Martin Atkins's dashboard

Martin Atkins replied on September 10, 2009 01:06 to the idea "Foursquare + Brightkite = Awesomeness?" in foursquare:

I hacked up my own app to do this. It only supports updating my own accounts, but the source is available should anyone wish to hack on it or make something of their own based on my code:
http://github.com/apparentlymart/brig...

I started off trying to automatically check in to both, but found that there's enough differences in naming of places between BrightKite and FourSquare that it works better to have the user interactively choose the matching item from FourSquare after first finding a place on BrightKite.

This was just a Sunday hack for my own use and certainly not a proper solution. I'd love to see a polished app for doing this.

Martin Atkins replied on September 09, 2009 23:00 to the question "Make custom banner clickable?" in Six Apart:

Although we can't introduce new links with CSS, if we move the styles you applied to the #banner div to the link TypePad provides in the banner then we can produce the same appearance while making the banner clickable.

For example:

#banner-header a {
background: url(http://davidowen.typepad.com/david_ow...) no-repeat;
height: 200px;
color: #ffffff;
}
#banner-inner {
width: 100%;
padding: 0;
background: #ffffff;
}
#banner-description {
display: none;
}

This will probably need some more tweaking to get it exactly how you'd like it, but hopefully this wil serve as a useful starting point.

I hope this helps!

A comment on the idea "Convert to Advanced Template" in Six Apart:

Hi Zolie,

On my blog I removed those navigation links using Custom CSS, like this:

.content-nav {
display: none;
}

Until this can be made an option in "Organize Content" this is an easier workaround than switching everything to advanced templates. – Martin Atkins, on September 09, 2009 21:53

Martin Atkins replied on September 09, 2009 21:40 to the question "Make custom banner clickable?" in Six Apart:

Hi Laura!

Could you let me know the URL of your blog so I can see how you've configured your custom banner?

Thanks!

Martin Atkins started following the idea "Customizing the boring word "Comments".. when?" in Six Apart.

Martin Atkins replied on May 11, 2009 18:55 to the question "Can my blog be my Open ID?" in Six Apart:

Using your blog URL as your OpenID should actually work, though there is a minor wrinkle in your case because you seem to have a third-party redirector service on sbpoet.com (with no www.) which is intercepting OpenID requests and preventing them from getting to TypePad.

However, if you use your full Blog URL with the www. prefix then it should work as an OpenID identifier.

Unfortunately due to the way OpenID works you will be considered to be a different user if you sign in with your blog URL rather than your TypePad Profile URL, so you'll need to be consistent about which you use to sign in: if you use your blog URL the first time you sign in to a site you can't later use your profile URL, and vice-versa.

Please let me know if you run into any problems.

Martin Atkins replied on March 07, 2009 02:02 to the question "Explain image URLs in TypePad and why they differ" in Six Apart:

There really is no malice behind this change; the new TypePad platform that we've been moving to comes with a new system for dealing with images, which allows new abilities such as dynamically resizing images to smaller sizes to create thumbnails and so forth; the "-600wi" on the end of the URL in the example means to scale the image to no more than 600 pixels wide, for example.

The URLs containing what is seemingly a string of gibberish is an artifact of this new system -- it's how the images are referred to internally -- and not something that was intentionally designed to cause customers any kind trouble, though clearly it did inadvertently make things more difficult for exporting and for creating search-engine-friendly image URLs.

If you upload your images through the file manager they will get a pretty URL in addition to the gibberish URL. I agree that it would be useful to have the ability to create a pretty URL when uploading an image through the entry editor too.

Martin Atkins started following the idea "Is Typepad going to allow Facebook Connect for basic templates?" in Six Apart.

A comment on the question "Google Friend Connect and Typepad Premium" in Six Apart:

I believe that Google Friend Connect uses that page to communicate with the Google servers, so I guess the page views you're seeing there are the result of the widgets you embedded retrieving information from Google, so that's why the number seems unusually high. – Martin Atkins, on February 28, 2009 09:02

Martin Atkins replied on February 23, 2009 04:36 to the question "Google Friend Connect and Typepad Premium" in Six Apart:

Assuming that you're using a computer with Windows, one way to find the necessary code is to open the Notepad program that comes with Windows and then drag and drop each file onto Notepad. This will load the code for the pages which you should be able to post into the "Edit HTML" box.

I just had a look at the files again and extracted the important body parts that can go in your TypePad page.

rpc_relay.html contains the following:


<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/friendconnect/script/rpc_relay.js"></script>


canvas.html contains the following:


<div class="fc-sign-in-header">
<!--REQUIRED SO VISITORS CAN SIGN IN-->
<div class="signin" id="gadget-signin"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var skin = {};
skin['BORDER_COLOR'] = '#cccccc';
skin['ENDCAP_BG_COLOR'] = '#e0ecff';
skin['ENDCAP_TEXT_COLOR'] = '#333333';
skin['ENDCAP_LINK_COLOR'] = '#0000cc';
skin['ALTERNATE_BG_COLOR'] = '#ffffff';
skin['CONTENT_BG_COLOR'] = '#ffffff';
skin['CONTENT_LINK_COLOR'] = '#0000cc';
skin['CONTENT_TEXT_COLOR'] = '#333333';
skin['CONTENT_SECONDARY_LINK_COLOR'] = '#7777cc';
skin['CONTENT_SECONDARY_TEXT_COLOR'] = '#666666';
skin['CONTENT_HEADLINE_COLOR'] = '#333333';
skin['ALIGNMENT'] = 'right';
google.friendconnect.container.renderCanvasSignInGadget({'id': 'gadget-signin'}, skin);
</script>

