasa to read your photos they need to exist somewhere on your hard drive. This is where my concern kicks in. I have many, many photos that span many trips, jobs, times and places in my life. I don’t want to lose any of the photos to a corrupt hard drive, lightning or an external hard drive melt down.

So I was viewing some photos today through Picasa when I noticed the “web albums” option on Picasa. The web album allows you to upload folders of photos to your own personal Picasa page where you can store, view and if you want share your photos with others.

I am personally not interested at the moment in sharing my photos with the world. I am merely looking for a third backup of photos that I really, really don’t want to lose. Very useful tool I think.

I have just picked up this interesting little social site that allows you to make notes and bullets on any website. So now, through Fleck you can not only consume information, but you can give it back. Simply leave a note, share it, blog it and let people know what you think of the site you are visiting.

Currently Fleck is not supported on IE, the makers suggest Firefox and are in the process of developing an IE version soon.

I am still in the process of familiarising myself with this tool but I think it sounds interesting. A little bar at the bottom of your screen pops up with various options available including bullet, note, share, blog and others. Below is a screen shot.

The other joy of this little tool is that there is no need to sign-up or register. You can do so if you wish, but it isn’t necessary. I have a registration addiction so I tend to register with every site that I stumble across.

Haloscan is a comment moderation tool that replaces bloggers comments. I am trying to make use of this due to my recent discovery of coComment (see TechAttacks 3 & 3 update). coComment allows you to follow comments you have made on any blog,account, website or anything. Now to make use of coComment through my own blog I need to get rid of Bloggers comment system and install Haloscan. This all seems very complicated, but trust me, if I can do it, anyone can.

The pro’s of having Haloscan is that you can customize the look of your comment box and it has a directly built in extension for users who wish to make use of coComment (perfect for me). It also allows you to track comment numbers, people, stats etc. Blogger does not do this.

The only downfall I can see so far is that I don’t think that I can keep any of the old blogger comments without personally copying and pasting them in to the Haloscan comment block one by one… that’s a lot of work for one person. So I am in the process of debating the whole value of using Haloscan if it means losing all the brilliance of my readers. We shall see.

Keep a close look and see how it all works out. Let me know what you all think.

coComment is fantastic. If you read TechAttack3 you will get the gist of the story surrounding coComment. Now I’ve had a bit of time making use of this initiative and I am extremely impressed.

coComment takes a bit of getting used to and understanding but let’s be honest, if I can do it, anyone can. It’s a hop, skip and a jump away from registering to getting in the full swing of the process involved in tracking your comments.

I not only spend alot of time reading blogs that I like and commenting on them, but following up on those comments and conversations. It is extremely time consuming to try and cover them all in one fell swoop and remember where I’ve been, who said what and when. So now I simply have coComment do it for me. The program can be downloaded (If you are using Flock or FireFox) and simply attaches itself to your blogger/wordpress comment box and asks if you would like to track the conversation. This is where it gets a little bit slow, once you tick the box and say you do want to track the conversation, you need to enter the blog title, url, post and post link then write your post and sign in as per usual. The comment is then sent straight to your coComment inbox where you can thereafter view and track comments on the conversation.

It’s simple, it’s easy and that’s the way I like these sort of applications to be. Easy enough for me to use and explain in 2 days and one post. Done and dusted.