I just happened to do the lazy people’s version of looking up a website by Googling for “Google Plus” in my browser’s (Chrome, obviously) address bar instead of directly typing in the URL plus.google.com. Hey, it’s a few characters less :) But what caught my eye was Google+ its tagline in the search snipped which I never noticed before.

Google+ tagline

“Google+: real life sharing, rethought for the web. Google+ aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life.”

What exactly does Google expect me to share offline that translates to the Google+ online environment? Offline I share paperclips, tea, t-shirts, online I share links. I am just trying to grasp this tagline. It doesn’t make any more sense in Dutch “Het doel van Google+ is om delen op internet meer te laten lijken op delen in het echte leven.” I don’t share “friends” offline. Nor do I share articles by photocopying them for my colleagues but maybe I’m just a selfish person offline.

Last Monday I wrote a blog post on Vampire movies in IMDB and Breyten notified me on Twitter that he wasn’t sure his comment came through on my blog because of a BackType error. I used the BackType Connect plugin for WordPress to integrate tweets related to the blog post into the commentspace. Conversations are increasingly moving from the blog commentspace to distributed commentspaces on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as analyzed with colleague Carolin Gerlitz. 0 comments has become 12 tweets and 4 Likes. This has also been noted by Jill Walker Rettberg who tweeted about whether there is a WordPress plugin to include Twitter mentions of a blog post in the light of the death of blog comments, or rather the migration of blog comments to other platforms.

Unfortunately, when Twitter acquired BackType, the plugin also stopped working. While developers have created a new plugin, this new plugin requires a BackType API key which can no longer be requested. Time to find a new plugin to integrate conversations on my blog. BackType itself suggests Disqus but I am not comfortable replacing my commenting system with an external system by a third party. I found two suitable options: one is a plugin by Benjamin J. Balter and the other is a plugin by Topsy. I went for the Topsy plugin because it is very versatile as it includes both a retweet button and Twitter trackbacks. For now I have only enabled the Twitter trackbacks in the comments as I am already using Twitter’s own retweet button. I could consider switching to Topsy’s retweet button as I can use my bit.ly API to track my retweets.

How to use the Topsy button to only include your blog post mentions and comments on Twitter?

1. Go to Settings > Topsy
2. Go to Button Placement > uncheck all boxes with “Display on page”
3. Go to Trackback Comments and check Enable trackback comments

That’s it!

The only downside? The old BackType Connect plugin supported conversations from Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News and other blogs while Topsy only supports Twitter. If you know of a WordPress plugin that still works and functions similarly to the BackType Connect button, please let me know in the comments or mention this post on Twitter ;)

Robot clothespins

I won’t bore you with my (already failed) New Year’s resolutions such as going to bed earlier, not checking Twitter when attempting to go to bed, taking more time to cook, exercise more and the other usual suspects, but instead, I will share some of my online resolutions.

1. Blog more often
   This one is going pretty well so far. For me, personally, it is about not setting the bar so high. A blog post doesn’t necessarily has to deal with my research, or has to be pondered upon for days. Small and quick blog posts are also fine. If I’m considering writing about something and don’t do it within one or two days it will eventually pass. Act immediately and write. My blog is the most beautiful archive I have.
2. Learn how to go offline and focus
   This one seems to be quite popular as for example described by Nick Denton from the New York Times who wants to learn how to “To Enjoy the View Without Help From an iPhone” in 2012. I just purchased the Freedom and Anti-Social bundle to limit the distractions on my MacBook while writing. While Anti-Social will turn off social parts of the web, such as Twitter and Facebook, Freedom will totally disconnect you. It’s reminiscent of “going offline,” remember those days?
3. Learn how to code
   I’ve been wanting to learn how to code for quite a while now and in 2008 I dedicated a blog post titled “Dear MTV, I Wanna Be MADE into a Killer PHP Programmer” to it. Now Codecademy has made this resolution easier than ever with their Code Year initiative: “Sign up on Code Year to get a new interactive programming lesson sent to you each week and you’ll be building apps and web sites before you know it.” I will let you know about the progress.
4. Clean app permissions
   This handy site was shared on Twitter: “Start 2012 by Taking 2 Minutes to Clean Your Apps Permissions.” I just revoked access to tons of applications I don’t even remember ever activating.
   
5. Backup backup backup
   Backup your WordPress database and your files. Put them anywhere. I backup my writing files on Dropbox and an external HD using TimeMachine and I use CrashPlan to backup my photos to the cloud (and an external HD using TimeMachine).
6. Update update update
   This one always follows after backup :) I just updated my iPad to iOS5 and my blog to the most recent version of WordPress for security reasons.

I’m a big fan of True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and other vampire related shows and movies so I did a small exercise:

1. Get all movies categorized with “Vampire” from IMDB and sort by release date: http://www.imdb.com/keyword/vampire/?title_type=feature&sort=release_date
2. Copy paste all 758 titles to a spreadsheet
3. Import spreadsheet in Google Refine
4. Search for all dates and note down number of movies per year in a spreadsheet
5. Visualize spreadsheet using Google Docs

Absolute number of movies from 1916-2011 labelled with "vampire" by IMDB

The image shows the absolute number of movies tagged with keyword “Vampire” from 1916-2011 with, interestingly enough, a few releases during World World II, a growth in the early seventies and a big peak in 2009. It would be great to normalize the data with the total number of movies released that year but I do not seem to be able to find that data in IMDB. For example: “Number of movies released in 2009.” If anyone has an idea on how to approach that, please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments :)

Please note that these are not necessarily all vampire movies but movies labelled with the keyword “vampire.” The small exercise served as a good recommendation filter as well because I found a Pedro Almodóvar movie I have not seen yet. Los Abrazos Rotos (2009) is not a movie about vampires but contains several references to vampires. Feel free to work with the spreadsheet, there might be more interesting things in there.

UPDATE
Thanks to Breyten (see comments) I was able to get the total number of movies per year in the IMDB to calculate the relative number of labelled vampire per year. The seventies are back! :)

Relative number of movies from 1916-2011 labelled with "vampire" by IMDB

I wish you all the best for the new year. Happy reading, writing, sharing, Tweeting and Liking in 2012! Below a video from the fireworks over Amsterdam.

Nicolas Henry exhibition in L'Église Saint-Merri

Nicolas Henry exhibition in L'Église Saint-Merri

Place des Vosges

In the line for falafel at L'As du Falafel, Rue des Rosier in Le Marais

Space invader

Café de l'Industrie

Galeries Lafayette

Galeries Lafayette

Happy holidays!

More photos from Paris on Flickr.