<!--END REQUIRED-->
<div class="clear"></div>

</div>

<div class="site-header"><span class="section-title">Site Name</span></div>
<div class="go-back">
<!--REQUIRED SO VISITORS CAN RETURN TO REFERRING PAGE-->
<a href="javascript:google.friendconnect.container.goBackToSite();">
&lsaquo;&lsaquo; Return home</a>

<!--END REQUIRED-->
</div>
<!-- REQUIRED - THIS IS WHERE THE GADGET IS PRESENTED. ALLOW AT LEAST 500px WIDTH -->
<div id="gadget-canvas" class="canvas-gadget"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var skin = {};
skin['BORDER_COLOR'] = '#cccccc';
skin['ENDCAP_BG_COLOR'] = '#e0ecff';
skin['ENDCAP_TEXT_COLOR'] = '#333333';
skin['ENDCAP_LINK_COLOR'] = '#0000cc';
skin['ALTERNATE_BG_COLOR'] = '#ffffff';
skin['CONTENT_BG_COLOR'] = '#ffffff';
skin['CONTENT_LINK_COLOR'] = '#0000cc';
skin['CONTENT_TEXT_COLOR'] = '#333333';
skin['CONTENT_SECONDARY_LINK_COLOR'] = '#7777cc';
skin['CONTENT_SECONDARY_TEXT_COLOR'] = '#666666';
skin['CONTENT_HEADLINE_COLOR'] = '#333333';
google.friendconnect.container.renderUrlCanvasGadget({'id': 'gadget-canvas'}, skin);
</script>



When copying this code please be sure to get all of it and not to pick up any extra text from around the code.

Please let me know how you get on!

Martin Atkins replied on February 18, 2009 18:07 to the question "Paragraphs, headings and lists smushed together on wiki pages" in PBwiki:

I'm pasting in some HTML I wrote in a separate editor into the source code view. It's nothing crazy... just plain old HTML paragraphs, lists and headings.

Martin Atkins asked a question in PBwiki on February 17, 2009 08:14:

Paragraphs, headings and lists smushed together on wiki pages

The default PBwiki stylesheet removes the top and bottom margins from various block-level elements like paragraphs, headings and lists, making everything appeared smushed together.

Is there some way that this can be disabled so that there is a sensible amount of spacing between these elements?

Martin Atkins started following the idea "Easier background image" in Six Apart.

Martin Atkins started following the question "Can you set the In-Reply-To header on topic emails?" in Get Satisfaction.

Martin Atkins marked one of Amy Muller's replies in Get Satisfaction as useful. Amy Muller replied to the idea "Different notification email addresses for different companies".

Martin Atkins shared an idea in Get Satisfaction on February 13, 2009 01:01:

Different notification email addresses for different companies

It'd be good if GetSatisfaction would allow me to have notifications for different companies go to different email addresses.

My account has my personal email address associated with it, which is useful when I ask questions about other companies, but I'd like notifications about the company I work for to go to my work email address.

Martin Atkins replied on February 13, 2009 00:45 to the question "Google Friend Connect and Typepad Premium" in Six Apart:

Cool idea!

Although TypePad doesn't have any official support for Google Friend Connect right now, you can actually make use of Friend Connect on a TypePad site using sidebar modules. Here's how you can do it:

• When following through the Friend Connect setup process you'll be asked to create two HTML files on your site. You can create these as normal TypePad pages. Choose to "Edit HTML" rather than "Rich Text" and you can copy the main content from Google's HTML files into the content field.


• Be sure to set the filename as per Google's instructions; if you don't see the "Filename" option on the TypePad compose page, you can use the "Display Options" link to enable it.


• Once you've got Friend Connect hooked up, you can add the members gadget and other gadgets as sidebar modules. Go to the "Design" tab and go to the "Content" area. One of the modules is called "Embed your own HTML", which will allow you to embed the code given to you by Google Friend Connect to embed the gadgets.

I set this up on a test blog. I'd be interested to hear about how you get on. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Martin Atkins replied on January 14, 2009 03:34 to the question "Using mapped domain as an Open ID" in Six Apart:

Today's TypePad release included a change that will allow a mapped domain to be used as an OpenID identifier.

If your blog is using standard templates then this should already be working and you can get started right away. If you're using advanced templates, then you may need to manually add some code to your templates to hook it up. Please let me know if you'd like any further help with this.

Martin Atkins replied on December 18, 2008 02:45 to the question "What TypePad URL serves as my OpenID--is it the profile URL?" in Six Apart:

Hi Melissa,

I got in touch with ClaimID and discovered that their system currently only supports an older version of OpenID that unfortunately TypePad Profiles doesn't support.

Unfortunately that means that at the moment it isn't possible to use your TypePad Profile URL to sign in to ClaimID, though ClaimID did let me know that they are planning to add support for the latest version of OpenID in future, which should then work with TypePad Profiles.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help here. Your TypePad Profile should work as an OpenID identifier on most other sites, as almost everyone supports the latest version of OpenID now.

Thanks again for taking the time to let us know about this issue.

Martin Atkins started following the problem "Problem posing in opera!" in Six Apart.