Below I’ve compiled a list of seven of my favorite NetNewsWire “styles”, which are basically just different looks that you can give to it.

Feast your eyes on this goodness, and choose the one(s) you want to install!

Default

For reference, here is the default NetNewsWire style that comes pre-loaded with every installation:

JetReader

Bullit

Serif Black

Serif White

ReadLight

Hardcover

Daring Serif

What are inline comment replies?

Inline comment replies is a feature that lets you reply to comments on a blog, and have your reply show up directly below the comment you are replying to.

Imagine this scenario: you’re reading an interesting article on one of your favorite topics, and after you finish reading, you decide to read through the comments and see what other people are saying about it.  You start going through the comments, and see one towards the top that’s from a guy who has a question about the article.  Since you have a lot of experience on the article’s topic, you immediately know the answer to his question and decide to answer it.  There’s only one problem – after that guy posted his question, 50 other people posted comments below his.  Now, if you were to post a comment in reply to his question, it would be so far away that he probably wouldn’t ever see it.  This is a pretty big problem, right?

Enter inline comment replies.  Now, if the blog you’re reading has this feature installed, you can simply click “reply” on the guy’s question, type your answer, and your comment will show up right below his (indented a bit so it stands out from all the other comments).  Pretty nice, right?  Or is it?

The problem

Though this may sound like a great feature, and in fact it is useful most of the time, there is one problem with it.  If you have an extremely popular blog that gets tons of comments within seconds of a new article being posted, then everyone is going to want to be one of the first to comment so that their website link is clicked most.  Normally, you could only do this if you literally sat on the site and clicked refresh every couple of seconds until a new article showed up, and then typed a comment as fast as you could.  However, with inline replies, you can just reply to the first comment on a post, and your reply is displayed right below the first comment.

If the first comment is an actual question, and the reply is an answer to that question, then this is fine.  But if the reply is nothing more than a way to get a link to the top of the comment list, then this can become a problem.

The solution?

The obvious solution for this is to simply not use inline comment replies on your blog.  However, sometimes it is a nice feature to have on your blog, and you don’t want to give it up.  So what do you do?

One thing you can do is manually delete comments that are obviously from people trying to just get to the top of the comment list.  The problem with this is the 1) the commenter might wonder where his comment went and get angry at you for deleting it or 2) the comment could actually have some good content in it, but doesn’t have anything to do with the comment it’s in reply to.  Deleting it would be removing legitimate content.

Another thing you could do is just move the reply comment to the bottom of the list.  The commenter might get annoyed that his comment was moved, but at least he didn’t get away with his scheme.

So now I ask you – do you worry about this on your blog, and if so, how do you prevent it from happening?

Then, after settling to be content with Google Analytics, I read an article on one of my RSS feeds that talked about a great new analytics program called Woopra that was still in Beta.  I thought it sounded interesting, so I headed over to the official Woopra website to take a look at the new rage.  What I found was truly amazing.  Not only was their website design awesome, but when I downloaded the actual Woopra Desktop Version, I just sat there with my mouth open.  Never before have I seen a program so extremely slick as this!

After I got past the first “wow” of the design aspect, I got another big “wow” out of the functionality of the program.  As I said before, I had always wanted to be able to see what visitors were on my website right at the moment I was on, but Google Analytics didn’t have anything like that.  However, when I downloaded Woopra, that was one of the first things I noticed.  Now, whenever I open up the Woopra Desktop Client, I go right to the “Live” tab, and see who’s on my website right at that moment.  Pretty cool, huh?

And that’s not all!  There are many, many other cool features of Woopra, some of which I’ve listed below:

• Website Statistics (obviously) – Total Visitors, Average Time Spent per Page, Page Views/Visit, Visits Today, New Visitors Today, Total Page Views, etc.
• Real-Time Analytics – You can see what people are doing right now.
• Easy Installation with WordPress – Just install the plugin, and you’re good to go!
• Real-Time Notifications – You can set up events that pop up when certain things happen – someone comes to your website, views a certain page, etc.
• Live Visitor Chatting –  If you see someone on your website that you want to have a conversation with, just click the “Start a Conservation” button in Woopra, and you can have a live chat with them!
• Visitor Tagging – If you know that one of your visitors is your friend, then you can “tag”, or “name” him something so that you will always know that it’s him.
• Impressive Search – You can search every visitor that every came to your website, find out his browser, OS, country, and language.
• Track Multiple Websites – You don’t have to just track one website, you can track all of your websites.

So that’s pretty much it.  If you haven’t tried out Woopra for yourself yet, then I really encourage you to head over to Their Website and take a look.  You won’t be disappointed!

1. I love playing the guitar.  I have two guitars – an acoustic and an electric – but I play my acoustic more. (I don’t know any drummers. )
2. I have five computers in my house. (unfortunately, they aren’t all mine…)
3. I went to the Bahamas on vacation last year.
4. Pizza is my favorite food. (Welcome to America!)
5. I just got a new screen for my computer – it’s an HP w2207 display, with a 1680×1050 resolution.  It’s nice!
6. I have a pet leopard gecko and a pet dog, an Irish Doodle, which is a cross between an Irish Setter and a Poodle.
7. I love Pixar.  I also love Dreamworks, though I haven’t seen their new movie yet (Kung Fu Panda).
8. Web 2.0 is my favorite style of web designing, then hand-drawn, then metal interface style, then finally grunge.

And that’s it! So now I tag you!